Jonny Crowe

WORK HISTORY

SKILLS

ABOUT JONNY CROWE

I’m often asked how I measure success in leadership. Of course, you can measure inputs (time / money) and outputs (what was delivered). but I prefer to focus on outcomes (what changed). The best outcomes aren’t always the ones you might predict or expect, but that doesn’t make them any less transformative. Let me give you an example. I was six months into the transformation of a long-established business with a proud - but constraining - culture. At a feedback session, a senior manager offered up this gem:“There are two good things you’ve brought, Jonny. Slack and coffee”. Slack and coffee. Now you might think that sounds like damning with faint praise. It hardly smacks of the transformation the PE owners had tasked me with delivering.But small changes can have big outcomes. Pretty much from day one, I moved the company away from a ‘reply-all’ email culture to small, fast-moving, multidisciplinary groups with high trust and constant communication, mostly over Slack. These task-oriented groups would form and reform to solve problems and it was working. I’d also noticed that while the C-Suite had a shiny Italian espresso machine, everyone else had to queue up around one of those awful powdered drink dispensers. It created a visible divide within the company… not to mention a lot of extra revenue for the (actually not all that) local coffee shop. So I had high-quality coffee machines installed on every floor, encouraging people to meet up around them. They were a hit. Small changes but the outcomes were big. The team rediscovered a passion for delivery, they felt more valued, they congregated and talked more, challenged each other daily and took ownership of what had to be done. Our goals were clear and we owned the route ahead. Of course there was a lot more to it than Slack and coffee, but I’ll take that as a win. If you want to talk outcomes, DM me here.