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(upbeat music)
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Greg, Jon,
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thanks for joining us today to talk about Octopus Energy's
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highly innovative approach to operations.
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I'd like to start by going back to 2015,
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when you entered an industry which
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I think some would see as quite traditional.
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Why did you choose that market to enter?
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Well, I think the founding team,
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we previously had a business that built
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platforms for a whole variety of industries.
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And I think what we saw was, time and again,
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that there were industries that thought
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they wouldn't be disrupted by technology,
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and they were the ones where the greatest opportunity lay.
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And, you know, with energy,
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you had this sector where companies were
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running on systems that are a couple of decades old,
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where customers were experiencing poor service,
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and where companies were typically quite bloated
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and bureaucratic. So we had the opportunity to not only
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kind of build a business where we use technology to
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dramatically improve customer service and drive down costs,
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but we could also, hopefully,
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find ways to use technology
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to help change the sector
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from one which causes climate change to one which,
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potentially, starts to fight climate change.
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Wow, pretty, big bold ambitions there then.
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And so,
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Jon, if I can come to you,
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you had worked in many other energy retailers beforehand.
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What did you take from those that you wanted to
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try and do differently this time?
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Yeah, I mean, I think I spent my whole career
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working in electricity and gas businesses and seeing,
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you know, time and time again,
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the same sort of technology platforms
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and the same sort of organizational structures,
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which to me looked designed
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to give customers a bad experience.
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And so, the opportunity to really rewrite the rule book on
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how you organize teams
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and how you organize and structure a business
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to deliver better outcomes for customers-and,
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I think, most importantly,
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better outcomes for the people
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who actually work within them-was
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a really exciting challenge.
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For somebody joining Octopus,
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what would that feel like then?
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Everybody starts with Octopus
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understanding the most important job in this business
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is looking after customers.
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Everyone who starts at Octopus Energy,
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whether they're starting in a marketing function
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or in a tech function,
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they'll go through some training to learn how to
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respond to customer emails,
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or to learn how and what our energy specialists do.
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We hired a marketing director,
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a few years ago now.
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And within a day or two, she came to me and said,
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"Where do I get legal sign-off for copy?"
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Right.
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And I said, "Well, you're don't."
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And she said, "What do you mean?"
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I said, "Well, you're the marketing director.
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You take responsibility.
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You sign off."
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Early on, the most senior people
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kind of hit this new paradigm
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in which they're asked to take responsibility,
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rather than to find someone else
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who's going to take responsibility.
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That's one of the best examples for me
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of the differences that people get when they come here.
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Greg, what are the other,
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leadership behaviors that you think are critical
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for success in this sort of model that Octopus has?
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I think the most important one actually
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is that we're all one team.
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And I know companies say this, right?
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We have no bonuses,
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and we don't have KPIs or targets
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for the functional heads or for our business leaders.
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So, I'd much rather we get something wrong
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and wrap our arms around each other-
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which means we're going to the next thing
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as a collaborative support team-
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than we end up blaming each other. Because
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business is a repeated game and
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we're only as good as the next match.
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I think our freedom is very important in our organization
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so that people feel that they can be their full selves,
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but also, making sure that's balanced with really honest,
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candid, transparent,
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feedback when things are going wrong
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or when people are doing things that aren't quite aligned to
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how we think about the world at Octopus.
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Thinking about the model: it's something you've built
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from scratch with a very clear sense of purpose.
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And you've kind of designed everything very carefully,
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really clear. It's been fascinating to learn about that.
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How could this be relevant to an existing organization?
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We've had an incredible opportunity
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over the last 12 months to help
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a very large incumbent energy company in the UK
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and a very large incumbent energy company in Australia
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try to move to an Octopus Energy operating model
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using the Kraken Technology platform
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and our operating model blueprint.
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And what's really fascinating is,
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for frontline teams,
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what these businesses are really about-
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serving customers
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and bringing outrageously good service to customers
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and then building a business around that-
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they transitioned incredibly well into this model because
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they're moving from a constrained, policy-driven
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departmental silo to
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high degrees of autonomy
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and high degrees of freedom and responsibility.
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It's like the service Nirvana for them.
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The big observation for us was that
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transforming the existing stuff is difficult.
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But starting from scratch,
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that's the way that you can
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reinvent all your processes,
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reinvent the way in which people work, and everything.
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I think the real exciting opportunity
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is to take everything you know as an existing company,
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create that start-up,
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but double down on it
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as it gets bigger.
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Fundamentally, the core of all of this
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is something we start the conversation with,
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which is actually trust and responsibility.
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The vast majority of people that work in most
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organizations can be trusted with far more responsibility
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than they're typically given.
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And if we want to create organizations that are
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multifold more efficient,
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more capable, more agile,
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we need to give people multifold more responsibility.
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Greg, Jon,
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thank you very much for your time and your insights today.
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It's been fascinating, thank you.