Mat Lock: Rocking the Ship

Transcript

[0:00:37] Charlie Hoehn: You’re listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. I’m Charlie Hoehn. Today’s episode is with Mat Lock, co-author of Rocking the Ship. Has your company reached its peak and stagnated? Do you have competitors disrupting the status quo? Mat and his coauthor Uli Grothe are here to teach you how to get back in the game. In this episode, Mat teaches us how he and Uli have turned corporate managers into innovators and business model mavericks. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a bullet proof strategy for getting ahead of the competition. And now, here is our conversation with Mat Lock.

[0:01:36] Mat Lock: I remember it clearly, it was a Sunday morning, early in May 2014. I was out riding my bike as I like to do before heading into the office and although it was a beautiful morning, I was distracted because of the – I guess the realities of where I was at within my management role. Yeah, I mean, fundamentally, I was expected to grow the business yet at the same time the business was calling for greater efficiency and cutbacks and even redundancies. It dawned on me that this dichotomy was one of the fundamental reasons that it’s seen our large organization become inflexible and all the internal politics were stronger and stronger. I guess every time we tried to move in a new direction or re-create or be innovative. That it just seemed to be surrounded by barriers, bureaucracy and BS frankly. As I was cycling, I wasn’t alone, I was with a number of other riders, as is the way around Singapore. They’d rotate around every couple of minutes and you get to chat with each of them and they’re all sort of corporate managements, Ex Pat corporate managers and it dawned on me in talking to them that in fact, all of my frustrations, the endless travel, all of the calls, the growing number of calls and internal meetings and internal focus. All of those frustrations were shared by all of the other people I was riding with, regardless of whichever industry they were from. Made no difference, which company, which industry. All frustrations and the challenges seem to be the same and fundamentally what was occurring was a business was declining. Profits were being squeezed and even though there was a lot of talk about being entrepreneurial and encouraging entrepreneurial spirit and being innovative. The opposite seemed to be true for the large corporate organizations, who in spite of that desire seemed incapable of coming up with ground breaking business innovation.

[0:03:40] Charlie Hoehn: How did this ultimately lead you to your book? Did you start to go down the path of figuring out how to spur that innovation or which problem did you decide to set out to solve?

[0:03:55] Mat Lock: Yeah, well my business partner Uli comes from a background of running strategy workshops and seminars for executives around the world. I’ve done that for several decades already and you know, considered very much the expert in doing so. What was interesting was, the frustrations that I was feeling, he made the same observations from his working life. So he wasn’t in a corporate environment per se but his audience were always from a corporate environment. We had that same epiphany I feel like. Why is it all of these talented, experienced and expensive managers from around the world are unable to cause change in their organization? By change, I mean, business innovation, real creative true business innovation. Why is it that they seem to be suppressed rather than are allowed to flourish and grow and grow the business as they’re tasked with doing? Certainly, it was together with Uli that we decided that it must be possible for established companies to think and act in the spirit of startups. It must be possible. We dug deep to find out, well why is it that that’s not happening, why is it that it’s predominantly the little startups that seemed capable of dominating and reshaping whole industries? Well, logically, the established companies who have all the cards in the hand and if you think about it, they have no short in financial resources, the expertise, they have the sales channels, the customer base, the RND capabilities. They have seemingly everything in their hand yet it’s the little startups that seem to be capable of dominating the traditional industries, or in fact recreating and causing new industries. That’s what we’ve set out initially to solve I guess, was to understand why it is that that’s the case but what can we do about it?

[0:06:01] Charlie Hoehn: Now, let me take a guess. You did all the research, so we’re going to hear your solution but I want to guess as to why this dynamic occurs of the small startups being the innovators while the bigger corporate companies with all the resources and the people tend to be suppressed? I’m going to guess, for one, there’s probably numerous major factors at play here but I’m also guessing that a lot of innovation doesn’t come necessarily from wanting to run a successful business. It comes from wanting to create something awesome, right? A quote from Mark Zuckerberg, I can’t quote it directly but I know that he started Facebook because he wanted to make something great. He believed that Facebook became number one of all the different social networks because he wasn’t set out at the beginning to create a business. He was set out to create the best possible product. Is that one of the contributing factors that you found in your research or what did you find in your book?

[0:07:12] Mat Lock: Absolutely. That would be the second point I’d come to with that question when we’ll talk about being truly customer centric. But actually it starts very much with the mindset, the psychology, of not only the organization at large but if you think about any organization, it is nothing more than a collection of individuals. Whatever your position or rank within the organization, that’s what a company sure there’s ISP and legal entities and so on but actually, when we talk about a company not being innovative. That doesn’t make any sense, it’s the people within the company who are not being innovative whether they’re not able to be or they’re not capable of it, whatever it is. It is the people we’re talking about. One of the fundamental challenges with the traditional approach to business innovation is that it focusses on opportunity, it focuses on what could be, what the potential is. What we have discovered and we’ve spent a lot of time researching this and talking to psychologists and the like and ultimately, we believe and we’ve shown many times with clients we’ve worked with, that a fear based approach is far more powerful. That’s one of the key departure that we make from those traditional approaches.

[0:08:35] Charlie Hoehn: Fear based approach?

[0:08:37] Mat Lock: Yeah, absolutely. If you think about it, we, as humans. We are wired to respond more immediately to danger if we get shocked or surprised, there’s a loud noise, what happens, it’s the fight or flight response that kicks in. That pulse, boom, instantly, speeds up. Our breathing rate increases so as it says, we get ready to either fight or run away, that’s an immediate response. Now, if we think about something nice that we’d like to have that’s aspirational, we don’t have that kind – we have a nice sensation but it’s not immediate. From a physiological perspective, we’re wired to respond quicker and more effectively to fear, no doubt about it.

[0:09:17] Charlie Hoehn: Are you saying that employees at bigger established companies and management teams become accustomed to being in a fear based mindset and a fear based approach whereas smaller startups, they don’t have that fear, they’ve really got nothing to lose.

[0:09:38] Mat Lock: Well, certainly that’s true. I mean, the startups are operating in a very different environment but really, from an early age growing up where fear is something that’s avoided. It’s considered a bad thing, it’s a negative, we should avoid it where if we’re saying, we should embrace and you can use that fear and you can use it very effectively. Certainly with what we’ve created, we actually teach managers how to virtually and playfully attack their own organization. Their own industry even, rather than trying to swim in blue oceans or seek white spaces and so on. We’re talking here about really, attacking your own business model, the business model of your industry. That’s ultimately what the startups have the liberty of doing because they have no connection, they’re not married to this status quo, let’s say. They’re not married to the established infrastructure. This large inflexible collection of departments and people in politics and they don’t have that. They don’t have the bias of thinking they know what the customer wants or trying to optimize a certain product because well, “We make that product for that group of customers, now we can try and tweak a little and set it to more customers.” They don’t have any of that. In fact, that brings us to the second point which you touched on which is all about being customer centric and often, with the large organizations, they become very inward focusing. I think many listeners would be able to relate to that. Think about it, all of the internal meetings, think of how much time out of your working day, working week, month or year – is dedicated to internal meetings talking about internal topics. Well you can be sure, the little startups are not doing that. They don’t have to do that. They’re incredibly focused on what the customers actually want. Now, when we talk about the customers, one of the other, I guess, key issues that’s large, established companies make, I’ve just touched on it with regards to recycling products to different customer groups. They’re often trying to please everybody. They need to and they’ve got these massive machines, these factories. This business machine that needs to be fed somehow and ultimately. they need more and more customers and they need to sell more and more products or services. Actually, we tend to use, you know, in the book we use the automotive industry as the thread let’s say for helping to tell our story. That’s because it’s very relatable for most people around the world but also, it’s a huge global industry that is being appended at the moment. Both electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles and the like.

[0:12:23] Charlie Hoehn: Matt, you said something that really caught my interest which was attacking your industry, your company in a way that’s playful and helpful. Let’s say I am a person who works at an established company and I’m caught in the day to day minutia and all the internal affairs that you’re talking about but I want to innovate, I want to contribute. How do I attack my industry playfully if I’m an employee or a manager at an established corporate business?

[0:12:58] Mat Lock: Absolutely, it’s a good question and certainly it’s one which I think many managers around the world do ask themselves and struggle with, I know I did. That’s at the heart of what Uli and I set about solving in the end. How is it that you can create your nightmare competitor? And essentially, we’re talking about your virtual nightmare competitor and the nightmare competitor I would define very simply as – if they opened their doors next to you tomorrow. They opened an office next to you tomorrow. What would they do that would render you and your business absolutely helpless. Everything that you hold true today that you would tell your customers, these are our strengths, and we touched on the automotive industry and let’s take that as an example. Most of the mainstream traditional car manufacturers would talk about the huge range of models they have, all of the dealerships and service networks that they have. They would talk all about those elements of their business but a nightmare competitive automotive industry wouldn’t care about the range of cars. They wouldn’t care about the number of dealerships and service stations. For example, if we think about Tesla and in fact we could, and we’re doing the book, we go through all of the elements that – or the constituents as we call them, that comprise a business model of the established. The nightmare competitor to them would basically eliminate most if not all of those to become the nightmare competitor let’s say.

[0:14:29] Charlie Hoehn: With the automotive case, they could have done this exercise of creating their nightmare competitor and thinking about what they could do to render us totally helpless. From my understanding, didn’t the automotive industry just fundamentally misunderstand the industry that they were actually in? They thought they were in the business of selling cars but really they were in the business of selling – getting from point A to point B.

[0:14:57] Mat Lock: I think for the traditional car manufacturers, yeah. I think you’re right, they’ve lost sight of their business being mobility and they’re perfect example which is why we’ve used them. They’ve become this huge juggernaut, excuse the pun. Sorry, that was unintended. They have, everything around the traditional car manufacturers supports the continuation of their business model, that being building combustion engines, designing sports cars, four-wheel drive SUV’s and so on. Building a massive range of cars for massive range of customers. Doing it in a very traditional way and everything about their industry supports that. You think about the unions within the car factory industry, they don’t want to change. They don’t want to change at all, they want to keep fighting for the rights of their workers and the like. You think about the supply on industries. All of the supplies for example that are making combustion engine parts today, they don’t want to change, they want business as usual and to sell more cars. Everything about it, the dealership’s the same, right? They make money a little bit by selling cars but mostly by servicing cars. The idea of bringing in an alternative that requires far less servicing is not attractive to them at all. They would not pursue that actively. Everything and I’m just touching, I’m paraphrasing a little bit. Everything about the automotive industry is fighting for the status quo and in the case of the automotive industry and whether or not Tesla will ultimately prevail long term, they have certainly paved the road for immense change within the automotive industry. I mean, they are without question the nightmare competitor of the automotive industry. If you think about the logic of that, I mean, Elon Musk doesn’t have a background in car manufacturing, not at all. He came from a software background. He’s come from outside of the automotive industry. Little tiny player by comparison with not very much money by comparison, to the established. He has intelligently and systematically, basically eliminated so many elements or constituents of the established automotive industries’ business model as well as then going beyond that. Adding in new constituents which they didn’t have a fight against and are struggling to play catchup in many areas. Certainly in the early days. That’s why we use them as an example but there are basically four steps to creating your nightmare competitor. To try and answer your question, simply there are four steps that we write about in the book and we teach it at our live events. In very simple terms, what we do is teach people how to systematically create a profile for the established thing, comments in this case, the BMW CI, there’s the GM’s, the Ford’s, the Toyota’s. What do all of them do that makes the industry what it is? And that’s describing the customer base of the established. We provided a really clear framework for doing that. We create the profile so that’s the first step and then for sure, really importantly step three is to identify those customers that’s not being perfectly served. I think that speaks to your point, that brings perfectly to the point of mobility. I mean, do people want combustion engines? In fact, there’s some people out there who don’t want cars at all. They want to be able to get from point A to point B and that’s the point but the car manufacturers at large who have lost sight of that longer way if indeed that was ever their intention but it opens the door perfectly for a Tesla or a Google or whoever. Uber, whoever it’s going to be in the future. Apple and others, who knows. But, it opens the door perfectly when customers of the established are not being perfectly served then it provides the opportunity for a laser focused outsider to enter that industry. Yu know, as we’ve seen, the results can be catastrophic for many of the established. Basically, creating a profile that the business quality established and then systematically creating a profile for what the nightmare competitor would look like. Sorry, I mean, the constituents, we’ve only flipped through them and not to dive into too much detail here but we cover things like the offerings, the valley creation system, the supplies the utilization. The model for generating revenue, how they generate revenues for that and important standards of integrity can be a really important lever as well. That provides a flexible framework that enables people to quite quickly – that’s the point. Quite quickly create their nightmare competitors and it’s only once you’ve got that, you have what we would call intellectual leadership because at that point, you know the potential moves of your nightmare competitors. Only then can you think about what you need to do to prevail in the future to shape the future of your own business.

[0:20:14] Charlie Hoehn: Author Hour is sponsored by Book in a Box. For anyone who has a great idea for a book but doesn’t have the time or patience to sit down and type it out, Book in a Box has created a new way to help you painlessly publish your book. Instead of sitting at a computer and typing for a year, hoping everything works out, Book in a Box takes you through a structured interview process that gets your ideas out of your head and into a book in just a few months. To learn more, head over to Bookinabox.com and fill out the form at the bottom of the page. Don’t let another year go by where you put off writing your book. It really seems like your question of creating – how can you create your nightmare competitor, what that allows managers and employees to do is to actually confront their fear so that they get out of that fear mindset, right? As soon as you actually put into terms what the nightmare competitor looks like, you’re not as much in a fear based approach, you’re proactive about being more innovative, right?

[0:21:28] Mat Lock: Absolutely, you’re in the ultimate position, you’re exactly where you are by harnessing that fear if you like. By harnessing it, you can put yourself into a position where you have intellectual leadership and let’s be clear. Most don’t have that today, they just don’t. It’s really only when you step outside of the status quo, you challenge the status quo, you step outside of the norm and you adopt a customer centric approach and using that fear based approach to create what your nightmare competitor would look like. How would they render you helpless? That’s your most powerful position to be in because now you actually have an insight into what it is potential competitors could do to render you helpless. Once armed with intellectual leadership, you can make the decision what to do, you can decide to do nothing, you can decide to sit on it and hope that no one does it but hope’s not a strategy, right? Let’s face it. Or, you can then decide to take action based on that and it may be – there are often one of the challenges we face, it’s not okay to stand, we have some amazing results, we don’t, our delegates do, readers do. They have some amazing results, we simply facilitate that, we provide the platform for it.

[0:22:41] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, Mat, let’s talk about some of your readers and their results. What kind of companies do you tend to work with?

[0:22:50] Mat Lock: We tend to work with medium to large corporate companies.

[0:22:54] Charlie Hoehn: Medium to large, how many employees?

[0:22:58] Mat Lock: I mean, okay, I’m happy to give a number but it’s not that it’s 12 we will only work with. The point is, medium to large in the grand scheme of the world would be I guess, 500 employees upwards.

[0:23:09] Charlie Hoehn: Okay.

[0:23:10] Mat Lock: We’ve worked with, actually the second company I’d like to talk about if we have time left. Staying true to the automotive industry. The first I’d like to talk about in terms of examples and certainly as I was saying, it’s not enough to come up with good ideas. I think lots of people come up with great ideas and have great ideas. But the corporate world, if I may, is often a place where great ideas go to die. It’s our observation and has been for a long time and certainly for Uli, the same. Running workshops from seminars for many years. The delegates or readers will go back to their daily grind after an event or reading the book or whatever it is. Armed with this great idea and trying to then convey you that in a way that fosters momentum let’s say. Agreement, often is the challenge. We’re often faced with the – yeah, it’s a good idea but that won’t work because you used to tell them devil’s advocate and no problem with that. Part of what we do is teach angel’s advocate, the opposite. That’s born from the reality of a lot of us are prewired in a corporate world. You can’t do that because that won’t to work because. All of the may Sayers if you like. What we want to do is turn the nay-sayers into team players. To keep heart of what we have to offer. We don’t only offer the ability to come up with these really bold insides. We also then provide a means for communicating that, how to derive these results yourselves while running your own workshops, how to then present that to whichever stakeholder has required. Then also how to actually structure it. How to turn this into commercial reality, it’s not enough to come up with good ideas. They need to be converted into commercial realities and one of the examples, to answer your question, one of the examples is a company called Zeppelin. Now you may have heard the name.

[0:25:11] Charlie Hoehn: As in Led Zeppelin?

[0:25:12] Mat Lock: That’s one option but no, the other Zeppelin. You might think about airships for example back in the good old days, Zeppelin, so the same company. So they would be in the grand scheme of the world, I guess a medium sized business but a very large business. A very classic German family company all of it with thousands of employees these days but they stayed true to the spirit of their entrepreneurial founder. And rather than what’s easily to be considered that they were a very traditional German reserved conservative company, on the contrary they adopted rocking of the ship wholeheartedly and in fact, they have embedded it. It’s now part of their – it is their annual process for looking into their business rather than the traditional strategy or planning approach they used to use. They now exclusively work with the nightmare competitor approach. So each of their heads of their business units they don’t stand up and talk about numbers. They don’t go, “Oh I think I can hit that number but we’ll stand back and stand back” and debate and negotiate. Their CEO, Mr. Gerstmann said, “I am not interested in hearing that. I want to know what we can do to continue being the nightmare competitor of our industry. To keep on innovating, to stay ahead of where our competitors could be,” which I found obviously appreciative in many ways. But I find that’s such a true form of leadership in itself is inspiring. But what they did as an example, part of their business, a big part of their business is reselling predominantly Caterpillar type heavy industrial equipment whether it’s mining equipment and some being bulldozers, diggers, Caterpillar trucks all that sort of stuff. So here we are talking about real businesses not pretty. It’s a dirty business, they sell and service all of that and they have a very small rental department in which they still have a rental problem. And on the back of running themselves through Rocking the Ship the first time, they’ve derived that they had really got a risk in their business in the form of a company would be able to rent out that type, rather than selling it, they could rent it out. If you like the Airbnb of the heavy industrial equipment world and they decided therefore – because one of the challenges they have is such specialist equipment that they are selling it to customers who are only using it let’s say three months of the year. And you know this is big expensive equipment. It’s a little bit like the firefighting helicopters that America and Australia share. They share them because they are grossly expensive and you only need them half of the year. Thankfully the way the seasons work, Australia and the US have opposing summers when the risk are. So it’s the same way idea really. It’s a way of maximizing or utilizing that equipment. But they saw a risk that’s a company conceivably create an equivalent of Airbnb for that equipment. Which would render their sales in jeopardy and therefore their service so they decided to create a company, a separate company. A new legal entity which is certainly what we would recommend in this case and it’s called Click Rent and it’s exactly that as I described. It’s exactly the Airbnb of the heavy industrial equipment and it’s become hugely successful.

[0:28:40] Charlie Hoehn: So is that a subscription service or is it on demand?

[0:28:45] Mat Lock: That’s on demand. So you literary go to the website, you plug in, “Well I need this equipment, that equipment, I need that machine and that machine and I’ve gotten those states here.” Click Rent will go back to the price and say, “Okay” well we’ll deliver it and decide you have that for those days. You know we train and we have to use that all those good studies it’s already serviced. It’s all in full working order and then we come and take it away and this is the amount of money it costs. And if you think about it that’s somehow in conflict with Zeppelin’s other business where they’re selling and servicing but they’ve derived that well, just the fact that it conflicts if you like with our current business doesn’t mean that it can’t become a reality. And better that we do it and let the customers decide. Let the market decide, if the market decides they prefer that model great because that success as well and for banner of Click Rent. But if we sit back and just hope no one else does it then clearly that’s a massive risk in our business. So that’s why we would always recommend in that case, we call it the habitat strategy of providing an environment underneath a legal umbrella as the holding of Zeppelin over to Click Rent. But they deliberately set it over the separate legal entity in Berlin away from the head office with all new employees. Deliberately because what they didn’t want is that hangover culture between the two, which was causing conflicts. Because you can be sure the rental department within Zeppelin doesn’t appreciate Click Rent. They are in competition with themselves in the end but yeah, that is a really great success story and it’s one I like to use initially because it’s not a pretty industry, it’s not glossy, it’s not Silicon Valley. It’s none of that. It’s down and dirty and it’s very real.

[0:30:28] Charlie Hoehn: You said that has been a very successful move for them. How successful or relative to maybe the revenue that they are generating in their core business?

[0:30:39] Mat Lock: So obviously clearly and I know you are not asking, we can’t go into the numbers. As a general statement, I mean Click Rent today is still a relatively small part of the overall turnover of their group. However, it is going steadily. It is highly profitable, it’s business on top that they didn’t have before so it’s really new business.

[0:31:02] Charlie Hoehn: That’s great, I mean as long as it is profitable in defending them against outside competition that’s awesome.

[0:31:10] Mat Lock: That was going to be my point because what they have done is they have now kept high, they have created and occupied that space. It would be really difficult not impossible of course, but it would be very difficult for a new player to now enter that particular space and that was key part in their decision making. So they’re not expecting it to – I would be happy about it too but they are not expecting it to become their overarching new business that puts everything else into the shadows. They have all created and occupied the space that’s important but it is growing and it is highly profitable and it is a great business in its own right and it runs in parallel with their main business.

[0:31:49] Charlie Hoehn: What’s the next example you were going to give?

[0:31:51] Mat Lock: Yeah, a couple more and certainly the second way is when we’ve developed and we’ve talked already about why we developed Rock The Ship and who the thing is aimed for but we were approached last year by a board member from the Dime Organization and she asked us if we could apply the methodology to her department rather than the overall dime of the business which of course we would be happy to have a go at. But it was a really interesting assignment, on the basis that she’s the head of the legal department amongst others but let’s just stay with the legal department and her aspiration given on what’s going on in the automotive industry; her aspiration is to become for her legal department to become the nightmare competitor of the legal departments within the automotive industry. It was a really an interesting application of the methodology at which again, at random works. So a global workshop for her and her and her team and again, it was hugely successful. This is a slightly funny story, it was run in a very large auditorium and we had I think it was something like 30 of that sort of senior management team from around the world from the legal department and I said at the time, “It’s lucky we are in such a large room because the combined IQ wouldn’t have fit in the room that was small.” So it was a really senior level highly intellectual legally trained group of people, who are a group of managers, who were really uncomfortable with what we are doing initially. In fact, the head of the US operation said to me afterwards he said, “Mat I think you’ve made us really uncomfortable,” and he paused and then I was thinking, “Oh what’s coming next?”

[0:33:47] Charlie Hoehn: The end of statement.

[0:33:48] Mat Lock: And he said, “But you know what? I really appreciate it.” He said it’s been liberating. He said, “As soon as we were able to look from a totally different perspective, to look from a customer centric perspective,” is what he was referring to, “And really look and understand the weaknesses of what we do today that was liberating.” And that is why we have been able to derive such incredible insights from the two days that we ran with them and they really did. And obviously again, I can’t go into graphic detail but for sure, there are a number of insights that came from that workshop that are absolutely being implemented and have been taken on board. So it is not just about creating idea, it’s not just, “Oh let’s run another workshop that’s great,” and then back to daily life. These are paradigm changing insights that have been derived and that’s the key, absolutely the key.

[0:34:44] Charlie Hoehn: Which company do you really want to work with or which industry are you dying to get into and start implementing the principles from Rocking the Ship in?

[0:34:57] Mat Lock: That’s a really good question. Actually one of the joys I think of Rocking the Ship is that it’s not industry specific. We haven’t yet found an industry that we can’t apply this to or that the managers within that industry can’t apply it to and for us, our aspiration is to get this into the hands of as many people as possible as quickly as possible and the most important engagement that we like for us is that there’s a willingness. There’s a determination to challenge the status quo to know that we’ll do it intelligently, not just for the sake of it. So I don’t know that there is one industry let’s say that we could pinpoint, even though I appreciate the question, because there are so many which have so much potential which are currently not being optimized by the encumbrances. So it starts really with a desire. There has to be a hunger, a willingness and a readiness to put aside how you do, what you do and I mean it’s common sense. If you keep doing what got you to where you are today, it’s unlikely to get you to where you want it to be. Something has to change and it’s that willingness to accept that and acknowledge that.

[0:36:12] Charlie Hoehn: Well sure, I just want to push you though because that’s my job. There has to be an industry that you’re like, “It drives me crazy that no one in this industry is challenging the status quo.” There has to be something, dentistry, insurance, any, which ones do you find you want to get in there and work with?

[0:36:33] Mat Lock: Me personally I would love and even though it’s already underway but I would love to step into the financial sector. I mean that is already starting to see some major disruptive potential. I mean beyond PayPal, we’re talking about Block Chain and the like. That for me is probably one of the most exciting because it is one of the most far reaching. It will have an impact on every single person on the planet ultimately and the opportunity for doing it so much better. It’s so vast, the level of control that so few in that industry currently have and my words would have been abused, that I think the potential to create some real good change that will benefit basically almost everyone in the planet. That’s exciting for me for sure.

[0:37:29] Charlie Hoehn: So maybe working with a bank or an investment firm of some sort and doing the theoretical, “Let’s create our nightmare competitor on Block Chain.”

[0:37:44] Mat Lock: Yeah, absolutely. I would love the opportunity of working with one of the big banks. Pick one, it doesn’t matter. Any of the big banks.

[0:37:53] Charlie Hoehn: Very cool.

[0:37:53] Mat Lock: If they were able to really embrace the idea of Rocking the Ship and understanding that, they probably won’t like the results initially. The results will be uncomfortable because it will challenge a lot of what they do today that’s the point but the reality is it’s underway and I’m surprised, I mean maybe it’s going on behind closed doors but I am surprised in a way how long it’s taking them to respond. But I don’t know why because in fact that’s one of the traits. I mean we see so many of these established. They allow little startups, they allow the disruptors so much time to take over their industry. I mean if you think about, let’s actually take the airline industry, is a really good one. I mean it was 30 plus years ago that South West introduced the concept of budget airlines to the US. It was another 15 to 20 years before the established flag carriers in Europe decided to do something about their version of South West.

[0:39:01] Charlie Hoehn: Oh yeah and I mean you are talking about the financial industry. Can you name an industry with more arrogance and ego? I can’t think of one I mean they’re –

[0:39:15] Mat Lock: I’ve got a close second because the next one might as well be the legal industry with that question. I would start with financial, I’ll go to legal and I think medical after that. Your prize there to me, my personal preference is they would be that order. It would be those industries and if you think about the three I mentioned, I mean they have such far reaching implications for so many of us in our everyday lives. There is so much room for improvement that yeah, that excites me. And rather than be I often hear people being despondent about all the disruption and “Oh this is happening to my industry” and “Oh whoa as me,” come on. It is creating so much.

[0:39:57] Charlie Hoehn: It’s exciting. It’s better, yeah, It’s the act of creating more value and making things better for the customer which is why you should be in it in the first place and if you’re not, then you might want to seriously reexamine your life.

[0:40:11] Mat Lock: That’s exactly right. Anyone stepping into those – so many of these industries, stepping in now with – let’s say the thought of a 30 plus year career, they have to be open, they have to be open minded because there’s so much change occurring and so much more to come and I’m with you. I find it exciting, it took almost exhilarating when you think about the possibilities. Rocking the Ship is a happy story, this is designed to unleash the inner maverick that is in all of us and certainly that’s the subtitle of the book, it’s Turning Corporate Manager Into Business Model Mavericks and that’s what we aspire to do and we all have the maverick streak in us. Our aspiration is to unleash it and to provide a platform where that can become a reality.

[0:40:57] Charlie Hoehn: Let’s give our listeners a challenge Mat, how can they begin unleashing that this week, what is one challenge that you can give them, that they can bring to their job or start applying this week?

[0:41:11] Mat Lock: Sure, I think it comes back to the starting point as we did, where it’s the challenge, their own psychology and ask themselves quietly without talking to anyone else. Do they think they are part of the problem or part of the solution? In my experience, most people say, “Oh I’m part of the solution of course” and we all like to believe that we are. But actually, if you adopt the nightmare competitor approach and you really look from that change of perspective let’s say. It can be quite dramatic and it can have an impact on every aspect of your life, not just your working life. I would basically urge the listeners to just stop and be honest with themselves, think about the daily gripes, the white noise as I would call it, in their business, their grievances, their frustrations. Ask themselves whether they are part of the system that is facilitating that or are they really doing something about it and making themselves part of the solution. Yeah, as I said, for most people, if they’re really honest, when we did all that workshops and the like. Actually, most people will switch at the end and go, you know what? You’re right, I’m part of the problem. Unwittingly, not deliberately, there’s no bad intent at all. By default where we end up being part of a big machine and we play out, we dutifully play our part. Actually, that doesn’t help and it requires each of the listeners to acknowledge that so they’re then able to tap in to that in a maverick streak that they have and they do have it, we all have it. That would be the challenge.

[0:42:59] Charlie Hoehn: That’s a good challenge and if they realize that they are part of the problem, how can they get in touch with you and work with you and Uli?

[0:43:09] Mat Lock: Absolutely. Well, they could certainly visit our website which is rockingtheship.com and on there, there’s even the opportunity to schedule a call directly, book it into our calendar and have a chat with us. It’s certainly provides more information as you’d expect with everything we have to offer. You can also contact us on Facebook @rockingtheship on Facebook. I guess the closing question I’d like to leave the listeners with, it’s a question, which would you rather be? The disruptor or the disrupted? That is the question you’ve got to ask yourself and it will be one or the other. There to disrupt or to be disrupted? That is the question. [END OF INTERVIEW

[0:43:57] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to Mat Lock for being on the show. You can buy his and Uli’s book, Rocking the Ship on amazon.com. Thanks again for listening to author hour. In lightning conversations about books with the authors who wrote them, we’ll see you next time.