58: Adam Tuckwell - Leaders are Listening to the Voices of Change

Adam Tuckwell, Managing Director for Mobas, a brand transformation business in the UK, crafts, seeds, amplifies, and channels corporate messaging to affect change as social media and other communications platforms shift information power dynamics between leaders and their constituent audiences. Adam brings communications experience spanning video gaming, traditional publishing, and brand agencies to explain how customers’ and employees’ voices generate and facilitate transformation externally and internally.

 

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

 

[02:49] Adam imagined his career differently to how it turned out.

 

[03:36] People have helped Adam identify his skills and what they are best suited for.

 

[04:34] Adam recognizes the importance of communications.

 

[05:59] The challenge of engaging teens in the video game sector.

 

[06:52] The wonderful challenges of wide-ranging tasks involved during the company’s growth stage. 

 

[09:07] Adam’s next employer couldn’t be more different!

 

[09:45] Updating how Cambridge University Press communicated with their audiences.

 

[10:16] Adapting to different pace and process challenges at his new job, Adam also launches a podcast. 

 

[11:20] The role of empathy in interviews—stopping broadcasting and starting to listen.

 

[12:03] Being naturally inquisitive, the next move was to an agency to explore diagnosis and problem-solving.

 

[14:16] The Future of Work manifests differently for SMEs versus for large enterprises.

 

[15:10] The Future of Work is being driven by workers—not management—being empowered.

 

[16:03] Companies’ transformation involves exploring different ideas and ways of working, getting beyond blinkered views of their situations.

 

[17:30] How the Future of Work is entirely changing the way we work.

 

[20:35] Clients want to solve a particular problem and don’t initially recognize how the issue fits within their wider organizational structure.

 

[19:08] The ongoing journeys of change—some are iterative, some are fundamental. 

 

[21:39] Helping future leaders identify where there are issues as iterations are ongoing. 

 

[22:30] In the current environment, where everyone is strained and stretched, how to identify the opportunities.

 

[25:17] Customers now have choices and voices which mean companies need proactively to manage how they are viewed so issues don’t snowball.

 

[27:20] Adam gets excited about inward communications and the Employee Value Proposition, which is hard for some organizations to adapt to.

 

[30:30] The next generation of workers give Adam hope with their openness and  different expectations of the workplace.

 

[31:52] As a child, Adam communicated visuals for his parents and appreciated the experiences of others and the relevance of tailoring messaging.

 

[33:40] The importance of trust and sensitivity to bring people along, combined with transparency and openness.

 

[34:20] Different types of leaders are rising now with diverse backgrounds and experiences. 

 

[36:08] The future for leaders who can channel Gen Zs’ insights and appetite for change.

 

[39:12] The importance of investing in failure, experimenting for the future.

 

[40:52] Encouraging companies to focus 70% of their energies on today.

[43:40] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Don’t be alone as a leader. Ensure you have a friend or a group of friends with whom you can be vulnerable and who will be honest and critique what you do. Invest in relationships that ensure the decisions you make are the right ones for everybody.

 

 

RESOURCES

 

Adam Tuckwell on LinkedIn

Adam Tuckwell on Twitter@adamtuckwell

adam.tuckwell@mobas.com

Mobas website

 

 

QUOTES

 

“People have helped me along the way to identify what I’m good at and how my skills might best be used.”

 

“The future of work is already here, it’s just that some companies haven’t opened their eyes to it yet.”

 

“So what I really like about transformation within the organizations we work with is that there’s a real appetite to try different ideas and concepts and ways of working that they wouldn’t have done before.”

 

“I think so many organizations are purely built to be reactive and they have too many layers that stop issues from being dealt with when they’re small and instead they snowball into big issues.”

 

“We need to have an understanding of where our people are, what they're experiencing, whether they're up or they're down, whether they've got issues outside of work.”

 

“Gen Z is seen as being a bit more entitled or set in their ways which are very negative traits. But then on the positive side, they’re really passionate about the environment, they want to save the world — they really don’t like what we've done to it.”