Tony Pounder Of Intelligent Decisioning: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Set clear goals and expectation. Sit with the members of the team on a regular basis and set goals and expectations with the individual — gain buy in from the team member by discussing why those goals are being set, how they help the individual and the wider team.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Tony Pounder.
Tony Pounder is the CTO of Intelligent Decisioning (id), www.id-live.com. Id are a Microsoft Certified consultancy specialising in providing innovative and cost effective solutions to business problems using the Microsoft technology stack. Until starting id, Tony spent his career in enterprise software development, primarily in the financial sector and this included a 12-year spell in the R&D department of a global financial organisation. Tony now splits his time between id, distance running, organising UK based events for the Microsoft Office 365 community, his wife, 2 kids and 3 granddaughters, though not necessarily in that order.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I was born in Sunderland which is a town on the North East coast of England Sunderland is 100 miles or so south of the Scottish border and 250 miles north of London. I originally left school at 16 with a few low-level qualifications as this was the thing to do back there and then. I spent a couple of years doing jobs I didn’t really like before deciding to go back to school and I spent the next 3.5 years at college and University where I studied computer science and learned how to develop software. I’d been into computers from an early age with the introduction of the ZX81 and this seemed like a good fit. My first development project was carried out on a terminal connected to the mainframe — a far cry from the ZX81 and later home computers I owned and the current computing platform. I then spent the next 25 years or so, having a family and developing software for financial organisations. I was presented with the opportunity to found Intelligent Decisioning around 2007 with a couple of colleagues and we set out to do our own thing.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
The funniest and the most painful mistake was when I was developing software in my first role. Even back then, I took project work home and continued to work on it on my home PC. I had no source control, nowhere to check in the code and I had been developing for a few hours without saving the code. My then 1 year old son, crawled into the room where I was working and managed to flick the power switch off — 4 hours down the drain but lesson learned. 😊
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
While at University I spent 12 months with the then British Rail, on a work experience post — I met the Software Development Manager who gave me a great piece of advice “If you have a problem that you can’t fathom out, take a moment, leave your desk, tell the problem to the office plant — you will be surprised how this will help” — I still follow this advice to this day.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
We set out to create an organisation that would delight our customers, where our customers are defined as businesses facing problems that could be addressed with technology, specifically Microsoft technology, and using that technology to deliver cost effective, innovative solutions to the problems faced. We also wanted a “family friendly”
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
Yes I have but I consider the implications of doing so and it usually spurs me on. I ran the London Marathon in 2005 and again in 2010 — each time, at around mile 22/23 I hit the wall and thought that was that but my running partner said to me “Think about the tale you can tell next time we’re in the pub — the respect from those who haven’t started, let alone completed the London Marathon” — after a few faltering walking steps and a drink of water, I was off and running again and I completed the world famous marathon course with a 4 hour finish time both times. It’s a similar drive in my work — I think “this can’t be done”, “it’s too hard”, “too difficult”, ”it’s impossible” but I go get a cup of tea, sit down and tell someone what it is I’m trying to achieve and why (to support my business, the staff and my family) and the determination kicks in again.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
A leader at any time, let alone challenging times, must show qualities of cool, calm decision making. The ability to pivot quickly to a difficult and rapidly changing environment is a key role during challenging times.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
I find the way to boost morale is to ensure that the team have visibility into every aspect of the company and keep them up to date with the company values and plans. To achieve this we have automated processes that share projects lead/enquiries and wins with the whole company.
We share company information with the team and provide an “Ask Me Anything” opportunity every month so that the team can voice any concerns and fears — this is done via our Microsoft SharePoint intranet product Mercury (www.mercuryintranet.com) and Microsoft Teams due to the ongoing Covid pandemic.
We encourage all employees, including me, to share praise of other employees using the Praise app within Microsoft Teams on a weekly basis. We also have a company Strava team and we award monthly and annual training competitions with vouchers awarded to the top athlete.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
There’s a saying in the UK, and maybe beyond the UK, that you should “grasp the nettle” — this means you need to tackle a difficulty head on and I use this approach. As little preamble as is needed and then give the bad news. I stress that I understand why this is bad news and for who. I then offer as much help and assistance I can to ease the pain.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
We need to make plans as always but they must be under constant review and may need radical rework as the unfolding scenario takes place — be agile and react to the changing landscape.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Keep doing what you can do and make sure you and your team always give it their best.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
During Covid and the UK lockdowns, it soon became clear that projects which had been planned with id for months slowed down and stopped. As sales started to slow down we set out to keep a close eye on our cashflow with weekly updates between directors. We have seen some customer organisations close down as they didn’t have the cashflow to keep them going.
Raising invoices on time and not chasing late payers are other common mistakes — if you’ve done the work you need paying for it so make sure you do it.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
Invest in marketing and lead generation — at the start of the pandemic we switched all our marketing activity off and that was a mistake as leads dried up and stopped. We realised this and went back to good quality marketing activity resulting in new leads appearing. As the previous answer, I firmly believe that you must watch your cashflow like a hawk, reviewing monthly and annual subscriptions for value versus cost.
Invest time and effort into new products and new ways of doing things to make them more efficient and reduce time and costs. In 2020 we used the slow down of projects to reinvent our 7 year old Mercury Intranet product (www.mercuryintranet.com) and take advantage of the modern SharePoint platform that Microsoft has introduced. The updated product has put us in a great place to increase sales and revenue.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
- Have honest and open communications with your staff and customers.
If a team member has not criticised an idea in the recent past then maybe your team are frightened to raise issues with you? Make sure that all team members feel confident that they can criticise and raise issues. Talk to your team members about subjects outside of the project and work, engage with them.
2. Encourage personal and professional growth.
Find out what your team want to do in terms of skills and professional growth and encourage them to get involved. Search out cost effective training options and hand on the information to your team. As a Microsoft partner we require certain skills in our teams and we encourage our team members by offering paid training time, provide training materials and pay for exams. We pay salary increments for team members who pass the exams required.
3. Stay positive.
It’s important for the team that the leader remains positive — that positivity will rub off on the team. Having said that, it’s equally important that a leader does not operate in denial of the evidence as the team will see through that.
4. Accept ideas.
A good leader doesn‘t have all the good ideas — listen to the team as they will have great ideas. When ideas are offered up, consider them and if it works, run with it. If the idea wont work, explain why and encourage the team to keep on offering up ideas.
5. Set clear goals and expectation.
Sit with the members of the team on a regular basis and set goals and expectations with the individual — gain buy in from the team member by discussing why those goals are being set, how they help the individual and the wider team.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
We used to have a saying back when we started developing online transactional services at the start of the original dotcom boom whenever there was an issue “It’s always the comms!” — in my experience, it still always is.
How can our readers further follow your work?
I’m on the usual social media channels:
Twitter https://twitter.com/WorTony — this is not always SFW so beware 😊
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonypounder/
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Tony Pounder Of Intelligent Decisioning: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
