Cyril Coste ADT podcast cover
Episode: 14

Cyril Coste - Growth mindset and de-siloing for effective digital transformation

Posted on: 11 Feb 2021
Cyril Coste ADT podcast cover

Cyril Coste is one of the top B2B influencers and experts in digital transformation. Based in the UK, he has served as consultant and advisor in many important digital transformation initiatives, in addition to founding and running several initiatives of his own.

In the first part of this episode, we discuss the importance of having a growth mindset in business and what it means for a company to be growth-oriented. The second part focuses on how overcoming common organizational biases is key to successful de-siloing. We tie things together by taking a look at how having a growth mindset can help with de-siloing and how the Covid pandemic and the rise of remote work have affected these two topics.

 

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Transcript

“What brought you here won't get you there, so how do you grow without burning what you have previously built? What I mean by that is, how do you develop a mentoring and coaching attitude in your company to learn and develop best practices, to continue a sustainable growth?”

Intro:
Welcome to the Agile Digital Transformation podcast, where we explore different aspects of digital transformation and digital experience with your host Tim Butara, content and community manager at Agiledrop.

Tim Butara: Hello everyone! Thank you for tuning in. Our guest today is Cyril Coste, chief digital officer and digital transformation advisor.

Cyril is among the very top B2B influencers and digital transformation experts worldwide. Today's episode will be roughly divided in two parts; Cyril and I will first discuss the importance of having a growth mindset in driving digital transformation. Then we'll take a look at de-siloing and how challenging organizational bias is key here.

Welcome Cyril, it's great to have you with us today. Is there anything you'd like to add to the introduction?

Cyril Coste: No, that was perfect Tim thank you very much.

Tim Butara: Okay, then I’ll dive right into our first topic, and that is growth mindset. I want to start with a basic question. So, what does it mean for a person to have a growth mindset?  Like, what are some of the typical characteristics of having a growth mindset?

Cyril Coste: That's a good question, and it's not a simple answer I’m afraid. You have a different way to see what does growth mindset mean. You can see it from a personal development perspective, you can see it from a business perspective, and you can see it as a psychological perspective. So, I’m just going to try to stay at the business level, okay?

Tim Butara: Yeah, that makes sense.

Cyril Coste: Growth is at an individual level the kind of ability to go beyond one’s own limitations. Our own limitations are usually built and based on our experienced background or education. So, a growth mindset is primarily the desire to learn, in order to improve our outcome.

What I mean by this is, in order to learn, you need to know what you need to learn, okay? And you don't learn in the same way when you're an adult as when you are a child. When you were a child or when you were a student, you were told what you needed to learn in order to pass your exam. When you become an adult, when you're a professional it's; let's forget the kind of personal development plans and you can develop with your HR and your company. But you need to identify yourself where to grow, what you need to improve, and it's very difficult to do it yourself; because we have our own bias. We have on view or an idea of who we are, how we interact, how good we are, with our skill set. So that's why it's important to develop trustful relationships with your colleagues, your clients, partners, in order basically, to collect some feedback about, you know; this is where you are good at, you know, Tim; but you know, these are where you could really improve or you know, the market you are in is evolving this way; and if you don't have these types of skills, in two three years you are going to, you know, to be deprecated, and you know the market will not want to work with you.

So, the first part to, to develop a growth mindset, is really to identify his own weaknesses, or let's call them opportunities, and develop an attitude, an active attitude to, to collect feedback and know from the best.

So, the second part of the growth mindset is, how do you learn? Especially in digital, it's very difficult to find a fully developed, you know, course online, or at university, where basically that will exactly match what you are looking for. So usually, you will learn from asking questions, or looking at how basically your kind of people will know how to do. So, it's really kind--  I, I don't like, you know, mentoring and this kind, but it's really to identify you know a coach. Someone who can coach your skills, you know, it can be in project management, it can be to manage your project better, it can be to improve your relationship with your clients, can be how to manage your team better etc. And, basically find someone who can help you by asking you questions, providing you, it can be a tool set uh to, to help you grow. And because we are in a fast-moving environment, it's a continuous process. It kind of never stops. And I think if you know; if we see what we consider today growth mindset today, versus 25 years ago when I started my career, this has nothing to do. Growth mindset there, there was pretty much focus on hard skills, while today we very much focus on soft skills and the importance to be also an inclusive workplace, and that basically, if you want to get most of your team, and be the kind of best company in the market, and understand better your customers, and their needs you also need to work a lot on your soft needs.

That was a very long answer, I’m afraid Tim.

Tim Butara: No, it's cool, but you covered quite a lot of really important stuff there, like, one of the first things that jumped out to me was that you kind of, that you equated weaknesses as opportunities actually, and I think that that's one of the keys of having a growth mindset. You know, it's not-- Weakness doesn't mean, I mean, failure doesn't mean weakness. Failure just means you know, there's something more to be done, there's something to improve upon, there's something more to learn. And I, I’m really glad you brought this up immediately.

Cyril Coste: Yes. We are not perfect. And, so the most difficult part is to identify our weaknesses. As you say, they are opportunities because, if you don't know where you are, don't expect other people to tell you who you are. So, it's important to use their vision to help you to identify your weakness, but you know, so in the same way that you are biased in the way you see yourself, other people are also, also biased, based on their own experience, background on education about you. So that's why it's important to have a kind of a 360 view by asking, you know, people who work with you closely, people who work with you not as close to you from a different technical background, from-- who have different experiences. So that basically it can give you a lot of material to, to know about, you know, who you are and where you need to go. And opportunities, you will identify them by discussing with basically these people. It's also very difficult on your own to identify what these opportunities are.

Tim Butara: Yeah, it's very, very hard to kind of take the objective stance and kind of go beyond yourself and, and kind of treat yourself in the same way, or see yourself in the same way as others would treat you without having that outside nudge from somebody, as you said maybe from a totally different technical background, or professional background. And I think that pinpointing-- I mean, understanding and realizing our weaknesses is basically the first step and the most essential step towards our ability to overcoming these weaknesses. Would you agree with that?

Cyril Coste: Absolutely. It's, in order to grow, you have this idea, that basically at the end you are at a higher level than where you started. So, you need to know where you are and this is basically let's, let's stop calling them weaknesses, because this is maybe too negative; but basically, these opportunities where, whatever they are, as I said earlier you know, they can be hard skills, soft skills, it's, it's all about an attitude, you know. The growth man that is about an attitude, about being positive, about how you personally you're going to improve, and how this improvement is going to contribute to the improvement of your team, of your company, or people you know who are close to you. So, it's primarily an attitude, and after it's a, it's a mechanism, if I can say it's this way.

Tim Butara: Oh yeah, that's actually a good way of putting it. Yeah. And so, so let's maybe take it a bit broader and like take the whole company into account. So, if a company has a growth-oriented culture that would mean that it's a culture which encourages having a growth mindset, which encourages growing, learning, sharing knowledge and kind of developing their employees.

Cyril Coste: Yes, and more. I say, when you take it at the company level and you talk about growth, the first things that pop up in people's mind will be, growth in revenues, growth in, you know, market share, growth in the client space. That will be basically the first thing that comes to mind in terms of growth. Growing a skill set maybe of your employees, but is it really a key KPI? Can you really measure it? I would say at the company level, you know, to be really growth oriented for the company, is how you grow in a sustainable manner, I think that's really, what is going to differentiate future winners, from not winners. It's, it's really-- so let's you know, let's not take you know, kind of FTSE100 companies and those tech companies because they have different kinds of objectives. But let's say for the huge majority of the companies in the world who are not listed and who are not based in Silicon Valley, what does it mean to be growth oriented? Growth oriented is you know, not only just reaching objectives, let's say usually going higher and higher, in whatever matrix we have chosen, so as I said earlier can be revenues, can be profits, can be market share, but also how you make it in a sustainable manner. So, I say, whatever individuals and talents you have in your companies, they have a limited amount of time per week, per month in your company.

So, what brought you here won't get you there, so how do you grow without burning what you have previously built? What I mean by that is, how do you develop a mentoring and coaching attitude in your company to learn and develop best practices, to continue a sustainable growth. So, growth oriented at the company level, is the ability to develop your employee to continue to develop on the same basis as before, and it's you know, it's easier said than done, because, as you know, while the company grew, it will inevitably add, you know, management layers, reporting activities etc. and it's very difficult to avoid this kind of bureaucratic and passive behavior when you grow a company. So. how do you avoid this approach by basically proactively developing a growth mindset, which is basically focusing on-- right now, I have let's say one team that is taking care of our customer support, because of the growth of the company, I need to build three different customer support teams, because I will have to sell different geographics, at different times during the day. So how do you ensure that basically, what was built in the first team is going to be deployed at the same quality for the next three teams?

So that's basically how you can develop, identify, you know, what's in the best learners, the best contributors, and basically how they can spread their mindset in the other teams. That's why I’m a strong believer about cross-pollination in organizations, and once you have a team you know it's very true also in any type of agile teams, as I’m sure you will know at Agiledrop, is, basically, once you have a well-performing team, do not hesitate to take some elements of these teams to put them in the other teams. Basically, to kind of spread the good practices. And this is really how you can develop harmoniously, peacefully, a team. And each team can contribute at their own level, because I’ve never met a team that was bad at everything. A team will be for example really good at, you know, market research; another team may be very good to you know implement to write their test and run their test. Another team may be really good to, in the relationship between the developer and the creative for example. So, every team can contribute in a positive way via cross brain nation, you know, outside the typical exchange that you can set up, you know, in the teams and the collaboration tools you can use to share documents, or process, or reports. It's more growth-oriented organizations, the successful ones, are betting on the human, not the tools.

Tim Butara: Oh, that's a very, very good point right there at the end Cyril, betting on the human not on the tools. And I think that that's actually at the essence of digital transformation, you know, it's not just about the digital, but it's, like, it's bringing the human and the, and the tools together, to kind of get the best possible outcome. 

Cyril Coste: Absolutely. In digital transformation, you know, when I built my first digital transformation framework back in 2014, at the center, it was my customer. So, because the customer was a center and everything was derived from here. So, there was the experience, you know, the data you collected from your customer, the operating model that was built around the customer, etc. It was like a seven steps process.

So everything in digital transformation is about your customer. So, you will have of course some IT organizations elements, yes you will have some sensors, captors, you will have some cloud computing somewhere probably with some AI frameworks that will consume some data that you are stored somewhere else. But at the end of the day, whatever you do must be connected to the customer, and must improve his experience. This customer can also be of course one employee. So, in this case we'll talk about employee experience, but even in this case it will need to serve the customer in a way or another.

Tim Butara: And you mentioned early on that probably a growth mindset from 25 years ago would look very different than a growth mindset right now, and I’m, I’m guessing that the, the mass digitalization and kind of the mass adoption of digital technologies is quite,  quite an important factor in this. Why is it so, it's so important to be growth oriented, maybe even more important, to be growth oriented in the, in the digital era, and are there any, any special characteristics, you know, any special, any specialties of the growth mindset in the digital as compared to before?

Cyril Coste: So if you go back 25 years ago, most of your education was done, you know, either when you were at universities, or via you know, the formal training you get in your organizations, or via party companies. And today most of our education is done via YouTube, okay. Or, you know, whatever blog. And basically, this is how you learn this day, how you, your education, you know, whatever. Is it for technique, is it for language, is it for management, is it for legal? You will always, your first destination will be Google or YouTube; it will not be, oh, let’s check what is available in term of formal training at the university, or on my corporate website, HR website.

So, because now we have access to so much information easily, and that usually no prerequisite is required from you, I can study, you know, medicine online, you know, without having passed any entry exam. I do not recommend that. It's, so basically this is the flooding of information and the constant change in our environments, which is how we interact, you know, digitally. So, kind of, you know, the first smartphone became really popular let's say 2010, a few years later for the tablets. The usage on smartphone is basically also changing a lot, you know, social media, the way we interact, you know, differently. It started with text, then with pictures, now it’s more videos. So, it's constantly evolving, and because our brains are also bombarded with this information, it's more and more difficult, and it's more and more important, to know exactly what you need to learn. And we go back to the first point of the growth mindset which is, you need to know who you are, and where you are if you want to grow, because if you don't do that, you will just absorb whatever is available to you. And during a day, you know, you just go on YouTube, you can waste your day on YouTube. And you haven't done anything at the end of the day. And this is valid for any kind of social networks. So I think I digressed a little bit but, have I answered your question Tim?

Tim Butara: Yeah, I think, I think you kind of highlighted the main and the most dominant reasons why growth mindset has changed, and why now it's even more important because of the huge availability of information. And because of its huge, very easy accessibility, you know, as you mentioned, now you just go on Google, now you just go on YouTube, and you have everything at your disposal, it becomes even more important to kind of delineate how you're going to learn, and what you're going to learn, because, as you rightly pointed out, you only have so much time, so many hours in a day. And if you just absorb everything then you definitely won't optimize and you won't actually grow in the proper sense, even if it may seem to you that you're growing, because you're learning more, but you're not doing it in a kind of, in a way that will ultimately benefit you in the long term.

Cyril Coste: That's absolutely right yeah. You summarized it very well.

Tim Butara: Okay, I think we already kind of started talking about de-siloing with the previous question. So, let's just move there and then we'll tie things together in the end.
So my first question for de-siloing, what, what are the key challenges that siloed businesses have to deal with? Why, why should companies de-silo? Why should they prioritize de-siloing?

Cyril Coste: Oh, good question. So the problem with silos is they are usually built on false beliefs and, you know, fake news, if I can say it this way. Silos in organizations basically are usually based on bias, or around biases. And if you don't fight the silo in an organization, you know that basically you are just getting slower, so you are getting your product to market slower, spread of information will be inconsistent, which means that basically information quality inside the organizations is going to vary from one team to another one, depending on who spoke to another one. And it, it also introduced this idea that you may have different competitors inside the company, you know, if you work in a silo it means that it's “us versus them” kind of behavior and attitude. Which is not what you want to do.

Interestingly, I think you will agree, Tim, that every time you hear about silo in an organization, you know, I’ve worked many years in the services industry, and you cannot start a project in an organization with people talking about, “Oh we need to do about silo in an organization.” So, you will notice, you know, these guys finance departments, they don't share anything, they don't talk blah, blah, blah. Oh, and you will see these people in the marketing department, they don't share, they don't talk, and we never know what they do. They do their stuff on their own and after it comes to, it just lands on our desk, and it just disrupts a project and etc. etc.

But interestingly when you search on Google for example, Google trends, you can see that the interest in fighting silos in organization is just decreasing over time. And what I find fascinating is we know that this is a problem for every single organization, but we do very little about it. We do very little about it. And it's a topic, you know, that it must be led by the leadership. There is no other way there, no other way to succeed, because it's really a topic where leadership and the C-suite must take in their own hand, because they must lead by example on this one.

So silos in my view, and based on you know the research I’ve done, can be, can be fought, you know, by fighting different biases that exist in an organization. A few of the main issues with silos is also, you know, I was talking about cross-pollination previously. And it also, siloed organizations will prevent this from happening. Let's say from understanding each other, and an organization is never the sum of all its parts. So, you know you can't see an organization as, oh, this is customer service, this is marketing, this is operations, this is finance, this is IT, this is sales. An organization is never the sum of its parts, okay. That's a simplistic view.

It's the interaction between these parts that basically will improve the value of the organization. So in order to do that basically, you must, look at yourself, you know, honestly and see how a company operates, not on paper because, you know, we have all seen tons of process paper, roadmaps etc. that, you know, what you're supposed to do in this case etc. but we know that this never happens, but basically how your company really works. And once you know that, you can say how, what can I do to improve it, to operate it better, and this is where the bias comes into play. I just stop here just to know that if you want to add something here, Tim.

Tim Butara: Oh no, no I just thought-- the next thing I wanted to ask is about bias. So, you're following my thoughts perfectly.

Cyril Coste: Okay. So I’m not covering here, you know, bias who are based on discriminatory factors, you know, such as gender, or ageism, you know, this type of bias basically that must be managed by you know HR, or a solicitor. So, I, I’m talking about you know the more day-to-day biases, that basically just makes everybody, everybody's life a bit more difficult. So, for example, confirmation bias, you know, when you, when you start a project, and, you know, someone say “Oh yeah we are going to do it this way,” because why? Because we have always done this way.

So, this is a process we are going to do, you know, to collect the requirements. So, identify your markets, run our market research etc., say, well okay, why? And we are just basically entering a kind of the same process, it's always something, we have always done it this way, so basically, we are going to do it again this way. Another also bias that I really like, and it's very easy to spot is a HiPPO. The highest paid person opinion in the room. So, it's basically when the team has made the decision and you know it's big time, we need to, to have the sign off on this, and basically you have this person, usually so it's, it's usually the highest paid. So, who knows usually, not a lot of the project, and basically decide to make some changes on the project or whatever you are working on. And this person doesn't realize, usually, the disruption that has been introduced, doesn't really necessarily understand the amount of work that has been invested on this project. And why, it’s because no one really wants to challenge the HiPPO, at least publicly. It's not something that is easy, you know, because of course you know the higher you are in the companies the better decisions you are supposed to make. Actually, this is what the type of expectations people will have, but it's very difficult to have a kind of uh to challenge a HiPPO. 

I noticed this attitude especially in the financial services industry, where there's this really this, this mentality where basically yeah, if someone with a kind of a hierarchical level will basically say something and even if it's wrong, the rest of the team will just follow and not confront him. That's, that's really what I’ve noticed in my, my experiences, but for everybody I think that will listen to this podcast there is one bias that basically we all can have at play is the self-serving bias. It is basically making decisions based on our needs, and not necessarily in the interest of the team, or the organization. And that's some, that's a bias that you will see in the recruitment process. That's why when I do recruitment, I always take two other people with me in the room, and it's important that you do it too. It's basically to remove the kind of self-serving, and to see basically, a candidate as okay, talking only about the skills or experiences that are relevant to what you need, rather than what your team or company needs in the longer term. So, it's important to have all those people's perspectives. People who don't work with you, by the way, try to take people from different teams, because it's important to have a different view about the company's culture, that the questions are not going to be purely about hard skills, but also soft skills, you know.

Working in a company is probably more about being integrating in an environment, where you can contribute, and where you are comfortable to be in. So that's very important. So that's why the self-serving bias - we are, we are all guilty of it, okay, in a way or another. A typical one for, especially technical people, is to choose a technical solution that you are comfortable with, or to choose a language to develop a solution, because you are more comfortable with it, even if it's not the best for the project, or for the company. So the self-serving bias, especially for technical people, is probably one of the most spread.

Another one and I think the last one I’m going to talk about is the status quo bias. So, it's okay, we don't want to take a risk, so you know, if we don't, if we don't do something at least we are less likely to fail at least, in the short term. And organizations tend to focus on short-term objectives. So basically, that serves everybody's needs. We will change when we have to, you know, this is the kind of typical sentence that you can hear for the status quo bias.
People who say ‘if it's not broken don't fix it,’ so if you have to wait that something is broken to fix it, it probably means that, you know, you can do a bit of predictive maintenance, you know, just to avoid something to break. And also something you will hear a lot with the status quo bias is, “oh we tried this before,” you know, as the world doesn't change since we discussed that, so it may be 5 years ago, 10 years ago. So, we tried this 10 years ago, you know, we tried to develop an app, let's say but it didn't, you know, make some success in the market. So, we decided to withdraw it and stop it.

Well, you know what the world 10 years ago is very different from the world today. So basically, once again, if someone said we tried this before, it's, it rings a bell and basically this is how you spot your status quo bias. And you can see the bias that I have listed. So, the confirmation bias, self-serving, HiPPO, status quo, are basically-- I’m sure, Tim, you can relate to them in a way or another, and say “oh yeah I’ve done, I’ve done this, I’ve said that.”

And we are all guilty in a way. And the purpose is not necessarily to fight them, it’s to identify the bias, to contain the damage they could create and creating silos in the organizations. So, the purpose is let's not have bias at all. It's to identify the bias, and act upon that, you know, if someone comes to you and says, “oh yeah I want to use this technology, because I used it before in my projects and I know it very well,” I say, “oh yeah, you know what that's a kind of self-service bias here - is this technology the best for the organization, or the best for you?”

So, you know quickly you can trigger these conversations and that's why it's important to know these biases and to be able to identify them.

Tim Butara: And one thing that I really noticed while you were, while you were enumerating the different biases, and one thing that you already kind of touched upon before, and I kind of want to continue with is that basically the self-serving bias and the status quo bias are basically textbook examples of having a fixed mindset which is the antithesis basically of having a growth mindset, you know. Because with a growth mindset, it's like, okay, you know, I’m, there's an opportunity to do something better, to improve, to learn something new, to kind of challenge the status quo and make it better. But the two biases, so self-serving and, and status quo are basically about keeping things as they are, you know, if it works, it works. Don't optimize it until it breaks. So, it's really interesting how actually the two topics of today's episode, that we're, that we've been discussing so far kind of play along so significantly and maybe, maybe, it's not immediately obvious that they do.

Cyril Coste: No that's very well spotted, yeah, absolutely. It's based, you know, on the kind of attitude, you know, as we mentioned before. And basically the first step to adopt a growth mindset is, you know, do you want to improve yourself, improve your team, improve your organizations, you know, and do it better for the benefits of your clients. And you're absolutely right, in the self-serving and status quo biases there are really very personal biases that basically are linked to your mindset, and will as you say it's a fixed mindset. It's very much uh about I don't want to evolve, I just want to play with my cards, with the cards I have in my hand, and you know, I don't, I won't try to get new cards. This is pretty much yes, the mindset, you're absolutely right.

Tim Butara: Okay. That basically does it for most of my questions. Maybe another, another final question that kind of ties both of today's topics together, you know we, we’re all familiar with the Covid- 19 crisis now, it's affected all of us. I, I hope everybody listening is still staying safe, staying healthy. But I’m guessing that probably de-siloing and, and growth, growth mindset also underwent some, some changes because of Covid. Like, have you seen the current pandemic impact the two areas that we discussed today, and if so, in what ways?

Cyril Coste: That's a very good question because I, I never thought about linking this to the Covid, or the “new normal”. So that's, that's very interesting. So what, what shocked me, you know, I was working in Canary Wharfs when this started in London and basically companies, huge companies are like few weeks, a few weeks really to completely change the way their personnel was going to work, you know. It's, it's easy to say “oh yeah everybody works with a laptop from home.”

Well firstly, does everybody have a laptop? Does everybody have the internet connection at home? Do you need a second monitor? Do you have a place to work from home at all? You know if you share a flat, it's not necessarily easy. I remember that basically, the biggest challenge was concerns about the stability of the infrastructure, because when you have 6000 employees, you know, working in the office, it's fine. But when they have never tested before 6000 employees working from home trying to access systems externally, that was a massive change.

And it just shows that basically the attitude on the mindset that um CIOs and CTOS had to go through in a very short period of time to make it possible has been incredible, you know. CIOs usually you know are very conservative people, you know, they don't really like changes. Don't, don't repeat that. But basically, you know, they have probably, of the board members, you know, with, with the CFOs the most conservative people. And they had to go through a cycle of change in less than a month, basically, that has been incredible, you know. I’ve seen some companies rushing to deploy Microsoft teams for example, because they didn’t have any collaboration, a real collaboration tool before. So they had to go through like what they were supposed to deploy in 12 to 18 months, they had to go through in three weeks basically. So I think Covid has kind of potentially brought something in people's mind, and especially the C-suite and people who are probably more on the conservative mindset that, you know, when you want, you can. Say when you want to do something huge, they say, you know, deploying company-wide collaborative tools in a very short period of time where usually you would have got like 50 consultants that will come to help you to do it, and you say “Oh gosh I don't have the time, I have to do it.”

So basically, it's possible and I think that's something really positive, is basically as we come, you know, the preconceptions before the bias or if you want to deploy your large-scale solution you have to have a high key outsourcing companies, and you will have 50 consultants for one year, that's going to generate a lot of power points etc. I think that's, that's gone. I think people say, oh gosh, we can do so much by ourselves now. So that's one thing.

Second thing is how, so I’m not talking about the kind of, you know, business as usual BAU projects, but more or activities I should say, but let's say projects. And in a very short period of time, once again teams across the companies had to find a way to collaborate online. So, let's forget the meetings, let's forget the PowerPoints, you know, that you add in the office. And say, oh, how in a short period of time organizations have shifted in a kind of matrix structure way, and without any kind of fully formal training, by the way.

But basically, each people in each team had to find a way to deliver, you know, their value, working from, or managing their own agenda, you know, not talking to your team leader, or project leader, you know, around the corner, because, you know, you're not going to pick up your phone every time you have questions, you know, you can't be that disruptive in this moment. So you know uh making a difference between what is urgent is important. I think when you work from home. Everybody's working from home, these notions about important and urgent are, are really fundamental because you can't be reactive. You can't work on what is urgent all the time. It's just impossible. Otherwise, you produce nothing. 

So, matrix structure, so, teams working better together, by having to collaborate by basically putting their work in the collaborative tools, collaboration tools, as I mentioned earlier. And also in terms of, yeah, as I said, a better emphasis on what is important versus what is urgent, and we made discussions with people across different companies. The term is that basically there are some projects where they didn’t have any value at all, basically have just quietly disappeared, so basically it has been a kind of natural filter this kind of Covid about, you know, focusing on what really matters during that time.

Tim Butara: And that's kind of what you, what you pointed out initially as one of the, one of the main tenets of a growth mindset.

Cyril Coste: It is, and yeah, it's really linked. Basically, as long as you work with people who have this mindset or you support them in developing a growth mindset. You give them the opportunities, the tools the time to do it when, you know, challenging times come, they will be there and they will be basically ready to face the challenge. And some companies will do better at the end of this crisis, and I’m, I bet you that it will be how, how people enter this crisis and, you know, their mindset and, you know, how they wanted to work to work together, how they supported their employees, that basically will differentiate the winners from the not so winners.

Tim Butara: Yeah, I agree with that. Okay that's all from me. Is there any final word that you'd like to give to our listeners?

Cyril Coste: If people are interested in the kind of growth mindset and biases, I think there's plenty on the internet, or in terms of books where they will find what is interesting. I think what matters is what is actionable they say, you know, as I said earlier it’s, it’s one thing to know uh about biases. What's most important is okay to identify them, to act, to act on them, so, whatever you're going to search on YouTube, on Amazon etc. just be sure that basically there is a kind of takeaway that will help you to take actions.

Tim Butara: Yeah, that's a very good point to make, yeah, thanks. Okay, before we finish our discussion just one final thing, Cyril. If people want to reach out to you, or to learn more about you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Cyril Coste: Okay well my two best friends are basically Twitter and LinkedIn. So, on Twitter it’s @CyrilCoste.com so C-Y-R-I-L C-O-S-T-E, and on LinkedIn too. So just search my name and should be one of the top results, and I'm happy to connect and to discuss. And if, if you have some coaching needs, and you want to discuss more, business related topics you can contact me via email at cyril@cyrilcoste.com. So I bet, Tim, will put my email somewhere.

Tim Butara: Yeah, no worries.

Cyril Coste: Okay that's good.

Tim Butara: Okay, thank you Cyril for taking the time to talk with me today. It was really, really great to have you as our guest. And to our listeners, that's all for this episode. Have a great day everyone and stay safe!

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