Episode 3: Tim copper

James Rowson 0:02
Hello, everyone, I’m James Rowson.

Dave Kemble 0:04
And I’m Dave Kemble. And this is the Practicus

James Rowson 0:07
Digital transformation podcast.

Hello everybody and welcome to the latest installment of our practice digital transformation podcast. Today we’re delighted to be joined by Tim. Tim is an experienced business digital transformation leader with a strong track record of transforming businesses, leading change and driving revenue growth and financial performance across multiple sectors, including p bat companies. He focuses on bringing the commercial and tech worlds together to create step changes in revenue growth, and then delivering the change to realize the value is successfully delivered customer led transformations that Travelopia, Camelot, British Gas, O2, AOL and Telstra. Welcome, Tim.

So, Tim, in keeping with tradition, the first question, you know, what does digital mean to you?

Tim Copper 1:09
Morning, James, thank you for that. Great question. I think that digital transformation is a core question. I know you ask that a lot for all of these.

I think it’s very similar to asking people in the street, what do they think Brexit means for them? And can you imagine the level of different responses you get? And clearly some of those responses wouldn’t be that pleasant at the end of the day. But you can just imagine those responses. And I think digital and digital transformation is so similar to that. And I think these transformations that we all know, they’re difficult, they’re hard, they’re messy. And the reason why is because they involve so many aspects for business,  it’s people, it’s culture, it’s obviously systems, its data and processes, the list goes on and on, of course. And when you ask people, often what they do is they just give their little bit of a slice, you know, what this digital transformation is, hence, what they tend not to have is the broader view the broader picture of what everyone is trying to achieve. And I think this is when problems often start during these transformations, because there isn’t the broader view, people aren’t aligned sufficiently. And it becomes really difficult actually, across the business.

Dave Kemble 2:25
Morning, Tim! It’s Dave here. But I’m really keen to understand that. So are you saying that there’s different interpretations of digital and that most companies haven’t actually sat down to have that conversation about what they all collectively agree is their interpretation of it, and also what they need to do with regards to it?

Tim Copper 2:53
Dave, I think that’s right, you know, and I think there are a few things you’ve got to get right and get right early, no doubt, because you do the whole transformation business, there’s a stack of things you’ve got to do, you’ve got to get right. But if you get these things right, early, I think you really set yourself up with the best foundation to really make this thing happen and get the benefits that of course, all these businesses want from this stuff. And I think the first thing is you say you’ve got to get the alignment and get the alignment at the C suite. And it’s the clarity of what this thing is, why we’re doing it, and hence the purpose and the vision. And the real purpose around the C suite, all singing from that same hymn sheet of what this is about. And I always come back to the the Jeff Bezos quote, which I think he’s just so spot on, you know, in these situations, which is simply “stubborn on vision, flexible on detail”. So really, now the vision, you shouldn’t really be, you know, changing that vision, a whole stack, to be honest, but flexible, how you get there. So I think that it’s just so important. And one of the things you know, I just don’t think gets talked about that much. In these early stages, I’m often actually throughout, to be honest, is actually creating a level of excitement across the business. And, you know, we all know these things are tough, they’re difficult. And I think with that level of excitement to keep people going as times get tough, I think it gets even more difficult. And of course, if you create a really brilliant vision and purpose of what this thing’s about pitch should galvanize the business, and really create that level of excitement that comes with it. And I think the third thing for me, which also often doesn’t get talked about that much is this thought about simplification and simplification early and as you go through the program, so I will be constantly looking at how can we make it easier, what can we take out without ruining the vision and everything we’re trying to do? But really coming back down to the absolute, you know, the minimum minimum viable to make this thing as successful as possible. And of course, we know there’s lots of things to get right. So what I try and do is just to break it down and check it down and use a very simple step driven approach. To try and work it through as you go.

James Rowson 5:02
Excellent. Can you talk to us about this step driven approach? Is it? Is it like a framework?

Tim Copper 5:08
Yeah, I don’t think it’s anything is sort of, you know, super smart as a framework or anything, but you know, there are some steps I would follow. And I think it makes sense to do those sequentially. Life often gets quite complicated. So you can’t always do it that way. But I think if you can that really help. So I mean, first off, you know, clarity around the vision, the purpose, and hence the why. So first off, I think you’ve got to nail that part. And you know, that the C suite are really clear on that, and you can really start getting into great conversations with them in terms of, you know, what does this really look like, in the future? What could this do for our business, and hence, you know, you take them away at the normal constraints that they would have in their day to day business. And you start to build, you know, as I said, the excitement early, so I think that’s really important. And then you can get into the what, and the what is all right, how am I going to execute this thing? So, you know, what is the roadmap? Of course, you know, what are the clear business priorities? How are you going to sequence the change, etc, etc. And clearly, how am I going to go through and execute this thing. So a clear understanding of resources, organizational capability, do I need to bring people in from outside, and often, you know, people, I still don’t think they like doing it may be a little bit boring and old school, but I still write, you know, investment cases in that walk phase. So broadly, this is what we’re trying to do, this is what we think it’s going to cost. And maybe we haven’t nailed the exact cost, but you should be able to put a range of cost in there. And hence the benefits that you expect out of those. And once again, you know, you continue to build alignment as you go through all this stuff. And the third phase, of course, is what most people you know, feel comfortable with in many, many ways, which is getting into the swing and get it delivered. You know, it’s all about basically, you know, getting into the scrums getting into a sports etc, etc. And you see, start to see a real tangible things coming out. But even through this whole phase of all the delivery that you’re doing, you’ve still got to keep the alignment and the communications high. So you know, the sports don’t get, you know, sort of, you know, you know, off to the four winds, and hence, all of the information that’s coming out is not getting circulated around the business, I think ongoing comms plays a super important part. And the final part is all around change, and you know, benefits. And just because you know, you have the business involved in all the sports, etc, doesn’t mean say the change management job is done. But my experience experiences are that I think most of the change management comes outside of that normal delivery phase, in many ways, because you can’t have sales teams that are on the phone all day long, you know, you can’t have them taking part in sports most of the time. So the change management has to happen and be a big part of what comes out in that later phase. And it’s only then that you will truly, you know, realize all the business needs that you want this. This is so important to be flexible, isn’t it? You’re absolutely right.

Dave Kemble 7:57
Thanks for that, Tim. So the four steps, as it were, are the why, the what, the how, and then the change and benefits realization?

Tim Copper 8:08
That’s right. So that’s what I tend to do try and run through those as best as you can sequentially.

James Rowson 8:15
If possible, let’s go into some detail on those, especially when we looked at the why then touching on what we talked about earlier, the alignment of the C suite around the vision for transformation. So you’ve got to do that. How do you go about doing that, in your experience?

Tim Copper 8:32
I think it’s interesting with one business I work with, it took, you know, months doing this, and you know, that may sound an awfully long time to spend. But you know, this was a business that was fairly siloed reasonably political. And we had to try, you know, galvanize the business around doing it. So what I would normally do is start off by interviewing all the C suite, you spend real time doing that, including the CEO course. And you signed to it, you know, get them to paint their picture of what great would look like as the output from this transformation that we’re you know, we’re all trying to go through. And, you know, I used to give them a couple of scenarios to think about as part of trying to describe it, one would be essentially around more business as usual, you know, in terms of, you know, this is the current business you have, but effectively, you know, you can change products change, can change services and customers to some extent, but broadly, what could you do within that remit? And what great would look like, and then the second scenario is far more transformative in many ways. And it’s basically saying, you know, What business? Could you be in off the back of that, and then, you know, you start to get, you know, quite a good description from what this thing looks like going forward. And what I then try and do is, once you’ve got all that information, you then work with the C suite, and you bring in more back together, having collected all this information, and you know, you’ll probably want to get into debate so what I’ll tend to do is, you know, they’re often called opposites that will come out during those interview stages. And I’m going to present all the polar opposites and get into that discussion, because that’s what you’re trying to do is the debate in the discussion, which is the real value of what this is all about. And the other thing I’ve used before that has worked really well is to have an artist in these discussions. And the artists there is, you know, recording pretty much real time what’s coming out. And it really massively helps to build, you know, that level of alignment as you go through this. But as I say, you know, this process can take months, and with this one client, it did actually take a few months to go through. But of course, as you’re going through the time, and all of this, as you are building detail about so it’s not just a very high level vision, you’re getting into the you know, the objectives of what this is about how we’re going to measure it, how we’re going to determine business value from it, all of those sorts of things. And the other thing I really like to get into is really risk as well. Because often I don’t think that gets talked about very much often that early. And I think if you can have a really robust conversation, how risky is this thing? What are the risks coming from this? How are we going to mitigate those risks, do the best we can, it really gives a far more, you know, shared sense of what we’re getting into, then you know, but hopefully, by the end of that phase, you’ve got a really robust, you know, set of documentation. However, that’s what wanted and coming out of it, you’ve got a very aligned C suite. But in some ways, even more importantly, they the way they tell the story of what this thing is about is even more important, because it’s aligned at that point, the way they tell the story is very similar. And that’s what I tend to see really

Dave Kemble 11:34
they’re all going to have a common goal. And I would imagine the common goal is is the same, but how they see getting there is very different. Is that fair?

Tim Copper 11:49
I think it depends To be honest, Dave on the situation, I think they’ll certainly have a common view of what this is about. Clearly, they’ll have their own snapshot of what this thing is, depending on their functional area to a large extent and what it means for them personally in their part of the organization. But the collective should be much, much tighter. And broadly, the way they describe the overall purpose and vision should be much tighter as a result.

James Rowson 12:14
It’s interesting, you mentioned the, you know, the four steps in the framework. I mean, obviously, in a perfect world, you know, you’d be joining a transformation, right to this start, I would have the time and the bandwidth even to go through that framework and a step by step process. I want to in your experience, I mean, is it I can imagine it’s, you know, a lot more difficult in a way to join a transformation, you know, partway through where you maybe don’t, you may have had to miss a step in the framework, or they may have had to go back in time to restart. I mean, what’s your experience with joining transformations? You know, they’re already in flight, so to speak.

Dave Kemble 12:52
And what differs? it? Yes, yeah, it’s

Tim Copper 12:55
an interesting one that is happened to me a few times. And often the process, you know, and whether you do it exactly right or not, is less important. It’s more that you actually complete, you know, that the steps to a large extent, and certainly one that I guess, in my experience, what tends to happen is that the bookends get missed most of all on the book ends, you know, in the steps would be, have you really thought hard about the vision and the purpose enough to have the clarity, and how much energy and effort Have you really put into doing the change management and realizing the benefits out of it. And I think what tends to happen is that there’s obviously always huge pressures and the to get stuff done and show progress and everything else. So often, I think businesses tend to dive in and start delivering and delivering too quickly, too early without all of the foundations set up in place. And, of course, by doing getting into that higher phase, and starting to deliver now, no doubt that we’ll have a bit of a view on roadmap as well. It gives everyone a sense that they’re actually achieving and it’s going really well and stuffs coming out, you know, we can see, you know, various, you know, tools being developed processes happening, whatever it is, you know, in terms of that we’re trying to develop. But of course, it’s it’s often only in six months and 12 months or even 18 months. In one case I had, were actually some of the issues and the challenges start coming out. Because actually, maybe the costs are actually spring that control maybe the benefits not coming out, you know, maybe this thing is not quite what we expected. And of course, once it gives you short term, you know, feeling of good that you’re actually getting started and getting stuff going. It doesn’t always work I think very well. You know, always I have this thought around, you know, less haste more speed and hence getting the foundational elements correct, I think is super important.

James Rowson 14:42
Absolutely. But I think it was a age old adage of Lincoln said if you had eight hours to chop a tree down he spent the first six sharpening the axe you know, it’s really important to get that preparation in place really early on. Otherwise, again, things can just escalate and spiral out of control really quickly.

Dave Kemble 14:57
So do you have any specific examples of that? I’d say,

Tim Copper 15:02
yes, there was one actually I was involved with, and I joined sort of about 18 months into a program, which obviously is quite a long time, you can imagine an awful lot of water going into the bridge by that stage. And, you know, when I, when I joined the business, it looked pretty good, actually, you know, on the surface anyway, that the business seems to be pretty engaged in all the program, etc, etc. But, you know, you start picking away and, you know, definitely some warning signs around the edges more and more that the tech side seems to be driving most of the day to day activity on the business, which, clearly, obviously, the technology governance plays such a massive part, they have to be, you know, super, super engaged. But it was the fact that it was like they were driving the program, pretty much full stop. And, you know, clearly they were way over where they expected to be from a cash burn point of view, which, you know, you can argue, well, you know, is that good, is it bad, and the more we got into it, it didn’t look and feel right. And given the level of cash burn, the scope coming out was brought was sort of not what they were really looking for, the scope seemed a bit off. And actually, the more I got into it, actually, the scope was quite significantly. And there are two fundamental issues really, when you get into it. One was, once again, back to alignment. When I went around all the key business stakeholders, they all had a quite different view of what this thing was and what it was there to do. So I was like, Crikey, that’s not good. You know, you really want real strong alignment at the time, it wasn’t there. But then just make make matters worse, actually, it was the tech guys who were actually driving the day to day scope of the program. They were the ones writing the use cases and filling the backlog, you know, they were doing all of that work. And it was like, Where’s the business in all of this? Why are they not writing this, you know, other no product owners, for instance, on the business side doing all of this work, and there just wasn’t, and you pick them all away, and actually, the business just didn’t have the cake set of capabilities. So they thought it was fine to have a broad view of what this thing was like at the very top. But of course, that wasn’t aligned either, then they just expected this thing to go get delivered. Actually, they were checking, you know, every month or so. And it would all be okay. And clearly it wasn’t. And, you know, it turned out that they were, you know, once we’d really understood the level of cash, but they weren’t massively over budget. And essentially, they’ve gone and built mostly the wrong thing. It was, it was not, I can really remember the time very well, it was a very, very painful, you can imagine, the level of board conversation was pretty tough and pretty challenging. As you’re going in presenting the cold facts and the fact that probably most likely we were going to have to stop, we may be able to reuse some of the you know, the software components and some of the delivery stuff so far, but the chances are reusing all of it was highly unlikely. And we had to go back and actually do the early phases properly and get the alignment of what this was. And the more we got into it, actually, we did get the alignment. And actually, that wasn’t too bad in the end, but we actually found actually selected the wrong tech product. So the thing that we’ve been spending all this time customizing around trying to get it to do something that it wasn’t really set up to do, which is actually the wrong thing. And actually, the scope of this thing was just something, you know, quite different, of course. So obviously, we have to redo the investment case. And of course, at that point, you know, rubber really hits the road. A lot of very, very tough, very frantic conversations. And of course, you know, it really is impacting people’s careers. But you know, you have to get into it. And you have to have those really hard conversations. But we came through it we we read, we delivered a whole stack of stuff. And you know, we went live and all was good in you know, despite some massive, massive bumps in the road, you know, the business actually came out in very good shape post on it.

Unknown Speaker 18:49
Excellent.

Dave Kemble 18:50
How important is the tech? That? Obviously there’s a significant investment goes into acquiring the relevant technology. And it seems to me that was it’s a huge part of any Transformation Program getting the right tech. But is it more about having something that’s future proof? Does it having more about the end goal, what I’m just curious to see, in your experience, when it comes to tech? What if you were to put a percentage or a weighting on it? How important is the technology that you choose in terms of the success of the transformation program?

Tim Copper 19:39
I’m sure you’d love a percentage Dave I think different isn’t it? It’s true. There isn’t they’re all a bit different in their own

right. what they’re trying to do sounds a bit of a political answer, doesn’t it? But you know, as I said at the start, there are so many things you have to get right. You’ve got to get all those early phases, right? You You’ve got to build a great team around it, of course, otherwise, you’ve got no chance of delivering it, you’ve got to get the business involved through all the delivery phases. And you really got to now change management. But of course, running through all of this, as you say, you’ve got critical components of technology, haven’t you, and you have to get those, right. And you need such a strong technical team to do this. And for me, and it’s probably just, you know, the transformations I’ve been involved with every transformation, I’ve had to go externally to actually look with third party support, to actually to really nail the technology side of this, because it’s so hard, I think, to have all of the technical skills in how to do these transformations. And it’s looking about pulling best of breed in and I think, there’s certainly the way it’s happened for me, but it’s, it’s worked. And we’re doing that because you get very different views, very different perspectives, once you start bringing third parties in, by even going through an RFP process to be honest, you learn an absolute load of stuff that you wouldn’t have otherwise got. So I think technology is critical, obviously, but having the skills and the strength of the people around the tech is just everything. And I think really understanding getting the right source of you know, in an external views coming in, I think is, for me, probably the most important part of the tech police room.

James Rowson 21:14
We’ve discussed that before, actually, you know, getting a perfect blend of internal versus external support. And staffing on a digital transformation is really important, if nothing else, just to bring in some, you know, external ideas and lessons learned from from previous engagements. So it’s interesting that you’ve also mentioned that too. And

Dave Kemble 21:30
I was just gonna ask is where you’ve done a lot of work in organizations, which have been b2c focused? How have you seen consumers response to technology change over the last 10 to 15 years? Has it been easier implementing solutions? Because a lot of what you would have done done surely is is? Yes, you want to change how you work internally, but it’s for a purpose, as you talked about earlier, which is to perhaps be better aligned with how you work with consumers and customers? Have you seen a shift from how consumers receive technology?

Tim Copper 22:12
100% Yes, I mean, I think we all know this, but it makes life obviously really tough, but it’s, it’s Apple, it’s Amazon, it’s Facebook, it’s whoever, whoever they’re driving consumer expectations online. And whether you’re a bank, whether you’re a service company, utility, whoever you are, you can’t say to the customer, like, you know, I’ll let me off a bit here, I’m just, I’m just at this, I’m just at that, you know, their expectations are set by the best. So when you go in, and whether you’re just trying to actually buy this, you know, check out on your basket, we all have it, you know, my expectations are through the roof. Now, you know, I might check out, you know, if I can’t do a quick guest, you know, process through that, I don’t want to give you my username, password old stuff, for instance, you know, I should be able to do with our social logins or whatever, it’s just the expectation is through the roof. And I think consumers as a result of, you know, they all give you I don’t know what the time is, I have no actual data, say this, but I know from my own experience, it’s what 30 seconds or something, I’m not going to give a site much time I get so frustrated so quickly. And I don’t most people generally like that. Now, the expectations. And of course, you know, the level of innovation, you know, just aren’t delivering as well, especially through COVID, you know, all these companies delivering all this stuff. And now, of course, if you can’t get stuff delivered within 24 hours, that’s not good enough. Now, clearly, there are consequences for this delivery stuff that we that we all know about, you know, in terms of the climb and everything, but our expectations are just set by the best out there. And it’s I think it’s incredibly difficult now, and it all comes back to you’ve got to set that you know, in that vision and purpose in you know, where you’re really trying to aim at, because clearly, you’re not just trying to aim for the next three to six months you you’re looking out ahead, and where am I starting to draw the line in the sand and he’s trying to set the capabilities such that you can get there, you know, on that journey that you choose to take. So we’ve got

Dave Kemble 24:04
we’ve come very high. Yeah, we’ve become the instant gratification. Generation almost. I wonder, sometimes James probably doesn’t remember the days of blockbuster having to go to

Unknown Speaker 24:17
do Joe just about just

Dave Kemble 24:20
but but you used to go to Blockbuster Video on a Friday evening. And if they told you they didn’t have a video or a DVD, but they would do one back. wait an hour hoping that someone would put something through the letterbox and you go, Oh, there you go. There’s

James Rowson 24:39
what’s the DVD? And in terms of the hearing now, Tim, you Ed, you were just talking about some of the changes in customer expectations and you know, instant gratification. I think certainly more recently we’ve seen that as well. You know, you know, almost everyone you know has been getting semi regular or regular Amazon Prime deliveries in the last year during lockdown. And and we’ve seen internally here at practice that COVID certainly given a big boost in terms of digital transformations for organizations, whether it’s internally or externally. I mean, for those that work in the digital transformation space, I mean, this sounds like great news, right?

Tim Copper 25:19
It is, yeah. And I have to say, you know, you, you take an outside in perspective of this a little bit, I think it is quite remarkable what most businesses have achieved during this, you know, during this phase of COVID. And, of course, there’s all the stats out there, you know, what’s been achieved and, you know, 10 years versus, you know, 10 months, whatever, whatever. It is quite remarkable, though, what companies have done and they have achieved it and i think i think they’re, broadly be my my external perspective, there abroad have been to two types of transformation that happened, okay, that maybe are those but the two big ones that I’ve seen happen is, you know, rapidly, everyone had to move from a place everyone going in the office to everyone working at home that how do I deploy that remote workforce? How do I support them system wise, process wise, and all of the other things that come with a course and I’ve had to do that as a business incredibly quickly. And I think businesses on the whole, have done an amazing job at that. Overall, like, because it’s been incredibly difficult, they turn it around super, super quickly. My only slight as a, as a, as a consumer, my only slight, Agon one point would be, it is quite annoying when you do have to call into all these call centers. And they’re still using COVID, as the example for not having, you know, good response times like that, it seems like the boat has really sailed on that one, to be honest. But anyway, on the whole, I think, you know, companies have done a very good job in terms of turning around incredibly quickly as well. And of course, the other thing that’s gone on in terms of transformation wise is for those companies that were not really online or not online very well, they’ve, you know, trying to do rapid transformation get online, massively improve the customer experience and the customer journey, because all the expectation issues that come with that. And as part of that drive conversion rates, no doubt, to really maximize the opportunity. That’s, that’s being presented through COVID. And when you look at those types of transformations, you know, the companies Yes, have done a really good job, they tick on that, I would say broadly Good, good. They are in many ways, though, more straightforward, I would say the clarity of what they were about, get everyone working remotely. And you know, some of the stuff that comes with this, improve conversion rates do this, I think the clarity of what those things are about is much easier to see and much easier to see for everyone actually, in the organization. I don’t think you’ll need to spend a lot of time thinking about what what are we actually trying to achieve here, actually, you can just actually pretty much get on and do we play. That’s what organizations have done through this period. And they have developed new muscles that they never had before, which of course, is great, and it will build them for the future. And the other thing I did see recently, actually, which was a great, but they had a real Watch out for me was it was Price Waterhouse they, they published a recent report. And it’s something I don’t know what it was 80% of CEOs, saying they’re no now over the next 12 months gonna invest a stack more money in digital transformations like, wow, that’s brilliant news. Because exactly, obviously, what should be going on? given everything that’s happening? No, they, they sort of got the bit between the teeth, so you know, come on, crack on with it. But the watch out for me is that certainly all the transformations I’ve done and seen and read on the transformations are often they’re complex, they’re messy, they’re not straightforward. And hence the clarity is just not as straightforward as those two main transformations that I think have happened during COVID. And hence the amount of work you’re going to have to do going forward. Once again, to get the transformations to get the alignment to get the clarity is much greater. And hence it’s back to you know, the great Jeff Bezos close, which is all about stepping on vision, flexible on details, and all of that building the right transformations really comes back and using like a step driven approach. So that would be my one big ask of all of us actually, we really, you know, pause Don’t rush in build the right foundations get the transformations, right, take the business on the journey, as opposed to taking four or five squads on the journey effectively.

Dave Kemble 29:22
So you think there’s a chance by the sounds of things just human nature will will slowly start to revert back to how we were pre COVID but take some of the winds do you think

Tim Copper 29:35
I think you’re gonna get you’re gonna get a mixed bag Dave, you know, clearly what these companies have developed is a lot of muscle which is great in terms of speed, agility, how to get stuff done quickly. But there is a risk in that of course, which is the you know, less haste more speed point. You’ve got to get the foundations in place. Because the transformations that you know, that have the big game changing benefits and the business value associate with them, they come from those transformations that impact massive chunks of the business. That’s what they tend to do. You know, so this is not talking about building innovation hubs on an adjacency to the business. This is talking about transformations that drive business value through through the company, they touch. So many people in the business, they touch processes or models, roles, technology, touch everything effectively. And hence, you’ve got to get the right things in place, if you’re going to get the business value. And we all hear it, don’t worry, you only need to look at any business transformation report. And they don’t have the value out of it, you know, so it’s all common. But I think the roots of it comes back to nailing the early phases and doing a great job of doing that as you go through.

Dave Kemble 30:43
So it’s him with consumer expectations as high as they are now. And with climate change being very much in people’s mind as well. And rightly so. Where does that sit? In your opinion with regards to the the 24 hour delivery situation that we find ourselves in now? Can you see a shift in consumer views taking place over the next year or so in the coming years?

Tim Copper 31:18
Yeah, it’s a really good one. Dave, I, I guess my worry is that that actually doesn’t happen. And I what I see at the moment is just an ever growing consumer expectation and demand for more and quicker. And, and in many ways, what cup new new companies are getting into this business. So actually feel this even more and actually, why is 24 hours shorter? That’s not good enough? And why can’t I get my groceries delivered actually, from a local set of suppliers within 30 minutes? Why don’t have to wait, you know, for the next day. And I think people are looking to actually innovate in this whole efficiency space more and more to actually drive, you know, actually delivery quicker and quicker. On all I see, to be honest, at the moment, as you go out, all I see is there are more and more white vans on the road than it ever used to be. And lots I’ve got no data on this. It’s just white vans everywhere, of course, because everyone’s delivering stuff, you know, and we’re all at home, still, to a large extent. So I worry that both customer expectations, and the innovation is fueling this more and more. And the and the whole climate agenda point is just not on the table for monex. Right now, for most people. Now, I once again, I don’t have empirical data on this, but I just don’t get that sense. I think people are very happy just to say great, I just got it delivered in the next, you know, few days, few hours. But one really good thing is though, that I do see Amazon have nice put in, you know, basically you can choose your delivery day. So it’d be really good if they would publish stats on how many people are actually starting to use that. So you can aggregate all of your parcels. But we all all need to have, I think a far more balanced mindset going forward. I know I’m trying to do this at home. It’s not that I’m trying to be you know, super perfect. But you know, we all have our bit to play in the climate, you know, climate change that is happening now. And it is going to have a massive impact on our lives going forward in terms of getting the balance, right in terms of getting stuff and actually enjoying all the benefits we get from technology and delivery, versus actually just being kind to the planet and being sensible, you know, you can walk and go and get stuff, you can do all these things yourself. And we just need to be really mindful things don’t come for free, just because there is not a cost attached to them today. So there’s no carbon tax attached to some of these things are going delivery really quick today. It’s not to say in the future, there won’t be a carbon tax upline, but I think we all need to be mindful there is carbon impacts, as we do all this stuff going forward. And I think the wall the delay happens, you know, like this type of question going forward, I think it’s just perfect.

Dave Kemble 33:48
You make a really good point. One of the things that always confused me was the clothing deliveries that are now done, people will order mass amounts of clothing in to try on different sizes, and then send them back. And that’s all free. And you think well that’s there’s got to be some some implication to the environment there. But will there be a shift then for consumers? And how long perhaps there’s no

Tim Copper 34:18
answer to this, there will be a shift

Dave Kemble 34:19
probably to where whether one one company will deliver and be able to promise energy efficient or carbon neutral? Well, then you’ll possibly see a shift as long as there’s no cost. I think people will certainly move to being kinder to the environment. But there’s everyone that

Tim Copper 34:40
Yeah, for a consumer you want best of both worlds don’t you cannot Can I still get stuff delivered quickly and efficiently. And can it be done in a in a either a very low run or effectively no carbon, you know, carbon way, of course that that’s the ultimate but we all know Amazon have been trying to figure out how to do the drone delivery and everything else and you know, See that on a mass scale? You know, I don’t know how far that off is off. But clearly it’s it’s not here right now. And it probably is, you know, a little while a way to get it across, you know, reasonable sized geographers. So I think, you know, we just all need to be mindful that things don’t come for free. And I think it’s just, as I said before, we know a more balanced conversation. And I think, you know, clearly, I’m not the person to ask about fashion or anything like that. But my sense is, in that world, there is a lot more going on now. And a far more sensible conversation about fast fashion, the consequences of fast, fast fashion. And so many of the startups now that I’ve seen over the last few months, you know, trying to create new businesses, or read about, you know, vintage and secondhand clothing, and actually really try and drive that market. And I think it already taps into something incredibly powerful and incredibly strong, actually. Absolutely.

Dave Kemble 35:55
Fantastic. Excellent. Well, thank you ever so much for your time, Tim, really, really appreciate you coming on the show today and your insight. Really, really interesting. And if anyone wants to get in touch with Tim, please do find him on LinkedIn, Tim copper, or any questions for Tim you can reach out to me Dave Campbell at Dave Campbell at practice comm

Unknown Speaker 36:21
or me, James Rosen at practical Stuff. co. uk fan. Thanks so much.

Dave Kemble 36:26
Thanks ever so much, Justin.

Unknown Speaker 36:28
Thanks a lot.