The Business Swiss Army Knife with Tim Newman | 004

Maartje van Krieken: Hey, thanks for tuning in. I am here today with the fabulous Tim Newman. We have crossed paths 1617, years ago for the first time in eastern Russia, and fortunately, since then, too, Tim is a independent consultant in general business and capital capital projects, and has done that in many places around the world, currently based out of Saint Louis in the US, but originally from the UK, with a lovely and easily understandable accent compared to my occasional dinglish. So it should be great. I'm really excited you are joining us today, Tim, because I think you probably have a whole deposit full of scars that you could talk from, and we all could learn from. I sometimes talk or talk about the fact that I also refer out right when I were with clients that that different situations require different types of people at different levels of expertise. Well, Tim is definitely one of those people that I'm glad to have in my rolodex. I think we do similar things, but in very different ways, and operate in different situations. So if you would end up reaching out to me in any situation, and I don't think I can help you. I might be referring you to somebody like Tim, and I know that he will, if it's also not him, go out of his way to figure out how to assist you, because that's the type of person he is. So welcome, Tim. Thank

you very much. Marty. I'm really happy to be here. Yeah,

Maartje van Krieken: excited. It took a little, a little country hoping for us to get together. It did, yeah, and actually have this conversation, which is, but so I'm glad you're here. So yeah, Tim, do you want to tell us about one of the many stories you have that led to some scars in the business front?

Yeah, I think it's, I guess, when I was thinking about this is there's some similarities between the problems people run into when trying to deliver a capital project and also when trying to build a business from scratch. I was thinking about this and just thinking, what kind of sort of problems do people make for themselves, particularly if they're inexperienced? And one of the common things I see because I kind of do it myself, in the sense I'm building my business, I'm branching into new areas, but you see people do it on projects, and I don't do it on projects anymore, because I have enough experience to know not to but it's kind of when you use envision, envisage the end state of the business or the project, and you basically jump to that point, and you start acting as if you're already at that point. So in the context of projects, if you're inexperienced in projects, and you're you found yourself in a major capital project role, because maybe your background is something else. And you you know, maybe your operations or something, and you don't quite understand that long, methodical, very meticulous capital project process where you do years and millions of dollars of upfront work before you start really committing. You seem to think the project hasn't started unless you're digging a hole in the ground, and you know you want to build a facility, you know you want to build a factory, you know you need a building. So hey, why not start building now? Why would we wait two years? We can build this now. Let's start getting some equipment on site. And you see, of course And inevitably, what happens is your heart point food building, and you realize it's not what you want, and you've wasted a load of money, and you're kind of going back, you know, you're completely overwhelmed, because you normally don't have the people or the project infrastructure in place to even manage that. Never mind that you're not building the right thing. But you see a similar thing when people are trying to build a business, and I say, I have to hesitate and stop myself doing it, even with what I do. And you see it on programs like Dragon's Den or Shark Tank, whatever they call it, in the US, where people have an idea, and it might be a good idea, and it might be huge in future, but they're making decisions as if they're already there. And they're, you know, one of the things you see a lot is they start, they've got a product, great idea, they've sold one. Now they start wanting to branch out into new product lines. It's like, hang on. You sold one, you branch out your second product line when you've sold 1,000,001 and a good example of this was when I did my MBA in Geneva, we had one of the what he was one of the senior professors at the university, and he was an exceptionally charismatic and impressive Dutch guy, Stef De Jong. He was called, he was, must have been in his late 60s. I'd imagine he'd been in Switzerland for years. He was a serial entrepreneur. But like a lot of Dutch, very charismatic, very outspoken, you know, mixed humor with seriousness. He couldn't quite figure out which was which. And I went with him to a pitching session of basically startups in Geneva, and listening to these various entrepreneurs pitching for money and capital. And one of them had this idea that he it was all around green and environmentalism. That's the thing that gets money over there. And this one chat young guy, he had this idea that let's move away from single use plastic containers in takeaways, you know, the takeouts from restaurants and things and from Chinese takeaways, he said, because they get used once and they end up in landfill. So he had come up with this idea where he was going to replace all aim with stainless steel cartons that basically he would own. They'd get given to the takeaway somehow, they would get dropped off in these collection centers and get washed and recycle. And it was all completely green. There were huge flaws with the plant for the start, the deposit on the container was $5 but they cost $10 to make. So the first thing you do is steal them all and melt it down and sell it to a scrap metal merchant. They you know, that was that was just my cynicism. But what was interesting was he said, Right, I need something like $100,000 because I need to make 10,000 of these containers, and I need this marketing strategy. I need to set up the collection centers I need. And he was already planning a $20 million a year operation, and the Dutch guy beside me lent over and said to me, he doesn't need $100,000 to make 10,000 of these containers. He needs to make 10 of these containers and go to a takeaway and see if anyone's interested. And if they are, and they say, Can you give us another 10? Go and get another 50 made. But if, after three weeks of knocking on restaurant doors, you've still got nine of these things left. You don't need $100,000 and it's this. And I noticed this through so many of these entrepreneurial pitches, they had an idea to get to a big place, and it could have been a good idea, but the route to get there is very important, because ultimately, you have to protect capital, same as in a project, you have very limited capital. You have to protect it. Because once it's gone, very hard to get anymore, especially if your track record is you've lost it. And you see this in in a lot of these entrepreneurs were always they were at the end point already, I need 10 vans and 15 of these collection points and 1000s of people. You do, but,

Maartje van Krieken: yeah, the world needs those visionaries, right? I work a lot with innovators and startups, because usually the major transition phases is where chaos ensues, right? And I have a background in innovation management, right? I love people who generate these amazing ideas that will make the world a better place. And we need people like that, and we need their ideas, and we need their ability to see the world in visions of what it could be, because so many of us can't the challenges that we also need to learn all to admit sometimes what we don't know and and admit that, to bring in others into into the the process, because we start to have blinders on and, and, yeah, talking through your thinking with others is so important. I talk about decision making all the time. Your story of the entrepreneur made me think of what we used to use in innovation management or product development in university just a while ago, these life cycle trees, as they call it. So they made us sit down in a group and kind of say, Okay, if this is our product and how does it work? What's the whole life cycle? What are all the the branches and the who's involved? How do we So, you would start have to think about, how do I take it back? How do I get it there? Who and And inevitably, that led to all sorts of challenges with me. I think like, Oh, I know I want to deal with all that, but yeah, if it's your business. You do need to deal with all that, right? And it doesn't. It doesn't require the most complex of decision making processes. It requires you sitting around the table and putting it in a spreadsheet or on a whiteboard, but get the thoughts from here to a place that you can get some feedback on.

Yeah, it's, it's the it's the importance of having that genuinely diverse team, in the sense that you need the visionary 100% you do, but you also need the pragmatic execution person. You need several personality types. And occasionally you hear about somebody who has both and their household names. They're people like Elon Musk, who has a vision and the ability to follow that route to getting it done. And they're the people that everybody knows about. And unless you're one of them, you have to really understand what your strength is and what people I need around me, what kind of people I've I'm not really a visionary I'm not one of these people who can really look down the track and think this is a great, disruptive idea. I'm just too probably the engineer in me just makes me too rigid. But if someone else has a visionary idea, I'm pretty good at putting in place a pragmatic path to at least trying to get there. But what you tend to find is, you know, the visionaries can be very impatient. So can investors. My approach is, quite often it comes across as negative, but I'm actually just being cynical and realistic. But of course, people don't want to hear that. They want to hear yay. We can go and do this, but it's in I think it's the skill, and this is the success of failure of companies, is making sure you have the right personality types and skill sets around the table, and that the leadership, whoever that is, can nurture those and they don't sort of shut them down or surround themselves by people who tell them what they want to hear. That you are able to say, Well, I do have a real cynic here, but if that person's on board, it's probably a good idea. Yeah,

Maartje van Krieken: definitely, right. And, and I think it's it's more, even more important in a progressive or dynamic business, or an innovative oriented business, or some a business or team that needs to develop that you create that transparency and that openness, because that's empowering, right? That allows people to to respond from their cynicism, because it has a value you, you, and hence, you don't want 20 of those in the team. You want the one that pulls you back when you guys go overboard, right? And you want the one who says, Okay, that's all fine, but we still need to be compliant with X, Y and Zed. So, yeah, I'm if you're now not going to work out these details we're in, we're in the wrong place, right?

That's exactly it. You don't want 20 cynics, but you also don't want 20 sycophants either. I mean, I worked, as you know, in Nigeria. I managed a team in Nigeria, and the culture in Nigeria is the Nigerian team will always tell their boss their idea is brilliant. That's the culture there. It's not a culture of pushback and challenge like you see in my the Netherlands, for example. So, you know, when I put an idea to my team, it was all sort of, yeah, this is great. Now, fortunately, I had one guy who was this old Scottish piping engineer who was kind of fed up with life in some ways. He really, you know, eat out enough. He was like, you know, and he would be so cynical, and if I'd had an idea, he'd look at me and go, Well, how's that gonna work? And fortunately, I understood that he had a lot of knowledge, far more than I ever would, and he would give me guidance. And I knew then that if I'd arrived at a methodology or an idea and he was on board with it, I knew it was solid, because the cynic who could undermine it wasn't doing that, and I found that a really useful role he played, you know, undermine everything, but if he's not undermining You, well, maybe it's a good idea, you know, whereas if you have a team of Nigerians all telling you that it's fantastic, well, you don't know if it is or not, so you do need one or two, but you say you don't need 20 of them in the team either. No.

Maartje van Krieken: And you also need to be able to sometimes tune him out, right? Because, yeah, there is he's he's not always right, but it's on the stuff, the riskier stuff, where your gut says, Okay, I need to be careful around this one that you want to tune into him, the stuff that you know that works. But then your gut also is fine, and your guts telling you you're on the right track. So it's easier, right? Tim, I know that you faced plenty of professional. Fires, right? So when the when the going gets tough and things get chaotic and a bit feel a bit like a crisis and stuff as a as a leader, what is the things that that you do or tell yourself, or what are the things that you found helpful, or maybe completely not helpful, in kind of taking the first steps in these situations when it's maybe not so clear yet where you're going and what needs to happen.

So there's two I kind of stumbled upon this anyway, because I'm a very kind of OCD organized person, but there were two completely unrelated, almost anecdotes that I heard from other people on how to manage an overwhelming task. One was from I had a good friend who was a he still is. He's in the military. He's a Royal Marine. He fought in Iraq, and I got to spend a lot of time sitting talking with him. And he said, When you're in the middle of a battle, you really have no idea what's going on. It is absolutely impossible to organize anything when you are faced with that level of confusion and noise and danger. So he said, what the training did, the training kicked in was that you just focus on the next task. You forget about the big picture. He said, Right, I need to get that weapon firing. I need to get that machine gun working. So I don't care anything else that's getting on. I am going to give the in order to get that working. Then I'm going to, once I've done that, I'll focus on the next thing. And it was just this, just do the next thing in front of your nose. Don't try to sort of, how do I manage all of this? So I remembered that, and then I read a book, which I have on the shelf up there, about an American mountain climber, Ed viestas, and he climbed, like a lot of the world's biggest mountains, and he said, actually trying to climb one of these gigantic Himalayan mountains is almost too big a task for you mentally to do. And he said, you can't actually approach it as I am going to climb this mountain when you're actually on it. He said, You have to walk to that, that boulder over there that's 100 meters ahead, I'm going to make it to that and that's all I'm going to focus on. I'm not looking at climbing the mountain and making the summit. I am focused on getting to that piece of rock over there, and when I get there, I'll figure out what I do next. And it's this overwhelming task which you completely dismiss from your mind and you break it into what is the next manageable step, because so long as that next step represents progress, then you're actually tackling the task ahead of you, even if the task is overwhelming. And that's what I tend to do, I get overwhelmed in my mind very easily. So the first thing I do is sort of write, what are the tasks that need to make this happen? What's the first one? What we need to find out, you know? So we need to do all this. Tim, you need to help with this. Well, this is all okay. What's the first thing that needs to happen? And how is that going to happen, and what needs to be in place to do it? And you basically break it down into a very small task, and you focus on that, and you don't worry about the overall, yeah, that's, that's how I've approached any kind of crisis or firefighting situation. Yeah, just break it down into the tiniest chunks.

Maartje van Krieken: I love the this the war analogy. I often say, if you if you find yourself with your back against the wall, or you're on that on that cliff, right, people always say, oh, but the decision, the decision is so hard at that point, the decision is actually not hard, because there's usually only one, sometimes two, things you can do, and What's hard is actually overcoming that fear associated with taking the first step. It's the emotional turmoil, because you're already thinking about what else is behind it, right? But that first step, that that first decision, is actually usually not a hard one, because you don't have 100 options, right? Exactly. There's a few things you don't know enough about and until you start moving and hence, then get feedback on every step you take, you don't get progressive insight, right? And standing on a cliff longer, yeah, doesn't make it any easier, right? Just exactly, more energy draining more fear. Yeah, yeah,

the Indecision is worse, and there's probably not many wrong decisions, but not making a decision is probably the worst, worst option. Yeah,

Maartje van Krieken: in the field, we both work, we help right and support. We also are used to working amongst people and probably ourselves, not the great. Greatest at asking for help. Humans are typically not the greatest at using but asking for help. Can you elaborate a little bit on that topic, on when you are in a situation at work where things in your business, where things are not good and asking for help, and how to maybe make it easier for people to do so or think about it differently? Yeah, I

think I've never had I have a problem asking for help with the stuff I think I know, which is probably I haven't actually thought about the answer to that, but because I I know what I don't know, I've always been pretty good at asking for the particularly technical expertise and technical help. I mean, I'm effectively a bad engineer. I did a mechanical engineering degree. I was never going to be a mechanical engineer because I was terrible at it. So I went into project engineering and project management, which is where failed engineers end up. So I've always sort of admired and respected, the people who have technical knowledge which I don't. So asking for help from them is much easier because it's something I acknowledge I don't know. Simply a case of, you know, this person has something I need. So you ask them where it's probably much more difficult, and I'm not even sure how I'm going to answer this is when it's something that I am confident, I know, but I probably actually do need help. I think it requires a lot of humility, which I think comes with age. I think it requires confidence in a way that you know you confident that you you're not going to feel insecure about it, which, again, comes with age, but I think it's really being able to ascertain your own performance and understanding that You do need help in an area where you probably thought you didn't, and I think that's probably takes some, quite a bit of effort, a lot of self awareness on the part of the individual, which I Think I'm probably better now, but earlier, when I was younger and very impetuous, probably not. Yeah,

Maartje van Krieken: yeah. And I think that's actually the answer, right? Those of us who are lucky enough to work in a lot of multi disciplinary teams and organizations at least, have really learned the value of, you know, letting the experts do things. And so typically, I find clients who have worked in that space find it a little easier to outsource, at least specialty support, interesting, the general stuff that we feel that we should all be capable of, and it's got something to do with pride, and it's got something to do with the luggage that you bring with you, right? What's build up over time? Yeah, um, yeah. And, and it's, and it's hard, right? There is not a single answer. But I'd say if in your in your gut, that you know that things are not great, even if it starts with just talking it through, right, and yes, or looking at yourself as a third person. Say if I was, if I if I was my best mate, what would I advise, right? And kind of say like, because, yeah, we were all humans, and we have a limited set of bandwidth and energy, right? And I think the kind of help that people like you and I provide are not any measurement of people's capacity of or capability. When

you've mentioned that I've actually thought of something I do and I didn't, it's just sort of triggered my memory here, I don't necessarily ask for help, but what I do, I always try and keep quite a close network around me, and I tell them what I'm doing, which is, in a form of, it's a form of asking for help. You're kind of, I'm not asking for feedback. I'm just saying, Hey, this is what I'm doing. And I talk to a lot of people I trust, and I do that even even right now in the workplace, I do that. I go and tell people what I'm doing, which is almost a check on myself, and it's almost, it's an indirect way of asking for help, and it may be born out of an insecurity that maybe I'm I don't know what I'm doing. Maybe there is a bit of imposter syndrome. So let's run this by three people and see what they say. But that can be if you're not I guess if you're not comfortable asking for help because you think that you should know it, maybe that's an alternative. Maybe that's something you do. You just give unsolicited, sort of just, you know, this is what I'm doing, and just, sort of, you know, see what feedback you get from people that you you trust. Trust, and you know, you have some degree of respect for because you're right. It is. It's not an easy thing to do,

Maartje van Krieken: no, and it's about, I'd love for people every with every client I worked with, it's always like, Oh, I wish they would have come a little sooner, right? Because there's so much, yeah, yeah, usually damage to the people. That's more what I sometimes care about than the business, right? That everybody is run down and tired and upset, and people who used to like each other and respect each other are kind of working against each other because of everything that's happened and, and it's like, oh, and it's, and it's, it's really hard, right? But I would like to think of of this type of help that's not really the specialist, doing a specialist piece of work for you. It's more as increasing your bandwidth temporary, increasing your energy, temporary, and bringing a fresh pair of ears and eyes and the ears are just as important, right? Somebody who will listen to you talking through all of it and kind of say, you know, it all sounds really good, but somehow, this common and that common, they don't gel at all. Explain me, right? How, how did, how did the two in your head connect because I don't see it or I don't hear it, and it's just this. It's, it's that, yeah, I think there's so much value in a peer conversations and a sanity check. And if you run a business or in your in a complex work situation or in chaos, you don't always have the right peer in your group of friends, right? So that's when you find a temporary friend, right? A temporary friend like, yeah. So that brings me to my last, well, my second last question to you, Tim, as I hinted at the beginning, you'd be one of those people who is in my space or in my rolodex. I wish I was in the era that I actually had a Rolodex. So if people are heard you talk and they they're interested in more of Tim and what you do, and where did they find you? What is it that you you offer or want people to know about you? So

I'm how I've been described before is, I'm like a Swiss army knife. Okay? My my experience and capabilities are very, very broad. There's not very much that I don't know how to do to a reasonable professional standard. But, I mean, I have, at the moment, I work for a client as their procurement and contract director, so I write contracts. I started off as their chemical program director, and I was literally designing reactions in a lab that I designed myself, and I designed the pilot plant. I'm also consulting on their project management and governance, and I wrote all their corporate governance procedures. So I've got this kind of really broad, but it's not very deep. So it's where I struggled in big companies. I'm not someone who can go in this specialist role and produce this like international standard result in a particular niche area, but if I come into a company, particularly a small or fast growing one, there is very little that I don't understand, be it technical, be administrative, legal, anything like that. So I can kind of add value across any area where the business is feeling pain, and get it to the point where you now need to really bring on a professional Well, there's a good chance of one of my clients. I'm going to be their HR director for a while, till they find a new one. I know enough to stop the department from falling over, but I wouldn't be the right person to be in that position for ages. So I'm a real sort of general purpose consultant who is, like the Swiss Army Knight, not the best tool in any particular job, but very useful if you're not sure exactly what you need, and you've got this little device which has 20 different functions until you figure out exactly what you need. And that's really how I don't market myself like that. But once I'm in with a client, they see that, and they're like, can you do this? Oh, can you do that? And I'm just picking up all different kinds of work, and they keep me around because I'm useful. Whereas, yeah, when I had a career in a big company, they want you to be a specialist in this one position and never move outside of it. But the irony was, every big company I worked for when they needed somebody to do a job that nobody was particularly suited for, I was the one they asked to do it, you know. So that's, that's what I do. My main, I say, my main specialty. If I had a gun to my head and was told, what are you really an expert at its capital project delivery. I know how to organize a capital project from the conception, the idea, right through to completion, all the processes that. Need to be followed, the stage gates, how you prepare for them, how you attract funding, that kind of thing. I can be found on, I'm on LinkedIn and Timothy Newman. My company is called Newman Aventus, which is n, e, w, M, a, n, e, v, e, n, t, u, s.com, it's, it's Latin for outcomes, Aventus, so that's where the name comes from, and it was unique. I mean, I do have a website, which is www Newman aventus.com, that's where I can be found. And, yeah, if anybody needs to get in touch, feel free. I'm always up for a chat. And yeah, anytime.

Maartje van Krieken: Yeah. So Tim, you sound like, to me, like an ideal person to bring on as an interim manager when there's upheaval. And the reason I really wanted you on the show in the early days, because I'm on this quest to show the world that there's people out there, particularly consultants, who, when you don't know yet what you need are the people you call, instead of setting up an elaborate contract for unlimited hours with a fancy place, you bring in some money who can at least get going and help you get going with the right variety of subjects, but who also will be honest and will not you know, I know for a fact that you're also the type of human who will not stick around when you're not the right person, right? And so I would totally trust referring people out to because I know that, because I see it way too much with consultants who stick around forever. And yes, it's great. You can do all of it, but you also are the type of person if there's others better place to do it that you're also happy to move on. You got there is enough people interested in in what you have to offer. So great. Thank you so much for being my guest today. I always enjoy your stories and talking to you and hearing your view on things. And as always, when I have a guest on the show, I want to ask you if you have a wisdom, a chaos theory that you want to share with our guests, something that's maybe relevant when things are tricky or weird,

I'd say when for people who and I'm kind of in this situation again, so I'm kind of taking a new line of business, but it's when you're starting out. You have these plans when you're starting a new business, and you think you know where you're going to go and what you're going to be doing in five years. And what I find when I speak to a lot of people is they ended up doing something totally different. Because what happened was they had this plan and like say, it's very important to move along the road and take the first few steps, but what you find is, when you're actually making those steps, well, other opportunities present themselves, and you end up following a bit of a line of least resistance. You're finding, well, they didn't, they're not really interested in this service I was offering, but they keep asking me about this one, so maybe I should deliver that. But before you know it, you're an expert in that, and that becomes your core business. And then a year later, you're telling everybody this great plan. You saw a gap in the market, and this is why you did it, which is, you know, complete nonsense. You just sort of fell into it. But I think what I'm trying to say is that if you're not sure exactly what you want to do, just keep pushing. Just keep pushing and doing something and meeting people and offering to help them, and you listen to them and hear what is it they actually need you, you come up with a reason to speak to them. This is what I want to do. I want to sell you this. Well, they might like you, and people do business with people, and they say, I like you, but I don't need any of that. What I could really use is this, do you know anything about that? And your first response should be, yeah, sure. I was just thinking of getting into that. And you go away and do some research, and you, you start providing that to the person in front of you, and I think that's the that's really the the key, and it stops you getting discouraged. You just keep pushing and pushing until you find that value stream. And then you make it your own, and then you rewrite the history to say you were going to do that all along.

Maartje van Krieken: Well, I'm a big fan of a BBC History podcast, and the only red thread in that whole history podcast is all these individuals who were big historical figures reinvented themselves and retold the same story about themselves differently. That seems to be the common theme. So I love that advice again. Thank you so much, Tim. Thank you for tuning in and listening and see you next time.

Thanks Maartje, see you next time.