Greg Arthur (00:01.29)
Okie dokie. Welcome to the Product Design for Learning podcast. We're in the second group of episodes now and we have, it's not often I say this, the big dog. We've got a big dog. So we had David as our big dog last time. We've got Tom McDowall who is currently, as we're talking, the chair of the Learning Network but won't be probably by the time this comes out.
But he's still an all-round good egg and lovely person to speak to and owner of a lovely beard. So Tom and I are going to be talking about the understand phase of the product design process. And Tom, first question for you, we'll go straight into it. How would you summarize this phase of the process in about 60 seconds? So why it's important, what it means to you. We're going to roughly count 60 seconds.
Tom (01:00.191)
I would argue this is THE important phase, is THE phase you cannot skip, cannot shortcut, it is the phase that sets everything else up and it is the phase where if you get it wrong, nothing else actually matters. It's about really getting to grips with what every phase moving forwards should look like. think I've crept in fairly decently under the 60 seconds there, which is impressive for me.
Greg Arthur (01:22.807)
you are well under time. That's incredible. That's a really succinct way. And I was literally doing some filming yesterday and this question came up as part of the filming. And I think my answer was pretty much the same and we haven't shared notes, so we're in good company. I completely agree. And I've said this to clients before, especially when we've been brought in kind of later in a process, like what happened at the start? And if there's a...
that comes in around, know, fictitious stakeholder or somebody in the group has said, they really want this to happen. It's usually like, why? And my immediate reaction is usually that's probably wrong. How do you deal with people that kind of come with like a predefined understand phase before they've even started? go, right, we're gonna make this format or this solution.
Tom (02:18.793)
So I I make the core of this part, the early stage of this conversation, actually all about risk, because this is actually the biggest opportunity to introduce unnecessary risk into your project by making unfounded assumptions. Like we are going to work on some assumptions, assumptions aren't inherently bad, they're necessary, et cetera, et cetera, but we've got to make sure they're all founded on something. And the reason for driving that isn't, I don't think about...
or well better outputs or nicer conversations later it's about highlighting look if we get this wrong here's what could happen to your business if we just go with it we might spend X amount of money and get no results we might make the current performance situation worse we might create a product that gets you sued let's highlight those risks and then usually I find they go actually yeah let's spend some time to understand this better then you don't have to do the persuading you can just outline the reality
Greg Arthur (02:51.959)
Yes.
Tom (03:13.095)
and they make the tough decision for you.
Greg Arthur (03:15.531)
Yeah, that's brilliant. That's great. And I also try and I've tried to work with people in that we kind of interested to how you feel about this. I try and work with people that we're going to maybe feel like we're going backwards to go forwards. So I kind of give them this kind of slingshot analogy of if it feels like we're just going really slowly backwards, as soon as we let go, once we've understood everything, we are going in the right direction super quick because we know why we're doing everything we're doing.
Tom (03:26.292)
Hmm.
Greg Arthur (03:45.387)
What kind of kickbacks do you get from people when they kind of go, no, this is what we want. This is what we brought you in.
Tom (03:52.657)
So this is always tough because there's an old joke about how online and on LinkedIn and inside our own businesses we're all William Wallace and then inside the business we're the guy in office space with the red stapler who just sits quietly doing the work right. There's there is some truth in that. There is it's always worth acknowledging like I will probably fight more fight with my clients than a lot of people will.
Greg Arthur (04:04.779)
Yeah.
Tom (04:21.491)
but there is also a line where they are they have contracted you to do something and as long as you've highlighted the risks you are going to have to to an extent go with what they want but up to that line generally the biggest pushback is we're on a short deadline we're spending money I'm under pressure from such and such within my organization actually of them that's my favorite one to get because that's the easiest to fix because in that case of okay put us in a room together
Clearly, you're not the right person to have this chat with. Who's controlling the budget? Who's setting the timeline? And who's putting pressure on you? Because it's almost never the person you're working with. They are usually in a similar situation to you, weirdly. So, don't want to bypass them, but if you can get beyond them to the people causing them the problem, 1. You make an ally out of them, rather than needing to fight them. And 2. You actually stand a much better chance of being able to change something.
Greg Arthur (04:54.795)
Mm.
Greg Arthur (05:15.071)
Yeah, absolutely. And this is great actually. So one of the things I'd set out with the podcast, just on a side note, is to make sure that we weren't just bringing people on to talk about their CV or their LinkedIn version of projects they've worked on. It's always really, really, really good. So excited. But I wanted to make sure that we talked about things when we talk about either a particular phase or we talk about an off process topic, where people really give some practical advice. And if anyone is with us, we're...
five minutes 45 in and you've dropped about three major bits of advice already. So incredible. Which brings us on to our next question where I think this is very much, I guess the only answer you can give is advice. I'd love to hear what you think. In this scenario, you're presented with a problem or a request. So you've engaged with a client and said, want, we have this problem or we'd like you to do this thing.
What's the first kind of things you do? What's the first actions you take with them and why do you do those things?
Tom (06:16.479)
So the first thing I do whenever I get through is I do something which I call assumption mapping which is kind of a silly name for it but it's basically pulling apart everything that they've said they want and trying to identify is this a fact or is this an assumption? So for instance if they've asked for a specific solution the whole thing is an assumption there's going to be nothing factual in there except for maybe I need something
They might need something but everything beyond that is going to be assumption. Other times they might come with this has happened, that's happened, that's happened and therefore we now need to do... You might have three or four facts, they're followed by an assumption. The reason for doing that is identifying where do I need to start diving in. Because actually if they provided me five or six facts, as long as I've got access to whatever backs that up, I don't need to waste time.
reanalyzing a really good piece of analysis they've done. The flip side is if they've done none, I need to go back to them and say, hey, look, really glad you've come to me, but let's hit the brakes a little bit here because I've got some questions. That really helps set up that first conversation. And I try and do that before having that first conversation. That's really important because the minute you start the conversations, whether you mean to or not, you will start going down a road. And if it's the wrong road and you do this later,
Greg Arthur (07:32.777)
Yes.
Greg Arthur (07:40.072)
Yes.
Tom (07:42.675)
You've then got a backtrack with this from day one, I can go in saying, okay, here's what we need to, here's the rough direction at least of where I think we need to be going. and that, that first conversation can't be overestimated in terms of its impact. It's not so much first impression of you. It's first impression of the understand phase. Again, you don't want people to feel like, this is time consuming, wasteful. If you come in saying, Hey, you've said this, this bit's golden.
Greg Arthur (07:51.06)
Yeah.
Greg Arthur (08:02.75)
Yes.
Tom (08:11.965)
This bit concerns me, we need to dive into it further. Understand is now not some vague, we need to do some analysis. That's a terrifying term for any business. All anyone hears there is, my god, six months down the line, we're going to have nothing. Instead, when you go in and go, I have these questions, that is now a very targeted and very positive sounding understand phase for them to engage with. So that's where I start.
Greg Arthur (08:14.665)
Mm.
Greg Arthur (08:21.266)
Yeah.
Greg Arthur (08:35.486)
Yeah, absolutely. That's brilliant. I don't think assumption mapping is a silly name at all. I think it's nice and clear. It kind of details, it does what it says on the tin. mean, one of the things that we do in our product time processes is almost the same. So we break everything out and try and reiterate as much as we can that understand phase means that none of us fully understand it until we finish this phase. And even then we probably have
80 ish, 70, 80 % of an idea, but it's better than having like five. And also there's like, you know, things about data moving on and that will probably change our perception a little bit. But at this point from the very beginning, all we know is that there is a problem, but it's like saying my foot hurts. And you go, great, you know what the problem is. You have no idea why it hurts or what you're to do to solve it. And again, we talk about things like, I'm just giving anyone our part, just ideas dumping.
where we just say, as soon as you say to somebody, this is a problem. And I'm sure we'd be, I'm interested if you do as well. Soon as someone says, this is the problem we have, I immediately go, here's four things you could do. They could all be rubbish, but I don't know that yet. But I feel like I need to do something with them or I'll probably forget them. So we just say, look, let's just write them all down. Write them down into whatever detail you've got them. And then let's just park them for a bit. We'll come back to them later. I believe you feel like you've done something.
to get it out your head and it's not a case of well I've got this idea and I love it so let's immediately run with it. Because again, we're still in the understand phase.
Tom (10:11.551)
And think on that there's this interesting thing where people are almost made to feel bad when they immediately start coming up with potential solutions. Don't do that, it's bad! No, no, it's like, no, no, one of those might be the world's greatest idea. But I hear a lot of people go, I have to try and stop myself coming up with them. But actually I feel like what you're suggesting is much more healthy for one thing, because we come up with ideas for a reason, that means we're engaging with the problem, right? And sometimes coming up with those solutions too early in the process spark a...
Greg Arthur (10:18.044)
Yes, yeah.
Tom (10:40.377)
But actually that raises this question, feeding into the understand phase. think that's a really useful thing to do actually rather than almost banning yourself from, think, solutioneering is the term that got created for this, which I think it's trying to do a very good thing, but it maybe has some negative backfiring situations where it prevents people going through this sort of idea generation process.
Greg Arthur (10:42.3)
Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Arthur (10:50.375)
Yes. Yeah.
Greg Arthur (11:02.121)
100 % and I think it's, and I think with the whole solutioneering or kind of ideas dumping, there's definitely a middle ground for both where if you run ahead with an idea straight away because you're going, I've got it. I can't think of anything else. Now this is just the only thing I keep coming back to is way too early to be doing that. But it's also a case of if you, if you dump all these ideas out and then don't revisit them or don't start to do kind of use some basic MVPs or.
or interrogate them a little bit more once you've got some more understanding, once you've got a bit of data. It might be that you did have a really good idea and now you've lost it if you don't do anything with it. But yeah, I think it's people trying to find their speed, I guess, in how they want to approach it. But I guess the main thing for me is, as you said a number of times, is just try and get the information down. If there's something concerning you, this is the best time to be interrogating it rather than...
Tom (11:37.951)
Absolutely. Yeah.
Greg Arthur (11:58.45)
when you've engaged the whole production team and you're hours and dollars into a project. yeah, it's the wild end. When we talk about the process, well, you understand part of the process, which bits do you find really boring and which bits do you love about it? Do you have that kind of black and white view of love and hate?
Tom (12:07.519)
Absolutely.
Tom (12:16.26)
Yeah, so I think I certainly have the bits that I give to other people, which is a pretty good sign of what I don't enjoy doing. So here's an instance. I really enjoy investigating and conducting interviews and going out and gathering data and all this sort of stuff. I cannot stand the analysis of said data and feedback. The idea of sitting down and conducting a thematic analysis of comments made by the I mean, I
Greg Arthur (12:26.663)
You
Tom (12:50.143)
if that was my job I would quit and go and work in a shop. I couldn't spend my days doing that. What I love though is the gathering of that and the sitting down with the findings afterwards. For me those either end are the fun bits basically and the bit in the middle is the slog through data. Which is being somewhat alleviated by technology but I find actually the best alleviation remains a really smart data person.
Greg Arthur (13:04.284)
Yes.
Tom (13:19.775)
Like the first person I hired in my business was, I want someone to deal with data. Because I'm not good at it, I don't enjoy doing at it, doing at it, doing it, I have no intention of getting better because I don't enjoy it, I should hire someone. That is kind of logical steps, right? So yeah, for me, either end is love and the whole bit in the middle is the hate.
Greg Arthur (13:31.61)
Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Arthur (13:40.26)
Yes. I, I, I, a similar to you, the conducting it and sort of pouring over the analysis is where I enjoy spending my time. I actually quite enjoy the analysis, but only because I want to get better at it only because it's like the certain and the certain methods that I quite enjoy. like, if it's like a more like, so I've been doing affinity mapping with some clients recently, that's quite fun where it feels like we're still.
Tom (13:55.283)
Okay.
Greg Arthur (14:10.407)
kind of in a workshop kind of vibe, which is nice. And like, we're kind of doing bits and pieces together and we kind of get into a, sometimes get into a full on argument about, well, why don't you put that there and that should be over there. And that's again, feels like some more data points, but, and also I love spreadsheets. I even have a little mug that says, I have spreadsheets. But I think I tend to agree with you saying if it was my full time, this is all I'm doing. Yeah, I'd be looking for a career change, but it's super important.
Tom (14:13.471)
That's quite cool. Yeah.
Tom (14:22.377)
Yeah.
Tom (14:37.415)
I we're spending a lot of time at the minute doing really specific to, not specific to L &D I suppose, but specific to the kind of questions we're asking about sort of specific performance problems. Doing a lot of multi variable regression analysis to try and see what's actually impacting what. I've been there, I've watched her do it, and I've sat there just going, how do you function?
Like, how can you go through life making like, real world decisions and then be able to do that kind of data analysis? It's fantastic and it's made us better at everything that we do, but, yeah, it blows my mind every time she goes into the last plan. was like, yeah, okay, cool. That sounds really interesting. You can only be good at so much stuff, right? And I think there comes a point where you have to go, look, am I going to try and be mediocre at everything or am I going to try and go, hey, do you know what, maybe that bit?
Greg Arthur (15:05.85)
Yeah.
Greg Arthur (15:24.016)
Yeah.
Yes, yeah.
Tom (15:35.684)
is really important, but it's not for me. And that's kind of where I've landed on the on the kind of deep analysis stuff.
Greg Arthur (15:41.294)
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think there's definitely a point there about appreciation of like say your own skills, but also for the processes in all these things need to happen. Doesn't mean that you need to be the only one doing every single bit of the process. it's, yeah, I think there's definitely a, maybe more for freelancers, but I guess in like small corporate teams where you don't have oodles of cash and resource and, know, ability to go outside, you kind of feel like maybe you are kind of
Tom (15:55.923)
Definitely.
Greg Arthur (16:11.066)
heaped on with, can you just go and get everything done by tomorrow morning? It's like.
Tom (16:17.235)
And I feel like that's where the tech fix is more likely to be helpful. That's where a lot of these platforms that will at least somewhat automate the actual data, the working of data. Was it Fathom I was looking at quite recently looks really interesting for that, that you can basically just dump your data in and go, I've got these questions. Could you have I got the data to answer them? And if I do, could you please provide me some answers? I think for in-house teams, that kind of tool will be really game changing.
Greg Arthur (16:20.537)
Yes.
Greg Arthur (16:28.036)
Mm.
Greg Arthur (16:32.718)
Mm.
Greg Arthur (16:46.659)
Absolutely, absolutely. And there's a friend of mine I swear that's doing a whole, or he's done actually, a whole kind of input around data visualization. So originally I was just thinking, it's just nice graphs, right? And then he kind of gave me the whole hold my beer moment and showed me like how you take a CSV file and then you can do so much mad, mad kind of visuals with it. Some of it is just crazy for being crazy, but.
Tom (16:56.959)
Hmm
Tom (17:04.284)
Yeah.
Greg Arthur (17:16.335)
quite a lot of it is also really different ways of visualizing quantitative and qualitative data where you kind of start to go, I've got a slightly different perception if I look at the same data based on two different visuals. And it was interesting to say, well, would we still come to the same outcome if we just had an Excel pie chart or if we just had a series of questions, we looked for keywords and did this kind of thing. So I think it's...
Tom (17:29.715)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Arthur (17:45.016)
trying to be open to different ways of approaching the same thing, but again, still not getting either bogged down with, I'm not good enough to do this or, or I just get someone else to do it and I don't care. I think yours is the nice middle ground of, I recognise I don't really enjoy this, but I will get someone that I can do the extra bit afterwards and pour over it. So.
Tom (18:06.973)
And I think interestingly, just on the note of visualizations, that's where a lot of understand phases fail, in my experience, is inability to communicate your findings back to your stakeholders. Because that's actually, I would argue, once you are brought into doing the understand phase properly, the most difficult bit is getting people at the end to be like, okay, this was valuable and I agree with the findings. And a lot of that.
Greg Arthur (18:14.296)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Arthur (18:18.424)
Yes.
Tom (18:33.129)
comes like good data visualization is almost never going to be graph based because most people can't read a graph or at least not in the one look okay I get what that means to me and my business kind of way they can read the data on the graph but not really understand what it means to them so good visualization can totally change the outcome of an understand phase
Greg Arthur (18:53.828)
100%, 100%. And I'm not gonna get into a whole learning styles. I'm sure we're on the same page on that, but some people do just like something more visual when it comes to data purely because if you gave them 10,000 lines spreadsheet of all sorts of data and God knows how many columns, just showing them a picture and going, this is it. This is why this is night and day, different.
Tom (19:00.031)
dear, yeah
Greg Arthur (19:22.852)
different factors or different, if you add in different variables, this is how it changes the visualization. At least if you can show them a bit of a story through images, it's easier than going, well, if you look at line 46, if we go down to February, which is line 600 and whatever, mental. So we talked about, you mentioned about the kind of before and after bit of data analysis, but where do you spend most of your time in the understand phase? And where do you...
Tom (19:30.588)
Absolutely.
Tom (19:40.799)
Absolutely.
Greg Arthur (19:50.019)
I guess where else do you enjoy spending time? How much are you working alone? How much do you spend with, I guess, other people, whether they're in your business, in the business you're supporting. What does that kind of dynamic look like for you?
Tom (20:02.877)
So it's always quite variable, but my kind of rule of thumb is the more time I'm spending with the people in the organisation, whether they are stakeholders, potential end users, whatever it might be, the better the understand phase is going. The more time I'm sat on my own, the higher risk there is that I'm just coming up with ideas that I like. think that inherently being on your own makes the process quicker, but there's no one to challenge you if you're on your own.
Greg Arthur (20:16.236)
Mm. Yeah.
Tom (20:32.959)
Or you know at least that that's my view is I always I always ask from my stakeholders from users that I'm interviewing or having conversations with or conducting roundtables is I want you to disagree with me I want you to have an opinion and hold your ground. You don't have to agree with me come the end of the conversation I don't have to agree with you. In fact, if we don't that's probably the sign that we're truly engaging with the issue And that there is a need for further understanding
Greg Arthur (20:55.427)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (20:58.783)
Everyone in a room nodding indicates that either everyone understands or no one is willing to be honest. One of the two and it's almost always the second in the real world. So yeah, nine times out of ten I will try and find a way to make any given activity inclusive of someone from the client side. Whenever I'm working alone on something I get nervous about what the quality of the output is going to be.
Greg Arthur (21:05.166)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Arthur (21:25.899)
Yeah. Yeah. And, and when you're, I guess this is a case by case point, but how do you know who to bring in? Especially if it's someone from a client side, I guess if it's your, so if it's my colleagues or people that I know that I've worked with before, I kind of know who I would pull on for certain things. if you're in a, in a client engagement, how do you, or, or
Tom (21:27.903)
Greg Arthur (21:56.259)
Do you just kind of wing it? Is it kind of a, how do you figure out who to spend time with?
Tom (22:02.013)
So there is always, in honesty, an element of winging it. I don't think I've ever gone in and had my initial assumption of who needs to be involved be accurate. It's always evolved on the fly. But at the same time, kind of, I have a rough idea of, so I want to know who holds the purse strings. Who's in charge of the timeline? Who's in charge of actually making this thing work when it's released into the real world?
Greg Arthur (22:24.386)
Mm.
Tom (22:30.513)
I want those three involved as much as possible because they are the three people above all others I need on my side in every key decision because those are the three things that will kill or make my project and then in terms of users generally I want and this is where people will agree or disagree with this a lot of people love to identify the people who are going to champion your thing when it launches into the world and yeah be that I do want to work with those people
Greg Arthur (22:56.93)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (22:59.689)
but I want to work with those people later. I want to work with them in prototyping and pre-launch and post-launch blah blah blah. Understand I want the people that hate me. I want the people who don't think there's a problem. I want the people that think there's a problem but that in my case L &D is a waste of time or ineffective or doesn't work because those are the people that are going to to an extent give me the worst version of reality.
Greg Arthur (23:28.503)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (23:29.151)
Which for most people in the workplace is much closer to reality than what the hyper-optimistic champions of L &D in the business think reality looks like on the ground. Because almost all of my end users are not going to work in L &D. They are going to be, I don't know, contact centre agents. Or they're going to be whoever who... The biggest difference actually isn't what they do, it's what their relationship with the workplace is. Which is, why do you have this job?
Greg Arthur (23:34.508)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Arthur (23:40.992)
Yes.
Greg Arthur (23:46.528)
Yeah.
Greg Arthur (23:56.256)
Yeah.
Tom (23:58.111)
because I need a job. I'm here to get paid so I can go home and do the bit of my life I want to be doing. For, what, 80, 90 % of the global workforce? That's the truth. So I want to speak to that, not to the people who were just very happy to be involved in the whole process. It's like, no, I almost want the people that kind of like, really, another job? Great. That's how I want that conversation to start, because it means they are not going to tell me what I want to hear.
Greg Arthur (24:04.086)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Arthur (24:08.619)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Arthur (24:16.415)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tom (24:26.843)
And if I can get them on board, I can make something that works for them, it will work for everyone. That's the thing for me.
Greg Arthur (24:32.609)
Absolutely. Absolutely. I heard a stat, I mean, this is a couple of years ago now, but someone had said, most of your waking week, so most of time you're awake as a person, you're at work. You're either traveling to, I think it was probably pre-COVID, so they were factoring in like travel time, traveling to, traveling home or being at work, all you're looking at. They factored in like the average amount of time people spend looking at their devices.
away from work when it's about a work thing. And I just thought, have you got the weekend? And I'd probably spend more time awake at the weekend. But then I kind of did the maths really quickly and I was like, right. I'm probably more working than not working. so yeah, people are, whilst they probably are, as you're quite right, probably doing it just to, I need to get paid to go and do the fun bits of my life that I want to do and keep a roof over my head and all these kinds of things. There is also an element of
Tom (25:16.063)
Yeah,
Greg Arthur (25:30.022)
You have to be there and you have to be to a degree good or better than good because someone else will come along and be better or good and then you're not there anymore. So learning definitely has a place to play and always try and same as you try and go for the kind of lowest common denominators. Like who are the people that will just go don't care. I don't care how much time you spend. I think this from the the disrupt conference someone had made a comment about
I think it was in the mass session where she'd said, they don't care how many hours the learning team has spent creating this initiative. Like I don't care how many hours Apple has spent making the next iPhone because they've got all of my money. They've got all of my attention and all my data. So if they've gone, we had to work a bit late. Well, might don't care. I'm probably going to buy it. So just make sure it's good. Like whatever you've done last time.
do it again, yes you can have my money, we've agreed on that already. it's, yeah, it's mad to think that the learning teams don't address all, what's the word, all kind of ranges of the absolutely love it early adopters down to the who are you and why are you talking to me? I'm busy and also I don't care, like, yeah.
Tom (26:56.403)
But when you look at how we measure the success of L &D teams, a constant metric remains whether or not they're liked. And it doesn't, it's always irritated me. Yeah, exactly. MPS or internal CSAT or whatever, and it makes no sense. Look, not just because I'm generally quite a dislikeable and disagreeable person, but it's always irritated me. It's like, you haven't worked with me. But like I said, a lot of how I work and how I work well is by being somewhat
Greg Arthur (26:59.625)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Arthur (27:06.122)
It's NPS.
Greg Arthur (27:15.488)
I wouldn't say so.
Tom (27:25.695)
by challenging, by taking us further. You cannot do that if you're forever worried about whether or not that month MPS is up or down for whether or your team is liked. As long as L &D sort of engages in the corporate popularity contest, it will not do a good job, it can't. The two are mutually exclusive. I would argue that, you you almost, you don't want to be disliked, but you want to be on that line of
Greg Arthur (27:35.689)
guess.
Greg Arthur (27:42.079)
Mm.
Tom (27:52.541)
they make me better at my job. That is the only thing that you are actually there to do. The rest of it, you know, let other departments worry about whether or not they're liked. What you want to do is be liked by the operational side of the business in the sense of, is L &D making a meaningful contribution to performance? Yes or no? If the answer is yes, trust me, the C-suite like you, and that's what matters.
Greg Arthur (27:54.505)
Mm.
Greg Arthur (27:57.908)
Mm.
Greg Arthur (28:06.911)
Mm.
Greg Arthur (28:12.127)
Mm.
Greg Arthur (28:15.753)
Yes.
Tom (28:15.775)
If the answer's no, no matter how much your end users love you as individuals and look forward to spending a day with you in the training room every now and then for a chat and a laugh and whatever, if the C-suite don't like you, your department isn't going to be there for long. I think that's where we're seeing now this kind of, L &D's always the first out when times get hard, there's a reason for that. Most organisations can cut L &D pretty harshly and see very little impact on their business and we can bemoan whether or not
Greg Arthur (28:28.829)
Yes, exactly.
Greg Arthur (28:41.532)
Yeah.
Tom (28:44.179)
Businesses are ethical or not letting people go blah blah blah, but actually if you're not positively contributing to the business Why should you have a job is my kind of unpopular opinion on that?
Greg Arthur (28:52.767)
Absolutely. I'm with you. I'm with you. like I this, you know, the two circles has been going for, I guess, 17 months, if I did my maths correctly now. It has been eye-opening, as I'm sure you know, from running a business as well, about how every decision, especially if it's financial, is a pour over it way more than they used to when I was working for a company or companies.
Tom (29:03.828)
Hmm.
Greg Arthur (29:23.103)
And it's a case of what value is that going to bring? Is it worth it? Can I do it cheaper? But if I do it cheaper, is it going to be good quality? Should I be doing this at all? Then also you don't get into the internal discussion of should I even be having this conversation with myself for 10 minutes? Have I just wasted 10 minutes going, it's only 50 quid like, was it 50 quid. And then it's like, this is silly. So it's, I always try and give people again, like another
Tom (29:23.423)
Absolutely.
Tom (29:41.924)
how much did that 10 minutes just cost me?
Greg Arthur (29:52.766)
when we talk about MPS and CSATs and all these kind of things is most people, I'm gonna say most, a large population people go, I really like a Ferrari, like they're lovely cars. And go, yeah, of course they are. That's, know, their whole deal is that they make really lovely cars. But I would say 99 % of the population can't afford one because they're ludicrously priced. So Ferrari don't really care if you all like them. They care about that 1 % of the people that
Tom (30:00.541)
Yes.
Greg Arthur (30:21.641)
First you can afford them, and then if they like them. So when you think about learning in the same way, same with any product or service, it's not about do they like it. That might be just the initial hook to get people to come in and engage with you. But then there's loads of things I like that are bad for me, or are not doing something that something else could do much better for me. So if you're releasing a product, a learning product that is really well liked,
Tom (30:23.647)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Arthur (30:50.45)
but has zero accountability, zero impact or zero.
reason to exist apart from people just thought it was nice like why is it there who cares
Tom (31:05.455)
This is it, and this is what I see in the social media version of learning that we're kind of seeing at the minute. We should be more like TikTok, we should be more like YouTube shorts, whatever, blah, blah. People love it. Yeah, people love it. Why is that a relevant metric in changing how we deliver content? what, what, You know, yes, I'm sure people do want everything to be shorter and quicker so they don't have to pay attention to it, but we need them to pay attention to it. We need them to change what they're doing.
Greg Arthur (31:10.878)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (31:31.579)
it being easier and fun, is my other bugbear in L &D, is fun being a major design consideration, it doesn't make us better at what we do, it just makes us look better at what we do. It makes us look innovative. We're meeting learners where they are on TikTok, it's like, yes but are we doing what we're supposed to be doing? Or are we just creating TikToks? Because there is a difference. And that, there's a...
Greg Arthur (31:35.87)
Hmm.
Greg Arthur (31:52.978)
Yes. Yes. Absolutely.
Tom (31:58.505)
There's a concern for me there about the way we, again, going back to the understand phase, fundamentally failing to understand what we're trying to achieve. We're not trying to achieve, you know, user engagement or user joy instead of performance improvement. Performance improvement remains, you know, L &D hasn't actually changed in the last 50 years. The objective remains identical. Improve employee performance.
Greg Arthur (32:18.033)
Yes, absolutely.
Greg Arthur (32:27.581)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (32:28.041)
We've changed how we do it a lot and arguably we've got worse at it. Is the somewhat awkward truth that I see a lot more waste now in, we've produced 30 videos that are all a minute long, it's like, cool, have we got any evidence to suggest they are improving performance? No. Then why are you making another 30? You know, there's a real problem with that at the minute and I don't quite know how much more to challenge it because it's very popular and there's people making a lot of money out there doing it.
Greg Arthur (32:32.667)
Yeah? Yeah?
Greg Arthur (32:45.042)
Yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
Tom (32:57.821)
But I do worry that it's another kind of strike against the industry in the sense of you're wasting time, you're wasting money, money's tight. Okay, there's a simple decision to make here.
Greg Arthur (33:05.694)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's kind of leads into the next question about we talk about people jump into solutions and a lot of the solutions I hear people talking about, which we try and steer them away from is initially, and I'm completely aware of the irony that we're recording a podcast right now, is that people say, we're gonna make an internal podcast and people will listen to it on the way to work. And I'm like, no. I was like, I will listen to maybe, I literally,
Tom (33:12.329)
Hmm. Yes.
Greg Arthur (33:34.715)
yesterday evening got my Spotify wrapped and it told me in my five podcasts there was one learning podcast on there. It wasn't mine actually, we've only had four episodes out so that's why. Next year it will be. But the rest of were completely non-related to the industry. They were just things I was interested in. And then maybe that's just my case on its own. But then people...
Tom (33:46.995)
There we go.
Greg Arthur (34:00.775)
that jumping to solutions where they're saying, we'll do this because that's what people do. So I think there is a kind of caveat. So I agree with what you were saying about the whole fun TikTok that I completely get all of that. And I agree with all of that. I don't disagree at all. think it's too easy to just go, well, that's working over there. So that should work over here. I think you can take elements of those things only if you have done your understand face to say,
This group of people that we're trying to affect this type of change to because we've understood all the parameters around it, something like a one minute, two minute TikTok would really benefit them because we have found out from our analysis that doing the tasks they do, they only have one to two minutes to make split decisions or they only have one to two minutes before they're engaging with a customer or they have to travel or probably whatever it is it's doing that they're doing, sorry, or that they...
have the availability or the mental capacity for. But just jumping in with, well it works on TikTok. So I don't go to, well I don't really go to social media much at all, but like, I don't imagine people are going to TikTok. If I sit and watch my wife scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, she's not there for any reason other than we're waiting for something to happen or she's got five minutes and she's just sort of scrolling and, or she's looking at dogs. It's like, great. I'll sit and look at that as well. I'm not learning anything other than,
That dog's silly. What a lovely time I'm having.
Tom (35:28.433)
And yeah, I mean, this was one of the, it was an eye opener for me is that I spent some time working in product management and I went to some product management events and conferences and spoke to product managers who work at social media platforms and they have this concept called low commitment engagement. They want people to utilize the platform with minimal levels of engagement and attention required. We literally want the exact opposite from our users.
Greg Arthur (35:39.1)
Mm.
Tom (35:56.403)
We want them to spend as little time as possible training because we want them to be doing their jobs, not spending time on our LMS or LXP or wherever we're hosting our training. And we want maximum commitment and attention in every interaction we create. So whenever we need to be more like social media, it's like why? It's the exact opposite. But again, fundamentally, we're just seeing it's a video. It's a different type of video, but they're the same. It's like, no, they're not. They are designed to be different. And it's why, you know, there's a reason we've got our...
LMS and LXPs suck compared to social media? That's like saying cars and bicycles suck because they're so different. They are trying to do something quite different. They may seem to be... they both get you places but they're not the same thing and they're not trying to be the same thing, you know? Or like a Ford Fiesta and the Ferrari you mentioned before. Yes, in theory they are both cars. They're not trying to achieve the same objectives here. know? It's... yeah. Very difficult.
Greg Arthur (36:34.148)
Yes.
Greg Arthur (36:39.695)
Yes, exactly.
Greg Arthur (36:48.412)
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And I think it's again, it's like you say, it's trying to, so I went and saw Stuart Lee the other night and he made a, he was moaning about Netflix cause he's Stuart Lee, but he made a comment about, a comment about someone who he knows that works for Netflix or someone who he knows has done some work with them. They're basically trying to figure out or they're basically trying to import content that they use this term called
two screen, it's two screen something, two screen basically, two screen attention or something like that. But basically you're watching it on your TV at home, but you're probably also scrolling through your phone. So whatever the point is that the characters in the show are trying to make, they've got to make them over and over and over and over again, because you might miss the first five because you're scrolling on Instagram or TikTok or whatever it is. And then when you eventually go, what's happening in the show? that guy's dead, cool, right? And then you kind of carry on again, but like they just kind of do it over and over again.
And I was thinking, that's mental. And then I realized, I do that. I'll sit and scroll through X and look at, you UFC or cycling or wherever it's gonna be, and then kind of go, I the last two minutes of this, but someone will say something in a minute and I'll pick back up where I was. But you're right, with learning content, I'm not going there for social engagement. I'm going there because I want to do something that I couldn't do before.
Tom (37:52.339)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Arthur (38:13.659)
because that's why I'm going there. Especially again, especially now running a business. It's things that I need to learn very, very quickly to make sure that can get on with my day. So I don't want someone going, hey guys, like and subscribe to my channel. I'm like, just get on with it. Like tell me what I need to know, show me effectively so I can then do it. But maybe I'm just being a grumpy old man.
Tom (38:36.657)
No, you know what, I found this and it was the most personal version of this was on my own YouTube channel which is an L &D channel, we focus on this stuff. For years the most popular video was the video I hated which was the first video I ever published on there which says a lot about all the content thereafter but it was like a 25-30 minute tutorial for how to install a localised version of the adapt authoring tool on Windows. It was
Greg Arthur (38:44.408)
Okay.
Tom (39:04.745)
command line and PowerShell and this and then GitHub and all sorts of was dull as anything the most popular video the most commented on video the most shared video because it served a real specific need there was no YouTube-iness there was no hey guys there was no like and subscribe there was nothing there was just me on a terrible like headset mic now open command prompt and type there was even an no wait that hasn't worked okay let's dive into why that hasn't worked in the middle of it because something went wrong
Greg Arthur (39:16.41)
Mm.
Tom (39:34.527)
It was by any YouTube-y metric, terrible video. Lacked narrative, lacked b-roll, anything like that. But it served a really specific need and it served it really well. And it continues to serve it well. And I've just updated a new version and I made the new version exactly like the old version. Dull as anything, no YouTube-iness to it. And, you know, there is a... that is still, whether we like to admit it or not, actually the core of what L &D needs to serve.
Greg Arthur (39:50.554)
You
Greg Arthur (40:02.746)
Mm.
Tom (40:02.781)
workplace needs not joyful engagement and relaxation. We are not second screen content. We are primary attention content. But we kind of kill ourselves with that with these assumptions that, well, attention span is not what it used to be. like attention span hasn't changed. There's just more distractions available. All the science tells us that, but we feel better by going, no, there's nothing we can do. People's attention spans are shorter. So we've just got to make what shorter, less effective content. That doesn't really sound like a great pitch for
Greg Arthur (40:21.143)
Yeah, absolutely.
Tom (40:32.703)
you know, having a job, in my view. So, and I think again, understand phase, actually getting to grips and understanding this stuff starts before an individual client. It means understanding when we talk about attention span, what are we talking about? We kind of need to do this constant understand phase in our careers to make sure we are well-bedded in what the reality is versus what people say reality is. Like, yeah, guess what?
Greg Arthur (40:46.958)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Arthur (40:51.16)
Yes.
Greg Arthur (40:57.73)
Absolutely.
Tom (40:59.229)
all these platforms do want you to think your attention span is really short. Guess why? Their content is really short. There's somewhat of a bias in what they're telling you there. So instead, do the boring thing. Don't go to chat GPT, go to actual Google, maybe even go to Google Scholar if you're feeling like you want some actual facts and look at attention span or look at whatever it is that you're interested in, just saying that as an example. There's a reason why that is still the best way.
Greg Arthur (41:07.885)
Yeah.
Tom (41:27.601)
Internet wise to go and learn stuff. It's not short form video. It's not even a YouTube video, although it's very popular It's going to some actual information which people do still read reading numbers continue to go up not down near on you The book is not short form content If people did have no attention span water stones would be closed rather than doing relatively well, you know
Greg Arthur (41:28.718)
Yes.
Greg Arthur (41:44.781)
No, no.
This is this is and this is the thing so like post Covid There was lots of and I'm sure Simon Sinek is one of the ones that's kind of said it loudest or I've seen most videos about Whether he's right on lots of things. I don't know. He's okay. He has nice hair and but like Like he'd said about people are craving and I'm not sure if he's talking about a specific age group I think he's meant people in general a more craving
Tom (42:01.023)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Greg Arthur (42:16.832)
social interaction post COVID, because obviously lots of people are locked in and I get that and I don't disagree with that bit at all. But what I do disagree with is the attention span thing. So if you take that post COVID world of people want social engagement and if you take this kind of attention span thing where everything is just getting shorter and shorter and tiny and more minute and you just kind of just this rapid fire of content, all it is is more confusing and
If you then plug in the social engagement side of things, how many long form activities do people do? They still go to the cinema. That's at least an hour and a half. Could be two, three hours, depending on the film you're watching. They still go for dinner with friends. Again, that's going to be at least an hour, two hours, three hours. Could be 10 hours if you're having a really big dinner. They still go to conferences. That's days long sometimes. They still go on holiday. They still have, hopefully,
longer than 30 second conversations with their friends, their family, their partner. So there's so many things we do sometimes every day, sometimes weekly or monthly that are way longer than 20 seconds where you learn something or you engage with something. And then the whole learning experience design that people talk about is in theory, everything is an experience because we haven't got Neuralink just to go turn it on, turn it off. So
But if we're talking about true experience design, especially when we're talking about the understand phase, to bring it back on topic, if you don't understand why you're doing this, it doesn't matter whether it's the best, most innovative experience, the shortest video, the flashiest looking thing. If you don't know why you're doing it, you might just get the equivalent of a thumbs up, know, Facebook thumbs up to go, that's cool. And then they just carry on walking away going, I don't really care about this anymore.
Tom (43:49.982)
Yeah.
Greg Arthur (44:14.357)
Like, because they've just gone out, it's easy to just go, yeah, cheers, off you go. So getting that, getting that crux of why are we even working on this down, sets the bar for everything else going forward. And it just stops this, this chaos. That's what it feels like.
Tom (44:15.103)
Exactly it.
Tom (44:34.483)
Yeah, I feel like it's, I think the biggest reason we end up contributing to that chaos is that lack of understanding at the start of process. There's so much noise, so much noise. And it just going back to just the workplace, there's so much noise in the workplace between all the different types of internal comms, all the working groups that are now going to be happening in your business, all the employee advocacy stuff, all the pulse surveys, all these things that are just flooding your kind of workplace kind of
sort of mental environment. What we as L &D professionals need to be doing is cutting through that with the hey here's how to do your job better. Let us make that as easy as possible. Easy doesn't mean quick, easy doesn't mean the low commitment, it requires time, it requires commitment, it requires their attention but we've got to make it easy to find, easy to access and actually helpful and when we get understand right
Greg Arthur (45:04.439)
Mm.
Greg Arthur (45:12.887)
Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Arthur (45:28.086)
Yes.
Tom (45:30.653)
Those are the three things we can absolutely nail every time. And that's how we prove our value, stemming from understand. We get that right, we can nail those three. We get it wrong, we just become part of that sphere of noise that surrounds every employee.
Greg Arthur (45:38.067)
Mm. Absolutely.
Greg Arthur (45:45.94)
Yeah, it just becomes entertainment after a degree or like a faux version of entertainment. And I just had a weird thought of it could be a terrible idea, but I'm do an idea dump and see what you think because you'll get your gut reaction on it. I wonder if I've heard a number of people talking about over the years, learning should take nods from social media or marketing or whatever it's going to be. Currently, I think it should be more product design in terms of a holistic process, but
Tom (45:50.653)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Tom (45:58.121)
Greg Arthur (46:14.324)
I wonder if we're all getting it wrong and it should just be IT. As in you turn up and go, this isn't working. They go, great, well, let's do first, second, third line of support. Let's diagnose it and then go, we've tried all these different things. If it isn't working, it's probably broken. Let's replace it. Or we figured out by doing a very logical walkthrough of have you done, have you turned it on and off again, but with people.
Tom (46:41.149)
Yeah, I mean, this I'm going to be really boring now and go into a 1970s history lesson. This is my favourite go to, everyone should read, Everyone Should Read Human Competence by Thomas Gilbert. And everyone who's ever gone to a conference session from me or a podcast with me will be bored of me telling them this now. But it basically goes through this whole what's called the behavioural engineering model or BEM, and it ultimately boils down to environment first, individual second.
Greg Arthur (46:46.378)
Let's do it.
Greg Arthur (46:52.712)
Okay, let's do it.
Greg Arthur (47:08.886)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (47:08.991)
Is there something wrong in the operating environment before we ever get to the world of training? Because training is usually ineffective, highly inefficient in terms of compared to other things. Training has to be an individual process. You've got to train a hundred people. You've got to train a thousand people. You only have to change one system. Like it's actually much more effective to fix the working environment than it is to train employees.
Greg Arthur (47:29.578)
Yes.
Tom (47:36.799)
And the vast majority of performance problems exist in the working environment, not in the individuals within it. Whether it's the system crashes 20 % of the time, there's your performance problem. It's got nothing to do with the users. They might have other problems, but your big problem is environmental, right? And this is kind of similar to that kind of way that IT work through, where we start with the simplest possible fix. And then, you know, third, fourth, fifth line maybe, you send an engineer out to
Fix the individual problem or you train that person is kind of how I see that back kind of crossing over But yes starting with those much simpler this fixes 80 % of problems 80 % at the time stuff, you know, really really does help So yeah, but again that was put I mean he wrote the book in 73 I think it was had been doing it for a couple of decades prior to that like we got this from kind of
the 1940s to the 70s and mid 80s and then we started, I don't know, somehow forgetting how to do our job to the world where now we're talking about content rather than fixing problems and all this sort of thing so I think something in that world would help and I think there's a space for you know marketing for learning and product mindset I think for learning is certainly has really helped me I found it really impactful.
Greg Arthur (48:40.585)
Yeah.
Greg Arthur (48:55.189)
Mm.
Tom (49:01.337)
stuff we can learn from all these other industries but there's also stuff from our own history that we seem to have set aside because it's no longer exciting like human competence the slip cover is brown that kind of gives an indication of when this book was published it wasn't published to jump off the shelf you know but it was published to go hey here's a way that actually works it's proven to work
Greg Arthur (49:06.515)
Yes.
Greg Arthur (49:10.857)
Yeah.
Greg Arthur (49:16.083)
Nice.
Greg Arthur (49:19.73)
Yeah.
Tom (49:25.649)
you can apply it to any situation. It doesn't require any technology. It doesn't require any budget. It's a way of thinking and working. And I think there's, we need more focus around exactly that stuff, whether it's IT, marketing, product, performance, whatever it is, focus on that and focus much less on what tool can I use to fix this problem.
Greg Arthur (49:33.427)
Yes.
Greg Arthur (49:47.22)
Yes, absolutely. And I think you're right about all the other different industries. There's definitely nods from everything because we're all hyper exposed to everything and we can almost see behind the veil of marketing now. We're not kind of being marketed to like, I think when cigarettes were first out there, like, it's good for your health. We're kind of all a lot more aware of what's good and bad and what they're trying to do. But I think it's then...
taking it back, taking all of that, it's a bit like we were talking about at start, taking all of that data, gathering it all, if you get someone else to do the analysis, that's fine, but pouring over the results to be able to say, how does this play into this behavioural engineering, and how does this play into what I'm actually trying to do, which is, whatever this problem is, here's what it is now, here's what not having that problem looks like, how do I get from here to here? And that's all it is, but I do feel like people are just rushing into...
I've just got to make something and it's got to be cool and I can maybe get in the ward and it's like, yeah, but come on.
Tom (50:51.633)
And again, like the maybe I can do it, maybe I'll do it quickly, maybe I'll get an award. No one getting awards is doing that, which is the really fascinating thing. So that when you look at the, so I can speak to the learning technology awards, the people who win are the people who can not only have done a really good understand phase, but can demonstrate it and talk about it. Can, you know, and can really show why what they did was the best solution to the real problem and
Greg Arthur (50:58.984)
Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Arthur (51:12.392)
Yes.
Tom (51:20.563)
that it actually worked. Like there are no awards for best looking learning intervention. Doesn't exist. Well, there might be, but I've not come across them and quite frankly, hope I don't. know, this, that is not, it feels often they do look fantastic, but that's because they've been so confident that they are creating the right solution. They've added that edge of polish to it. That is secondary and not actually usually even mentioned.
Greg Arthur (51:42.388)
Absolutely.
Tom (51:49.745)
in their submission for the award. So I think there's strong evidence to suggest that if you just do a really good job, that's how you get to being an award winner and not rushing. Those who, the submissions that what I call bounce, i.e. they get to first round and they go, nope, can't even really consider that, they're the people that rush. They're the people who don't do the understand, that usually launched it six weeks before they put in for an award, have no evidence of anything, but it looks great.
they've clearly got a phenomenal graphic design background but no idea what they're actually doing in their job. Which is somewhat harsh but you know, sometimes these things have to be said.
Greg Arthur (52:22.534)
Yes, absolutely.
Greg Arthur (52:27.794)
That's the last thing if you're for an award, it's the group trying to say we're the best of the best, or we think we are, not just we've got a great designer on our team. But yeah. Last point and then we will wrap up Tom, this has been great by the way. I don't know if we've tapped you out of advice, but the last question is what advice would you give to someone who struggles with the understand phase? What kind of practical tips would you say to them to?
Tom (52:39.804)
Exactly.
Tom (52:45.343)
Cool.
Greg Arthur (52:56.838)
to help them get started.
Tom (52:58.911)
So first of all don't stress about it, it will be incremental. No one ever gets it right. There is always more you could put in to understand. And in most settings no one wants you to invest time here. So you are always going to have to be fighting for every bit of time you can put into this. But focus on incremental improvement.
Greg Arthur (53:11.666)
Mm.
Tom (53:25.759)
Personal suggestion would be start with that figuring out what's an assumption and what's a fact because until you know that it's very difficult to grow your understanding So even if you don't then do any more understanding Maybe you just figure out what's a fact what's an assumption at least you know moving forwards you know where you can step Firmly and go that I know this is solid and you know where you have to be a bit more careful and then Maybe something goes wrong
highlight it, use it as a reason to do more understanding. It's okay sometimes to leave the understanding phase, get further down the line and then go, hold on, this has come up, this has happened, everyone's aware of it. Either we can push ahead with this risk, again, bringing risk into conversation, or we can quickly double back, do a bit more understanding and then get going again. Look for those opportunities. And then again, don't make it an all or nothing sell. What do you want to do? I want to interview
five end users. Just really small, really quick. Or how long will that take? I don't know, give me half an hour with each of them. That's not ideal. But ideally you want more time, want an observer, blah blah blah. But don't worry about ideal, just do something. And then sing about its impact to everyone who will listen. And if they won't listen, sing louder. Because you are selling them this. Like you're selling them a car or anything else that they don't want to buy, you've got to persuade them of the value of it.
Greg Arthur (54:43.964)
Yes. Yeah.
Tom (54:53.887)
But it's always going to be incremental. Do not try and implement it all at once and don't feel bad that you haven't implemented it all at once. No, if we're being honest, no one has. I've never had a project in years and years and years of doing this where I have done everything I ideally wanted to in the understand phase. It's always a compromise. It just takes time to get to where you're comfortable compromising.
Greg Arthur (55:11.442)
Absolutely.
Greg Arthur (55:16.689)
Absolutely, and I will put out my kind of standard public service announcement if anyone feels like they are doing this correctly, perfectly every single time please come and tell me how you do it and show me because I same as you have got to a point where there's there's bits where you kind of have that guidance thing to have I'm gonna drop this bit because I get it It's gonna be a it's gonna be a problem But then there's bits that are kind of non-negotiable and I guess you have to find your own non-negotiable within that
But would say universal one is still your purpose. If you don't have a purpose, that should be on everyone's non-negotiable. It has to be defined. Otherwise, just stop what you're otherwise that was incredible, incredible advice to him. I've lost out of my fingers of how many bits of advice we've picked up from this one. So thank you so much for your time. This is also where we give you the space to plug anything you want to plug. Over to you, sir.
Tom (56:15.419)
Yeah, come and have a chat. guess I'm on LinkedIn. Tom McDowell, come and say hi. I've got the YouTube channel Instructional Design Tips if you're specifically into L &D. There's the occasional video that goes up there on a monthly live stream where I chat with Heidi Kirby about the L &D Months News, which is a super exciting rundown, as you can imagine. It's usually us taking the mick out of someone who has said something unbelievably daft. But all for a good cause of hopefully getting us all to think a little bit more about what we do.
Greg Arthur (56:43.344)
Cool, nice one. Thank you, Tom. Well, absolute pleasure having you on and we'll see you very soon. Thank you very much. Cheers. Bye.
Tom (56:46.739)
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Tom (56:53.087)
Cheerio!