#508 Breaking the Expert Trap: Alistair Gordon on Elevating Technical Skills into Enterprise Impact

Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to an episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet today. I'm very pleased joining me from Australia, Alistair Gordon. Alistair, thank you very much for being with me here today on the show. I really appreciate the time. Um, what I like to do, Julia, I [00:01:00] keep it to my guests to introduce themselves.

Tell us a little bit more about you, your journey, you know, your background, what you're currently up to, just as a teaser for the audience. We're gonna talk about leadership a lot. Today. And, uh, Alistair can share a lot and a lot about this, especially for people in tech. Um, so without further ado, Alistair, just the floor is yours.

Alistair: Well, thank you very much. So I, I started off life as a, um, publisher working in, uh, publishing and, um, both in, uh, Europe and in here, down here in Australia. And, um, you know, built and sold a couple of businesses of my own. So I have pretty entrepreneurial background. I've also built a couple of businesses that didn't work.

Um, it's always useful to do that after you've built the business that did work. I find that's the right order to do it in. Um, and then I've got into. Investing in some businesses. And we invested in a leadership development business member a, a few years ago and, um, started working in this business and eventually bought out the owner.

And, and, [00:02:00] but, but about eight or nine years ago, we started pivoting towards working with technology teams and in particular the deeply knowledgeable technical experts, um, who, you know, have got, you know, sort of 10 to 15 years deep. Technical experience, and we found working with their leaders, the CIOs or the CTOs, um, that, you know, a lot of those people were a bit stuck in their technical bubble and the CEOs and CTOs wanted to really leverage their capability.

So we've been working on programs we call these programs expert ship, and, and that's what I've been doing around the world for the last sort of seven or eight years. And I have to say, it's, it's been incredibly fulfilling to really help technical experts sort of get outta their own way a little and, and really have all the impact and influence that, um, you know, they know they can have and that their, their sponsoring leaders know, you know, there's so much more that they could contribute.

And, and so we, we, we work with those teams [00:03:00] to help them do that. 

Mehmet: Great. I like the name opportunity, which is like expert and opportunity. Correct. Well done, 

Alistair: well spotted. 

Mehmet: I, I, I love the name. And to your point, I, I was one of the people who thought early in my life, of course, like if you go to a technical career like leadership and learning about, not necessarily to become a leader, but.

You know, I thought like, this is not interesting. Right? And I thought it's not important. And the more I started to, you know, grow in, in my career path, I discovered like even if someone doesn't want, because I can understand, some people tell you. Hey, I'm not a leader. I like to be a, an individual contributor.

I can understand, but I started to, to feel that we need to learn about leadership, especially when we come from technical background like myself. So it's very important topic and, and you know, again, thank you, uh, for being here with me today. [00:04:00] Now the first thing, because you've been doing this for a long time, like over two decades, right?

Yes. Um. How have you seen the concept of leadership actually evolving? Um, you mentioned about, you know, disruption in tech and, and all this stuff, but how the role of a leader changed, let's say, in the early 2000 compared to now in 2025? 

Alistair: Well, yes, great question and, and significantly so. And. And if I can just, you know, sort of slightly confuse matters, you know, I think there are several types of leadership, so mm-hmm.

There's the leadership that probably all of us are thinking about when we're thinking about this. Where we, we are running a team of people. We're effectively a people leader. It might be a technology team, might be a team of generalists, so that that sort of leadership development pathway and the programs and the.

Coaching and so on and so forth. Pretty well established then is what I would call small L leadership. [00:05:00] So that's where we are not formally leaders, but we're asked to play a leadership role, whether it's in a project team or whether it's running a piece of knowledge or a knowledge practice or, um, you know, those sorts of things.

And then, and then increasingly what we've been working on is expert ship, which is. Um, where you're, you're a knowledge leader and you are running a, uh, a technical practice of some description. You know, you might be a hydrologist, you might be a technologist. There's a whole range of things. We have about 600 different types of experts that we've worked with over the last 10 years, and, and each of those three, if you like, leadership paths, you know, being a.

Being an expert guru is one, being a sort of informal leader in the projects that you're working with or being a formal people leader. Each of those paths, I think, should be open to everybody. And, uh, they should also have a little bit of equal billing. Um, you know, the technical expert tends to, to actually quite a lot of leadership, but is because they're not seen as [00:06:00] a people leader.

You know, they're, they're probably not invested in as much as they should be, and they're certainly, their contribution is as, isn't as valued as they should be. So we've been working on trying to make sure that people have those three pathways. And in terms of the change that I've seen in, you know, across all three of those pathways is, is really the.

The difference now in terms of the way you need to lead teams. 20 years ago, probably most of us could have got away with being a people leader and simply telling people what to do and, and telling 'em to get on with it, and that's it. And people were sufficiently. Worried about their, their own jobs or, um, you know, wanting a security of, of employment or what have you.

And indeed probably grown up, um, you know, believing that they need to do what their leader has told them. But of course, you know, the, the market now with. You know, people who are highly mobile, um, can work from home, um, [00:07:00] can switch jobs really quickly, um, tend to tend to switch jobs when they stop learning in the job that they're at, they're in.

I think it's a much more equal relationship now between the employees and the people leaders and really the people leaders increasingly need to leave. You know, you know, lead collaboratively. Um, and collectively they need to really listen to their employees a lot more than they they used to. Um, and they need to work hard to hang onto them because the very best people can move job at a drop of a hat.

So, so I, I've seen a lot more democratization, if you like, and, and this whole concept of leader as coach. Rather than leader as authoritarianism, I think is, has really got traction around the world now. Not everywhere, not in every, in every, um, uh, country or in every culture, but certainly in the global businesses that we work in, typically.

Um, you know, you have to work very hard to make sure you are worth working for if you're a people leader. [00:08:00] 

Mehmet: Absolutely. Uh, uh. And I have a theory that with all the changes that are happening now, this is, uh, something which we can't stop. Um, uh, because teams, you know, I'm sure you follow the technology trends also Alistair, and, you know, everyone is talking about smaller teams, which will be like more capable of achieving better results.

So that means we will have like less people in a team and probably one who will be like acting as. Team leader more than just as a manager or director in the sense of giving orders. So he, he or she would be like leading the tribe, right? Uh, yes. To, to getting this. So this makes a lot of sense to me, but still there are like some of, some skills I would say, and some maybe I would call them blind spots, that these, let's call them coaches or let's call them team leaders, right?

Um. They, they might have like, you know, some blind spot that they [00:09:00] aren't able to see when they start. Usually. What are these blind spots are and how do you think they can overcome those? 

Alistair: Yeah, so great question. So I, I still. Um, work with lots and lots of leaders as well as these experts. And, and if I were to, um, answer your question quite directly, there's probably two or three things that most people, leaders think they're pretty good at.

And when you go and ask their, their team members, um, their team members will tell you something different. So, for example, a lot of. A lot of, um, leaders believe they're now quite good coaches. They, they've probably been on some sort of a coaching course that their organization has organized for them, and they believe that they are busy coaching their staff and their employees and their team members, but they're probably not, they're probably mentoring them, which is providing advice or, or they're actually being a bit more directive than they, they think they are.

So that would be one. The other key skill I think is that [00:10:00] because most. Teams that you're describing now, these smaller teams, they work as a really, you know, the best ones work as a very cohesive unit. Um, the, whoever the team leader is or the team coordinator is unlikely to be the person who knows exactly the right answer or what the exactly that team should do.

So it's a very collective. Um, experience these days. I think that the, the teams that really do well really listen to one another. And that's the other thing that I think, you know, a lot of people, leaders think they're very good at. They think they're very good at listening, but a lot of the time I find they actually hear what they want to hear and they're not really, really listening to exactly what their team leaders or their team members are saying.

So those would be two things. And then I think the third thing that is very important these days. In most organizations is that they, um, they, they would like to believe they're inspiring. Um, and a lot of the inspiration they do is around hitting targets and hitting [00:11:00] KPIs and, and you know, these sort of measures that.

You know, randomly really put on, on teams from a performance point of view. Whereas the real inspiration these days that everyone's looking for, most people now want to work in areas where the, their work makes a difference. They can see they're making a difference to the world. So, um, you know, I think leaders have to get a lot better at can making.

Work meaningful, connecting the work that people are doing, how, however far away from the customer that might be, and a lot of technical people are a long way away from the direct customers. Leaders have to be really good at connecting the work that's being done and the quality and speed of the work that's being done to, you know, make sure that, that, um, people are inspired and they see the meaning of the work and it's gonna make a difference for them.

Mehmet: So how exactly we measure this Aand? I understand, you know, but. Uh, organizations and even like, I know, like even individuals, you know, they measure [00:12:00] themselves based on these KPIs and they have done this for a year. Um, I have my own theory on this, like. Similar to how we say, like you can judge someone by, let's say, uh, one exam in, in, in, in college.

Maybe they are very good, but you know, they do one, one exam and they fail. So the same thing applies in the job. Right? So maybe they are doing well how fair these KPIs now? Yeah, the shift is happening towards like something more. I would say, uh, meaningful or whatever, or like how, how much they have impact, but how do we measure this impact, uh, in the organization?

Alistair: Yeah. So look, I I think you're, you're talking about something that's really fundamental and you see the organizations that are doing brilliantly, um, and are, are ones where. You know, the goals and what have you are really outcome based rather than activity based. You know, so if we, if we take sort of your audience as, as an [00:13:00] example, who are, you know, very technology savvy, then.

You know, you can either talk about this project being, being finished as far as, let's say the software development team is concerned, or, or, you know, the production team, the, the, the thing that they've built. Whatever it is, the piece of software or the application, um, is finished and it's live on time and on budget.

Those are typical. Um, sort of KPIs, which, you know, are, you would think fantastic, but of course that's not really what the KPI should be. Well, the KPI should be is about, well, who is the application built for? Are those users actually using it and, and is the organization or the customers and what have you getting the value that was imagined.

That they would get when, when the first design of that software was done. Um, so I, I think there's this strong shift now. There ought to be a strong shift to outcome-based KPIs rather than activity, [00:14:00] um, um, um, KPIs. And as soon as you move to outcomes, that also helps you connect to the meaning. So, you know, if this application is.

Built really well, and it's intuitive for the users to find it very easy to use, then they will get benefit X, Y, and Z. They'll save time or they'll sell money, or they'll make money or they'll have more information. So as long as everybody is really focused on the difference that that application's gonna make, it's quite inspiring.

People get behind it. But if it's just a deadline on budget, then um, I'm sorry, that's not gonna make me jump outta bed in the in, in the morning. 

Mehmet: Cool. Now I want to go back to what you're currently focusing on with opportunity, right? Which is transforming technical experts into master experts, as you, uh, mentioned, um, out of curiosity.

Now, sometimes I see people complaining that we have a lot of coaches and experts and, you know, they, they push back on this [00:15:00] and they say like. Enough is enough and we need, we need something else. Um, how do you overcome like these, um, objections? I would say aster because, you know, the reality is, the problem is, you know, I'm a big believer in coaching.

I'm big believer in mentorship. I'm big. The problem is we have a lot of people who like. Put that code written like on back, coach, mentor, whatever you want to call it. Yes. And then it, it, it gave this, I would not say negative, but kind of assumption from people. Yeah. I don't want yet another. Uh, coach or like expert or whatever it is, how we can justify, I mean, you know, get it back to the track.

Let's call it this way. 

Alistair: Yes. Well, look, I, look, I agree with you. I mean, you know, there are many qualifications now. So anybody can go off and do a coaching course as you know, and get a qualification through the ICF or whoever it might be. And, you know, those programs [00:16:00] are fantastic. And then they put out their shingle, don't they?

And say, right, I'm now an executive coach. And, and off we go. And I can, you know, whatever complicated thing that you are doing, I can help you do it and I can tell you how to do it properly and so on and so forth. So, um, I, I mean, I, I'm, you know, just like you remember, I'm, I'm kind of the other way so. One of the things we've, we learned very early on working with technical experts.

Well, actually two things. The first is they are intensely bright by and large, and the second thing is you can't teach them anything. They need to learn it for themselves. So if we're putting ourselves out there as saying, well, we are the font of all knowledge here. We know. I've never been a software developer.

You know, I just worked with some space engineers. I've never been a space engineer. I've just worked with some hydrologists I mentioned. You know, for a water company, I can never tell them precisely how to do their job. Um, but I can ask them a lot of questions about, [00:17:00] you know, what's getting in the way of them adding more value and, you know, what are the challenges in their role, um, and.

You know, how are they, how are they approaching those challenges? How are they attending to overcome them? Um, and, you know, what options are available to them. I, I can ask a lot of questions that a good coach will do and help them figure out what the right solution for, for them is. And, um, because they're intensely right?

And because most technical experts want to be the best expert they can be. I mean, they, they attack this with military precision. Um, it, I, you know, I've done a lot of work over, you know, sort of 20 years with people, leaders. Um, but I'm enjoying the work with subject matter experts, um, far more because, um, they actually do what they say they're gonna do.

You know, they say, right, I need to be better at doing this, and off they go. And they get really good at it because, you know, they're, they're very smart. They're very motivated. They want to be the best expert they can be. So, so we really just help them get outta their [00:18:00] own way and get them to think about maybe some things they haven't thought about before.

And, and, um, I, I, I think they see us as facilitators of their learning rather than a coach telling them what to do. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. Now, coming back to this, do you think that having this, um. Transition of technical experts into, uh, you know, master experts is something which is often overlooked in enterprise development programs.

And what do you think the cost of this neglect. 

Alistair: So, um, another great question. Thank you. So, um, yes, it's, it, it is enormously overlooked. I think, um, I think if you, you've got lots of listeners who are CTOs, obviously given the name of the podcast, and, and I, I suspect a lot of them will tell you, you know, she or he will tell you that, um, they, they [00:19:00] know that their.

Technical experts could add more value. And they've probably asked their talent teams and their organizational development teams and these large companies, you know, can you, can you help our experts grow? And a lot of those teams, at the end of the day, uh, you know, just suggest, well, you just send 'em on more technical courses.

In other words, make them more technical. Um, all of the research that we've done over the last 10 years suggests that technical prowess. Gets you so far. But if you're going to become a, a, what we call a master expert, you're gonna have a lot of real influence and impact in your organization. Help drive change, help drive innovation, um, you know, really help, help the success of the organization.

You have to what we call these enterprise skills. Mo most, most technical experts would call them soft skills. No, but we, we call 'em enterprise skills 'cause there's nothing soft about them. They're hard to acquire. And, and they, they have really hard impact. They have a lot of really good impact. So we [00:20:00] call 'em enterprise skills and I can go into some more detail as than what they're in a moment, if you like.

But, but that's the, that's the area. And, and most, um, talent teams in most organizations don't provide those sorts of programs to the technical experts. And one of the reasons they don't is that. Their mandate is leadership. So, um, they perceive that, you know, they have this thing called the nine box grid, uh, moment, which your, your listeners would be able to look up on, um, on Google easily enough.

And the nine box grid is a way for talent teams to assess who they should invest in. 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Alistair: And these nine boxes up, up the left hand, um, access. There's performance, you know, low performance, medium performance, high performance, and, and across the, um, uh, the other axis is potential. And you can imagine there's nine boxes and, and, um, on the top right hand box.[00:21:00] 

Um, of this nine box grid, you have someone who's a high performer and has high potential. And in fact, the top three boxes on the right hand side are called the green pool. They're always colored in green. That's where this phrase, the green pool comes in. And if you're in the green pool, you get invested and you get sent on programs, you get executive coaching, you get to work with people like me and so on.

Um, there's only one problem with this whole system, and that is that their definition of potential is, um, all about people leadership. So has Meek got potential to lead more people in 12 months or 18 months? Yes, he has. In that case, we're gonna send him on a lot of programs. On the other hand is, has Alistair, the Unix engineer, who actually is a mission critical role in the organization, has he got the.

Potential to lead lots of people in the next 18 or two months. Does he even want to, does he even have that ambition? Well, he doesn't look like he has that potential. He doesn't [00:22:00] show any ambition to want to be a people leader. In fact, he wants to do the real work rather than sit in all those boring meetings.

So, as a consequence, you know, they just ignore, they put 'em in this box at the top. Left, which is technical experts, sometimes they to, to make us all feel a bit better. They call it the technical stars box, you know, to make us feel like we, you know, we and, and no money flows there whatsoever. So we are working with organizations to get them to change their definition of potential.

And so the definition of potential should be this person. Does this person have the ability, the potential to add more value to the organization over the next two years? And if you change that definition, an enormous number of fantastic technical experts immediately move into the green pool. And this is the seismic change in talent development.

We're trying to, um, you know, support across the planet. 

Mehmet: Fantastic. Now, quick follow up question on this. Now [00:23:00] let's, let's say we started the training, um, for one of the technical experts, right? How do we define, or like how do we know that we can say like, yeah, they are now master expert. Like, what's the measurement to see like whatever they have taken in that, uh, you know.

Development program. They absorb it the right way and they're ready to be. You know, put in the next seat. 

Alistair: Yeah. So, so there are, there are some concrete measures and there's some sort of signs and symbols, right? So I was talking to, excuse me, the, the CIO at a, a large university, um, the other day. And we're talking about him doing a program, uh, as it as it happens with us, but it could be programs with some of our partners and what have you.

Um, and he's already done one, one program, uh, a year ago and we're talking about now doing another one. And he said to me and [00:24:00] that, um, he remembered that the people came out the program different. And I said to him, well, how are they different? And he said. They're thinking differently. They're interacting with stakeholders differently.

They're thinking, they're asking me questions about customers and students and business outcomes and what have you that they never previously asked me. Um, they're, they're thinking about the impact of change on, on the, you know, the changes that they're driving on the, on the people that, um. You know, are affected by the changes that they're driving.

He, he said they, they absolutely came out different. Um, and the, the re and, and so it's quite, it is actually quite measurable. Like you can see the difference. Um, you can see the sorts of things they wanna be involved in. Uh, you can see them. Building a coalition of the willing quite often. So doing that sort of much more diplomatic, um, and, uh, you know, collaborative, um, team [00:25:00] building and, and, uh, goal building.

Um, and it's, and it's simply because they've, they've suddenly been exposed to, you know, some, some really simple tools and, and approaches that, that help them be much more effective. Um. Uh, partners and, and, uh, you know, collaborators with the rest of the business, whereas before they've just been overinvesting in their technical skills and, and, you know, they, they're the expert that people come and ask questions and they give the answer and, and that's it.

So, so the program really opens up, um, most technical experts mind as to how they can. How they can really make a difference. Um, and, um, it, it is very visible generally speaking to the, to the people that they work with and, and to their leaders and to them, you know, um, uh, and the typical question they ask is, why didn't somebody tell me about all this stuff 15 years ago?

Mehmet: Yeah, of course. Like, uh, so the [00:26:00] moment you start to discover, you know, what you're capable of. After, you know, taking, you know, someone opens your eye, right? Yeah. So, so it's literally, this is the way that happens. Now, from your experience, Aster, like how, how much you know, uh, this impacted the innovation within the organization?

Because when, when. You take that expertise to the next level, and I'm sure part of it is to have this holistic approach and to have this different perspective of looking into things instead of just focusing on one small part. So how that affect the innovation. I'm curious about that. 

Alistair: Well, I mean there's, there's a few examples, but the enormously, because one, one of the things when I'm working with very senior people, leaders in organizations, you know, I say to them, um, so, um, are you an in innovative company?

You know, innovative organization or innovative [00:27:00] government department? And they say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're pretty innovative. And I say, okay, where does it all happen? Um, oh, well we've got, you know, uh, head of strategy and head of innovation and what have you. Yeah. But actually who drives the innovation inside the organization and it takes them a little while, but they eventually realize it's.

It's the technical experts, whether it's, you know, whether it's lawyers or, uh, marketing people or product development or manufacturing, um, or obviously technology hugely involved now in, you know, reimagining customer value and, and so on all the time. It's actually the technical experts who drive innovation.

But there's a, there's an innovation deficit in most organizations because the technical experts themselves have brilliant ideas all the time, but they're not particularly good at articulating them to non-technical people. And, and very often when they're describing the things that they think they could, you know, build that will, will make the wheels go round faster, if you like.

Ma, the, [00:28:00] the, the problem is that they're looking at it from, as you say, very sort of technical, um. Sort of detailed, uh, you know, structured thing and, and, and you can see the CFO or the head of marketing or the CEO just, you know, their, their eyes glazing over because they, they, they haven't, you know, really, really articulated the business value, a really good business case.

They haven't gone and talked to other departments about how, you know, they can build this coalition of the willing that I'm talking about. So I think you see people. And organizations suddenly being able to hear clearly, um, some of the great ideas that technical teams have to innovate, whereas perhaps they haven't been clear before, and, and we can get rid of that deficit that, you know, there's so much potential.

I mean, I, I really feel like my job right now is to sort of help unleash the potential of most technical expenses. There's a latent. Potential there. And I think most CTOs and CIOs know there is, they just don't know how to [00:29:00] draw that out of those, those people. And, and obviously what we're now saying is, well, there is a way, um, the organization has to change.

Its thinking a little and it has to sort of pilot some of these activities. But once, once it does, you know, the vast majority of our clients, once they have piloted something. They, they wanna send lots of people on the program. Um, and there's lots of different ways they don't have to spend lots of money.

They can, there's lots of mm-hmm. Different ways they can start with this. As, you know, we've got publications and what have you, so they don't have to invest, you know, lots and lots of money. They can just get, start, get people started by thinking differently and, and, um, e encouraging experts to, to embrace that they're gonna be a guru if they've got this technical pros.

And these enterprise skills, those two things together and the world is their oyster. 

Mehmet: That's great. Now, how much can we apply this into a startup slash scale up where we would have. Technical [00:30:00] founders wearing multiple hats at the same time. So how we can apply and help them lead better. 

Alistair: It's, it's a super question.

And, um, I mean, we've, just for complete transparency, our, our, our focus have been working with really large organizations. Notwithstanding that my background has been with a lot of startups and, um. And I've worked with a couple of, um, uh, you know, incubating, um mm-hmm. Organizations where, um, they're helping startups.

Um, and exactly as you described, the, the, the technical guru who's come up with a brilliant innovation suddenly has to learn all these other things that they, they have to do when running a startup. You know, that terrible thing called Cashflow memo. I mean, who knew that that was gonna be important? Um, yeah, so I, I think.

There's, there's very broad application, uh, to it. The challenge is that. As you would, I'm sure you would know in startup, you've [00:31:00] just got too much to do and not enough time to do it. Right. And there's this real focus on, well, if we build it, they will come in a lot of startups and, um. You know, we, you, you've probably interviewed many, many entrepreneurs on your show where they've had to pivot halfway through or completely change direction or, or what have you.

'cause they suddenly realized what they were building. Actually, there wasn't a demand for that, but there's a demand for this thing over here. So, so we would, we would strongly encourage startups and, and entrepreneurs to. And, and, and a minimum get a brains trust that they're prepared to listen to and who are going to provide, you know, robust feedback.

Um, but, you know, there is lots of material, um, both from us and in many other, um, areas where they, they can read about. You know, and how they need to start building these enterprise skills as well as the technical skills to be successful. 

Mehmet: Yeah. I, I always push people to at least learn, you know, on a high level because at some stage, uh, they need to have first [00:32:00] the belief that they gonna scale and become a big organization one day.

So they should be ready from day one. Like, okay, one day we're gonna have like a lot of people in the company, we need to know. And this comes back to the culture, which is another topic which, uh, I, I discussed a lot on the podcast with my guests also as well. And, and it's all about leadership also Alistair, right?

Yeah. So, so you, you, you need, you need to, to, to build the base. And by the way, this is why. It's for the audience. This is why, you know, if you're a technical founder and you are one of the people who say, Hey, I would never be like a good leader or something like this, be aware that yeah, probably if you raise money, you know your investors with their board, they're gonna replace you and bring someone to be the CEO of the company, which is fine, don't get me wrong.

Um, but this happens and prepare yourself. Uh, emotionally for this, because it's your baby, your startup. You started, you know, this by yourself or maybe with some [00:33:00] co-founder or founders with you, so, so this is good, good to know. But I still push people to, to go and at least read about it, right? I still, yeah.

Want to say something? I think 

Alistair: de definitely because. You know one, one of the things that I find with technical people, and this is gen generalists, generalists, think that technical people, because they're so technical, are not good with people. They're not good with money, they're not good with. Business cases and what view, and my experience is nothing could be further from the truth.

They might not initially be interested in those things or have studied them to your point, but they're very, if they, if they're building a startup and they're building some fantastic mousetrap, the, the bottom line is they're very smart and they absolutely can learn those things. And of course it's in the generalist's interest to say, oh, well you wouldn't understand how to.

You know, um, manage cash flow, you wouldn't understand how to inspire people and what have you. My, my experience, um, of working with a lot of technical [00:34:00] experts who've been stuck in their technical bubble, um, is that once they understand the importance of those things, they can learn the tools and the techniques very quickly.

Um, and they don't have to step back and let some professional manager. Run the business, they can, um, you know, they can absolutely have a, a foot in both the business world and the technical world. And when you think of some of the people in the world who've influenced us most, um, they've been the people that have been technically really clever and good at the enterprise skills.

It's the combination of the two. And I always say to technical experts. The technical stuff's, the hard stuff to learn. The, the enterprise skills is dead easy in comparison. Just, you just need to spend some time on it. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. Yeah. I know from myself because I, you know, to your point, you, you think or you put this belief in your mind that, yeah, it's like hard stuff.

I don't want to learn it. I don't. But once you start to little bit approach it step by step, you say, oh, like this is very easy. [00:35:00] I do this also. Like sometimes, you know, I, I, um. I was part of one, uh, mentorship program and you know, some of the people coming from different backgrounds and I discovered if you never tried even to to read, just read, like not learn, they would be scared of it.

Like, and of course you can imagine financial projections and building financial models. I'm not saying it's easy, don't get me wrong, but it's not as hard as you think it is. You just need to, and, and if you try to extend in layman terms to them, oh, that's easy, right? Like, okay, now I can get it. Of course.

Now one thing, Aster, which is I can't skip any episode without getting this topic, which is AI and automation. Yes. How does. How does changing the landscape when it comes to technical expertise and, and leadership? 

Alistair: Well, I think, you know, I, I'm not a, you know, a technical expert, uh, as such, but I, I know [00:36:00] that all of the experts I work with are finding that AI is.

Really helping them enormously to get rid of all the grunt work that they need to do. You know, so the basic coding and stuff like that can be done just really quickly now using ai. Um, the, the question in my industry, which is, um, you know, very. Um, uh, current is, you know, uh, you, you, you were saying there was a lot of coaches.

Well, will there be any left in a few years time? Because surely you can just ask, you know, um, ai, uh, what to do and, and what have you. I mean, I think the, our experience of it so far is that. Um, a AI is really, really good at collecting a lot of information and providing you with general advice. So we've built a, um, an AI coach, except we're not calling it a coach, we're calling it a, a mentor.

Mm-hmm. Because that's effectively what it does. And ai, with an ai, you ask it a question and then it, it provides you with things that. You know, it thinks of the right answer. [00:37:00] Um, and those answers are by the very nature, very generalists. They're very generic. So, you know, how do I motivate, how do I amend a broken stakeholder relationship with one of my stakeholders?

So you can type that into our, in our, into our AI bot, and it'll give you. Some really good information about how to do that, um, because, you know, all of our master expert book is in there and all of our, you know, expert sheet growth card and all of our websites and all of the content that we've developed in, in order to do that for technical experts is all in there.

So it'll, it'll give you very good. General advice. The only problem with this is that every technical expert I've worked with context is everything, right? They, you know, they're not just a hydrologist, they're a hydrologist that specializes in X, Y, Z, A, B, and C. And, you know, they, they might be, um, you know, having to provide water and so on and so forth, and do testing.

There's a million things that are very, very contextual to a technical expert. So I, I think [00:38:00] general advice, AI is gonna provide a lot of that. But the really contextual stuff that moves, moves the dial for you personally. Um, that's where, um, you know, a, a human, um, you know, that's asking you questions is probably likely to be, um, you know, helpful.

The thing we haven't been able to teach the AI is to figure out what the next coaching question to ask is. And if anybody has figured that out, I'd love to hear from them. But I think that's a long way away. Because it's such an intuitive, you know, thing. Um, so anyway, we'll see. What, what are your thoughts?

Mehmet: Um, it's interesting and, um, my belief is like the role of coaches or mentors, um, would be more important than ever before. Because AI can do a lot of things with automation, right? But this human touch, you will not be able to get it from a machine. Never, ever. This is my own belief, [00:39:00] right? Uh, not only me, experts in the field, uh, you know, I, I read a lot of books about like future of humanity with AI and all this kind of stuff.

I watch a lot of keynote speeches. And all of them, they agree that, you know, what we gonna be doing as humans is interacting more with each others. And this is why the role of a mentor comes very, very, um, you know, to the front line. I would say, uh. This is why, you know, in, in, in the, the, the, the books I read, like for example, some, some careers, they would not disappear easily.

Like, for example, a counselor, right? Um, someone who works in psychology. Yeah. Even doctors. They would become more a kind of a counselors in the future. Take that on any other career, you know, you can think of. So this is where the leader becomes more important because he has to do the, or she has to do the [00:40:00] motivation.

They have to, you know, keep people, you know, up to what they want to do. They can, uh. Energize them. Right. With, with the activities that they're gonna do outside. And this is kind of skills, I believe personally would be very important. The soft skills of a leader would be so much important if you want to thrive in the, you know, ai, uh, era of, of, of work.

So this is, this is my, my 2 cents on this, uh, Alistair. Yeah. Yeah. Um, 

Alistair: I'm, I'm glad to hear it. Good. Um, yeah, as, as I say, I think, you know, the, the thing that I've learned most in the last 10 years is if, if you can expose a someone who's very technical and in their technical bubble, you expose them to the power of.

Um, mastering enterprise skills. 

Mehmet: Yep. 

Alistair: They will double the value that they are offering their organizations within 12 months and [00:41:00] they will provide themselves with multiple career opportunities, um, and career trajectories. And, um, you know, they, they will probably support the growth of the more junior people inside their organization as well.

So for CTOs and CIOs, there's a huge payoff from a productivity perspective. Um, but for the individual experts themselves, there's a huge payoff in terms of fulfillment, um, being back in charge of their own destiny. Not feeling trapped, not being, being, feeling trapped in this expert trap that quite often they are.

Mehmet: Absolutely. I totally agree with you, Alistair. Now I know that you are, uh, expanding the business outside of Australia, uh, to the US and Europe. What, what drove this decision and you know, have you seen some signals that there's a need. In these geographies outside of Australia? 

Alistair: Yeah. I look, I think in, um, so I [00:42:00] think in two or three cases it's been, um, different divisions of the company in Australia has, has seen what we're doing here.

And then we, we've been invited to do stuff there and a couple of instances, um, the, the clients we've just, we've just, we've just won through. Various referrals or what have you. The, the reality of the situation is if you take any large organization, medium to large organization, let's say an organization of a thousand people or more anywhere in the world, doesn't matter which country it's in.

About 200 of those people in that company, maybe 250, are gonna be technical experts, and about 10% of them are gonna be leaders. And all the development money is spent on the people leaders and none of the development. Money is spent on those 250 people who, as you know, many CIOs have said to me over the time, are the people who do the real work, right?

Um, they keep the lights on. You know, that person who runs all the security on the [00:43:00] email system, you know, um, the amount of technical. Prowess and expertise that needs right now are absolutely taken for granted by the other people inside the organization until they come in in one Monday morning and the email's not working right.

Yeah. Um, and so, so a lot of the brilliant work that technical expert has done do is invisible until, you know, suddenly, you know, the service is not available. So. Um, I think in, it doesn't really matter where you are culturally, there's no difference. I mean, we've, we've worked across, um, uh, you know, across many, many countries in Asia.

I think we've delivered it now, 16, 16 countries. So, um, it was interesting for me to see if there was a big difference when we had a technical group in, you know, Singapore or in India or in, you know, the UK or in the us and there's, there's the issues and the challenges of technical experts are exactly the same.

Everywhere. 

Mehmet: It is universal. I can say it is. 

Alistair: Universal is [00:44:00] exactly the word I was looking for. 

Mehmet: Yeah, it is. And it doesn't, you know, these are some of the things that, okay, there's still sub NCES related to culture, but on the big picture level it's the same. It's universal. A hundred percent. Yeah, I totally agree.

As as we are almost close to the end, I know you have authored a book. Uh, tell me about it a little bit more. 

Alistair: Yeah, so, so we've, um, and it's kind of a textbooky type thing, you know, it's like this sort of master expert and, and the, I, the idea was that from our perspective, once we, once we discovered this opportunity to help people, um, I worked out, um, using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, a person who's just been fired.

Um, uh, they. There's about 40 million technical experts in the world, I think. Um, and, um, as much as we, uh, are a startup and we're looking to grow and what have you, I don't think we're gonna be able to reach 40 million people. So, [00:45:00] so what we've done is we've basically written down, um, what we think the nine capabilities that.

Technical experts need to master. Most of them have mastered three of them, which are in this sort of technical area, but these enterprise skills, so we've, we've, um, put it all in a book. The book is kind of like a textbook and you, you jump in and out. You don't start from the beginning and read all the way to the end.

You know, if you've got challenging stakeholders, there's a whole pile of chapters on that. If you are struggling to get traction with your innovation ideas, there's chapters on that. If you are struggling to try and get some of the more junior people to take on some of your work. You can work on the higher level stuff.

There's chapters about that as well. So, um, I, I, you know, it, it's the easiest, quickest way to have a lot of access to our IP is, is just simply, um, start with that. Um, uh, there's also a free assessment that we do. You can come to our website, expert ship.com and you can do a free assessment that will tell you which bits you need to develop most.

And which are already your [00:46:00] strengths. Um, uh, it's a self-report, but nevertheless, it really gives you a good idea of, um, all of the things that master experts are really good at. And you can, there's a, you know, an opportunity for you to sort of figure out where you should start, and that's very often what technical experts need is.

Where should I start? Tell me where I should. 

Mehmet: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. This is the, this is the number one question. Uh, I'm sure. Yeah. And ands. Good. You mentioned this, Alistair, so, uh, where people can get in touch. You mentioned the website. Any other, um, yeah, 

Alistair: soper.com or opportunity. So Expert and Unity is all one, all one word, global.

Um, but if you go to the expert ship.com, uh, website, you'll, you'll, you'll be able to. Capture us there, or you can just search on my name and, um, uh, yeah, we, we gradually also building partners all the way around the world. So there, there may well be some people, you know, locally who can help you as well.

Mehmet: Great. Um, well Alistair, thank you very, very much for the time with me today. [00:47:00] Um. I enjoyed the conversation. You know, you shed some very, very, very, very informative, you shed light on very, you know, informative things that are underrated in my opinion. You know, like, especially when it comes to technical leadership, converting it to master expert ship, right?

So, uh, this is an important topic and of of course everything we, we, we discussed in between. I really appreciate that and for the. You know, audience, all the links that Alistair just mentioned, you will be able to find them in the show notes. And if you are, you know, listening on your favorite podcasting app, they are in the show notes.

If you're watching this on YouTube, they are on the description and this is how usually I add my episodes. This is for the audience. Um. If you just discovered us by luck, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, so give me a small favor and subscribe. Share it with your friends and colleagues who are trying to make an impact and reach as much PE people as possible.

And if you are all of the people who keep coming [00:48:00] again and again, thank you for loyalty. Thank you for the support. Thank you for bringing the CTO show this year. I'm repeating this I know every time, but I have to thank everyone involved in getting the CTO show in the. Top 200 Apple Podcast ranking across multiple countries in the entrepreneurship category multiple times this year in multiple countries also as well.

So this can't happen without the audience. And of course, my guest, including you, er. So I really appreciate, you know, the time that every guest comes and put, uh, with me here to get these episodes out. And as I say, always stay tuned. We'll be again in a very new episode soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.