Chris Norton: 1:57

He walked into the C-suite boardroom and tried to win them over with jokes. The CEO looked up and said, Who's this guy? Today, Faris Aranki, strategy consultant and former McKinsey advisor, shares the mistake that cost him his credibility and what it taught him about emotional intelligence. If you've ever lost control of a meeting or watched a great idea die in sign-off, this episode will help you read the room, build buy-in, and keep your strategy alive. I'm Chris Norton and this is Embracing Marketing Mistakes, where senior marketers turn hard lessons into better campaigns and sharper decisions. Today Will and I are joined by Faris Aranki, founder of Shiageto Consulting and former top-tier strategist. Faris once presented a multi-million pound strategy with the wrong tone and lost the trust of the CEO in seconds. We'll break down why it happened, where his control slipped, and now what he does differently. In this episode, you'll learn how to adapt your style to any audience, how to turn passive stakeholders into active owners, and what it takes to make strategy stick in the real world. Let's get into it. Faris Aranki, welcome to the show. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Will.

Will Ockenden: 3:15

Good to have you.

Chris Norton: 3:16

We've got you on the show to cover, well, various things. Um but before we get right in, I mean, we'll get into your where you've come from and everything. Yeah. Uh you've sent over something about where you're from, uh or sort of your philosophy on the world, should I say, and it's IQ plus EQ plus FQ. Yes. I'm glad we cleared that up. So well, yes, yeah. I need some IQ to understand, right?

Will Ockenden: 3:42

That equals success, right?

Faris Aranki: 3:44

That equals success. Well done, Will. You've done your homework, but Chris clearly hasn't because he said plus. Yeah, I noticed that. It's multiply, Chris. That's a marketing mistake.

Chris Norton: 3:53

Uh that's why I created this show. I can fuck it up as much as I want, and people can keep can keep coming on. So yeah, tell us where that philosophy has come from then and what you mean by it.

Faris Aranki: 4:03

That was kind of me putting together everything I'd seen in life where I'd been successful or the clients that I worked with for successful. And just for context, I've been writing strategies for companies for 20 years. Right. And I went back in a sort of way, like, look, most of my work, let's be honest, has gone nowhere. Right. Even when the client paid, when even when I was top-tier consulting and the clients paid millions of dollars for the work, they didn't end up doing it or achieving what they wanted. And so when I looked back and I was like, why is this, right? Okay, because they had great ideas. Okay, that was a prerequisite. You need a great idea for whatever you want to achieve. Um, but that's not enough. We've all had great ideas, right? And we all know that we need to take others with us on the journey, right? That's the EQ part. So the great idea is the IQ part. The take others on the journey is the EQ part because you can't achieve anything if it's losing weight or making a billion dollars startup without taking others on the journey, selling it, getting them brought in. But even that's not enough. You can have a great idea and everyone rallied. The last bit that just sort of dawned on me was this F key, which sounds a bit rude, but is all about having the focus around your idea. You're not going to achieve anything if you don't have focus. But focus alone without those other two components isn't gonna work. So it doesn't matter if it's personally, professionally, you need a great idea, everyone on board, lots of focus, uh, and then you'll be successful, right? And invariably all of us have one of those pillars that is weak, weaker than the others. And so, you know, I'm like, work out what your weak pillar is, then you'll be more likely to be successful.

Will Ockenden: 5:36

So that's strategic intelligence, emotional intelligence, and focus, right? Yeah, yeah, spot on. So the emotional intelligence side, I think I mean that's I think a lot of people you hear that term kind of bandied around a lot in in business circles, don't you? You know, yeah, as a CEO, you need to be more emotionally intelligent. So what does what does that emotional intelligence actually mean? And can you teach it?

Faris Aranki: 6:01

Yes, and uh you can. And what does it mean, right? Just think about the people you know who everyone seems to get on with, right? Think about people with the the ability to um get others excited by what they're talking about. Um, I'll give you a great example. Um, I started my career as a school teacher. All right. Um, I used to be in front of uh 11 to 18 year olds trying to get them to learn maths and economics, yeah, particularly maths. Maths is the greatest uh thing that happened. Teaching maths is the greatest thing that happened to me because what happened uh in every classroom on day one, wherever I was in the world teaching, you'd get about 25% of the kids who would tell you on day one, I hate your subject, sir. I'm never gonna learn it. All right? They're basically telling you their emotion. I hate this. I don't know. And you know, brilliant, you're handing me that. I now know you're gonna resist. I have to learn how to overcome that. That's what great EQ is about. I now understand how you feel about saying I'm going to accommodate it in how I teach you or how I approach you. That's what having good EQ is. I am factoring that in, not just going, hey, this is math, this is algebra, you should all get this. It makes sense, it's logical. Oh, hang on a minute, you know, you dislike uh this aspect of it. Okay, I've got to factor that in. That's what having EQ for me is about, um, more than anything. It's just taking into account the other person's feelings around a topic.

Will Ockenden: 7:24

And how how would you um as as you know, as a business leader, how would you advise I suppose what are the what are the reg what are the signs that a business leader's got low emotional intelligence and how would you um work with them to improve that?

Faris Aranki: 7:43

Yeah.

Will Ockenden: 7:44

That's probably quite a good question.

Faris Aranki: 7:46

Yeah, I guess one of the first things I look out for is are they listening? Yeah. I'll often do this with a leader who's very strong and doesn't have high EQ. I'll say to them, we'll I'll we'll record a meeting that they've been having, either with me, one-on-one, or with their team. And I'll say to them, look, how how long do you think you spoke in that meeting? Like what percentage of time do you think you took up? Bearing in mind there was 10 of you in the meeting. And they'll say, Oh, well, there's 10 of us, I maybe spoke for 10% of the time, or because I'm the boss 20% of the time. Well, the great thing with AI now, you just pull the stats, right? And I'll go, Did you know you spoke 68% of the time? All right. That's a big clue to me that you are not factoring, you're not even creating the space to listen for other people's emotions. And if you can't do that, then you're probably missing the emotions. So a key one is their their ratio of how much they talk to how much they listen.

Will Ockenden: 8:38

I'm acutely aware now of uh how you're gonna look back at the facts.

Faris Aranki: 8:43

Now we're on a podcast, so you're asking me to speak more, but my default status is actually just to listen. Um and um, but yeah, that's it, that's a number one thing that I look out for.

Chris Norton: 8:53

You've you ask a lot of questions like what would your nemesis do? Which is quite interesting. Because I've got a squash nemesis, so I just can't get past. He's got he's got this serve, and I just can't get past him. Um what what is what what if this person was your best friend? So what uh why are questions such a powerful lever to get effective to create effectiveness, would you say?

Faris Aranki: 9:15

Because um, I yeah, the things I do with teams and the places to take, they already know. So I need a way to galvanize them and really reinforce it in a simple way. So I use questions like this because they're non-attacking, they kind of help them reframe something. Um, because key to a human being changing is they've got to embrace it and think it, think about it from their point of view. So I'll use the question around a nemesis, particularly if I want to help someone get focused. You know, I'll say to them, particularly if I realize they're doing lots of things, they're getting distracted. I said, Oh, hang on a minute. Do you have a nemesis? Yes or no, and often people don't. I say, imagine there was someone who had the equal abilities to you whose sole job was to beat you. And given the choice right now, what would they do when faced with the decision you're about to make? Right?

Chris Norton: 11:10

So say it was like, I really but go on holiday, that's what Will's doing.

Faris Aranki: 11:18

Yeah. It it is. It's a technique I use on myself a lot, right? So let's say I need to, let's say I've got a client that hasn't paid their bill, and I'm about to start writing an email to them saying, please pay your bill, your invoice is outstanding. And I'll sit and go, hang on a minute, what would my nemesis do? My nemesis would just pick up the phone. Right? He wants to beat me at this, he wants to get the money quicker, he he's just gonna pick up the phone, right? And if I was about to pick up the phone, I go, what would my nemesis do? He'd be round their offices. Right? So it's a way to upgrade your idea, your get to straight to the point. And I unashamedly stole this from reading uh um uh an interview with Daley Thompson, who said, Look, I only got to be the double Olympic gold champion because of Jürgen Hinkson, my nemesis, right? German, East German athlete. He said, Anytime I thought about quitting, I was like, what would Jürgen do right now? He'd keep running, right? He wouldn't take a day off, right? It was that idea of having a nemesis, and Jürgen was completely unaware. That's how Daly's brain was set up, right? Yeah, but just so it helps triggering you, going, nah, I can do this, right?

Chris Norton: 12:25

Yeah. I mean, I don't really have a nemesis at work. I was joking that Will's my podcast nemesis, but we're co-hosts, that's fine. But nemesis is an interesting philosophy to like trying to think of what why would what would they do in this situation and what why would that make you think slightly differently? I think that is quite an interesting philosophy. I'd have to ask AI, they'd probably just use AI, wouldn't they?

Faris Aranki: 12:48

They might do nowadays, right? And yeah, build an LLM of your nemesis, right? And ask it what it would do if it was given your business, and you'll be amazed at the ideas it comes out with. Uh, pr probably pretty simple things that you're you dismissed early on, or you you you said you know they're on your to-do list. Now I can't even say this word. Qu quotient, is that right?

Chris Norton: 13:08

Quotient, yeah, quotient, yeah.

Will Ockenden: 13:09

I told you it's quotient, Fred.

Chris Norton: 13:11

Yeah, you did. I asked, by the way, every for every for the for the benefit of the tape, we'll have to Google it how to pronounce it because he said it three different ways. So before he outsmarts me there.

Faris Aranki: 13:23

Um, yeah, you know, just a lot of cues. But it hey, look, I just try and simplify it, right? Have a great idea, get people on board, be focused. You're gonna be successful. Um, but it's easy to get distracted by that. And then and then kind of you said something earlier which um sort of rang true with with with with our experiences, really. You know, a lot of brands will spend an awful lot of money and time on strategies, um, and then ultimately they never really bed them in, they never really get through to the execution. It's almost a box ticking exercise sometimes, isn't it? Lots and lots of thinking in the front end, and then great, we've got the strategy, and then nothing's really done with it, which is just a huge waste of time and effort. So um, I suppose why do you think that happens? And um, you know, what are the kind of the blockers to it, you know, because uh to execution? I mean, it's hugely frustrating. I mean, great, you get paid for it, but it'd be nice to see your your strategy actually put into action, wouldn't it? How can we how can we make that happen? Yeah, well, having come from that top-tier consulting world and having written a lot of great strategies, and I know they're great because I poured my heart and soul, you know, 2 a.m. finishes, you know, all the doing all the research, all the analytics. It is it is a lack of those two other pillars, right? That's so that was addressing the IQ pillar. Have the perfect answer. But invariably I would see things fall apart because of EQ problems. I the senior team did not buy into it. Right? Either they didn't buy into the idea because they don't understand it, it wasn't explained to them in a way that they grasped it, or it didn't excite them, right? Or they they were had enough conflict amongst them that they could never agree as a senior team of eight people to sign it to really not, you know, they might in the meeting say you already approve it, but to really embrace it and say, this is ours, we own it. And when I was in top-tier consulting, the likes of you know, McKinsey, BCG, they don't always spend the time getting at emotional connection to the strategy because that's not their job. All right, they've already banked their $10 million, they're like, it doesn't actually bother us if you do this or not. That's terrible. So there's this big gap where nobody's actually taking the time to go, hey, hey, Mr. CEO, I know your actual response was shit, this sounds like it's a lot of work. Or shit, if I go ahead with this, I might lose my job because the risk is so you know, and factoring those in and and taking the time to unpack those emotions. So it's the lack of buy-in is a big reason that a strategy just sits on a hard drive. The other one is is the F key, is they love the idea, but they're doing 200 other strategy projects, and they can't give it the focus and dedication that it needs.

Will Ockenden: 16:02

So is there a is there a I mean, I I understand, you know, we've talked about emotional intelligence um and um you know and focus. I mean, from a sort of a practical perspective, you know, you you've delivered you've developed this, you know, um 200 hours worth of work, the the best strategy, the most effective strategy, incredibly proud of it. Yeah, there's eight decision makers, they can't agree, they're not necessarily bought in emotionally to that. I mean, what can we do? Is there practical strategies we can deploy to actually get them to buy into it and actually make it become a thing, you know, and and lead lead to execution?

Faris Aranki: 16:38

Yeah, so that that's my world today, right? I I don't do the analysis anymore, I don't do the IQ part really. I go into senior teams and get them aligned. And that can be a lot of work, right? That can still take 200 hours, right? It's one-on-ones, it's understanding their perspective of their world, what's important to them at that point in their life, right? Showing them the features and benefits that align to that, taking on board. It might be communicating them in a different way, right? For the CFO, who's very analytical, I'll only talk in the numbers and the ROI and the thing. For the CMO, the head of marketing, I'll talk in the big picture, the vision. Right? You cannot walk, just like I learnt with those kids. I can't go and stand at the front of the room and explain something in one way and have all 30 kids understand it.

Chris Norton: 17:24

Yes.

Faris Aranki: 17:25

I need to learn how to be. And that's the same with a board. They have different priorities, different ways of understanding. So give them, if it's important, give them the one-on-one time and attention, and then bring them together and show them their commonalities. Hey, you love this part and you love this part. So we we know that part's great, right? And near and get them to talk it back to each other, not you as the paid consultant. Because the sooner, have you ever heard the story of the initial um Apple stores when they first launched the iPad? No, go on. So in the in the old Apple stores, rather cunningly, they used to purposely tell their employees put the iPads five degrees askew on the wall. Right? The reason being is what does the a customer or a human being do when they walk in and see an iPad five degrees askew? What will they do? What's their instinct? Straighten it. Straighten it, right? And they wanted them to straighten it because the sooner they touched it made them five times as likely to buy the product. Right? And so what I do intentionally with senior teams is leave their strategy, even if I've written it, I leave their strategy five degrees askew. Because I want them to touch it, turn it around, feel like they've owned it, because they're then five times as likely to embrace it and start talking about it as my strategy rather than this is the strategy McKinsey wrote for us. Can I ask a question then?

Chris Norton: 18:43

Yeah. Oh, we're on a podcast, so I should be able to. Uh, I don't know why I said that. Um in that theory, then, because a man who does strategy, would you using that philosophy? Because I think that the the reason why people were five times more likely to buy the is the experiential side of it, you're touching and feeling an iPad or whatever. Wow, that that's amazing. So, should we then, consultants, marketers, whatever, make our strategies tactile? Everything is AI bilge, it's um digital, it PDF, it's what about you know, what about walking in and giving them um your strategy in a but I when I was at university, we used to really bind bind bind our um work together in a machine, the binder. Oh, buddy, it was a bane of my that was my nemesis. The binder, people of a certain age are doing that at university, putting your dissertation together and stuff. Um, but my point is printing stuff out on high-quality paper and creating your strategy after obviously after the work you've done, the the integration and uh asking them questions. What do you think about creating it and actually producing what you know a high quality one and giving them so they can then would that make them more likely to use it? And if you say no, then I've wasted a lot of it.

Faris Aranki: 20:04

It might do, right? If they're a tactile person. And you know, there is a power of sort of particularly in the modern world of when everyone turns right, turn left. So in a digital world, as you've seen, the old-fashioned postcards come back, right? Because they make more of an impact, right? But if everyone's sending a postcard or every everyone's printing out the deck, then you're it's gonna be harder for them to embrace. But but you know, what I mean by this is when I teach anyone how to engage an audience, say, right, many people will have prepared a monologue as they're opening Gambit. And I say monologues are terrible because they do not invite that ownership and that engagement. So I look at their monologue and I say, we're gonna turn that into just a question. So I could I could walk into a room and say, say, I'm about, you know, I'm here today to tell you about this new iPad. You know, I would I would instantly turn it around and say, Hey, what was the last great piece of technology you used? Yeah, everything you can do, just turn it into a question. That's how you get them to touch it and feel it in the in a sort of metaphorical sense.

Will Ockenden: 21:04

Interesting.

Faris Aranki: 21:04

Rather than literal. Because the sooner they start doing that, you know, it it's as I say, it's you don't want to be sat opposite them, eyeball to eyeball, you know, eyeballing each other because that's confrontational. You want to be sat side by side. It's us against the world. So the sooner I pull them around to my side of the table and they feel like, hey, this is our strategy, not yours, the better, the more successful it's gonna be, the quicker it's gonna take.

Chris Norton: 21:29

So that's because you we've we've worked on strategies for like content marketing strategies we did for Oxford University of Oxford, and we got every you know, I was running workshops and we had multiple people in the room, and we'd get everyone's take on what their view were, and then when we took all those views, took them together to create a consolidated view, view. So the vision was everybody's, and we then we got feedback on that. I mean, yeah, it's a bit more long-winded to get, but then you're right, everybody was bought into the correct strategy, and everybody agreed with it. Interesting. I just think that tactile stuff, like it's like the human, I feel like the human touch in marketing or sales or anything like going into the co-op or Tesco's now, right? You walk in and you get people just go straight to the machine, you get your stuff, you grab it, you go to the machine. Soon you'll have to start putting it on the shelves for them. But you and it there's no sort of human element anymore. And I'm not sure if we've gone if I know the robots are coming, and you know, Elon's gonna give us a robot to do the ironing. Great, you can do the ironing, the cooking and the cleaning, and we can all do something. But I do feel like the human touch, the tactile, the vinyl, the postcard, the is that is that what's is that what the next five years are gonna be? Is that things are gonna come, yes, stuff's gonna get automated, but more things are gonna become tactile. You know, there's the things we can pick up. I don't know. I don't know, I don't know if that's what's gonna happen. We're gonna like reject the you know what I mean, the digital side of things.

Faris Aranki: 22:54

Well, yeah, I mean you see I mean there'll be the mass, and then there'll be the the sort of the um the the non conformists, uh the ones who stand. Out, right? And you see it now, you know. I think last year was the highest sales of vinyl uh in X years, right? It so there'll always be a resurgence, but unfortunately the mass will continue to move. Um, and it's certainly something I'm seeing more and more of. The more we embrace technology, AI, the less people are good at having a conversation, being personal. You know, the more we disintermediate the need to go and talk to another human being. Great word. Um yeah, right. And people get bat weaker at it, they get worse at it. Yeah, I can tell you a story so many times. You know, in fact, you know, one of my clients had a warehousing problem. So they're a big consumer goods product company. And despite their best efforts, every year they had to increase the level of warehousing to stock the overproduction of products. And they brought in a consulting firm to help them with it and spent millions of dollars. And this team had designed a new forecasting model because they were saying, look, you're predicting wrong how many, how many bottles of shampoo you should make each month, how many balls of soap, and that didn't fix it. Then they brought in a second consulting firm who said, Oh, well, you need to fix all your processes. That's clearly what's going wrong here, right? And so they redesigned all the processes, that didn't fix it. I was having a casual chat with the head of supply chain whom I knew from another lifetime, and I said, Explain the process to me. And I said, I think you've got a human problem there. I think when he described it to me, I could see that there were two departments who were not talking to each other in a way that they both had a shared view of the world. And I said, I can fix that in two months. And lo and behold, I went in and I taught these two teams how to talk to each other and it eliminated 90% of the problem. And when I said to them, why did you not just think to go up and talk to that other team face to face? Oh, I sent them emails about it, telling them how annoyed I was. And I said, Why would you just not walk over there? It's not far, so like, and just go and sort it out. And they just looked for me blankly. I was like, you know, I was like, it's very sad that that's how many modern companies run the point is just make a million dollars on uh wasted consultancy fees as well.

Speaker: 25:10

So well, is that moral?

Chris Norton: 25:12

Yeah, the point you just made there though, um, is that is the point of having a conversation. Like pe people now hide behind email, they hide behind um sending emails. Oh, I've send that email, that's off my list, it's on your list. The the illness is now on you, you have to do that. And often I'll see people having you know, there might be a situation where we've got a client and we're doing a campaign for them and something maybe something's got to be sorted out. And I'll see somebody replying on email, and I'll be like, just pick up the phone and have a chat with the client because it you know when you've got emails coming back and forth, back and forth, that is no way to manage a client relationship. I often say the best way to manage it, you can't manage a relationship on email. Imagine trying to manage your marriage on email, it doesn't work. It this is my side, and this is your side. Sure, some people do.

Will Ockenden: 26:00

Well, yeah, true. Some stat about um Gen Z answering the phone, and the voice call is a thing of the past, isn't it? Something that 80% of Gen Z will refuse the voice call and put the default to a message.

Faris Aranki: 26:12

Yeah, yeah. Well, there's a there's a couple of things here, right? That I'm gonna pick up. One is a loop back to the nemesis thing. That's why I use the nemesis thing. I say, look, someone out there who is smarter, quicker, is just gonna go over and have that conversation because they know it's better, right?

Chris Norton: 26:26

Yeah.

Faris Aranki: 26:26

The second thing is, is as you touched upon, Chris, is we too many people focus on the broadcast, as in I got my message out. Yeah. But I'd say to them, if you're actually a high EQ person, you care more about the receive. Right. It doesn't matter what you said, go over to the other person and say, sorry, what did you understand from what I just said? And unless you do that, you're you're not a great leader. Because the same eight people in a room could completely uh understand your message in a different way. And I do a lot of I show a lot of simple examples to teams of that. Where I'll read out one sentence and I get them all to write down what they think I said, and they'll all hold it up at the same time, and it's all completely different. That's interesting. Isn't that bonkers? Because as the leader, I assumed you all got my message nice and clearly. That's funny because I sometimes um people will get an email from a from a journalist or a client or someone, and they'll read it out, and they'll be like, Oh my god, I can't believe they sent me this. And I'll read it out in a really angry voice. And I I read it and I go, That's a nice email. You're just seeing it through a lens. Um let's talk about focus. So that's the kind of the final point of it. And obviously, you know, business leaders at any time in history are incredibly busy with 101 different competing priorities. Yeah, the digital world also means that people's attention span and opportunities to be distracted are bigger than ever before. So, how how can we get that focus from um you know from senior leadership in the context of strategy, but I suppose in broader context as well? Yeah. So it's it's really interesting. When I talk about focus, I actually mean predominantly prioritization. Okay. But when I talk to people, they essentially go tell me, oh yeah, I can't, you know, I always check my mobile phone. I'm like, okay, well, that's that's that that's also we need to address that. But sitting way above that is prioritization. You know, I say to leaders, if you do not know what your top priorities are, then no wonder you're not gonna achieve on any of them. All right. So literally write them down, prioritize them. You've got to make hard choices. And invariably, by doing that, you're probably gonna have to let go of stuff. Right? One of my go-to techniques with a company is to get them to audit how many strategy projects they're doing. Often they don't know. You know, on day one, I'll say, How many strategy projects are they? Oh, we think it's this. I'm like, no, no, go and count them and they'll come back. And there'll always be a number around 200. 300. I'm like, that is bonkers. Would you try and do 200 new things in your life at the same time? And they'll go, no, but we're a company of 10. I say it doesn't matter. Right? It's the same principle. And they or they'll say to me, Yeah, we know it's too many, we should rationalize it. So it's not for a lack of them not understanding they should, it's the emotional side of letting go of some of those projects. And so often a technique I'll do with the same senior people, I'll say, Don't worry, leave it to me. And overnight, I'll take away their 200 projects and I'll turn them into Pokemon cards. All right. Have you ever played Pokemon with your kids? Or you ever played them? You've got to catch them all. You've got to catch them all, Chris.

Will Ockenden: 29:26

I'm familiar.

Faris Aranki: 29:27

You're familiar. They're the old school top trumps, right? Will's a Pikachu fan. He had the look of a Pikachu fan. Um, but the reason I do this is I turn them into cards with statistics, their own statistics, and then I get them to play in the boardroom. And invariably what happens is whoever's got the weaker cards, the crap projects, ends up losing, gets frustrated. I'll say for them, there's a simple fix, get rid of those cards so your deck is better. Right? And so it is a way to legitimately allow them to get rid of things without it being a sort of a business decision, so to speak. And invariably, we play this game, and the 200 cards will get down to about 30, 40, or 50. And we'll have a pile of ones where they go, Well, those are crap cards in comparison to these cards. Right? And I say, Yes. Right? Can we now get rid of those cards? And so it begins a process of formally closing down those projects.

Will Ockenden: 30:24

So we're not saying love that example.

Chris Norton: 30:27

Does that mean that you've you've got rid of faulty strategies that you could have worked on and build them for that? Hey, you know, um, you know, they'll come back if they're if they're important, don't worry.

Will Ockenden: 30:40

Yeah, I love the story though, I love the analogy because yeah, I mean I can't imagine the emotional load of having 200 plus um strategies is is is completely overwhelming, isn't it? Whereas consolidating them you know mentally, it becomes uh much more manageable as well.

Chris Norton: 30:58

I can't even imagine having 30. Like we we've we've probably got seven.

Faris Aranki: 31:01

I mean 30 is too much, but but yeah, it's a better better place to be than 200, let's put it that way.

Chris Norton: 31:08

If so, this show is all about mistakes. Yeah, what mistakes have you made then, Faris? You must have made a few in over the last 20 years in in strategy development. What have you properly screwed up? That'd be interesting to hear.

Faris Aranki: 31:21

Oh, loads of things, loads of things, Chris. Uh and I still screw up uh regularly. Um, you know, a lot of them come from that in the early days of the EQ pillar, you know. So um I remember um early on in my career where I wasn't great at reading a room. Um and it I remember it was the first time I was uh given the sort of um responsibility to present to the senior client. You know, I was quite junior, and I my boss said, Okay, well, you've done all the hard work, you get up there, you present it. And my natural style back then was very jokey, very over-familiar. And I stood up in front of the C-suite room and started to tell, you know, play that style. And the CEO looked up, and the first thing he said was, Who is this guy? He's not my friend. I didn't pay him to be my friend. And my boss hooked me at that point. And I was gutted and I was like, I've spent, you know, I rehearsed this, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, in the afterwards, he pulled me aside and he said, You did not have the emotional maturity to realize that you had just lost the crowd with your first opening statement. And and I just thought it was going to get worse for us. I know you were trying to be friendly, but this is not the audience to be friendly with. Right? So um, it was a really important lesson about how you know you assume your style will work everywhere. Who who wouldn't like a friendly approach? Well, it turns out people who've paid a lot who are very direct and to the point do not want that in the room.

Will Ockenden: 32:56

Did your boss salvage the um the presentation?

Faris Aranki: 33:00

He did salvage the presentation, and the knock-on for me is I had to play a sort of more sort of backroom role uh for the for the you know, kind of as a penance because the the CEO did not like me at that point.

Will Ockenden: 33:14

Is that the idea of um you you talked in the in the kind of pre-show briefing about the importance of not pissing off powerful people?

Faris Aranki: 33:20

Is that an example of that's an example, but when I wrote that one, it was actually um do you know uh you know when people say, Hey, please give me any feedback, my door is always open. I made the naive mistake um a few years back where um I said to the the owner of the company that I worked at, the big big boss, he said, I just want some honest feedback about this this thing. And we were sat in a in a group atmosphere and everyone had gone around kissing his ass. And so I said, Hey, do you want honest feedback or do you want me to just be like these other people? Right, and say what you want to do. Already, I was like, and he said, honest feedback. So I then gave him honest feedback about this thing. And I was very happy with myself. I was like, Look at me, I'm the only one who did the honest feedback. Um, it turned out he didn't want honest feedback. Uh the next day, my boss came and said to me, Were you pissed? Let's call him Steve. Uh, you pissed Steve off. He's now um thinks you're not a team player. And I didn't realize at the point, but for the rest of my time in that company, that guy never spoke to me. Ever again. Um, and so I tell people, particularly who have to come from different cultures and aren't aware of the British culture, I'll say, Don't trust somebody when they say, you know, hey, my door is always open, uh, unless you have a level of trust. Or they say, of course I want feedback, or they say, Yeah, sure, we'll go for a coffee. I like these are phrases that people use that they don't genuinely necessarily mean. You have to, it's that point about going back and double checking before you step into that.

Chris Norton: 34:56

That'd be quite a good game to play. Um phrases that people use in business that they don't actually mean. Because there's that one where is the this this uh there's the bingo, isn't there? What's that buzzword bingo where it's like let's touch base? Yeah, yeah.

Faris Aranki: 35:10

Let's touch base, yeah.

Will Ockenden: 35:12

Yeah, we'll we'll go for lunch.

Faris Aranki: 35:13

That's we'll go for lunch. Oh, that's interesting. Interesting at all.

Chris Norton: 35:19

I hope this email finds you well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is how that email finds me.

Faris Aranki: 35:23

Ah it's I I find this are particularly certain cultures very British in many ways. So, you know, I'm um I'm Arabic, um, and a lot of my Arab friends who haven't spent time in Britain find it very confusing. Uh and and not just not just the Arabs, but many other uh things. So you know, particularly if you come from a very direct nation.

Will Ockenden: 35:46

It's so it's so subtle though, isn't it? You know, that level of um that level of nuance is is so subtle. And can I just check? Did you deliver the honest feedback in front of the entire team as well?

Chris Norton: 35:56

I did, yeah. Oh that's the that's that's there's the there's the problem, Faris. Isn't it they say praise to a team, praise to a group, criticize to an individual.

Faris Aranki: 36:07

Yeah, that's that's a key. They did, they do. And and they the the also hand in hand that I've learned subsequently is if you have uh negative feedback, deliver it in uh uh verbally in person. Yeah. If you have positive feedback, even if you deliver it in person, follow it up in writing. Because human beings like to show off positive things to their friends and family. Right? Yeah, whereas negative if you write a negative things, A, they don't want to show it, but also can be lost to that interpretation of you know what voice they read it.

Chris Norton: 36:35

If everyone listening to this podcast now could just pull out their phone and write a positive review of how amazing this guest and we are, that would be great. If you don't, if you don't like it, sorry. Don't don't write if you don't like it, ring us, don't write a review.

Will Ockenden: 36:47

Ring we'll publish his number in the show notes. Um I'm I'm intrigued, Faris. Um who is the more terrifying audience? Um a kind of a blue chip C-suite board facing you, not happy with what you've done, or uh a classroom of school children.

Faris Aranki: 37:06

Oh, the the school kids any day, right? Um the thing about the difference uh why I love the kids, but why they were difficult is they were just honest, usually, right? I effing hate this, uh they wouldn't say sir. They'd just be like, uh you know, I taught in some pretty shoddy schools, right? I'm gonna stab you later, sir. I actually believe you. I actually believe you. Um and the thing about as you become an adult, you hide, it's those nuances, you use those language, you learn these techniques to say things that you don't really mean. So you've got to uh you've got to pay more attention to what is their body language saying, what are so it takes more, but deep down, both sets are very similar. I still use so many of the games I used to use with the kids in the boardroom. Yeah, you come to one of my boardroom sessions, it doesn't matter if it's a big blue chip like Amazon or and I'm facilitating, I might have them standing up, sitting there, and running to the board, playing bingo to reinforce what we're talking about and and that point of getting them to own it rather than just sit passively and listen to it. Um and and for that I am grateful for those tough kids who who really, you know, uh there were some tough years trying to get them on board.

Will Ockenden: 38:13

Baptism of fire. And um a bit of a follow-up question to that. Um, this is a stat you always see kind of banded around, and I'm always fascinated to know if it's true. Um, they say the average chief exec has you know that it has many personality traits um in life, similar with a psychopath, you know, and there's there's there's some sort of um synergies.

Chris Norton: 38:33

Sociopaths, I'd say, but is there truth in that?

Will Ockenden: 38:37

Psychopath or sociopath?

Faris Aranki: 38:39

Yes, yeah, and a lot of highly successful business people are socio borderline sociopaths. Um, the ability to park their emotions, the ability to um sort of work a room um and manipulate, um, you know, and often uh it is what it is, right? I don't know if it's good or bad, but often a lot of the stuff I teach in the EQ arena, if manipulated the wrong side, could be sociopathic tendencies. All right. I probably the number one training course I've run for the last 20 years is influencing skills. And um invariably people will come on this course, and invariably in any cohort of about 20 people, someone will come and talk to me during one of the coffee breaks, says, Could I use this in my relationship uh, you know, with my husband, wife? And in my head, I'm like, oh my god, if you have to use these techniques on your husband and wife, that's not a great uh thing. But I said, Yes, you could. Yeah, you know, there's no reason. Um, but there's always someone in the room who's you can see the how their brain is working. They're like, hmm, can I get this to say somebody who I to do something that they don't really want to do?

Will Ockenden: 39:46

Have have you got any um ethical, of course, but have you got any dirty tricks and influence that people have to of course I do, of course I do. And do I use them on my friends? Obviously, ethicalants be used in the right way.

Faris Aranki: 39:59

These are not the droids you're looking for. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. These are not the droids. You know, go and read any, and you know, it's not just Smithy, go and read Roberto Chialdini, Chris Foss's How to Split the Difference. There are all these little nuances of little words you can use that borderline dark arts, you know, um turning things into questions, using you, you know, um using the power of their name. Um, these are all great for building trust, but if used just in the wrong places, they they're a little bit too much the dark arts. Um I'll tell you offline and we can record a both.

Speaker: 40:34

We'll have a chat afterwards. Yeah.

Faris Aranki: 40:35

People always want to know, and people always come and present me a unique situation and go, what should I say to this person to get them around? I'm like, uh okay.

Chris Norton: 40:42

Uh marketers are obsessed with the next big thing. So we often like abandon a working strategy, which is what you're talking about, to chase like the next trend, um, which can lead to like wasted budgets. We see this a lot. Um, and so with your focus quotient, uh yeah, how can you tell the difference between a good pivot to it or just being bloody distracted?

Faris Aranki: 41:06

You know what I mean? Yeah, so pivots are fine, right? That's what business is about, is about pivoting, but control pivots, right? It as part of the IQ part of any strategy project, strategy is easy, right? Is you tell me what you want to achieve, we'll then generate a hundred ways to get there. And it's important to generate a hundred because most people only generate one or two, and then they try those one or two, they fail, and they go, well, our strategy is rubbish. I'm like, no, the fact you didn't generate a hundred and pick the best, because the reason you want a hundred is you pick the best ten options. And when I say about experimentation and pivot, all the strategy is is we're gonna try these ten in a controlled manner. We don't know if they're gonna work. We're gonna try them, we're gonna measure them. If they work, we're gonna keep doing them. If not, we're gonna close it down and then pick something else from our 100 list. Right? Which is different to just being distracted by a new trend. It's I've already pre-thought this out. I prioritized and ranked and said, I think this one's gonna be my best bet. I'm still not sure it's gonna work. It's a hypothesis, not a guarantee. But I've articulated to everyone in my business these are the 10 hypotheses we're gonna focus on. So they're clear, this is the ones we're gonna work on, not get distracted by other things. But we also allow ourselves the space to say, if it didn't work, it didn't work. Close it down, move on to the next one. That's all the strategy is. But most people don't take the time to unpack that process, right? If you actually draw it, it looks like a tree. Right? I've got so many of these strategy trees uh that I've written for companies, and I come back and I go, Did you keep stick to the tree? No, we didn't, we got distracted. I said, let's go back to the tree. Your success is there because your smart minds came up with it. It wasn't me, it was you. I drew this out of you, the hundred ideas.

Will Ockenden: 42:50

And that's actually the idea that it's okay to fail. You know, it's it's okay to try things. Um if they don't work, it it it you know, the the the important the important thing is knowing when to quit and then trying something else, isn't it?

Chris Norton: 43:03

There's also there's also the thing in Marketing, like so talking about like moving from one thing to the other, and like so every marketer comes into a job, they look at it and they go, need to change the logo or want to change the style. Let's change the campaign. And I've heard so much about what people fail to do is come is think about compound interest of an idea. So you let's say, for instance, uh, a good example is the holidays are coming, the Coca-Cola advert that comes on at Christmas, right? When that first came out, it did well. Obviously, Coca-Cola, and and I don't I don't know if I can make this claim, but Coca-Cola created Christmas. There's a great video on TikTok all about how Coca-Cola made Christmas into the big thing that it is with Santa and the red and everything. It's all it's all from a lot of it is from Coca-Cola. Obviously, religion has a small part to play in Christmas as well. But the the the point is the adverts go right back to the holidays are coming, and now they've been building on that. And actually, you have to compound. They could have changed it every year to a different advert, but they don't really. They keep the same gist and even the same advert. More recently, it's been the AI one, hasn't it? Um, and it's the compound, it does better and better because you you recognize it, and it's like that feeling of like when you you know, like a Christmas record, actually, is a good example as well. When you first hear a Christmas record, you think, oh, it's not as good as the old stuff that. And then the next year you think, oh, it's a little bit better. And then by the by five the year five, a Christmas record that you thought was bang average is actually pretty good. And then it's part of the it's like the compound, and but in marketing, we just switch, sometimes we switch to a new new set of quick, get the latest click. Uh I don't know, I don't know what the question is, but I just think there's a there's a lot in um there's a lot in compound interest.

Faris Aranki: 44:43

There's a lot in compound, yeah. And what you're talking about is the magpie syndrome or boredom bias, as they call it. It's amazing how many we you know we self-destruct by getting bored. You know, we've got something successful in front of us, and we're like, oh, oh yeah, I want a new challenge. We do that personally, but I also sit in companies, right? Where everything is ticking on, and I can see the board, the senior team getting itchy. And often I've had to reel them back in. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what the hell are you doing? Well, we just thought we'd launch this new product. Why? You're gonna disrupt the work, distract the work first. You've got everything running, you know. Um, so you just have to check it's for the right reasons and not just their board or there's something shiny over there.

Will Ockenden: 45:23

This is fascinating.

Chris Norton: 45:24

I've I'm I'm finding your philosophy fascinating. And what book would you because I like I've not really um we've done EQ and stuff, but what book would you recommend if you if you're there are the people listening to this and they think, oh, I'd love to get into this. What book is like a salient, you know, the number one book that would be good to get your head around this?

Faris Aranki: 45:45

Well, I you know, um this is where I should plug my own book. I don't I haven't written a book, but I that there's one are coming, I'm sure. But um look, I I sort of geek out on sort of behavioral economics, how people make decisions, uh, because that's for me is what's fascinating. So the books of like Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, Richard Thaler, you know, Nudge, um, Daniel Pink, you know, all about how human beings, what they're really influenced by. Um, because it's fascinating. You can have the stupidest things will, you know, like the iPad, will get somebody to buy into an idea that they before they walked past the store had no idea they were going to walk out with an iPad.

Will Ockenden: 46:27

So you've um you've been on the show. Hopefully you've enjoyed it and you understand the format. Um who would you recommend um within your network or anybody you've come across that we we could interview next on the pod?

Faris Aranki: 46:40

Oh uh just to put you on the spot. Yeah, this is I don't I don't want to put someone on the spot who like no, I don't want to do your show. Um hey, look, you know, there's loads of fascinating people. Um there's obviously the big guns who go on every podcast. There's kind of Rory Sutherland's and uh he's on the list, I'm sure they are. But do you know what? You know, it's going back to that tactile versus in a digital world. Swim left when everyone else is swimming right, right? Go and get the um top school teacher of the year in the UK, right? And go and interview them. How do they market tough lessons? How do they market tough things to kids? You will learn so much, right? I don't know who that person is, right? But just go and get any top-tier teacher, headmaster, headmistress.

Will Ockenden: 47:33

Oh, love it.

Faris Aranki: 47:33

It needs to be them because like I said, this is the toughest audience.

Chris Norton: 47:37

I'm gonna have to steal that and Google it. I'll have to get a production team onto it, our production team of us. Uh Google it.

Will Ockenden: 47:46

Sorry, Chris.

Chris Norton: 47:47

Yeah. We'll ask Chat GPT, it'll tell us.

Will Ockenden: 47:50

Yeah.

Chris Norton: 47:51

Uh yeah, great. If people want to get a hold of you, Faris, how can they find you and um, you know, book your services?

Faris Aranki: 47:58

Yeah, so two ways. Come and visit the company website, Shiageto.com. So shear ghetto is the Japanese for sharpening stone, because we sharpen humans. Um, it's a nice little metaphor. Uh so Shiageto.com, and you can read more about us, and there's a contact form. Or the other way, fuck quicker, is come find me personally on LinkedIn, Farisaranki. I spend a disproportionate amount night uh disproportionate amount of my life there, but I do respond to every message I get. Uh, I post daily nuggets on the sorts of IQ, EQ, FQ stuff you can do in your life. Um, and just love meeting new people.

Will Ockenden: 48:32

Fantastic. Well, thank you for appearing on the show, Faris.

Chris Norton: 48:35

Yeah, thanks for coming on the show, mate. I really appreciate that. It was great.