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WB-40
Hosted by Matt Ballantine & Chris Weston · EN
Conversations on how technology is changing how we work with guests most weeks helping us to navigate.
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(350) Accessible
3w ago01:01:02Tap to summarizeEver organised an event and just assumed “accessible” meant a ramp at the front door? This week on WB40, Michelle O’Connor — co-founder of the Access Given conference — explains why that’s nowhere near enough, and what actually changes when you design an event around access needs from the start rather than bolting them on afterwards. Lighting, seating width, catering layout, sensory rooms, joining instructions that don’t leave people dreading the unknown — the detail is granular, and most of it costs nothing to fix once someone tells you it’s a problem. With neurodivergence estimated at over half the tech workforce and disclosure rates nowhere close, this is a conversation about who gets left out of rooms, meetings, and conferences without anyone quite noticing. Well worth a listen if you’ve ever run an event, chaired a meeting, or designed a process for “everyone.” Find out more about Access Given on their website, their LinkedIn page, and their YouTube channel. Full Transcript of the show, automatically generated by Descript: Lisa: Welcome to episode 350 of the WB 40 Podcast with me, Lisa Riemers, Matt Ballantine, and Michelle O’Connor. Matt: 350 feels like it should be like significant, but as far as I can work out, it’s only significant in the way. It’s half a 700, but it’s still quite a, a landmark number. So welcome to the 350th episode of WB 40. It’s a lot better than it used to be, although slightly less frequent and certainly much less predictable, which I think is a good thing. We haven’t had a show for over a month because we had actually a number lined up, but because of various things, including a detached retina and , like ridiculous heats like it’s the planet Mercury in London and other things. We haven’t been able to do any shows for about a month. But we’re back. And then we’re gonna take a long break for the summer ’cause that’s how we roll on WB 40. Lisa, pleasure to be with you again. How has your week been? Lisa: Nice to see you. It feels like it’s been a long time. And I was trying to think, you know, the, I always find with these things it’s like, what did I do last week? I’m not like you where I write a week note that says all of the things that I’ve done this week and, and publish it to people. And whilst I might work out loud on a project and do that internally, it’s not something I ever got into the habit of actually posting out to the internet. But, so over the last week or so, I, I did a talk at a local school talking to some small groups of year tens about my wibbly wobbly career, which was fun. Actually ended up being, I think there were four of us in the room who all did different aspects of communications. And it was quite interesting talking to the teacher that had brought us in. ’cause one of the people was like, shouldn’t we all be a bit more different? It’s like, but yeah, the thing is, it’s nice to have jobs that people won’t have heard of. And actually, given the nature of the background of where you got there, people were, they’re really achievable. And it’s like, oh, I love that. And then I thought to myself, maybe I should have done something that needed six years and a, a a a year in, uh, doing some kind of practical work. But, you know, Matt: can I say, Lisa, can I say this with all, you know, the with love and intent, but the idea of you concentrating on something for six years plus a year? Sorry. Lisa: Well, you say that, you know, it’s, it’s nearly nine years since I’ve been freelance, which is the longest I’ve done anything. I know, Matt: but that’s not like doing the same thing every day, is it? Lisa: It’s not. I do like the fact that it is doing different things and I don’t wanna jinx it. But one of the other things I’ve done this week actually on that matter is had a conversation with an organisation about doing an interim role and actually sort of going back in house, but on an interim basis, which would be a bit different. Matt: Interesting. Lisa: It sounds like it might be quite a challenging environment and yet it’s also sounds like a really interesting opportunity. So I’ve got another chat about that tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to finding out a bit more. I’ve also been, we’re back on the SharePoint bandwagon, not bandwagon, but we’re back doing SharePoint work. Matt: How, Lisa: just when I think of Escape, SharePoint comes back and I mean, I’m, I’m grateful for the work in some ways and in other ways it feels like a never ending treadmill of share pointing. So that’s fun. And yeah, that’s, I feel like there was something else. Oh, yes. I went to a really interesting session on accessibility, but specifically around epilepsy, uh, at the HSBC building in Canary Wharf last Monday. And there’s a lovely bit of research looking at how organisations can be more epilepsy friendly in their communications and in how their offices are set up. And it was a really interesting panel discussion and there was a lovely case study of somebody who, found out that she had epilepsy as a teenager and she was actually there on stage being an advocate, and she’s still only 19 or 20. And she was remarkably articulate and it was a really interesting conversation. And I think it’s something that I didn’t know. I, I don’t know all the, I didn’t know as much of the detail about it, but there was lot, there’s lots more to unpack and I need to do a bit more reading of that report. But yeah. How about you, Matt? What have you been up to? Matt: Well, it’s been a while since I’ve been on the show, so I have published a book since I was last on, so I’ve kind of got this split identity at the moment, which by day I continued to do my work as an engagement manager. Managing engagements. We’ve got some interesting things going on. Obviously today as we’re recording this on the 20th of July, if you have, uh, teams who are working in the public sector, there’s a certain sense of all bets are off. Who’s gonna be the new boss as they, uh, announce new members of the cabinet, like it’s some sort of football squad. So that’s, that’s interesting. We had a big away event, uh, last week where, uh, some of us went up to a hotel just outside Wakefield with a, a building with a moat that was quite entertaining. And uh, so that’s the sort of day job stuff continues chugging away. And then conversations about keynote speeches and how we’re going to try to be able to get copies of the book into people with influences hands, which is an experiment that Nick and I are, are running at the moment. And then there’s occasionally these two worlds crossover. So I’ve got one public sector client who have asked if I can run a, an event around randomness and serendipity and luck and what that means for thinking about ai for about a hundred of their digital leaders in September, which would be quite good fun, I think. So I’ve been embarking on that as well, uh, alongside all of that. Uh, school finished on Friday, so I’ve got two teenagers now loafing around the house rather than just one, ’cause the other one finished GCSEs and June has been doing absolutely nothing since. But from lounging around, it’s mostly jealousy. And uh, at the weekend we went up to Herefordshire and I think it’s Staffordshire, but uh, to Ludlow. And we went to, it’s the second year we’ve done it. They have a concert in the, in the Keep of Ludlow Castle. And so we got to see, uh, Blancmange who were really, they only had one song, let’s be frank. You had, uh, mark Mond, uh, what a diva, amazing performance. And then the headline out with the Human League. And, um, whilst Phil Oakey does look a little bit like that bad character from that film ...
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(349) Freelancing
Jun 2000:46:43Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Julia and Nick meet Matthew Knight to discuss freelancing, community-building and the shifting economics of self-employed work. Matthew, self-employed since the age of 15, runs several communities supporting freelancers, with particular focus on mental health, strategy professionals and those new to self-employment. The conversation explores how the freelance market has evolved from trust-based networks through commoditised digital platforms and back towards private, trust-based pools, raising questions about inclusion and access along the way. The discussion turns to pricing and value, touching on research into how women price their work, the limitations of day-rate models, and the case for value-based pricing as alternatives to charging for time. Matthew makes the case that self-employment requires deliberately designing your work rather than following generic guidance, while acknowledging that the freedom to say no to work is a privilege not available to everyone. The episode also covers what makes communities sustainable versus audiences, and the leadership and culture-setting required to hold a community together past its first eighteen months. Show transcript generated by Squadcast: Julia: Welcome to episode 349 of the WB 40 Podcast with me, Julia Bellis, Nick Drage, and our guest this week, Matthew Knight. So Nick, why don’t you kick off by telling us what you’ve been up to in the last week. Nick: Right, as should be mentioned in the show notes and something I’ll only be discussing briefly the main event from my last week has been attending my father’s funeral with, with all the, all the, all the connotations of that. Definitely not the subject of this podcast, but gives me an excuse to say to remind people out there considering the amount of administration that’s now into my life as beneficiary and executor of the will make a will sort out power of attorney. Make if you are while you’re making a will, make sure there’s an easily accessible list of all your service providers and their contact details and their names. Like who does the electricity, who does the gas, who provide to the internet, all that kind of thing makes such a difference and is something that thankfully my father did. That is the end of like the public service announcement for the podcast, but that’s, it’s really made me realise that and it’s a grim subject that people put off. So hopefully listen to this. People will make a note. Yes, I will get round to doing that at some point. But that’s, that’s taken up a lot of my previous week and a lot of my, for want of a better phrase, a lot of my brain space, but moving on to hopefully happier things or this could be like a horrible coincidence. How about you, Julia? What have you been doing the previous week? Julia: Well, well, but before we talk about me, I was just gonna say, it sounds like a tough lesson to learn that you’ve got to deal with all of this admin when you are reeling from dealing with death as well. So thank you very much for sharing that. Nick: Thank you. Julia: I have, I have had a happier week, actually. It was my company conference from Monday to Wednesday. And when I joined my company, which is coming up to 10 years ago, the annual conference was a sort of large room in a classy pub with a guest speaker and some lightning talks, and now it is a three day extravaganza in county hall. And we had a scavenger hunt, which was the first time ever, which was absolutely brilliant. I haven’t done a scavenger hunt since I was about 25, and I remember really enjoying that one. And the energy levels after the first day, which was quite exhausting, were fairly low. And I, I’d say we all sort of left the venue in our teens. Most people were kind of looking forward to getting to the pub and within 20 minutes we’d all perked up massively and got incredibly competitive and it was really good fun. And we had a time limit. We had to get to the pub by seven 30 and it was addictive. You just wanted to tick off more challenges. And my team walked into the pub, which was in a maiden lane at 7 28 and the whole ops team was sitting outside the front of the pub and cheered as we came in and totally recommend it. Brilliant. Nick: that’s wonderful. As regulators will know, I’m an advocate for games in business context especially something like that. So the second public service announcement of this episode, I think is just play more games with your work colleagues. Well, and what a, that’s great. Thank you for sharing that. Julia: Do you know, that is such a brilliant segue because I think Matthew is brilliant at playing games. But before we talk about that, tell us what you’ve been up to in the last week. Matthew: You know what? I had to actually look at my calendar because my, my memory these days is shot. So I struggle to remember what I have for breakfast this, this morning. But last week was quite an IRL week. I had a number of coffees and chats with some members of a community, which I run, which was great. And a couple of face-to-face meetings with some potential clients and also reading a whole load of new laws, which are passing through the House of Lords at the moment, which is has seemed to have become a recent nerdy, I’m not gonna say passion, interest of mine. Julia: You know, I think this kicks in sometime in the middle of your fourth decade. I’m, I’m very what did I find? The, the house of the people where it shares that have been discussed in Parliament, how it was voted on in Parliament, and then how it was voted on, on this website. And I’ll have to, and it is very interesting actually, to see does Parliament really represent the people, or at least the people who self-select and go onto this website, the nerdy people in their forties who are very interested in this stuff. Matthew: It is interesting. I think we know relatively little, unless you work in that sort of space, how laws come to pass, how arduous and, and lengthy the process is, and who is ultimately involved in informing how they are written, what they include, what they exclude, who doesn’t get a say and how sometimes brilliant work hidden people in hidden departments and, and rooms in Westminster and otherwise how brilliant and hardworking they are. And it’s only at the last minute that actually some of that work gets thrown out or ripped up and, and how frustrating it must be for many people work in that, that part of things, but I’m finding it. Yeah, I’m I’m very honoured that you said my mid forties. I’m definitely approaching my late forties, but yeah, it has become a recent nerdy interest. Julia: So I was very interested, Matthew, when you mentioned meeting members of your communities for coffee frequent host of this podcast, Matt Ballantine, is known for his coffee chats and meeting people for coffee. And I just wondered if you could tell us a bit more about that and how that came to be a feature your community. Matthew: Which part? Coffee community meeting, there’s, there’s lots of things there. I, I run a number of community projects supporting fellow freelancers. I’ve been self-employed since I was 15, which is two or three years now. and for the last 10 years or so, I’ve run a number of projects supporting fellow freelancers. A large one focuses on the mental health of the self-employed, so our unique experiences, the gaps and challenges in support that we face and the influences on our wellbeing. I run another one, which is primarily for strategy individ individuals, so people who work in marketing, brand and innovation and digital. Another space purely for the self-employed or on a another community for, for those who are just starting out as freelancing. And the majority of these spaces are digital mostly because it’s a lot easier to have conversations with people who are all over the world, you know, distributed across the country if you’re in a Slack channel on a, on a kind of WhatsApp group. But I have made myself a, a commitment this year to get out of the house more often. And. Julia: about mental health. I think that’s really important, isn’t it? Matthew: It’s crucial, absolutely crucial. Not just the vitamin D but actually seeing other people as well. And I’ve been actively trying to see at least one person from our various communities a week, and it’s been wonderful. <p class="wp-block-paragra...
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(348) Procurement
May 2100:54:15Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Nick and Julia meet Phil Clark to discuss the surprisingly complex world of technology procurement, and why it’s a profession almost nobody plans to enter but many find genuinely engaging once they do. Phil walks through procurement’s longstanding branding problem and CIPS’s efforts to fix it, including the QCD (Quality, Cost, Delivery) triangle game his branch developed for school careers fairs, complete with chocolate-coin incentives. Beyond pitching the career to twelve-year-olds, the discussion gets into the realities behind recent headlines: the scramble to buy 7,000 laptops in the first week of COVID, the Suez Canal blockage as a real-world stress test, and why “cheapest wins” is the wrong mental model for anything more sophisticated than paperclips. Procurement, Phil argues, is the mirror image of sales — the same skillset facing the opposite direction — but with arguably greater bottom-line impact. The richer territory is forward-looking. Phil explores how procurement teams are starting to grapple with AI contracts: what happens when an AI bot replaces a thousand jobs, and how you contract for the ethics of training data. He looks at Y2Q and the need to bake quantum-safe expectations into multi-year deals, and reflects on the catch-22 of preventive work — good procurement means bad things don’t happen, which makes the value invisible. The throughline is that procurement is genuinely strategic work for people who enjoy complexity, relationships, and thinking several moves ahead. Show transcript auto-generated by Descript Nick: Hello and welcome to episode 348 of the WB 40 Podcast with me, your host, Nick Drage, host Julia Bellis, and our of guest, Phil Clark. So first of all, Julia, what have you been doing over the last week? Julia: Do you know? I always know you’re going to ask me that question and then I struggle to think of interesting things that I’ve been doing. But actually I have had an interesting week. I went up to Durham for work to run a few workshops and my main job actually was doing the icebreaker. historically I’ve been rubbish at icebreakers, but I’m getting a bit braver now and I’m taking risks and I’m doing silly things. And I got the team to do a one word each story, so give them a problem to solve. Everybody says a word. Let’s see what happens. And the best one was, the problem I posed was how might we make more friends? And they came up with on the spot, should dribble less, which I thought, nailed it. You got the brief there, absolutely sorted. And then I came back from Durham and promptly caught a terrible cold. So you can probably hear me being a bit huskier and croaker than usual. Nick: Extra as SMR for our listeners. Julia: There we go. What about you, Nick? What have you been up to? Nick: First of all, impressed at taking on icebreakers everybody’s nervous and some icebreakers can be just so cringeworthy, it can set a bad tone for an entire workshop. But doing something like that and also expecting people to be like, who show made slightly, whose line is it anyway, kind of level of improvisation, but if everybody’s doing it that just sounds really fun and a way to get everybody to get over themselves and talk to each other. For me, I, yeah. I also, yeah, know this question’s coming, written things down. The honest answer is cutting down some unruly bushes in my garden, small garden, which makes me realise I want to live in a forest and just how to make that happen. Just, yeah. Julia: Do you know, in my experience, every woman hits mid forties and wants to live in a forest so you can join all the women who’ve had that Nick: It’s, I like I’m just ignoring a guest and trying not to derail the conversation, but there’s something to that idea. Now you’ve really got me thinking about that. I shall, I should just put star next to my notes and we’ll see if we can do a separate episode on that. We’ll. Phil: keen to explore this. Want to live in a forest thing though, ’cause that, that, so you enjoyed cutting down the bushes, is what you’re saying? Nick: Not really, but they weren’t one of the trees, wasn’t that health one of the trees or bush or whatever. I don’t understand biology at all. I just enjoy being around it. Is, was a bit dead. Like you could literally pull the tree apart. I mean by tree, something that’s three, four metres high at most. But because it’s nature and it doesn’t obey like the borders of the property or fences, they had to come down. Otherwise it was, I need to remember every couple of weeks to stop that blocking. For example, one of my neighbours, it blocks the sun, which isn’t fair with summer coming up. So I didn’t really enjoy taking ’em down what it needed to do. But I like that idea of being in nature partly for the choir, partly just ’cause the way nature works is really interesting. And so seeing it firsthand can is really interesting. If it’s your own, then you can study it and play with it. Like cutting these bushes back before I was really interested in how they fought back and which, what grew back where, all that kind of thing. So that’s one thing I’ve done. Also moved from one ISP to another, like a good or bad habit. I’ve been self-hosting some online services, some at home for, geez, 25 years and just doing that and the way the internet has developed is something I just loads of thoughts off that. And that’s something else I’ve been doing. And also, as we discussed before we started recording I should be running a business. Lots of half thought conversations about that, including I might become a part-time Viking sage, which is both really interesting suits, my beard. But also if you look up Viking Sages and I researched it for two minutes, they usually end up beheaded according to the mythology and the history. So I’m, I’m not, I’m considering the position at the moment. So that’s what I’ve been doing over the last week. Julia: Fighting and poetry are the strengths of the Vikings, so if you’re up for those things, I think you should go Nick: Oh no. Horribly. I’m up for, I’m up for instructing how other people should fight and being unimpressed by poetry mostly, if I’m absolutely honest. So it seems that profession’s looking less and less likely by the minute Julia: I think we should ask our guest what he’s been up to this week. Nick: I think. I think we should, and I think, I don’t, we’ve either set the bar really high or really low. I’m not sure. Phil: Over the last week I’ve done a bit of work stuff. Boring, went and talked about that, but a friend of mine does ultra marathons and so I was crewing for my mate as he ran up Snowden with 2000 other people Nick: Oh, nice. Phil: which was horrendous ’cause the weather was awful and of people got quite cold and wet and yucky and it was all a bit dangerous, but, so yeah, that’s my thing. But it sounds great. My job was really driving him to the start line and sitting in a coffee shop for about 10 hours, eating cake and then picking him up at the end, which I’m perfectly happy with. And the Wales one wasn’t so good, but he does these quite frequently. So the next one in the summer is in the Pyrenees. And then in September we’re going to niece twice. So yeah get a friend who does ultra trail marathons. You don’t have to worry about cutting bushes back. Julia: are a good friend. Actually, I Phil: it’s not that hard, honestly. It’s great fun. Julia: I bet you he was delighted to see you in a warm, dry car Phil: Yes. Julia: end. Phil:</str...
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(347) Luck
Apr 2900:57:45Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Matt and Nick meet Chengwei Liu, professor of strategy and behavioural science at Imperial College, London, to discuss the role of luck in decision making — and why we routinely underestimate it. Chengwei traces his own serendipitous path from consulting in Singapore to a PhD at Cambridge, and explains why so much of what gets credited to skill in business is really survivorship bias dressed up after the fact. The conversation gets into the case for random selection: when shortlisted candidates or options are genuinely close, drawing lots produces outcomes equivalent to deliberation while avoiding the bias and politics that creep in when committees feel obliged to justify a winner. Switzerland has been allocating research grants this way for over a decade, and the UK’s British Academy is now following. The discussion also picks up on the cultural and psychological complications — how randomness reads as fate or destiny in some cultures, why women may be more likely to internalise an unlucky outcome as personal failure, and whether modern corporate life can ever sit comfortably with “we rolled a dice” as a legitimate answer. Plus, a look ahead to Chengwei’s forthcoming book, Smart Contrarians: How to Think Differently About Thinking Differently. Transcript automatically generated by Descript Matt: Hello and welcome to episode 347 of WB 40, the increasingly erratic podcast. With me, Matt Ballantine, Nick Drage, and Chengwei Liu. Matt: Welcome back. We have been away for a few weeks. There was the Easter break and, uh, the usual weird way that everything seems to cease for a while because of a couple of days of bank holiday. And, uh, we are back again. And, um, just before we started recording, uh, Nick. Described himself as being the robin to my Batman, which now means all I’ve got is mental images of Nick wearing tights, which probably I don’t need. Nick, how has your last week or so been. Nick: Well, I mean, I’m instantly regretting that version and not knowing more about is the DC comics background? Is it, isn’t it? And so on there, there must been, must be a much more, less sixties robin. Than what came to our minds apart. The main thing in the previous week is attending Connections online, which is a, an online war gaming conference based in essentially eastern US time zones and just a chance to catch up with a lot of thinking, a lot of people. And they used the online version to really get into. Non-standard ideas such as how to model soft factors in war games, and LLMs of course featured quite heavily. So that was really good the previous week. How about you? Matt: So what have I been doing here the last week? Had a wonderful lunch with a fascinating academic last Monday. That was good. Hi Chen Way. And then Tuesday was the first run of random, the workshop in what I think is as close to being its final form as ever. It will ever get into a final form. So I had, despite the tube strikes in London, I had a dozen people join me at the Equal Experts offices in London. And we had. A really interesting evening for me to be able to try out some of the ideas of how to get people to explore the concepts and the ideas that we’ve got within the book that is coming out now. And we have a we have now a publication date, which is, or launch date, the 17th of June, which is extremely exciting. So that was good. I’ve had some time to be able to, just make some decisions as well. I was running with my foot in two camps at work for a while ’cause we’ve had a bit of a restructure and just because of the nature of the clients that I’ve got, I ended up in sort of two parts of it. And so last week I also took the executive decision to be able to say, I’m going to focus on one, not try to continue to be in both. And that’s really reduced my stress levels immeasurably. There’s something about, being able to, it’s not so much about resolving ambiguity as actually when you’ve got too many things that you could be doing and needing to be able to make a decision about being able to focus on things that you can manage to do and how being able to turn off the fomo, the fear of missing out, and instead be able to properly commit to doing a manageable set of things. I think that, that’s been a good learning. And then apart from that, obviously I’ve been obsessively watching marine tracking apps to be able to see where the boat on which the book is sitting. And I had a sort of nervous few days because. It’s been in the middle of the Indian Ocean and as a result there’s been no tracking updates. But it came back onto the the system again about 14 hours ago. So it’s just heading past Madagascar now, and it’s been a fascinating insight into what it actually means for goods to be manufactured in China, and then the route that they take to be able to make it. To the UK and you, this is stuff that we don’t think about and it’s been really interesting to be able to just see how this stuff sits together. So that’s been my week, I think. So with that welcome to the show Chengwei what’s your week been like other than a wonderful lunch with this strange man that you met on last Monday? Chengwei: Hello Matt and Nick thank you for having me. Yeah, my week was definitely great highlighted by the excellent lunch with you. We talk all ideas, right? And really glad to learn that your workshop went well because I have the pleasure of having you as my guest speaker for my MBA students at the Imperial College in a couple of months as well. And the rest of week I managed to finish the revision of my new book. Smart contrarians, how to think differently about thinking differently. So I’m really look forward to the next stage. That is the marketing stage of this book. Matt: So whereabouts are you now? Is everything is with publisher? Has it been printed yet or is it still at the place where it’s. Chengwei: No, it’s the handling editor at hover Business Review Press, which is our publisher. They sign it off. The editor and his boss sign it off, so it’s. Good from their perspective. But then the first stage in the production is there will be a copy editor go through the entire book, and then of course suggest questions and also some fact checking, right? So if we have any say missed and then they’ll point it out and we just verify everything it’s in the right place before they put it in print. Matt: It is interesting, isn’t it, when you actually get into the process of producing a book. I, for many years wondered why it took so long from somebody saying, I finished writing it to it actually being available. And then when you actually go through the process, you start to realize why. ’cause there’s an awful lot of work involved in producing a book. Chengwei: Absolutely that the divisional labor there is very interesting. I begin to learn about this as well, and there’s a meeting event with the market department of the Harvard Publishing. That’s a huge group actually in the US And yeah, they have their expertise and we just have this interesting. Serious about deciding the book cover. So basically the first cover that designers sent were really not so happy with it, but our headly editor said, okay, there’s not a thing he can really intervene too much. And, but we, he gave us. Some ideas about how to say nicely that we hate it and we did it. And then and of course we provided our view about what the cover should, like what is the concept, and of course, the taboo to say anything specific about design idea, because that’s their domain, right? We don’t want to invade their domain with the academic author. Author of the book we control or have the ownership of the ideas and the concept being written. But our design cover is their domain. We can provide ideas, suggestion, but they decide. So fortunately the second cover idea they send where. Reasonably happy. So that is another major achievement in the past week. Now, I think about it because initially when we received and we thought about the previous discussion with the editor, then we really worry if that is something we need to accept. We are not really, be comfortable with that. <p class="wp-block-...
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(346) Mental Fitness
Mar 2400:46:11Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Matt and Lisa meet Dan Bowsher to discuss Good Enough Chats, his podcast focused on men’s mental health through lived experience. Dan founded Good Enough Chats following his own experience of burnout, anxiety and depression, which left him feeling profoundly isolated. His podcast deliberately features ordinary men — not celebrities or experts — sharing unedited, unscripted accounts of their mental health journeys, structured around the same five questions in every episode. Dan explains the thinking behind keeping the format lo-fi and the conversations raw: he wants guests to feel they’re having a conversation with a mate, not appearing on a podcast. You can find Dan’s podcast at goodenoughchats.com. Full transcript generated by Descript: Matt: Hello, and welcome to episode 346 of WB 40. I’ve got no idea the timing intervals this show works on anymore, but this week it’s with me, Matt Ballantine, Lisa Riemers, and Dan Bowsher Lisa: Welcome back listeners. Nice to see you again, Matt. Thank you. Um. I mean, I only saw you on Thursday, which was probably my busiest day this last week. Um, but it feels like a, it’s been a while since I’ve been on the podcast, even though it’s only a couple of episodes ago. As you’ve alluded to in the intro, it’s a little bit wibbly wobbly time. Why me at the moment and what even is time? So, um, yeah, it’s been quite an interesting week or so. I think I’ve certainly noticed a shift in myself since the sun’s come back out again, and we’ve actually had some warmth. I realized I’m probably a complicated houseplant because the sun was shining. I’m in a much best I feel. I don’t know, I just feel like everything’s lifted a bit this last week or two. I’ve been back rowing. I went back to, um, I went swimming in the Charlton Lido and it felt a little bit like I was weirdly on holiday it, rather than not being in a webinar that I’d signed up to just to watch. And yeah, I had a. Really social day on Thursday. So I saw Matt and Susie, who’s a friend of the podcast at Paul Armstrong’s the new normal at disgusting the early breakfast session that started at eight in Old Street. Then went to work out of my friend Christine at c Rockstar’s office. Then I went to the Color Walk and actually while I was at the Color Walk, I bumped into someone from the rowing club and he was very confused to see me. Couldn’t place him either. I also saw a friend, other friend of the podcast and my sometimes collaborator Simon Thompson, who said he might swing by a spitalfields market, but we happened to also bump into each other without having prearranged a time or a place. We just met at exactly the point that we’ve never met each other at before. Then. So after the color walk, then came home, got my whiteboard out so that could take it along to the pub. Had my twice monthly, one of my twice monthly pub o’clock meetups in my local. And had a very long day and I did not leave the house on Friday. And then had a reasonably social weekend. And here we are. How has your week been, Matt? Matt: My week up until started to record this show, which, dear listener, it’s been an absolute disaster when all the technology goes wrong. My God, it goes wrong. Apart from that it’s been a a, a good week. We had a video sent through on Wednesday from China, from the people who are producing the book. And it is finished. It is now being shipped. We’ve got four to six weeks before it arrives in the UK to be able to be sold for money. Uh, available@securityglenbooks.com. So that’s very exciting though to see the finished product because it is, uh. A book that defies normal expectations of what a book is. We are pushing the boundaries of the book format. Uh, it’s not called the book though. What is it? No, it’s not called the book. It’s called Random, uh, how to Thrive In An Uncertain World by me and Nick, d dr. And, uh, it’s available from all good bookshops online that are called Security Blend Books. You can buy it other places, but we advise you to buy it from security blend books.com. It’s gonna get more and more tiresome. You realize another four to six weeks of this before I can let go of the sail shtick. Uh, apart from that, uh, we’ve been, actually, I’ll tell you the other thing I’ve been doing, which has been fascinating is using the clawed to be able to do visualization of qualitative information. I’ve got a client and there’s two parts to that client, but it’s public sector thing. So there’s a lot of the, the history of it’s in the public domain. I wanted a, a timeline to be able to help them understand what they might do next. ’cause I’m a, a big believer and if you don’t understand the history of, of where things have come from, it’s very difficult to predict a future that is in any way meaningful. And so, um, we did it and it’s amazing. Just put some. A little bit of structure in to, to say what it was I wanted, and it creates this interactive web timeline thing with clickable bits and all sorts. And the data, the, the thing that’s really interesting actually, the amount of wrong information that’s going into this sort of stuff. Now is getting less and less and less, and the ability to then start to think about, well, how might I visualize this stuff in, in a way that would’ve taken weeks of work previously? Um, and it’s not, it’s not perfect by any stretch, but it’s enabling, it’s back to the drum machine analogy, enabling me to do things that otherwise I’d just simply wouldn’t have done and nobody would’ve done. So that’s been quite interesting as well. So, um, yeah, it’s been a, it’s been a productive, a productive week. Guest this week. Dan. Welcome to the show. How’s your week been? Dan: Thank you very much for having me. It’s been a great week in no small part because I got to go to a gig that I’ve been looking forward to for absolutely months and months with a mate who I haven’t seen for about a year. And I’ve only seen this band with this mate every single time. Um, the band’s called Deus. They are a Belgian art rock slash alternative rock group, have been going since the mid nineties and the gig was at Shepherd’s Bush Empire and it was absolutely awesome. You go into these things fearing that they might be past it. It turns out they can absolutely knock it outta the park. Still Matt: WW worse than fearing that they might be past it. The worst stuff is no. Tonight we’re gonna just be playing new material. Dan: Oh yeah. Yeah, we, well, we knew that wasn’t gonna happen because they were playing their first album versus their second album. That’s, that’s the whole of this tour. So we knew that they weren’t gonna play any new stuff. So we were all right on that front. Um, but that, that was amazing. And then I guess the other thing, uh, of note was I started up this, uh, local marketing community, like this informal marketing meetup. And we get together every month. And last Friday, it was the most recent, one of those great chats, lovely coffee. And uh, yeah, looking forward to the pub version of that next month now. Matt: Excellent. That sounds also like a productive week. Well done everybody. Little round of applause. Um, uh, but we are going to talk this week about an initiative that you kicked off a while ago. Now Dan called Good Enough Chats. So I think we should probably crack on Lisa: , We are here to talk about your initiative talking about men’s mental health. Can you tell us a bit more about what it is and how you started it? Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So, to all intents and purposes, its current form is a podcast. It may, well, hopefully, well, I would love it to evolve into more things beyond that, but it’s a podcast, but it’s a podcast that is entirely focused on lived experience, uh, men’s lived experience with mental health. And it doesn’t feature experts. It’s al...
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(345) Data Maturity
Mar 1800:53:14Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Matt Ballantine and Julia Bellis meet Sian Basker, co-founder of Data Orchard, to discuss what data maturity actually means for organisations — and what a decade of benchmarking data reveals about who’s doing it well and why. Sian explains how Data Orchard‘s assessment tool, now used by nearly 20,000 people across 56 countries, measures organisations against seven dimensions — from the practicalities of data collection and tooling through to purpose, skills, culture and leadership. Crucially, the tool is designed to be completed by whole organisations rather than data specialists, on the basis that the people closest to the work are best placed to assess it. The conversation explores some striking findings from Data Orchard’s most recent annual report: that there’s no correlation between organisational size and data maturity; that Scotland’s public sector is outperforming the rest of the UK; and that only around 5% of organisations reach the top “mastering” level. The group also dig into the human side of data: siloes, the gap between what leaders need and what frontline staff experience, and why confident leaders are often the most important ingredient of all. Show transcript autogenerated by Descript: Matt: Hello and welcome to episode 345 of WB 40, the bus like podcast. You wait for ages and then all of them come along at the same time. This week with me, Matt Ballantine, Julia Bellis, and Sian Basker Bus. Like he says, it’s the 200th anniversary of the very first bus. I found that out today. That’s the sort of facts that you don’t get anywhere else other than WB 40. Welcome back to the show, Julia. How has your week been? Julia: Well, am I allowed to go back as far as International Women’s Day? Matt: You can, Julia: yes. That was quite an exciting thing that I did that I thought I could talk about that’s relevant. It seems to go from strength to strength year by year. And this year I went to two International Women’s Day events, so it’s pleasingly morphed from a day when women have to do loads of extra work to prepare stuff to a day when women get invited to go to really cool, fun things. And this year I went to an energy auditing lunch in Manchester, which was really interesting and it was the opportunity to really think carefully about what aspects of your work drain your energy and what aspects boost your energy. And then the homework, which I have not yet done, but must, is to go away and seek opportunities to incorporate all of the energy boosting stuff in. And they can be tiny little opportunities. You know, the difference is cumulative and as I, so I was very grateful actually. I thought that was a genuinely useful and fun way to spend a lunch time. Matt: That’s very good. I’m also slightly never seeing that. We’re working together quite a lot at the moment that I’m on one of those lists and that’d be quite. Julia: No interactions with you are always joyful. Matt: Oh, that’s very nice of you to say. Um, anything else that’s happened in the last week or is that has happened like, Julia: well, actually, I mean all about me was Mother’s Day at the weekend and so I seized the opportunity to compel my family members to join me on a mystery solving history walk around London. And it was so much fun actually. We did a, it was called the Holy Grail Walk, and we started in the Knights Templar Church around the inns of court. And we had to follow all of these cl clues and went around Lincoln in fields and just these really cool, beautiful, peaceful back streets of London. And had a marvelous time and ended up in the Chesa cheese Pub, which was good fun. How about you? What have you been up to? Matt: Uh, I have been doing relentless plugging of book work because we are getting closer and closer. Apparently the book has been printed. , When I last heard from the publisher it was being cut. They’re using special machines to cut the book, which is very exciting. , I was at the London Book Fair on Wednesday last week originally to see around it with my publisher, but he was ill, so I was there on my own and spent quite frankly, four hours wondering what on earth you’re supposed to do at the London Book Fair. It’s the busiest trade event I have. I’ve been to in forever, the whole of Olympia. And it was, I mean, there’s incredible energy there, but I felt like a massive outsider. But I did have one meeting lined up, which was with somebody who is potentially interested in representing us for international translation rights, which is very exciting. And I had a meeting with our publisher’s other half who joined, and she’s actually a, a translator professionally. So, um, she has a sort of vested interest in that and also obviously with her partner running a small publishing house. So that was very interesting on for, and Julia: you should enjoy this. This is the cue. Matt: The Well, yeah, the thing was at Olympia though, because, because basically it’s publishers selling to retailers and it’s publishers selling to rights holders. So actually authors don’t appear to be really be there other than sort of occasional intellectual candy for the stands. And you can’t buy a book there as well, which is a really bizarre thing. ’cause it’s, I mean, you can buy the rights to books, but you can’t actually go and buy a book. I have a thing. I know. Julia: You feel robbed. Matt: I know. If you’re Julia: going to the book fair. Matt: Yeah. Sorry. I No, no, no. And um, so the other thing was on Friday I got introduced to, um, a chap who is a professor at Imperial College, who’s an economist whose specialism is luck, which given the theme of the book about randomness is we had a related, fantastic conversation. And, um, there might be an opportunity for me to do some guest lectures at Imperial College. It should be quite fun. So that’s been good. There’s been lots of work stuff. And then, uh, we actually had 12 people four of us, and then. Eight other people that we really didn’t know at all come for lunch on Sunday. As part of my eldest getting ready for the Scout jamboree in 2027, we met the families of the other two kids who are going to the Scout Jamboree in Poland. It’s quite nerve wracking when you’ve got complete strength. It’s coming for, for lunch, but it was all great and they were ev all, everybody’s lovely. But, um, that was quite an odd way to spend Mother’s Day. Julia: I think that’s a brilliant comfort zone, expanding activity, you know, created by your children actually. Matt: Yes, and it was, it was, uh, it was a stretch, but it wasn’t as much of a stretch as Olympia, which was stretched too far possibly. So yeah, keeping in and outta comfort zones is an important thing. Anyway, so yes, that was, that was the, the sort of week that’s been. Um, Anne welcome back to the show. You were with us some years ago now, I think. Mm. Um, Sian: yeah. Matt: But, uh, what you’ve been up to? Well, I mean, if you wanna go through the entire last four years or something, that’s fine. But last week, Sian: last week, well actually I also was celebrating International Women’s Day last week. I celebrated it with my choir singing, protest songs on a beach in Pembrokeshire, which was a hoot. And I can’t, it’s quite a kind of, we’re sort of coming out of winter. I mean, I, I still, I, some people would say argue already in Spring, but I have spent quite a ...
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(344) Partnerships
Mar 1000:46:42Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Matt and the team meet Shaline Manhertz and Kristianah Fasunloye to discuss their business partnership, which began formally in 2018 when Shaline’s cancer diagnosis forced a pivot from individual business plans to joint working. The conversation explores how their partnership survived extraordinary pressure by rejecting the conventional 50/50 model in favour of an equitable approach where each partner gives 100% of whatever capacity they have at any given moment. The discussion examines their practical frameworks for sustaining partnerships: the “MAGIC” model (Make a decision, Attributes, Guidance systems, Intelligence gathering, Course correct) and the four Rs (roles, responsibilities, respect, resentment). They challenge typical business assumptions about productivity and efficiency, arguing that genuine curiosity about people—asking questions beyond task delivery—transforms supplier relationships into true partnerships. The conversation draws parallels with pair programming in technology, showing how collaborative approaches often outperform traditional resource allocation models, even when they appear counterintuitive to conventional management thinking. You can watch Shaline & Kris’s Ted Talk here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1dJHi1s2WYs The show transcript – automatically generated by Descript. Matt: Hello and welcome to episode 344 of WB 40, the really quite erratic podcast with me, Matt Ballantine, Shaline Manhertz, Kristiana Fasunloye, and Chris Weston. Yes. You heard, right? Yes. You don’t need to worry about Harry Styles releasing albums. No. Chris and Matt are back on the show together for the first time in New. Two years. I’m not sure that I can cope with this excitement. Chris, how are you dealing with it? Chris: Yeah, it’s alright. You know, we’ve had, uh, it’s two years. You say you don’t look, you don’t look any different. I think you look younger, Matt. I think that’s, you know, that’s maybe just having that extra, you know, pizazz of some different people to talk to. Is it reinvigorated you somewhat Matt: that or you really need to get to the optician soon? Chris: Well, maybe you’ve been dying your beard or something. Matt: Oh dear. Like, the passage of time is a strange thing when you get to a certain age, isn’t it? Is a whips past. Uh, we, we won’t dwell on the entire two years ’cause it’s, that’s two years worth. But, um, what have you been up to in the last week? Chris: Oh, I’m glad you hadn’t asked me what’s happened in the last two years? ’cause I can just about remember the last week. Uh, everything else is, is very much a blur. Um, wow, wow. It’s been very busy. Right. And, um, so. I guess the, the big things in the last week or so have been, so at Aztec we, we did our first big event, uh, on our own like, uh, so a big grownup company on Thursday, the something I think, I think it was the end of February, so it was back just every week ago. And that was really good because it was partly because it’s a good. Team. And it’s nice to see the marketing folk, you know, and put all the effort in to make something like that happen. It’s good to see lots of people, you know, lots of, um, you know, old friends, new friends, whatever turn up and actually for the content to be pretty good too. And that, you know, that’s always a bit of a, uh, a worry ’cause it can be a. Even with the best preparation, it can go a bit flat sometimes. Um, but we had, uh, Benedict Evan speaking, who’s a bit of a, a, a legend really, really articulate guy in terms of tech and a whole bunch of other people. Um, so yeah. Yeah, that was good fun. Really, really great. And then I’ve been working with a client the last few days well actually, yeah, for almost since, for the last three weeks really, but for this last week as well, working with a client who works in. In the kind of retail supply chain, which again, very interesting. You know, I know a lot more about lettuce and beet root than I knew a few weeks ago which wasn’t a high bar if I’m, if I’m honest. But it’s, you know, there we go. I’m, I’m, I’m more informed about the, uh, the supply chain pers of, uh. Fresh produce, but yeah. Yeah. All good. Matt. Can’t complain. It’s been busy. Busy, busy. How about you? Matt: I’ve been taking on a new client at work and a, a very well established client for us. Quite a big client in terms of, uh, the number of consultants. So to get my head around it, I’ve been meeting all of the consultants who’ve got working on it. And so over the last. Two and a half, three weeks. I’ve had something like 50, 55, half hour meetings with different people, which has been really wonderful, but quite tiring I think is the best way to describe it. I mean, some of my colleagues, especially people who are used to sort of sitting writing computer code, are kind of baffled by the idea that you could speak to that many people ever possibly. But. The, this is where my social science training comes in. ’cause basically I was taught how to do interviews and stuff. So therefore I kind of, I, I, I’m okay with it. And it’s been really interesting and trying to be able, when you’re involved in something new, trying to be able to triangulate some form of truth because there isn’t one. Truth, there are multiple truths and if you can get to speak to lots and lots of people, you can build up, I dunno, it’s a bit like, you know, there’s apps you can get where you can create 3D scans of things by going around with your phone and taking loads of pictures and loads of different angles. It’s a bit like that. Nobody Chris: knows about those things. About Matt: is it just me? Chris: People with too much time on their hands. Matt: Yeah. Okay. It’s me being geeky again, isn’t it? But uh, yeah, so that’s been taking up, quite a lot of my time in work and then out of work because, I dunno if I told you this, I’ve got a book coming out. See, I’ve got a book coming out. It’s very exciting. I have got a book coming out. I still don’t quite know what the release date is because there’s been so many comical, random issues with getting the book out. But, we are assured it’s now actually being printed and the publisher is, uh, is trying to now work out the logistics of getting two washing machine sized lumps of cardboard and, and paper from China via the Middle East. Yeah, have all else is going on straight of hall moves, right? They don’t have to go through the straight of hall moves. No, but they have to go the other side. So there’s still plenty of opportunity for more random delays. But anyway, because I’ve got the book coming out, I’ve been doing more experimenting with doing stuff to video now. I’m a purist when it comes to podcasts. Podcasts are audio only. If you put video on a podcast, it becomes a TV program. Okay. That’s, that’s my view. I, I will not be shaken on that, but I have started to get into the idea of like two, three minute, little videos. And so I’ve been writing some scripts about things that are about randomness which is what the book is about and things that are about randomness in sort of local areas. So I can go and do some little bits on location. So my son and I, my youngest and I went out at the weekend and we were in. Bushy Park. We started at the house where Alan Turing lived, and then we went to the National Physical Laboratory to tell the story of Donald Davis, who’s the man who partly created packet switch networks, which are the underpinnings of the internet. And everybody’s heard of Alan Turing, and there’s roads named after him and there’s blue plaques on houses. Nobody has heard of Donald Davies at all. And it’s a story about the randomness of what we remember and what gets told in history. So it...
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(343) Trust in AI
Feb 1100:43:33Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Matt and Nick meet Alexander Feick, Vice President of eSentire Labs, to discuss his book “On Trust and AI” and why organisations need fundamentally different approaches to govern AI systems. Alex explains that whilst traditional computers multiply human intent predictably, generative AI acts more like an autonomous agent capable of creating its own decisions—something between software and people that requires new thinking about trust and verification. Using the example of AI-generated legal briefs with fabricated citations, he demonstrates why hallucination isn’t just a model problem but an architectural failure: when systems lack transparency, explainability, and alignment, organisations cannot verify the outputs they’re trusting. Alex introduces the concept of a control plane—deterministic software and logging that wraps around AI models to verify outputs work-by-work. Instead of allowing AI to directly cite cases (which it could fabricate), the system only permits references to IDs in a verified database, creating verification breakpoints between untrustworthy model output and validated information. This shifts human work from production to verification, applying critical thinking and domain expertise to judge whether AI reasoning is sound. Alex argues that “when creation became free, trust became the product”—as AI makes generation near-costless, real value concentrates in verification systems. Organisations must ensure verification capacity scales with generation capacity, otherwise they risk producing “AI slop”: unverified outputs that erode trust and create liabilities rather than value. You can read Alex’s book here: https://www.esentire.com/on-trust-and-ai/ Show transcript – automatically generated by Descript – below. [00:00:00] Matt: Hello and welcome to episode 343 of WB 40, the sort of fortnightly podcast with me, Matt Ballantine, Nick Drage, and Alex Feick. [00:01:08] Welcome to the first. February edition of the show and the first show that I’ve actually been involved with. So the front of house I’ve obviously for all of them, I am doing my devious work in the background to be able to edit the things. But this is the first time I’ve been on the show, uh, in 2026. [00:01:29] And, um, I joined by co-host and also soon to be co-author Nick Drage. Nick, how the devil are you? [00:01:40] Nick: I’m alright actually. How are you? [00:01:43] Matt: I’m, yeah, I’m good. Having said that, I kept waking up in the middle of the night last night. I’ve got a little bit of a cold and as I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought to myself, I know what I can do. [00:01:54] I can, in my head, I can rehearse. The talk that I’m giving in a couple of nights time in Nottingham which is gonna be the first or big public talk about randomness, which is the thing you and I have written the book about. And so in my brain, in my half, half awake, half asleep brain, I started to do my presentation and by about, by about slide three, I’d fallen back asleep again. [00:02:19] And I don’t think this is really necessarily a good advert for the quality of the presentation I’m gonna be giving on Thursday, but you know. Apart from that, the reason why I kept working up as well though, is ’cause the night before I had the experience of what can only be described as the most tortuous user interface that there is on this planet, which is the, what happens when the backup battery in your smoke alarm decides that it’s not got enough power in it. [00:02:49] And what it does is it makes a cheer up, very loud noise, but it does it in such a way that there’s a kind of. Improbable gap between them. And if you’ve got as many of the things in, uh, your house as I have, it’s next to impossible to know which one it is. But it’s really annoying. So it keeps, ’cause it’s designed to be annoying and they always go off, there’s a physics thing behind this. [00:03:10] They always go off in the middle of the night because at the coldest point is the point where the batteries are least efficient, so therefore they will always be triggered. So two in the morning, I’m on a small step trying to not fall down 14 flights of stairs to be able to get the thing off. So just so apart from that, I’m fine. [00:03:30] Nick: I thought you were making that bit up, but that makes sense. It does, doesn’t it? About batteries? About And also, yes, the interface is, the interface to them is horrible. I think it’s fair to say friend of the podcast, Dave Gray, who we both know to varying degrees, uh, had one in his, I think his basement where he does his video calls, online meetings, and. [00:03:54] It was just, he didn’t know where it was in that huge, you know, sort the typical huge American basement. So we just all got used to it. There was just a beep sporadically in the video calls. He runs every week for something like three months and instead of one week, we all noticed, I think halfway through that it had gone and either, and I don’t think it replaced, but I think it was finally it’s died. [00:04:17] Now, you know, your basement might catch fire, but at least you can have decent video calls. [00:04:21] Matt: Uh, yeah. I, I, I need to look up at some point how many people are injured or killed through the process of having to replace batteries in the middle of the night. And then it’s the kind of having to shove screwdriver into the side of it. [00:04:34] And the one literally at the top 14 stairs, and the way the builders installed it was the way you have to push it. The direction of push is down the stairs, so on a tiny little stair Oh, [00:04:45] Nick: is the same. [00:04:46] Matt: Yeah. Hal. So anyway, I think what I’m completely, there’s, there’s [00:04:50] Nick: a, there’s a podcast in that, but not this [00:04:51] Matt: episode. [00:04:52] No, no, no, no. Absolutely. But all I’m concluding is I’m lucky to be alive and you’re lucky to have me here. There we go. Um, have you been up to anything other than risking life and death in the last few weeks, Nick? [00:05:02] Nick: Oh yeah. ’cause I just suddenly realized, oh yeah, it’s the bit where you asked what I’ve been doing. [00:05:06] Matt: Yes. [00:05:06] Nick: That’s great. So I grabbed my work calendar and kind of. And I hope this sounds cooler than it is kind of, I can’t tell you, but as much as I can say ’cause of like NDAs and so on, is fighting an a well-known online chat platform and losing, let’s just leave that there. Helping develop and. Plan and soon we’ll be running a multi-agency war game, multi-agency exercise, which has proven really challenging, but really interesting, especially for use of LLMs, which we might get onto later. [00:05:43] And just planning another exercise where. An industry is looking forward to what might happen politically in the UK in the next few years and is looking to plan ahead, which is really good to hear about, really interesting to be involved with. And, um, just an an interesting sort of business and research projects. [00:06:02] All the times I’ve popped into this podcast and see things about the way war, professional war games and exercises might go. It looks like it actually is going that way. Finally. [00:06:13] Matt: That’s good to hear. I was talking to some people at government department today in the current state of British politics. [00:06:17] They were wondering what would be happening in the next week, not necessarily the next, you know, couple of years. I think the short term thing has come back forward. It’s like 2018 all over again. [00:06:28] Nick: Well, I mean, we can’t, I haven’t looked to the news for like six hours, so we can’t comme...
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(342) Alignment
Jan 2700:44:19Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Lisa and Julia meet Emma Bruce, Software Engineering manager. The conversation explores the often-overlooked transition from individual contributor to engineering manager, examining why technical excellence doesn’t automatically translate to management success and what skills actually matter when leading teams. Emma discusses the historical lack of training for engineering managers and how the role has evolved into a more scientific one, with greater emphasis on metrics such as cycle time, throughput, and flow state. The discussion covers the challenge of aligning diverse stakeholders—from business objectives to compliance requirements—and the importance of consciously deciding what to deprioritise when focusing on specific KPIs, such as time to market. The conversation also touches on whether non-technical people can succeed as engineering managers, provided they partner effectively with strong technical leads. Show transcript automatically generated by Descript: Lisa: Welcome to episode 342 of the WB 40 Podcast with me, Lisa Riemers, Julia Bellis, and Emma Bruce. Julia: So it is great to be back here with you, Lisa. I think it’s been, well, this is certainly the first podcast that we have co-hosted in 2026. And to be honest. It was quite a way back, possibly in the summer 25 that we, um, did a double act. So it’s good to see you again. It’s been far too long. Lisa: It’s been ages, hasn’t it? It’s been, it feels like it’s been, last summer feels like a lifetime away and also feels like it wasn’t very long ago at all. But there’s been, I feel like there’s probably been quite a lot of things happening but. Bringing it back to slightly more recent times if we were gonna follow the format of the podcast, which also always is evolving. What have you been up to over the last week or so? Last fortnight ish, maybe, or since last summer. Julia: Wow. Um, let’s forget since last summer because I will just won’t stop talking. Possibly I have just come back from a really cool adventure. And, uh, I took Friday off work, got the train down to Pzi, and then spent three days walking from Pzi to Rye, which is, uh, a route called the 10 66 Country Walk. Lisa: That’s really far, isn’t it? How, what’s the distance on that? Julia: Yeah, it is really far. It’s very easy when you see it on a signpost and you go, oh, let’s do that. And then when you actually come to do it, it’s 60 kilometers. Day one we intended to walk 27 kilometers and we knew that was a big day because of various things happening and diversions and map reading fails. It ended up being 35 kilometers, which was painful. We sort of, uh. Battle is very beautiful. Very beautiful. You know, the Abby and the Castle and the church, we staggered into battle after dark and I have never ever been so happy. To see the pub where we were staying and stagger up the stairs in my backpack on and collapse into bed, actually. So yeah, it was a real adventure. Really good fun. So I’m glad I could come on the podcast and talk about it because I don’t often have such interesting weekends. Lisa: I’m getting horrible flashbacks. When I was in Central Ambulance as a teenager and we did a 75 mile walk around Surrey over five days. But we had a similar thing. The first day was the biggest day, but it ended up being a few miles longer than we were expecting. And it was just like, I mean, I was a, I was a teenager when it was hard enough, like I couldn’t imagine doing it now. So I’m in massive awe of you doing that. Julia: I am quite proud of myself actually. Yes, I made it and then, then the next two days you were saying how time walks. Distance warps when you’ve walked 30 K and you’ve still got five to go, that five feels incredibly long. But what about you Lisa? What have you been up to? I’ve Lisa: been entirely sedentary, certainly in comparison. I’ve been, well actually no that’s not true. The last fortnight. So since the last podcast, ’cause I was on the first one this year with Matt. Um, I had the color walk, although that’s not really a walk. It’s what? That, so the color walk is a thing that I do if I can make it work, allowing, it’s on the third Thursday of the month. And we go to old hospital fields market and meet up, and it’s on the flea market day and there’s between, normally between sort of 50 and 70 people wearing their most colorful outfits and all of your accessories. It’s like the opposite of what Chanel would say. It’s like before you leave the house, put more things on. Julia: Alright. Yeah, put everything on, but it is Lisa: more of a pose than a walk like I did. It did mean I left the house. But we don’t go much further than around the market. If we do any walking at all, we sort of meet up and chat and there’s a big group photo. But yeah, and I had a couple of events last week where I was at my desk, did a meet the author thing with my co-author and, um, the through, that’s Julia: exciting Lisa: talking about our book about accessible communications, which was nice. Um, it felt like the first joint thing me and Matisse have done for a while as well, so that was nice. I was sitting here at my desk, and then I also did a, it was a session called the Intranet Hot Seat, where I was interviewing Suzie Robinson from Clear Box, talking about the latest report that’s coming out. Oh, I think this Thursday now. It is Thursday. The T, no, Wednesday the 28th, I think. No. Yes. Anyway, at some point this week it’s coming out and it’s this massive tome comparing intranet products that sit on top of SharePoint or independent to SharePoint and communications platforms. And it’s something that I’ve been involved in over the last few years as an independent consultant. And we got to basically geek out about intranets. So that was also lovely in am midst actually doing some SharePoint stuff for a client. But Julia: yeah, I’m quite impressed at your ability to geek out over intranets actually. It’s quite Lisa: niche. There’s not that many of us do. Julia: We should find out more about that in future. How, how about you Emma? What have you been up to? Emma: Um. A couple of, couple of trips to the home counties over the last couple of weekends. One to Bahe to see my, my mom and sister. Another one to Redding this weekend just gone. And then, yeah, apart from that normal things during the week, but also I’ve been I sort of made the decision beginning of the year to, to look for another job. So I’ve been doing quite a bit of sort of research, trying to read up on, on various things and spending quite a lot of time kind of actually geeking out a geeking out a little bit more than normal even. Just just trying to get my, uh, get myself sort of back up to speed with some of the things I haven’t used for a little while. You know, in advance hopefully for finding a, finding another job. Julia: So this is really interesting actually. I think we could do a podcast on how to look for a job. After a number of years, or even dare I say, decades in your career, you know, it changes, doesn’t it? And then. You’re doing it in a new way that you’ve never done before. Emma: Yeah. And even the mechanism of actually looking so, going, I, I’m not a huge user of LinkedIn and every time I sort of log in, things have changed. First time coming across any kind of AI agent, doing a, you know, having a conversation with an AI agent not actually an interview. This was, um, a recruiter that uses AI to sort of screen people. Yeah. And things change every time. I, um, I, I look and as you say, yeah, it&...
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(341) Nomadic
Jan 1300:48:58Tap to summarizeOn this week’s show, Lisa Riemers and Chris Weston meet Sharon O’Dea to discuss digital nomadism and the evolution of remote work. Sharon shares insights from her decade-long journey as a digital nomad, including her recent seven-week stint in Japan, where she worked from locations ranging from traditional coworking spaces to foot spas in town squares. The conversation explores how digital nomadism has evolved from a niche lifestyle to a mainstream working pattern, examining both the opportunities it creates for geographical arbitrage and talent access, and the infrastructure challenges that remain. Sharon highlights how towns like Nagasaki are developing specific offerings for remote workers, creating ecosystems that blend professional development with cultural exchange, whilst also discussing how these same principles can benefit people who simply lack access to reliable transport or need flexible working arrangements for caring responsibilities. The discussion shifts to the practical realities of making remote work sustainable, particularly around the thorny issue of time zones and asynchronous collaboration. Whilst tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom enabled widespread remote work during the pandemic, they’re still largely designed for synchronous presence rather than output-focused collaboration. Sharon argues that truly effective remote work requires moving away from managing presence towards measuring outcomes, breaking the connection between work, time and place. The hosts also explore the human side of remote work—the importance of intentional rituals and moments of connection that prevent teams from fracturing when they’re not physically together. The conversation concludes with a more cautionary note about ensuring remote work is designed for dignity and connection rather than creating new forms of digital exploitation. Transcript automatically generated by Descript. Lisa: Episode three 40 of the WB 40 Podcast with me, Lisa Riemers, Chris Weston and Sharon O’Dea. Chris: Oh, hello everybody and welcome to January, 2026, which is as I think Matt said in a LinkedIn post the other day. It’s the 11th calendar year of WB 40 which is a little bit, uh, scary, but we are, we have evolved. We’ve got, you know, he is, that’s not here. He’ll be, he’ll be. Pulling the levers later on. But, um, no. Today it’s, uh, myself and Lisa and Sharon oday and we’re gonna be talking about digital nomadism. And, um, but before we do that, we’re gonna talk a little bit about what we’ve been up to in the last few days, week. Uh, what whatever I think suits our purpose. Lisa, what have you been up to? Lisa: Well, it feels like 2026 has had a bit of a slow start for me. I’ve had a cold all year, which is fun. I did manage to get through most of Christmas, relatively healthy though. So we did have a really lovely run of it all. Had a lovely uneventful, festive period in the best way. Like everything ran quite smoothly and we saw friends and family and there weren’t any major dramas. So the last week or so have been kind of. Winding back up again into work mode and picking up with clients that I was speaking to in December, and some people are raring to go and other people are still trying to get back into things. So it feels like a slow start to the year for me. But lots of stuff going on. How about you, Chris? Chris: Funnily enough, I was with a colleague today. I was in Birmingham going to see somebody and we, we were walking through and I was saying that actually it feels like January has, has gone very, very quickly. And I think maybe that’s because I didn’t go back to work until like the fifth of Jan. So we’re, um, you know, we’re already a week in pretty much when you go back to work, but it’s nearly now the 12th. And I guess the, uh, impending deadlines that are happening this month and next month around various things at work mean that. It does seem like it’s the, the water’s draining away extremely quickly in terms of, uh, the time we have available. So it does seem to have gone quite quickly and I happen to be really busy. However, I haven’t had to go too many places. I’ve been out and about a little bit. So it’s been uh, head down planning, getting ready for what’s gonna happen in the rest of this year. So, uh, yeah, I can’t say that very much has happened. We had the snow last week, which, um. Which was extremely, uh, cold and, um, in my outside office here meant that I had to put the heating on about an hour before I wanted to come in here ’cause it was just too cold for my sensitive disposition. But other than that, yeah, I can’t complain. It’s been a decent start to the year. So, Sharon, welcome again, welcome back. Hey, after, uh, many years of, uh, A Gap, what were you doing this year, this week? Sharon: So actually I’ve been, we’ve been really busy. So, uh, the biggest thing is that we, me and my business partner, Jonathan and co-author, we sent in the final chapters and the last bit of the manuscript of our book. Uh, this is the first opportunity. Then officially I get to plug it. So, thank you. Should I, uh, it is out, it’s available on pre-order. Are you, what’s best? You’re not sure? I’ll say that again. Thank you. I’m really glad you asked. It’s called Digital Communications at Work and it is the book that I wish I’d had when I was in-house. It kind of walks you through the process of working out what your users need, what your organization needs, how to choose the right section of, uh, selection of platforms even, and configure them and manage them. For the long term. Uh, so it’s kind of about the infrastructure and plumbing of communications. But yes, Jonathan and I finished off the last sort of few edits and sent them in on Friday. So while everyone else was enjoying their mint supplies, I was hunched over my laptop at home. Editing and going over and over the same handful of edits. It’s really weird when you work in digital, you know, we always say like, done is better than perfect, but it’s not there, is it? It’s gotta be perfect. And it’s really counter-cultural. I dunno if you had it that experience, Lisa, but I’m like, oh, I could just change this bit over and over again. Lisa: Yeah. I mean book is the, the ultimate in waterfall launching. Sharon: Yeah. Lisa: It’s, you can iterate and do additional versions in the future, but each one takes, what, 18 months? So something like that. Yeah, it’s quite, quite the thing, and it’s. Sharon: It’s quite weird going, okay, what if everyone hates it or if they don’t agree with, anyway, so yeah, it was really weird letting go, like it was okay sending off one chapter at a time, but that’s what I’ve been up to. And then alongside that, there’s the day job, which has suddenly got really busy, like the end of last year was moderately quiet and now all of a sudden everyone’s raring to go, which is great. Uh, we’ve got some workshops coming up and I love doing that. That kind of just planning how we’re gonna get the best out of people in the room has been quite fun. So, yeah, it’s been, I can’t believe it’s the middle of January already. It feels like this month has gone super quickly already. Lisa: So, Chris, when’s your book coming out? Chris: Well, do you know what I’m thinking about that? I was, I was, I was thinking about it the other day actually. I’ve got, I’ve got the germ of an idea and. I’m not really the kind of person who thinks to himself I should write a book because I understand my own, uh, deficiencies in terms of, uh, ability to actually get on and do something like that for an extended period of time. But I thought my, I was just sitting there the other day and I was thinking, I was actually reading another book. I was reading a book called something like. Why is everything fucked? A book about hope by a guy called somebody Manson, mark Manson or something like that. And it was quite good ’cause it, it talked about the fact that you know, there’s a lot of like I would call standard, uh, psychology in it, but a lot of stuff about. About kind of narcissistic ways of thinking and why we,...
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