The Value Exchange podcast – Episode 10 ready for consumption.
This week we were delighted to spend some time speaking with Steve Latchem, former Chief Architect at the MoD and CTO/Exec Director at Mastek,now strategically advising a number of tech organisations and self proclaimed Ethos Pro-bono Super Fan No.1. We hear from Steve about his education, from taking his CSE Grade 1 in Computer Science to becoming Chief Architect at the MoD and beyond. We were keen to hear too about his experience with Servant Leadership, where that first impacted him, what this means in practice and the relationship with Value Exchange and delivering more real social value in the future. There are also snoring dogs!
For more information on Steve Latchem visit:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevelatchem/
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Youtube video – Episode 10 – Steve Latchem – Servant Leadership (and snoring dogs!)(click to watch)
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Transcript – scroll to see text below
TRANSCRIPT – Episode 10 – Steve Latchem – Servant Leadership (and snoring dogs!)
00:00:08:00 – 00:00:40:02
Annabelle Lambert
And welcome to the next edition of the Value Exchange Podcast. I’m here with my regular co-host, Rob. Hello Rob, Rob purposely not speaking as always, just to disrupt me. And today, most excited to introduce our, described himself as our pro bono superfan, number one. And so, Mr. Steve Latcham, I’m going to just hand over to Rob to give a little bit more background on Steve.
00:00:40:03 – 00:00:41:18
Annabelle Lambert
So, Rob, tell us about Steve.
00:00:42:25 – 00:01:28:19
Rob Pye
I’ve known Steve for yonks since Capita/Thales days. So at one time or another, Steve has worked on and off for Mastek and Mastek did the super duper jump on the London congestion charge where it was a big dot net project and he got Capita out of the do do on some big architecture thing there. And then we with Steve, when I was a vice president in Thales we were doing some complicated MoD stuff and Steve and Mastek were the saviour of doing some really interesting things around air movements for defence.
00:01:28:27 – 00:01:52:18
Rob Pye
And we’ve kept in touch since Ethos 13 years ago. He’s always been a bit of a “have a gone completely mad Steve? Can you just look at this technical architecture and I want to do some things with linked data. And I want to do some things in skills planning” and always this great excitement about tech for good. And Steve has just been, you know, we just kept in touch and he’s really helped me.
00:01:52:29 – 00:02:31:03
Rob Pye
And now he’s like a pro-bono exec for Ethos, just helping us reinvent the organization around some different services, different business models. And I just I’ve always wanted to interview and have a discussion with Steve about his style of leadership, which I’ve always called servant leadership. So I’m just delighted to have you on today, Steve. And I really I know that you’re probably one of the most modest chaps that I know, which is not usual, but everybody’s blowing their trumpet.
00:02:31:03 – 00:02:40:01
Rob Pye
But I’d really want to just, you know, how did you get here? Just a little bit. Introduction and tell us about you and and no need to do it in a sentence.
00:02:40:18 – 00:02:57:12
Steve Latchem
Of course, thank Rob and Annabelle, and I’m delighted to be here as well. Actually, this is after the many, many Ethos virtual meetings that we’ve had. This is a recorded one. So I will be careful with political correctness and
00:02:57:12 – 00:02:57:29
Annabelle Lambert
Oh no
00:02:59:03 – 00:03:28:03
Steve Latchem
Clamp down a little bit of the humor maybe, but so only slightly. Only slightly. Steve Latcham I’m as mentioned Pro-bono Super Fan of Ethos and collaborated with Rob in supporting the Mission of Ethos for the last pretty much 13 years. Rob and I first interacted in 2004, so it’s not that far away from a couple of decades.
00:03:28:20 – 00:04:01:02
Steve Latchem
I am perhaps one of the most fortunate technologists in the world because I left school at 18 at the end of sixth form college, thinking I needed to earn some money rather than necessarily doing university. I’ve not being great at written exams and that kind of traditional educational process and got a job at NatWest by attending NatWest jobs in Bristol City centre initially and their motor insurance division.
00:04:01:11 – 00:04:34:26
Steve Latchem
But where I got lucky and luck and fate often coincide is that at that time NatWest were building out their newly formed I.T. department and my glorious CSE 1 in Computer Sciences was sufficient to pass the bar to join that department. So that is still my most high, if you like, educational accreditation in IT. I’ve got lots more since, but that 12 years at NatWest was amazingly educational.
00:04:34:26 – 00:05:09:21
Steve Latchem
Not much money, but lots and lots of training. So through object orientation, joint application design, service orientation, client server implementations, I basically learned to tradecraft in IT, but in real experience in the trenches after those amazing 12 years, I realized that actually NatWest pay probably wasn’t going to sort the mortgages and the pensions and all of the other aspects in a long term career.
00:05:09:29 – 00:05:47:09
Steve Latchem
So stepped into consultancy with W S Atkins and then Select Software Tools where I travelled all over the world, basically engaging with pretty much every domain and sector in technology, process, implementation and evolving into contemporary tech. During that journey, I was fortunate enough to be involved in international standards definition with the Object Management Group, collaborated on four books on process architecture and technology and then moved into as
00:05:47:09 – 00:06:45:02
Steve Latchem
Rob mentioned Mastek, which is an Indian service integrator but formed in India but grew up in the UK over the last three decades, specializing in software engineering in the contemporary and bleeding edge technologies. So I discovered a whole new culture during that journey with the Indian enthusiasm, entrepreneurialship and genuine collaboration and high speed delivery of technology, often 100 miles in the wrong direction if you didn’t keep your eye on it because the enthusiasm and agility can drive a long way, the wrong way and it was during that journey that I first started to do, if you like, assimilate one of the core principles of Agile delivery.
00:06:45:02 – 00:07:19:08
Steve Latchem
But also an age old premise, which is also taught in the Defence Academy, Lead to Serve or Servant Leadership. And one of my former bosses, Sudhakar Ram, who sadly no longer with us, educated me in that servant leadership principle, which was ultimately from a moral compass perspective. It’s not all about me. The best, if you like,
00:07:19:19 – 00:08:00:21
Steve Latchem
outcomes are about educating, supporting, mentoring and growing your team. And this led through to actually my five years at the Ministry of Defence, where as a civil servant, the clue is in the name, servant leadership is about collaborating and growing together and using quite austere resources to drive really disruptive outcomes from cloud computing to intelligence analytics through to weapons systems, command and control and payroll expenses and desktops and desktop builds.
00:08:01:04 – 00:08:39:17
Steve Latchem
And that five years was an amazing journey for me and put me, I think, on mission in terms of supporting not only the UK sovereign interests but the interests of my team and I embedded servant leadership as a measure during promotion and market skills allowance incentives and bonuses for the civil servants in my team. Then, 18 months after finishing at the MoD, I ran Mastek’s public sector practice back with my original company not being able to remove the DNA of what we call Mastekeers.
00:08:40:10 – 00:09:15:12
Steve Latchem
They do say once a Mastekeer or always a Mastekeer, and I’m properly proof of that because I still advise them one day a week on UK public sector strategy, technology and road maps. But I think if I look at what is nearly 39 years in July in technology where I’ve been able to effectively do some pretty phenomenal things is in that collaboration, mentoring, servant leadership and enabling individuals to scale and grow.
00:09:16:00 – 00:09:43:06
Steve Latchem
And also the fact that I’ve never particularly been academic. So my knowledge set and my focus is more about the pragmatics of getting things done and my mentoring and and servant leadership to others is about focusing on the outcome and really enjoying the journey, if that makes sense. Sorry really long intro, but that’s me.
00:09:44:28 – 00:09:54:25
Rob Pye
No, I’m, I’m really disabled in terms of throwing questions at you because my mind’s all over the place. Annabelle do you have one? While I just…
00:09:55:01 – 00:10:13:03
Annabelle Lambert
No, but an observation. I’m sure, I’m sure you’ve introduced yourself to me before, Steve, but I feel that was perhaps a little bit more in depth than I heard before. And I’m always interested. Obviously, I’m thinking a Grade 1 CSE was probably as high as you could get in computer science at that time. Can’t even believe you managed to do it.
00:10:13:03 – 00:10:37:05
Annabelle Lambert
But anyway, which is, which is good. But but just quite an inspiring story of, you know, just just because because I would position myself as not academic. I went to university, but I was never and, you know, I just don’t have the academic bent. I’m much more practical, much more I want to learn through doing stuff. And that’s my style.
00:10:37:05 – 00:10:46:09
Annabelle Lambert
So really inspiring. So thank you. Thank you is what I would say. Sharing that. I think a lot of people could learn a lot from that story. Really.
00:10:46:29 – 00:11:16:20
Rob Pye
Yeah. So and I think it’s very inspiring for all those people who haven’t got an MBA’s, Masters, Doctorates, you know, first degrees. I mean, I have a degree in computer science and who’s the better geek, you know, Steve or Rob? It’s Steve everyday of the week. And you know, it just it just proves that you don’t, you know, and increasingly academic qualifications are at best a means to an end.
00:11:16:20 – 00:11:29:25
Rob Pye
But sometimes they can kind of get in the way. And we see many stories of of university dropouts, especially the Silicon Valley, ones who made it through the first year of college.
00:11:29:25 – 00:11:36:18
Annabelle Lambert
And there’s so many stories. Yeah, everybody famous dropped out. Yeah, everyone you’ve ever heard of drop out.
00:11:36:20 – 00:11:43:13
Steve Latchem
Yeah, I didn’t quite make it to billionaire Silicon Valley social media guru, but it.
00:11:44:01 – 00:12:14:01
Rob Pye
But you didn’t do bad. And so just before we segway into social value and Ethos and the value exchange. Practically, when you were at MoD you did some really cool things and I know you can’t share the details of a lot of them, but just generically, for people who just want to know what you know, what is that servant leader?
00:12:14:01 – 00:12:42:00
Rob Pye
You know, what were you able to do? I think it was Corsham when you did a lot of cloud stuff. And I was, yeah, How is that possible in DE and S and defence procurement that are not necessarily world famous for their agility, let’s say, and just some of the things when, you know, before you were chief architect, before, you know, I think you were doing cloud provisioning and he did some really cool stuff
00:12:42:15 – 00:12:48:08
Rob Pye
How did how did that map on to, say, real results then from that MoD perspective.
00:12:48:29 – 00:13:26:03
Steve Latchem
Yeah.. in that early part of the journey. It was really 2015 to 2017. Where I was fortunate is that I was given quite a senior civil servant position, which is always great for empowerment, not necessarily delegations, but being able to look at doing things differently and a good friend of mine was the CIO with MoD at the time, Mike Stone and he had a mantra which was “if you not disrupting every day, you’re not really doing your job properly.”
00:13:26:23 – 00:13:28:16
Steve Latchem
So I kind of took that.
00:13:29:05 – 00:13:37:06
Rob Pye
Mike Stone come onto the show, he lived by that mantra, you know, I can testify absolutely.
00:13:37:11 – 00:14:18:11
Steve Latchem
So what I was able to do was effectively, working within the boundaries of the civil service and MoD financial approvals and their ten year planning cycles. And there is a level of freedoms which you can utilize if you’re brave enough to, if you like, go past the critique, so my team on the cloud enablement named App Services and DevOps tower, we moved out to a temporary building across the road from the main building in Corsham, cancelled the formal attire rules because there is no dress code in the civil service.
00:14:18:11 – 00:14:36:10
Steve Latchem
So t shirts and jeans and trainers were allowed. I spent some of my own money on a table football and an air hockey table, bought some bean bags. We were kind of Google with zero budget. If I if I could attribute it that way.
00:14:37:05 – 00:14:37:24
Annabelle Lambert
That good.
00:14:40:05 – 00:14:40:17
Steve Latchem
And.
00:14:41:00 – 00:14:50:24
Rob Pye
I’ve got Google on a budget here, its a tennis ball, if anyone wants a little squeeze while they are working.
00:14:50:24 – 00:15:19:21
Steve Latchem
What we also did is as a head of function, and this was the engineering function which only had a few people in it. So my team was the first one that developed that I could set up market skills allowances, defined training programs to turn civil servants from project management and contract jockeys through to actually genuine engineers so we could train them in agile, in software development, cloud configuration.
00:15:20:09 – 00:16:01:12
Steve Latchem
And what we also did and these were the ones that caused a little bit of a ripple in the if you like, approvals and finance folks, is defined a mission statement, which was broadly three or four things. Every voice is heard. We collaborate together. Trust and keeping our promises are critical and effectively, despite all of the constraints of billions and billions of budget and all of those processes, we would always focus on what was the outcome for defence that we were striving towards.
00:16:01:25 – 00:16:27:10
Steve Latchem
And in one of our first sessions, all hands as we scaled from six people to nearly 130, we instigated a thing called the Duracell Bunny Award. Now that it was called the Duracell Bunny, because one of my good friends nicknamed me that because I kept on going and going and going at everything we needed to do and how we could come together to achieve those outcomes.
00:16:27:20 – 00:16:57:14
Steve Latchem
So each month the Duracell Bunny award was for the person who lived that mission and that vision the most within the team. What effectively happened with that is that was the early incubation of the digital transformation within defence. So if you look at things like the Queen Elizabeth Carrier, the F-35 jet, the drones, the capabilities in defence today,
00:16:57:23 – 00:17:45:11
Steve Latchem
they are all software defined, built using agile processes and can reconfigure and change themselves in seconds as opposed to the ten years of lifetime that you had in the past. So Mike Stone and I’ll always love him for that, gave me that disruption mandate that enabled me to start that journey. And that’s continued today across the single services, Strategic Command and other areas, but has its challenges in paying appropriately, retaining talent and I think one of the early stages and I’ll just this is my last point about that early point is that the graduates and Apprentice program was amazing within defence.
00:17:45:23 – 00:18:20:22
Steve Latchem
So a fairly low bar of entry, which was phenomenal. So the diversity and inclusiveness was astonishingly good. But I had one of my best business analysts or product owners was a former gym receptionist who could herd the cats of various, shall we say, steroid incented weight lifting individuals and took that behavioural skills straight over to herding senior business stakeholders into prioritized requirements.
00:18:21:03 – 00:19:15:29
Steve Latchem
And my bus driver became a senior accounting officer just literally because they enjoyed numbers and bus driving was the thing to make money in their early stages and the project manager, who was a former veterinary receptionist who just prioritizing customers every day, learned how to manage a daily burn down chart and an agile process and other aspects. And I think that was one of the things I learned, a phenomenal lesson there from the servant leadership perspective and behaviours are the things that people have by nature, technical skills and approaches and digital outcomes and other things can be educated from that core moral compass and behavioural capability for sure.
00:19:15:29 – 00:19:30:10
Rob Pye
So. So you’ve given us a really inspiring story on education. You’ve given us a really inspired career path. And this is not a webinar to encourage everyone to not get educated.
00:19:30:27 – 00:19:33:01
Steve Latchem
No, that’s not.
00:19:33:12 – 00:19:35:17
Annabelle Lambert
Note to my children.
00:19:38:01 – 00:20:08:11
Rob Pye
And an inspiring story about culture in the workplace, particularly civil servant, public service. But you know, a lot of what we’ve done on the on these videos is holding a bit of truth to power and kind of looking at not just going good, good, click, like, like, like, but going, you know, the other side of it is it’s not the other side of the fence
00:20:08:11 – 00:21:11:19
Rob Pye
is not all glitter and, you know, fantastic examples. I’m reading a book that Tony’s recommended called The Big Con, which is about the hollowing out of government and organizations through big consulting management consultancies in particular, sort of likes McKinsey or EY, our former employer, Annabelle and I. Leaving particularly in the context of digital skills, core competence, you know, big organizations without that sort of core competence of doing doing a lot themselves and having to having to employ third parties to do delivery work that you might consider to be in the run of, you know, being a local government central government, an MoD.
00:21:12:09 – 00:21:45:09
Rob Pye
And certainly from my experience of being on the outside of public service, I’ve seen too many civil servants who are kind of the opposite of that culture. You know, they are they don’t want risk. They want to turn up and they don’t want to disrupt, they don’t want to innovate, they don’t want to take any risk. And almost, you know, I could take a different angle to the story you’ve said, which is actually the majority.
00:21:45:09 – 00:22:07:15
Rob Pye
You know, you’re the exception that rather than the rule and I think of a lot of what you’ve embodied in the education story in the work story, is kind of what we’d like to do with Value Exchange. You know, wherever you are, whoever you are, you know, whether you’re out of work or in work, to empower people to just, you know, be their best selves and, you know, whatever that is.
00:22:07:27 – 00:22:34:03
Rob Pye
And I, I, I know you. We’ve recruited 65 young people during the pandemic and gave people without education an opportunity to work. You’ve mentored and helped a number of them. They come back “Wow Steve’s he is just amazing” but you know, in this servant leadership, you know, you’ve helped a few of our young leaders. You’ve also said to me, you have to be careful to look after yourself.
00:22:34:03 – 00:22:58:04
Rob Pye
You’re not your your words, but sometimes that giving approach, you can feel a bit exhausted and kind of.. how how have you managed to be resilient in the face of maybe there’s a lot of culture in civil service that’s not got the ping pong ball or the squeegee ball or whatever it is, and or you’ve given too much and you’ve gone
00:22:58:04 – 00:23:07:22
Rob Pye
I’ve got to be careful here. How do you, so very long question, how do you manage the downside Steve? of you know, it’s not all like like click click fantastic.
00:23:07:22 – 00:23:37:03
Steve Latchem
No. Very true. So I think so one of the things and we’ve had this conversation before, Rob, is that I, I think my mum instilled in me this pleasing and completer finisher nature. So in, in essence, I like to please people with what I can do for them and help them. And I almost measure myself in terms of how I’ve enabled others.
00:23:37:15 – 00:24:05:13
Steve Latchem
Now that is incredibly valuable for me personally because of my natural and if you like, motivation but can be abused as well. It’s you know, they do say you always ask the busiest person in the department if you have a highly urgent thing to do. And it’s genuinely true. They’re really busy because they run asynchronously against a lot of completer finisher activities.
00:24:05:13 – 00:24:36:22
Steve Latchem
And what I found a few years ago was that I didn’t have an off switch, so, 60, 70 hour weeks with massive asynchronous levels of task. And that effectively was one of the catalysts for me switching to part time advisory work, because if I took on all of that servant leadership demand signal, then find it really difficult to say no.
00:24:37:00 – 00:25:09:07
Steve Latchem
I had to flick a switch in my head so that I can’t do that because I’ve set some guardrails around the way in which I can support. But if you talk to Jane or Mary or another individual in the company, they will have something that can help for you and I’ll do what I can later. So it is something that has to be within the bounds of your own work life balance parameters and mine have always been in the wrong place.
00:25:09:07 – 00:26:07:05
Steve Latchem
But thankfully the last and the last two years, my two ish days per week, which equates to about 28 hours, is half of what I used to do, but still quite a full week in its own right. But much easier for me and I think to talk about the civil service and their reassuring heritage and never let an outcome get in the way of a good process, it’s really fascinated space and and genuinely civil servants that stay in their lane have extreme expertise and can work that machine within those boundaries are incredibly important because the machinery of government is complex and probably defines Gartner’s multi-modality in perfect definition because there are slow and careful
00:26:07:12 – 00:26:44:12
Steve Latchem
and high risk things that need to occur in a highly governed process. Where where I was fortunate was I was in the cool, geeky digital part of that. So disrupting the new things that had to be higher cadence by their nature in adopting new models. But it it is really interesting in the new generations of folks that are coming through that that more traditionally, structurally, hierarchically minded individual doesn’t particularly exist anymore.
00:26:44:24 – 00:26:50:12
Steve Latchem
So a revolution or evolution within government will come, I’m sure.
00:26:52:09 – 00:27:02:08
Rob Pye
Yeah. So let’s get on to Ethos and Value Exchange and what we’re trying to do because that’s why we’re here.
00:27:02:16 – 00:27:04:01
Annabelle Lambert
Me, me, me.
00:27:05:18 – 00:27:48:01
Rob Pye
Us, us, us. So you’ve had a look at Ethos quite intimately over the years. We’ve changed our business model recently from incubating things like TeamArmy and Ethos Wilder and Team Police to helping organizations and individuals increase their consciousness of social and environmental value. And that ultimately is a cultural thing. But it involves process and behaviours and incentives and, you know, friction and lots of lots of things in that you’ve experienced Value Exchange because you’ve got one.
00:27:48:02 – 00:28:15:27
Rob Pye
Even as a volunteer, you kind of have one. You’ve helped people, helped mentor, you’ve mentored Annabelle and I. What are your sort of what what are your observations on reflections of what we’re trying to do? You know, the sort of, be honest, you know, the challenges we’ve got, the opportunities that what you’ve observed in I mean, it’s only two or three, four months that we sort of taken an idea and you’ve said you should do more of this.
00:28:15:27 – 00:28:22:03
Rob Pye
And less of that. So you know, built service around discovery
00:28:23:07 – 00:28:59:16
Steve Latchem
It’s yeah, it’s been literally the last two years or so where I’ve been more actively interacting with you has been absolutely fascinating. And if you start with the Value Exchange, that’s probably the most effective format of servant leadership conversations that can occur. Because if you look at any typical interaction between individuals, there’s some level of facade that’s played there in a particular role or accountability or responsibility.
00:28:59:24 – 00:29:28:13
Steve Latchem
But when you flip that and say, what are your values? What motivates you? How do you, if you like, get out of bed each morning doing the role that you do? And to some extent that opens up between those values, you have a genuine human connection that talks about motivations and capability and and and genuine feelings and genuine background.
00:29:28:21 – 00:29:59:14
Steve Latchem
And I think that core of the Ethos mission ripples out to all of the things that have happened over the years. Now, the transformation that’s happened in the last year is that through the journey of creating TeamArmy, Team Police, the wilding projects, the smart city projects, you have sharpened the sword of implementing ESG social value for real.
00:30:00:08 – 00:30:37:24
Steve Latchem
And whilst that can scale but is quite hard as a small to medium enterprise because funding is difficult, Brexit, pandemic, austerity, inflation, all of these impacts get in the way. Any large organization is at best greenwashing or social washing their procedures and initiatives with some KPIs and planting some trees to counterbalance and making charitable payments, as opposed to looking at genuine value creation.
00:30:38:07 – 00:31:23:28
Steve Latchem
So the Value Exchange, supplemented by the education and experience that your journey has taken you through, is the opportunity for the Discovery consultative approach and experiential sharing of the Ethos mission to organizations large and small. So I think like me as a servant leader in technology, Ethos is a servant leader in ESG social value, you have the t shirts in the wardrobe, you have the lumps, bumps and roller coaster ride of that journey and the pay back pay forward of Ethos is now effectively helping organizations
00:31:23:28 – 00:31:29:09
Steve Latchem
to genuinely achieve significant and impactful outcomes.
00:31:31:01 – 00:32:03:27
Rob Pye
Yeah, interesting because we’ve we’ve probably done value recognition, you know, I would say thousands but you know many, you know over a thousand times over the years and the the 65 young people that we employed for six months. So people sort of the bottom of the food chain entering the job market. We’ve more recently started doing it for really, really senior chief execs.
00:32:04:06 – 00:32:32:10
Rob Pye
And it’s and it’s amazing and wonderful to give somebody an impression or not an impression, an opportunity to say what it’s like being them as a whole person from values, beliefs and that, how they engage. And, you know, NHS chief exec or senior partner in a you know, big, big four consultancy or you know, chief execs of charities and and they’re they’re really valuable.
00:32:32:10 – 00:32:57:05
Rob Pye
And I think people are kind of like quite shocked by having an opportunity to talk to other people about their story. And you know although we framed it servant leadership here it is empowerment, agency, this is me and this is this is the good bit. And value recognition is always, you know, that that that kind of social bit.
00:32:57:05 – 00:33:35:05
Rob Pye
But it does feel like on the helping organizations, you know, that we’re really at the start of a journey rather than at the end of you know commoditising this sort of approach for organizations because I don’t think that there is a lot of consciousness about what what the social value might mean for local communities, for a workforce, for, you know, beyond a sort of HR scheme of flexible employment, which might say, okay, well we give you a coffee break or you can have a snooker table to de-stress or whatever.
00:33:37:01 – 00:33:57:13
Rob Pye
So yeah, I think it really interesting in linking your story, which didn’t start with Value Exchange but with where you are now, the helping with Ethos and the work that we’re, we’re doing on, on, on Value Exchange. Any, any questions Annabelle? You are on mute.
00:33:57:15 – 00:34:02:18
Annabelle Lambert
This, you know, this , I think it might be a dog just making noises. So I just muted myself.
00:34:02:23 – 00:34:03:18
Steve Latchem
Okay, fair enough.
00:34:03:18 – 00:34:44:24
Annabelle Lambert
I’m sort of interested, you know, what Rob’s just described and I think I’m viewing the challenge is I feel this is all, you know, bleeding obvious, bleedingly obvious. You know, people should be thinking in this way and we can move some really quite urgent and important things forward if people would just, you know, shift their mindset, put themselves at the centre, which is which is, you know, which is very optimistic of me, I think, to to assume that people could just do that because I, I don’t think it’s necessarily something that they have time to even consider.
00:34:45:03 – 00:35:06:16
Annabelle Lambert
So so I’m interested Steve at what point for you did you just go, okay, Right. This is this is just a much you know, this is when I when the shift happened and I thought actually this is this is you know, I need to be thinking about these things. I need to be thinking about myself, my impact on my immediate circle.
00:35:06:18 – 00:35:29:27
Annabelle Lambert
And then what does that mean? Taking myself, my opportunities into my organizational context? Because I think that’s what we’re we’re about. It’s not you know, it’s not about convincing people to leave their jobs. It’s about helping them understand the the influence and impact that they’re having through what they’re doing. And they may be happy with it. They may not be happy with it, but they need to.
00:35:29:28 – 00:35:47:18
Annabelle Lambert
We I feel everybody needs to get a handle on that for themselves because we have a lot more happy people doing a lot more things that, 1. are socially valuable and 2. are meaningful to them. And you know, that can be anything. There’s no rules for what that can be. You know, it’s indiviudally driven.
00:35:48:00 – 00:35:55:01
Steve Latchem
God, it’s really interesting. You’ve got me rewinding my entire life now to work out when that switch flicked over.
00:35:55:08 – 00:35:55:24
Rob Pye
Flicked
00:35:55:24 – 00:36:09:03
Steve Latchem
Over. Yeah, but let’s and I’m probably going to psychoanalyze myself too much, have to go into a darkened corner with the wet towel around my head later on this evening, but I.
00:36:09:03 – 00:36:09:19
Annabelle Lambert
Oh no!
00:36:09:23 – 00:36:55:10
Steve Latchem
So if if you rewind to the time when I started in IT. So I’m an 18 year old individual with a CSE1 who’s now amongst these grey haired, middle aged individuals who have ten, 20 years in technology, and they’re own perceived wisdom and hierarchies and processes. And something I always say actually about IT is common sense is not as common as its name might suggest. So effectively shareholder value or customer assumption or technology, if you like,
00:36:55:10 – 00:37:36:20
Steve Latchem
preferences jump all over the place and hugely sometimes aggressive opinions occur. And I was this pragmatist with a good dose of common sense, instilled by my mother and my father, who wanted to say the emperor has got no clothes but wasn’t brave enough or senior enough in those days to effectively make that shout. So effectively you turn into the open questioning, understanding motivation and understanding the problem sets to then replay that with possible alternatives and then backing off really quickly when someone shouted.
00:37:37:02 – 00:38:21:09
Steve Latchem
So I think it was those early stages that I realized that to be the disruptive individual, you couldn’t actually disrupt that much until the appropriate point of understanding all of the mechanics and the influences. And I think ESG and social value has the same challenge because it’s popular and mandated across government procurements and it isn’t a natural instinct to consider the mission of the organization should be more about the lasting value it provides as a result of receiving all this money.
00:38:21:17 – 00:38:34:00
Steve Latchem
And that’s not a shareholder or an employee. It’s actually about the big wide world outside. And that mind shift is not very straightforward for any organization.
00:38:35:04 – 00:39:17:24
Rob Pye
And that is that so profound that insight. So profound! Because, when we do Value Exchange with anyone, whether we’ve known them for years or not, or because we’re essentially doing Value Exchange here, which is why it’s called The Value Exchange. A good session would just quickly get to a level of trust. You know, we’re just having a chat. No, nobody’s got some hierarchy or stake or axe to grind, and then people will just get back to “I grew up in Scotland.”
00:39:17:25 – 00:39:48:17
Rob Pye
“I always thought this and then that.” And then because there will be things that shape life and shape the story. And it’s why, you know, I rather geekily said if we can take the world of explicit knowledge and make it tacit, you know, tacit knowledge is that knowledge that you can’t write down on a web form or a process, but it is it comes out in coffee conversations.
00:39:48:18 – 00:40:19:06
Rob Pye
And that, that actually the the social and environmental value is about raising that level of awareness. And actually the more we kind of talk and, you know, not just be grumpy and aggressive, you know, because that, you know, maybe we don’t serve anyone, which is why in thinking more recently about Ethos’ mission, we were expressing it as being able to out more and more stories.
00:40:20:05 – 00:40:22:04
Rob Pye
Is that a grumbling dog in the background.
00:40:23:09 – 00:40:26:27
Annabelle Lambert
Two snoring dogs have lined up behind me
00:40:27:14 – 00:40:30:02
Steve Latchem
I had to check it wasn’t my cat.
00:40:30:15 – 00:40:31:01
Steve Latchem
She’s not in the room.
00:40:33:24 – 00:41:02:16
Rob Pye
I’ve sent much more, many, many more interesting guests to sleep than the snoring dogs before. But but it is is actually I love what you just said there about just if you can’t do the emperor’s clothes, let’s just talk Let’s just and what that talking and that honest conversation is raising a consciousness about what do we mean by social value?
00:41:02:22 – 00:41:24:22
Rob Pye
What do you mean by helping people? You know, and I think that there’s a question on that just, if we haven’t gone far enough and it’s like phew lie down. I wanted to talk about helping people in the context of, you know, reciprocal. You know, some people say, I scratch your back, you scratch mine.
00:41:25:01 – 00:41:49:06
Rob Pye
But so there’s sort of that direct reciprocity. But in in a family environment or friends, you would often do that without expecting anything back. You just help people because pay it forward or you just just help, you know. So it could be indirect reciprocity where you kind of helping people and maybe you don’t have to know them, maybe you don’t have to like them.
00:41:49:06 – 00:42:11:18
Rob Pye
Maybe don’t have to. You know, actually helping people is a sort of human DNA that within the bounds of your own well-being. You know, do do you have any filters when you help people? Do you you know, you don’t go looking for it, but, you know, what’s your architecture, that’s a big word, for helping people?
00:42:11:19 – 00:42:15:06
Steve Latchem
Do I have a gatekeeper or a mental block that
00:42:15:17 – 00:42:16:21
Rob Pye
A little switch that says, you know,
00:42:17:18 – 00:42:44:03
Steve Latchem
It and it’s interesting, actually, I think my initial response is always to try and help, be that deferring and suggesting some other people that they might speak to or something that they might look at. I think if someone takes that help and then tries to damage me or hurt me as a result of that help being provisioned, that would be my mental block.
00:42:44:13 – 00:43:08:23
Steve Latchem
And that has happened in the past. Not not everyone is completely open and honest in how they enact with these things. And I’ve had some terrible bosses that I’ve continued to help for ever in my time and some terrible customers in a consulting mode that you continue to help because that’s the mandate and the mission which you follow.
00:43:09:18 – 00:43:10:28
Steve Latchem
But my take.
00:43:10:29 – 00:43:24:01
Rob Pye
And now have you been able to say no much more now? And I know that actually that’s not good for me. And therefore I am going to draw a line under you know, I’m not just going to do it, even though I know it’s going to hurt me.
00:43:24:23 – 00:43:49:24
Steve Latchem
Yeah, I’m much better at it if you like due diligence of that initial value exchange before the help is given than I was, you know, nearly 40 years ago when I started operating the two ears, one mouth ratio, which is a brilliant one to mention to some people, sometimes not any of these delightful forum.
00:43:49:24 – 00:44:14:16
Steve Latchem
But I do I do use that with some others. I think the the other one is that something that stops me helping people when there is if you like an and optionality to it is where they start off by the 20 minute diatribe of how amazing they are and how they can do this themselves. But can you just help them with this thing here?
00:44:14:16 – 00:44:26:06
Steve Latchem
It’s like, to be honest, I’m not really the droids that you’re looking for in this instance. Look over here.
00:44:26:06 – 00:44:33:18
Rob Pye
So I’m conscious of time. Annabelle do you want to final Spanish inquisition and close it off?
00:44:34:24 – 00:45:01:05
Annabelle Lambert
Yeah. No, I don’t have. I don’t have any more questions to ask Steve, other than to say thank you for your time. Um, but at the beginning, I sort of, you again, opened my eyes to the diversity of the role that you had at the MoD, dealing with, you know, the cleaners over here to the technology in its most, you know, most complex at the other end of the scale.
00:45:01:05 – 00:45:08:00
Annabelle Lambert
But but no, nothing more for me. Um, Rob, do you have anything Steve, do you have any closing words?
00:45:08:21 – 00:45:33:12
Rob Pye
I’ll just say thank you and then let Steve have the final word. So, I mean, you know, you’re honesty, disclosure, bravery, you know, it just wonderful interview. I promised myself I’d do this years and years, but thank you. Thank you. Once again, Steve, I think, you know, you’ve given everybody a gift of lots of inspirational stories and, you know, hope to see you back here at some point in the future.
00:45:33:16 – 00:45:34:12
Rob Pye
Any final words Steve?
00:45:34:12 – 00:46:08:00
Steve Latchem
No, I think just to say thank you to the two of you, we’ve had so many of these virtual conversations in context to an Ethos challenge or idea or wild idea or aspiration, but this has been hugely cathartic for me. Think of finally identified that Ethos pro bono superfan was because I find a collection of individuals which are of wider family for me in their approach and their mission.
00:46:08:09 – 00:46:19:25
Steve Latchem
And I have done that in business in the past, in the MoD, in Mastek, in another places. But this one feels rather more world changing, I hope, with fingers crossed.
00:46:20:28 – 00:46:25:22
Rob Pye
Fingers crossed. Thank you so much. Until the next time goodbye from everybody. See you later.
00:46:25:22 – 00:46:35:16
Annabelle Lambert
Bye!
