Unifying the Vision: Aligning Tech and Business to Drive True Transformation

In this episode of the Tech Trajectory Podcast, host Chris Davies sits down with John Sullivan (Sully) to explore what it takes to lead large-scale transformation, without losing sight of people, purpose, and impact.

Sully shares his journey from engineer to CEO, and how listening to customers and translating business needs into tech outcomes became a career-defining shift. From OKRs to flywheels, ride-alongs to data dashboards, this episode is packed with practical stories and clear-headed thinking on how to get alignment, and why buzzwords are no substitute for intent.

Whether you’re scaling a startup, transforming a product team, or simply trying to get business and tech to speak the same language, this one’s for you.

1. Tech strategy is business strategy

[02:00] Sully shares how his early experience riding along with sales teams helped him shift from building for tech’s sake to solving business problems with tech.

2. Why OKRs changed everything at Chargefox

[08:30] In a post-acquisition pivot, Sully introduced five company-wide OKRs to align teams and give structure to a newly evolving software business.

3. Driving transformation with data and purpose

[15:00] From dashboards to Python scripts, Sully doubled down on making data accessible and meaningful—building alignment from the numbers up.

4. Leading with intent (and ditching buzzwords)

[21:00] You won’t hear Sully say “data-led” or “people-first,” but you’ll see it in his actions. He shares why clarity of intent matters more than corporate speak.

5. Navigating the personal side of transformation

[23:30] Whether it’s changing operating models or growing teams, Sully breaks down why true transformation is always personal—and why setting the ‘stall’ is essential.

6. What doesn’t work (and what surprised him)

[28:00] Not every team needs Agile. Sully challenges blanket transformation methods and shares what really made a difference across business functions.

7. From chaos to clarity: lessons in leadership

[32:00] As a CEO, Sully reflects on loneliness, switching leadership styles, walking the walk, and how a “why” mindset can be both a superpower and a headache.

8. Defining success and building flywheels

[38:00] Sully explains how Chargefox moved from a vague directive (“become a software business”) to a platform strategy, accelerants, and a flywheel that made it all work.

Where to find John Sullivan:

• LinkedIn: John Sullivan

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Transcript

Chris Davies: 0:00

Welcome to the tech trajectory Podcast. I'm Chris Davies, and today we're talking about what it really means to Align Technology and Business on the road to digital transformation. My guest is John Sullivan, an experienced tech and product executive who's held leadership roles at AWS and MYOB and most recently served as CEO of charge Fox, where he led the business through a critical growth phase. Sully, welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for having me. So I'm going to throw in a would you rather question to begin with? So would you rather lead a transformation project where every meeting starts with a motivational quote on a PowerPoint slide, or one where everyone communicates only in GIFs on Slack.

John Sullivan: 0:47

Am I allowed to say neither? Like, they both sound horrendous?

Chris Davies: 0:52

Yeah, we can. We can say neither,

John Sullivan: 0:55

then, neither like. I like the motivation thing. I like people being involved, being wanting to being meetings. I've always tried to make meetings fun. I always felt that, you know, if you make a meeting dry, no one's gonna you know, you're gonna get people turning up. Yeah, so I like the motivational part of the thing, but just not the powerful way.

Chris Davies: 1:15

Fair enough. Fair enough. I think that's a that's a good, good response to that. So, yeah, many topics that we're going to talk about today, but I think one of the main ones is your journey, in particular, starting off as an engineer and then moving away up various different leadership roles and then transitioning over to the business side of things. So yeah, your career has shifted and pushed tech teams closer to the business. What triggers that for you? What, what makes you try and force that shift in in the businesses you've worked in? Yeah,

John Sullivan: 1:54

I don't think it was. There's like a moment in time where I went, Oh, you know, we've got to, we've got to shift we've got to shift direction here. But I do think there's been a few things that I've always felt are true. One of them is that tech teams themselves predominantly don't, haven't in the ones I've worked in, they can't survive on their own. So if there's no business. There's no tech team, so it's important to understand the business and do the right things for the overall business that you sit within. So that was one thing, so became kind of important. And the second thing was tech itself, I didn't find is exciting. I don't find as exciting in its own right. I think what it does, how it's used, the love for the thing that's created with software, you know, that's the thing that's exciting. And so those things really changed the direction of how I thought about software. It wasn't about writing something that, you know, was the best for loop, you know, or the most memory efficient mechanism of doing something, it was more about war gets generated with it. So there was those two things that I went well, for me to do that, I've really got to understand the business, and that's, I think, where the exciting conversations were happening and the exciting bits were and then, how could I take technology and then really empower the business, or, you know, give it bigger opportunities.

Chris Davies: 3:25

Yeah, amazing. And I think there's this thing where people get obsessed over the tech, what it can do. And, yeah, like you say, built in a beautiful way, and that kind of thing. But we're essentially, you know, solving a problem or producing an outcome, and the tech, don't worry, the tech will be able to do that. We'll figure that out later down the track. Yeah. Let's kind of start with that

John Sullivan: 3:53

higher level thing. Yeah. I think we see a lot of this today on in sort of the AI space, like AI could do anything, and I think it's overstated what it can and will do, and under utilized for what it actually can do and then. But you see it today, like AI, is it like everyone's talking about, AI will do this, and it will do that, and you go, actually, it in itself is not really the exciting bit. It's what you can do with it. How can you use it to, you know, read images and make people's health better. How can you do those things and maybe use a bit of AI to do that for you?

Chris Davies: 4:28

Yeah, so in those early days when, yeah, maybe your role was more tech focused, what did you What were some of the key things you learned when you started to come more involved in the business focus conversations. What really stuck out to you that thought, oh, maybe this is more me.

John Sullivan: 4:49

I'm better. I like talking and putting myself in a position where I can use the thing that I'm building or the thing I'm. Trying to design, and I think there's more gratification. And so I learned that in talking to customers, this is the one thing I had to do to start off with. It's like you couldn't the really interesting conversations came with the users of the product, or the thing that we were building, and then the or the thing we were looking to see if we could build, and it was learning that I've actually got to get out of a room and I've got to go on ride ons with sales. At the time, when I first started, it was sales people. There's no such thing as really is like UX designers, sure. And real the product role didn't it sort of existed, that the bits of it existed, or the functions and the role and the, you know, sort of the capabilities existed, but they were kind of different, shaped differently. But it was more about that. It was just like, I've got to get out and I can't listen to the salesperson, and I can't listen to the MD, and I can't listen to the team I'm in because we're blinkered, like it's the person that's going to use it is the person that's, you know, they they're the ones to talk to, yeah. And so that was, so I did ride ons before they were called Ride ons, you know, yeah. And then yeah. So that was one thing for sure. It's like, get out and actually understand why it's used. And then you make, I seem to make better decisions in what I built. Yeah, great. And why ask people to build because, yeah, that has purpose. Yeah,

Chris Davies: 6:31

awesome, yeah. And during some of those moments in time when you're trying to get tech into the hands of users, or even before then, just listening to their wants and their needs that they want from a product or solution. Do you think that helped to embed business strategy into tech strategy, or was something else that triggered that and to try and develop those more kind of Yeah, the UX roles and the product roles just

John Sullivan: 7:03

they just seem to join, okay? It just like there wasn't a divide, like I was having a conversation with someone that was using it with the salesperson, or with the MD, or with the chief, you know, the CFO, when I was building accounting systems for companies, I was just listening to the person that was using it, and so there was no divide. There was no valley between us that wouldn't you know, no document was being passed between one or the other that I realized that you had to describe, to understand, like to sort of like take notes on the conversations we were having, they had to be written in the language of the person that I was talking to. I couldn't write them saying, you know, I'm going to build a modular program that does XYZ. You know, it's got to be, no, no, we're going to basically create a trial balance, and it's going to report on these figures, and it's going to have on the left hand column, this on the right hand column, these debits, credits, that type of thing. So you had to describe it all in, you know, in business, in their users or the businesses terms, and therefore they're separate. They're how we were doing it, like didn't enter those documents. I kind of almost had the strategy all done. Yeah, that way. Yeah, for sure. And

Chris Davies: 8:21

I think, you know, talked a little bit about some of the, maybe the metrics and that kind of thing. And we shift to one of your most recent roles at charge Fox, you introduced a single set of OKRs for the whole business. What was the catalyst for doing so well?

John Sullivan: 8:42

And mainly because it was we needed. So I've always believed that visions and purpose and strategies evolve. You can't set one and stick by it for a long period of time because the needs of the business and needs the operating model that the business works in and operates in. They all change, and you've got to realign to meet though, to meet those changes. And when I joined charge Fox, it just been bought by the mobility clubs, NRMA, RACV, Raa and the other the other clubs, and they bought it at the point when it was a startup, yep. And it was very small, underfunded, and really it had operated as a startup. All it was trying to do was survive, yeah, get business not run out of their financial runway, or run off the financial runway, and with the sort of, with it being bought by the clubs, there was more money to be invested in it. And the strategy was not to build charges and put them in the ground. It was more to the strategy from the investors was move to a bit, move to a software business, not to a hardware business. Yeah, and that was the only thing they had. What does that mean? Yeah, well, we think there's money in the software, but we don't think there's money in the installation of the hardware. Yeah, right. Okay. So we needed, we needed a new vision, and with that, we wanted to scale the business up. So we wanted to move from a startup to a scale up business. All of that required a complete shake up of the strategy, or any of the strategic initiatives or visions, or, you know, the way that people operated. Everything had to shift. There was a I was one of a number of people that joined at a leadership level that were new to the market, and so we needed to learn the market quickly. And I'm sitting there going, we could do anything, because it says, like the description of what we want to achieve is become a software business. It's pretty broad, yeah, I think great things happen when you constrain them, when you put constraints in, and you go, you know, you focus. Your focus becomes more sort of pinpoint laser, laser focused when you constrain Yep. And so I worked with a lady, Alexander Stokes from reboot co to come up with a program to, like, a couple of days with other leaders to reset the vision. I wanted it to have a way of, like an inspirational vision. And I picked using NTPs, like massive transformational purposes. And then I wanted to do OKRs, because I've used OKRs before. Her suggestion was three. I went, I just don't think we can constrain it to three. It's got to be, I think it's got to be five, because one's got to be people. One of them's got to be about operating and scaling the operations up. But only leaves one for business. And it's too broad a business to just have one, so we need three others. And so we just worked on a program with her, and that's the that's the direction we took it for that reason. And we, the OKRs, helped us hone in on what it is we wanted to try and achieve. And I think gave the team the comfort that we actually knew we could describe what we were going to try and achieve for the first year. And it was like, we are just going to move to a to a software business. This is the measure of success, and they're all aspirational. I don't want to, I want it to be like the MTP was a big it was, you know, it was purposeful. It was electrify every vehicle. I didn't want to constrain people's thoughts to say, we're just going to electrify, you know, passenger vehicles again, there's a bus market moving in there, there's trucks coming into it, last miles coming in there. Why would we? Why would I constrain you with what we could do? But this is how we'll measure success, and that was just on five objectives. Each of the objectives had about two or three initially. So the first year had two apps, right? Three, at least three. KRS, yeah,

Chris Davies: 13:13

yeah, fascinating and really interesting. A lot of kind of shifts, by the sounds of things. So wanting to go from startup to scale up, moving across from a Yeah, hardware kind of business to a software development business. How did that kind of change the way that the teams work together? What challenges did you come across? Was it, you know, ways of working, or, yeah, lots, a lot. Well,

John Sullivan: 13:42

if you go from the the investors up the investors, like I ran them through, like we were part of a group, a holding group called Australian motor services, AMS, I took them through the OKRs, they were not yet because it didn't describe verbally. They were used to verbal visions and PowerPoint presentations and the same for the investors. So I had to create, like, rebuild that into a into a strategy document, and I built it on three themes. What were they? Sustain, grow. Sustain and defend his three themes that we're going to go on, and here's how we're going to measure them. So I put the OKRs into those three themes and built like a 12 page document that I written through that this is, this is the book of charge Fox. This is where the book this is what we're going to be. If you want to read a book about what we've become, read this at the start of the year and then go back and have a look at it, because that's what we'll do. So that was one thing. I had to re back track that into the investors and to the wider holding company for the teams themselves. It's the first time they've really had measures. Mm. Hmm, most organizations say most, it's my experience. When I say most, most of my experience, because there'll always be someone on the podcast that will go, not at our company, because my words different. But most of the companies I've worked for don't really measure that. They state targets or goals, and then don't go back and measure them, or don't measure them whilst they're going in that, you know, whilst they're trying to deliver towards them, they're sort of on to the next one. And so the first thing was, get the team to understand the beauty of data, yeah, right, democratizing, in some respects, data, and then getting everyone pumped to what we were trying to achieve and why it was, why it meant something, yeah, and so we had, you know, everything tied back, in some respects, to how much CO two was going to be abated, like our goal was to clean the planet up. And it's so people came in with their own personal values, and the personal values connected with the organizational values and objectives. And it was like one of the very few companies I've worked at where we've got people who skip to work because they know they're doing their own you know, it's them like that. Their values and the business values are just so aligned, yeah, that there's no divide from it. So So one of them was get people to do measures. We had to change the way that we designed product roadmaps, how we did showcases, how we did product roadmap sort of kickoffs. And so we themed everything onto the onto the OKRs. So we said, this is what the we're going to do for the next quarter. You know, it's working against these OKRs, and we believe that these OKRs, we're trying to hit this, this goal, this KR here, and we believe we are going to change this measure here, which will increase if it will reach this kr. And these are the actions that we're going to take. So it's changing their mindset from, you know, I think that if we do this, we will get this result. It's moving them to we're seeking to achieve this, measured by this. These are the experiments, and these are the ways that we're going to work towards doing it. And we'll go month by month, and then, if it doesn't, then we'll pivot, perish. So we got that sort of experimental mode into people. So that was another thing that that changed. So pretty much the whole, like, the whole way of working in the team changed, and they pretty much started to get annoyed with me. Like, they'd say, we're going to do this. And I go, why? Tell me why? Like, what are you going to do with it? Like, so you're going to do something, and at the end of it, what do I get? What more can I eat? Or what can I feel or touch, or what will I see as a result of your effort and like? So people can't even talk to sully now without him asking why? This guy's just the most annoying.

Chris Davies: 18:20

It's a good question to ask. It's just, why?

John Sullivan: 18:23

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? So in any like when I left two and a half years later, I was really quite taken aback that the product guys, they built visual roadmaps so visual dashboards that showed the progress towards the metrics, the chaos that they were trying to reach with all the effort that they were, you know, the initiatives they're doing in the product, yeah. So they've moved from, I don't understand OKRs and measurements and everything else, to now. Here's the starting measurement. Here's where we currently are. Here's our trajectory towards it like it was, yeah, awesome, yeah,

Chris Davies: 19:02

yeah, amazing, yeah. And I think it's, yeah, you can't put enough value on being data driven, because then that gives you such tangible reasons why you're doing something. Yeah.

John Sullivan: 19:16

And every company's got data, the thing they don't have is access to it. So quite regularly, you have to go through groups to get data, and then there's a time lag between the data that you want and need and how you can get it. So we built, with DiUS, actually, we built, like a very rudimentary data warehouse, and then I just became the custodian of that whole thing and started building dashboards and transforming data. And, you know, went from sitting at night, finishing work at sort of seven o'clock at night, going home, and, you know, something would be on TV, and I'd be sitting in there in data, writing Python scripts, changing code. Changing data everywhere, yeah. So I don't think I worked, you know, most weeks, about 8080, hour weeks, and most of it was, half of it would have been just writing data to get it in front of people, yeah, and say, here's some lead indicators, yeah. So you know what's going on. I just kept on pushing data in front of people, and they were going, well, that's really interesting. And then it just, it sort of took off.

Chris Davies: 20:23

Yeah, great, yeah, trying to democratize that task

John Sullivan: 20:27

like you just want data accessible in the form that people want to consume it, yeah, and that it was on it. So guy at was working at AWS at one of the Buy Now pay later companies. There's a

Chris Davies: 20:45

few of them, yeah,

John Sullivan: 20:48

one of them said one of the data guys there to sit and he said, Well, trying to basically make data available to anyone in any tool that they want. Not be not say, this is how you we will serve you data. It's like, what do you want it? And you want to use it in you want to consume in Excel. Okay, CSV file for it. You want it in snowflake. Here is in snowflake for it, you tell us, we'll put it in and I pretty much took that mantra. It's like, how do you want it? Yeah, if you don't give me anything, I'm going to give it to you in this form. But if you want it in CSV form to go into Excel, bang. Here you go. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to give you all the data the finance team ran off spreadsheets that basically I'd run for them. They did the whole finance for charge Fox off of the data that I created. Wow,

Chris Davies: 21:36

yeah, such a fascinating insight, and I think I probably know the answer to this, would you rather question? But let's see. So would you rather align your entire organization with one perfect set of OKRs, but the doc is in Comic Sans forever, or use beautifully designed slides, but no one ever reads them.

John Sullivan: 21:58

Yeah? The former. Yeah. I just Yeah, someone could ask me for data in PowerPoint. I probably wouldn't have produced it. That was the one caveat. Yeah, no good. I'm

Chris Davies: 22:11

glad, I'm glad that was your response. So, yeah, moving on to more the personal side of things, and we talked about, yeah, what some of the members of your team really drove them to be part of an organization, organization like charge box, but yourself and certainly on the topic of transformation, you've said that most transformations are either personal or group based, yeah, what do you mean by that?

John Sullivan: 22:39

Well, the personal point is that organizations are people. They're not, you know, they've got a light at the front. They've normally got a name at the front door. Some don't. Again, I'm going to get picked on here, doesn't. But most, most companies have a light at the front, you know, right at the front. But there is just generally the way that people work together. So when you transform, you're transforming the things that people were going to do during the day, the conversations they're going to have, the things they're striving to achieve, who they're going to become, how they're going to operate. So that's the personal level of it. Is that whenever you transform, the exciting bit about it is, I think, is that people will evolve and grow in it, because they're going to do something different or and when you start transformations, I always believe, set your stall out with people say, this is what we're going to try and achieve, and this is the opportunity for you in this transformation. It's not all about, we're trying to make a squillion dollars. It's about you are going to grow. And if, at the end of that transformation, you've got all this extra skills, you should be able to go somewhere else with it. Yeah, and if it's but if it's not for you, we set out our stall, then let's help you get a job somewhere else. Yeah, do you know what I mean, where you can work the way that you want to work, but this is what we're going to do. So that's the one thing. And then, like I've seen, large organizations try to transform to agile in the end, there's always some level where it the transformation stops and the old way of working, you know, even if it's, you know, how do we distribute earnings to shareholders? At some point it flips, and the transform doesn't happen. So, like when you say group, there's some level it doesn't transform. Sure, there are basic ways organizations need to work for tax reporting and for other reporting. And so it's never the whole organization. There's always some, what I always used to call the back flip. So we work this way, I'm going to back flip what we're doing and represent it to you the way you want it represented. Yeah. And. I'm going to work the way that you want so you want, you know, if you do, if you're product led in the tech teams, then that's fine. But maybe they don't business case that way. Maybe they don't set up the finances for the operations of the tech teams and the product teams. You know, on an ongoing basis. They do it in a they do it annually. Yeah, sure. So you've got to say, what are you going to do for the year? Well, that's not product, yeah. You know, that's like going and in a massively, I think it transfer. Most companies transform, because the market they're in is transforming and changing. Then, you know, they, they have to, they change what they do to suit that bit, but at some point you have to operate with inside the boundaries of how the normal organization operates, so they become group, yeah, sure. Group can be quite big, yeah,

Chris Davies: 25:53

yeah. No, I can't say I've ever looked at it like that way, because I think, yeah, it's always seems to be some sweeping program of work that everyone gets along, brought along on the journey, and you have to have buy in from everyone, but it's interesting point where you say, well, not necessarily.

John Sullivan: 26:14

I don't think you do. There are so many I've had quite a few conversations with teams that said, like, we've tried to work using Agile. But, like, we don't see the point, yeah. Like, how does the legal team? How does the legal team work in a kanban model? Yeah, sure. Should they do that? How does the risk, risk management team of a large corporate? How do they work in Agile? How do the accounting teams work in Agile? There's bits they can use in it. Yeah. So should they really get swept up in the whole in the whole thing? Yeah?

Chris Davies: 26:49

Not, not, if, yeah, not, not really, no. And especially because a lot of these things take a lot of time, effort, investment, yeah, to go and make these things happen, you don't get instant speed.

John Sullivan: 27:01

So productivity dips, yeah, and then, I don't think people look at it that way. They quite say, we're going to do Agile. Productivity will go through the roof, no, no. Probably insights will go through the roof. So you're probably getting an idea of how fast you are actually working, but you're going to make it slower because you don't know what to do next. You're learning what to do next. It's going to and agile never, for me, those sort of transformations and were never they were always touted as it's going to be, you know, make us better and faster. I've never seen cheaper. I've never seen an Agile transformation make things cheaper. Yeah, you know, how do the scrum master? Masters and the Agile coaches change the wage bill dramatically? Wasteful goes through the roof. You've got four coaches, yeah,

Chris Davies: 27:54

yeah, no, fascinating. And I think, yeah, that's something I wanted to also ask about, is whether that was something that you saw early in your kind of journey from, you know, going from, you know, engineering to leadership, and whether there was anything else that you kind of maybe thought in the early days which then changed, so maybe something that you thought was good in software engineering and it should be applied in the realm of business where kind of took a step back and actually, no, that doesn't work in this,

John Sullivan: 28:32

I can tell you, the data was the one thing that I think I felt should, should be used everywhere. Yeah, like, yeah. Yeah, that was one thing that you can see sweepingly makes, you know, goes everywhere, because it at least gives you an idea to prioritize. Everyone's overworked, yeah, everyone's got 101 things to do, and a means to be able to simply prioritize. And data gives you that option. That's one thing, yep, but yeah, I don't think the Agile like the full transformation to agile, or product led and stuff should go right across a whole organization. That was one thing. I just noticed that that reasonably quickly, because it was just, you could transform, you could change the way you did business casing, and you could change it. But really, was there any real benefit? Yeah, I just didn't see at times. Just didn't see the benefit some of those things. I went just, it's our concepts, our ideas. Yeah, the other thing, the other thing, basic levels of coding capability in a lot more parts of the business was

Chris Davies: 29:36

useful. Yeah, right, okay,

John Sullivan: 29:39

yeah. So even, like in the accounting side generally, so you could actually take data and run formulas and stuff like that, just basic coding stuff was actually useful. Yeah, not 100%

Chris Davies: 29:50

and Yeah, sort of looking more transformation as a tech executive. Yeah, in those roles, say MYOB. CEO and then at charge Fox as CEO, what shifts when you're accountable for both the vision and the execution?

John Sullivan: 30:13

I'll tell you one thing that shifts the color of your hair, because now you're making every decision, yeah, it's a pretty the more responsibility you take on, the more lonely it becomes. So excuse me, that that's one thing. Yes. Like, I don't think I was this gray before I took on the role at CEO of charge Fox. But the the, well, I don't know if it shifts or not, but I got a better understanding of the need to change the style of leadership, okay, regularly, yeah, right. As as my role changed, because there's times if you think of a leadership style was on a on a line and two ends on it, like one would be like the true leadership bit about empower your teams. Don't ever tell them what to do, just inspire them to do great things one end and Order, order, autocracy or order autocratic leadership stuff? Maybe, I don't know, maybe not again, someone on the podcast, yeah, that's what's that word? But yeah, autocratic leadership on the other side, like, there's times where you've got to shift and you've got to be so you've got to decide when's the right time to be one over the other. Like you can give full autonomy to a team if it is capable and willing to take on ownership of making decisions. And there are times when you're trying to move fast and change things. Where you've got to be very dictatorial, I try desperately hard not like to be very personal. Like to keep a personal way of doing things. Think of the person. It's like people first all of it, yeah, but there are times where you've got to change. And I've learned that the different sort of, the more senior the roles I get, that I've got to, I've got to just decide on my style for the problem and the thing in front of me. That's one thing, and then the other one would be like, walk the walk. Like, yeah, sure, it's almost working with teams. Is not like, is in no way shape or form. Like training a dog, however, there's an element of it that's similar. Like, you can teach a dog, you know, 100 times, to sit at a road and then walk on the command, and it will do that, but the first time you just let it walk across the road, it's never gonna you know it, you're back to the 100 times before you get that result again. Yeah, sure. And with teams like you have to walk the walk. You have to, if it is going to be data LED. You can't go to the team and say, just do this you have, because they'll just go, Yeah, you know, that's just a PowerPoint somewhere, yeah, get around the corner. There's a, there's a piece of paper. They're going be led by data. Yeah, that's like the company vision, yeah. So you have to, you really have to walk the walk. Yeah,

Chris Davies: 33:39

sure. And is that one of the big things of just ensuring buzzwords, let's say, are, you know, actually meaningful? So you can say, Oh yeah, we're we're data led, or we're people first,

John Sullivan: 33:53

I try not to use any of those things, yeah, okay. I just it's actions and it's conversations and it's things that you say, Yeah, but you'd probably never find me going, it's got to be data led, or it's all about the people. Yeah, you'd never hear that from me, but you'd see the decisions I make. People would go, Yeah, I can. He's got my back, yeah, yeah, for sure. And okay, he's, he's making that decision and he's explaining the result of it that he's seeking by doing the things that he's doing. Ah, he's data LED. Yeah, so I would never use buzzwords. I would always try and, you know, action, work in a way that basically could be interpreted by whatever term people wanted to use for is it data LED? Is it data, you know, insights, or what is it? Yeah, let someone else choose those buzzwords. Yeah. And

Chris Davies: 34:45

I think something that you mentioned earlier as well, and in a previous podcast with Charis from freely, she talks about having intent, like

Unknown: 34:59

Set your stall out. This is what we're going to do. And having intent around, yeah, if we were going to live and breathe, being data focused, or people first, this is how we're going to go about it, yeah, like it's to a point probably where people were going, what, Sully doing, and there was data on my screen, yeah, there was always data on my screen, yeah. It's like, Sully's like, the data guy, yeah, it's like, just, yeah. Have intent about it

John Sullivan: 35:29

it be through the actions. Inspire through actions. Don't inspire through words and PowerPoints, yeah,

Chris Davies: 35:39

yeah, and any kind of specific examples where that's, you know, a big win, or even a failure, where you've tried to kind of, yeah, implement something like that.

John Sullivan: 35:55

Most of the failures are being able to being unable to influence people or change things. A lot of the failures I felt in the last couple of roles, or last few roles have really been about the level everyone reports to someone. So you think when you get into a CEO role, that you're the most important person, but you're not. You report to someone, you report to someone, you report to a board, or you report to a Group CEO, or if you don't, you report to a bank, you know, and you report somewhere. Yeah, some but the biggest failures I've had is probably taking inspiring people on the other side of the team I'm leading, to the same extent that I have been able to do that with the teams that I've led? Yeah, sure. That's and, and that's and how that results normally is that the direction that was we're moving in, the people outside of the company asked for that to change because they can't see the value, or they form an opinion without basically seeking out clarity from with inside the team. So there's failures in that from me, successes that, if I just took say, Judge Fox, the greatest thing I think we got is that the growth that we got in the first two years, like it was astronomical. We were in two years. I know the market was growing, but we were 200 300% bigger in the first year than when, when we first started. And organizations that were our competitors in there. They they failed them. And, like, close up, yeah, wow. So, yes, it was a growing market. But like, we managed to grow. We managed to describe our purpose, inspire people go through a strategy of integrating everywhere. And, you know, wedging ourselves in as a platform business, yeah, and so, and taking the description of become a software business, which is what we're asked to do, to explaining it, no, no, we're a platform business like Uber. Think of Uber. Basically, they don't own the cars. They basically facilitate the transportation on stuff they don't own, of people, and then they build other businesses around the side, like it's not a person that's being transported now it's, it's a food, yeah, and so we took, I got the same model into charge boxes, like we're there facilitating a charging session. And then we have other ancillary, or accelerating businesses on the outside of it, like we will incentivize the purchases of electric electrical vehicles by saying you can get x amount of free charging when you buy this this vehicle. Yeah. And then so we had these accelerants on there that grew charging, grew revenue. But it all worked off of that one transaction on the business, which was, you know, someone wants to charge, or something wants to charge, and someone has the capability and wants to advertise their availability to charge, yeah? And that, to me, that was a success. To try and take an idea that was no more than, you know, back of a fag packet, yeah? You know, become a software business, yeah? It's like the gnome sketch out of South Park. Phase one, steel underpants. What's phase two? Don't know, but phase three, profit, yeah, there's a sketch in. It's like steel underpants. I don't know about how we're getting with what we're gonna do with them, but we're gonna make profit, yeah, and the names were clever we know about businesses, yeah, yeah. So, so that was a success to me. Yeah, 100%

Chris Davies: 39:52

and I think that perfectly illustrates tech strategy is business strategy, yes. 100 to find that we are a software business. How do we go about that? Okay, well, here's a model of someone else who to someone an outsider. It might not seem like a tech business Uber, but it is. It's that platform that facilitates everything. But then, well, yeah, we are a business. So how do we make money, drive revenue scale, grow. Ah, well, these accelerators, and that feeds into all the hard work we've done from the tech side of things. Yeah, we

John Sullivan: 40:29

also had this. I built a I explained the model, like on a platform business, and then I had a flywheel.

Chris Davies: 40:36

Love a flywheel.

John Sullivan: 40:38

My days at AWS like but we, I built a flywheel to explain our business, and that got used in the clubs and in other places to explain us. And it was like, you know, get more users, more users. So, yeah, get more users. They will charge more then more charging activity will mean that people with charges will want to be on the platform where there is more charging. Yeah, right. And it's kind of like it just keeps moving. And then the more charging that's in there means people looking to charge will go to the platform that has more charging, of course, and so it just keeps going round. And then we built these other accelerants on the outside of it, which was, okay, let's every new vehicle get it free charging. So get people understanding how to charge in on public charging infrastructure. Yeah. Let's go to businesses and electrify fleet businesses. Another accelerant, yeah, and so we, like, I drew it up, and then I gave it to the UX guys, and they made it absolutely beautiful. But yeah, we built flywheels as well to do the same thing. Well, yeah, I have to

Chris Davies: 41:47

say on a victim is the right word of the flywheel. But I remember when I needed to hire a car, and I saw that you get free charging with CHARGE Fox. Well, there we go. That's the one. Then, because I don't, then I don't have to pay for fuel, or I don't have to worry about, you know, returning it full, returning it full, or anything like that. Is there a charge charger nearby? Yep. Is there? Not that made the decision for me. So that's, yeah, a really good example of acceleration, a

John Sullivan: 42:18

six car rental. That's it. That's the one. Yeah, it was awesome. The number of times I returned a sixth vehicle back with like, 1% on it. Have you got any charge? Sorry, got a plane to catch? Yeah,

Chris Davies: 42:34

awesome. So I think we've got one more. Would you rather question? And then we'll move on to our final piece of the pod. So would you rather inherit a tech team that delivers fast but names all of their repositories after 90 sitcoms, maybe after the South Park reference? We might know the answer to that one or one with flawless documentation, but they reply to every message with per my last email, former

John Sullivan: 43:03

it's not such a bad one. I just Yeah, codes, codes documented by itself, yes, yeah. And if it really needs reams and reams of documentation to understand it, then it needs to be rewritten. Yeah.

Chris Davies: 43:17

Good point. Yeah. So yeah, the final couple of questions for today is, what's one? Mind shift, mindset shift. You'd love to see more leaders adopt tech or otherwise.

John Sullivan: 43:36

So it think of the outcome that you're seeking before you decide the actions that you want to undertake. So the number of times I've been in organizations where they go, lots of this exact case, we're going to transform the way we work, or we're going to merge these teams together, and then we're going to go and find synergies. Yeah, right. Really, like, it's like it so that just closes all the conversation off. Okay, where are what synergies are you after? Like, when you've got synergies, what are you going to do? Like, what you can have more of, what can you eat more of? What can you you know, what weight are you going to lose? What you going what's going to happen here? So to mind, it's always changed the way you think and live in. It's quite a nervous state, I think, to keep asking yourself, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? And then I'm doing it because of this. But why am I doing why is that important? Why is that important? And just sit in that really nervous, I think, nervous state for a lot longer than you would normally sit in it. Yeah, because people are very comfortable in motion. They're not very comfortable sitting down and considering what they're about to undertake, yeah. And so I would ask leaders to sit down and consider the outcomes and why they're doing things and then decide what it is they're going to do, maybe think about the measures, and then think about the things you're going to do that will prove that will meet those measures that will get you that outcome. Yeah. So that's what I'd ask people. Yeah. I'd love to see more of that. Yeah. And there aren't many, like I said, most people, again, turn most, lots of people were just, don't, they think about something, can they feel comfortable with the concept of what they're going to do, and they're happy with that, and so they start working on and you go, no, no. Think more. Yeah, think think about it more. So you can describe it without it's kind of, you know, it's the vibe, it's, it's like Mambo, it's, it's, yes, a vibe, yeah? And

Chris Davies: 46:07

I think that's a something that has come across throughout today. I think looking back, talking points have been, yeah, obviously tech strategy, it's business strategy, okay, ours, but also asking questions around constraint, when it comes to OKRs, when it comes to transformation, it's just as much about personal growth as it is business growth. Obviously, many lessons in leadership along the way. But also you've asked the question, why a lot, and perhaps more significantly, why is it important that we're doing this? And I think that's kind of resonated throughout.

John Sullivan: 46:45

Yeah, it's get the why gets me in trouble, upwards quite John, you need to do this. Why people like people, would see that it's a question, that you're questioning their leadership and their authority. And I say, now I'm actually just trying to discover how best to do what it is you need me to do, yeah, and because it's not clear, and you can't actually say it's because, like, it's just not clear and apparent, what the hell you actually want me to do? You just want me to take this action? Yeah? But tell me, I'm a smart person, I could probably do it really well if I actually knew what you're trying to achieve? Yeah, yeah, awesome.

Chris Davies: 47:23

Well, yeah, I think that's pretty much it for today. If people want to kind of follow your work or learn more from your experience, where can they find you or get in touch? Probably

John Sullivan: 47:37

have a crack on LinkedIn. Yeah, I was on Twitter for a while, but then when it went to x, well, that jumped off. And I never really after COVID, sort of found the social platform to to converse on. So a lot of it, what I do is I go through these space of doing stuff on

Chris Davies: 47:57

on LinkedIn, writing articles and stuff on LinkedIn. Yeah, I've read a couple recently. Yeah, it's probably, probably the best place. Yeah, cool. Well, yeah, if this conversation has made you rethink about how tech and business teams work together, please subscribe to the tech trajectory podcast, because I'm sure we'll have more along the same lines, but we'll be back with more stories soon from people shaping what's next, but for today, Sully, thanks very much for joining me. Pleasure. You.