Paul L’Estrange – former CTO, Mars – Driving Transformation While Mitigating Risk

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hi! I'm Shannon Lucas, one of the co-ceos of catalyst constellations which is dedicated to empowering catalyst to create bold, powerful change in the world.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: This is our podcast move, fast, break, shit burnout. Where we speak with catalyst executives about ways to successfully lead transformation in large organizations. And today I am super excited. We finally did it. I'm here with Paula. Strange welcome, Paul.

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Paul L'Estrange: Thank you very much, Shannon. Great to be here great to finally get together.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: We did it. Paul is the founder of quantum advisory services supporting chief technology officers and it executives to navigate the complex world of technology delivery for global organizations.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Paul has served as a catalyst in large public and private companies, in consulting consumer products and fashion retail industries and focused on supporting the growth of powerful consumer brands, including Mars and Pvh. Corp. Owners of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, Bacardi, Philip Morse, international and more

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Paul brings global expertise to his catalyst roles and unique perspectives on running world class. It delivery teams, all right. So that's the high level. But we'd love to hear about your journey through the catalytic lens. Maybe you can share a few career highlights that you're proud of things that help us see your catalytic nature.

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Paul L'Estrange: Great would love to

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Paul L'Estrange: you know I've been reflecting on this as the, as you know, I've been preparing for this interview, and something that that really struck me is my name Lestrange or Lestrange in French.

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Paul L'Estrange: is really driven from, you know, people who join different groups around the world, and if I look back into my ancestors, you know, there's a whole lot of people who 1st were engineers, and, secondly, people who have gone from one side of the world to the other, to build something or deliver something or make change happen. And so I'm convinced that I must have some DNA, and I'm sure most catalysts have some DNA

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Paul L'Estrange: that really drive them to be who they are. And so the whole nature and nurture situation, I think, brings us to to where we are.

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Paul L'Estrange: I love solving problems.

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Paul L'Estrange: I've spent a lot of time working with the internal. It organizations. I mean, it's it's fascinating that it is very much a catalyst and a change agent for large organizations, and at the same time the It organization itself

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Paul L'Estrange: is constantly changing.

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Paul L'Estrange: and I've played a lot of roles in it, and the one that I've really gravitated to the most is the role of constantly changing and reinventing it itself.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing. Do you want to give a couple of examples of how you've done that? How you've been the catalyst for the catalyst it organization.

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Paul L'Estrange: Sure. So often I've come in as the chief technology officer.

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Paul L'Estrange: And then so you you generally have a chief informational chief digital officer and a chief technology officer. And the chief technology officer very much focuses on bringing new technologies and infrastructure into large organizations and over time, that role has really become in many organizations the coo of it, the chief operating officer of it, and

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Paul L'Estrange: it tends to bring in your operations teams, your delivery teams.

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Paul L'Estrange: and then by bringing together all those elements of it, you're constantly challenged to reinvent that. And that's where you put in place ecosystems with 3rd parties. That's when you apply the technologies that we're applying externally in the business into it itself, like machine learning like AI, and and

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Paul L'Estrange: you're you're using all those different techniques and technologies to transform internally the It organization so it can deliver cheaper, faster, better, and and all 3 are possible in the it world.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So I'd love to understand with that lens, how you identify with the concept of catalyst, especially catalyst, and how, being a catalyst, can support you as an executive.

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Paul L'Estrange: So I love the name catalyst. I started looking for a name, and then, when when you, when you brought it up to me it. It

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Paul L'Estrange: completely reflects how I operate into an organization. You know I love change myself.

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Paul L'Estrange: I love coming into a new organization.

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Paul L'Estrange: Looking at the organization. Look at where I can add value.

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Paul L'Estrange: I'm always interested in, you know, finding a new mousetrap to do something or to build something. And and so I'm always looking for that challenge, that constant challenge to come in and make change happen.

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Paul L'Estrange: And you know, another dimension is, I really believe, in

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Paul L'Estrange: gaining as many experiences as possible to have in your toolkit

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Paul L'Estrange: how you can actually make change happen in organization. And you know I've taken sabbaticals. I've worked for startups. I love cooking. I love travel. I love the stock market, I mean some of the some of the. The

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Paul L'Estrange: the best information I get around. Technology is also following those companies on the stock market as well. And so what I do is I use all those experiences that I've gained from either hobbies or personal interests, and my professional career

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Paul L'Estrange: to solve problems in the internal it organization.

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Paul L'Estrange: And I think it's it's it's it's very powerful to use all those different dimensions.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's spot on with how we think about catalysts like I often talk about like the dot, the sensing, and the dot connecting. It's like you read a Sci-fi book, you read a Mckinsey report, you talk to customers, you have your external things, and from that these things start to emerge about ways that we can help the organization transform. I'm curious if there was a moment when you realized as a catalyst.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: but maybe obviously not having that term that you operated differently from some of your peers, either in other it roles in other organizations, or internally in your in the places you were working.

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Paul L'Estrange: Definitely so because I gravitate towards the delivery organization.

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Paul L'Estrange: You know, a lot of delivery and technical and operations people, they're very analytical. They're very process driven.

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Paul L'Estrange: And you know, like, structure can become risk averse over time. And that's just the nature of the role. Because, you know we're constantly faced with cyber threats. You know, things, problems happening around the world, things breaking that you need to fix. And

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Paul L'Estrange: I would always come in with, you know, a perspective of.

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Paul L'Estrange: we need to be close to the customer. We need to understand. You know how we're impacting the end customer

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Paul L'Estrange: and a lot of what I do when I come into an organization is to work with the team on pulling them out of the process, because people tend to really love the process, and the process gets more and more complicated over time. As we had layer and layer of of complexity, and really start to get people to identify the customer groups they're serving.

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Paul L'Estrange: And you know, in a large public organization it can be the the end consumer or the end customer. It can be the employees themselves, or it could be the shareholders. And if you start to draw a line of sight to the work that everyone's doing in the delivery and operations organization to how they're benefiting those customer groups. I find that it's a complete revolution in the way people think. And that's

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Paul L'Estrange: and and I started to realize that I do that. And the more I do that the more success I had.

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Paul L'Estrange: And so you you do see a lot of, because I work for private and public companies. You do see that more natural in private companies, because you can identify the owners. And often, you know, when people are working, or you know there is this desire to constantly please the owners and do the right thing by the owners. And so you. You do see that more often. And people are sort of.

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Paul L'Estrange: you know, looking at how to do things better, how they how to save cost, because they see who the owners are, and and they want to do the right thing by them in a public company. It's more complex. So

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Paul L'Estrange: if you can draw a line of sight to the customer groups

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Paul L'Estrange: still respecting the risk management still respecting the processes that are absolutely necessary, not the processes that are there.

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Paul L'Estrange: I find it's it's it's a revolution. And it frees up a lot of the technical and analytical people in their thinking. They they, it's it's just like they're they're completely rejuvenated.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, it's so fascinating the impact of quarterly earnings on driving transformation and leading change. We could probably have a whole whole hour long conversation about that. But I would love to pivot. I mean, I think that that's a great segue to understand, like maybe one or 2 of the biggest challenges that you faced as a catalyst executive, and you know how you work through them. What was most helpful.

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Paul L'Estrange: Yeah. So

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Paul L'Estrange: as you know, being an it as an executive long time. A lot of the work we do is restructurings or outsourcing. And as you.

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Paul L'Estrange: as you play those roles, you're looking for a combination of, you know, building the right ecosystem where your internal organization is focusing on. You know what is unique to that that business or that organization. And then you use 3rd parties to help you with. You know, a lot of commodity activities as well.

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Paul L'Estrange: While you're making that change, you need to keep things running.

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Paul L'Estrange: and you need to prevent any outages. And you know what what a lot of people aren't aware of who don't work in it. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there every day

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Paul L'Estrange: so dedicated, making sure that things are running every day and

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Paul L'Estrange: While you're making that change happen.

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Paul L'Estrange: you need to make sure that you're managing the risk at the same time as introducing the change in the restructuring.

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Paul L'Estrange: And

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Paul L'Estrange: what I find I need in that is to make sure that I have the right team with me and I've seen some of your your previous guests talk about the right numbers, too, and the right team members with them that balance them. I am a big change agent. I come in and I make change to an organization.

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Paul L'Estrange: But what I also know that I need next to me is people who are my reality check

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Paul L'Estrange: people who help me manage risk

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Paul L'Estrange: people who call out to me when I'm about to cross the line.

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Paul L'Estrange: And you know I've done many restructuring activities, and many, you know, redesign of the It organization activities. And I find those people very, very valuable to have next to me, and I actually look for them. As soon as I move into an organization I look for those people who can guide me. I don't always listen to everything they say. But they're essential for me

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Paul L'Estrange: being successful.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's such a powerful moment, was it, when, as a catalyst executive, I don't know. For me there was sort of like a letting go. It was like this liberation of Oh, I can have, like a chief of staff and a Vp. Of operations, like people who are playing different functions for me.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Excuse me to do that. I am curious about that nuance that you said at the end, which is, you know, as a leader. How do we invite the, you know, today we would call it psychological safety. But on a you know, one on one with those people who are supporting you where it's like I invite it. It doesn't mean that I'm always going to listen to it, and I don't know about you, but sometimes I like to have some healthy debate as we're going through, because I'm learning as we're having the conversations. Do you have any

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: insights into how to navigate those partnerships most effectively?

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Paul L'Estrange: I think it starts with respecting everyone and the the role they play. You know, I see too often new executives come in and completely dismiss everything that's been done in the past. And I mean, yes, you need to create a burning platform. Yes, you need to drive, change and create a sense of urgency. But at the same time you need to understand why things are the way they are.

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Paul L'Estrange: And I've spent a lot of time you know, understanding what people do

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Paul L'Estrange: appreciating what they do, telling them that I appreciate what they.

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Paul L'Estrange: And then, you know, building your plan together.

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Paul L'Estrange: and and recognizing that you do need those different roles to be successful.

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Paul L'Estrange: And I find you know you. You bring people into solving the problem together.

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Paul L'Estrange: you know, that's that's that's when everyone's on board. And and you're successful. And and I often find that they're looking for for a leader or someone to come in.

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Paul L'Estrange: and you know, drive, change, and help them make change

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Paul L'Estrange: and as long as you know you, you bring them in as part of the solution and and part of the team and value their their expertise. It's been very successful.

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Paul L'Estrange: I did. I did remember just also another moment where I realized that I, you know, was a bit different. And I need. I needed sort of support from other profiles and other team members to be successful, and it was on a, you know, a large restructuring number of years ago, and we did a like a change management exercise with Hr. For the for the team driving the change.

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Paul L'Estrange: and one of the activities was to place. There's about 15 of us place us on the change curve.

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Paul L'Estrange: and we drew out a change curve on the floor, and the 15 people position themselves on the change curve the different stage of the Change curve.

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Paul L'Estrange: Now I was over here right on the end. Now, largely because probably I I'm the person who drives a lot of the change. So I have the idea early in the process. But I looked back, and the most of the team was, you know, stages back, and you know, up to like, you know, 6 months in the journey

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Paul L'Estrange: behind me, and that that was a wake up to me. And fortunately it happened about halfway through my career. That

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Paul L'Estrange: you know I was not checking in with, and this was the core team. So I was not checking in enough with people

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Paul L'Estrange: to make sure that we're all at the same place on the Change Curve, or close enough on the change curve to be successful. And and that sort of changed the way I go into these situations now, where I am actually checking back. And I am getting a you know, guidance from people along the way to to, you know. Make sure that we're all we're all tracking together. So.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's so powerful. And you know, when Tracy 1st shared the catalyst research with me, and I wish it had been earlier in my career. Because I like having that epiphany and just being like, I thought I just wasn't explaining it the right way, or but it's like, no, they actually have a different relationship with change than I do. Which means that I need to. And it's on us, I believe, as the catalyst to understand what they need to come on the journey with us, which is what you were talking about right before that. You're like

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: bringing people along valuing their expertise like there's lots of tools that we can do to bring people on that change curve. But I think it's a super important realization for organizations.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It does. I. I am super curious about something that comes up in conversations a lot nowadays, which is, if you look at the standard deviation change curve, you know, change, curve standard deviations.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and if catalysts are on sort of the the pointy end on one end.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: how do you think about like in this new world of New world, the the pace and acceleration of change that we have today, and the amplitude and all of that our organizations gonna need to shift if you like, mapped the whole employee base to the change curve. Our employee, our organizations gonna have to shift a little bit like, will there be people who are left on the bus left off the bus.

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Paul L'Estrange: I so certainly the pace of change is moving faster and faster.

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Paul L'Estrange: I think organizations have to spend a lot of time

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Paul L'Estrange: helping people understand that change is now constant.

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Paul L'Estrange: It's not a you know. It's not something that comes in every 3 to 5 years. And I think I think that's the challenge. The challenge is, how do we?

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Paul L'Estrange: How do we all understand? And how do we, you know, lead our teams in this mindset? And it's like it's like the ad learning agile.

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Paul L'Estrange: It's like the, you know, the the learning, agile concept.

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Paul L'Estrange: and I think that's where a lot of work needs to go is that you know.

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Paul L'Estrange: we need to be in a situation that you know it's it's gonna be happening at a faster pace. At the same time

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Paul L'Estrange: for a lot of the organizations that I've led. We need to manage the risk.

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Paul L'Estrange: And you know, particularly in the world of, you know, cyber attacks that, you know. Look in global organizations. You can have a cyber attack that comes through one country via another country, through an update, and it can bring down your organization in 15 min globally.

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Paul L'Estrange: And as we're introducing change, and, you know, playing the catalyst role as well, I think we

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Paul L'Estrange: also need to understand how we manage the risk.

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Paul L'Estrange: And and that's a that's a dimension that as catalysts.

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Paul L'Estrange: we need to be aware of more and more because the the the threat of

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Paul L'Estrange: you know, cyber. And you know things just happening that can bring down the brand reputation of a company or the revenue of a company or the quality of the products

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Paul L'Estrange: is just becoming, you know. More and more.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, thanks for that answer. It reflects back a little of my own, my own bias, because I think it is always a great remember to catalyst to be like the people who are on the other, you know. Spectrum of the Change Curve have a lot to offer to, and if we don't stop and listen to them about. You know what is holding them back. They are the often the gatekeepers, or they hold the institutional knowledge about what the risk is or like. Yeah, we did try this before, and it failed. But if you lean

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: into them the learnings that we can get instead of like I. Clearly I can be a little bit dismissive sometimes, which is probably not always a great way to bring the organization along.

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Paul L'Estrange: And and that's where my experience has been. If you can really value what everyone does in the organization, you know the the risk management side as well as the change catalyst side.

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Paul L'Estrange: And if you can help draw a line of sight for everyone to the customer group, they're helping.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Paul L'Estrange: It really brings a different mindset.

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Paul L'Estrange: And again, in large it organizations, you know. Traditionally, you've had this concept. Well, you know, things always break in our global organization is always something breaking somewhere that you need to fix. And and the mindset has been okay when it breaks, we're gonna fix it. How quickly do we restore things?

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Paul L'Estrange: Part of the mindset shift there now is okay. We have customer groups. We're serving every time something breaks. It's impacting one of those customer groups. So how do we? How do we get this 0 problem mentality? Or you know, 0 incident mentality? It's called in it where we design for things not breaking, you know. From a technology point of view, from a process point of view. And

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Paul L'Estrange: that also, I think, helps people feel valued, helps people realize that you know

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Paul L'Estrange: everything that everyone does in the organization is for the benefit of a customer group.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's interesting because, you talked earlier about this, which I wanted to double click on that tension of needing to transform

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: while mitigating risk. On the other side. There's the people who keep the lights on, and then there's the people who are leaning into the new, whatever it is.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: What we see today is, there's a lot of organizations who are culturally trying to accelerate the transformation mentality. Thinking about, is it the a new value? And how we work new ways of operating.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And again, what we see is because there's a lot of focus on that sort of in the employee engagement and the messaging from executives, the people who are in the like mitigating risk and keeping the lights on which is obviously crucial to the business, can feel a little bit left behind forgotten. They're like, we're not working on the shiny new thing that everyone is focused and celebrating. How do you keep people engaged in that sort of ambidextrous organization, and have them all feel valued.

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Paul L'Estrange: So that's exactly what I was talking about. So you're absolutely right. That's that's the way

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Paul L'Estrange: that's the way these large organizations are is, you know, certain people are in the spotlight. You know, bringing new ideas, new technologies, new concepts. And then you have people who are running the business every day. I am the poster child. I am the voice of these people.

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Paul L'Estrange: These people are so important to the success of the business every day. If it wasn't for these people and the dedication of these people. The other people can't operate as soon as something breaks. There is no focus on the shiny new. There is only focus on getting the business up and running. And so that's exactly why I spend a lot of time working with the operations and delivery people

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Paul L'Estrange: having them understand that what they do is very valuable to a customer group, and

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Paul L'Estrange: most things that we're doing to be catalysts to help business change, we can apply internally

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Paul L'Estrange: to the delivery organization. So the AI, we're doing machine learning and AI to the delivery organization, we're making sure that you know, instead of waiting for something to happen that we need to fix. We're actually doing, you know, predictive analytics and you know, proactive maintenance to make sure that things don't break. We can apply a lot of those concepts that are happening in one part of the organization internally to the delivery organization itself.

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Paul L'Estrange: And so that's what I spend a lot of time doing when I go into organizations. And so, being the catalyst of the delivery organization taking cues from what's happening elsewhere in the organization.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And so tactically does it come down to like ins incentives, or visibility or reward, or I'm just curious, like I I hear the time.

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Paul L'Estrange: Starts with visibility.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Paul L'Estrange: It's it starts with visibility because it itself is a black box. To many people.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Right.

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Paul L'Estrange: The delivery side of it is even a black, a blacker box to it, people.

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Paul L'Estrange: and it has a lot of jargon. Again, people are very analytical, very process driven.

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Paul L'Estrange: And I find it starts with

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Paul L'Estrange: visibility of what people are doing.

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Paul L'Estrange: And having conversations just like this with my peers and other executives in the organization to really

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Paul L'Estrange: you know, bring the spotlight to that organization

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Paul L'Estrange: and and once you start doing that. And once. You know, this organization has so much to offer, I mean, it is constantly. It can constantly reinvent itself. It can constantly look for ways to, you know cut costs save money. Deliver better quality the the talent required to make this organization run well is is critical to the, to the total company.

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Paul L'Estrange: and

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Paul L'Estrange: and I find by just bringing a spotlight on that. And and you know, talking about it makes a huge difference.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I'm curious to one of the challenges that we see a lot of organizations struggling now with is having sort of the outcome. Slash, you know, change the ownership mentality around change and outcomes

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: having people really feel and believe that. And obviously not every organization is inviting that. But having spent a lot of time in it myself, I know that the it can often feel like they're the order takers, right like they'll just get this long list of things that the organization wants. And so I'm just wondering if you have any advice

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: for people, particularly in that sphere of the world, about how to help employees have an ownership, an outcome, ownership, mindset.

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Paul L'Estrange: So I think we have

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Paul L'Estrange: over decades as a function. We have fallen into the order taker mentality.

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Paul L'Estrange: Again, I believe

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Paul L'Estrange: it is one of the most valuable functions in every company. It is a peer function to finance, to Hr. To marketing, to sales, to

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Paul L'Estrange: legal, to every other function, if not more. There is no other function that constantly goes through change.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Paul L'Estrange: It's really just being able to articulate

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Paul L'Estrange: the role we play and the importance we play

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Paul L'Estrange: and you know, I think

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Paul L'Estrange: more and more. You know, leaders are doing that, and and

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Paul L'Estrange: as we do that, and as we, you know, are better at communicating, and have the conversation and drawing line of sight to the value we bring and the risk that we manage.

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Paul L'Estrange: It just builds more and more success.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And it's a i think it's also great call out, because so many of the you know, we do these catalyst programs with large organizations. And so, whatever to your point, whatever area of opportunity that the catalyst teams are tackling.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: a majority of them in some way are going to have to work with it. And so we also talk a lot about like having the compassion and bringing them along and understanding. You know where the the overlap of the Venn diagram is so that there's wins, for on on both sides of that

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Paul L'Estrange: Information in every function is often driven by it.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: That's it. Totally.

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Paul L'Estrange: It's it's it's it's driven by, you know, Mobile, it's driven by, you know, consumer engagement. It's driven by. I mean, it is a thread that goes through every function. It's it's it's quite a unique function, because there are often, you know, towers with, you know, finance, Hr. Marketing, etc. It is a thread that has to go through every function and gets a total view of the organization.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: That's right.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Okay, I'm curious. It's not easy as a catalyst to sort of always make it to the upper echelons of organizations for different reasons. So I'm wondering if you have advice about, like, you know. Ha! What has helped you become a successful catalyst executive, or maybe asked another way. What can stop a catalyst from becoming an executive.

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Paul L'Estrange: So, as I said, DNA, I mean, I I love change. So I'm attracted to change. I'm I'm attracted to new challenges.

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Paul L'Estrange: You know this career has taken me on an incredible journey. I mean, I'm living now in the 5th country.

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Paul L'Estrange: you know, due to this career, I mean, I've moved from country to country.

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Paul L'Estrange: Because of jobs, I think.

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Paul L'Estrange: I think that's the 1st thing is is.

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Paul L'Estrange: if you're that type of person.

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Paul L'Estrange: seek the challenges, seek, seek the changes. Put put yourself, and people often call it luck, you know. They say, Oh, you're so lucky! Well, you need to put your way in luck. You put yourself in the path of luck.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: That's right.

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Paul L'Estrange: And so I think and you know

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Paul L'Estrange: I have moved from country to country, and I've not been a resident of those countries, but it hasn't stopped me. You sort of you know things just work out. And you, you know, if if you have certain expertise, then you just you know you're able to do that.

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Paul L'Estrange: I think associated with that is, if things are not working out where you are for various reasons have the courage to move on.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yes.

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Paul L'Estrange: And

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Paul L'Estrange: early in my career I probably stayed too long in certain companies. For good reasons. We have all good reasons why we we stay.

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Paul L'Estrange: But I think if you're if you're not being appreciated, if you're not being recognized, if you're not advancing in your career or doing the sort of work you'd like to do.

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Paul L'Estrange: Take the courage to go somewhere else.

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Paul L'Estrange: I think that's a that's a huge piece of advice. Another piece of advice is.

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Paul L'Estrange: don't get caught up in the process, you know. We

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Paul L'Estrange: often get drawn into following a process and processes sly and

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Paul L'Estrange: pull yourself out of a process and try and focus on those customers

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Paul L'Estrange: and the outcomes. And you know, why are we actually doing something, and who is benefiting from the catalyst role of the activity that we're driving. I think too too often in large organizations

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Paul L'Estrange: they are very process heavy. We get pulled down by the machines.

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Paul L'Estrange: And you you just need to.

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Paul L'Estrange: You just need to fight that sometimes and and pull yourself up out of it.

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Paul L'Estrange: I've had. I've had a couple of great mentors along the way, and I think

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Paul L'Estrange: One of the best mentors was, you know. He

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Paul L'Estrange: he gave me plenty of rope

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Paul L'Estrange: he gave me. I don't like being micromanaged.

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Paul L'Estrange: But he was there when I needed some checks and balances and advice.

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Paul L'Estrange: and, you know, very supportive when I needed him

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Paul L'Estrange: at the same time, you know, gave me plenty of rope to to

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Paul L'Estrange: I, you know he helped me identify what needed to be done, but didn't tell me how to do it.

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Paul L'Estrange: And I think that's key as a mentor in

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Paul L'Estrange: helping people identify what the right thing is to do.

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Paul L'Estrange: But you know, letting us work out the right way to do it.

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Paul L'Estrange: Yeah.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing list of advice. Thank you.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: As we wrap up. I'd love to hear about your favorite catalyst who's inspired you, past or present, and why.

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Paul L'Estrange: So I have a few it might be a bit controversial, but we'll certainly one is Bill Gates.

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Paul L'Estrange: Particularly the Ngo work

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Paul L'Estrange: he has done, I mean, hugely successful with Microsoft, I think, even beyond that is just all the Ngo work that is promoted for a very long time. It's just so inspirational.

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Paul L'Estrange: And the other one is Elon Musk.

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Paul L'Estrange: and I'm sure that is controversial. I just.

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Paul L'Estrange: you know, when when you think of Da Vinci, and you think of you know the the change that he brought to the world.

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Paul L'Estrange: And then you think about, you know electric cars, and you think about flying to Mars, and you think about

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Paul L'Estrange: boring tunnels, and you think about robotics. And you think I mean, it's just incredible. And

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Paul L'Estrange: and not only coming up with the ideas, but actually making many things happen.

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Paul L'Estrange: I think you know history will look back in 50 years and say, Wow! You know

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Paul L'Estrange: he brought a lot, so

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: There's no denying that. Totally. Yeah, there's no denying there's no denying the impact of what he's done, and also just going back to something else that you said the it's the challenging, the outcomes, but also like thinking. I mean, particularly in sort of some of his areas. The customer experience which really unlocked. Like as he was challenging what seemed like established norms, or think thoughts about how systems worked.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: He really reverse engineered that from a customer perspective, so yeah, anyone else.

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Paul L'Estrange: Oh, many I mean alike.

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Paul L'Estrange: you know. I like the work, Richard Branson, over the years.

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Paul L'Estrange: Again, you know the courage to create. You know the the stories you know around him creating virgin, and

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Paul L'Estrange: and you know just the courage he had to like set up an airline. And then.

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Paul L'Estrange: you know, just because the stories didn't, didn't, didn't like or he didn't like what he was getting from the other airline. And just people who

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Paul L'Estrange: who have the inspiration. Just courage to to challenge the status quo like that. Yeah, inspire me.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Awesome. Paul, will you inspire me? Thank you for the time today? This was an amazing conversation.

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Paul L'Estrange: Thank you very much.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And to our listening audience. Thank you for joining us. If you'd like to learn more about how to create bold, powerful change in the world. Be sure to check out our book, move fast, break, shit, burn out, or go to our website at catalystconstellations.com.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: If you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Please take 10 seconds to rate it on itunes, spotify stitcher wherever you listen to your podcasts and of course. If you have other catalysts in your life. Hit the share button and send a link their way. Thanks again.