Maria McCann 0:01
Once you start saying you don't know, it gets easier to say it more and more, letting people know that you don't know the answers, making them feel safe to actually say, I don't know the answers. You may not know the answers, but as a group, let's talk about what it looks like. And when you collaborate together as a group and a team, invariably you will actually find the answer. That's Maria McCann, organizational psychologist, digital and data thought leader, and so much more. She is this unusual mix of people, person and lover of all things technology. In this episode of your truth shared, we talk about her role in identity management at the HSE during the COVID crisis, finding your voice, being comfortable with who you are, and being okay with not knowing the answer. This is a jam packed episode that I think you'll enjoy.
Finola Howard 0:51
I'm Finola Howard, Business Growth strategist with a joyful heart and your host of the your truth shared podcast, I believe that every business has a story to tell, because that's how the market decides whether to buy or not, and your story has to resonate with who you are and with the people you want to serve. And this podcast is about helping you reach the market in a way that feels right to you. So if you're an entrepreneur with a dream you want to make real, then this is the podcast for you, because great marketing is your truth shared.
As you all have probably guessed by now, I'm particularly interested in this idea of when the solopreneur turns into the entrepreneur who has a team of people around them, and this idea also of leadership versus managership, and how, how we can help entrepreneurs get to this point and discuss this area. And you know that because I've been speaking about it for quite a number of episodes, and today, I wanted to bring in the lovely Maria McCann, who has another perspective to share with us and some very interesting perspectives. Welcome Maria, thank
Maria McCann 2:04
you, Finola. I'm delighted to be here, delighted to be here, even though I'm in a different location than what I thought it would be because of the lovely storm.
Finola Howard 2:14
Of course. Of course. Okay, so the thing that I let's start, the thing that I liked about you was you had this experience of leadership on the ground, particularly of going from a team of three to 30, and that's a very different set of spaces, and I'd love you to share a little bit about that with us.
Maria McCann 2:35
So my name is Mary McCann, an organizational psychologist, and I suppose the last I work now in a consultancy, heading up a practice and setting up the practice for data and digital solutions. But previous to that, Finola, I spent 10 wonderful years within the health services in Ireland, and in that role, over the 10 years, I did sort of many different things with many incredible people. One of the challenges that we faced as as in me and my team was during COVID When I had been asked in the January of 2020, to set up the business side of the health identifiers team within the health services. And what that is, is the unique identifier that identifies us within health. And we had done a lot over legislation and technical build since the act to come into 2014 but that business, that change management, the stuff that I love, being an organizational psychologist, working with different partners to embed digital transformation, hadn't been really tackled. So in January 2020 I was asked to set up that team. We started to look at what that looked like. There was three of us at that stage, myself and two others. And then, as we all know, COVID hit in the march of 2020, and it was a strange one, because at the start, I actually reverted back to the Corporate Center and working with my then manager, Joe Ryan and John swords, working with both those guys who were the national director for operations and the National Director for shared services. And my remit at that stage was to say to the team that I had, which was like a couple of us, just hold fire a wee minute we see what's happening here. And they were redirected into supporting some data quality work. And I then looked after actually bringing our finance, our procurement and our HR teams from shared services technically home to build basically their technical ability to get online, to work from home. And then we went into an education thing at a different stage, which I can talk to you about again, that was really important from a cultural perspective, as opposed technical but what we luckily realized very quickly then was our clinical colleagues really strongly believed in the identifier as a support mechanism for following the patient pathway through health. And we we hadn't done a full patient follow through any health journey ever before. And so hold
Finola Howard 4:54
for a second. Yeah, because that's powerful. Because, yeah. A living in this country, it's not followed. But the idea of an identifier, that means that this idea of we have a secure identifier that travels with us throughout our lives, from a medical perspective, which means that you could possibly get rid of the different color sheets of paper that you are signing 55 million times while dying of some illness.
Maria McCann 5:30
And Finola, it's it's that it's identifying yourself safely. It's exactly identifying yourself, as opposed to the clinical information about you. The identifier is to ensure that it is Finola that we're talking to. Finola who lives in ABCD road and is from her phone number is x, and she is here because of this medical is so safely identifying you. And what ended up happening was that, and it becomes, it's a foundation for being able to support electronic health records. It's that foundation to say if I can identify Finola, and I can identify her in her GP records in Castle Blaney and in the hospital she attended in Dublin, because it's the same Finola that allows the foundation for you to be able to link records. It has nothing to do. It doesn't hold any clinical it's your demographic information to say you are who are similar to a PPSN from the revenue side of things that we do within revenue,
Finola Howard 6:24
I'm presuming data protection and data privacy is a nightmare while you're navigating this
Maria McCann 6:31
huge what ended up happening was the legislation element of the piece of work that I undertook and ended up being way bigger than what I'd ever, ever realized we were going to have to get into, which was fascinating. And look, I love learning, so I learned loads, and had incredible colleagues from the data protection office and from the legal colleagues that we worked with and Department of Health to understand the legislation that had been set up in 2014 and how it was not fit for purpose, for what we were doing in this day and age, from a data point, point of view, but that was after COVID. That's after learning incredible lessons in COVID. And I'll give you an a simple idea of that. What that means is like we didn't have stipulated in the legislation 2014 that you needed a mobile number as an identifier, and we changed that in the legislation as well. So there was just the different things that we worked through in COVID and understood were really important. Why
Finola Howard 7:28
was that important a mobile number as an identifier? Is it because, you know, because people do change their mobile numbers? Yeah,
Maria McCann 7:35
but it's actually a really strong identifier number that a lot of people actually keep the whole way through their lives. So you would have your first name, your surname, your date of birth and your gender would be our core four identifier data sets. And then you'd have a plus one, and that plus one could be your phone number or your PPSN or your address or and then we got our code out in as well. So we got mobile phone numbers stipulated because legislation data protection all to protect us. It said phone numbers, but didn't say mobile phone numbers. So we were having to make sure that the legislation very specifically called out certain data sets to support us as a citizens moving forward. And which was which was great, but I suppose that the going from the three to 30 thing came about because clinical colleagues, credible clinical colleagues we worked with, were like, We need that identifier within the COVID test and trace system that was being built, that technical system being built to support test and trace and then our vaccination system. And our clinical colleagues were like, No, we know this is important. It's an important requirement. And they pushed hard for it to be like mandatory fields, mandatory that your first name, your surname, your PPS and number, your date of birth, your gender, were all being captured. And then we worked with them to explain on the forms as to why you were capturing that information. And our clinical colleagues pushed really strongly in that. And what ended up happening then was our team went from three to 30 during during COVID Because the use of that identifier went through both systems and then supporting the information that maybe wasn't put in correctly at the start, we had to build a team to actually support the patient on the other side. And what that means Finola, is if you came in to test and trace and the clinical colleagues or the administration staff that were taking your details rightly so, the aim was get everyone supported, get everyone tested, get everyone their vaccination in order to stop the spread of the disease. So if they took Finola Howard and they spelled your name wrong, or they misheard your phone number, or they put in the wrong date of birth, maybe your test results could get held because they're not identified with the right person. And my team had to build to ensure that we were actually able to fix that information and send that text message out to Finola, who the Finola that actually had come in ensure that that identity was matched. So the team went from three. 30 very, very quickly, and we successfully worked with incredible teams during COVID, and then were able to actually accelerate the journey of the identifier within the business as usual side of the HSE and the health systems afterwards.
Finola Howard 10:15
Like it was amazing, and actually, in some ways an awful thing to say, but COVID allowed us to move into this direction to get this information easily. Do you find so part I'm conflicted, right? So one part of me is saying, this is fantastic, because I find it crazy that in this day and age that we don't use tablets in hospital like, you know, screen tablets in hospitals that we don't that we're having to do so much paperwork, and then nurses and doctors are having to do so much paperwork. So this idea of what you've accomplished makes me go, we're going in the right direction. That's really great. And then the other part of me is going, Oh, I'm a bit scary now, because now we're in big brother territory. And you know, everything about me and nothing of mine is kept for me anymore, and I don't get to choose anymore what I share with you, because you're taking it all anyway. So I've two sides in me. Is that you'd normally hear no, Finola, you're completely No,
Maria McCann 11:20
you're not. You're not. Fila, I swear to God, I love this conversation, because one of the other projects, programs of work that I worked on with who really good friends Gar makhja And Ben Clooney within the HSC was the HSE app, and the foundation behind that was to be able to use an app and all of our health interactions to identify ourselves. So instead of you, for example, like, let's pretend you're going to a mental health clinic or sexual health clinic, and all they need to know is you're over 18. So the app works from an identity perspective, that you're able to actually share the information with the clinic, but it's, it's only the information you choose to share, the only information they need to know. So it's designing, it's designing technology with the users in mind. So user centered design. How do you do that for us as citizens, and how you do it for clinicians? Again, for clinicians, great to have lots of technologies within hospitals. Actually any business. I work with all businesses. Great to have technologies in any business, but if they're not designed correctly for you, the user, as the employee or the user, the customer, the patient, the citizen, whatever that may be, well, then they're not going to be of any help, and they're going to cause frustration. They're not going to actually assist in your journey. So it's how do you build the right way? And from a health perspective, and the app that will be coming out, the lads are still working on it. They're doing an incredible job. I can't wait to see it that will actually support you, actually sharing the data you want to share. And you, the patient, become in control of your data. It's yours. It's your information to share.
Finola Howard 12:51
Yeah, because so the key piece of information and getting from what you've just said, is I get to choose what information I share. Yeah, okay, that's amazing. Because the other thing that really annoys me is an old Irish habit of where doctors you know, when you're you're you go to your GP, and the GP refers you to somebody else, and then the person you refer to, the consultant or the specialist sends the information back to the GP and we and then it's supposed to be interpreted by them for our, our, us, lowly pedestrian people, which frustrates the hell out of me, because there's we are disempowered. We have been disempowered for years about our own health. And so this feels that perhaps there's a shift away from that, because I find that really frustrating, especially when I you know, when I think about parents and stuff like that. But even my own health, I'm like, no, no. I want to know. Not needed. It's not my GP. I want to know, yes, tell them as well. If I want you to tell them as well, but I want to have the knowledge of understanding about my health, my body, what's happening to me,
Maria McCann 14:05
so that the sharing of your identity information is what you would be in control of. And then there's the consent around you, sharing the information with your medical personnel that need to basically be able to access it. And that's a a different that's a different like kettle of fish, and what that looks like from a legislation point of view. However, the HSE are doing incredible stuff. One of their pillars of work within the digital health strategy that's been created with the Department of Health and with the HSE, one of the pillars is around patient empowerment and engaging patients, and looking at how you empower patients. And there's a new law that's coming in. I think it's next year. It is next year. It's been the the bones of it have been released this year. It's the health legislation bill, and that's coming in again, all around supporting the information to be shared to the right people that need the information to support you through your health journey. And that because there's so many legislations across health as well. And then there's public sector, private sector section 38 Section 39 the legislation side of it, as actually we spoke about at the start, was something that we ended up in my team having to get quite detailed into working with experts in those phases, because it's very different across different areas. So the government and the HSC are working to try and make that as clear as possible to benefit citizens. And that whole pillar of work around patient empowerment is something our clinical colleagues have been championing for a very oh my god, I'd say forever. They Corely believe it's around supporting patients to have the power over their own information as well. So there's some really cool stuff happening in health at the moment, all around that area. They're brilliant,
Finola Howard 15:36
amazing. So I think what listeners will probably get from this conversation is that you are not a traditional person. You seem to have such depth of knowledge around organizational psychologists, obviously, because that's how you introduce yourself. But also, I know you're a computer scientist as well. But also you seem to have a lot of background in law. Also, no, no, yeah, yeah, law, I helped you, yeah.
Maria McCann 16:05
It was, you know what? I mean, it was literally, like, it was all around organizational change, change management, bringing it in from a digital transformation technology to transformation for people. And then all of a sudden, the the health identifiers. It was like, oh god, okay, COVID. It was, look at the COVID legislation. Is it going to health identifiers? Legislation. Luckily, I think from the psychology point, I think I like dig, dig deep, and I love data. And then it was working with cool colleagues that were like, let me teach you what that looks like. And in this area, it looks like this, or if you hypothesize this way, it looks like that. I was like, why are we talking to lawyers all the time? I'm supposed to be doing transformation. But I did, and it was very interesting. I actually did enjoy it, but it took a while to enjoy it because it was heavy,
Finola Howard 16:45
heavy. I bet it was heavy, but it's also just to flag this point. So many people rest in their careers from a niche perspective that they maybe start down a route, one way, and then think that that is all they can ever be, whereas some of the great, the beautiful things that I see happening in business and in entrepreneurship is when people bring all of themselves and many different parts of themselves into the mix.
Maria McCann 17:12
Love that, love that, and I love learning, much to my children's dismay, I'm always like education is wonderful, meeting new people, learning from them what they're doing. And I love that Finola, that's something I think it's a curiosity. When you have that curiosity to try and look at things from a different perspective or learn something new, it translates across so many different places. And I find that I worked in a number of different programs within the health service and programs beforehand, and my career journey has not been simple. I sit on the board for fast track to it, and I present it to it's an apprenticeship program in government to bring people into it, professions at any age if you leave school and university is not for you. You can look at apprenticeships. If you're 40, 5060, and you want to change your career, you can look at the apprenticeship program, it's incredible. And I spoke to them exactly about that. I was like, This is what Google says is an IT professionals career when I started way back in computer science and psychology, before that, then computer science. And I was like, This is my career. And I went through my life and how I had to navigate around my life to support my career, and all the lovely things that life brings with you, postnatal depression, divorce, all the things you have to navigate. Do you know what I mean? Like, if you don't think it's simple, it's not, you have to try and look at it from your life's perspective, and
Finola Howard 18:33
that's a different perspective, because we've had generations of niching what we do for a living, and siloing what we do for a living. And then when we create silos, you don't have collaboration, you don't have cross pollination of ideas. We have none of these things. Whereas now I think there is an emergence of people giving themselves permission to be all that they can be.
Maria McCann 18:56
Yes, and it's fab. It's brilliant. So it is collaborations huge. I have I created a thing in the health service called COVID on where we would have brought people from all across the HSE, and I do it now in my own role here. I brought the idea with me as well. It's how you collaborate together in a short period of time. You bring people from all walks of life to look at a certain topic that they're interested in, and then you share knowledge. I did want to May a minister, Dara kaleri, opened it all around AI, and we brought people from loads of industries. So we have people from aviation, we have people from academia. We had people from God recruitment, different people looking at AI data and what that looked like, and then presentations across all and then we did, we did workshops, then in the afternoon with every industry, and talked about how you could take lessons from what Finola does and go actually, I could switch that. That would work for me, even though it's completely different industry. So I've been running them for about eight years, and I use. To do stuff with our seat, with our CIOs and and health. I was e health advisor to three CIOs and we did a lot of things around collaboration startups, bringing, I'm very passionate. I bring in startups. They have such a unique perspective on how we actually tackle challenges, and bringing them together with the larger programs of work, and working out how you can work together. I've been doing that for years. I think it's massively powerful.
Finola Howard 20:23
I love it, and I could see that. But even within an organization, I think that should happen more like within or like a like a small business. So because what I often see as businesses grow, there's a siloing between even the most simplest thing, a silo between sales and marketing, and they don't talk to each other. And then also, there's another one that comes in, which is HR, and one of the things that I've done with a lot of tech companies over the last number of years is bring those three things together, because then you have really strong Employer Branding, you have really strong you know, and also production, you know, build the products that your customer wants, and then make sure that your team is, you know, it's, I love that idea collaborate on. But it was also there's an idea like this in how to resolve challenges in any organization. Martin Umar wrote a really wonderful book. He's a brand guy, and he wrote it like a story of how to bring in all these people in a different times, to get this more cohesive, more commercially viable product into the marketplace. Because you take it from every different perspective, they're stronger when you take them from every different perspective.
Maria McCann 21:33
And I love when you bring people together, and somebody says to you, why do you think that you're like, going, blah, blah. And then they go, actually, and then they flip it, and you're like, great. This is great. Okay, now we know something. This is actually not the right direction in the HSE, we used to test animation. We used to do a lot of stuff around marketing and animations and translating technical information into stuff for clinicians and for our citizens as well. And we used to test them. Then I brought an idea in to test them at for focus groups, because there was decisions that have been made, and this is the right thing. And I was like, Have you tested it with the clinicians? Have you tested it with the with the citizens? And we tested them, and the results were, that's not right, that's insulting. That doesn't make sense. Great. Just brilliant, brilliant, yeah. And it was coming back with reports. They actually lads, and they were like, oh, right, okay, no, okay, brilliant. And then we were able to refine it and make sure that it actually hits the mark, so that everyone's understanding of what everyone is saying is the same thing. So that whole clear vision, clear communication as to where are you going, what does it look like? Just as everyone's expectations and understanding the
Finola Howard 22:39
same I love it. Let's come back to one of my first questions for you, yes. From three to 30 you, when we spoke beforehand, you seem to be very you brought your team together, and you know, COVID happens, which is crazy this world, like this pandemic happens, and it's mad, like mad stuff going on, and you said to your team that you didn't know, what did you What did you say? Remind me what you said.
Maria McCann 23:07
Well, so I was like, Look, we don't we don't know what we're doing. This is a brand new territory for us. And instead of actually moving into a world where we would have been testing and looking at how we fix different data sets and identity management, and looking at the processes and building the processes, and checking those processes, and moving forward, it went and then even given organization ID. So identifying safely identifying nursing homes was one of the things that we did as well when we were giving out the vaccinations, putting an organizational identifier against that in before COVID, you'd have been going through processes to build those processes to work out who the stakeholders you would be actually engaging with, what that looks like with the word of even entry. We just had to do it. We had to work really quickly with the patient at the center, which would always have been anyway, but doing that as quickly as possible in order to implement and affect that the right way. So instead of building processes, you're doing them and learning as you go. So our teams were working really strongly together, with that clear vision in mind, that we were all working together to actually do as much as we could to stop the spread of the pandemic. And how we did that was to safely identify people, to safely assign organizational IDs, and some a lot, not a lot of the time. But there would have been two streams. We would have ran Finola would have been like, our team would have been like, Okay, we need to safely identify all 900 or nursing homes within the country. We know that's going to be coming over the next number of of months, when we were looking at the vaccinations prior to Christmas that 2021, but what was happening, and rightly so, is reactively, we were being told we're going to this, this nursing home, this nursing home, this nursing home, would have been given a list and list and been told to get identifiers for them. So my team were brilliant. They were like, what do we do? We know we need to do them all. How do we do it? Do we do all of them at the same time? Do we? And as you know, we'll do the reactive ones when they're needed straight away, when we're told what the decision has been made on where we're going to we will create those organization identifiers. But let's. Build a plan, because we know they all need to be done. So what we can do is react when we know what we need, what the need is, the priority, and then we'll basically build the plan. So when they actually end up coming to us, we'll have everything done. So we'll work in the background and doing that as well. But
Finola Howard 25:14
you also said this thing is what really struck me, because it came up in a previous podcast episode. For me, it was this, this declaration that you gave everybody permission to not know things
Maria McCann 25:26
set and I put my hand up still and say, I don't know the answer. I'm working with data teams all over the place. And I'm like, Look, you guys technically know way more than that I do. So we all need to work together, and it's okay if you don't, because a lot of the time what we're doing is quite different. And with my team and COVID, it was we had the COVID that we're working for, the test and trace systems, the vaccination systems. Then there was a cyber attack, and then I took over as data and informatics response for the HSE for the Ukraine crisis. And I just said that all teams, it's like we don't know exactly the answer to everything. That's okay, but let's work together to try and work out what the best answer is. And collaboration, action, flow, we used to bring things to an incredible governance group within the HSE that was set up over COVID called the dying group, data access, information management, stakeholders from all around the HSC who understood data from their perspective, from all different parts of the business, and we would say, here's the challenge. We don't know the answers, but here's the three options we think would work. Here's the risks. We prefer option A, here's the risks, and here's how we're going to mitigate it. Here's B, risks mitigation c, what do you think? And then they would have actually said, Okay, we get it. We don't know what's going to happen when X, Y and Z happen. So let's look at that. We agree go for a and put in your mitigations for those risks, and we will support you moving forward. So my team knew that I didn't know the answers, that COVID was so bizarre that no one did, but that we would understand what we could do and what we could do to protect the HSE citizens, etc, for the processes, and we present them to this amazing group of people that never judged the acts you were there always to help and say, okay, and it was the same for stuff.
Finola Howard 27:10
Is it not unusual? Maria, like, this is a really enlightened structured like, I find it interesting your two backgrounds. Because clearly those two backgrounds are coming into play here, that idea, that love of data, the logic, the you know, planning, all of that methodical approach, and yet there's underneath it is this human centered approach, this user centered, citizen centered approach that that so it's head stuff and heart stuff working really strongly together, productively,
Maria McCann 27:46
yep. And that's why, like, I actually get goosebumps. That's why I love what I do. Because if you actually understand that, how you treat the people that are are delivering that transformation. The impact from an organization, point of view, public private sector is massive increase in employee engagement, huge increase in productivity, like if you actually work with your teams and enable and empower them, the impact is phenomenal.
Finola Howard 28:12
What's that mean? You know that because people say those words, enable and empower quite a lot, but practically, what are you doing that's different to other leaders that are not getting those kinds of results because they don't know what that means to enable and empower
Maria McCann 28:29
so I think what you said earlier, letting people know that you don't know the answers, making them feel safe to actually say, I don't know the answers. You may not know the answers, but as a group, let's talk about what it looks like. And when you collaborate together as a group and a team, invariably you will actually find the answer, because it will come out of those conversations and those like, basically, those, those collaborations that you have education for me is massive, and it doesn't need to be formal education, but actually supporting your teams in the next product that they're using or a new process. So teaching people skills that would actually help them in digital transformation, I ran multiple foundational national programs of work for nurses clinical staff around how to use laptops. We done one that now resides in the amazing nursing and midwifery team, and they roll it out across the HSE, and that was literally how to use the devices that were being provided to them by the HSE, because they are incredible clinical colleagues, and they're they're trained and skilled around clinical, not around digital and devices. They're there, so we have to enable them to actually use what we're giving them. We see
Finola Howard 29:37
you. You gave people permission to not know, and then you created a space where you could say, not know, but I have an idea, which means you're creating a space to allow them to have ideas, even though they're not sure of the idea. Yes,
Maria McCann 29:54
exactly, and then supporting them with maybe learning how to get that idea to the. Right place, and what that looks like, and how do you actually bring others in with you, and how to feel psychologically safe. I use this a lot in different teams that I'm working with. It's like, how do you actually feel psychologically safe? How do you feel that all skills within a team are actually respected because we're all different, we're all unique, and that shouldn't threaten anyone else. It should actually empower everybody else to go, Okay, I don't know that. But you know what? I think if I talk to Finola, she might be able to help me work that out, because everyone has different views and skill sets around everything. So how do you create that environment like I had different teams, and the Ukraine team, I had one of the fellows that worked in it. I'm still friendly with him. He's brilliant. He was incredible at all the Power BI analytics Excel. And I used to say to him, were you going to a session with my team in the identifiers? And they'd be like, yay. And he'd be like, yay. And they loved cross pollinating with those skills. I'm like, showcased them what you did with that report that we were looking at for the Ukrainian crisis. When you showed them how you actually put the background into that, the guys were really keen to learn, really keen to learn something new, more like, that's very cool, and they felt safe to have the conversations where he would show them how to do it
Finola Howard 31:07
differently. Yeah, but Marie, I just, I just love to work with you, yeah? Because it just, it becomes exciting to
Maria McCann 31:16
work then, yeah, because you're learning. And I think everyone loves learning, and different ways. It doesn't have to be formal, but if you're feeling that you can actually have conversations and learn something new, I love learning. I love having conversations with people you think
Finola Howard 31:30
we're we're too preoccupied with knowing instead of learning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and showing that we know and
Maria McCann 31:41
showing that we know. Yeah, I think COVID probably within the teams that we were in was very much open to I don't know. And I think once you start saying you don't know, it gets easier to say it more and more, and you get it like, once you start it, it's easier to keep going. I don't know the answer to that. Let's look at it. And our technical teams, who are so gifted, we would have sat, from a business service implementation point of view across all the technical teams, and would have been openly going to the lads, especially when we're meeting in person, draw that again. When you draw that again, I don't understand what that means. And they were brilliant. They were like no problem, because they were they felt the honesty and when, then when we actually did get it, we would go, why you didn't that way? Why can you not do it that way? And they'd be like, Oh, we, can we do that? And we'd be like, Yeah, we just need to make sure that we speak to so and so and so and so. And actually change that. They'd be like, that would be incredible. So they loved us, even pushing them around the technical stuff. And then we could say two or three times, draw that process again. Let's start again, because we it's not so there was permission. You had permission to do, permission, permission, yeah, which was, which was brilliant, but it's not easy to get there. Finola depends, like that team that I worked with. We started in COVID together, and grew together. The Ukraine crisis was the same. We started together, melting pot of people from Microsoft, from enter, ey and HSE. So it was a melting pot. And my my other team was like that as well. It was lots of different people from different organizations all coming together. And then I was like, we are one team. And the same was with with the Ukraine crisis, like we're all from different organizations, but with the same goal, we're a team. So you guys definitely know more about the technology product than these guys do. Can you please help them? Can you please teach them so that they can build what they need to build? And it's not always easy. And then sometimes, when you inherit teams as well, they come with their own biases. So that's a completely different kettle fish. Then again, it's like, how do you actually work with a team that you've inherited, that maybe don't have, maybe something like something, something's happened to them, or they have, they had a bad experience before, and you're trying to get them to build trust again. But
Finola Howard 33:48
that, that process of, because I really, what I've really gotten strongly from this conversation, is the I don't know, but you are sandwiching I don't know, or partnering I don't know, with let's teach each other, yeah, yeah. So when focused, yeah. So culturally, do you dictate that from the very beginning? So even when you're inheriting, do you say, Okay, well, this is how I am as a leader. I i make it safe for you to say, I don't know, because I don't know either. And I'm gonna, we're gonna teach each other how to do all of these things, because each of us knows something different. Do you state that like values led, culture led from the very beginning, or is that because you talked about like? Is it when you're organically growing from three to 30, at what point do you stick that piece in where you're saying, this is our way of working. This is our culture. Now,
Maria McCann 34:45
with the three to 30, it organically happened because I was going, Look, I don't know the answers. No one does, but let's look at how we look at solutions. The solution thing was interesting, though, because quite there it took that took more time to filter the whole way through where people would just. Say, here's the challenge, here's the challenge. And we're coming to me and my senior team, and we had to keep going back and saying, Okay, but what do you think the answer is? And let's look at that, and we'll have a conversation. So that took time, and teams that haven't heard it in the past as well. There can be, it's a fear or not, mainly being psychologically safe. And you're you're saying, This is what I want to this I want to do, and that, but it can take time. Finola, I've had teams before that. They still stay quite closed, and they don't want to. And then it takes one brave person to go, actually, I have an idea, or I want to look at things differently. And I've noticed that once one brave person does it, the rest go, Okay, this is, this is, see if that person's being really supported, they come up with three ideas. They're being really supported and bringing these ideas forward. Okay, this is what, what this person is saying is true. They are going to support us. They are going to look at things differently. And sometimes I think it can take a bit more time with different teams to actually get there. Do
Finola Howard 35:57
you do you look for the one brave person when you go into a new team,
Maria McCann 36:00
not always. Because sometimes the one brave person you think is the brave person isn't there, maybe just pretending to be Yeah, and being genuine and being genuine for no sometimes the people that are quite open, sometimes are actually saying things, but not actually maybe bringing things behind it. They're just more open to conversations. Whereas I have seen other people that maybe are not as open or not having the conversations, that are the ones that would come to me and say, I actually have an idea, and I'm like, That's a brilliant idea. Maybe it's it's confidence. They don't have the confidence to bring it forward in front of the wider team, and and then once they do, and you're like, share this brilliant idea, that this is great, they then start to feel more comfortable. And other people start to feel more comfortable bringing stuff feel more comfortable bringing
Finola Howard 36:44
stuff forward as well. Let me come back and ask another question, which is stated values and stated culture. When does that kick in, and are you a fan of it? Are you not a fan of it? From a pragmatic from a practical perspective, what's the impact
Maria McCann 37:02
I struggle with this one, right? Because it's, it's, are, are they stated and being you're being told to follow that, or is it authentic and that it's the behaviors and actions that actually come from those values are what are being? Are being actively pushed within the organization, not pushed supported within the organization. Or are these values on a wall, but no one is actually doing them, behaving, feeling them. So those values or principles, I think it's more about what does that look like in real life, and how do you showcase that different role models across the organization are delivering them, and one of the big ones would be when they are not when they're like, it's the empty it's the opposite of that value actually being shown. Do people feel safe to saying that's actually wrong? It's completely against what we're doing. So I think it's when,
Finola Howard 37:59
when did, when did you at what point from three to 30, at what point did you write values?
Maria McCann 38:08
Our values are the HSE values, so that the HSE values have been set. And in fairness, they have a really cool thing where they actually done Values in Action. So they have posters up around different organizations where it showed be compassionate, and then there was examples of what that looked like, which was really, really cool. Or you would hear stories of engaging with patients or engaging with employees, as to what that value actually looked like in a day to day interaction. So they were there, they were really good. And we would have talked within my team about values and action, which is really good as well. So it's trying to but like it's it's very difficult to get everyone on a team to everyone has different personalities. Everyone has their own history, their own biases, their own views on the world as well. So when I done my organizational psychology, one of the biggest lessons on day one was our director stood up and said, but you all think that you're here and you're going to be able to ensure that all the people you work with and support, all the people that you work with, to be really happy and work and I'm there with my pen. They're like, this will never happen. You will never and it's true, you will never get everyone happy and engaged and fulfilled and supported and enabled, and that for me was something i i have struggled but have got much better at being at peace with myself, that I will do the best that I can for as many people on the team, but I cannot make everyone feel that way, and that's because all of us, myself included, every single person is human. We've all had our own history, our own biases, and sometimes that makes us believe or see things in a certain way, and team leaders or managers can never change everyone's opinion and that they can only do what they can to support as many people as possible.
Finola Howard 39:58
It's a hard lesson. Yeah. Yeah,
Maria McCann 40:00
it is a hard lesson. I was sitting with my pen and my laptop, getting all excited, and you can see like that a lot of people in the room was like, This is what I'm here to do. Like, where is this magic? I want to be a witch and help people and be really like, good white witch stuff, and everything's gonna be happy. And how do you support people and put all the building blocks in place? And it's like, yeah, you can do all of that. You can put all those building blocks in place, but sometimes it just won't work for everyone. And you can do your best. And that's, and, look, I'm 47 now, but it's, it's like, it's, it is reality, and it's, and it's, and that's okay. You can only try your best and do your best. We're all human, everyone, everyone's human, and everyone makes mistakes.
Finola Howard 40:46
Tell me another conversation that we ended up having was this idea of entrepreneurs are taught that they must become leaders to a certain formula. And you know, because this is the biggest this biggest scaling issue for entrepreneurs is going from small team to scaled team. Yeah, and it was this idea that you said, you mentioned to me that there's new, new research that's proposing we take a different perspective and instead play to our strengths, which feels a lot better to me. Tell me more about that. Yeah, I love
Maria McCann 41:20
this. Mean, you had a chat with us. A friend of mine shared an article with me that I will find, and it talked about founder mode, as opposed to, when you're skilling an organization, that you have to go to this formulaic of you are now going to be the CEO. You now need to employ people that are going to be your SMT, that you have to basically engage with these guys, and then these guys will will engage with the wider teams below. And that, if that's how you scale, because you can't manage as one person, all the different people, and how you have to basically put these structures in place in order to do it. And but how there's more research looking at that founder mode is actually a better way to be that bringing in that layer can actually move the founder from the people that are actually invigorating them, giving them the energy, telling them the stuff that's actually happening on the ground. And they talked about things like Steve Jobs and how he used to take away like 200 people to a retreat. But they weren't the top level that. They were people all across the organization who brought different insights and skills, since what we were talking about around finding out authentically what's happening in your world, and it not being filtered through a management structure, that it's coming directly from that person who's doing that job, and that they can actually give you the best view of what that looks like. And that founder mode is something that's been looked at in a more detailed way by researchers now as well, to say it shouldn't just be only this way, from a scaling perspective, that founders have an inherent stomach, like gut instinct around their own business, because they've lived and breathed it, and they should be allowed to lead in their way, as opposed to being forced to do it through a certain organizational structure. And I know they had looked at that with multiple different sort of tech companies years ago as well that had that one sort of hierarchy, as opposed to lots of different managers. But this founder mode, supposedly, is a little bit different to that flat hierarchy. It's more that the founder can manage that organizational structure and that engagement across the organization, and they shouldn't be told, No, you don't speak to those people. You speak to only these guys who have filtered the information that you have to let them run with their gut more. And that people that do it can be seen as quite eccentric, but that in years to come, we will actually look back and say they actually were ahead of their time in trying to do it in a slightly different way as well, which are really interesting.
Finola Howard 43:42
So it's interesting because I've worked with different types of tech companies over the years where the leader has often been that quirky, eccentric. And I remember speaking to the COO of one company, talking about the founder of the company, going, it's like magic Finola. We don't know how he does it, but we've just got to let him do it, because he just does stuff we never even think of. And so the organization used to move around him even, but it was frustrating. Yeah, there's no structure to it. Yeah, no structure to it. They didn't know what he's going to do. They just not knew he would do really good stuff, like and, but, and it was the first lesson for me of thinking without limits. That, yeah, I mean, I'm pretty good at removing my own limits. I work at it right, but, yeah, this guy was at a different level of he just never, he just saw a clear path straight to the top, and that top that was higher than anybody else would imagine. And but I remember them moving around a lot, but then also when investors would come in, they were critiqued for it. They were it wasn't so positive about. Out that structure. So, yeah, I know from that particular company that they it changed structure so many times so that the it would be challenging, because, yeah, you're tapping into this greatness of the founder, but then you're trying to manage and control, for lack of a better way of saying it an organization around that and that becomes unsafe sometimes, and
Maria McCann 45:28
people like to feel safe, because that's reminding me of even like that resilience, and that resilience whenever change is happening on a constant basis and nobody likes to change, myself included, even though Change management is what I absolutely adore and preach, but I find it difficult to change everyone does, and that resilience that an organization like that has to have needs to come from the culture and the people joining that organization need to be aware that that's what they're joining. And I think it brings it right back to even when you're doing recruitment, that you're setting out expectations if that's how that organization is going to flourish and grow, that the people joining it need to be extremely agile in actually how they work, and very open to changing expectations or changing directions, and in COVID and in cyber attack, and then within the Ukraine crisis, I kept telling my team that we would get to Business as usual, because the whole time we were basically working with what the macro economy and the world and the things that were happening were actually coming at us, and what we find then we had to do internally is I kept saying, we'll get to business as usual. We're going to build strategy, we're going to do this. And then one day I just went, Okay, hands up, lads. We're not I I'm I don't know what I'm talking about anymore, because everything keeps changing. So what we're going to do is we're going to concentrate in our team. And I ran resilience day, and we literally looked at our energy buckets and went, how do we as a team be very clear and aware for ourselves of what our energy buckets are, mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. How do we recognize others and how do we support each other as a team? Because outside us, you can't, you can't control it, and some people really need to know what they're doing when they're doing it for the next week. And a team like that, that you're speaking about would have to be employed in a way, I think, to be very clearly bringing people in that are very clear that they're enjoying a team, that things will sway and change, and that they need to be okay with that, and have that resilience and that clarity of how to manage themselves from a resilience perspective, challenging, hmm, also
Finola Howard 47:37
very interesting. I mean, you've this idea of this founder view, and that we don't have to conform to a certain view. Also, like the whole colabs on thing, like, I think that's it's a much more interesting way to grow. And this company that I'm thinking of continue to grow. Like, he's still amazing,
yeah, yeah.
So one of the things that I'd love for you to speak about for a moment as well, is this idea of any tips that you would give entrepreneurs as they build that team around them, like, is there or do you think we've covered them all now, with being okay with not knowing, being clear on what the vision is. What would you say?
Maria McCann 48:26
I think that team resilience, so that open and honest communication that everyone doesn't know the answers, and that when people are actually joining your team, that they like, like, as they always say, like, hire people that are smarter than you in the areas that you want them to excel in. So I had amazing, incredible and still do work with people smarter than me, which is brilliant. So it's doing that and also making them feel empowered to the fact that doesn't matter if they don't know the answer to that thing either, and that the lens that you may be looking at it from the new organization may be very different to what they've done before very successfully, and that they may not be able to follow that same flow that they did before, but not to try and force that organization, that entrepreneurial organization, into that flow of an organization. Maybe that was much, much bigger. So it's trying to ensure that people are okay with trying in a different way, and that thing around failure and then diversity, inclusion, around the collaboration. Oh my god. I think that's one of the most powerful. Powerful ones is actually understanding what people are actually bringing to the table. And you never know what people have or what they've been through. And when you open up and have conversations, you could turn around and say to me, actually, Maria, I did ABC. And I'd be like, Oh my God, tell me more. So you don't know what's going on within people's lives. Everyone lives such wide and full lives, themselves, has so many experiences. So trying to understand your team and the other experiences they can bring, and the other lenses they can bring other than the one you employed them for. So that's hugely powerful. I think
Finola Howard 49:59
I. Other than the one you employed them for. I like that. You said something else about finding your voice and being comfortable with who you are. Yes, we talked about Alvin the Chipmunk. Yeah,
Maria McCann 50:13
my friends go with this. I have worked probably with quite a lot of men over the last number of years, because it's tech, so it's it and that kind of thing. Um, amazing, incredible, incredible men and incredible, incredible women as well. There's an incredible amount of women doing cool digital transformations within health as well. And but I would have found, and I noticed it on reflection, that sitting in different boardrooms talking about different important pieces of work. Sometimes I would have found that I couldn't help myself when I was trying to put my point across, and that I would feed in my voice, and
I would come out and go, Where is Alvin coming from? And it would be inside me. It wasn't, it wasn't the people I was with lovely, super respect I work with, incredible people. Um, but it was me, Finola. It was my trying to give my contribution, believing in the thing that I was about to say, and grounding myself and actually go on. Excuse me, I actually have an idea, and it was more, not the environment, but my perception and biases, maybe from a very young age. The whole way through that, I would have started to feel uncomfortable. And I heard chipmunk, I heard all of them coming in, and I recognized it, and then had to go, okay before you when you feel that anxiety about putting something across, and I think it's natural for people to go, I've got I'm gonna go against what they're saying. So I have to take a breath here. It's about taking that breath to go Look, can I just speak about something that I feel, but I would have had Alvin, Alvin, and it was confidence and just maybe believing in myself as well. But I had to realize about Alvin and trying to start bringing it deeper already joking. I didn't, it didn't go deeper, but I did have to start taking a breath, grinding, yeah, breath, it's okay. And knowing that you're like and those, honestly, those spaces I was in, I did feel psychologically safe, and I I knew the people I was working with, and they were brilliant, and they would have been senior to me, but it was me reacting in that environment, not not even them, a lot of the time. So how do you manage
Finola Howard 52:25
how fast did you cop that you were doing that? Yeah, well,
Maria McCann 52:29
it was, I was the only woman in that room two or three times when we did and I just like, what's wrong with my voice? And I talk fast. I'm from the North. I'm working down south, so my I know I have to slow myself down sometimes, in fact, I got my skirt tugged when I was presenting many years ago to a multicultural audience. When I was on stage, somebody tugged my skirt like you need to slow down. But I think it was after the second or third time with that group of people that were senior that I went, Oh God, I can hear Elvin I and I spoke to friends, and we laughed and laughed and laughed, and then had a conversation about it, and I went, I need to breathe. I need to hold myself and just, basically just breathe before I have something that is making me feel what
Finola Howard 53:19
was happening? Were you feeling unsafe or just scared?
Maria McCann 53:23
I felt that I was maybe scared that I was about to say something, not even scared I was about to say something maybe that didn't align with what was actually being said. And I was going, Okay, how do I say this in a way that is going to come across the right way? And it was all male voices as well. And I was like, Excuse me, I think maybe, and it was like, and I recognize, I don't think it might not ever go away completely, but it's being aware of it. For me, in my 40s, my big thing has been more self reflection and awareness of me and being okay with all my faults, which there are many, and then the good things that I bring, and being aware of maybe what I'm better at, and sort of breathing in a better way around that, and trying to be a bit kinder to myself as well. So it's okay if Alvin's there. Make a joke about Alvin and say, I don't know, but
Finola Howard 54:14
I like that. It's okay if Alvin is there because Alvin is then, is then signaling something for you to look at. It's okay.
Maria McCann 54:21
That's it. That's it. Yeah, that's it, exactly, yeah.
Finola Howard 54:26
Really cool. What would you like people to walk away with today? Maria,
Maria McCann 54:32
that we are all unique and different, and all can bring different lenses to like, if we're talking about from the work perspective, from a work perspective, from a work perspective, you can bring a different lens from work perspective because of your experience, but not negate your other life experiences and the benefits they will actually bring in your work environment as well. So just because you've done it, programming or data analytics, all the other things that surround your life, which there are many, could bring. Mother, like lots of different lenses that would actually support stuff that's actually happening in work. So to go into an environment not just thinking, I am X you're not. You're some of lots and lots and lots of little mini x's, and the thing that you're really good at and don't, don't forget to feel confident and comfortable talking about the other things that you do and how you can bring them to work and feel more authentic. For leaders and for entrepreneurs, it's really do work on how do you make people feel psychologically safe? How do they and if they're not, it's coming from the top. If they don't feel psychologically safe, there is something happening that is not working. So you need to really look at what that is. And it's not a quick fix. It is not a quick fix to actually move that that dial for people as well. And if you get it right, you will achieve like, so much more like employee engagement worldwide. Is it 22% like, when you actually that makes me feel nauseous. 22% huge. And if you can actually get a disengaged employee, engaged productivity rate is increased by 17% so how you actually lead people, as opposed to manage them, makes a massive impact on them as people, their ripple impact with their with me, I'm a single mom with two kids. When I'm happier and work, my kids feel it. Do you know what I mean? Your interactions with your friends, your productivity and organization and all the money data side of things will absolutely raise, but also think about the impact you're having on people, not just that employee, but their wider life as well. So I think that's a big reason why you should have the space and time to reflect, ensure that you're you're trying to do it in the right way, and that it's okay to do it wrong and make a mistake if you'll realize it and try and fix it, that no one is perfect, absolutely by no mix or means, are people perfect. We're all only trying to learn and get better and be kinder and do the right thing. I think that there was a lot.
Finola Howard 56:59
Yeah, really good. All, really good. Thank you so much, Maria. Enjoy a joy. Yeah,
Speaker 1 57:06
you too. I've learned loads from you. We've had great conversations, and you've linked to fab. Loved it. Yeah, more.
Finola Howard 57:12
We'll do more. We will and that's it for this episode. Everyone. Thank you so much for joining us and make sure to connect with Maria on LinkedIn and reach out if you have any thoughts you'd like to share on this topic. Thank you for listening to your truth shared. And if you enjoy this episode, make sure to share it with your entrepreneurial friends and help them grow their business to even greater heights. Until next time, let's keep growing. You.
