Acting on Instinct - James Carey

00:00

... in my opinion, you have to have absolutely harmony with your own values and the values of the organization that you work for. And those values also need to be shared by the people who work there. I think it's quite interesting because I've joined organizations where I've sort of, because people publish their values a lot these days, what it means to work somewhere. And I think people are getting very good at curating those values and not very good at living them.

00:41

How do you listen to your instinctive traits?

00:45

It's a difficult one because there's kind of like a nagging feeling. If I could try and describe it, there's like a nagging feeling in the back of your mind and ...

00:57

It's like a nag, isn't it?

00:58

Yeah. Yeah. And I think you're looking for reasons to ignore it. And sometimes you just spend a lot of time searching for those reasons to continue to ignore it and hoping that ... But distractions will come along. Things like, oh, actually a new role might be coming up or the business might take a different direction which will be quite interesting. Things like that have happened to me in the past where I thought, " Actually, I'll hang around for this to see what happens."

01:32

But your instinct is-

01:33

But instinctively.

01:35

Right, right.

01:36

Yeah. What you're saying is this isn't the right place anymore. Maybe it's time to move. And I think a lot of that comes down to, well, ultimately are your internal values versus the values of the area and the environment or organization that you are working in. And I think you have to have, in my opinion, you have to have absolutely harmony with your own values and the values of the organization that you work for. And those values also need to be shared by the people who work there.

02:19

I think it's quite interesting because I've joined organizations where I've sort of, because people publish their values a lot these days, what it means to work somewhere. And I think people are getting very good at curating those values and not very good at living them if you see what I mean. So I've worked in places where I've read, I've gone through the values and what they stand for before I've joined. I've been like, "Actually, you know what? That's awesome. I'm all about that." And then when you get there, a lot of those values aren't upheld or lived.

03:02

It's interesting that your instinct is the right ... the way to make the decision about values specifically as if it's something that you can't quite put into words, but you're feeling.

03:16

Yeah. You just know it's not right. You just know it's not right. And you may even be getting some fulfillment in your career. There may be some of the wins you're getting in terms of oh yeah, okay, I'm progressing well. Or, you're doing good work, work that you enjoy, but actually that the whole thing doesn't quite work.

03:45

Yeah, I've been, without meaning to go on record sort of naming and shaming, but a few organizations where it's been, I've sort of progressed in what I'm doing and results, the results are there, stuff's going really well. But in myself I'm thinking, "Oh actually, you know what? I don't quite fit here," because yeah, the behavioral traits of those around me, and yeah, just sort of the ... maybe the ... How could I put it? The almost the behavioral traits of the organization don't fit with me. And I feel like I can't do my best work, and that's like, I can be completely true to myself.

04:36

And that's the instinctive thing you've got, is like I've not been true to myself in what I'm doing here. Even though I'm doing good job, I'm not being entirely true to myself. And that's really when you've got to say ....

04:50

And even now it's ...

04:54

Yeah. And you've got to have the courage to do it as well.

04:56

But you still put it off.

04:57

100% because it is a difficult ... It's quite a scary thing to do. There's a number of reasons for it, I guess. It's only the reasons for me were plain and simple, got bills to pay, got money to make. And you've got commitments. That's one of them. Most people do. And because of that, that all plays ... Well, it certainly played in the back of my mind. And then there's also, probably a bit of imposter syndrome as well. If I were to move to a different organization, could I actually do it? It's that confidence thing, could I do it? Could I succeed at the level I've succeeded here? Would it work? It's a fear of the unknown.

06:03

I think you've got to see past that and have that confidence in yourself to know that if the values of business are aligned to yours, yeah, you'll do well. I think I've kicked myself a few times in the past where I've spoken to people about opportunities and the conversation and the vibe I've got from those people has been fantastic. And I think, "You know what? That's absolutely the right role for me, but not the right time."

06:42

And when I think, when I've been thinking it's not the right time, I've been thinking from either a financial perspective or a sort of career trajectory perspective. And you probably shouldn't think like that. Oh, in retrospect, I think if I'd have taken those opportunities to work with those individuals and the vibe I got from them in the organization they were creating, I feel actually, even if it may have been, I might have taken a step back, I feel I've got a lot more fulfillment out of that and I probably would've got a lot more longevity out of it as well. But yeah again, what stopped me was the fear.

07:28

It's funny how the ... It's almost as if opportunities don't come at the right time or the right level, because when it's the right time is the wrong level, and when it's the wrong time, it's the right level. And it's very rare that those two things level themselves out.

07:47

Yeah, absolutely right. And I think some of the best opportunities, how can I put it, some of the best opportunities presented to me I've never taken because I felt that, like you said, it was the wrong time. And that was-

08:07

Like what?

08:10

Heck. So I was offered an opportunity around basically being CTO of a FinTech startup. I was already in another role and I was actually progressing a project significantly in that role, and I really wanted to get it done. So I was quite focused on that, very focused on that. So it's like a sort of real tactical focus to get something done. And it wasn't even that significant, but I just really wanted to get this thing done. We'd been working on it for a while and it was important to me and to the business. So I kind of paused the opportunity I had with this FinTech startup.

09:07

But nonetheless, I was still, I was so impressed by the people I've spoken to and so intrigued by what they were doing, I went all the way through to the end of the process, to the point where an offer was going to be on the table. And that's when I walked away. I was like, "Actually, you know what? I feel like I've got to finish this piece and I just can't. As much as I want to, I just can't take this offer right now," which I really regret because anyone could have finished the work I was doing. Anyway, it was already in a good place. They could have got someone else in to do it.

09:49

Yeah. I feel like I missed out an opportunity because I was focused on the near term. I didn't think about sort of my strategic career goals. You see what I mean? And that level of fulfillment, I felt like I would've got from that role. I probably would say I paused it for the sake of others, because I think the business really benefited from me finishing that piece of work. But I didn't really. Other than the sense of marginal fulfillment, I didn't really get anything out of it.

10:22

It's almost like what makes you such a good leader also makes you bad at making career decisions for yourself.

10:30

Yeah, yeah, I'd say so. And I think, in some instances I should have been more selfish really, but as a leader, you do get quite attached to your people, and I think that there's definitely, I certainly had a fear of the sense of leaving people behind because you do go on journeys with people in businesses. There's always difficult times, and you're sort of there in the trenches with everyone and you build lasting relationships that you kind of instinctively want to hold onto. And that can be a real pull factor in terms of not wanting to leave the organization.

11:24

It's an interesting thought that if you are also a leader, you've developed those relationships more deeply too. More people are relying on you.

11:32

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's that, or at least it's the perception that more people are relying on you. And I certainly had that, people, and I'd feel a duty of care to them. And yeah, that is a factor in sort of clouding your decision making of logically what's right for you, but I think they shouldn't be impactful on your overall career journey.

12:10

The last thing you want is to advise your old self to be more selfish. What would you do differently?

12:21

What would I do differently? I would probably act earlier. When you start to see some of the warning signs, like for instance senior leaders in an organization not living the values of that organization and behaving in indifference towards those values and individuals. At that point you know it's not a business that stands up for what it says it is. I think integrity is really important in business, and certainly from a employee perspective, as a leader as well, you have to uphold those values. And if your leaders aren't ho holding those values, big problems. I say, it's just not sustainable. You can't act with integrity when that's the case and you've got to walk away. You have to walk away.

13:47

There's been a few times where I've been in a position where I've thought I can't continue to impact my integrity by staying here, but I did in pursuit of things like project goals, because I'm a relatively driven individual and results matter. But results shouldn't overcome integrity. I think if that's the case, you need to move to a place that values it.

14:20

I think it's important to listen to your instinctive traits there, because sometimes we need to make reactive decisions. There's also, I guess, proactive decisions and there might be circumstances where it's not necessarily that you're being pushed, but that you're being pulled. Have you been in that circumstance before? We say that our biggest failures often are failures of omission rather than the opposite.

15:04

Hmm. Yeah. Have I been in that position before? Yeah. I mean, in a variety of ways I'd say that I have. I'm trying to think of a way to articulate it that would make sense to normal human beings, not just in my mind, because it is quite difficult to articulate, to be honest with you, what goes through one's mind when faced with a situation like this.

15:55

So I've always been very results driven and that I feel has been a bit of a distraction to me, and I haven't necessarily put my head above the parapet for where we're actually going, or where am I actually going, in terms of my career. I haven't necessarily done any career planning or anything like that ever in my life. I've just fallen into things, enjoyed them, done well at them and have progressed that way. I think what I'm starting to do now later on in my career is actually think about what do I actually want in terms of myself in a job and my work-life balance? In relation to your question, I hadn't really thought about those things before. Strangely they come a bit later in life. I don't know whether it's just me.

17:08

It's annoying isn't it?

17:09

Yeah. They seem to come later in life. So when I left university I was head down. I just wanted to work. I just wanted to get out there and work, and that's exactly what I did. I got my head down for basically 10 years, worked exceptionally hard in all of the roles that I had and actually progressed quite well. But when I look back, I feel I really did get burnt out by that. I really burnt out. Just looking back now, I think if I'd have thought a little bit more about where I want to go in terms of my career trajectory and the things that mattered to me, I could have made some better decisions there.

18:06

I think an example I'll give is when I was at Betfair. So when I joined Betfair it was a up and coming betting business. It was a real underdog actually, in terms of the Goliaths of the betting world, like William Hill and Ladbrokes and Paddy Power. Betfair was completely online and a lot of those businesses were laughing at Betfair because punters wouldn't possibly want to go online and bet. In this day and age people still wanted to go to the betting shops and get the betting experience. It turns out that they were quite wrong. And I think that drive of being the underdog at Betfair was, I love that. I thought, yeah, we'll show them. We'll show them how Betfair was right and they were wrong, and we actually did. I made a pledge to my director of technology at the time when I was an engineering manager and I said, "I'm not going to leave Betfair until it's the biggest betting company in the world, because that's how much I believe in what we're doing."

19:23

If I look back, it's probably one of the most fulfilled times in my life now. So this is a mission that we want to achieve. And we didn't get far off that, to be honest with you, the point where a lot of the work that we did in technology enabled that business to grow to a point where it was on a level playing field with the likes of Paddy Power and William Hill and Ladbrokes, and actually got to the point where Betfair was able to merge with Paddy Power. If you look at what happened with the Betfair and Paddy Power merger, basically all of the senior individuals in the Betfair business ran the merged business, so ultimately it was a bit of a takeover on Betfair's side. They wanted the leadership of Betfair to run that business. That was a really great journey to go through to say, actually, we worked our way up from underdog to become an equal, to then basically take over another one of those businesses. And also, that trajectory continued and it grew and it grew.

20:27

I saw a massive opportunity with that when I was working there, but also what I didn't quite realize what's going on. There was actually a massive change in the way that the organization was starting to be run, and also the values of the organization was starting to change as well. And the strategies were starting to change so it was no longer we are the underdogs, we're basically take on the world and show the others what we can do. It became one of, well, by the time I'd left, it became one of let's look at people who are doing this better than us and buy them out so they can no longer compete with us, which from a business perspective is actually quite a reasonable strategy. It makes a lot of sense. The Flutter Group, as it was then known, was actually quite a cash rich business, and it could absolutely do that, so made sense.

21:27

From my perspective, the career fulfillment I was getting from that was really lacking and I didn't pay attention to the early instincts that I was having. I stayed with Betfair for another two or three years with that mindset, and I think that was the wrong thing to do, looking back. That really was the wrong thing to do because there were all these pull factors out there where roles were being offered to me. And again, I was quite comfortable. I knew Betfair. I knew the world of betting. I understood it, so that comfort factor really was setting in. I'd become very good friends with a lot of people. But in terms of my fulfillment and the reason why I joined it in the first place that was gone, and that really did start to show. I felt like I was in a bit of a holding/caretaker role from what we were. It's like we'd been through the battle and the business was reaping the reward of that, and we would just make sure the ship stayed afloat. That's certainly how I felt about it.

22:36

Yeah, I'd say looking back, I'd have identified that quite early, because the signs were there and instinctively in my mind, I knew it, but I didn't quite want to make that leap.

22:56

There's a couple of bits I'd love to touch upon there. There are things that I think are less obvious, and they weren't obvious to me when we first started talking. It sounds like Betfair gave you such clarity of mission at a certain point, despite the fact that from the outside it's a betting company, and it might not feel like a betting company would be one of those companies that feels mission driven necessarily. The other thing that was interesting is that as you started sharing that story, it started off with burnout and how burnout had been such, looking back, where there could have been different ways of managing it, but yet it still was when you reflected on it, the best times were in battle, and were the best moments. It's funny how the experience at the present moment is almost different to the experience on reflection.

24:03

Yeah, no, I think it does come out when you talk it through, doesn't it. And yeah, I absolutely had the best times in the heat of battle but if you are continually at it and certainly with benefit we were for a number of years, I'd say about four years of my time there, it was just a relentless push to get to a point where we were equals with the other businesses and everyone bought into it. We had some great leadership at the time and I remember working like very, very long hours and I had a horrendous commute as well I remember. Sort of be an hour and a half each way and sometimes be working till nine, 10 o'clock and then you've got your hour and a half commute back. Sometimes I would stay in a hotel overnight nearby, just come in the next morning.

25:14

And it, yeah.... But I didn't care didn't mind because I was so connected to what I was doing. But doing that relentlessly is absolutely exhausting on your mind as much as anything, you don't quite realize it when you're in thick of it but when you sort of take a step back, think actually, you know what, how sustainable is it? I couldn't see anyone doing it for 10 years plus. I know people do but for me, I think it came to a point of exhaustion at some point maybe after about, yeah, after about 5, 6 years, it hit me.

25:57

But what you do is you take a lot of learnings from that. You never learn more than when you're in situation, in a high growth environment and driving that growth and seeing the results, you learn so much. I took the majority of my learnings in my career from that, or those points in time. And what I feel I can do now is I can apply those to situations I've been in so I don't have to go through as much of the upfront stress as I did when I was first in that situation. But also I can share that knowledge and some of those experiences with others so they don't necessarily have to go through the same thing at the same intensity. But yeah, I think, looking back was enjoyable, but at the same time, exhausting and yeah, as I say, as the business strategy changed by the tempo of the business really did slow down.

26:59

And I found myself... In terms of the overall mission of the business, I found myself unfulfilled by that because it was a case of, okay, we are basically the big players in town now and we've got the majority of the market share and we are just going to start buying people out. I'm like, okay, let's yeah... For some, that can be quite an enjoyable mission, but for me it wasn't. And now I found myself since then moving to organizations which were in that sort of late start up, early scale up stage. And for me, what I've realized is that, actually I've got... For me to do my best work I've got a bit of a niche in terms of the businesses to work in. And it is that one where it's late startup, early scale up, high growth. I do my best work in those organizations because I resonate with the mission, they're very results driven and they're very fast paced.

28:09

And so I tend to thrive in those environments. And I've worked in those places ever since and so we'll continue to, I can't see myself not working in one. So that's what I know what I'm looking for, where when I go next. And now I didn't know that before. I think you have to go through various things, various experiences before you find what you are really good at. And ultimately, if you do what you're good at then you're going to enjoy your work. Because I say, the other part of burnout looking back, it is to do with not necessarily being in the right role or not necessarily being fulfilled in the work you're doing, but still working hard, that's when you tend to get burnout. As opposed to working very hard and stuff, they really enjoy doing it can still be exhausting, but you tend to avoid the emotional burnout that they're going to be associated with working hard, something you're not enjoying.

29:17

Yeah. It does seem like the opposite when you are putting all of your energy and effort into difficult challenges. And that sounds like that would be more burnouts than when you're in the easy phase where you're just making those slightly easier decisions about just M&A strategy.

29:40

Yeah. You see, I thought that, but then I kind of... My emotional exhaustion came from getting frustrated with the pace of some of the, well, some of my colleagues to be complete honest with you and some of the decisions. Whereas when you're in that high growth phase you've got to make those decisions, you've got to move on them if they're the wrong decision, find out very quickly, but it, keep moving forwards. And I appreciate that's not for everyone, but certainly for me, that's kind of what I'm about and what I enjoy.

30:20

So in an odd way, the way to make sure that you don't burn out is not to not put in the hours, it's not to put yourself in a high growth environment, it's actually just to work out what it is that you... Is the environment that you want and put yourself there, like would you... It sounds like someone who's the opposite to you would burn out in a high growth environment, but you would burn out in low growth environment.

30:48

Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with that sentiment. Because it's the frustration and the burdens that come with not enjoying what you do that just contributes to a lack of mental wellbeing, where, if your head in a good place, you really enjoy what you're doing and you're focused on the mission, then that enables you to continue working at that level of pace. I think... I was trying to remember, I read a statement somewhere that resonated with me where, working hard and doing what you love is called passion and working hard, not doing what you love is basically called burnout.

31:47

Or something like that. But I completely agree with that. Yeah.

31:55

I find it really interesting how you've also managed to thread a high growth niche with a betting niche too, but you've done it in a way that's quite typical, I think of how a lot of other people tend to run their careers, where they might not start off in that research team full of top data scientists who are doing the cutting edge technology and they may transition to it over time. And it's almost as if as you are naturally... You've worked for a company that is so well known and did such important work in its time and then you're almost able to utilize that as you go on throughout your career because you then have, it's almost feels like it's getting nicher and nicher as it goes on.

32:55

Yeah, I think so. And I think the one thing I've certainly noticed is the more senior of a leadership role that you take, the more niche that is going to be. People are looking for very specific things. So I think it naturally evolved that way because you tend not to want to take a step back unnecessarily and it does get very specific. But certainly from a technology perspective there's a number of new things that people look for in terms of how your work, technologies and tools that you've worked with. And I certainly took a lot like that sort of template from Betfair and that model and have been able to apply it in other organizations. And I think a lot of people do similar when they've worked in organizations that have some of the technological capabilities that Betfair had. So if you look at the ex Amazonians and Googlers and guys from Facebook, they were doing the same thing because I think you almost get regimented in the most efficient ways of doing things because you have to.

34:21

And because ultimately, you're embedded in an organization where everyone else is doing it and you can't not do it and that kind of stays with you, I think. And again, also learning as you go through your career, but there is a bit of a template and a formula that you apply. I can't quite explain it, but there is sort of this set formula that you can apply in those certain situations. I think Amazon have absolutely nailed it and they really draw down to their people. And then when they leave to go elsewhere, they'll apply the same techniques as they had done when they were Amazon. And I think it is probably quite similar in that sense.

35:03

It's a pace as well, isn't it? And it sounds like it's more of a mindset than it is a specific set of tasks or actions that then ends up defining how you make your working choice next. I think the hardest thing is perhaps that it's so difficult to vet for that mindset. You can understand the different perhaps, tools that a company is using, or you can get a sense of a one-on-one conversation. But in general, understanding the pace, the company mindset and the general approach they take can be such a challenge.

35:42

Yeah, it can. And I certainly, I find myself doing a lot more influencing these days. So helping the leaders of organizations actually shape their digital strategies, their growth strategies.

36:00

I find that the experiences I've had in the past can be immensely useful when it comes down to that. Technology has kind of been on the front foot when it comes to, how can I put it, basically, getting things done. The concept of delivery and achieving goals, it's actually quite a difficult thing to do. Exceptionally difficult. In technology, is probably one of the hardest fields to get that right. But the same principles can be applied to business as well. What things are we going after? What have we got to do to be able to get there? How are we going to put together a reliable plan to be able to achieve that?

36:54

We do all of these things in software projects, no matter how large or small all of these fundamental questions are asked, and you work with your team to get there. I find myself doing a lot of that with the sea level executives of the businesses I've worked in prior to Betfair for the whole organization. We'll apply the same techniques that you would do to getting things done in the technical landscape to the business world, and often works really well. I know people talk a lot about the concept of OKRs, which is an acronym for objectives and key results, that Google originally set up. But it's been in various guises in other organizations as well.

37:45

And that started to be adopted more mainstream in like the executive suites of larger businesses because it's a really efficient way of doing things. So having had that knowledge from the coal face of technology and being able to apply that at the board level is, actually, it brings quite a lot to the table I found. Yeah, and I'm certainly grateful for the experiences.

38:12

That's quite interesting that that's the type of thing you could ask for. You could work out whether a company is maybe by asking questions like are they using OKRs or how do they structure decision making or what timeframes do they look at it from what mechanisms do they use?

38:29

Yeah, certainly one of the questions I ask people if I'm looking to roll with them is like how do you get things done? It can be quite revealing because you get a real feel where you work in organization's quite micromanagery or whether you get a lot of freedom. Whether they're metrics or results driven. All of these things I think are quite important when going to a new organization. Again, it all depends on what you are looking for as well. So do you want to work in a startup environment with lots of ambiguity where you have to put together a lot of the pieces yourself, or do you want to work in environments that's actually very highly structured? There's maybe a little bit less autonomy with more certainty. I think people are suited to different things and you can find those answers out by asking that question.

39:27

It's interesting that the question not to ask is, are you micromanaging? Because they will say no. Whereas if you ask about the systems that they use to get things done, if they don't have a system, then they're going to have to be micromanaging.

39:43

Yeah, I think if someone wants to get you on board, they're always going to give you the answer that they think you want to hear. I think that's for sure. Yeah, in that sense, you got to get into a more conversational flow and be able to ask those quite open ended questions to enable someone to talk through their thinking. Then you no longer, yeah, they are no longer prejudicing the output of their answers. Yeah, asking how you get things done, asking where the business is going and how they plan to get there is also another one, and why they're looking for certain roles? Like one of the things I always ask for, particularly at CTO level roles, is why are you looking for a CTO? What happened to the last one? It can be quite a forward question.

40:45

When you get the answer to those questions, I guess you have the same predicament as you did at the start of our conversation. How do you take your instincts and then make this more contextual, qualitative decision way up both options and say, "What did my instincts say on staying here? What does my instincts stay on doing something new?

41:10

Yeah, like instinctive thinking is quite difficult because it's I've done a lot of reading about this, so I'll try to try and control your instincts and understand what your instinct is telling you. Because often I've found it's been right in the long run, but yet never really used it properly at a certain point in time. But you will know if something feels right or if something feels wrong. There will just be, yeah, there'll be a number of flags that will come up that will trigger in your mind. It won't be like a Eureka moment, it'll just be like, as we said before, this growing sense of nagging feelings that you're trying to find reasons to negate. But, actually, you really shouldn't. I think as soon as you get any sense of anything like that, you need to do what your instinct is telling you.

42:14

I have the same principle, again, not one I can say I've successfully followed, but one I try to. In hiring people myself, I try and structure the interview in a way to find out who the people that I'd be working with in the future are and how they would fit in the organization because it's not that they're not capable or not skilled people, it's that fits actually really important and cultural impact's really important. So try and structure the conversations in a way that I can surface that. Sometimes, instinctively, no matter how good a person is, I would just get this feeling that I just don't think it's going to work out in this particular organization for you.

43:09

So we won't go forward with hiring you into the role. Sometimes it can be quite difficult to give that constructive feedback of based on what you've told me, I think, instinctively, it is not going to work. Yeah, just because of these cultural things and the way the conversation flowed. But it is really important that you listen to that, and I think it's the same for if you're going into an organization. When, on the candidate side, they've got to make sure it's them. I think a lot of people can be... there's a lot of things you could do to attract really good people to your business side. You can pay top salaries, you can pay really good bonuses and equity stakes. And sometimes it has the negative effect where I can attract the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Even if people applying for the role might notice, "Oh, I'll do this for a couple of years, get my equity stake and move on."

44:12

You got to balance the reward with getting the right people on board because sometimes it can cause headaches of hiring. I think you've got to be aware of that as well. I think I had a few offers for CTO of cryptocurrency firms right before the whole crash. One of these firms actually just let go of almost half of the tech team, and I certainly would've been one of those people. But I was wowed by the offer, or at least what was on offer, huge, huge equity stake, huge salary. But I remember at the back of my mind thinking, " Yeah, I've always had a bit of a problem with sustainability in crypto, certainly, from a tech perspective and that's I decided to not pursue it."

45:10

I'm really glad. I'm really glad I didn't. But in the back of my mind, still, I was like, "Actually, that salary is amazing." And air critic stake is amazing. Could change my life. But if I'd gone with that and been successful, it would've changed my life in a much more negative way. So sometimes instinct does pay off, yeah.

45:33

It's a relief. Thanks for sharing your story, James. I think it is just so challenging to let ourselves follow our instincts sometimes, and I'm really pleased that specific moments you've been able to verbalize when you've used it for good and for ill. I've loved it, thank you.

45:58

Oh no. Oh, thanks very much for talking to me. It was just insightful to go through it and myself in a bit of analysis.

46:07

No worries, man. You too.

46:08

See you later.

46:08

Take it easy.