High-Performing Teams & Operationalizing Culture with World Fuel CIO Josh McLean | Technovation 755

Yeah, thank you for having me, Peter. I'm really humbled and look forward to the time we have ahead.

Yeah, well, it's almost the company no one's really heard of. We're a Fortune 100 company at the moment. Head office is in Miami, Florida, but we're in 80 locations, we operate in 200 countries globally. We're basically an energy provider, with our predominant business being in fossil fuels. We have four main business segments: aviation, a land-based business, a marine-based business, and a very much growing sustainability business as well. We are very diverse. We have everything from fueling planes and trucks at major airports, to deicing machines, to developing SaaS products for small FBOs (flight-based operators, private planes essentially), and credit cards. So a very diverse kind of product offering and technology suite, and a business to match.

Under me is all of infrastructure, network, cybersecurity is under me, and all application development globally for the organization.

Yeah, good. I mean, it's pretty obvious I'm not local to Miami, I think with the accent. But yeah, been here in Miami with my family. I've got two young daughters. We relocated five years ago. I wasn't with the organization prior to that. The connection I had, or how I ended up being here, was the previous COO, Jeff Smith. Him and I had worked together over many years within Australia. He lived in Australia, he held executive roles in Australia at banking and financial institutions where him and I worked. So when he started here, we had kept in contact since he left Australia, and when he started here he reached out and said there was an opportunity, would I be interested. To be honest, I didn't jump at it to begin with. As much as I respect Jeff, there's very few people I would approach my wife to say, 'Hey, let's pack up our stuff and move halfway across the world.' But Jeff is one of them. He's a very inspirational leader, and we think alike. So that's how I ended up here. The decision we went through, my family and I, we'd often talked about an overseas adventure as we called it. The kids were young, they were five and seven, so they were at an age where they're very resilient, much more resilient than adults. We wanted to make the big move because everywhere's a long way from Australia, but we wanted to go somewhere culturally different to Australia. That was their main criteria. Because of that criteria, the States was never high in our list because the States and Australia are very similar. I relayed that story to Jeff, he said, 'Have you been to Miami?' I said I hadn't. He said, 'Well, why don't you come over and check it out? Don't judge a book by its cover.' So I did. I came over for a week. I tell this story a bit, but this is what sealed it for me. There were three things I observed and heard when I first came into Miami. First was landing at the airport and coming off the plane into the airport and hearing Latino music blasting through the airport in Miami. I thought, 'This is not normal, right?' The second thing was dual Spanish and English signs. Everywhere you go through the airport, everything is dual Spanish and English. But the one that sealed it for me was I hopped in an Uber to go to my hotel and tried to talk to the Uber driver, and not a word of English. So I remember ringing my wife in the Uber and said, 'I think we may have found our future destination.' And we did. Five years later, we're loving it. We love the diversity, the ease of travel from here as well. We can get to lots of destinations very close to Miami. So we're fully embracing that family adventure, and we haven't put a timeframe on when it will end, but we enjoy it while we're making the most of it while we're here.

Look, Pete, to be honest, I was incredibly intimidated. I hadn't worked globally before. I'd been with a big organization in Australia, but Australia is very small. It's only 28 million people. Florida has a bigger population than Australia does the whole country. It was a very prominent Fortune 100 company, a global company. So I had this high expectation of walking into a very mature, well-run operation because of all the accolades it had received. But what I walked into was something very, very different. The people were very reserved, incredibly reserved. You could just tell they'd been through a lot of change and there was a fatigue about them. There were lots of practices they were doing which were very much of a highlight to me. They were doing very old legacy, what I call older practices. For example, there was no kind of automation practices, there was no continuous delivery practices, even agile was something that they hadn't really embraced or yet heard of. And this was 2018. So I was incredibly intimidated, but what I found and discovered was something that I was not expecting because of the profile the organization had. But in relaying that story to Jeff when I was there, he said, 'Well, this is exactly why I took the role and why I want you here. We know it's an enormous undertaking, it's a big challenge, but it'll be incredibly fulfilling and rewarding when you look back.' So I didn't accept straight away, but after debating and going through that personally and professionally, it's been a very good move.

The very first thing we did, we knew that with the talent we had at the time and the aspirations we had, we needed to fundamentally inject talent who had basically done what we were looking to do to help us. We knew that the two of us, Jeff and I, were not enough. There was another colleague of mine that came over from Australia, so the three of us wasn't enough. So we brought highly talented individuals that we'd worked with before outside, and we brought them in. There's nothing better than experience of what you've been through, what we're looking to go through. So that compression algorithm is only getting better. That was the first thing we did. We brought people in who we knew and worked with before, who had gone through similar journeys but had the collective experience in all different roles. They weren't all leader roles. They were architect roles, testing roles. And the beauty for World Fuel is it's not a big IT organization. It's like 400 people. So we knew that if we got a key number of folks in those key roles, we could make a tangible difference really quickly because it's not a big scale. So scale wasn't a problem we really had to solve for. So that was where we deferred, pretty much to getting the right talent in to begin with.

Yeah, look, I'm a big believer that culture is leader-led. As a leader, from prior mentors and coaches, I learned that you are on show wherever you're walking, whether you're talking, whatever you're doing. People are looking at you and they're learning from you. The behaviors and what you do and how you do it is showcasing that culture you want to create. So you're in the spotlight. There's a saying a mentor of mine had: 'Beware the shadow you cast,' because that shadow casts a long way. If it's a very healthy and good shadow, it'll be well received and well rehearsed. But if it's not, then the opposite will happen. So that's something that I thrive on, but it's a big responsibility. What we needed to do was get that behavior and culture within the leaders that we had here. There were a number of leaders that we brought in, or we turned, or we spent a lot of time coaching, because we knew if we got the right leadership in place, then the culture will follow as a result of their behaviors.

For me, what I learned a lot here, and particularly from Jeff, is how do you operationalize culture? Culture is a buzzword. Anyone can say 'I want to build a high-performing culture,' that's all. But tangibly, what is that? How do you do it? And how do you go about doing it? There are a few things we did here that I hadn't done before, but we really tried and it has been terribly successful for us. One was defining the leadership attributes that were important for us, and we measured those attributes. There were six attributes. These are leadership attributes, it doesn't mean you're in technology. For example, there's forming teams. How good as a leader do you form teams? Your ability to form teams. You're only as good as the people around you. That ability to form, and that's not just surrounding yourself with people that are high performing. You need to know how to adjust and act on underperformers as well, and that's something a lot of leaders don't do well. And know how to coach and mentor. So that forming teams aspect is a key attribute. The other attribute for us was around distributing work. We get paid to deliver and support software. So how do the best companies in the world do that? Educate yourself on that, and then bring those practices and behaviors into the organization. The third was around measure what matters. Measurement for me, what gets measured gets done. You replace a lot of assumptions and opinions with fact with measures. Once you can measure something, you can then understand root cause and improve upon it. So it becomes this continuous improvement, but the measurement part of agile really helps you factually understand where things are broken in order to improve. The other three we had was attracting people. We wanted leaders to build an environment that others wanted to work for them, but also others wanted to work with the team. So it's an equal contribution between the leader and the team. The ability for leaders to attract talent and take that onto themselves was another big key factor. The last two attributes are listen, learn, and leverage, and impact and influence. The listen, learn, and leverage is a bit like, within technology you're solving problems. Mostly those problems have been solved before. You're not the first one to come across this problem. So people that have a high curiosity and ability to put their ego aside and get out and understand who has solved this before, what does good look like in the craft that you have, understand how that works, bring that back in and implement it yourself. That's a big part of what we wanted our culture to be like. And then impact and influence as an individual you have across your organization. So we have those six attributes that are a part of every leader, no matter what role and level you're at. And then we use NPS every quarter to measure the success of the leaders and the team, how they're progressing. We ask two questions: Would you recommend your leader to a colleague or friend? Or would you recommend your team to a colleague and friend? That's a quarterly survey we do. The results are very transparent, but it's more the feedback that it provides us that helps us then formulate plans. We do that every quarter. We've been doing that for the last four years. So a long-winded answer, Pete, but there were a number of attributes we used. They were deliberate attributes, and we measured the success of those attributes for leaders to see where we needed to either start, stop, or stoke.

Yeah, so part of what I referred to as high-performing teams, what does high-performing teams mean? A big component of high-performing teams is accountability and responsibility. They care for what they do, they take pride in what they do, and they're looking to build and continue to improve on that. Traditionally, when I first came here, we were organized in a very traditional IT mode, which was production support and projects. It was very separate teams. Teams over here only did errors that occurred in production and support tickets, and teams over here only built new stuff. I've worked in those environments. It's not a productive environment. There's a lot of finger pointing: 'This broke over here, this person's fault.' We reorganized ourselves completely into a product model, Spotify model. Those models are out there, but basically that is forming cross-functional teams around an asset or a product, and they own that asset and product. They own if there's any issues on it, they own all the new development, they own the asset lifecycle, the roadmap, the security, everything about it. So for me, that was one of the biggest step changes in improving the culture. Simply reorganizing ourselves into that model. It went from one day I didn't have to get woken up at 2:00 in the morning because someone else would do that for me, to this day, 'Oh my gosh, I'm now being woken up at 2 o'clock in the morning for a change I did.' And all of a sudden you care a lot more to not be woken up again the next morning. So that's been a big factor. We continue to be guided by those principles in any organizational changes we do, so that we don't lose the outcome we're looking for in being organized that way.

Yeah, happy to. As you said, I never finished high school and I never went further onto further education. What I did do is I went and owned my own business. I jumped straight out of school and for three years I had my own business. I then transitioned into a few other roles after selling that business, and purely by accident I landed in IT. It was for those who remember Y2K. That was where they were employing anyone who could spell IT, and I was one of those people. So that was my path into IT. A few friends and a cousin of mine recommended me because I was curious about technology, particularly coding. So I did a number of short coding courses and then drifted into technology. Having been a developer for a number of years, I quickly realized I like to enjoy what I do. Life's too short. It's totally up to you. You have a choice to enjoy what you do, and if you don't enjoy it, don't look to other people to solve it for you. It's your choice to act upon that. I wasn't thoroughly enjoying developing, but I also knew I wasn't enjoying it because I wasn't terribly good at it. I realized that coding is difficult. It's an ever-evolving craft. There are new tools, new languages. If you don't have a passion for it to learn all this stuff, you will be left behind. Purely by chance, I got off at a leadership role. My first leadership role was actually a team I used to be a part of, and I was the youngest by 20 years. So I moved into a role where I was leading people much more experienced than me. But it was one of my best learning experiences as a leader because I learned that you're not there to teach them new things. They're 20 years my senior. I'm not going to teach them anything they don't know. So I learned to be very authentic. Don't try and pull the wool over their eyes. That's kind of stuck with me throughout. I was very fortunate enough to be in an organization that focused a lot on leadership as a craft, not the technology side of things. So a lot of the people aspects: how do you build high-performing teams, how do you have effective conversations. We would do role plays a lot. I still do role plays today. I think role plays are a fantastic tool. Practice is the way to improve. That had my younger earlier leadership career really formed and helped me grow when I loved it. The other pivotal moment for me was when I got introduced to Agile in 2010. It was very akin to my personality. It's a team-based methodology, very open, very transparent, about continually improving, short and sharp, not long-winded. So my short attention span really grew to like it. So a couple of key moments really helped me move. I think once anyone sees that they really enjoy what they do and then they love what they do, opportunities come. The other advice I got was never knock an opportunity down. You may not know or see the benefit of this opportunity, but someone is coming to you for something that you can't ignore. So I've always taken on opportunities. There's very few I've turned down. So I've ended up in places that I never ever thought I would, such as Miami, Florida. Again, probably a long-winded answer, but it's something that I continue to do. As far as how do I then lead through others, what has that affected me? Another mentor of mine said, 'When you're having a crisis at work, you don't go back and look at the person's resume. You're talking to the person, and that's the partnership and the relationship you have and how you can work through and solve that problem.' As I hire and recruit people, I generally look for attitude first. Someone who has a very good attitude, someone who has a high sense of self-awareness as well. Particularly in leaders, if you've got a high level of self-awareness, you do need to know technology. This authenticity part of me, it's inauthentic to you to ignore technology because you're leading technology people. How can you lead a group of that if you do not understand it yourself? So you have to have an interest and an education and passion for it. So that's how I've kind of gone through. I look for someone who's very people-oriented, I look for someone who's got a strong backbone. You need to have a sense of confidence yourself in what you do, but a strong sense of morals and that self-awareness part that goes with it.

Yeah, there are a number of those topics. In no priority order, what fascinates me at the moment is the whole low-code, no-code area. There's some stat I read that over 60% of application development will be done by low-code, no-code within five years. So it's a fast-evolving space. Why I think it's highly interesting is I've worked in a few organizations from banking, insurance, telecommunications, and now energy. Every one of them, this is the only place I've worked that hasn't had a mainframe. Every organization has some form of legacy technology, and everyone's trying to modernize that technology. It's difficult, it's hard, and it's expensive. The day that someone comes along to make that easier is a day that's going to be really fascinating. Low-code, no-code is kind of heading towards that, making it a lot easier not only to produce new things quicker, faster, and easier, but to transform existing. So again, I have a very similar problem here, and it's a space that's really high on our to-do list. The other is just that whole data, but AI data. That's a very fascinating, fast-moving space. It's not new, it's been around for a while, but the advancements that we're making are steep. It's something we don't do maturely here. We do do a little bit of AI, but it's a space that's incredibly fascinating.

Yeah, I think the other one that I draw upon is I owned my own business and I treat it like it's your own money. The responsibility and accountability that comes with that, it's a 24/7, 365-day job. You do not let loose on that. So there's a certain grit and resilience that goes with it in order to do that business well. I think in my younger years, from 18 to mid-20s, I've taken that on with me, and that's one aspect that's really helped me. The other bit for me is just keeping authentic to me. I think that's the one no matter what the role, no matter what the situation. I don't have to know the answer. I'm not the smartest in the room, and don't pretend to be. You're working with a bunch of experts, and make sure you lean on them for help. So that team-based attitude, it's not about me, it's about the team. I keep authentic to that because that's why I'm here today, I think, is a big part of all those reasons I mentioned.

Yeah, thank you, Peter. Again, I'm privileged to be a part of it and enjoyed the time. Thanks again.