This week on The Digital Download, we are challenging conventional growth strategies. In the frantic race for innovation and market share, many businesses overlook their most valuable asset: their people. To discuss why a strong company culture is the real engine of success, we welcome our special guest, Mark Cowieson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of LHR Marine.

While many leaders merely talk about putting people first, Mark Cowieson truly lives it. Beginning his career as a mechanical engineering apprentice at just 16, he has risen to become a CEO and respected leader in the energy industry. His journey is a powerful testament to the leadership skills he has built and refined along the way. In his session, he will share insights on why fostering an environment where employees can thrive is the foundation of lasting commercial success.

Join us as we discuss questions like:

* Why is a strong company culture more important than product strategy?

* How can a leader tangibly create an environment where employees flourish?

* What is the direct link between employee well-being, customer service, and innovation?

* How do you move from a culture that is "stated" on paper to one that is "lived" every day?

* What are the first steps a leader should take to transform their company culture?

As the CEO of one of the UK's leading safety and marine equipment providers, Mark is responsible for LHR's growth and strategic direction. His unique experience offers a rare insight into how investing in talent development and fostering a supportive culture translates directly into innovative solutions and sustainable business performance. This episode will provide invaluable insights for leaders looking to build a truly resilient organisation.

This week we were joined by our Special Guest

• Mark Cowieson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of LHR Marine.

This week's Host was -

• Bertrand Godillot, Founder and Managing Partner of Odysseus & Co, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Panelists included -

• Tim Hughes, CEO & Co-founder of DLA Ignite,

• Tracy Borreson, Founder and CEO of TLB Coaching & Events, a proud partner of DLA Ignite

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-09-12

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:07]:

Good afternoon, good morning and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to a new edition of the Digital Download, the longest running weekly business Talk show on LinkedIn Live, now globally syndicated on TuneIn radio through IBGR, the world's number one business talk news and strategy radio network. Today on the Digital Download, we're challenging conventional growth strategies. In the frantic race for innovation and market share, many businesses overlook their most valuable asset, their people. We have a special guest, Mark Koiza, to help us with the discussion. While many leaders merely talk about people first, Mark truly lives it.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:00]:

Beginning his career as a mechanical engineer Apprentice at just 16, he has risen to become a CEO and respected leader in the energy industry. But before we bring Mark on, let's go around the set and introduce everyone. While we're doing this, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, pull ping them and have them join us. We strive to make the Digital Download an interactive experience and audience participation is highly encouraged. Tracy, would you like to kick us off?

Tracy Borreson [00:01:32]:

Yes. Start at the bottom. Good morning everyone. I am Tracy Borreson, founder of TLB Coaching and Events, a proud partner of DLA Ignite, who if you don't know already, you will learn about when Tim introduces himself. And I mean, I'm a big fan of humans and what humans can do. So I'm really excited for this conversation today.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:57]:

Excellent. And I can only share what you just said. So Tim, would you like to introduce yourself?

Tracy Borreson [00:02:06]:

Thank you.

Tim Hughes [00:02:07]:

Thank you for watching. My name is Tim Hughes. I'm the CEO and co founder of DLA Knight and I'm famous for writing the book Social Selling Techniques to Influence Buyers and Change Makers. I'm wearing a pink shirt in homage to Trace's headphones.

Tracy Borreson [00:02:26]:

Pretty soon we'll all match every.

Tim Hughes [00:02:29]:

And, and I'm, I, I'm wondering whether I clash with the guest but, and I, and I just want to say that Adam sends his apologies. He's taking his daughter, she's starting a masters at, at Glasgow University. And he's got a drive there which is a nine hour drive and then drive back again, which is nine hours back again, which for Canada isn't a lot, but in the, in the UK it's like.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:59]:

Infinite. Yeah. For those watching us on video, it's going to be a very colorful show today, I can tell you so. Myself, Bertrand Godillot, I am the founder and managing partner of Odysseus & Co, a very proud, DLA Ignite partner as well. As I said this week on the Digital download, we'll speak with Mark. His journey is a powerful testament to the leadership skills he has built and refined along the way. In this session, he will share insights on why fostering an environment where employees can thrive is the foundation of lasting commercial success. Let's bring him on.

Bertrand Godillot [00:03:55]:

I'm not sure we want to translate that, Mark, good afternoon and welcome.

Tim Hughes [00:04:04]:

Can I just butt in, Bertrand? Because Mark has been a watcher of this show for probably since the beginning and, and he's always provided amazing comments, amazing jokes, and he's come on today and I, and, and it's the first time that we've ever met, you and I. And I want to. And I kind of want to give you a hug and, and I can't.

Mark Cowieson [00:04:33]:

Everybody feels when they meet me, Tim.

Tim Hughes [00:04:34]:

Yeah.

Mark Cowieson [00:04:35]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:04:36]:

And I just. And I, I just. I don't know, I can't really put in words, but I just want to thank you. No, thank you for watching and thank you for coming on and, and thank you so much.

Mark Cowieson [00:04:46]:

No, if you, if you create engaging content, then that's what brings people back. So.

Tim Hughes [00:04:53]:

And Ross, Ross Jolly has already made the comment. Good to see the shirts are still as dull as ever, Mark.

Mark Cowieson [00:05:03]:

You know, a lot of thanks to Ross. Ross worked with us very well and he helped us with a particular marketing strategy that I had in mind. Shirts happen, but safety matters. So Ross did a lot of help. Getting helpless, get that off the ground. And yeah, it meant I had to go and buy a lot more shirts, so.

Bertrand Godillot [00:05:24]:

And you have, you have more friends joining us, Mark. So.

Tim Hughes [00:05:31]:

Craig Allen says, looking forward to this. Great to see you, Mark. And Craig is actually talking to Ross, which is good, which is saying, I got my shades on me.

Mark Cowieson [00:05:43]:

What I'm not gonna do is I'm, I, I was thinking of maybe doing a change halfway through, but I'll save everybody from that.

Tim Hughes [00:05:49]:

Okay, good.

Bertrand Godillot [00:05:51]:

Okay, Mark, so why don't we start with having you telling us a little bit, a little bit more about you, your background and what led you where you are today.

Mark Cowieson [00:06:01]:

So I, My father was in the oil industry. Oil industry leader. He. He worked his way up through the. The drill floor in the oil game. And he was. Before he retired, he was the leader of a large drone organization, global drilling organization. I said, there's no way I am going to follow him.

Mark Cowieson [00:06:21]:

I left School 16 and took on a Mechanical Engineering apprenticeship forward eight years. I joined a Norwegian company after that and that was kind of my journey, particularly getting to know good company structure, good culture where you were no longer a Staff number. You were very much somebody who had a say in the business and how the business was run and organized. And I went on from the age of 22, 23, I was in charge of large projects. A 25 million pound project for hydraulic engineering design on drill ships in Korea. I've been very lucky. I've traveled the world, I've been in leadership roles. I said I wouldn't follow Moldman, but I did into the drilling game.

Mark Cowieson [00:07:13]:

Starting off as an operations engineer, made it all the way to the heights of operations manager in charge of 12 up to 1200 people across 27 operations. Working with some of the big oil companies at the time, the Shells and the Marathons and Chevrons for example. And then I've been a director of two businesses, the director of a fire protection business throughout Covid. We were the only part of our group that still made profit. Unlike many other businesses, private equity is a tough place to be. And then I got an opportunity. My business partner is friend of the family. So I got an opportunity to join LHR Marine four years ago, bought into the business with very much a plan for growth.

Mark Cowieson [00:08:05]:

And here we are four years later, still continuing on that growth plan and what I like to think developed and all the business. I've been in quite a strong company culture that's helped deliver some of that growth.

Bertrand Godillot [00:08:20]:

Sounds great. Excellent. Thanks for that. So as usual, I'm going to start with a financial question mark. Why is company culture more important than product strategy?

Mark Cowieson [00:08:36]:

So for me, listen, this is purely my thoughts. Company culture is the foundation of any business. It's the building blocks for everything that goes on in a business. And what it also helps is so through change, if you're going to be in a company that's going to grow, there's going to be change, there has to be change. Culture helps sustain that performance to help deliver the kind of the growth output for me, creating. When I went into any business, I always looked at the core values that were there, the behaviors that were there, and for me, the values. If you can align all the employees in a business around those values and behaviors, you're going to develop consistency, you're going to develop resilience when things don't go wrong. Because typically they don't in any kind of growth in a business.

Mark Cowieson [00:09:29]:

But for me, what I've seen is by kind of aligning the whole, the whole employee base around a set of values and developing that strong culture, it gives us competitive advantage over our competitors. They have tried to replicate it and they simply can't and you know, some ex employees, I'd like to say would atone to that. My employees who are here, I think would agree with, with a lot of the comments. It's, it's good, it's good working here, but we're also delivering, you know, the growth out the back of that. You know what I mean? So that for me in a nutshell, if you get strategy alone is, you know, if you've got to develop strategy. Yes. If you don't have that cultural alignment, it, your strategy is often going to fail. So that's it.

Tracy Borreson [00:10:19]:

I feel like that strategic execution, like, like the execution of whatever strategy you come up with is based on the behavior. So if you've chosen a strategy that isn't in alignment with the cultural behavior, the likelihood of being successful in that strategy is very low.

Mark Cowieson [00:10:35]:

Correct. You know, but, but keeping it simple is also one of the most important things. So, so when I came here, company had no values whatsoever. No, no behavior. Well, lots of behaviors, but maybe they weren't the right ones. But, but there was no expectation on behavior. You know, and like any business I, you know, I go into, you've got your 30, 60, 90 day plan. So the first 30 days is, you know, it's spent actively listening.

Mark Cowieson [00:11:01]:

You know, you need to, need to get a feel for the business. But most importantly listen to what people in the business are saying, what makes them tick. They'll tell you what went wrong more than they'll tell you what's went right and what's going right. You know, so it's a real opportunity to, to help work with, spend the next 30 days working with them, involving them in your SWOT analysis, developing that strategy. That's a crucial part, you know, and then the 90 days you measure and you know, you're continuing on. So for me, make values very simple.

Mark Cowieson [00:11:34]:

And try and include at that 30 day, 60 day stage, try, try and include the employees in development of those values. So lhr.

Mark Cowieson [00:11:45]:

I can't tell you what LHR actually means. I don't really care what it means. But what I did do was worked with the team and I knew the kind of values that we needed to develop and I tried to kind of word them around lhr. So for me, what we came up with, strategy and our values and our behaviors was LHR's core values is as easy as ABC. So L is for being loyal. Yeah. So loyal requires character, integrity. H in the, in the LHR is for honesty, being honest, you know, that encourage is the openness Right.

Mark Cowieson [00:12:28]:

It empowers us all to develop consistency in how we show up.

Mark Cowieson [00:12:33]:

Every single time you show up exactly the same. If you're honest with yourself, that's what will happen. That's what come out of that. Reliable. That's the R. Yeah. Reliability, again, makes us dependable, faithful, and certainly worthy of trust and remaining authentic, safe. Yeah, we, we work in an.

Mark Cowieson [00:12:55]:

I work in a very heavy industry. Safety tends to be certainly the way people speak. It's, it's above probably profit. It's above, it's above everything else. And so for me, we had to, you know, we have to encourage a culture where we're safe. It's about showing up, you know, having dedicated focus on it. If I've got, if I go out into the warehouse and I'm not wearing safety shoes, I'm not consistent. I'm not showing up.

Mark Cowieson [00:13:24]:

Others will see my behavior and they won't fall. So if he's not going to be safe, why do I, why will I be safe? You know, Know what I mean?

Bertrand Godillot [00:13:30]:

Those are, this is a, this is a great point, by the way. Just a quick comment from David. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. There you go. Just a quick question on that. So we, I suspect these three words, you know, loyal, loyalty, honesty and reliable are on every single walls within lhr. But how do you leave that? What's the recipe to make it look that. And I think you already.

Mark Cowieson [00:14:02]:

Yeah, I mean, as I said to you, we didn't just come up with it. We didn't just say that's what it's going to be. You know, remember I said to you that, you know, through loyalty, it's not just about being loyal to lhr. It's about being loyal to the procedures that we've developed, the processes that we've developed. It's about being loyal to our supply chain partners, it's about being loyal to our customers. And, and by, by, by creating procedures that, that consider those particular. It make. You need to make it easy for, for the employees to, to show that or, or sorry to be loyal throughout everything they do.

Mark Cowieson [00:14:50]:

So, so, you know, and it's, there's lots of different ways to kind of, you know, when someone shows loyalty and you look at reward mechanisms, right. So you need to make sure that, you know, you celebrate those times that someone's lived A value at the end of the day. But, you know, you use the words loyalty, honesty and reliability. The way we've changed that slightly is it's about a value is something you can be. So you're ultimately loyal is the big at the top. But you're being loyal, you're being honest.

Speaker E [00:15:28]:

Right.

Mark Cowieson [00:15:28]:

I'd rather if we had a challenge somewhere. I want someone to be honest about that challenge. Most importantly, if we can capture lessons from it and then, you know, revert those lessons back into the process so that we won't get that same repeat. I worked in a business where we ordered valves from this company and we asked them to stamp the valves, right? Every time we wanted them to stump, now we were getting them delivered and they weren't stumped with the numbers that we wanted on them, our kind of asset number. So I found out that the culture in the warehouse area was that when I challenged them on it, I said, well, why do you not tell anybody? Company does it all the time. I think we've done it 19 times. And I'm like, wait a minute. Had you stopped at time number one and then allowed us being honest about it, told someone about it, allowed us to then feed that back to the company and say, hey, we ain't going to accept your valve.

Mark Cowieson [00:16:33]:

Come and come and pick it up and come and take it back. We asked for it to be stamped. We ain't going to accept it. We ain't going to pay your money.

Speaker E [00:16:38]:

Right.

Mark Cowieson [00:16:40]:

So we had a further 18 times where they were delivering a valve that was not. And then we, we had to get. We had to go through that process. So, you know, that's where living the value of honesty, the individual thought, you know, it's one delivery out of 100 in a day. But it was a real missed opportunity that led to a lot of challenges along the way. You know what I mean?

Tracy Borreson [00:17:06]:

Yeah. Mark, I have a question because. Well, from a marketing point of view, people love to just choose values and write them on the wall and make people memorize them so they can regurgitate them. But then they don't get lived like that. And I'm also wondering because they've seen a lot of people with a lot of values, a lot of like seven or ten values on their website. You mentioned three that seem to go, like, deeper, and there's like a lot of intention to bring those to life throughout the organization. So do you have a recommendation on how values is too many values?

Mark Cowieson [00:17:44]:

It's a very, very good point. But, but listen to what I said at the outset was I wanted. I've worked in. I worked for a company called smedbook. Yeah. And they had four values. Sale, safety, accountability, inspirational, loyalty. I know them because I lived them.

Mark Cowieson [00:18:00]:

I was also part of the organization who. And this is the crucial thing about how. How those values become livable is integrate them in everything you do. Integrate them in your hiring process. Integrate them in the coffee, you know, the morning tea break conversation. Integrate them, you know, reward people when they recognize things like values. So I would never. I'd never restrict people on the number, but you need to try and make them memorable.

Mark Cowieson [00:18:30]:

The one thing I remember from Smedvig, Peter Smedvig, his great grandfather had a ship, the Clipper ships, you know, the big sail ships with the sails on it. And the way we remembered it was we had. We had a picture of a ship and we put a P on a sail and we created another value, an extra value. Proactivity.

Speaker E [00:18:54]:

Yeah.

Mark Cowieson [00:18:55]:

Which came out of the conversations with the feedback and the employees. So what you effectively had in your head was picture of a sale P. Sale P. Sale P with the value safety account B, Inspiration, loyalty, productivity. So to me, key things about making them memorable, make them visible in everything you do, and particularly in the leadership roles. Make sure that you reference those every single day. I saw a great. There's a great podcast out right now from Bob Keeler, one of our industry leaders, and if you've not seen it, go and have a look.

Mark Cowieson [00:19:37]:

It's a Tap Room talk that he did with Kenny Dooley at OGV Tap Room. And he talked about how he had developed set values with his leadership team. And one of the values was about care, caring for employees. And one, somebody in far, far, far country overseas wrote him an email and said, hey, you probably get these emails all the time, but we've got this particular staff member. He's got a. A disease and he needs specific medicine, and he's. And he. Blah, blah, blah.

Mark Cowieson [00:20:15]:

So he put back, okay, that's fine, no problem. So they looked more into it and what had happened was he was able to. The first year, the insurance covered it, but he needed this medicine to continue, you know, continue his treatment, but he couldn't afford it. So his leader was effectively asking if the company could pay for it. Right now, get back to the crux here. What Bob did was as the kind of chairman of the business, he brought it into his leadership team meeting. In fact, his HR manager brought it up to him just before the meeting. He said, well, listen, I was going to bring it up, but why don't you bring it up? So he brought the situation up in the meeting, and immediately the leaders went, well, if we do it for him, we have to do it for Everyone else.

Mark Cowieson [00:21:03]:

And then what he did was he turned it around and he went, one of the other leaders said, oh, wait a minute, our core value is care. If we're not going to show up for this particular employee and, and we've got no choice, we have to do it. We've created this value of care. This is us showing up and doing it. And actually the HR woman burst into tears because he came out of the meeting agreeing to do it, burst into tears and fell into Bob's arms. And he thought, and she said, you know, I know what. We developed all these values. I never thought that a conversation about help an employee would come back to the value conversation.

Mark Cowieson [00:21:42]:

And it's crucial as a leadership that you deliver that back. And it's a real pointy moment. I'll, I'll maybe, I'll maybe put on the comments. I'll put a link to the, yeah, do the, to the particular session. He can tell it better than me, but for me it was really, really powerful on, on values and how it is one. One of the things I did at one of the companies I've got and we do performance reviews. I'll use the word performance reviews because the word appraisals was, was what they used to be called and there was a particular organization in the northeast of Scotland that used the word appraisals and used it to score a scoring mechanism and paid a lot of people off and I mean hundreds of people. So for this organization and the people working for this organization, the word appraisal fell, fell on dumb ears and it felt like you were going to be scored.

Mark Cowieson [00:22:33]:

So they didn't really participate in the process the way that they should have. They weren't as honest as they should have been because they were worried that they would get someone fired, for example. So what we did is we went away and we said, right, okay, our values are X, Y and Z. Safety account based. Let's try and make the performance an annual event between a leader and their subordinates. Let's make that up with a set of questions about how they've lived those at the point five values. And it was a much better conversation around personal development, employee development and the strategy for moving forward rather than, you know, I'm going to score this person based on here, you know, safety, for example, or being safe. For example, a leader could reference a particular time that an individual stepped in and prevented a potential incident.

Mark Cowieson [00:23:33]:

And how he stepped up and, and he put it forward to such and such. So how somebody showed up and when you Continually do that as leaders to your subordinates and your, and your, your employees, then they'll believe in those values and they'll live them with you, if you know what I mean. Because they're striving to be everyone. Everyone strives to be better. Well, most of us do. But if you have a clear strategy and how to do that, living the values, how do I live up to that value? Then it helps with personal development as well.

Tracy Borreson [00:24:05]:

So what stops. I got a really important question. I think, okay, what stops?

Mark Cowieson [00:24:10]:

Every question is important because I feel.

Tracy Borreson [00:24:14]:

Like everything you're saying makes lots of sense. And what stops leaders from doing exactly what you're saying right now? Because I would, I mean, in my experience that's still, I would say in my career I have had one leader that very strongly led by values and five or more leaders that did not. So what stops leaders from doing that?

Mark Cowieson [00:24:39]:

Ultimately, the leaders that don't do it don't believe in the values. That's ultimately what the problem is. And it's, it's, you know, ultimately, that's what it is. You know, I mean, I mean, I, I, A lot of businesses develop values and missions and value and state, you know, a lot of them are same, same. And that's it. They do it because they're, when they're, when they're commercially going for a commercial tender, they need to show up and have mission. It takes up two pages at the front of a tender and it looks good.

Mark Cowieson [00:25:10]:

So they're not living the values that leaders. And I think that's what the barriers are. They, they either, they've not been in, they're either not been involved in the process of development, so they don't believe in them. They've not had, or they've not had that situations where it's been embedded into everything they do. You know what I mean? Every process that we've developed here and the places I've worked all falls back to, you know, a company value somewhere. You know, I mean, a behavior that we're trying to encourage.

Mark Cowieson [00:25:44]:

So I use the word lhr. Values are as easy as abc. ABC are the behaviors that we expect people. A, stands for, accept accountability. B, build relationships. C, challenge and collaborate.

Mark Cowieson [00:25:58]:

So of those behaviors, you can integrate that in just about everything. You're making someone accountable for a process.

Mark Cowieson [00:26:07]:

As I say, we didn't, we, we hadn't made an individual story. We hadn't made that individual accountable, or at least we thought we had, but we didn't give him the encouragement to Be able to feed it upwards as a business. We had a business of 1200 employees. We had nine non conformance reports.

Mark Cowieson [00:26:32]:

So that was a shock for me to just have nine, so nine opportunities for learning.

Mark Cowieson [00:26:39]:

What we did was we trained people, we looked at the process. There was clear changes we needed to make the process. We trained people on what the expectation was. People thought an NCR was a bad thing. People thought it was a bad mark against their department. Part of their P and L would affect their P and L would affect their performance, it would affect their bonus. It wasn't about that. It was about leadership.

Mark Cowieson [00:27:02]:

Hadn't really emphasized and shared with people what the, the expectation of an NCR actually was. The next year we had 240, I think NCRS. And that meant that we were able to change the process for the better in line with the core values and our behaviors. That make sense?

Bertrand Godillot [00:27:24]:

Yeah, it does, it does. We do have a comment from the audience and this is from Ross. Sorry. More often than not they are so they, the values are very generic and rarely differentiate between companies. Hence many employees simply ignore them. I think that as you said, this is one takeaway for me today. You know, the value is something you can live.

Mark Cowieson [00:27:50]:

Yeah. And as I say, I think to follow on from Ross's very pertinent comment that you know, if you was to ask an employee that's probably the answer they would give. The answer I'm given as someone who's developed values and has, has changed the processes in an organization. If you don't do that part of it and you don't set the expectation for the employee, then they are going to ignore them. You know what I mean? It's, it's as simple as that. If you don't, you don't show up. You don't, you don't, as I mentioned, reward. We, we used to, we used to do.

Mark Cowieson [00:28:27]:

There's a, there's an offshore. There's an opportunity for an observation.

Mark Cowieson [00:28:31]:

And it was called the stop card. You know, dupont were the first people that did it. They had, they had Dupont, the explosives people, they had an explosives factory and they kept blowing up their employees. So what they did was they moved the families of their employees into the blast radius of the plant. So all of a sudden they stopped blowing up themselves.

Mark Cowieson [00:28:57]:

But what they did was the employees went, well, can we get something different? So they developed the stop process.

Mark Cowieson [00:29:03]:

Which was an intervention. Make an intervention when someone saw something that wasn't quite right, an opportunity for improvement. But in the Offshore industry, it became, you know, you must put one stop card in a day, right? So because it became an expectation to put one stop card in a day, people did it because that's what the company wanted, right? There was a, maybe a leak in quality because of that. And it's quite clear those who weren't buying into the program were there. We changed that round and we said, look, in a, in a 12 hour shift, right, you will do at least one thing for safety, right? All I'm asking as your leader in that 12 hour day is to let me know about it, let me know what you did in safety. So if you made a, if you made a, an intervention and something was wrong, just let me know about it. But the mechanism to do that is by completing the card because that's the only way, you know, I was a remote leader, I'm on shore, they're offshore. It's the only way that I get to know that you've actually contributed and taken part.

Mark Cowieson [00:30:05]:

And what I want to do, I'll reward the individuals that I think come up with the best interventions and we'll continue to change our processes. If we're finding that there's an obs, an observation that is kind of continually coming in on a particular process, that's not right, you know, and, and what I also was able to do was, was take graphs. I managed 27, I'm responsible for 27 rigs very remote from each other, right? So 27 teams, if you want to call it, I can tell you that the most active in the observation program. So those who had the highest numbers of participation, participation, I should even say, were those where this was, it was the safest site and they had the fewest first aid cases, fewest incidents and most proactive, as in they were the ones who were changing their processes more often because they were capturing the learnings, right? And see when you change it round from, yeah, I want one a day to, you know, I want differently, you know, think of the core value to be safe. I want you to be safe and I know you will be in at least once in a 12 hour shift. Can you just do me a favor and let me know about it? And by letting me know about it, I can help an ARC change, I can help you make the changes. You know, I mean it's a really good, it's a really good program that's been absolutely beaten to death offshore as a bad thing. But when you actually take time and speak with teams and show them the resulting evidence of contributing Regularly, then it makes a massive difference.

Tracy Borreson [00:31:45]:

I think you demonstrate a really great example here, Mark, because I think people could batch safety into a generic and not different value. There's probably lots of people who have safety as a value or at least a published value. But like what you're demonstrating and how you're looking at it is like, okay, if safety is actually our value, this is how the industry is doing it. It's not working for safety. So if safety is actually our value, what how could we tweak the process so that we make it livable in our organization? So I think that's an interesting component too because I also don't think that values are have to be so profound. They can be loyalty, they can be safety. But you gotta be very clear on how that, how we do that here. And, but I mean, for example.

Mark Cowieson [00:32:41]:

Exactly. It shows up when I, when I talk about results, I'm not just talking about a graph that shows that, you know, Team five were the most proactive and therefore they are.

Mark Cowieson [00:32:52]:

What actually happened out the back of that was when you come to contract renegotiation, we typically had three four year contracts with major oil companies. You know, Shell, Chevron is like marathon. They're looking at these metrics, they're looking particularly at the safety metrics of how many first aid cases you've had, how many. But most importantly come away. They're lagging, right? You want the leading factors to be the ones and, and you know, being proactive and recognizing how many processes those are the leading factors that we were able to put in front of all these organizations. And they go, hey, this is a company that actually from the top down lives the values and ultimately out the back of it is the company that gets the results because of that. You know what I mean? And I'll say this safer. We were more profit.

Bertrand Godillot [00:33:46]:

We made a question for our audience who's really experiencing very high growth.

Mark Cowieson [00:33:57]:

And.

Bertrand Godillot [00:33:57]:

Sometimes high growth is a challenge with, to living the values, if you see what I mean. So the question is, how do you make sure that along your growth you actually don't lose your values?

Mark Cowieson [00:34:17]:

Good question. And I'll try and relate that back to a specific part of my career. We were doing well as a business, but M and A, we had some capital spend so we purchased another business that was of a decent size, two hours. But I will say a company that had a very different culture. A culture that from what I had heard of in the industry, I actually turned around and said there's no way I would work for them. But yeah, through M and A, we eventually worked for them. I was in the HSE manager's role as we took on that. Well, I volunteered for it.

Mark Cowieson [00:34:57]:

I was in the operations team, but I volunteered to be part of that transition period and most importantly move 19,000 processes from what they had in their organization to change them into the company processes, the company values that we have. That doesn't happen overnight. It certainly doesn't happen overnight. You need to start somewhere. The starting somewhere is, as I said again, the 30, 60, 90 days active listening and learning. Try and understand what they believed in, how they, how they showed up against what their company values were. And then that's the opportunity. You can then go, you know what, I'll change that round.

Mark Cowieson [00:35:47]:

And this is what we do. And here's the results of that. Is this something that you would. Yeah, okay, I like that process. Let's go for that. You know, I mean, so it's, it's, it's probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my career, which was to merge with the business and take, I think it was nearly 400 employees on board to onboard them. And it happens regularly in high performing businesses. The more they perform, the more companies they'll merge with and acquire.

Mark Cowieson [00:36:15]:

And yeah, you have a big challenge. Seadrill is a great example where seadrill was a company I worked for. They bought Smedvig to be their management company. They were building maybe something like 15 drilling rigs in the Far East, South Korea and China and such like. But they needed a management company and they looked at us and said, you know what, you guys have done this, you manage it on a smaller basis. But to expand this at scale, we need the people, we need the management team, we need the processes that you've developed in line with the core values and we want to drive that change. But what you ended up doing, you try and you try and get. So say an average rig is about 120 people times 15.

Mark Cowieson [00:37:03]:

They're just not available off the street. And they've all come from very different companies with very different cultures. And you know, you'll get some people that will fall to the side, that's for sure. I've seen that where people just couldn't handle the kind of inclusive culture they were used to. A dictatorship wanted to do their two weeks and then go home again. That was it.

Speaker E [00:37:24]:

You know what I mean?

Mark Cowieson [00:37:26]:

They didn't want to be a place, they didn't want to be included. Just, they just, you know, that's fine. It happens in every business. You're not going to convert everyone as hard as you try. You need to recognize that. But you know, the more, the more you convert, the more they'll help you bring others along the way.

Bertrand Godillot [00:37:43]:

So I love. Yes, it does. And I do have another question on this and that is around high performing people.

Mark Cowieson [00:37:52]:

People.

Bertrand Godillot [00:37:53]:

Yeah, very high performing individuals do not buy into the values. So how do you manage this?

Mark Cowieson [00:38:03]:

Good question. It's a very, very good question. So I'm trying to try and bring it back to examples where I. So let me think of, think of someone along the way that I knew of. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm gonna, that's a tough one. I mean, you listen, I've, I've been guilty of it. When you're, when you're in a, under a lot of pressure, you're, you, you've developed your strategy, you, you've set yourself up high growth, you're working till, you know, you're up at five in the morning and you're working till half ten at night. Those things, you know, there are things that definitely fall to the wayside and at the end of the day bring it back to human behaviors again.

Mark Cowieson [00:38:57]:

They need that check and balance. There's a certain individual who's in the White House right now, who individual that, that doesn't necessarily live some of the values of the, the country that he leads. He needs like, like any high performing individual, he needs checks and balances. He needs people to be able to intervene. And, and I've, I personally have never had that problem. I've had challenges with my leadership team. I challenged my chairman who was in Norway on a particular process that they wanted to introduce. And, and you know, and, and it's, it's having that, it's, it's not easy.

Mark Cowieson [00:39:44]:

But that would be my answer is there needs to be someone in the organization who really believes in it, who can really convince that individual that everybody else believes in it except him and that he needs, you know, he needs to get that mirror back in his face and he needs to be the one who's showing up and living the values. But most importantly, you need to explain to them what can happen if, if he doesn't do that. You know what I mean? There's, what are the consequences? He needs to know what they are.

Bertrand Godillot [00:40:10]:

Well, we have a great question.

Tracy Borreson [00:40:13]:

Yeah. Just, just to wrap that up, one of the things that I actually saw, we had organization, I worked for, had a very quote unquote high performing sales person. They're generating A lot of business who did not match the values whatsoever. And not. I wouldn't say this organization had particularly clear values, but like the regular behavior that everyone else was doing, this person did not match it. And that person ended up getting let go because all of their, like, headbutting with everybody else and it increased the profit that the company was making even though they lost their number one salesperson.

Mark Cowieson [00:40:58]:

Yeah, it's a very, very good point. And what you need to do with that as the leader who would make that choice to let that go when somebody. And this is a crucial thing about showing up as a leader. So we had, we had. We've had individuals that. I've let individuals go who haven't met our expectations, who. Who haven't met. Lived the values.

Mark Cowieson [00:41:19]:

And. But what we've done is we've certainly let the individual know that those are the reasons, but we've let other members in their team know. We've let. And we've made it clear that as you know, the expectations we've set, the high standards that we've set, the values that we've created that we all want to live to. If someone's not willing to follow those, then there's probably a place for them out with the organization and they're not, they're not welcome on the bus or the train as we, as we head on to high performance.

Tim Hughes [00:41:50]:

Yeah, if you let Toxicity into the company, then everybody looks it and goes, why are the leadership doing that? And immediately that gives everybody the green light basically to be toxic.

Mark Cowieson [00:42:07]:

But what I've also seen is where that's happened and they've let someone go and just moved on, not said nothing about it. You know, I remember we held a town hall where we let a very senior member go. We held a town hall and we explained the reasons why we let that person go. And it was a real, you know, a real show up of strength and leadership, but also strengthen the belief of the values that we've all created. You know what I mean? And we all live. So, you know, it's very, very powerful, that message. Trying to think of the exact. I know what happened.

Mark Cowieson [00:42:39]:

I'm trying to think of the exact example.

Tim Hughes [00:42:41]:

Bertrand, you had a question?

Bertrand Godillot [00:42:43]:

Yeah, we have a question from the audience from Santana who says question. I think it is very important for us to connect cultural values to the direct business outcomes. How do we do that? Any thoughts?

Mark Cowieson [00:43:01]:

Very interesting. No, absolutely. You, You've. You need to translate the values into those specific behaviors that people can see. Okay. That's what you need to do right, but integrating them into everything you do. And I said it earlier, it's the hiring process, it's. I remember when I, when I went to a Norwegian company and I went in there, I had all, I've done all the prep, I've done everything.

Mark Cowieson [00:43:30]:

The one thing I sat down and the first question I was asked, so this is our core values. What's your take on, on how are you going to. How would you live this particular value? I was like, you know, but what I did, I joined that organization, right? I learned and really got into the core values. I learned the process and every single interview I did from then on, I used the core value piece because I was able to use it as a. If an individual couldn't answer it, it was also an opportunity for me to share. Hey, I'm the top man here. I'm a leader. This is what I believe in.

Mark Cowieson [00:44:06]:

And here's how I think that if you were to join this organization, you could be a part of that. This is how you can help us with the growth part of it. So you do into that. I mentioned it, Performance reviews. It's a really crucial thing, recognition. So I mentioned it earlier. Recognizing when values are being lived, not necessarily being just being broken or not followed at all, but when people are really showing up and not show up moment, let people know about it, recognize people. The other part is to hold people accountable, right? Absolutely.

Mark Cowieson [00:44:43]:

Holding people accountable for being a role model. I worked with an organization where we had, quote, unquote, 340 leaders. Okay. I generated a leadership two day leadership seminar. Created me and my psychic created a two day seminar. The first question we asked now, so you had 60 people in the room on six or seven sessions. I can't remember how many it was, but we asked one simple question. So we sent them a letter to say that as a leader in our organization, we use the word as a leader in our organization.

Mark Cowieson [00:45:25]:

We invite you to attend a two day leadership seminar where we will look at X, Y and Z.

Mark Cowieson [00:45:32]:

First question we asked was, I only know. I know some of you. I've recognized some faces. Some of you maybe don't me will work remotely. So it's not easy. So one of the, one of the questions I asked was, who in the room are leaders? Show of hands. Who in the room are leaders? Less than all the six and seven. All the six sessions, half the room put their hand up, right? So they didn't even believe, even though we told them your role.

Mark Cowieson [00:46:04]:

So what we had to do is we Sat them down in that two days and we got them in their leadership groups. So there was one group of leaders where we put the, we took out the job title at the top of their job description.

Mark Cowieson [00:46:17]:

And in the job description was their what we expected of them against the core values, etc. Etc. And we asked them, can you, in your groups, can you tell us which role you think that is? Some of the tables didn't even recognize their own job descriptions. So it was a real challenge from, particularly with numbers of people, larger organizations, you really need to make sure it's embedded in the what you do, the how you do. But most importantly, that continual review, the continual recognition, the continual mirror up to yourself. You know, how have I, I asked myself a question. How have I lived the values today? You know, I mean, just that one question. I think we developed some stickers that they put offshore on the mirrors, you know, as they brush their teeth.

Mark Cowieson [00:47:08]:

How have I lived the values today? You know what I mean? How have you lived the values today? So they saw it when they went to the mirror and just that consistent, you know, review, consistent reflection. One of the things that you need to really do is get feedback on your own performance as well, right. That is from your leadership team, but also your employees. Ask them, how have I been showing up? You know what I mean? And you get that occasion where, remember that one time you did this? I didn't necessarily agree with that. And I said, brilliant, thanks for telling me. See you next time. Make sure you tell me then. Don't tell me now, Tell me then, because that's what I encourage you to do.

Mark Cowieson [00:47:48]:

I'll learn from it. You learn from it. And you know, and when someone with an observation system offshore, when somebody would intervene, right. You'd often get grumpy guts that would turn around and say, I'm just, I'm just doing it quickly. I'll leave my alone, you know, I mean, but, but when you make it embedded in the culture that it is the norm to be intervened upon, that's a big, that's, that's a big differential, you know what I mean? So linking that to the business outcomes. Yes. You ultimately will drive the business outcomes are what we're all in business to develop, to make profit. Yeah, absolutely.

Mark Cowieson [00:48:36]:

That's what any business exists for.

Mark Cowieson [00:48:41]:

The crucial thing for me is that you need to sustain that performance of the strategy you've developed. And the only way you can do that is to build that cultural foundation. Once you've got that cultural foundation, you then continue to review of that culture and how things are going. That is how the link between the business performance and the values, that's where the synergy comes in. Hopefully. I've answered that question.

Tracy Borreson [00:49:11]:

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too is just that I think a lot of times people assume that you can have values or you can have performance. And instead of looking at, okay, we desire growth and we desire to live these values, so how are we going to achieve this growth? By doing the things that we value and then you like, build the solution.

Mark Cowieson [00:49:35]:

You know, I mentioned 30, 60, 90 plans, right? So when you're looking, you're doing your analysis, you're doing, you're doing, you know, in a certain role, you look at the financial performance, you'll look at what's your sales pipeline look like, you'll look at what, what can we actually achieve? And you'll set yourself some goals and numbers. Right, that's, that, that's, that's financial planning. That's what that is.

Mark Cowieson [00:49:58]:

At no point did I turn around and say, you know, I need to make sure that I want to double growth and I need to link that back to value. At no point did I even think of that. I knew that if I don't get the values right, I don't get the buy in of the employees. I ain't making sales, I ain't delivering performance, I ain't, you know, I, I'm not able to put in systems that help me deliver what I need to, to do financially. So as much as there's a link, it's not one that you really need to think hard about. It's, you know, cultures that, sorry, companies that are successful typically have a strong, good culture right at the heart of them.

Bertrand Godillot [00:50:43]:

So quick question before I take Ross question because I think this is a, this is a very good question. In the chat, so we've, I'm sure nobody has ever experienced the fact that you are a manager within a company which doesn't have very strong culture and you're crazy enough, you know, to be willing to develop a proper or a better culture in your team, but not necessarily with the backup of your senior management.

Mark Cowieson [00:51:15]:

Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:16]:

How can you make that happen? First of all, is it a good idea? And then how can you make that happen?

Mark Cowieson [00:51:22]:

Sorry, can you just give me that again, Bertrand? Sorry. Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:27]:

Leading a team in an organization with not very, very strong culture, but you still want as a, you could say middle manager or at least as a manager of a team to foster a culture within your team. How can you make that happen.

Mark Cowieson [00:51:46]:

So that's a really good question. And you know, part of your analysis, part of that active listening and learning, you will very quickly learn which people in the organization are going to come along with you.

Mark Cowieson [00:52:00]:

Listen, I've joined two organizations in the last eight years. This particular organization doesn't have the same people who were here four years ago. I've changed out all of them. They've either left through natural leaving, they've not bought into our growth strategy and our culture, or they've been asked to leave. So, so what? To answer your question, what you do is you quickly recognize the ones who will and who will support you to develop that, that strong culture and you make them accountable for certain elements within it.

Mark Cowieson [00:52:38]:

They will bring others on with them.

Mark Cowieson [00:52:40]:

I've seen it in a room and you've got six managers, all line level managers for me, rig managers who, who were big earners, 50 people, 70 people each.

Mark Cowieson [00:52:53]:

You know very quickly that if one of them is more proactive, one of them is showing up against the core values that the others are sitting, going, okay, I, I need to up my game a little bit. I need to do something different. So if you're talking about bringing people along, that, that to me is, is, is. It's not, it's not show up the recognition of that person in the room that is doing it. They're getting consistent recognition from the leadership team. The results are obviously taking care of themselves. As I mentioned, if you've got the right culture, then right safety culture, it will take care of itself having that kind of proactive culture, then ultimately the results will come with that. And that individual has either a choice to join in and support that or maybe ask to leave the business.

Bertrand Godillot [00:53:46]:

All right, maybe one last, one last question. How do you work, how do you work backward and convince the board that.

Mark Cowieson [00:53:54]:

They need to quantize technology in assets, software comparable to.

Tracy Borreson [00:54:01]:

How do you convince a boardroom that it deserves this culture, deserves the same investment.

Tim Hughes [00:54:05]:

When everything, when everything is all the.

Mark Cowieson [00:54:07]:

Same.

Tim Hughes [00:54:09]:

What have you got?

Mark Cowieson [00:54:11]:

So, I mean, you have to, and.

Bertrand Godillot [00:54:14]:

You have, and you have radio short time for that.

Mark Cowieson [00:54:17]:

Yeah. You have to look at, you have to look at examples, right? And you have to look at examples of businesses who have been successful. Let me give you, let me give you a start. I remember I was in a session over in Norway and this, the, the top, top man in style, the absolute chief executive, the big, big man. He, he put up shows you a long ago, it was one of those overhead projectors where you Would write. So he actually wrote his organogram on an overhead projector. It was him at the top and such and such at the bottom. And he, he said the most powerful, powerful thing at that session.

Mark Cowieson [00:54:53]:

He said, I'm the boss. He said, sometimes this is what my organogram looks like with me at the top. And he took the paper and he flipped it around 180 degrees. He went, sometimes this is what my organization looks like. And it was the best at the bottom. At the top. So if you're gonna, if you're gonna. How are you going to convince a boardroom that culture is the differentiator? You have to look at examples of businesses that are out there and already done it.

Mark Cowieson [00:55:22]:

And, and as I said, there was a particular business that I didn't like the culture of and I would never look at them. You know, I mean, we want a contract. Part of our culture was to. Was to be involved in the community.

Mark Cowieson [00:55:40]:

It was a particular part of our values where we wanted to show up. And it's part of our corporate social responsibility. We actually sponsored. We're one of the first sponsors at Pitodri and the contracts team in this organization. It was between us and another contractor and they sought each other and went, you know, these companies, they're both pretty similar. They're both the same. And just at the point they were asking that question, who we're going to pick Our name came up on the advertising board at the football at Petoudre and they both looked at one another and went, well, you know, they support our local home team. They do a lot, lot more in the community.

Mark Cowieson [00:56:16]:

That's a differentiator for me. And we actually want a. No feedback from these people. We won a contract because of. To me bringing it right back to the culture.

Bertrand Godillot [00:56:26]:

Great. Well, Mark, really thank you so much. We could.

Tim Hughes [00:56:30]:

Thank you, Mark.

Bertrand Godillot [00:56:30]:

We could keep this going for four hours.

Mark Cowieson [00:56:32]:

I'm sure we could thank for the guests and the questions that they put in because without them we wouldn't be here. So thank you.

Bertrand Godillot [00:56:41]:

Where can we learn more and where can we find you?

Mark Cowieson [00:56:44]:

So. Www.lhrmarine.com that's my website. We're a safety equipment and marine equipment supplier. We are the largest distributor in Europe for fall protection equipment. We work with all the big people. Part of our growth strategy. We've significantly increased our stockholding from something like 200,000 to nearly three and a half million in Aberdeen in four years. So if we, if you want it, we probably got it.

Mark Cowieson [00:57:18]:

But it's backed up by specialists and we work with people and we've got some really good, strong supply chain partners that provide support for us. You can also on YouTube put in shark Happens but Safety Matters and you'll see some short, less than three minute videos of me and all my collection of sharks.

Bertrand Godillot [00:57:43]:

I want to see that.

Mark Cowieson [00:57:45]:

Getting some of the benefits of some of the, the key factors of the products that we sell and why you should consider them. So that's where you can find me. And most importantly, if anybody wants to hit me up on LinkedIn, you should be able to send me a. Send me a thing. I'll just leave you with one thing though. You know, you asked me, you sent me a question you didn't necessarily answer during the day. But there's a principle I use that helps me create an environment where employees flirt, right? So I named it the Beer Principle. Okay, Beer.

Mark Cowieson [00:58:23]:

Beer's principle. B E I R S. So be visible, encourage open dialogue, invest in personal growth. Recognize and reward and the s support, flexibility and well being. The Beer's principle. I'll put it in the comments for you.

Tim Hughes [00:58:45]:

Put it in the comments.

Bertrand Godillot [00:58:46]:

Excellent. Excellent.

Mark Cowieson [00:58:48]:

Well, thank you.

Bertrand Godillot [00:58:49]:

Thank you so much, Mark. We now have a newsletter so you know, don't miss an episode. Get the show highlights, be on the show insights and information on pieces of information. A lot of upcoming episodes. You may scan the QR code on screen. Thank you, Tracy. Or visit us on digital download.live/newsletter. On behalf of our panelists, Mark, thank you.

Bertrand Godillot [00:59:19]:

Thank you so much and thank you all and see you next time. Bye Bye.

Tracy Borreson [00:59:25]:

Thanks everyone.

Mark Cowieson [00:59:26]:

Bye.

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