Rob Thomas:
The emotion of the uncertainty part of it and coming through it is actually perfectly normal and you're not alone. And we all feel it at every single level.

Andrew White:
Hello, my name is Andrew White from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. You're listening to a special bonus Leadership 2050 miniseries focusing on transformation. How organisations successfully undertake radical change is a key part of what we explore in Leadership 2050. But it's such a fascinating area, we thought it deserved a deeper dive. So we've teamed up with global professional services company, EY, to dig deeper, because how to create a revolution in business thinking and practise is what we're all about. What can leaders who've been through the process, teach us about the secrets of a successful transformation? What are the pitfalls to avoid? Stay tuned to find out what lessons can be learned from some of our top business leaders.

Andrew White:
In this episode, we're in conversation with Rob Thomas, the Chief Operating Officer of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team. Rob's automotive career started at just 16 years old when he left school to start an apprenticeship with Jaguar Cars. He studied mechanical engineering at Coventry University and by '22 was working for Shell as a drilling engineer, where he spent five years working on oil rigs. Back on dry land, Rob went on to work for Rover BMW, TRW Aeronautical Systems Group, and GKN Aerospace Services before becoming Chief Operating Officer of the Mercedes Team in 2010. Rob led the transformation of Mercedes at a critical point in the company's history. And here he talks frankly, about what worked and what he'd do differently next time. Joining me as co-host for this series is my transformation leadership research partner, Adam Canwell from EY Asia-Pacific. Adam kicks us off.

Adam Canwell:
As you think about the programmes you've been involved in over the past couple of years, the degree of change you've faced into, what does transformation mean to you? And what's the key to it, do you think, when you think about how you get success in transformation?

Rob Thomas:
The last few years for us has seen significant change. Maybe I explain that a little bit. Formula One has been relatively stable for many years. We talk about lots of change in F1 and we are surrounded by change, the cars constantly being developed, very short lead times, very rapid innovation cycles. But when it comes to change of the organisation, we don't do that very often. And for many years we've been quite stable. We've built up a team here that we're quite proud of, is very strong, and we've been quite successful over the last eight or nine years.

Rob Thomas:
And then back in 2018, 2019, the FIA talked about introducing a cost cap into the sport, really aimed at trying to level the playing field. Some of the larger teams like ourselves, Red Bull, Ferrari, who are the bigger teams, it was aimed primarily at those teams to try and bring them to a point where people like ourselves wouldn't dominate. So this was an introduced as a concept around 2019 to be introduced actually into the sport in 2021. So we saw this coming and it was set at a point then, the actual level was set at $175 million. Now for us as a business, that's quite a change because we were above that number. Our spend was above that and I won't go into the technical details of it, but it did mean quite a change and it fell onto my shoulders to take us through that.

Rob Thomas:
Now looking at that change, it was quite a big deal. And as the leader of it, if I'm being brutally honest, for a couple of months, I sort of stared at it. I thought, actually, how do you go about tackling this? Because it's different. It's not a sort of technical challenge that we're so used to. And most of us have engineering backgrounds and mindsets, so we kind of like technical challenges because we can understand them, we understand the journey and we've got a good idea what the end point will be. So that's quite a comfortable place for us.

Rob Thomas:
When you're looking at something like this, which is quite wide ranging, for myself anyway, I sort of looked at it and did various different plans and actually got myself stuck into a bit of inertia. I didn't actually start it. And it was only kind of taking a brave pill in the end and said, "Right, let's just get going. Let's get a group of people together and let's start scoping out this sort of challenge." And that's what we did. And we got ourselves into a reasonable place. We had a project team in place. We had a structure in place and we were kind of okay. And we knew where we were going and it was fine.

Rob Thomas:
And then the pandemic came along and what happened around in March, April time, 2020, the FIA reduced that cost cap limit from $175 million down to $145 million. So suddenly this challenge became a really significant challenge, really significant. For a company like ourselves, this was pretty major. And it was an interesting time. And I reflect on it quite a lot because this happened, we were all sent on lockdown, we were at home, this happened, and then we came back to work about eight weeks later. And we carried on as before. We had the same working parties, the same meetings, the same steering groups. And we said, "Okay, now we've got to go from 175 to 145. So we need to do a bit more."

Rob Thomas:
And we carried on those meetings and the meetings became increasingly difficult because actually, instead of just looking for some efficiencies kind of around the edges, how can we balance the organisation, but not take any sort of major surgery, we probably wasted, I don't know, maybe a couple of months until actually it wasn't me. It was somebody else in the team who said, "We need to stop. We actually need to stop. We are not going to get where we need to get to just by adopting the same approach we had before." So it was a big turning point and he goes, "This is a significant change now. And we need to step back from what we're doing and actually look at how we're going to organise ourselves." And that was an important moment for us, because it did force us to think differently.

Rob Thomas:
And what we'd sort of stumbled into, I think a little bit was we were looking at this sort of size of change, our communication to the organisation wasn't what it should have been. And we left a big vacuum, a vacuum in the company where everybody knew about this. It was in the press. We're going to go to $145 million, but everybody else apart from this small group were thinking, what does it mean for me? And there was this sort of cloud over the organisation of surely that means we're going to have lots of redundancies. People are going to lose their jobs. What's happening? And we left that vacuum. We didn't fill it because to be honest, we were wrestling with it ourselves.

Rob Thomas:
We took a step back, say, one person of the team triggered this and we actually thought, how can we manage this? And we came up with a different strategy for us. And instead of this sort of oppressive shrinkage type model, that's what we were heading towards, we thought, well, how do we look at this differently? How do we look at it from a growth perspective, a much more positive perspective. Because we've built this team over many years and we're very proud of it. In a way, the easy path would've been, okay, let's reduce the team down to the size of the cost cap limit and then let's go forward. But we didn't want to do that. We actually wanted to try and maintain the strengths of the team as much as we can, but actually how do we do that when you've only got a fixed amount of money you can spend?

Rob Thomas:
So we came up with a different strategy, a strategy where actually, at certain times of the year where we can't afford these people, let's use on something else. Let's use them on what we called non-F1 work. So this is work, doing projects that aren't related to Formula One. So we started talking to companies and the first major project we took onboard was to help with the America's Cup because INEOS, one of our sponsors, they were involved in the America's Cup in the last campaign, we did a little bit of work to help them. But actually, we're doing a lot more work on that. So we started doing these interesting, exciting projects, which compliment our skills. They're using their capabilities. They're commercial projects. So they're generating income, which is always useful for the business. And we're able to maintain the organisation pretty much as we've had it before.

Rob Thomas:
So suddenly it's a change of direction and we're actually heading down a path where the team isn't actually reducing. Potentially it's growing. So once we've sort of firmed at a direction, we could talk to the organisation and say, this is where we're going. We have some clarity now of the direction at a high level, there's a lot of detail to work through, but actually it's a really positive future. Formula One will always be at the heart of what we do. It's the core of what we're about. But actually there's some interesting other projects for engineers and not just engineers, other skills in the organisation could potentially get involved into and they could learn some new skills. We'll hit the cost cap, but actually we come up with a strategy, but it's actually a difficult strategy managing our way through this. And we've been wrestling with this all the way through as much as we can.

Rob Thomas:
But that's the sort of call it a transformation, if I'm being brutally honest. I don't particularly like the word. The reason I don't like the word is it feels a bit sensationalist. It feels a bit, well, you've got to transform because you're in a bad place. You're in dire straits as an organisation and if you don't transform, you're going to fall to pieces. And it can scare people and it gets people into... So I don't want to call it that. I actually want to call it more about, this is just a change. Don't be scared of it. Be part of it, get involved in it. And actually take away that almost burning platform type thing because we didn't have it. We'd won lots of world champions. It's just a significant change coming around the corner. We just need to move with it.

Adam Canwell:
It's interesting where you go there, Rob, because one of the big pieces that comes out of our research is the need to manage the emotional journey that the workforce go through. What we're saying by that, and being a high-performance sport, you already get this, actually pressure is really important. So you actually have to take pressure up to get into a zone of high performance. But if you take pressure up without any kind of compensating act, all you end up with is people look rabbits and headlights, essentially.

Adam Canwell:
If you take pressure up and you move the right level of support in, and that's the language that we use, the behaviours of our leaders, physical manifestations of what we're trying to do. So it's hard as well as soft. And you're kind of, actually, I don't like transportation because in some ways it challenges people, it puts too much threat into the system. It's one of those things, isn't it? It's saying, actually, I know we're going to go through a pressured situation. The pressure's there. We're a high-performance sport, got to take a bunch of costs out, but how do I ameliorate that pressure to some extent so people stay functional, so people stay on track?

Rob Thomas:
Yeah. Over the last four or five years, we've done quite a lot on pressure because it's a high-performing industry, as you say, and generally people think about the pressure at the circuit, the two second pit stops and what happens there. But actually there's a lot of pressure in the factory as well. Because we're trying to develop a car in nine months, we rely a lot on the human to do the right thing. And there's intense pressure during that build period.

Rob Thomas:
So we've trained the whole company over the last four years into understanding pressure and performing under pressure. And we've had people from different sports. There's a guy called Dr. Ceri Evans who work with the All Blacks. He spent some time with us talking about how these guys adapted to pressure. So it's a language we're used to and people, they understand red blue, they understand under pressure, how do they react, and the behaviours that underpin it and how to deal with it is key.

Rob Thomas:
So I think that preparation helped us an awful lot for the major change that we've gone through. But also, when we were going through this and we're still going through it, to be honest, going through this big change, we're very open with people. And again, we told everybody, we talked about the change curve to everybody, the whole company about these are the emotions you're probably going to feel. And you're sitting there clamming for answers. And we don't know all the answers and that frustrates people. They go, "Tell us what's going to happen." I said, "To be honest, we're still learning, but as soon as we know it, you'll be the first people to know. But try to understand the situation we're in. And if you've got input, we're all ears."

Rob Thomas:
So involve them in the process. And I think that helped a lot. I think people appreciated the honesty, even though they wanted answers. We didn't have all the answers at that particular point in time. But also just understanding that the emotion of the uncertainty part of it and coming through it is actually perfectly normal and you're not alone. And we all feel it at every single level. And I think as the leaders of the organisation, we made sure we recognised that we were in a privileged position. We're in this privileged position because we knew what was going on and we had a direct say in where we were going and we had to try and make sure we didn't forget that not everybody had that information and had that ability to be part of it.

Rob Thomas:
So if you left those pockets, those vacuums, like I said, people would naturally fill it with their own stories. And they generally wouldn't be positive because that uncertainty would get to them. And it's like, they're not talking to us, must be something going on. So we tried to make sure through really regular communications, weekly newsletters, talking in front of the staff as much as possible to let them know where we were.

Rob Thomas:
And for engineers setting off on a journey like this without knowing what the end game looks like was unsettling for me personally and I think for others, because it's kind of like, you're not really in control, but again, you sort of swallow it in the end and say, well, let's just get going. Let's start doing some things and we'll learn and we'll adapt. And the journey, we'll get to where we need to, as we've learned. It may be not by the direct path and there'll be all sorts of bumps and things along the way, but actually you'll get there. The worst thing is just freezing. And I think personally at the start I froze due to uncertainty and that's a big learning for me and I think for others in the organisation.

Andrew White:
It's interesting listening to you, Rob. At the beginning, but also more in the later stages of the process, there seems to be a human, I don't know, phenomenon that when things start to change, we go internally and now almost our heads come down, it's into our own emotions. You talked about freezing. We lose sight of who we are, what we are. And there was two things that you said, one is the person who called it and said, listen, the status quo isn't working, that kind of gets you back to the why. And I loved what you said around pivoting into other industries. There's a positive energy about that. It gets you back to a why, back to a purpose. We're brilliant engineers, where else can we deploy these skills going out to a partner, a sponsor? It goes from almost, I don't know, it's almost like a head down, it's me, it's my emotions. It's a kind of inward angst into an outward where I'm able to actually move forward and do something. There's a different energy about it.

Rob Thomas:
Yeah, absolutely, Andrew. I think, again, if we're sticking on the emotion side of it, it was actually the technical director who sort of called it and said, "No, we need to stop," as you said, and change direction. And again, for me personally at the time, I sort of beat myself up for a little while and saying, "I'm meant to be leading this. That should have been me who did that." And then it was like, you just got to swallow that. Come on. Does it matter? It's not about me. It's about the right thing for the organisation. And it doesn't matter where it comes from. In fact, somebody was brave enough to sort of say, no, come on, let's time out on this. All credit to them. And again, a learning for me is like, just forget about your own pride or whatever else. It's not really important in this. It's different.

Rob Thomas:
And as you say, Andrew, that's sort of... Finding a way to remove the weight, which the project was at one point over the organisation and was just pressing down, you put yourself in the shoes of maybe the engineers or anybody who's within the cost cap. It's like, the cost cap's coming down. They can't afford to develop me. There's no progression. Probably can't afford pay rises. That sort of weighed on me, how am I going to... It's a really compressing environment to be in. And we had the biggest technical change in the sport probably for many decades. So we had a number of really massive factors playing on the organisation and finding the lever. And it was finding a way to, say, remove the weight to say, actually, there's a direction here, which is exciting. It's interesting. I can develop. It's been really important.

Adam Canwell:
Rob, such a success story, an organisation, and a team based on delivering incredible success that you passionately believe in. And yet what you've got to go through is that process of a leader of letting go of that and then reinventing and reimagining. That is like all of our research which show that's really difficult. That's really difficult to give yourself the space to let go of what has got you to where you are, because it's no longer functional for what you're facing into. And that's kind of the experience you're going through at that point, isn't it?

Rob Thomas:
It is. I mean, I can sit here and talk about, which may appear like a nice story with a nice direction, but actually it's really hard. It is really hard. And there's many days of uncertainty and difficulty. And again, if you wind the clock back, what you do differently, actually, I believe we were quite naive. Believe it or not, we were really busy before this all came along and then we decided we need to do this big change. And we thought, okay, let's do this change, but we'll do it ourselves. We'll just suck it up and get on with it.

Rob Thomas:
So what we ended up doing was really overloading the managers and the people in the organisation. And we didn't really add too much extra resource into the company. We didn't really understand that well enough. So people were really under the cost and still are, because we're still wrestling with this model. I talk about there's a cost cap, but we can have this growth model, but we weren't brave enough to really believe in it and invest in it. So actually it is clear now that we were short of resource in a number of areas. We thought, we can't go and recruit. We've got a cost cap. So there's all of these difficulties and dimensions that came into play that we're wrestling with, that you would probably change with hindsight. Now we'll come through it because we've got a direction and we kind of know where we're going and it's starting to settle down, but it is, it's really, really difficult. But stepping back and having that clarity is the biggest, biggest change that we did.

Andrew White:
And you talked about, you know, you gave a great insight into the process, which was non-linear, it was backwards, forwards, up, down, round. And Adam and I have really been trying to wrestle, how do we describe this because it's not a project plan and it's clear that you are having to think about, and it's almost like you bring together the emotional and the rational. Is there a metaphor? Is there a way of describing that, you think we could use? When you look back on it, how would you make sense of it if you had to describe it to us?

Rob Thomas:
Yeah. Great question. I don't think you can avoid not having a plan, to be honest with you. You got to have something to cling onto, otherwise you really are blindly heading off. And we had a plan and if I went back and looked at it now, I'd probably say that looked okay. I think the bit we underestimated within that is it always takes longer and it always takes more resource than you think it's going to. That's a big learning for us. And then the way I went about this at the start, if I'm being honest, I just did a mind map. I just chucked it all up there and said, what are all the factors? And now if I drew that mind map again, I'd have 50% of it would be into planning and the technical side, and 50% would be more on the human side factoring on the emotional side, as well as that sort of cloudy direction and the communication and put much more weighting into that.

Rob Thomas:
And make sure that during the period, if they're not spontaneous kind of force ourselves to take a step back and say, are we still doing the right thing? And not just from the project group, which is a tiny subset of the organisation, but mechanisms where anybody could contribute and say, have you guys thought about this? What about this? And just make sure we have these input into it, because otherwise you can easily get into, and it's a human nature thing, I kind of know where I'm going. I've got my arms around it. I'm comfortable. Even if you're heading over there, when actually you need to be heading over there.

Rob Thomas:
So I haven't got a metaphor for you, but it's that sort of learning that I've gone through that something like this, which is as much human behavioural as it is, the technical detail is to make sure you build that into it from the very start.

Andrew White:
I mean, almost as like, once you've done the project plan, recognise this is only 50% of what the plan looks like. And then there's a bit of thinking around how long will it take for us to come to an agreement? How long will it take for mindsets to shift? How long will it take for us to go through some of the difficult motions? And I think, perhaps our job as the researchers on this is to really think through how do you plan for that? What do KPIs mean in that? What do activities mean in that? And it's much more of a complex thing. So maybe leave that one with us.

Rob Thomas:
Yeah. You're welcome.

Adam Canwell:
No, I wonder whether it's to do with not making a plan for it, but making the space for it.

Andrew White:
Yeah.

Adam Canwell:
You have a plan for the activity, but you have space for the people. There's something quite interesting in the way you describe it. Rob, just a question for you as the leader going through this, because these are tough journeys, like you say, the ambiguity of it, everything resting on your shoulders or the sense of accountability for it. And you're already a highly accountable performance-driven organisation, so I'd imagine that's quite a heavy load, particularly in your industry. What did you do for yourself? Where was your space to get away from it or to be able to cope with it?

Rob Thomas:
Yeah. It was a personal thing feeling the accountability for it, but the reality of it, there was a group of us doing it. I felt the accountability because that's kind of by nature a little bit what we're like. How I managed through it, really is just making sure I can go and get a bit of time away. And for me that's sport. I just go running. I run three or four times a week and that's enough to clear my head and get back into it again and go from there. But the organisation that we have is particularly supportive and we do a lot to try and help each other because, as you say, the nature of our business, the sport we're in, the expectations does drive a very close-knit team. So I was very fortunate to be amongst a bunch people who you can go and talk to about almost anything and they will help you. And hopefully we help each other. So yeah, being in that sort of culture was massively beneficial.

Andrew White:
And one of the things we're thinking about is, what's a superpower when it comes to transformation? I mean you've got superpower drivers and if we think about this as a capability, is there anything that stands out when you think about things that you did that really moved the needle or things that others did, your peers, the team that you lead did that really moved the needle and really allowed people to move forward, build that transformation muscle?

Rob Thomas:
Well, I wish I could find some superpowers. I think there's a few things now, again, that would benefit hindsight you think about. What would I have done differently? I wish I'd been braver at the start not to be thinking grander than I did, because I was thinking more of a traditional change, optimization, efficiency thing without actually such a large-scaled vision of what it could be. So bravery, I think is one of the superpowers. I think being able to have clarity early, I would love to have that. Being able to have the clarity of, yeah, I can see it. I can see where we're going. I can see the direction and I can articulate it in a way which is engaging, so people will share the same enthusiasm for it. That actually, yeah, there's going to be some tough steps along this journey, but actually where we're going, it's going to be worth the effort.

Adam Canwell:
And if you could gift any one thing to a leader, kicking off a transformation tomorrow, a learning from it, what would you gift to them?

Rob Thomas:
Have a holiday today, because it's going to take its toll on you. I think you've got to find a way to enjoy it, because it can take its toll. And actually, I actually felt quite privileged. For a change of this scale, to be asked to try and lead it was a bit of a privilege. And see it like that. Don't see it as a weight. Don't see it as nobody else to step forward, it's me. See it as something that is actually quite exciting. It's an opportunity, but don't try and carry the burden on your own shoulders. People are generally supportive if you're honest and open. So avoid what I did, which was to have that sort of inertia at the start of a couple of months of wrestling with where do I start? What's the first step? Get some people involved from the start and suddenly it doesn't feel such a weight on your own shoulders. Get them involved and start on the journey.

Rob Thomas:
And as quickly as you can, try to get some clarity, as I said, and a consensus about this is where we need to be, then you feel in better shape, but not forgetting as we've talked all the way through this, about the human element of you're going to take an organisation through quite a change programme. And how do you prepare them for that from an emotional side? How is your communication plan going to work? From very early days, talking about this is what we're dealing with, here's where we're going with as much honesty as you can, of course, you have to gauge that, but as much honesty as you can and make sure that the people understand it and go with you. Because there's likely to be points where people won't agree with you and they won't even like your decision, but as long as they understand the reasoning for it, the journey you've been on and hopefully where you're going, you'll know you're doing the right thing.

Adam Canwell:
When we started on looking at the interviews and the findings and the research, Andrew pulled out an analogy of not entirely, there are some strengths to the analogy and some weaknesses, but when you really look at these successful transformation programmes, there's an element of it that feels a bit like a social movement, which is the non-linearity. Because what you do is you're getting a set of people together based on a common belief who together will work their way through it, through open dialogue, honesty, pushing through together, not knowing where they're going to get to, but that kind of sense of in it together to create a movement. And there's a bit of that to what you were saying, don't do it yourself. You've got to convene it and you've got to push it forward, but don't do it yourself.

Rob Thomas:
Yeah. Absolutely right. And don't feel like you have to make every decision. There's that sort of feeling as well in you that I'm meant to be heading this up. So I will tell you the direction, I'll let you know where you're going. Yeah, don't do that. I mean, social movement, may be one way to call it. But if you want it to be successful and take the people with you, there has to be a large element of that. I firmly, firmly believe it. Otherwise, you'll find out all of a sudden you're quite isolated and that's not a good place to be. That's been a fascinating journey to be on and it's not finished yet. And the ultimate measure of success for this, we'll see on the circuit, we'll see at the races. Because ultimately, can we keep winning within a cost cap the way we want to win? And that's the real measure, but hopefully I've been able to share with you hopefully an honest view of what we've been through and the challenges and the learnings along the way.

Andrew White:
And I probably should have said at the beginning, for those people who are not Formula One fans, Mercedes has had relentless success. I mean, this has just been out of the park. And, Rob, you're a bit English, may I say, and being understated. I mean, this is just unbelievable performance. So what we're hearing here is really about transformation in the context of an extremely high-performing organisation. So that's everything from me, Adam, anything else from you?

Adam Canwell:
No, Rob, it's been wonderful to hear from you and good luck with the rest of the season. It's looking like you're on the right track.

Rob Thomas:
Yeah. Well, thanks very much. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.

Adam Canwell:
I tell you what, Andrew, the bit where he really leant into the use of pressure and why pressure is so important to performance, but that you have to be careful with it and you've got to really manage the emotional journey of the people going through it. I mean, I guess as a high-performance sport, we could have expected that in a way, but he brought that bit to life just beautifully I thought.

Andrew White:
Yeah, I thought so. I thought the whole thing was just so interesting. Rhe use of pressure, the whole thing about the start where this was a big shock to the system. I mean, they had something, an external thing come onto them that said the status quo. It wasn't just unsustainable. It just couldn't continue. And it started with them as leaders. And I loved the bit about where it could have really, I mean, a lot of organisations would've gone into redundancy, I think, take our costs down, but they kind of redeployed the skills elsewhere. And I love how do you lead the emotional journey and get people to think about their potential and pivot onto something. It was just a great story in terms of the unexpected upside out of transformation.

Adam Canwell:
Yeah. And it was that, as you said as well, an incredibly high-performance organisation that has delivered success after success, after success with a phenomenal team in there. And the thing that he then experienced as a leader was how do you let go of that? Everything is built up around what you've created and you've got to let go of it, which is so true to major organisations holding onto legacy products, because they've built up these incredible belief systems. And being able to step away from it and reimagine is such a difficult thing to do, isn't it? And you could see that within a compressed time scale, he had to go through that process to then be able to reimagine. But it was tough. It was really tough.

Andrew White:
Yeah. Really hard. I think there's an opportunity here. I mean, if the traditional project planning tools are only 50% and you've got this space, you're right in what you were saying, it's not a plan, but it kind of is a plan. There are some activities, but there's something different about it. So we've got the dominant hand, let's call it the right hand. But what does the left hand look like in terms of the plan? And I think that's where we've got to really get our brains together, Adam, and think through how do you create that? How do you put some structure around that and give people a sense of what that looks like as a pathway? Maybe it's not a plan, maybe it's a pathway or a series of pathways forward.

Adam Canwell:
Yeah. Even in a engineering organisation that works off detailed plans and linear A to B, he was like, that was less than half of it. And actually his regret was not making the space for that earlier, wasn't it? That kind of organisation for that to be the case is incredible.

Andrew White:
And can we create KPIs for emotions? Now we can't force emotions to change, but we can conduct activities that lead an emotional journey. So how do we know when we've reached a certain point? Maybe KPIs is not the right word, but what are the indicators? What are the measurements? How do we know when we're ready to move forward, where we've taken a certain number of people with us and got them to a certain place emotionally, such that we can engage a different bit of the plan?

Adam Canwell:
Yeah. Yeah. And created a really deep belief that allows us to lead with the courage that we're going to need. Because that's the other piece, they kind of knew where they were going, but they didn't really believe it. So how do you make the time and the space to really believe it? And how would it feel like leading from that point of belief, not fear?

Andrew White:
Yeah. And I think all it does is it reconfirms the existing data we have and the insight that a lot of this is front loaded. So much of the success that you see further down the road comes from creating that space to go through these processes. And that whole question, where does courage come from? Where does bravery come from? They are big questions we're not going to answer now, but that's the kind of challenge we have with taking this forward.

Adam Canwell:
Fascinating.

Andrew White:
Our thanks to Rob Thomas. You've been listening to a special transformation edition of Leadership, 2050 with me, Andrew White and Adam Canwell from EY. You can catch up with all our episodes from the Leadership 2050 series wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, why not subscribe so you'll never miss an episode? And help others find us by taking a moment to give us a rating and review. If you'd like to hear more podcasts from Saïd Business School, exploring leadership and how the business world is reimagining the future, please visit oxfordanswers.org. Leadership 2050 is a podcast from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. The Producer is Eve Streeter. Original music is by Cybeg. And our Executive Producer is David McGuire for Stabl Productions.