Vision and bravery in leadership with Mike Pettigrew

Jacqueline Conway  00:00

The organizational peak is a perilous environment. It’s more complex and challenging than anything that’s gone before, and as a consequence, both executive tenure and corporate longevity are decreasing to survive and thrive at the perilous peak, executive leaders need to balance their functional leadership, a focus on execution with enterprise leadership that is ensuring the organization adapts in our new world. That’s what we’ll be exploring in the advanced executive leadership podcast. Welcome. I’m your host. Jacqueline Conway. I’m the Founder and Managing Director of Walden Croft, a consulting practice dedicated to helping executives and executive teams anticipate, navigate and lead at the perilous peak. Hello and welcome to the advanced executive leadership Podcast. Today we’re diving into a conversation that’s inspiring and thought provoking with Mike Pettigrew, the CEO of ASCO, materials management and logistics business for the global energy sector. Mike is a dynamic leader whose career has spanned industries, continents and some of the toughest challenges in business, from transforming undervalued organizations to navigating the energy sector shift toward renewables, Mike shares candid insights about how vision, bravery and a people first approach can turn obstacles into opportunities. If you are curious about what it means to lead with clarity and conviction in times of change. Then this episode is a must listen. Let’s get started. I’m a

Mike Pettigrew  01:49

chartered electrical engineer, and I started my life at Rolls Royce industrial power. And I spent time I was nine years there, I spent time in India, and I set up a business for them and ran it in Malaysia, and both in terms of capital projects and sales and marketing and servicing of complex components, I’ve been I’ve spent time in aerospace, supply chain. I’ve spent time in automotive, a little bit of automotive, a little bit of specialist manufacturing, cable manufacturing. I’ve spent a bit of time in, obviously, power transmission, directly. I spent time in ship design for Babcock. We created a company which became the largest marine design company in Europe. For Babcock at Versailles. I then spent time actually doing warship pre fitting and building the aircraft carrier. Aircraft carrier Alliance was part of that for a little while, and and then, most recently, I came into, I was with altrad for a little bit of while when it was cape, and then became altrad Industrial services. And then I then I came into ASCO, which was because I was looking for a vehicle which was private equity. And ASCO, I discovered ASCO through somebody who introduced me to the CEO. And I just found it was a fantastic business that was undervalued by its its clients, by its shareholders. At the time, we were being sold in a private degree, but really sadly, by its employees who didn’t felt they had to justify their existence to even their customers. So with those challenges, it was a huge opportunity.

Jacqueline Conway  03:32

So that’s really interesting about it being undervalued in all of those ways. How did that show up from the employee point of view, um,

Mike Pettigrew  03:41

since about 2014 when there was that big crash in the oil price, it went from 120 to $29 a barrel. The oil companies, the big oil companies, big nationals and the regional oil companies, squeeze the supply chain to such an extent, um, which is 90% of the employees in the industry are in the supply chain. So they squeeze the supply to such an extent that people felt they almost had to justify even making a profit, and they were so browbeaten by the by the operators who were desperately trying to save money. You can understand that the easiest way to save money is past that. Past the past the problem onto your supply chain and and these are 10 years of this. Well, nine years of it. And so the time I came in, and they really had got to a point where, if you were going to put the going to go for a strategy which involved maybe losing a bit of market share in return for some margin improvement, they didn’t feel they could justify it. They didn’t feel they could justify even making a profit to some degree which, which is a shame, because they’re good people, they just needed to take little confidence, pill and and band and a bit of bravery. Bravery is a really important thing in any company. And I’m not spam, don’t mean foolhardy, but you need to be brave, because in our company, you need to be brave because. Because you need to be able to stand your own ground for what is fair, you know, what is a sustainable margin. But also you need to be brave, because we’ll go with with the declining oil and gas in the UK anyway, they need to start looking at new markets. So that requires a bit of bravery as well, because what you’re going to sell into is a different market and possibly different

Jacqueline Conway  05:17

services. So we’ve got those two things going on where there was a there was an organization that that lacked kind of self confidence, you’re talking about for bravery. So why were you a good match?

Mike Pettigrew  05:31

What I’ve always been really good at is, is growing companies. I’m rubbish at financial detail. I can do it, but it bores me silly so. But I love strategically positioning businesses and growing them, and I love it so much that I in my previous roles where we built that design company, for instance, they have never done anything but gray warships. So when I took them into let’s go and design complex FPSOs and heavy lift ships, they really were frightened. But the enthusiasm, I think, becomes infectious and and I really care about I really and I really believe that people could do almost anything when I’ve been at so many companies where people think leadership is governance and assurance and putting in, you know, committees for this and committees for that, all of which is required, but that’s management. Surely, that’s managing the status quo. Leadership is about saying, Well, look, guys, that’s where we’re going, and inspiring people to go with you. They’re not, I think, because that’s, that’s what was required here. It was a complete change of direction, both in their existing market, but also in the in the future market. And they need somebody to say this is possible,

Jacqueline Conway  06:41

yeah. And so where did your capacity for knowing what was possible, both having the vision, but also that all important bravery? Where do they stem from? From my perspective,

Mike Pettigrew  06:54

and just put your hand up if you can’t hear me, but from my perspective, I was sent to Malaysia by Rolls Royce industrial power. I volunteered to set up a business for them in in in the country, in Kuala Lumpur. And I literally, literally, I was 27 and they gave me a ticket. Said they go set up a business for Rolls Royce industrial start selling and winning, winning projects, selling components, selling power switch gear and electric electronic relays, protection relays, and I had nothing. I had a book about how they worked. So I was one page ahead of the the industry in Malaysia and and I had to do everything myself. And when you’re thrown in the deep end, you know needs must. And I just found I loved it. I loved going and finding out who wanted to buy stuff, who had a need, and going and servicing that need. Because, you know, I loved doing that. And I built up a business which was a multi million pound business inside, I guess, three years, to the point that it got so large that they thought I was a con man, and they sent out auditors from from the UK to check that I hadn’t been doing something because the sales were so big. So from a standing start, and I employed all my own local staff, and I loved it. I absolutely that’s where, that’s where I got my first taste of, you know, anything’s possible, if you put your mind to it. So yeah, there we are. And so, so

Jacqueline Conway  08:23

tell me a little bit more about you know. So you’ve got this bravery, you’ve got this vision, and then you said something interesting a few minutes ago, where you said, and then you need to take everybody with you, and that that is leadership. So say more about that. I

Mike Pettigrew  08:38

i mean that comes from my experience of people inspiring me. You know, if I, if I, if I see that there’s an opportunity in a marketplace adjacent to where we are, and, you know, getting enthusiastic about what could be achieved if we, if we, if we, if we actually embrace that opportunity, then you will find out very quickly which of your team is prepared to come with you and say, Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll have a go at that. This is something a little bit out of my comfort zone. You know, for ASCO, for instance, oil and gas was the supply of logistics and materials management for end to end. So I feel like three, three or four PL in oil and gas was their comfort zone. That’s where they always it’s a safe place. That’s where they always went. And when anybody went to them, Well, what about lifting turbines, or doing Mars, the assembly of wind turbines, or warehousing for large cable components for offshore wind, they look to you like, Oh, my goodness. But when you start to explain, Well, this was possible. This is what the market needs, that you know there is, there is a huge appetite for the slight modification of the services we currently offer into that market, you start to get some traction. Not everybody goes with you, to be honest. Jacqueline, I mean, the reality is some people, everybody, you know, Aces, in their places. Some people are very safe. They’re safe place doing what they do. And you need people who do that. But you also some need some people. Who actually are prepared to break the mold and come with you in a different direction, because all companies need to evolve. You know, that’s the that’s the reality. Well,

Jacqueline Conway  10:10

absolutely. And I mean that just goes to what I was about to ask there about the nature of the industry and the transition that we’re going through, and whether or not, then there’s a you know, so obviously there’s the technical transition that we are making in Scotland and further afield. But what about the leadership or the people transition? I mean, is it a case of simply deploying the same skill set to different opportunities towards renewables that wear oil and gas, or is there something on top of that that’s needed?

Mike Pettigrew  10:50

So it depends what aspects of renewables. Renewables is a huge sort of set of you know, it can be carbon capture, it can be future fuels based on hydrogen, green hydrogen production, or ammonia or E methanol. So it’s different components, but it’s the same skills we could you know, we still manage the materials and warehouse them and make sure they are there for our clients, so that their projects and their operations are mitigated. The risks are mitigated, because the materials and the people are there when they need them.

Jacqueline Conway  11:16

You’ve come into ASCO, and you’re helping this organization with this transition, what? How do you do that, in terms of the vision? And I guess I’m thinking about, how do you know what needs to happen next? Now, there’s a saying, you know, there’s some people that kind of say, we’ve got an intuitive sense about you know, you just know the marketplace and you get a feel for these things. There are other people who do sort of really robust forecasting. There are other people that do Strategic Foresight kind of work. I mean, how is it that you know where to place your bets? As it were?

Mike Pettigrew  11:52

People can do paralysis by analysis. You can sit there and over over, bake strategic plans in. And it’s a very dynamic environments in our energy transition. So you could spend months doing a strategic plan, only to find that the ground beneath you have shifted, that sand has shifted. So the way, the way I do it is, I you just brought up and go and speak to some of the clients who are spending the money and say, what is it? What is it? Where are your challenges? Tell us about your business. Empathetic learning. What is what is it for? Empathetic listening. What is it you’re you’re finding difficult. What are you experts in? So to give you an example, I’m not used company names, but you know, big offshore wind development company, they are no experts in, in logistics and materials management. Why would they be? That’s not That’s not the game. Most of the most of the big offshore wind developers are actually, to a degree, investors. They’re investing in that technology to make a return from the electricity. They may have some technical capability, but it’s rare that they will have really in depth logistics and materials management capability, so they may not recognize that day one, that that is one of the critical enablers that will make their project a success. But they’ll learn it pretty quick. And I go and speak to them, I mean, that’s the that’s the way anybody should you should always build a strategy from the market, from the market need, so identify what that needed. So you said that makes sense.

Jacqueline Conway  13:21

Yes, it makes perfect sense. And, you know, you talked about well before the market there was this, you know, after the oil and gas price crash and the and the margins being squeezed within the supply chain, and the impact that that had in your business. And you know, what came into my mind then was the kind of ethics of that, but also that that was a that was a business risk that, you know, the business has overcome. I’m thinking of one or two particular business risks kind of going forward. What do you see within your industry? Are the big business risks

Mike Pettigrew  14:02

for us at the moment is probably the strong overlap, you know, where I am, in no way a climate change denier. I mean, I believe that global warming is potentially an extinction event for the human race, so we need to get off our dependency on oil and gas products. Let’s let’s not be about the bush. But there must be a strong overlap, because you get an awful lot of gesture politics, of people running around saying, Oh, I hate the oil and gas certain politicians in the budget recently, I hate the oil and gas industry. We need to punish these people with incredible, incredibly high taxes, almost to oblivion. Let’s punish them to oblivion, because that’ll help fund other things in the sector, in the economy, but also it’ll reduce our carbon footprint. Just as an engineer to clarify something, the production of oil and gas. Does not lower your fog, your carbon footprint. It is that. It is, it is the consumption of oil and gas that produces your carbon footprint. So simply not producing it indigenously in the UK won’t, in fact, lower our carbon footprint. It will actually increase it, because I have to bring it in. So the way to get off that our dependency as a society on hydrocarbons is is to manage the removal of our need for it. So so find alternative, viable, commercially acceptable alternatives to us using hydrocarbons. You know, we need to, as a society, stop our need for hydrocarbons, because simply shutting it off at one end will actually just create trouble, because we haven’t today, got an alternative, and we need to work an alternative. So my risk to my business is that they try, because it’s politically a football. They try and squeeze one out before the other one is ready. Of course, the problem with that is also that you will then downsize the same supply chain that’s going to do offshore wind and carbon capture. If it’s not there because you’ve crushed the oil and gas industry, it won’t be there to support the growth of the alternative industries. So there has to be a strong overlap.

Jacqueline Conway  16:17

And I want to go to that point about it’s not going to be there, because I tell you something that I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading about recently, which has sort of had a profound impact of on me. And it’s, it’s looking closely at the demographics of, well, the world demographics, but also you and I are both sitting here in Scotland and various parts of Scotland right now, I know that you’re a global organization that you’ve got, you’ve got locations all over, but we have a declining demographic. We are much, much, much worse than even the rest of the UK. There are some other countries that are in this position where there The fertility rate is not reproducing the amount of people that it’s replacing. So I think it’s like 1.3 in Scotland at the moment, children per like live births per woman and and so what they’re anticipating is that by 2045 what we’re going to have in Scotland is an aging population, much less people coming into the the companies to do the work and and the fact that you’re not going to make that up because these declining fertility rates are are kind of baked in now. So what do you do in those kind of situations where you think, because I know that you have said in your front and center about it on the website, for example, about people being absolutely essential in your business and central to your business. We are people business, yeah, so What? What? What does that mean? I mean, is that something that you’re giving any thought to? Is it something that,

Mike Pettigrew  18:13

yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s a real it’s a real issue, not not just actually the demographics of people. It’s difficult to get people into our industry. So oil and gas, it’s got a terrible if the oil and gas element of our business, it has people don’t join us because of that, because Greta Thunberg has rightly, absolutely slagged off the use of hydrocarbons, but blamed the oil and gas company for that, which is not entirely I don’t think it’s entirely fair, but, but it does, it does taint the industry. But if I the way I’ve got around that, to get graduate trainees to say, well, actually, our future isn’t as a key enabler of offshore wind, and it is, and suddenly they say, well, we can be part of that transition. But I think, I think, yeah, there is a real issue in the in our economy, about an Asian population, but actually also about skills. You know, people don’t want to do warehousing, which is what we do. They don’t want to work on Quay sides in, you know, in the rain. People want to work in offices. Why wouldn’t you? And that’s a real issue, and we, one of the ways we’re trying to tackle it is, is looking to be able to recruit specialist people from because we’re around the world, we can bring, potentially, bring people in, if we can get Veals for them to work in this country, Trinidad, for instance, one of our home markets. We’ve got fantastic people in Trinidad that we use in other parts of the world. They’d be really good people to bring it. But also we have to have a very strong Ed and I ethics and culture. You know, I don’t understand why people, why? Why people sit there and somehow, consciously or subconsciously exclude huge section of the population. How can you afford to do it? You know? How can you afford to say, well, we’re misogynistic. You can’t afford. You need the best people, irrespective of of of the gender or the how? Their color, or whatever. You can’t you have to have be able to employ as many people as possible, take the best so. And I guess that’s one way of one thing. Yeah,

Jacqueline Conway  20:11

and yeah, oil and gas, even though, well and less so renewables, but oil and gas was traditionally quite male dominated, and the women that actually worked alongside in that industry tended to be more in the support type, functions, HR, finance, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And so what can you do to make that then attractive, as attractive a career for for women than is for men.

Mike Pettigrew  20:43

Well, I think you have to have to try and start to eliminate glass ceilings. You know, I’m sitting here at the moment to be absolutely honest, and our board is entirely male, which is not completely unusual oil and gas, let’s be honest. But some of our best talent is not male and and we need to make sure they have a route to get onto that board. No way could you say we are brilliant. I mean, I can’t remember the statistic, but we are somewhere around 20% of our of our employees are women and diversity, ethnic diversity. I don’t think we’re particularly good at certainly not in Aberdeen, but we are an international company, so we we tend to have to employ people locally anyway. So if you go to Senegal, it’s almost all local people, because that’s the only economic way you can do it. You can’t have expats going all over the world. So So we train people up in those localities.

Jacqueline Conway  21:38

Yes, yes. And of course, when I go back to the demographics point, then actually the places in the world where the demographics are going in the other direction is actually in the sub Saharan African countries, Nigeria and Ethiopia and places like that. I’m imagining then that you have got a very kind of large appetite for risk. You’re you’re able to live with the uncertainty, live with that risk, be able to lean into it and see the opportunities in that.

Mike Pettigrew  22:08

I’m not a gambler. I don’t I don’t bet the farm on things. But you know, manage risk for upside is always it’s always part of business. You have to invest something speculatively to get something back, but as long as you understand what’s worth, I could lose this wealth. Fair enough. It was, it was a good speculation.

Jacqueline Conway  22:29

At the beginning of this conversation, you talked about, one of the things that was attractive about ASCO was its private equity. Me, yeah, and I wonder what impact that sort of ownership structure has on risk and the the ability to pivot if it’s necessary, and those kind of things,

Mike Pettigrew  22:49

I think they are to my experience private equity, and this is I’ve been involved a little bit before, but it’s the first time I’ve actually been in a leadership role under Private Equity. Ownership is, you know, it is pure capitalism. It is individuals in the private equity company have consciences of, you know, all this, CSR agendas, etc, but in reality, their investments are investments they expect to get a return. That’s very empowering. There’s no other agenda. And so therefore, you build a sustainable business based on satisfying your customers by employing really good, motivated people. And it’s just sustainable, and it’s for the long term, and then at some point in the future, people will buy that business for more money for the private equity company, because you’ve built something much greater than you started with. And I think ASCO, to me, ASCO just represented a really good opportunity, because it was undervalued by its by its custom, by its customers, by its by its employees, but also by its by its owners. Then, who were banks. They just wanted their money back. So actually, it was underpriced. So endless were very quick. There was a number of people competing for it, but endless recognized that actually what they really needed to do to land it was just come up with the cash, pony up the cash, no debt, just drop it on the table, and they got it. So, so, so, yeah, is it any different from other companies I’ve been in? The clock is ticking in private equity all the time the clock is ticking. Grow, grow, grow, grow. Whereas sometimes feeling PLCs, there’s less immediate pressure. They can speculate a bit more on certain markets, and private equity don’t do any of that. But I personally find that empowering. I think that’s good, because it focuses. That’s what matters. You always ask the question, when you’re when you’re when I’ve been an asker, is, is this going to increase the value of the company? You know, it’s doing this action, going to increase the value? Yeah,

Jacqueline Conway  24:51

yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s what it’s that it’s that strong focus on value creation, isn’t it? And assessing. Everything, yeah, you know, on value creation. And actually, that that sort of interface between PLC and and and private equity is interesting, isn’t it? Because, um, because, in some way that’s that, yes, that the clock is ticking, because, invariably, they’ve got an exit date in mind. That’s maybe, you know, the few years either 10 year, to turn it around. And yet, paradoxically, they often think longer term. They often think about sort of putting things in place that that are more legacy, because they see the value creation of that into the longer

Mike Pettigrew  25:38

term, because that’s something they’re selling with the business. I mean, you know when they sell a business? When our owners sell the business, it will be selling the future. So they can’t just say, What did a great did really great last year, but there’s, there’s nothing on the order book tomorrow, they’re selling the future. And that’s the whole future of business. So not just earnings potential, but But you know, you mentioned earlier about having the right people and the right demographics and the right CSR and the right Ed and I policy and the right governance and assurance and all these things. You know, they are selling our business that will have to survive significant customer due diligence and and rightly so. Nobody coming in to buy this business should just buy blind so, so, yeah, they’re creating something of value, and that means, you know, a time frame beyond their ownership.

Jacqueline Conway  26:25

Yes, and I just want to ask you though about something that I’ve been sort of reading and writing a bit about recently, which was, you know, in 1970 the economist Milton Friedman said the sole responsibility of a business is to make a profit. And we’ve had people onto this podcast, Eden McQueen, who’s written a book called ethical leadership, who said, you know, it wasn’t just that Friedman’s philosophy was wrong, it was morally bankrupt. And so how do you square kind of a strong profit motive with business, the expectation on business. I mean, you mentioned earlier that it’s hard to get young people to come into oil and gas. Yeah. So how do you square that with it’s not just that the demographics are changing. There’s a value people. You know, young people are their values are different, and they don’t just want to work for profit. They want to contribute something more. And so where does the ethics come into that?

Mike Pettigrew  27:35

Well, so I’d start off by saying, I think I don’t agree that the only thing is to make a profit. I mean, there’s a three legged stool, you know, and you can’t have so you want, you want your stakeholders to be happy, and your shareholders, which, which ultimately will probably be a profit. But you can’t do that without happy customers and and motivated and when you know, suitably rewarded employee. And so it’s actually a three legged stool. If one of those, one of those, one of those legs falls away, the whole thing collapses. So you can’t do it without you can’t do the profit without having the good customer, the customer satisfaction and the employees. That makes that happen. So, so I think it’s a bit, it’s a bit short sighted, saying it’s the only, it’s the outcome. I think I would say it’s the outcome of, you know, a more balanced strategy which encompasses all aspects of the business and and if you look at things like, you know what, what motivating people, they need to believe in the company they work for. They need to believe the ethics we have. We have series of ethics and standards and codes of conduct. But, you know, we fundamentally believe in our in our business. We want them to believe in it as well.

Jacqueline Conway  28:45

I’m remembering Mike, that you said in a previous conversation that we had, you know, I don’t read a lot of leadership books. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t have a theory of leadership, but, but it sounds like you do have a theory of leadership. It might not come from a book, but what I’m hearing is your own kind of personally evolved idea of what leadership is, and I wonder if it would be at all possible for you to try and articulate what that might be if

Mike Pettigrew  29:22

we get from ask or something, some sense of self satisfaction, either because they feel rewards when they come to work, or they enjoy their colleagues, the time of their colleagues, or or because, because of our policies and our ethics, I think that’s really important, because that’s what it should That’s what work should be about. It’s not just a about. It’s not just about turning up and getting paid. And if it is, I think that would be a little bit a little bit sad. It should be much more than that. And so I don’t know if that’s leadership, but I think that’s a culture of a company I would always want to inspire. And I thought, you know, I’ve always made the point. I did a. Town hall two weeks ago, to the to the global Town Hall, and somebody said to me, you’re going to tell them the numbers. I said, Absolutely, absolutely. I tell them the numbers. This is, this is, this is our business. It’s called a company because it’s a company of people. It’s our business. It belongs to all of us, not just endless that. You know, our private equity owners. Everybody has a stake in this business. So we’ll tell them entirely, and we’ll tell them if things are going badly, and we’ll tell them if where the challenges are, but we’ll also tell them when things are going really well. You know, we’ve had probably the best year we’ve had since 2014 financially. And that is down to the people we employ. It’s not down to me, it’s down to the people we employ. And they should be really proud of that. So if you don’t tell them, how can they possibly be proud of it? So I think communication is really important in leadership at all levels.

Jacqueline Conway  30:47

And I’m reminded of my colleague Peppa and I waiting to speak to you a few months ago and speaking to one of your junior colleagues, a young woman who said, Oh, it wasn’t until I came to ASCO, and it wasn’t until I met Mike that I thought that leadership was possible for me, and now I think I could, one day, I could be a leader. And you know, I was so touched by that, because it was genuine, but it did speak to something about what you obviously embody in the company that you know, whether it comes from kind of a you know, doesn’t come from a book theory, but it comes from, you know, the kind of values that you imbue in your own leadership and in The organization, and the impact that that has on young people, that opens up an opportunity or a possibility for them that beforehand they didn’t think was for them,

Mike Pettigrew  31:50

which is which? I’m flattered by that thing I did find out who was, and I’m very flattered. I think one of the things I think is important, and we’ve actually talked about this before, is about it’s about status. So I used to work for a defense contractor. If I said it was Babcock and it was, we started off life as a 300 million pound turnover company, when I’ve been various different places, and the guy who’s the CEO, came in and he said, right, build businesses. You know, as long as it’s ethical, right, sustainable and long term, build, build businesses. And I will support you in doing and that, that bit like private equity, that’s very empowering. So, so we built this huge business and hugely profitable business, and then within five, six years, ASCO was a FTSE 100 with a five and a half billion pound turnover and and everything changed. It became the number of non executive suddenly found on board the center started to get bigger. This London city center, center in wakemore street side to get big, big, big, big. And it completely forgot how it got that, how it got to that position. It lost all the value of entrepreneurial flair, of inspiration, of the leadership I described. It lost all of that, and ended up being people in the center. And when I decided to leave, because it just wasn’t for me, because it was, it was like running through treacle. The CEO, real nice guy, Archie Bethel said, took me in his office and and he said, so why are you leaving? I said, Well, you know, because it’s become this bureaucratic defense contractor, the very thing it wasn’t supposed to be. And I’m not that. I’m not a civil servant. I don’t, I don’t do that sort of management and assurance and governance piece. And I said, you know, and if you want an example, of that, I said, the last time I had a budget review, there was, there was only, there was 14 people in the room, and I only knew five of them, but the other nine had an opinion on my, on my business. But we’re accountable for nothing, and I think you need to, you need to always remember what sort of business you’re trying to be. If you’re trying to empower people, then empower them. Don’t, don’t put a whole lot of rules on them. Just guide them and inspire them. Don’t. If you want to, if you want to ball a stone to run down a hill, you can either slowly walk it down the hill in a very measured way, and it’ll take you forever, or you can let it run and just guide it and and I think one of the things that organizations that became, and it became like BA Systems, if anybody watches this from BA Systems, I apologize profusely, but a big behemoth of a business, big institutional company, and it’s all very status LED. It’s very hierarchical, and there’s all the trappings of seniority, you know, put offices and and posh cars in the in the car parking and and, and, you know what I’m going to tell you, and things like a nice watch, and that’s absolutely what I don’t stand for. Because I think it just, you know, I am no better and more important in this business than anybody. Contributes value in ASCO and and so therefore I wear a watch associated with that. I wear a Casio. And the reason I wear a Casio is because I think that’s important, that people should remember the values here, what’s important. And I was at a company. I went to a company called altrad, what was cape, and before I came here, and they every if there was a lot of scaffold there, scaffolders work from work for cape and very skilled scaffolded. It’s very skilled job, but it was really important to scaffold as part of their sort of journey through life was to get a hugely expensive Rolex or Breitling or something as soon as they could afford it. You know, the children might have no shoes, but they would have a bright like Rolex on their wrist and and so therefore, I got this because I went in there as one of the directors, like, I got this because I, I think that’s the wrong value. You know, it’s our society. The money is all about this ownership of these, these, these totems. And I just think it’s completely the wrong value. So, yeah, does that answer question? I remember the question was,

Jacqueline Conway  36:03

well, it does. It does answer the question because, because I think, and I remember the Casio example, and I often say when I see it on your wrist there

Mike Pettigrew  36:13

for that video, and it has a small light, you know, so it’s more accurate than a Rolex, and it has a small light, what’s, what’s, what’s not to love.

Jacqueline Conway  36:20

It’s these symbols, isn’t it? Because we think, because people are watching, and they’re actually paying quite a lot of attention to those things around there’s what we espouse in an organization that’s important, and then there’s what the witness is actually important.

Mike Pettigrew  36:38

I’m wearing this branded workwear, and it is not because I’m trying to increase the exposure necessarily, of asking to its clients or potential clients, although a lot of our people do work in their sites and so they you can never advertise enough. But one of the primary reasons is branded workwear, if you’re all wearing the same thing, it creates that sense of team. You’ve all got the same objectives, you’ve all got the same behaviors, the same ethics. And I think it’s really, really important. So I will wear a suit if I’m going to be good big business leader. But when I’m when I’m just in the office on the daily basis, I will wear the same outfit as everybody else. And why not?

Jacqueline Conway  37:20

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