The Experimenter Series: Leadership with Brett Skinner
The Experimenter Series is a collection of six interviews with people pioneering scientific experiments in large organisations. We continue with Brett Skinner, Senior Consultant in Leadership at Nationwide Building Society.
Today, I speak to Brett Skinner, a Nationwide legend who recently co-ran a scientific experiment on leadership development with MoreThanNow. I’m still Gus Lindemann and I’ve just joined the company as a behavioural researcher. In this series, I’m exploring how behavioural science is applied in the real world while celebrating some of MoreThanNow’s partners. My interview with Brett follows on from conversations with Rosario Saud at Ericsson, Chris Rider at Novartis, and Professor Maria Guadalupe at INSEAD.
“Experiments are a non-judgemental process. You are not trying to prove yourself, but prove your impact.”
— Brett Skinner
G: Hi Brett, so lovely to meet you. Nationwide gets a lot of good press at MoreThanNow, so I'm excited to have this conversation! To start off, can you tell us a little about yourself?
B: Sure, my role at Nationwide is as a senior consultant in the leadership space. We have a practice that is set up like a consultancy. Our purpose is to bring new thinking to how we do things in the Society and develop leaders in the organisation.
G: That sounds very cool, and experiments are all about new thinking. How did you get into the approach?
B: My experience with experiments is still limited, but I first heard about MoreThanNow in 2019. As someone looking in, the work seemed to be centred around nudge theory, getting people to do things differently and design their own personal experiments. But going behind the scenes and conducting a scientific experiment with The Reset was a real eye-opener (The Reset is our most recent experiment on leadership and hybrid work at Nationwide, of which Brett was a core member of the team). It revealed to me how important it is to have data-based insights and the ability to robustly test things for effectiveness. We ran the experiment during Covid, and it was in response to some of the things we thought we were seeing inside and outside the organisation even before the pandemic. It centred around how we can get people to work with greater accountability and freedom, which helps create a psychologically safe environment for them to go out and deliver.
G: What do you see as the value of scientific experiments, following that experience?
B: It forces you to take a step back rather than immediately approaching a challenge from a certain angle. The hypothesis part of the process is exceedingly valuable, as it’s not about immediately deciding what the solution is, but truly exploring the issue. I guess in any kind of experiment you probably have an idea of what you think the outcome will be. But the particular benefit of working with MoreThanNow is that you are agnostic about results, it shifts the focus onto what is actually happening in a workplace. It creates a certain form of neutrality; the focus is on where the results lead you rather than just going in one direction and hoping for the best. In this way, experiments are a non-judgmental process. You are not trying to prove yourself, but prove your impact.
G: That’s so great. I think it’s brave of organisations to do research in this manner, because you are seeing the truth of your work. When I have conducted research myself, I am always surprised by the findings. Have you found this as well?
B: For sure! Organisations are always looking for the catalysts of change, and I think experimental research is key to this. There is a lot of commitment and investment to create big changes, which comes with its own risks. Experiments stand out for their flexibility, but also for the fact that you know the change you are implementing works.
G: Do you think it is difficult for companies to conduct experimental research?
B: There is so much emphasis on the pace of projects and deadlines, that having to deliver things quickly might be an obstacle. With experimentation, you need to create a little bit more space for quality of thought, precise questions, and the opportunity to test and learn. However, from a leadership perspective, behavioural science is interesting as it feels like a more human approach to creating change and understanding what is beneficial for people. Nationwide strives to be an inclusive organisation that values well-being and this is an approach that helps to facilitate that. In my opinion, it is quite brave for organisations to come forward and admit; we do not know all the answers, as you do with experimental research. To be like, we are going to collaborate with our people to explore this together. And that’s very different from what people expect, right? Normally, it’s just you deliver, and move on to the next project, without ever fully comprehending the impact you’ve made.
G: Interesting! How do you feel your area of expertise interacts with experimental research? Do they go hand in hand or was it a bit of a clash?
B: The leadership space can be quite theoretical, while experiments evaluate their impact before anything is implemented. It’s not just deciding that I've read this book, or there have been some articles recently, and I think we should roll out an initiative on that basis.
“What the experimental approach does is it allow you to robustly challenge those preconceptions. To say we’re focused on a more robust form of evidence we using to make these decisions. ”
We are excited to explore how this way of experimental thinking can shape the way our teams and customer offerings work. It plays nicely into putting the experience of people, whether customer or colleague, at the centre of our decisions. Instead of just thinking about a product and enforcing a change on others. So, it has really changed the way I think as well as allowing me to come to more robust decisions around some of the stuff we do. For example, with leadership people might just have different philosophies, beliefs, mindsets, and hold them to be factual. An experimental approach allows you to robustly challenge those preconceptions. To say we’re focused on a more robust form of evidence to make these decisions.
G: That is a good point, it is hard to argue with science! In regards to this, what see as the future of experimental research in organisations?
B: Throughout this whole process what truly resonated with me was to focus on the smaller changes. The conventional way of conducting business is to first look at the big questions and challenges. With experiments, however, you look at smaller interventions to truly make impactful changes. For me, one of the great things about working with MoreThanNow has been the realisation that we often try and fix too much all at once. Allowing me to realise that it can be key to shift one thing and learn from that. From my perspective, it feels like experiments will become a natural way of processing in organisations. To truly get more people to understand the purpose and intention behind it will take some time, I think, but it is important to be very transparent and educational about why we're taking this new approach.
G: That’s great. This transparency I can understand might be difficult as there is quite a lot of jargon in experimental research. How did you experience this kind of translation of behavioural science into the corporate world?
B: Again, it might be the behavioural scientists I've worked with, but to me, it felt like an entirely natural process. There was understandably some jargon, as it is integral to the research process, but it did not impact the collaboration. We just need to think about how we make this understandable for everyone in the organisation, through the language of a layperson. I didn't find it a massive shift of voice, to be honest, although we were clearly doing things very differently than before. I think that's probably the quality of support we got from the MoreThanNow team.
G: That’s great to hear. Do you have any final reflections or things I have forgotten to ask about?
B: Just that from my perspective, I loved the transparent and collaborative process from your team throughout our project. We were very clear on what we wanted to explore and what we thought was happening, and MoreThanNow were able to challenge us while working within constraints. The other reflection is that everyone that I've talked to across the business who haven’t been directly involved with the experiment, are very curious about it. It’s been a project that people have found very exciting, because it’s new and it pushes boundaries. From this feedback, I think there's also an appetite to adopt it more broadly. People are wondering how they can start to do this work with their team! And isn’t that the best compliment?
G: Wow, it sounds like the relationship with Nationwide will keep growing! I’m excited to get involved in our next experiment. Thanks so much for speaking with me.
“One benefit of working with MoreThanNow is that you are agnostic about results. It shifts the focus onto what is actually happening in a workplace and creates a form of neutrality. The focus is on where the results lead rather than just going in a certain direction and hoping for the best.”
A massive thank you to Brett Skinner for the great conversation and for offering his take on experiments in the workplace. It was very enlightening to hear that experiments helped create a positive impact at Nationwide and have provided a new mindset for leadership development.