Episode 16 - Change Management: Interview With Bestselling Author and BBC Television Personality Geoff Burch

Dynamic, exciting and fun, Geoff Burch is a business expert like no other. He is internationally known for taking a walk on the wild side of business and turning it into an engaging, entertaining and humorous presentation that will lift and delight your audience.

Geoff is the author of six best-selling business titles, is a regular presenter on BBC television and was voted Business Communicator of the Year by the Speechwriters’ Guild. Whether he is speaking on customers, sales, leadership, or change, once seen Geoff is never forgotten. Today, we discuss change management.

You Can Read the Transcript of Our Interview Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to the MBM interview series. This is the sticky interviews. Today I've got the pleasure of interviewing Geoff Burch. He is a best selling author. He's got six books out already. He is a TV presenter for a business presenter for the BBC. He's got tailored presentations that have helped motivate and inspire change within organization, a blend of motivational message and humor. And I've had the pleasure of talking to him before. Yes, there was a lot of humor. I can't divulge a lot of what we talked about because the phrase effing and Geoffing may have been written about Geoff. So, we're going to try and keep it business correct.

Nathan Simmonds:

His demand as a speaker has been voted Business Communicator of the Year by the Speech Writers Guild. And amongst that, he makes time to make his delivery entertaining, funny, digestible so that the normal man in your business can understand what is happening and effect change for themselves from the inside out. Now, the quote that resonated with me, Geoff, when we spoke last, "A change inflicted is a change resisted." Geoff through his words makes change possible. So, thank you, Geoff, for being here. Welcome.

Geoff Burch:

Pleasure.

Nathan Simmonds:

First and foremost, why do you do what you do?

Geoff Burch:

Accident. No intention at all, absolutely not. Literally hurled into it. I feel like Brian in the Life of Brian, you know? I expect my mom to be at the window going, "He is not a guru. He's a very naughty boy," you know? Absolute total utter accident completely and utterly. And if I could understand how I do it and bottle it, I would be a lot richer than I am. But I have ... I travel. I sort of travel like a comet. I think all the ancients would sort of ... All the ancients would look at a comet and think that it imbued some sort of portent to something or other. But the comet is just a bit of frozen rock and frozen dinosaur poo sort of whistling through the universe. I feel like that, really. People interpret great portent from my things. And I'm just this piece of sort of deep frozen sort of archaeology hurtling about the place really.

Geoff Burch

 

Nathan Simmonds:

I thought you were going to say you were a piece of dinosaur poo then. I was going-

Geoff Burch:

I was going to say that. But I noticed your sort of reservations about bad language, so I'm being extremely careful. Yeah.

Nathan Simmonds:

It may happen. I think, to be honest, if we're working in business at some point, the swearing is a natural part of what we do.

Geoff Burch:

Yeah.

Nathan Simmonds:

Especially in times of crisis now. When you don't see these things happening, the first words that often come out of your mouth is, "Shit." That is just the way it is. You say that you got to where ... And I spoke about your speaking career because I'm avidly interested in a speaking career for myself in the future. And you said, again, it was accident. And I guess it's about being in the right place at the right time, saying the right words and having the right people to listen to you, which makes it happen. What inspired you then to keep going down this road, even by accident?

Geoff Burch:

Money. Lots and lots of money. I think, again, I have all sorts of weird mental problems because I was brought up by a psychiatrist, you know? It ensures that you're going to be round the twist, you know? An old Viennese psychiatrist. And I kind of feel this about these rock stars that end up sort of dying at 27 and stuff. They had something that they enjoyed doing, you know? They enjoyed doing it, whatever it was. But they enjoyed doing it. And somebody said, "I like listening too you doing what you're doing. Here's wads of money and we're going to fill a football stadium with people. But don't be ill. Don't fail to turn up. And then we're going to take you to another football stadium and another football stadium and another football stadium."

Geoff Burch:

You go, "Well, I'm tired. I don't want to." You can't stop because you've got a contract, you know? And these guys just erupt, but that's not what they were doing it for. They were doing it because they like playing their guitar or mouth organ or whatever it was they did, you know? And kind of, I've enjoyed talking bollocks all my life. And then, just one day somebody pressed money in my hand and said, "But you've got to be in Singapore in two days' time." "But I don't like flying and I don't like being away from home." "Well, I don't care. How much money do you want to be in Singapore in two days' time?"

Geoff Burch:

And kind of people go, "Yeah, we love what this guy says." And you kind of go, "Well, I would have said it anyway," you know? I say it in the shower. I say it to the rats that live in my loft. It doesn't really ... You know? And I'm fascinated by business and the weirdness of it and the stupidity of it. I mean, Einstein said, and I love Einstein, he's my hero. Einstein said that, "There are only two genuinely infinite things. One of those is the universe, and the other is the stupidity of mankind." And he said, "And I'm not sure about the universe."

Nathan Simmonds:

So, which ... Then probing into that, which parts of business do you find the most stupid?

Geoff Burch:

Well, I think the sort of ... Again, Life of Brian, again it's one of my key things is the finding of the holy sandal, you know? "I am healed by the holy ..." They have these business plans, the gurus, you know? You can be top guru one day and not the rest, Tom Peters et al. Then there's Agility, there's Six Sigma, there's the Toyota Manufacturing Method. There's the this, that, and the other. And I'm sure there's a lot of listeners out there who are screaming at me going, "But I've lived my life by the KPIs," and stuff like that. And you can always find some marvelous stupidity in it.

Geoff Burch:

Whether people want to really pay me to be told that they're stupid, I don't know. I think, again, it's the kind of gesture job thing. I think Henry the Eighth at the slightest insult would chop your head off. But his jester was allowed to do what he liked. And I think ever monarch, every ruler, every chief executive ... I mean, what was it? One of the Roman emperors used to have this guy who was paid to stand behind him to say, "You remember you're mortal," you know?

Nathan Simmonds:

Yeah, Marcus Aurelius. I was thinking that as you were saying it.

Geoff Burch:

Yeah. I think every major leader, if he values his company, needs to hear the negatives. My thing is, I'm unemployable. And that is actually a key benefit because I don't work in people's businesses. They don't want to employ me. There's absolutely no way. You don't want a person like me in your organization. So, if you have like-minded people around you, they will share the mistake.

Geoff Burch:

I mean, one of the things with aircraft systems and one of the reasons the French managed to crash an airliner was because you double up the systems. Now, because they were French, they bought all the systems from the same factory. So, after 27.5 hours, this particular part would malfunction. And because it was an identical part, the two parts malfunctioned at the same time, and the thing plunged into the sea. Whereas, all the other aircraft manufacturers buy them from two different companies.

Geoff Burch:

So, you know, you do have to employ this contradictory point of view to what you're doing. You don't have to abide by it, but you do need to kind of see what there is. And the other thing is, I often express the emotional intelligence of the frontline people, the people in the wellies and the orange jackets. So, whereas the people who live in the sort of holy place that's built on a rainbow somewhere in far Asgard, you know? I probably would understand how that just in time Agility model could be translated into the guy with the steering wheel in his hand. And I suppose that I do have a talent for being able to sell that. So, I tend to be wheeled out at company conferences.

Geoff Burch:

And I suppose, if I have any skill at all, it's to sit with the pointy heads where they talk rubbish, and then I can actually say, "No, no, no. What that actually ..." Because somebody was trying to ... Let's take Six Sigma, right? Six Sigma comes in 27 volumes of 5,000 pages each and it's a manufacturing excellence model or something, quality model. But what it is, is actually ... What it is, is you take a target and a bow and arrow and you say, "If I want to hit the bullseye, what do I aim for?" And you say, "Well, the bullseye." And say, "Well, how much away from the bullseye can we tolerate and call that the middle?" And Six Sigma says, "None of it. If you want to hit the middle, aim for the middle." And that's it. That's all 50,000 pages condensed, basically saying, if you want to get things right, you ought to try and get them right. If you have tolerance 10% either way, everybody will make it 10% either way.

Geoff Burch:

If somebody says, "Look, count the money. There should be 5,000, but I won't be upset if there's 4,900," that's what you'll get every time is 4,900 because the bloke knows he can nick 100 quid, you know?