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E16 – Change Management: Interview With Bestselling Author and BBC Television Personality Geoff Burch.
Dynamic, exciting and fun, Geoff Burch is a business expert like no other. He is internationally known for taking a walk on the wild side of business and turning it into an engaging, entertaining and humorous presentation that will lift and delight your audience.
Geoff is the author of six best-selling business titles, is a regular presenter on BBC television and was voted Business Communicator of the Year by the Speechwriters’ Guild. Whether he is speaking on customers, sales, leadership, or change, once seen Geoff is never forgotten. Today, we discuss change management.
You Can Read the Transcript of Our Interview Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Welcome to the MBM interview series. This is the sticky interviews. Today I’ve got the pleasure of interviewing Geoff Burch. He is a best selling author. He’s got six books out already. He is a TV presenter for a business presenter for the BBC. He’s got tailored presentations that have helped motivate and inspire change within organization, a blend of motivational message and humor. And I’ve had the pleasure of talking to him before. Yes, there was a lot of humor. I can’t divulge a lot of what we talked about because the phrase effing and Geoffing may have been written about Geoff. So, we’re going to try and keep it business correct.
Nathan Simmonds:
His demand as a speaker has been voted Business Communicator of the Year by the Speech Writers Guild. And amongst that, he makes time to make his delivery entertaining, funny, digestible so that the normal man in your business can understand what is happening and effect change for themselves from the inside out. Now, the quote that resonated with me, Geoff, when we spoke last, “A change inflicted is a change resisted.” Geoff through his words makes change possible. So, thank you, Geoff, for being here. Welcome.
Geoff Burch:
Pleasure.
Nathan Simmonds:
First and foremost, why do you do what you do?
Geoff Burch:
Accident. No intention at all, absolutely not. Literally hurled into it. I feel like Brian in the Life of Brian, you know? I expect my mom to be at the window going, “He is not a guru. He’s a very naughty boy,” you know? Absolute total utter accident completely and utterly. And if I could understand how I do it and bottle it, I would be a lot richer than I am. But I have … I travel. I sort of travel like a comet. I think all the ancients would sort of … All the ancients would look at a comet and think that it imbued some sort of portent to something or other. But the comet is just a bit of frozen rock and frozen dinosaur poo sort of whistling through the universe. I feel like that, really. People interpret great portent from my things. And I’m just this piece of sort of deep frozen sort of archaeology hurtling about the place really.
Nathan Simmonds:
I thought you were going to say you were a piece of dinosaur poo then. I was going-
Geoff Burch:
I was going to say that. But I noticed your sort of reservations about bad language, so I’m being extremely careful. Yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
It may happen. I think, to be honest, if we’re working in business at some point, the swearing is a natural part of what we do.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
Especially in times of crisis now. When you don’t see these things happening, the first words that often come out of your mouth is, “Shit.” That is just the way it is. You say that you got to where … And I spoke about your speaking career because I’m avidly interested in a speaking career for myself in the future. And you said, again, it was accident. And I guess it’s about being in the right place at the right time, saying the right words and having the right people to listen to you, which makes it happen. What inspired you then to keep going down this road, even by accident?
Geoff Burch:
Money. Lots and lots of money. I think, again, I have all sorts of weird mental problems because I was brought up by a psychiatrist, you know? It ensures that you’re going to be round the twist, you know? An old Viennese psychiatrist. And I kind of feel this about these rock stars that end up sort of dying at 27 and stuff. They had something that they enjoyed doing, you know? They enjoyed doing it, whatever it was. But they enjoyed doing it. And somebody said, “I like listening too you doing what you’re doing. Here’s wads of money and we’re going to fill a football stadium with people. But don’t be ill. Don’t fail to turn up. And then we’re going to take you to another football stadium and another football stadium and another football stadium.”
Geoff Burch:
You go, “Well, I’m tired. I don’t want to.” You can’t stop because you’ve got a contract, you know? And these guys just erupt, but that’s not what they were doing it for. They were doing it because they like playing their guitar or mouth organ or whatever it was they did, you know? And kind of, I’ve enjoyed talking bollocks all my life. And then, just one day somebody pressed money in my hand and said, “But you’ve got to be in Singapore in two days’ time.” “But I don’t like flying and I don’t like being away from home.” “Well, I don’t care. How much money do you want to be in Singapore in two days’ time?”
Geoff Burch:
And kind of people go, “Yeah, we love what this guy says.” And you kind of go, “Well, I would have said it anyway,” you know? I say it in the shower. I say it to the rats that live in my loft. It doesn’t really … You know? And I’m fascinated by business and the weirdness of it and the stupidity of it. I mean, Einstein said, and I love Einstein, he’s my hero. Einstein said that, “There are only two genuinely infinite things. One of those is the universe, and the other is the stupidity of mankind.” And he said, “And I’m not sure about the universe.”
Nathan Simmonds:
So, which … Then probing into that, which parts of business do you find the most stupid?
Geoff Burch:
Well, I think the sort of … Again, Life of Brian, again it’s one of my key things is the finding of the holy sandal, you know? “I am healed by the holy …” They have these business plans, the gurus, you know? You can be top guru one day and not the rest, Tom Peters et al. Then there’s Agility, there’s Six Sigma, there’s the Toyota Manufacturing Method. There’s the this, that, and the other. And I’m sure there’s a lot of listeners out there who are screaming at me going, “But I’ve lived my life by the KPIs,” and stuff like that. And you can always find some marvelous stupidity in it.
Geoff Burch:
Whether people want to really pay me to be told that they’re stupid, I don’t know. I think, again, it’s the kind of gesture job thing. I think Henry the Eighth at the slightest insult would chop your head off. But his jester was allowed to do what he liked. And I think ever monarch, every ruler, every chief executive … I mean, what was it? One of the Roman emperors used to have this guy who was paid to stand behind him to say, “You remember you’re mortal,” you know?
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah, Marcus Aurelius. I was thinking that as you were saying it.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah. I think every major leader, if he values his company, needs to hear the negatives. My thing is, I’m unemployable. And that is actually a key benefit because I don’t work in people’s businesses. They don’t want to employ me. There’s absolutely no way. You don’t want a person like me in your organization. So, if you have like-minded people around you, they will share the mistake.
Geoff Burch:
I mean, one of the things with aircraft systems and one of the reasons the French managed to crash an airliner was because you double up the systems. Now, because they were French, they bought all the systems from the same factory. So, after 27.5 hours, this particular part would malfunction. And because it was an identical part, the two parts malfunctioned at the same time, and the thing plunged into the sea. Whereas, all the other aircraft manufacturers buy them from two different companies.
Geoff Burch:
So, you know, you do have to employ this contradictory point of view to what you’re doing. You don’t have to abide by it, but you do need to kind of see what there is. And the other thing is, I often express the emotional intelligence of the frontline people, the people in the wellies and the orange jackets. So, whereas the people who live in the sort of holy place that’s built on a rainbow somewhere in far Asgard, you know? I probably would understand how that just in time Agility model could be translated into the guy with the steering wheel in his hand. And I suppose that I do have a talent for being able to sell that. So, I tend to be wheeled out at company conferences.
Geoff Burch:
And I suppose, if I have any skill at all, it’s to sit with the pointy heads where they talk rubbish, and then I can actually say, “No, no, no. What that actually …” Because somebody was trying to … Let’s take Six Sigma, right? Six Sigma comes in 27 volumes of 5,000 pages each and it’s a manufacturing excellence model or something, quality model. But what it is, is actually … What it is, is you take a target and a bow and arrow and you say, “If I want to hit the bullseye, what do I aim for?” And you say, “Well, the bullseye.” And say, “Well, how much away from the bullseye can we tolerate and call that the middle?” And Six Sigma says, “None of it. If you want to hit the middle, aim for the middle.” And that’s it. That’s all 50,000 pages condensed, basically saying, if you want to get things right, you ought to try and get them right. If you have tolerance 10% either way, everybody will make it 10% either way.
Geoff Burch:
If somebody says, “Look, count the money. There should be 5,000, but I won’t be upset if there’s 4,900,” that’s what you’ll get every time is 4,900 because the bloke knows he can nick 100 quid, you know? Without the system going into overload. What’s a tolerable amount of staff theft? 5%. That’s what they’ll pinch then, you know? I am a cynic as well, as you might have guessed. If I smell flowers, I-
Nathan Simmonds:
I was going to say, I think you have to be a bit cynical. You have to be a pessimist and an optimist in the same measures, I think.
Geoff Burch:
When I smell flowers, I search around for the funeral, you know? And I’ve always sort of felt these kind of levels of tolerance, you know? There’s a thing called the motivation gap, right? And it’s actually about the very best people can do. There is something that people can be incredibly talented and hardworking. And then, at the very bottom of that graph, there’s people doing absolutely bugger all, nothing. And then, halfway between, if you can imagine it as a bar chart, there is a line. And that is the line that people have to achieve to basically avoid getting fired, you know?
Geoff Burch:
So, basically, they do just enough. And of course, you can hit them with a stick and they’ll do just a tiny bit more. But how do you fill that gap to make them put as much effort into working for you as they would into organizing their daughter’s wedding or their kid’s football match or their holiday arrangements, you know? The time and effort they put into their hobby they won’t sell to you. Even for 20 quid an hour, they won’t sell you that. They’ll sell you something less than that.
Geoff Burch:
And again, I suppose one of the things I do work on is how do you bridge that? How do you get that cooperation from people so they are as engaged in your business as they are in their own lives? And is it too much to expect? That’s the other thing. I mean, you know, sometimes people have marvelous things, like, “We only employ the best.” You seen that? Well, how does that work? “We only employ the best.” So, there must be these idiot savants that are not only the best software engineers, but they’re too stupid to see they’re being paid less than everyone else. How come we employ the best, but we don’t pay the most? You know? So, the company that pays more than us aren’t getting the best, but we are, because our best software engineers are too stupid to realize they’re being underpaid.
Nathan Simmonds:
But then the flip side of that is if you’re employing the best, and I think it was the Gallup Poll in 2016 or 2017, and they said 87% of the globally employed are not engaged in the work they’re doing.
Geoff Burch:
No.
Nathan Simmonds:
Therefore, they’re not enjoying the work they’re doing, so they can’t be the best because they’re not giving you their full attention. You’ll be lucky if you’re getting 60% out of them.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah, well as I said, no, absolutely. My graph does sit at about 60%. The how much do you need to do to avoid getting fired, you know? And again, I suppose if you were a real cynic, you could say, “Well, you can run a business at that level.” The work gets done. That 40% is loss then. But productivity is the obsession at the moment, isn’t it? And I mean, that gap can be filled.
Geoff Burch:
But I think, the first time I got fired … When I was a kid, I used to get fired. I got fired from school. I got expelled. The guy said, “You’re here to work, not to enjoy yourself,” you see? And I said, “Can’t you do both?” And he fired me. So the proof is in the pudding. But yeah, I mean, this idea of, again, particularly British, the idea that people could actually enjoy being at work is a terrifying prospect to bosses because here’s the thing. There’s this thing now that I think this COVID crisis that we’re in is a loosening of the straps of employees. Do you know they can be trusted to work from home? And productivity in some cases is going up, because to work in your pants with a donut and a mug of coffee actually makes you more productive, you know?
Geoff Burch:
The fact that they all have to come in a suit and tie and all sit in little cubby holes in a hot office. I’ll share a story with you. Years ago, one of the things that happened to me is I bought my kids electric guitars because I’m an old hippy. The hair’s gone now, but it wasn’t then. I’m an old hippy. And I thought, “Well, if they’re going to make a living, they’ve got to be rock stars.” So, I bought them electric guitars, you see? And they said, “What are these for, dad?” And I said, “Well, how are you going to be a rock star?” He went, “I don’t want to be a rock star, daddy?” “Well, what do you want to be?” “I want to be a solicitor.”
Geoff Burch:
So, they both became … To my despair and misery, they both became lawyers, you know? Rebellion against me. But anyway, one of them at law school, we were there at his graduation from law school. And the day came, and they wheeled out basically sort of … It’s like Hogwarts this place. And they wheeled out the sort of head in a sort of basketwork wheelchair and he had sort of covered in cobwebs and dust. And as he sort of was illuminated by a sort of ray of light from the stain glass window, he sort of became animated and said, “There’s something that you are now lawyers and you owe the profession. You owe the profession a duty. And that is, never let the client see how easy it is.”
Geoff Burch:
And I had a … And that’s one of the tricks of being a consultant or being self-employed, never reveal the mystery. So, don’t show this interview to anybody. Luckily, probably no one will listen to it. But many years ago, I had a job which was big, big corporations were going through one of their terminal crises. And they were laying off senior staff. And one of my little jobs is I talk to people about being self-employed or starting as a … Two of my best-selling books have been on being self-employed, tiny businesses. And this was somebody who had designed atomic power stations. They had offices that were two aces big, you see?
Geoff Burch:
And anyway, they laid everybody off, everyone. And I counseled this … Most of them wanted to be consultants and this sort of thing. But as their industry was on its ass, I don’t know what they were supposed to be consultants of because they were all atomic physicists and things. But anyway, they realized to their horror in the end that they’d laid everybody off and they didn’t know anybody who could actually switch a power station off, you see?
Geoff Burch:
So, one of these guys came to me and said, “Do you know, my old company has just offered me 50% of my old salary, but as a fee to do 50% of my old job. Should I do it?” And I said, “Yeah, absolutely, take the money and do the job.” So, in every month, they gave him a fortnight’s work. But the problem was, it took him a day to do it, you see? So, they went nuts. And I thought, here’s the first job, never let the client see how easy it is, you know? You want to come in sweating with your shirt torn and, “God, I’ve been up all night with this one. My god, I had to knock myself.” The fact you did it while you were watching Match Of The Day, you know what I mean? You just don’t ever let the client know how easy it is.
Geoff Burch:
But they though they’d been ripped off. Ripped off A, because he hadn’t done the job properly, or because when he had been working with them, he hadn’t been working hard enough. And he said, and this was the day of floppy discs. And he said, “But it isn’t that.” He said, “Before, if I wanted a floppy disc, I would have to fill out an internal requisition. Then I had to apply the floppy discs to a particular contract number, which I would be issued by my line supervisor. This would be then returned by the stationery office to be counter-signed to get my box.” He said, “It used to take a fortnight.”
Geoff Burch:
He said, “Now, I wander down to Mr. [Patell’s 00:19:08] Computer Shack. We talk about football for 10 minutes. I give him three quid, and he gives me a box of floppy discs and I go home.” You know? And again, I think this again is this situation we’re in now, is the amount of crap that you get surrounded by with office politics, trying to get hold of bits of paper, drawings, things signed off, that’s almost been taken out of the hands of the bosses. And people are … Will people ever go back to proper day job work if it’s so easy to, as I say, work in your pants with a donut?
Nathan Simmonds:
I think this is part of the rub that I see is, potentially a lot of businesses before have said, “You can’t work at home. We don’t have the infrastructure.” Then all of a sudden COVID-19 turns up and it’s like, “Well, actually, we can now.” So, you were lying to us before about the situation, now it’s okay. And then, when this is all over, they’re going to say, “Well, we’re going to call everyone back to the office.” Now, to do that, there are all these people that are sitting home. Some people like it, some people don’t. And there will be a balance between those. But when they try and pull these people back to the office and say, “No, you’ve got to come to work,” all the people that are loving life while they’re working at home and being more productive, they’re going to go back to the office, get even more disengaged, even more frustrated, and the business is going to cause themselves even more problems.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
And it’s interesting you talk about not letting people see how easy it is. And I wonder if there’s people in senior positions in businesses that are trying to make it look more complicated.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
And actually, like you say, through some of these experiences, we’re starting to see behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
And it’s actually not that complicated, people are just making it that way.
Geoff Burch:
One of my favorite business books is called Bullshit Work. But the thing that gets me, he talks about the model of bullshit work goes right back to medieval times, you know? And it’s almost a perfect business model for the business we live in now because our manufacturing’s all done in China and this, that, and the other. And if you run something like Microsoft or something, the wealth you make is just embarrassingly huge. And he kind of … This is my interpretation, so it’s probably, the bloke who wrote the book, if you watch this, it’s unlikely, but if you do, I’m sorry, but this is my bastardization.
Geoff Burch:
You get yourself a Lord, and he’s got 2,000 peasants on his estate. And they have to give half their crop to him every year. So, he gets the income of 2,000 peasants. Well, there’s nothing he can do with that. It’s just ridiculous. It’s like if you’ve got one of the Silicon Valley companies, the amount of money that pours into you because it’s skimmed of millions of people is just, what do you do with it? What do you do with it?
Geoff Burch:
And what you do is, you create bullshit work with it, because you buy a castle, you’ve bought a castle. You’ve only got one castle. You’ve bejeweled your Mrs. You’ve got the best sword money can buy, you’ve got a nice horse, now what? Just piles and piles of money. And how will the people understand how much status you’ve got? You’ve got to create bullshit work. So, what you’ll do is, you’ll have a kid that carries a velvet cushion with your bog roll on it, you see? But then you go to the baron next door and he’s got two kids with two cushions with bog rolls on it, you know? And that really pisses you off, so you want three kids with bog … And you’ll hear managers in bars going, “Hello, Frank. What do you do?” “Well, I’m a manager. I’m a line manager in business intelligence.” You go, “Oh yes, how big is your team?” “Nine.” “I manage 12.”
Geoff Burch:
So, this guy gallops back and creates three more completely stupid jobs so that he can have 12 people who do nothing. And of course, there must be a big shake out in that as well because bullshit jobs don’t work from home, really, you know? Do they? I wonder how many of the people who are working from home aren’t actually working, but are just as productive because they did bugger all when they were at work.
Nathan Simmonds:
And this is the key thing, isn’t it? People are finding they’re more productive. And you talk about kind of the distractions. It’s not just the distractions of the bullshit work, it’s the distractions of the other people sat next to you, the trivia that’s going on, whether someone watched EastEnders last night and all that stuff that general people don’t care about. So, they spend 40-50% of their day caught in this cycle, in this vortex of nonsense, inessential stuff. So, they go home and they haven’t got the distractions. They can put their earphones in for an hour, they can listen to the sound of nature, like I do, birds singing. I can crack out an hour’s work. And that actual hour is more like 13 hours worth of work in the office.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
So, all of a sudden, you’ve got two and a half days to play with, which is your own time. Well, what do you do with that time? People say they haven’t got time for their own personal development. Well, actually, if you worked at a normal focused kind of rate of knots, you’d have loads of time.
Geoff Burch:
Then you’ve got the commute as well, which if you work in London can be two, three hours either way. It’s just mindless. When I go out to meetings in London, I sit on the West Way just thinking, “I couldn’t do this every day. This is insane, absolutely insane.” To what? To get to an office and do what? Don’t have to do that anymore, you know? HS2, really? Why? To do what? The only thing worth is to move vegetables about because people don’t want to do it. Why? Why do you want to do that?
Nathan Simmonds:
Even if you take it back 15, 20 years before the laptops, people on the trains were kind of doing a bit of paperwork or reading the paper. Now, if you get on the train at 9:00 and you’re already working at 9:00 because you’ve got your laptop and you’re getting stuff done. Then you walk into the office, if you’re lucky, at 11:00 and your laptop gets opened up and you carry on going.
Nathan Simmonds:
You’re almost forced … You’ve got the capacity and the technology to work anywhere you want to now. And even as speakers and trainers in the not-so-distant future, you can stand in your lounge and the people in Japan will be able to see you. And it will look like you’re standing on stage because they’ll have these magnificent glasses on, like virtual reality sets on. You’ll be talking from your lounge and 1,500 people in Japan will be laughing at your jokes.
Geoff Burch:
Mind you, I hate that. I would hate that.
Nathan Simmonds:
Which bit?
Geoff Burch:
I just like the … I have a friend who’s a rock star, I won’t mention which band. But they give their music away completely online, you can just download it. And I said, “Well, how do you make money?” They said, “Because we fill football stadiums.” And the fact is that actually people do like you online or do like you. But they eventually want to physically … There is a physical human need to be there.
Nathan Simmonds:
Agreed. Yes, agreed.
Geoff Burch:
I’ve got another mate who’s a really dodgy motivational speaker, you know? Of the worst kind. I love him, but he’s, “Do you want to soar with the eagles?” You know? And, “Don’t hang around with the turkeys.” But he created this thing he calls the funnel, where you sign onto his website and it’s free and you get lots of motivational daily, believe in yourself, don’t let them dull your sparkle girl, and crap like that. But if you want to go deeper, the secrets, you just put a dollar in, you know? A dollar a month or something. And then you get into the inner. But then for $100 a month, you get into the inner and so on. And he’s got about 70,000 people that give him $1 a month. So, he’s doing all right.
Geoff Burch:
But every year, he has a big conference in Miami where he appears in person. And it’s $10,000 to go to that. And it’s sold out every year. Every year, it sells out because there’s this group of people that are desperate for contact with him physically, you know?
Nathan Simmonds:
They feel like-
Geoff Burch:
I find-
Nathan Simmonds:
I was going to say, they feel like from that proximity, they gain that extra whatever it is. And I was interviewing a lady yesterday, and we were talking about Zoom calls, like we’re doing now for the Zoom interview.
Geoff Burch:
Sure.
Nathan Simmonds:
And obviously another friend of mine was saying, “This is the apocalypse sponsored by Zoom.” I think they’ve tripled their profits in the last three weeks. Although we’re connecting through Zoom and we’re having a great conversation and there’s a certain amount of brain chemistry that says, “Yes, you’re doing this.” There’s also a certain amount of kind of dissonance where you’re not physically here. Your brain is also going, “This isn’t right. You’re not in front of me.” So, you need that in person presence.
Geoff Burch:
My old man’s little thing was … He was like this, you know? Talked like this. He was from Vienna, “So, you want to meet your children, this is quite normal, yes.” And he said, “If you have a telephone with somebody in New York, where did the conversation take place?”
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah.
Geoff Burch:
And it’s like, you know? Well, I don’t know, because yeah, where is this conversation taking place?
Nathan Simmonds:
And there’s multiple points, either there person in New York says the conversation’s happening in New York. The person in England is saying it’s the person in England. The person that works at the telephone exchange says it happens on the line.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah, in the wires, yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Simmonds:
And then from kind of that neuroscience point is it happens in your head. Your ears pick up the sound, it changes it to it, and then it interprets that into a piece of information and your brain goes, “Oh.” And then kind of you have all the emotional stuff that goes with it.
Geoff Burch:
Sure.
Nathan Simmonds:
But then it comes back to that-
Geoff Burch:
But you can’t enjoy my smells, can you?
Nathan Simmonds:
No, and that makes up part of it. I dread to think what smells you’re making at this time of day.
Geoff Burch:
I can only describe them.
Nathan Simmonds:
And we all know that the sense of smell is one of the strongest senses we have, you know? It’s built into the deep parts of your brain. And when you smell something, it brings back those memories. The perfume your wife was wearing on your wedding day, or the Sunday roast that you love that she cooks, all those sorts of things, brings back all that stuff.
Geoff Burch:
Mountain Lion, I think it was called.
Nathan Simmonds:
What? The perfume?
Geoff Burch:
Yeah. It had a sort of musky cat smell, anyway.
Nathan Simmonds:
I take it that wasn’t the first thing that attracted you to her then?
Geoff Burch:
No.
Nathan Simmonds:
So, I think it is vital, not just seeing people when you’re presenting like yourself, I think it’s vital for me as a trainer. I can do a certain amount online. But I like to see the whites of people’s eyes face to face. I like to be there. I like to appropriately touch them, shake hands, you know? Touch them on the shoulder when they get that revelation of something that you’re sharing or you’re training them, to be in that presence and to feel that energy as the trainer, as much as for the delegate in the room, is just energizing, you know? And it’s one of the best parts of the job, I think, being a speaker or being a trainer. It’s just having that one to one time with those individuals.
Geoff Burch:
The audience reaction.
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah.
Geoff Burch:
The laugh. I mean, I said, again, you’ll have to excuse me, “My wife is my boss. She rules me with a rod of iron.” So, she doesn’t let me get ideas above my station, you know? And we get these debriefs in the car afterwards, which are things like, “They might have thought you were funny. I thought you were crap.”
Nathan Simmonds:
I get exactly the same.
Geoff Burch:
I remember one of the huge successes, I mean, it really was just 1,000 people on their feet cheering and laughing. And she said afterwards … I said, “There you go, I was brilliant.” She said, “No, you weren’t. They just wanted to love you.” She said, “You could have bent over and farted and they would have roared with laughter.” She said, “They’ve obviously come. They just wanted to. It wasn’t your talent, it was their expectation that worked,” you know? And again, I suppose it is that. It’s like, if you go to see somebody you … You know?
Geoff Burch:
I remember once seeing … I don’t know. I’ve forgotten his name now, some comedian from years ago. But Tommy Cooper was in the audience. And the guy said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Tommy Cooper.” And Tommy Cooper said, “No, no, no. I’ve come to watch you.” And he said, “No, no, no. Come on, Tommy. Take a bow.” And Tommy Cooper said, “No, I’m just in the audience.” And the audience was saying, “Go on.” And he just walked up on the stage, looked out into the audience and said, “Nice show.” And then just this roar. I mean, just a roar. And this guy afterwards apparently said, “I wish I hadn’t invited him up,” you know what I mean? He just stole … No joke, no nothing, “Nice show.” And it’s like, “It’s Tommy Cooper.” You know? It is nice to have an audience.
Nathan Simmonds:
And I think where frustration comes from is the expectation in your head and reality not meeting those things. So, I think even with an audience, they have an expectation of you. Then they build some of that up and some of it is an internalized thing. At the same time, you also have the capacity and ability to say something that resonates with them in a way, whether it’s through humor, changing hearts and minds, those sorts of things. That expectation is met by the reality of Geoff Burch.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
And that, when you talk about where does that conversation happen? I think the point where those two elements join, that’s where the conversation happens. That internal demand and desire for a shift. And the way that you then present it in a way where you talk about the people in the orange coats and the wellie boots. Those two elements meet, that’s when the conversation happens and the penny drops.
Geoff Burch:
I don’t know if you could do it online. I mean, I obviously do. I do webinars and bits and pieces like that. But they’re pretty … I don’t know if anybody laughs at this. We’ll see, you know?
Nathan Simmonds:
I mean, more likely at your jokes than mine. Just don’t start describing what farts and smells you’re making right now.
Geoff Burch:
No, I won’t.
Nathan Simmonds:
So, thinking about the change, and this is the part that I love talking to you about from now and from before, is talking to those people, the boots on the ground at the coalface, turning that bullshit business bingo stuff that we talk about, this complication that people create. One of the key elements is they talk about change management, because in itself makes me laugh because how do you manage a change?
Geoff Burch:
I love that.
Nathan Simmonds:
Because you can’t, change is change. What’s happening now and what’s happened 12 weeks ago, what’s happening in 12 weeks’ time, everything’s constantly changing. You can’t manage that, it happens by itself. When you talk about change management, what do you mean by change management?
Geoff Burch:
I think if I had a senior director in one of my companies, I’d call him Catastrophe Running From Officer. No, I mean, I had a friend who was director of change at a major bank. And after a year, he jacked the job in. And I said, “Why did you do that? It was well paid.” And he said, “How can I be the director of something that this company’s never going to do?” And this business of change, I have a few things on that.
Geoff Burch:
One is, one of my favorite stories, absolutely true. I had a big shtick I used to do on empowerment, which is about change. Change is about empowerment, actually, because it’s pointless without it. And somebody rang me up and said, “I want you to empower my people.” He said, “I’ve seen you are a jolly funny chap, jolly funny. Not my sense of humor, of course. But I think the chap’s would like it. So, I’d like you to come and empower my people, empower my staff.” And I said, “To do what?” “To feel empowered. To feel empowered, you see?” “To do what?” “To move us into the 21st century through empowerment.” “No, what do you want me to empower them to do?” “We want you to empower them … We want you to empower them to do what they’re told,” you see?
Geoff Burch:
Empower a bit of discipline into them, you see? And again, this thing of change is not … The change they want is, “Can you make them work harder for less money? That’s a change we’d like to bring about. Can you stop them nicking stuff? Can you stop them busting things,” you know? And it’s actually hugely complex. It’s hugely complex. Punishment and … I haven’t got the time to do all my punishment stories. “But carrot and stick, Geoff. I’m firm, but I’m fair. They respect me for that, you know?” I bet they do. “Carrot and stick. That’s what I believe.” I said, “I’ve seen you using the stick. What’s the carrot?” “The carrot, Geoff, is if they behave, I don’t use the stick, you see?”
Geoff Burch:
Yeah. And so, you have this situation where, what’s in it for me? Is the first thing. If I was a frontline staff member, what’s in it for me? And my thing is, well, it makes your job easier. If you’re not dealing with customers that want to punch you in the face, that’s got to be good, doesn’t it? You know? If you have-
Nathan Simmonds:
I was going to say, you could probably sell more if your customers don’t want to punch you in the face.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah, absolutely. And you don’t have to do your job twice if it’s done right the first time. And you’re not going to have the bloody foreman bollocking you every minute of the day and night, and so on. And so, you need to put together as to why. I mean, I tell a daft … Again, my biggest failing, if I’ve got one, I don’t think I have. But my biggest failing is I think that intelligent, hardworking, thoughtful business consultants see me as light. I quote, light. So, the humor hasn’t got any depth to it, it hasn’t got … But I think it has, you know?
Geoff Burch:
So, I tell a funny story. And the boss … The Mrs says, “Now you’ve got to explain it.” She says, “You get the laugh, but then you don’t mine into that.” But one of the stories that illustrates this, and again, I’ll do the story for you. I’ve got this … Change, right? Change is my thing, as you know. Went to an art college. We were all into zen, everything’s about change, you know? And I got this company ring me up. They manufacture cars. They manufacture cars. They’ve got just in time, total quality management, Toyota production, command and control, yada, yada, yada. So, at the gate of this factory is a perfect car. “So, how do you get it to the customers?” “Well, I don’t know.” “We need to bulk deliver cars.” “On a lorry?’ “Yes, on a lorry.” “So, we need lorry drivers.” “Yes.” “Tell me the job advert for the lorry drivers.” Wanted: lorry driver, must have clean license.
Geoff Burch:
Good. And how do we incentivize? What’s the important thing? To get those cars there as fast as possible. It’s just in time, quickly. So, we’ll pay them a bonus to deliver the cars. So, they get a bonus for every car that’s delivered. So, it takes a bit of time to wind the chains to a safe position, so bollocks to that, let them swing, you know? And so, they knock the wing mirrors off, they crack the windscreens, they scratch the paint. So, over a year, they were doing three million pounds worth of uninsured damage to brand new cars.
Geoff Burch:
So, they rang me up, “Could you change our drivers?” “Well, how?” “Well, you’re supposed to be the bloody master of change, you come and change them.” So, how am I going to … And I found this wonderful American book called Company Hero. What you’ve got to do is find your company hero by rewarding and acknowledging heroic behavior so everyone will want to behave like a hero. And soon, you’ll have a whole team of heroes.
Geoff Burch:
Well, I’ve got this room full of Manchester lorry drivers, right? “So, which one of you is the hero?” There was no hesitation, “Brian. Brian’s our hero. Brian’s our hero. Brian’s our hero.” “Brian, why are you their hero?” “I’ll tell you, I don’t like to talk about it. I’m shy.” “Terry, why is Brian your hero?” “I’ll bloody tell you why he’s our hero, Geoff. I’ll bloody tell you. He went under a low bridge and he had the roof off eight Volvos.” So, burrowing into that, I told this to an American friend of mine. He said, “Geoff, it’s about culture.” He said, “Don’t worry about organizing a culture in your company, because if you don’t, one will develop all by itself.” And the reason people laugh at that is because they know that’s their drivers. That’s exactly what their drivers would say, you know? “Bloody Brian, he’s a laugh. He set fire to the foreman.” You know?
Geoff Burch:
But people don’t associate company culture with change. They say, “This company was founded 100 years ago. And if giving … The only shame is that we stopped whipping the staff. They used to work harder then.” The heart of the business, the total … We have that book Passion for Excellence, and we have loads of clients talking about excellence and total quality and focusing on the customers. And I had this lecture from a chief executive who wanted me to talk to his people, whereupon there’s a, “Come in?”
Geoff Burch:
“Hello, boss. Sorry to interrupt, but you know those radiators you’re shipping to Dubai? All the paint’s blistered.” “Well, just put a bit of straw around them when you pack it. They’ll never notice. Anyway, as I was saying, this company is entirely dedicated to quality.” And you think, the truth of the culture came through the, “Put a bit of straw around it, no one will notice,” not a, “Thanks for that.” Well, no, even more than that, the guy should have never have had to knock on the door. He should have said, “Can’t send them out, lads. The paint’s blistered.” And the boss says, “Did you send the stuff to the Far East?” “No, we had to take them all back out of the crates and respray the lot.” And he shouldn’t have been fired for doing that, which he would normally. “You’ve done what? Do you realize what that cost us?” You know?
Geoff Burch:
That’s where change is so hard for companies because to get change, you have to change. They think you can change without changing, if that makes any sense.
Nathan Simmonds:
Yep. They think they can create change. And I’m talking about kind of they, senior leadership teams in certain organizations. They think they can create or get change without changing anything themselves. And like that example you talk about, you talk about culture. You grow a culture. We do that in science as well. You have a Petrie dish, you add certain ingredients, and you let those things in that Petrie dish grow. And that’s how you create a culture. When you’ve got senior leaders and they drip feed certain elements of negativity or positivity or appropriate behavior or inappropriate behavior, you put a drop of that in the dish, and it will expand accordingly to the numbers of people in the environment you’ve got.
Geoff Burch:
You know that thing of fractals, where they keep growing, the thing keeps modeling the same over and over. If I meet a horrible, shitty employee, I bet he’s got a horrible shitty boss.
Nathan Simmonds:
Agreed.
Geoff Burch:
You know, somewhere along the line, that is just a reflection of the company attitude, you know? This has been going on since Noah built the ark. You’re a trainer, I am just a rebel. People still haven’t cottoned onto it. Bosses are still assholes. I’ve got a client now whose name is John Smith. Anyone call him John Smith, he’ll get fired. It’s Mr. Smith. He doesn’t like to see jackets on the back of chairs, you know? And you think, “My god,” you know? It’s a shame they still haven’t got the work house. And he still has this appalling attitude, you know? I think that British management is a bit like a cesspit that the big lumps float gently to the top, you know?
Nathan Simmonds:
I think the challenge that I’ve noticed in that space, and it’s the same as parenting. And in leadership, it’s often, “You did a good job. Here, have a responsibility where you look after people doing the good job. But you don’t get the skills to do it.” And often, when I’m speaking to those people, I will tell them, “You will do to people what was done to you.” And it just gets repeated and intensified.
Geoff Burch:
Or not. The old man used to … I used to talk to the old man about people who would … I don’t know, abuse children. And he said, he had no sympathy because he had a friend, a very dear friend who was another psychiatrist who dealt with homicidal maniacs. It was a hospital for the criminally insane. But the old man used to say, everyone has a choice. You can grow up and say, “My dad did that to me. It didn’t do me any harm. I’ll do it to my kids,” or, “My dad did that to me, and I will never do that to anyone in my life.”
Geoff Burch:
Everybody at some point at a crossroads in their life has a choice to make about the way they behave in reflection to the way they were treated. You can either be against it or with it. You can either be as bad as the people that messed you about, or you can rebel against it. But rebellion isn’t something that’s encouraged, you know? Opposite thinking is not something, particularly in a British culture. We’re very bad at encouraging oppositional thinking.
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah, agreed. And it comes back to that initial thing you talked about is you need people to challenge you. You need people in your teams. So, I am the Roman emperor. If I’m going around thinking I’m right 100% of the time, and actually, everyone’s just agreeing with me and then we’ve got a problem and then the empire falls down. Whose fault is it? Well, it’s mine for surrounding me with people that agree with me. I need people to challenge that thinking.
Geoff Burch:
I know a very, very sincere and intelligent business author. That’s me, yeah. And I put a chapter in one of my books, Who Would Tell Caligula? You know? Caligula was such a terrifying individual that nobody would say … And again, I’m a paid consultant. And if somebody said, “Are we doing the right thing?” And I said, “No.” And they wouldn’t pay me, do I keep telling them? That is the real rub of … If a client says, “I listened to Geoff Burch on that interview with the weird guy, and he was so contradictory, he was so perverse. I would not have him anywhere near my business because he would be disruptive,” you know? That’s the difficulty, you know?
Geoff Burch:
When I have these … I’m not allowed to do them anymore, the Mrs does them, briefing calls with clients, it scares them. Not because … Because I’m trying to burrow down into what they genuinely want. And they’re going, “Well, people told us you were funny. This isn’t funny, it’s uncomfortable.” I’m like, “No, it will be funny. But I need to know what goals, what aims, what problems.” “I don’t want to talk about my problems. I thought you were funny.” You know? That is the kind of thing that I need that. It’s like growing a pearl. I need that irritation, that tiny bit of irritation to grow it from. And so, the Mrs does the briefing calls now because the clients feel I’m not funny when I’m doing a briefing call. I’m trying to get to the heart of the message they want to deliver. And that’s really difficult to do without pissing people off.
Nathan Simmonds:
And we have to, in the nicest possible way. If businesses want to grow, there has to be that level of discomfort to grow the pearl. And I think it was Neale Donald Walsch. I can’t see the book on my thing. He said, “Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.” If you want your business to expand, it’s going to be uncomfortable. When we’re born, we suffer with growing pains. And those growing pains are because we’re getting bigger physically and emotionally. And businesses need to do that. They need that rub, they need that disruption, and they need that discomfort so they can expand and grow their businesses in the best possible way. And it takes people like you to drill down and people like me to train those skills out to make sure that embeds.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah, if that’s what they want to do. I mean, again, that’s the other problem. People make so much money, they’re not really interested. I mean, again, if you went to Elon Musk and said, “I could help you get richer,” he’s say, “Well, I don’t care, really.” I mean, that’s the other thing, businesses … I find I have a lot of German clients, surprisingly.
Geoff Burch:
One of the things is aid to a German audience was, “You need to spend some time with someone you hate because you have to get that other point of view. You need to spend time with somebody you really dislike.” And somebody at the back said, “That’s why you’re here, Geoff.” But the Germans seem to have that … this idea that it is good for the company to grow. The guy who owns it sees that as a sort of holy duty to be a custodian of the good of the company and will have a nice Mercedes and a nice little country cottage in Bavaria, but isn’t astonishingly rich, you know? I mean, they’re famous people like the Staedtler crayon people, and some of the chemical companies, that it’s been in the family for 50 generations or something. And they don’t … They have a status because they own the company or they have this small company, they own it. But then they don’t start having yachts in Monaco and stuff. They have this kind of sense of what is best for the company all the time, you know? We don’t kind of have that.
Geoff Burch:
They say with family business, rags to rags in three generations because somebody said that the ambition of every working man is to turn his sons into gentlemen, you know? So, you’ll get some dodgy old itinerant who starts some metal plating business that becomes international chromium products. And his sons will become gentlemen and start galloping about on horses and hunting foxes and then spend all the money, or sell it to a hedge fund or something. There is this no sense of duty of the custodian of the product, which is sad.
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah. And in that example, kind of the word steward comes to mind, to actually steward that company so that it’s almost like the planetary thing, it’s not our planet. We’re just looking after it so we can give it to our children. And it’s the same with your business. I’m just looking after this business so I can then teach my children and educate them, and then hand it over to them so they can then steward it for the people that are inside and so on and so forth. So it continues, and you don’t have these ups and downs.
Geoff Burch:
But they shouldn’t be buying random Ferraris on your effort, that’s the thing.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely that. On their, the parent’s effort, not on their own understanding.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah, we have this thing, a British thing is that gentlemen don’t work. So, you want your children to be gentlemen, you’d like them to got to Eaton. But then, if you’ve become a gentleman, you don’t work. So, that’s the hard work is not something that gentlemen do, you know? I mean, Bertie Wooster is in the Drones Club, isn’t he? It’s called the Drones Club because it’s so useless. They’re just useless males, basically.
Nathan Simmonds:
Do you know what? I think had a list of questions in my head that I wanted to ask you, and I think-
Geoff Burch:
I’ve got them in front of me.
Nathan Simmonds:
I know. And we’ve gambled on for about an hour and we’ve listened to some of the stories. And we’ve even covered some of the stuff, why people resist change. And we’ve talked about the leadership. We’ve talked about change management. We’ve talked about how you’ve got into doing what you’re doing. I think one of the big questions that I want to round this conversation off with, two of them. The penultimate one, what do you think makes behavioral change stick?
Geoff Burch:
That is actually … The main thing is to feel that it’s a change you built for yourself. The simplest thing we ever had like that was, we were working with a chain of small restaurants, like roadside … like motorway services, basically. And my wife asked for a baked potato. And she said, “But I don’t want anything on it. No butter, no nothing, just a baked potato.” And basically, a thing that looked like a warm pebble on a white plate appeared. And she said, “What’s this?” “It’s your potato.” We pointed this out.
Geoff Burch:
And anyway, we spoke to the waitress concerned, because we were secret shopping. She said, “Yeah, look, they’re horrible, aren’t they?” She said, “My auntie Florie, she used to do them. She used to rub them with salt and then she used to roll them in olive oil and bake them until they got crisp on the outside. And the skin was so lovely.” So, anyway, we said, “All right, we’ll make them like that. But we’ll put on it a note, a proper notice saying, ‘These are Beryl’s potatoes,” you know? Doris’ Auntie Beryl and let’s just say, “Tell us what you think.” And she would promote … Anyway, this is a change in their potatoes. But now this waitress promotes these potatoes to every customer because they’re her potatoes, do you know what I mean? That’s the point. They didn’t say, “Head office, this is the new potato requirement.”
Geoff Burch:
I remember I worked for a major bank. And it was difficult to work with the frontline staff at a bank. They were supposed to be flogging stuff and they couldn’t be assed. And it turned out to me, the thing that sorted it to me, the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree is delivered. And on it, and with it comes a chart. Like, a chart of the sky of exactly where every decoration needs to go, every one. The tree, this is the tree, and this is where red. And people would come and say, “I’m sorry, Beryl, but the green ball is where the red ball should be,” you know? And the corporate Christmas tree.
Geoff Burch:
It doesn’t sound much, but it truly pissed the branch staff off, you know? Why can’t they decorate their own tree? You know what? Because it’s, “Yeah, but we want every branch to have the same Christmas tree there.” But why? “Well, it’s corporate identity.” No, it isn’t. It’s crap. Stop it. A change inflicted is a change resisted, you know? And I said to you, what’s the difference between a bogie and broccoli? And the difference is, you can’t get children to eat broccoli. But you can. If you give kids a packet of broccoli seeds, if they grew it, they’ll eat it.
Geoff Burch:
And again, with this virus thing, people from working at home are planning their own work routine. But the thing is, it scares bosses. That’s the thing, it scares bosses. I had an involvement with dustbin men. And these bin men, it wasn’t my idea. These bin men were appalling. They never finished. It was like the Rock of Sisyphus, this bloody bin round, you know? It just went on, endless task. The endless task of the bin men demoralized the bin men. It pissed off the public because the bins never got completely emptied. And it didn’t matter how many bin men you put into it. It didn’t matter how many bin men you put into it, they never emptied all the bins.
Geoff Burch:
Then the council decided they needed to cut back on bin men. You can imagine the consequences of that, except galloping over the horizon came an intelligent manager who’s put in charge of the bin men. But this doesn’t have a happy ending, this story, because what he said, he cut the bin men by a third, like he was told. And said to the bin men … The other thing is, they would flog scrap. And anyone caught flogging scrap would be fired, you see. That’s what they used to do. So, they used to sneak about round the back of the scrapyards sorting scrap for their little bit of extra. And it was all a terrific floor they had going on selling the scrap.
Geoff Burch:
So, he said to them, “Right, the third of you have gone. But when you’ve finished the round, you can piss off home. There is no day. Start at 7:00 like you do. But when you’re done, you can go home and you can have the scrap at finish. Done.” Now, they would finish normally at 4:00. They were finishing at 11:00 in the morning. They were running behind the dust cart. And they all had second jobs and stuff or would just go home.
Geoff Burch:
But the council went mental because British management … Here’s the key, this is another one of my phrases, the change resisted. But British management is obsessed by process, not outcome. You know, you employ a bloke to paint your fence, you don’t keep coming out every 10 minutes and saying, “I wouldn’t hold the brush that way up, and I wouldn’t do this.” You say, “How much to paint my fence?” “100 quid.” You go, “Go on, get on with it then.” You come back a day later and if he hasn’t painted it well, you kick his ass or say, “You’re not getting paid for that, it’s crap.” Or you say, “Brilliant, well done, mate.” You don’t ask him how he achieved it, where’s his worksheet? Did he requisition the paint? Where did he do it from? It’s outcome.
Geoff Burch:
The outcome was to have the bins emptied. But the management, the upper management said, “Well, how was that achieved.” Don’t ask, don’t need to know, do you? “Well, that’s ridiculous. We pay them for a day’s work. We’re getting half a day’s work.” No, you’re not. You’re getting more than a day’s … What? You’re getting more than a day’s work. We have this thing of people should stand by their bench, whether they’ve got anything to do or not. Imagine what British industry you like if people say, “You can go home when you’ve finished.” Just like-
Nathan Simmonds:
I think we used to experience that when we were kids doing paper rounds or on our apprenticeship or on youth training. It’s like, we’ve done a good day’s work.
Geoff Burch:
Or self-employment as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah, you know? Chip off at 3:00, 4:00. You’ve done what you needed to do. We don’t just sit there and then drag it out. That example you used there, they’re getting more than a day’s work because they never finished the round beforehand anyway. And now they’ve actually got more freedom to do it, they’re working four or five times harder to make sure they do get it done.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah. And then they go home. Yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
And you’re paying for the energy input that gets the result, not the amount of time that gets that result.
Geoff Burch:
Going back to our earlier conversation, you should never let the customer see how easy it is. And never let your boss see how easy it is either, you know?
Nathan Simmonds:
Exactly.
Geoff Burch:
That’s the madness of this. Again, manage for outcome, not process.
Nathan Simmonds:
And this time we’re in now is giving more people space to get the work done, and for leaders to let their people get the work done. And then, also the opportunity for leaders to reconnect with their people because they’ve got space to do that, whether it’s one to one development from a leader to their team or individuals, or whether it’s the whole team doing a team meeting or leadership development with other companies. There’s an opportunity here for personal growth if we use it and we’re productive in the time that we’ve been given.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah, see now, you were saying I could talk to Tokyo with my virtual goggles on. Now, what I would like, my dream for the future would be that people would come out of their homes once a year to actually meet the people they talk to online, see me, have a bit of a nibble, shake hands, have a bit of fun, and then all go back to their homes again, you know? Because they’ve been … in a normal situation, they’re all together in an office anyway. Maybe this is the one or two times a year they would actually physically meet the people they work with in one place.
Nathan Simmonds:
Flip the whole thing on its head.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah, they only go to work once a year, basically. Your sound’s gone off, by the way.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s just cut out. There we go, I’m back. Geoff, I just want to say a huge thanks for your insights today, deeply appreciated. I love speaking to you. I love hearing the stories because they’re real. They’re real stories, real people at the coalface, boots on the ground. And like you say, it’s business without the bullshit. This is the reality of what we do as human beings, how we lead, and how we run businesses. And how we need to run businesses with a little bit of discomfort and a hell of a lot of reality. Thanks very much for your time.
Geoff Burch:
And a bit of fun.
Nathan Simmonds:
And huge spoonfuls of fun.
Geoff Burch:
But if anybody thinks I’m too shallow, I’ll quite my hero Einstein again. “If you can’t make it simple to understand, then you don’t understand it,” he said.
Nathan Simmonds:
Exactly that, exactly that. Geoff, where can people find you?
Geoff Burch:
Well, geoffburch.com. It’s B-U-R-C-H. That’s what people always misspell my name. It’s Geoff with a G and I’m B-U-R-C-H, geoffburch.com. And I’m very accessible, anyone can get in touch with me. I’m more than happy to … I’m on LinkedIn. I’m always welcoming people to link in, that’s lovely. And then, I come on things like this, which is hilarious. I mean, it’s great. I’ll be interested to see what people’s reaction is.
Nathan Simmonds:
Geoff Burch, as real as it gets in business. Thank you very much for your time. Hugely appreciated.
Geoff Burch:
It’s a pleasure.
Nathan Simmonds:
One other plug from you, what’s your current book, your most recent book? And which one would you recommend to people to read right now if they wanted to become self-employed?
Geoff Burch:
Go It Alone or Self Made Me. Here it is, Self Made Me. That’s the latest self-employment book. That’s a no … If you read this book and you think, “No, I don’t want to be self-employed,” that’s a good thing. This book tells it as it is. Irresistible Persuasion and The Way Of The Dog is my favorite because it’s the weirdest. Now, there’s this guy who’s the crappiest salesman in the world. And he’s supposed to be selling double-glazing. And he can’t sell it. And he goes to this little house in the wood that is made of gingerbread to sell double-glazing.
Geoff Burch:
And he says to the old lady who opens the door, “Do you know there’s some kids eating your roof?” And she says, “I blame the parents,” you see? Anyway, she’s so pissed off with him, she turns him into a dog. And he learns how to sell by herding sheep, you know? He becomes a sheepdog. And the first thing he ever does is to rush at the sheep barking, like he used to with his customers. And of course, they all run off.
Geoff Burch:
So, he’s taught by Shep how to get a relationship with the sheep and how to move the sheep from one place to another without frightening them, without upsetting them, and with them actually willing to repeat the experience time and time again. He meets all sorts of weird people, the farting cat is one of them.
Nathan Simmonds:
Do you know what? Already from you saying that, there’s two things popped into mind. One is this is a book that I wish I had read probably five years ago when I started selling my own one to one coaching.
Geoff Burch:
It’s on Audible as well, you can hear me reading it.
Nathan Simmonds:
Perfect. You can count me in. The second thing is you also mentioned that you’re a hippy, so I’m not surprised that this is probably the weirdest book that you’ve ever written.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah, wow. I mean, they’re all a bit weird, I must admit. That is the weirdest, yeah. Yeah. It has a happy ending, that one. Not to start with. No. Funny enough, he goes to this farm where he meets the management, like you manage. They have 11 dogs and 10 beds, and the crappiest dog doesn’t get a bed, you know? That’s kind of … I’ve met sales teams like that, you know? It’s like Glen Gary, Glen Ross, the first prize is a Cadillac, the second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is you’re fired.
Nathan Simmonds:
Yeah. And I’ve worked in teams like that and I’ve led teams that are in those sorts of environments, and it’s just not fun.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
And it is about teaching people a different way so they can make it work.
Geoff Burch:
A major car sales team were in touch with me. And they say … I say, “What’s your staff turnover like?” 50%. I said, “That’s high.” And they said, “It’s even higher because it’s 50% in the lower 50% performance levels.” So, like, their top salesmen don’t turnover, but they don’t ever help. They don’t help the less successful salespeople. They keep it all to themselves. So, if you go there and you’re a bit crap, you won’t make a living, so you don’t last. But they kind of see that as a valuable culture. I see it as an absolutely crap culture, to be honest. And suit and tie and this, that, and the other. And it’s just, no, the world’s changing. And jolly good it is too. Whether I’m going to be part of that change, I don’t know.
Nathan Simmonds:
Geoff, I think if people are listening to this, you are part of the change. If people have read your books, you are part of the change. If people are taking any wisdom from this about change management and making it stick, it makes you and I a part of this change, and I’m very grateful. Geoff.
Geoff Burch:
Yeah.
Nathan Simmonds:
Thank you very much for today, so appreciative. Have a wonderful day. For everyone that is watching this, please dive into the work of Geoff. Have a look at the books. You want to improve your sales, you want to improve your culture, you want to improve cultural change, read the books. Get it on Audible. Go and find out about this guy. He’s got loads of YouTube videos worth watching as well. Please make the most of it, and I look forward to you hearing the next interview from MBM and The Sticky Interviews. Thank you very much.
Geoff Burch:
Thank you.
