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The Interconnectivity of Success - a conversation with Stephan Szugat
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Stephan Szugat is founder of Self Coaching 365 and the author of Interconnected Success in which he explains the connections between business management and the coaching techniques that help businesses to be more successful.
In this episode of the Abecederpodcast The Independent Minds, Stephan explains his seven-point model that breaks down the activities that any type or size of organisation need to undertake efficiently and effectively to become successful.
Find out more about both Michael Millward, and Stephan Szugat at Abeceder.co.uk
The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr, because as the all-in-one podcasting platform, on which you can create your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms, Zencastr really does make creating content so easy.
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing and use our offer code ABECEDER.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Independent Minds
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencastr Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for every everyone.
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysseedah. Today I'm going to be discussing the intercognectivity of success with Stephen Sugart who is a business coach and obviously an expert in making people successful.
00:00:41
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, the Independent Minds is made on Zencastr.
Zencastr and Podcasting Offer
00:00:47
Speaker
Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to all of the major platforms.
00:00:55
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Zencastr really does make making content so easy. If you would like to try podcasting on zencaster visit Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abbasida.
00:01:08
Speaker
All the details are in the description. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:22
Speaker
As with every episode of the Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Stephen Sugart's Career Transition
00:01:29
Speaker
Today, my guest Independent Mind is Steven Sugart.
00:01:33
Speaker
Steven is based in Germany. Germany is a place I've visited several times. Every time i go, ah making my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, holidays, and all sorts of other travel related purchases.
00:01:52
Speaker
There is a link and a membership discount code in the description. Now that I've paid the heating bill, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds. Hello, Stephen. Hello, Michael. Thanks for having me.
00:02:05
Speaker
It's great that you can you've got time to join me. I know you're very busy. I'm all looking forward to finding out about your book, yeah Connected Success. But please could we start by you giving me bit of a summary of your career to date and how writing the book came about?
From Numbers to Strategy
00:02:23
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Well, i I have been an interim manager for finance and accounting for more than a decade. One day i was leaving a client. I was wondering that I wasn't speaking with him much about the numbers.
00:02:38
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but more about strategy, business vision, self-development and all kinds of things. And that moment I realized that what was happening with my other clients too.
00:02:53
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So that made me think, what am I doing here? This is not finance and accounting anymore, not solely. So i did some research and found out that I was coaching my clients.
00:03:06
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And because of that, I decided, let's get my head deeper into coaching.
Coaching vs. Finance: A Forward Focus
00:03:12
Speaker
And um while I was doing that, learning different coaching methods, I decided if I go into coaching full time, I will blend my experience as an interim manager for finance accounting into my approach for coaching.
00:03:31
Speaker
Because When you look at businesses, there is not only the accounting which is similar, it's a lot more. I was thinking in many ways that the the accounting side of it is a large part of it, at least, is about looking at the past in order to plan the future.
00:03:50
Speaker
but you are reporting on what has happened the last month, the last quarter, of the last year, a lot of the time. And yet coaching is almost the complete opposite. It's it's very much about the future.
00:04:04
Speaker
And it's it's a lot about the present moment. And that is... well in as it you just said, in finance and accounting is more backward orientated. It's it's the past.
00:04:17
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Everything that you see in accounting is already happening. It's it's past. It's done. But with coaching is really you are in the present moment and your outlook goes into the future.
00:04:28
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So, yes, I see what you mean. You're talking about the present but thinking about the future. Right. Okay. So you go from being an accountant to to being a coach full time. Well,
00:04:40
Speaker
but Quite a change. Yeah, absolutely. It's quite a change. it's a and And I love it because as an interim manager finance and accounting, it took a long time until I saw results with my clients, weeks, months, if not longer.
00:04:59
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And coaching my clients right now is sometimes you can see the impact right away. They are shining. They, they, you, you, you hear their voices getting more encouraged and that's a total difference.
00:05:16
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Yes. And I can imagine that your background in finance means that you perhaps are able to have and and a conversation with people in a coaching situation where you are obviously understanding more about how the business operates as well, because you can understand the figures.
Beyond Finance: Holistic Coaching Approach
00:05:34
Speaker
And I always said to my former clients that, uh, Even so, I'm just in finance and accounting, but as an accountant, you have to look at all the parts of the business, the processes and and what whatever flows into it.
00:05:49
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So you have to take a look across the border of your plate and getting that into my coaching approach, it's a tremendous sell. One of things that I was quite but very interested in talking to about is this idea that coaching is as much a process as it is an experience. Yeah.
00:06:06
Speaker
it definitely is so i can tell that even for myself as even even coach others but i sometimes get me a coach myself because it's the it's the greatest experience i ever made but the thing is as you just mentioned it's it's as well a process you you can have if if a coaching session is not following specific process and usually you have coaching methods for that It goes nowhere.
00:06:35
Speaker
So you really have to be clear what what is the aim of my coaching session? That's the process. But then comes the experience. what What does the client experience while being in that in that process of being coached?
00:06:50
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And the experience, i suppose, that the client has is is multifaceted because there is that part of the coaching process, which is focused in the present.
00:07:02
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And then the part of the coaching session, which is about the future and the part of the session that is about the process of getting from the present to the future. And I, I can remember.
00:07:15
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some clients which had moments during a coaching session, during the process that they said, oh, I know what I need to do, but I i can't tell you what it is right now, but I know exactly what to do.
00:07:30
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And later on, they came they came up with a solution for their their problem. they They built their own toolkit for communication, for example, or they they created ah some kind of work process for themselves.
00:07:45
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But in the in the moment of the coaching, they just had the clarity, oh, this is what I need to do without being able to verbalize that. and And I can remember that also happened to me once while I was being coached.
00:07:59
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And that's a wonderful experience. I can imagine. I'm thinking that when somebody says, I know what I need to do, but can't verbalize it It's the, the, how are they're going to do it, which is the thing that they can't verbalize. Yeah.
00:08:18
Speaker
Right. And then with the, when you talk about the communication, and this connectivity of success how the success of different people is connected I'm thinking that perhaps one of the reasons why that is limited or restricted is when people can't communicate what they need to in order to help somebody else be successful there are so many things in in success that that are connected with each other with
00:08:52
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which which makes running a business sometimes like going through a maze. You don't know which corner which turn to take, and if you take a wrong one, you need to go back again.
00:09:04
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But when you really see where you need to focus, then that takes a little bit away the overwhelm that might come along with trying to interconnect everything. Because when we really take a look to life, everything is interconnected.
00:09:21
Speaker
You it's that old saying about a butterfly flutters its wings on one side of the world and causes a tornado on the other side of the world. I totally get the the connectivity between everything that happens around us and how we behave can generate different types of response behaviors from others. Totally get all of the the inco interconnectivity ah between what we do and how other people react to us. so I can see the sense in
Interrelations Coaching Model Explained
00:09:50
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that.
00:09:50
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you've analyzed all of this in in a lot more detail than most people i suppose and and have actually written a book about it yes i did as i as i mentioned at the beginning i wanted my uh my coaching approach to align uh with my experiences or getting my experiences and interim manager into the coaching model so i i created my own coaching model which is called interrelations.
00:10:19
Speaker
And that coaching model has seven key areas of impact, which ah I found to be available in every kind of business, no matter the industry, no matter the size, no matter the legal entity, it's just there.
00:10:36
Speaker
What are the seven elements of of your model? So the seven areas of my model are dependencies, mutuality, profit and finances, processes, rules and regulations, stakeholder and strategy.
00:10:52
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without With all of these types of models, you give them a title, each section has a title and words are open to interpretation. So let's go to just that in a couple of sentences, just explain, like, for example, what does mutuality mean? Mutuality is about finding win-win situations.
00:11:12
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So in business, what I learned, even with with myself getting new assignments in interim management, it was always this looking for the chemistry between me and my my next client, seeing if that's feeling good.
00:11:30
Speaker
And if if we agree on on on the price of my my work, and that all seeing that what's the benefit for my client and what's the benefit for me and aligning that that's a win-win but you can do that in in many other our areas as well so even if you are manufacturing business for whatever machines you could still see what are the benefits my clients get and what is the benefit i get so mutuality is and it's not only limited to to uh my my clients it's also
00:12:04
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How do i deal with my vendors? ah What I'm doing with my employees? Do I really have a mutual beneficial partnership with my employees?
00:12:17
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So... Yes, that ties in with the the work that I do in terms of building relationships between employers and employees so that will last from hiring to retiring.
00:12:29
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So that it's it's not a case of a master and servant. ah It's a case of manager and employee or it's a case of partnering at work. I bring my labor, my skills, my knowledge to work.
00:12:43
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You provide me with the resources to apply that skills and knowledge. And we end up with a win-win situation. We value each other because of what we can offer yeah to each other. Yeah, you you just used the word that's really the key here. It's partner, being partners.
Business Dependencies and Sustainability
00:13:00
Speaker
And partners usually are on the same level. Yes. Yeah, because you've got mutuality as one of the elements of the model, but another one, which I'm not sure about the connections and links, but is dependency.
00:13:15
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what What does the dependency mean? We we all depend on something. when When we take a human body, for example, we depend on food, on air and so many other things. And and that's true for businesses as well.
00:13:27
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So when we take a look, a business depends on a continuous stream of cash flow. And that means it depends on clients. It depends on on suppliers for their raw material or service providers. so But sometimes these dependencies could, well, make a business too much depend on one client. fault For example, I remember a client I had with interim management,
00:13:59
Speaker
They had been dependent for 40% of their revenue or something like that had been depending on one client. So just imagine that client is breaking away. That's a huge impact.
00:14:12
Speaker
Yes, a huge impact. I have had suppliers who, where I have been one of their small customers, and they've had one big customer, which amounted for much more than 40% of their business.
00:14:22
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There was a change of strategy at that customer of theirs, and that destroyed their business. They didn't have enough other business to keep on going. And lot of smaller businesses, especially are ah tied into those types of arrangements.
00:14:37
Speaker
I get what you mean about the mutuality and the dependency. What about the rules and regulations?
Internal Beliefs as Business Regulations
00:14:42
Speaker
What does that mean? Every business has to be compliant with the local law or international law.
00:14:48
Speaker
So that's one point or one area in this big pond, let's say that way, of rules and regulations. Because rules and regulations, that's the part call regulations. That's the local law, what the government says.
00:15:04
Speaker
But rules is something that goes more inside of everyone. Most of the times I work with with managers or business owners and every one of us has inner rules and these inner rules could block our success.
00:15:19
Speaker
So sometimes we have some beliefs. you You can, as I just said, you can even name them beliefs or habits. that's That's your inner rules and you have to address them as well.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yes, it's an interesting point, I suppose. It's like the inner rules. How many people are conscious of their inner rules and how many people have these rules that they're unconscious rules?
00:15:47
Speaker
And is there a benefit to having them as conscious rules? So for for me, I can't tell the exact amount how many people are aware of them, but I guess... most of Most of us are aware of of the rules we have inside because it's the way how we interact every day.
00:16:05
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so But the thing is, ah do we realize how these rules block us interacting with others and making that aware? How do you act in specific situations?
00:16:19
Speaker
Or did you do you step back instead of going forward in specific situations? Or do you distract yourself or procrastinate? These are really important things to to really find out and then tackle them.
00:16:34
Speaker
So i had been I remember one CEO who was really stepping back most of the times. But then one moment he said, why am doing this?
00:16:47
Speaker
It doesn't help me and it doesn't help the business. So and from that moment, he just started and said, okay, let's go move forward. Interesting.
00:16:58
Speaker
Very interesting. Because rules and regulations, when you're talking with an HR hat on like I do, you start to think about, well, actually rules can be applied to the job.
Balancing Formal and Personal Processes
00:17:08
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So a job description is the start of a set of rules about how you will do the work that you are paid to do.
00:17:15
Speaker
But how does processes fit into the model? Well, that's exactly what what I understand under processes. So you you have... For example, a workplace description for a specific job title.
00:17:30
Speaker
And from there, the person who is in charge for that job could make their own processes. So inside the processes which are in the whole business. So you have, to for example, that that general process of...
00:17:46
Speaker
Order to cash, right? Customer orders, everything gets fulfilled and you get the cash. yeah But inside inside that process, there are so many little processes. Everyone, every person are getting work done has their own processes. So that's that's also something that needs to be covered. Because when I do my work,
00:18:07
Speaker
I have specific way doing things. This specific employee might have different ways doing it, but still they try to get more productive. That's almost where communication comes in is like, it's okay for me to do my job my way, as long as it doesn't negatively impact the way in which you have to do your Exactly.
00:18:27
Speaker
There's ah three more parts of the model. What were the last three
Stakeholder Management in Business Success
00:18:33
Speaker
parts? Profit and finances, that's speaking for itself. It's all about the money, yeah right? The bottom line of the business and and so on and focusing on that, how to get that in order.
00:18:44
Speaker
Then we have stakeholders and stakeholder is everyone who has an interest in the business. So how do you deal with them? How do you treat them? Do you pay enough attention to them? For example, a stakeholder could be A financing source might be your bank, might be some external investors, or even a government agency helping you to finance export business or something like that.
00:19:12
Speaker
But it could also be your employees. And from a perspective of but of a business owner, stakeholders are also your family and friends because they want to spend time with you.
00:19:25
Speaker
So that needs to be in line and balance. So we can also say in stakeholders also ah thinking about a work life balance. Yes. And the last one is
Strategy vs. Planning: Embracing Vision
00:19:36
Speaker
strategy. yeah Before we go on to strategy, one of the interesting things about the word stakeholder is that I think it started to emerge a few years ago in terms of being incorporated into the the way in which people spoke about businesses and organizations.
00:19:54
Speaker
and how they are run. And then it almost became another word that we use to describe people. Whereas the important part of it, I suppose, is that you understand who those people are, who who's holding something, and what their actual stake in the organization is.
00:20:13
Speaker
and that means that you can't really paint people with the same broad brushstrokes of defining people as collectively.
00:20:24
Speaker
You've really got to spend time, energy, understanding all of who all of the different types of stakeholders are and also define what that stake is and what their definition of excuse me mutuality dependency the rules regulations processes how they define ah successful outcome from each one of the parts of the of the model exactly ah remember i had a ceo um who was in trouble with with the stakeholder management and he was really giving all his time to across all stakeholders which had been important but
00:21:06
Speaker
After we had a session, a coaching session, he decided, oh, i I just need really to focus on these two or three. And that's it. And just the others just get a little less attention that they would even notice.
00:21:21
Speaker
from From that moment, you you could really see how he was lucky to have his time back. and And all the stakeholders had been absolutely okay with it. Everyone got what they need.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yes, because he took the time to understand himself as a stakeholder and what he needed to achieve and then understand the stakeholders who were going to provide the most input to his success and then creating their success. And like you say,
00:21:49
Speaker
The people who got a little bit less didn't notice. But I'm reminded that if you treat everyone equally, you treat no one fairly. everybody gets the same thing, you're only likely to get right one person who's actually getting what they need.
00:22:05
Speaker
It's interesting. And then the final part of the model is strategy. That's another big word that often gets mis misused in education. these sorts of things so how do you how do you define strategy in terms of this interconnect interconnected success the first thing i i did when i were when i was thinking about the word how which word to use for that area i was looking up the definition of strategy and what strategy actually means is having a plan to reach a specific goal with limited resources
00:22:39
Speaker
And I said, that's it. It's all about planning. It's that simple, right? we We use a word, but most of the times it's just about planning. And and that's exactly what strategy in this case means.
00:22:53
Speaker
You have to plan. What is it that you want to achieve? Because what does any business or whatever you like to do will be without a goal? And to to go for a goal, you need to know which steps to follow.
00:23:08
Speaker
what is it how you plan to achieve that. And that's all what is packed into into strategy. If strategy is all about planning, why did you choose the word strategy and not the words planning?
00:23:21
Speaker
Because planning is some sort of limited because strategy is something that I say goes even a little bit further than just planning alone.
00:23:33
Speaker
It also includes your business vision, your personal vision maybe for your personal life and and so much more. So you can pack much more into strategy than I could pack into planning. I'd like to leave it a little bit more open so it's there is more space for whatever comes in there.
00:23:53
Speaker
Planning is part of strategy. Strategy includes the the vision, the purpose, the mission, the plan, the objectives.
00:24:04
Speaker
It's much it's a much broader, larger 360 approach to the future of the organization. Yeah. Yeah. It's really very interesting. What type of organizations are applying the interconnected success
Universal Principles of Business Coaching
00:24:20
Speaker
model?
00:24:20
Speaker
Actually, every everyone who runs a business can apply it. So you you can be ah a sole appropriator, you can have a bigger business, mid-sized business. So it doesn't really matter what kind of size of business or industry. It applies across the board.
00:24:41
Speaker
It applies across the board. And because that was the most important thing for me is what are the similarities between businesses? And when I really take a look to all businesses, you can find all the seven areas in every business, no matter what they do, no matter the size.
00:24:59
Speaker
Even if you're running your business alone, you can still use it. Because business is a business. The size of the business, the industry, the location, doesn't matter. a business anywhere in the world, regardless of size, operates in the same sort of way.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah. Right. And that is the interconnected success model. Every organization can benefit from it. Brilliant. Yes.
Conclusion and Additional Resources
00:25:24
Speaker
yeah I know on your website, you have all sorts of information about interconnected success model and some of the organizations that have achieved success by using it.
00:25:35
Speaker
ah Stephen, that has been really very interesting. Really do appreciate your time today. Thank you very much. Thanks, Michael, for having me. It was a pleasure to be It's been a pleasure. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Stephen Suga, creator of the Interconnected Success Business Model.
00:25:58
Speaker
You can find out more information about both of us at abbasida.co.uk. There is link in the description together with a link to Stephen's website. I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Stephen.
00:26:13
Speaker
If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if like Stephen, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker is where matches of great guests and great hosts are made.
00:26:24
Speaker
There is a link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description. If you are listening to to the Independent Minds, on your smartphone in the UK, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:26:41
Speaker
So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers when you use my referral code.
00:26:56
Speaker
With all the links and discounts in the description, it is going to be well worth reading.
00:27:04
Speaker
I'm sure you will have enjoyed this episode of The Independent Minds, so please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
00:27:16
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abusida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. All that remains for me to say is until the next episode of The Independent Minds, I appreciate you listening. Thank you very much and goodbye.