"At the business level, what I observed was that many businesses realised they could also slow down, to think more deeply about their people, their customers, their partners, and be able to work together more carefully."
Meet Scott Ko, the present Acting CEO of Leadership Victoria, a leadership development social enterprise that fosters purposeful leadership for an inclusive, equitable, and sustainable society.
He’s also the CEO of ColourSpace Gallery, a social enterprise that creates human-centred, engaging workplaces by filling it with art from local artists. Additionally, Scott is also the Co-founder of Curiosity Journals, a journal that cultivates the curiosity mindset to help people think more clearly, act with confidence, and make meaningful progress.
Whilst that may sound like disparate roles, what connects all of these is a deep focus on leadership, psychology, systems thinking, design thinking, social impact, and the belief that by tapping into all of our experiences, we can create social change far beyond ourselves.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Scott Ko: Thanks for the opportunity! My name’s Scott, and I’m presently the Acting CEO of Leadership Victoria. We’re an Australian social enterprise that fosters purposeful leadership for an inclusive, equitable, and sustainable society. We do this through a variety of leadership development programs that bring together people from all walks of life and instil within them the principles of Adaptive Leadership; the idea that leadership is a behaviour, not a position. The most prominent and prestigious of our programs is the year-long Williamson Leadership Program, the alumni of which have gone on to make incredible impact in Australia and around the world.
As for myself, my formative background was in management consulting where I specialised in strategy, implementation, and design thinking for both public and private sectors. I also have extensive experience in entrepreneurship, startups, and social enterprise. For instance, prior to joining Leadership Victoria, I founded a social enterprise start up in the arts and wellbeing sector called ColourSpace, a service that enriches work places with art whilst creating new opportunities for local emerging artists. ColourSpace continues to grow post-pandemic, and I continue maintain oversight as the CEO of ColourSpace in-between my work at Leadership Victoria.
2020 and 2021 threw a lot of curve balls into business on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past couple years, how can businesses thrive in 2022? What lessons have you learned?
Scott Ko: I think the pandemic acted as an interesting circuit breaker of sorts for many businesses and leaders. Pre-pandemic, I believe that many businesses operated on sheer market momentum, meaning they succeeded (or failed) simply by focusing on the basic components of business: Find new customers, service them, make a profit, repeat. The problem with this Keynesian model however is that it also resulted in businesses cutting corners or making decisions that also had negative impacts on people.
What I believe the pandemic has done is shown that there can be different ways of working, and that growth and success isn’t defined purely by profit. At an individual level, I see more people thinking more deeply about what they do, their purpose, and re-prioritising what is meaningful, which is what I think is contributing to the ‘Great Resignation’.
At the business level, what I observed was that many businesses realised they could also slow down, to think more deeply about their people, their customers, their partners, and be able to work together more carefully.
Thus the biggest lesson I’ve learned in a leadership capacity is the importance of deeply listening and empathising with what people are saying (customers and staff alike), and then adapting the business to suit. Importantly, this doesn’t mean sacrificing profit or business growth; it means better understanding *why* we do what we do, and thinking more about the impact we create.
The pandemic seems to keep on disrupting the economy, what should businesses focus on in 2022? What advice would you share?
Scott Ko: There’s two observations I have. Firstly, from a market perspective, I think it’s really important to listen to and understand what it is customers value. Don’t just be satisfied with just winning work for the sake of it; what I think is more important is understanding why a customer chose to work (or not work) with you. Secondly, from a business perspective, I think it’s equally important to hold ideas lightly. Young businesses and startups are typically more familiar with the need to rapidly adapt to changing environments, but I think more established businesses can be just as adaptive and open to change, especially as they often have the resources to support the change.
For leaders, I think this means getting as close to the point of value exchange as possible. Listening to front line staff, talking with customers, working with suppliers, and observing what people truly care about. I believe that this not only builds adaptiveness in businesses, it encourages greater emphasis on building genuine, collaborative relationships within the organisation, the benefit of which is greater resilience and trust.
How has the pandemic changed your industry and how have you adapted?
Scott Ko: Within the leadership development industry, learning experiences are typically done face to face. The pandemic meant that we – like many others – had to adapt to online learning. Whilst there’s no denying the power of face to face learning, especially for experiences that challenge people to be vulnerable and authentic, our team did an incredible job of recreating a similar experience online.
But in order to do this, it required deep understanding of the experience, of what ‘matters’ the most, which links me back to the deeper listening and understanding point I made above.
What we need to adapt to now is working in an environment that is still relatively unstable. Whilst we’re working towards more face to face experiences, we have to consider both physical and psychological safety in the learning environments that we create, which is an ongoing challenge.
What advice do you wish you received when the pandemic started and what do you intend on improving in 2022?
Scott Ko: I think the advice I wish I received early on would have been to do my best to have clear, solid processes and operating environments in place. This isn’t so much about productivity as it is about clarity and transparency, which makes it easier for everyone to understand what’s going on. Or to put it conversely, the less clarity there is, the greater the risk of duplication of work, of misunderstandings, and of losing a sense of progress and momentum. In many ways, having a clear operating environment means having a solid foundation on which to pivot and adapt to any new challenges that may come, which greatly increases resilience.
Thus in terms of what I intend to improve, it’s to continue to reinforce that clear operating environment so that it remains resilient and adaptive.
Online business surged higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for 2022?
Scott Ko: I have 2 expectations for 2022:
1) A broader ‘ask’ for flexibility, from both customers and staff alike. I think people want more options to do the things they want to do. I don’t necessarily think this is people being more demanding or selfish, I think it’s people thinking more about what is important to them; their purpose. However I don’t think that necessarily means businesses need to bend over backwards to cater to all needs. For businesses (or more specifically, business owners, CEOs, and executives), I think it’s equally fair to think about which of those demands are important to the business and are worth prioritising. Therefore I think 2022 represents a great opportunity for businesses to adapt and evolve.
2) To present a counter-point to the online nature of business, I believe there’ll be a pendulum swing towards a focus on genuine, human connection. To put it bluntly: Yes, everything can be done remotely, but should we? I think people by nature still need some form of human, face to face interaction. I think businesses that understand how to genuinely blend both digital worlds coupled with human-centred experiences for customers and staff alike are the ones that will more likely succeed
How many hours a day do you spend in front of a screen?
Scott Ko: Probably a solid 12 to 14 hours during the work week but that’s spread across a couple of different businesses, so I don’t know if I’m a good basis for comparison! I fairly consistently start my day with a run outdoors with no digital devices whatsoever, and I’m fortunate that the offices where I work have great people so I make sure to break up my day with face to face interactions where I can.
The majority of executives use stories to persuade and communicate in the workplace. Can you share with our readers examples of how you implement that in your business to communicate effectively with your team?
Scott Ko: I think it’s useful to first contextualise what ‘storytelling’ means in the context of business, as I think it’s become a bit of a buzzword that clouds its main purpose, which is to communicate information in a way that is relevant to the audience, whether that’s customer or staff. For me, I think stories are messages that speak to emotions and lived experiences. That means for a story to have impact, it needs to relate to the experiences of the target audience. This in turn requires a greater understanding of who the target audience is, and what they care about.
Thus in context of that, let’s say I need to introduce a new operating model to my team. I don’t tell them why I think the model is good or how I came up with the model, I ‘tell the story’ through their perspective, articulating how the model fits into their world, and why it’s useful for them. And given different teams have different areas of focus, it means I need to customise the story so that it’s relevant to each team.
Personally, I’m also a highly visual thinker, so I like picture stories. I like to accompany my messages through diagrams or pictures that not only reinforce the messages I’m trying to convey, it also helps frame the context for the message. Then – if the story resonates – I’ll then re-use the same imagery in other settings, which helps in the re-telling of the story.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as the real challenge right now?
Scott Ko: I think the first challenge is being able to define what ‘growth’ means to business. I run a couple of social enterprises, thus for me, the goal is understanding how to grow the business financially, so that it enables the growth of our social impact, people development, and sustainability.
Within that context, there are two real challenges right now. The first is a challenge not dissimilar to what everyone experienced pre-pandemic: Putting the right message in front of the right person at the right time. With so much business done online now, ensuring cut-through is a bigger challenge than ever, though this simply means we have to get creative with how we do that.
The second challenge is then being able to prioritise how we grow, in a way that doesn’t take away from the impact we want to create. In other words, not all business is good business. With limited resources, it’s vitally important to consider the opportunity cost of the work we choose to do.
In 2022, what are you most interested in learning about? Crypto, NFTs, online marketing, or any other skill sets? Please share your motivations.
Scott Ko: What I’m most interested in learning about is how to combine cutting edge technology with human-centred design to both grow business, as well as enable sustainable social impact.
What that means in practice is recognising that technology, automation, and AI is to stay. Rather than be fearful of it or fight against it, what I’m keen to learn is how we can continue to get in front of it. For example, let’s say we’re working with people who experience disadvantage of some sort. How can we equip or support them with technology so that they can better participate or be involved in society?
But equally, I’m motivated by ensuring that we don’t lose what it means to be human, about human connection, which is why I think it’s important to stay on top of technology and understand how it be leveraged to improve our collective quality of life
A record 4.4 million employees left their jobs in September 2021, accelerating a trend that has become known as the Great Resignation. 47% of people plan to leave their job during 2022. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. Do you think leaders see the data and think “that’s not me – I’m not that boss they don’t want to work for? What changes do you think need to happen?
Scott Ko: Naturally, if a leader does not think the data applies to them, that’s a pretty big red flag in an of itself.
But I think there can sometimes be a great deal of pressure on leaders to be everything to everyone. For example, taking that 82% figure of people feeling unheard, part of the challenge is that in listening to all of those people, there will be a vast spectrum of opinions on what needs to be done. However the problem is that as a leader, any decision that’s made will invariable benefit some employees, but not others.
I think the biggest change that needs to happen is to increase transparency around how decisions are made, what are the contributing factors, and what the desired outcomes are. Again, I don’t think the measure of success is to make everyone happy, I think it’s making sure that people are brought on the journey. If some employees choose to move on because they don’t like the direction that the business is going in, that’s actually ok. In many ways, the Great Resignation is also a Great Reshuffle; there will also be people who want to join the direction that leaders point their businesses in.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Scott Ko: Telepathy! Or more specifically, the ability to understand what people value and what motivates them. This to me is the biggest challenge for all businesses; to understand what truly motivates people to take action. When we undertake A/B testing for example, or ethnographic research, or storytelling, all of these are merely experiments that help us try to understand people better. If I could confidently understand what is the motivating factor for someone to make a decision, whether that’s a purchase decision or an impact decision, it would help me understand how we can respond!
What does “success” in 2022 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Scott Ko: At a business level, success in 2022 means finding consistent, sustainable paths to market that allow us to work with the people we want to work with, to create the impact we want to create. This requires all of the things I’ve been describing in this interview, about listening, empathy, adaptability, and innovation.
At a personal level, what drives me is finding joy in what I do. Thus success means being able to create an environment where the people I work with are happy doing the work they want to do, they enjoy working with each, there is clarity in the direction everyone is working in, all in order to work towards success at the business level. This, to me, describes the joy of working with incredible people in incredible teams.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Scott Ko for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Scott Ko or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
