Inclusive Growth Show
Inclusive Growth Show
Delivering Diversity: Energising Game Changers
Unlock the secret to fostering inclusive and high-performing teams with insights from Nathan Ott, co-founder and Chief Polisher of the Game Changing Index (GC Index). Nathan shares the innovative approach of the GC Index, which categorises individuals into five key roles: game changers, strategists, implementers, polishers, and playmakers, and explaines how embracing different thinking styles and contributions can revolutionise your workplace and promote cognitive diversity.
Discover practical applications of the GC Index framework in various settings, from businesses to schools. We discuss the importance of a shared language for defining roles and responsibilities, which helps to depersonalise feedback and align teams more effectively. Nathan provides real-world examples of how the GC Index aids in recruiting senior leadership, organising projects, and balancing team energies to boost productivity and collaboration. By understanding and leveraging these unique roles, you can unlock your team's full potential and foster a more inclusive environment.
If you're enjoying this episode and looking to boost equity, inclusion, and diversity in your organisation, my team and I are here to help. Our team specialises in crafting data-driven strategies, developing inclusive leaders, designing fair recruitment processes, and enhancing disability confidence. With a blend of professional expertise and lived experience, we're ready to support you on your journey. Reach out to us through our website.
If you want to build a more inclusive workplace that you can be proud of please visit our website to learn more.
Intro: Welcome to the Inclusive Growth Show with Toby Mildon, future proofing your business by creating a diverse workplace.
Toby Mildon: Hey there. Thank you ever so much for tuning into this episode of the Inclusive Growth Podcast. I am Toby Mildon, and today I'm really pleased to be chatting with Nathan Ott. Now Nathan is the co-founder of a fantastic tool that we use called the Game Changer Index or the GC Index. And if you are an avid listener to this podcast, this might sound familiar to you because we actually interviewed Nathan's business partner, Dr. John Mervin Smith back in March, 2022, where we were talking about the GC Index. And before we launch into the conversation with Nathan, I just want to give you a recap of what we talked about with Dr. John. So the Game Changer Index or the GC Index is a revolutionary organisational metric system that was co-created by Dr. John Mervin Smith and Nathan. And they focus on identifying a nurturing talent by assessing how individuals prefer to make an impact.
Toby Mildon: So unlike traditional tools, the GC Index emphasises the specific impact and energy that individuals bring to their roles rather than their inherent personality traits. So this shift from being to doing provides actionable insights into how people can best contribute to their teams and their organisation. So how does this work? So the GC Index identifies five key roles. So we've got the game changers who are innovative idea generators, the strategists, so they are pattern recognizers and planners, the implementers, these are task orientated doers, polishers like myself, who are excellent driven, improvers and Playmakers. So these are the consensus builders. And each role highlights different sources of energy and impact within the team. So I'm a high polisher, and when we get into the conversation with Nathan, we will learn more about that because both Nathan and I are polishers. So we tend to focus on continuous improvement and high standards whereas game changers tend to bring creative ideas.
Toby Mildon: And then finally, how does this fit into diversity and inclusion? Because at the end of the day, this is the Inclusive Growth Show and diversity and inclusion is what my team and I do. So the index does support diversity and inclusion by valuing different thinking styles and contributions, which fosters an environment where everyone can thrive. So we align these roles with an individual's energy and impact preferences. Organisations can then enhance respect belonging and empowerment and progression amongst their workforce. And this approach not only promotes cognitive diversity, but it also helps create inclusive workplaces where employees feel valued and can make meaningful contributions ultimately leading to high performing teams.
Toby Mildon: So that's just a whistle stop tour of the conversation that I had with Dr. John a couple of years ago. And I'm really excited now to be catching up with Nathan because it's been a couple of years since the GC Index tool has developed. There's some exciting new developments that we'll be talking about as well, and we can have a chat with how we've been using the tool as well with some of our clients. So Nathan, after that long rambling introduction, thanks for joining me today. It's lovely to see you.
Nathan Ott: Oh, thanks, Toby. Thanks. I enjoyed listening to that. Thank you very much. I always do worry when I get on a conversation with you because you're a lot more articulate than I am, so I'll do my best. I'll do my best. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.
Toby Mildon: Oh, you're welcome. You're the co-founder of the GC Index or the Game Changer Index, but can you tell me more about what your role is as Chief Polisher? I don't think many people have heard of Chief Polishing Officer before.
Nathan Ott: Yes. Well, I'm gonna sort of polish in there right up front if I may, because the GC index stands the Game Changing Index, not Game Changer Index, which is, and don't worry, it gets called that quite a lot. So as you mentioned, polisher is one of the five energies. We call them proclivities roles within the GC index. And I called myself a Chief Polisher quite early on because I'm not what people would expect of a CEO. I don't look and sound and feel like a CEO. And I was thinking, well, I'm not that strategic person. I don't galvanise and take people with me. I'm not the articulate typical person that's always quite cool and calm when they should, but whatever we expect a CEO to do. So, yeah, called myself Chief Polisher, which makes me feel more comfortable, authentic, and people know how to get the best out of me, and I know really how to be myself. I think that's helped me be myself is probably the best way of describing that, yeah.
Toby Mildon: So how did you arrive here? How did you end up as Chief Polisher and how did the GC Index begin?
Nathan Ott: It's been a wonderful journey. We call ourselves co-creators, Dr. John and I, but we just had an idea really well, I had an idea and Dr. John then substantiated it, and I spent a lot of time in the world of diversity and social mobility is really quite important to me. And there's a couple of things. One, I spent a lot of time working in the world of professional services, and I spent a lot of time being a certain diversity events and thinking, I feel a bit different here. I'm the only one that's a bit different because I'm a white, straight, pale, male, stale young man, whatever at that time. And I remember thinking, can't we just see people for the impact they make? Can we not just start there? And that was the first thing. And the second thing was there was a lot of businesses were asking for people to make a change, and they were using traditional talent frameworks when we used to go through, describe them to me, go through your talent frameworks. They used to say, well, just get me some people that get it.
Nathan Ott: Oh, you've got the framework, which you spend a lot of money in, and you do not want to, and sort of go with this and they go, no, no, I'll know it when I see it. Describe it to me. And they couldn't really describe it. They described the, this pixie dust, the je ne sais quoi and that's what we termed them Game Changers. So we termed these people Game Changers, hence why people still, we were quite loyal to those folks. Dr. John lived the study when we had due corporate education for quite looking for these individuals called Game Changers at the time. Cut a long story short, lots of research about three, two, three years. And then we launched the DNA of a Game changer, which was our first bit publication and organizations seem to like it. And there's one particular organization, Orange, when we presenting to who said I've got these Game Changers, but what does it mean if you're not a Game changer on your metrics?
Nathan Ott: 'Cause those who will know about the GC Index, Joel have explained two core constructs are imagination and obsession, which any academics listening, the academic folk found that quite interesting because imagination, obsession have been studied independently for years, but not together. And that's what underpins the GC Index anyway. So with this group, CIO for Pascal, his name was, and I said, we don't know Pascal. We just been looking for these people called Game Changers who are highly obsessive, highly imaginative. We don't know. And then we went back and studied for two more years. And that's when the framework appeared. So, and since then, how I got here today was really through partners, clients. We work wholly through partners. Of course, very lucky to have builders as one of our partners and your GCologist who just moved us on Toby. They've just moved us on. I, yeah, we... I do feel a little bit of a fraud sometimes when they say I'm the creator or co-creator because we had an idea, but it's evolved for the last five, six years around the world. And it's wonderful to see and is it, and it's just a wonderful journey and everyone's contributed to it. So yeah, hopefully that's enough.
Toby Mildon: That's interesting. It's how I explain it to clients whenever we use the GC Index tool, where it began, the way that I explain that is that you asked, how can we identify these people in an organization, the Game Changers, and is there a way of statistically identifying and measuring these folk? But in the course of your research, you said yes, it is possible to identify these Game Changers. However, at the time, there are three other dimensions of how people make an impact. As I mentioned in the opening gambit, we've got the strategists, we've got the implementers, we've got the polishers, and then the playmakers were added in. So these are the people that like to build consensus, make sure everyone's pulling in the right direction. I do want to challenge something you said, you did self identify as stale. I wouldn't describe you as stale, by the way.
Nathan Ott: Thank you very much. But do you know what I mean? It's sort of like, I felt like the minority, the minority group, and I'm thinking, this is madness. Can't we just see people for the impact we make? And yeah, I was just using the vernacular male pal instead, but do you know what I mean?
Toby Mildon: I suppose how we've used the GC Index with our clients, and we've used it in a number of different settings. So we've used it as part of leadership development, inclusive leadership development. We've used it as part of team development, team cohesion. We've used it as part of a recruitment process. When a client of ours were appointing a new board of directors, the GC Index was instrumental in that recruitment process. What we found is that it helps have a conversation about diversity in a different way, because, yes, we've got diversity of traditional characteristics like gender, ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status, that kind of thing. But actually, a lot of business leaders like to talk about diversity through these five psychological proclivities and making sure that they have that diversity of energy on their team. So we've worked with teams where there might be a bias towards being Game Changers. So they are very ideas driven, blue sky thinking, thinking outside the box, but they're lacking in implementers. And there's this kind of team frustration that they come up with fantastic ideas, but they lack execution. And then they realize that the reason why they're lacking execution is just because they're lacking that energy on the team to implement.
Nathan Ott: Completely agree with that. So I just find it a more useful frame to understand what impact you're going to bring first. That just makes it like you say, that makes a much easier frame for discussion. And I'm not sure I mean, I'm talking to UK's expert in diversity, equality and inclusion. So if I say anything wrong, then do correct me. Right. But the last time I looked you mentioned gender. I think women's quite a diverse group in itself. Did you know what I mean? We put them all together. I think it's just not a useful frame. If we understand how people wanna make an impact and we recognize it and value them for it and align it to what the business requires or the team requires, it's just a, I find it an easier starting point.
Toby Mildon: Yeah.
Nathan Ott: It's not to say the other elements aren't valuable. Of course they are. But I just think it's an easier starting point to go, well, come on in. We've got this stuff. We've got this is what we need to do. How can you contribute to it? And how can we help you contribute to it?
Toby Mildon: What kind of impact are you noticing the GC Index having on different organizations that you and your network of partners are working with?
Nathan Ott: There are a number. Part of the challenge with the GC Index is that it can be used in so many ways. And it is just a data point. It's one data point, one length. Where are we seeing it most successful? We're seeing pretty in three real core areas. One is in teams, one is in recruitment or succession, looking at roles, picking the people in the right roles. And the other one is really sort of understanding projects and processes. There are two core component parts to the GC Index really. One is the language, which is devoid of people. And in the first instance, in the languages.
Nathan Ott: What do we need to do here? Do we need to create original bachelor project? Do we create original ideas? Do we need to strategise, align things? We need to get stuff done, we need to get stuff done better? Do we need to galvanise people, manage stakeholders? So they're the five elements and whether we're working in a business, a team, a school, a university, it doesn't matter. These are elements that we have these conversations, all the time. And so the GCs has framed that into those, that language. So that's given everyone a language they can talk about, this is what we need to do, create new ideas, get stuff done, blah, blah.
Nathan Ott: And then we use the data afterwards. So the individual data, the team data, the organisational data then to help us make those decisions. I think that's the bit that's unlocking teams is definitely that language, aligning people to the right projects and processes and anyway, big ones, small ones. Could be any project process really. And actually another data point of making sure we've got the right people in the right role, which is a huge link to wellbeing, which we might touch on beatres on the HR topics as well.
Toby Mildon: Yeah.
Nathan Ott: Did that answer your question?
Toby Mildon: It does. And that shared language is really powerful. So I'll give you a couple of examples. So we used the GC index for one of our clients to help them recruit a new senior leadership team. So they were recruiting a chief strategy officer, chief technology officer, a finance director, and a chief commercial officer. And they found that all of the candidates to do the GC index. And then we used the GC index, or we talked about the GC index profiles or proclivities in the interviews.
Toby Mildon: So the candidates had this shared language and the client told us, the conversation drastically changed in the interviews. It wasn't about personality, it was about how they were going to impact the organisation and how they were going to help the organisation achieve its vision strategy that they developed. We use it internally here. We... Me and my team use it. And again, that shared language is really key. Let's say for example, we're having a meeting and we're talking about ideas.
Nathan Ott: Yeah.
Toby Mildon: One of our team members might pipe up and say, hang on, we've spent an awful lot of time in game changing territory where we are coming up with loads of ideas, but we're not yet implementing anything. So can we switch gears and move to implementer? And we know who on the team has got energy for what? So I'm a polisher game changer whereas somebody else on my team is very much implementer. So she's the one that says, hang on a minute guys, we've done way too much game changing, talking waffle creativity stuff here. Now's the time just to kind of get our heads down and implement. And we just find that this shared structure or language is really powerful.
Nathan Ott: Yeah. And I think it's the depersonalisation of the language. So if you frame that conversation you've just had but without that the language of impact say rather than that individual saying, oh, we've been too much in game changer territory that's come and implement police and stuff, which everyone then understands. It could have been, well you lost, please stop going around and around in circles. You're stupid, crazy ideas. You don't really understand what we're trying to do here. You are always air at the fairies and you're just lying. Don't care what we are doing.
Nathan Ott: And then you all go, well stop being so pragmatic and brushing us with that. Yeah. You're always doing that to us. You're bloody rushing us all the flipping time. Stop it. What's the matter with you? Whereas, it comes quite personal and I know that's an extreme example, but we see that going on in businesses all the time. It becomes very personal. Whereas if they can go, look, we've spent some time game changing on that, can we just see if we can get some practical outcomes and implement some stuff here? It's just much easier.
Toby Mildon: Yeah. It is.
Nathan Ott: It's just much nice.
Toby Mildon: You can organise projects around the framework as well, which I really like. It's a really natural way of organising project or a product development because you can start with game changing, which is coming up with all the really fantastic ideas and thinking outside the box. Then the strategists make sense of those ideas and they're really focused on why something should be done and how something should be executed or rolled out. Then the implementers step in and go, brilliant, we've got the idea, we've got the plan, now let's just crack on and implement it.
Toby Mildon: Then the polishers are like fantastic. We know that the implementers are quite happy to get to 80% completion because they're all about just getting stuff done and shit. They're not about perfection, but that's where the polishers come in and take it to 100% and make it better. And then you've got the playmakers in the middle who are a really crucial role in trying to bring everyone together, making sure that they're all, everyone is on mission pulling in the right direction. So the framework is a really great way of organising a project or a product or anything like that as well.
Nathan Ott: Yeah. And you can start anywhere and it gives you a nice language to say, what do we know? And I had one last week where they actually had a team that couldn't just get some stuff done. And this particular project, no, we've got a plan, we've got a strategy, we don't need any more creative ideas. Thank you very much. We need to implement and now. So we didn't have to go around the loop. Whereas another one might be, do you know what? We've been doing this in silos. Let's start with playmaker bit first. Let's get the right people on board and get the right people on board. Let's get the different level of thinking before we even start game changing or strategise it. And it just gives that nice framework and you're right, and it's very simple.
Nathan Ott: Teams do it in sort of 15, 20 minutes. They get a shape of their project and it's when you compare it to the data, when I had one team do their top 20 big strategist, playmaker team from their team data and when they mapped out all of their 20 projects, implement a phase was either the first or second. And they went, "Oh, that's probably why we're a bit behind, isn't it?" 'Cause they didn't have any implementer in their team data. And they realised that all these projects to deliver and were getting trouble for not executing stuff. And they could see it stare...
Nathan Ott: And they're in the face that all the red was, which they had said was the priority, and then they went, hmm. So it just helps them frame. And again, depersonalized. It's completely depersonalized. You've had Dr. John on to a couple of years ago. The biggest learnings that we've had from our community is this, that, low scores aren't necessarily bad and high scores aren't necessarily good. That's really helped with these projects and processes because it moves us away from, oh, we just need implementers to do this and we just need game changers to do this. It sort of moves us into, this is your proclivity. How are you gonna contribute to this process? And certainly the low scores we see as huge strengths in the right context.
Nathan Ott: You don't want a game changer the last two days of a project where you're trying to get it out the door. A low score there is a big strength. Thank you very much. Did you know what I mean? Whereas if you're trying to do something. So yeah, that's been quite a nice shift for us the last two or three. Again, learning through our GCologist, our partners and their clients. Yeah.
Toby Mildon: And again, a high score isn't always good news either 'cause you and I are very high polishers, which means that at our worst, we are perfectionists.
Nathan Ott: Yes.
Toby Mildon: We might not get stuff out the door because we're just constantly trying to make things better. We might drive our teams around the bend because we've got high expectations or high standards and we expect our team to meet those high standards. So when I took the GC and I've done it several times now, the self-awareness that it brings is really impactful to my own leadership abilities.
Nathan Ott: Yeah, I agree. And that's why I call myself a chief polisher. I mean, the amount of times I was trying to pretend to be a strategist playmaker, which people most think that CEO shouldn't be in these certain times. I mean, that's just not how to get the best out of me. And you're right. And of course, Toby, we know the polishers are the best. We know that, right? Although we say that there's all, they're all, no one's better than the other. No, of course, bump-offs, of course, I'm teasing listeners. But a low polisher score is great in the right context because they can cut their losses. Don't over-agonize, don't over-deliver, press send on that email, that'll do, get it out. Do you know what I mean? Whereas you and I will take weeks trying to get the perfect email out, which is not always the right thing to do.
Toby Mildon: A key community that you work with and that is used by the GC Index are HR, human resources. What are some of the trends that you're noticing at the moment the GC Index could help HR professionals with?
Nathan Ott: There are a number, and we have, we've actually written a response to Ghana's top five HR priorities for HR priorities for 2024. It's a couple of key areas, certainly around teams, but not necessarily intact teams, but sort of project teams or cross-functional teams. HR, there's a lot of work that is getting done more globally, more cross-functionally, and this is helping sort those out quite quickly, getting those teams working well together, getting the right balance of teams. I think teams, that's certainly one. Change really does help with change, and it's a bit how because...
Nathan Ott: With the GC Index, first of all, through the project and process, HR are now able to understand what type of change is this. Is it change at all? Is it business as usual? Is it incremental change? Is it transformational change? You can start to see that through the GC Index. It's very hard. We hear a lot around change mindset or transformational change, but unless people know how they can best contribute to that change, really hard. That gives HR real data to go back to the business about how their people can best contribute to the change that they're trying to drive. I think that right now, well-being is one that we're really seeing where it starts to come in. Because you're able to map the energy required for that type of work, then we're able to understand how that work is going to de-energize or give people energy, and then energy is a great indicator for well-being. How do we get people running towards work rather than running away from it? How do we stop our people getting burnt out? Those that know me, they have a real issue with resilience training. It makes no sense to me.
Nathan Ott: Why are we trying to make people resilient? Why not put them in environments or teams or work where they don't need to be resilient? They can actually flourish. Do you know what I mean? Of course, given this podcast, if anyone's in the UK, if you just Google diversity, equality, and inclusion, you'll see the GC index is always on that front page because it's an inequality tool or an equity tool really in terms of democratizing impacts.
Nathan Ott: I think that permeates everything that we do. Everyone, whether they're in a project, a team, a role, we're going to value them for the impact they bring. It's that democratization of impact, which is going right through.
Toby Mildon: Yeah.
Nathan Ott: In terms of HR issues, change, well-being, and cross-functional teams is a big one.
Toby Mildon: I talk about the GC index in my latest book, Building Inclusivity, because I mentioned that as an individual, if you understand what energizes you for making an impact, you can lean into that. If you are a diversity and inclusion leader, and let's say you are high game changer, high implementer, so that means that you get energized with coming up with fantastic ideas, and then you just want to crack on and implement them. But imagine you're working for a boss who is a high strategist.
Toby Mildon: They might then come to you and say, oh, it's amazing that you come up with all these fantastic ideas, but you need to be more strategic in the way that you approach your work. And then let's imagine that you score low as a strategist. You're probably sat there scratching your head thinking, yeah, but what does my boss mean by being more strategic? What does that mean? I've got these ideas. I wanna implement them. I know they're the right thing to do. And so just understanding that dynamic is really powerful, because then you might then be able to plug that gap.
Toby Mildon: So I worked with the diversity and inclusion leader once who was high game changing, high implementer. And so one idea that we came up was almost like create this virtual strategy board. So they would take their ideas to this virtual strategy board. This virtual strategy board would make sense of the ideas, think about if it was the right thing to do, how it should be executed, what the roadmap looks like, and then she could crack on and implement. And that was just that kind of mind shift was really impactful for them.
Nathan Ott: Yeah. And you mentioned self-awareness. It's a good self-awareness piece. It's also that other's awareness as well, I think, is where are the people coming from and when to use people. You mentioned that strategist bit. We see that often when it comes to people go for a promotion, going through the ranks, and they've probably earned their spurs by getting stuff done, getting stuff done well, let's say, implement a polisher in our world. And then it's like, can we make this person strategic now? What? I mean, whereas, no. We could try, back to your point, but if we can either give them the tools to understand how they can best contribute to the process of strategy whilst using their implementer product, it's so much easier for them. The amount of team meetings or teamwork from leaders where the actual leader is not a big strategist.
Nathan Ott: And you think, and they're all looking at this person's strategic direction. The relief across that leader's face where you can say, look, you've got some strategist folk around here. You're the leader. You approve the strategy 'cause you're the leader, but let them go and create it. You go and do what you're good at. You can change a polish or whatever. Go out and do. But don't sit there and think, oh, thank God for that. Do you know what I mean? They haven't got to pretend to be this person anymore. And so that's the sort of stuff that I like seeing. Anyway, so.
Toby Mildon: That's cool. So obviously, I interviewed your business partner, Dr. John, a couple of years ago. And the GC index has evolved significantly over the last couple of years. So from what I see, your network of GCologists is expanding. Like you say, you deliver the GC index through this network of partners. And we are one of your proud partners to work with. But also one of the other developments is the creation of GC Translate. So you're using a bit of AI to help you with this. Can you just explain to us what GC Translate is and how it's used?
Nathan Ott: Yeah, it's quite visual. So I'll try to do so on a podcast if I can. But the GC is thought of as a language. And what GC Translate does, it looks just like Google Translate. But what it's got behind it is a glossary of words that are associated to each proclivity. So if we think of implement, so we want to get things done, it'd be things like build, deliver, delivering, execution, that type of stuff. And polisher, we've spoken a lot about them. Let's keep talking about them then. But there'll be things like excellence, perfectionism, improving, best standards, and so on. So there's a data bank. That's the glossary that obviously comes through generator with AI learning and stuff. But it's human-assisted AI. It's not fully AI because we want to keep hold of it. What it does, quite simply, get to the point, Nathan. See, this is why I'm not a strategist implementer. You can't get a precise answer.
Nathan Ott: So what it does is it takes any content, job profile, LinkedIn profile, website, marketing copy, D&I strategy, or charter, and it will translate that into those words. It'll pick up those words associated to those proclivity. And then it will give you a profile of what that content is saying in GC index term. For example, if we have a certain role profile that's using a lot of language like build, deliver, execute, very implementer focus, that will show that it's 60% implementer, for example, that role profile. And then a candidate like you or me turn up with our profile and think, oh my God, now is this going to be the right role for Toby or Nathan or not, based on that. And that's how it works.
Nathan Ott: But I guess anyone who's taken the GC index, so it's free for our GCologists. Yeah. But anyone who's taken the GC index will have it free to use and play with up until the end of December 2024.
Toby Mildon: Yeah. So just to give you a practical example. So we use the GC translate tool in that project recruiting the new senior leadership team. So what we did is we cut and paste the job adverts into the tool to identify the language that was being used. So let's say we took the job of chief strategy officer. Unsurprisingly, it came out as high strategy language and high implementer language. Then we could go back to the client and we could say, is this the language that you want to be using? Do you want to attract a strategist implementer? Yes, no, maybe. But it was really good because then the client could think about, well, actually, yeah, for a chief strategy officer, it probably makes sense that we attract people who are energized by strategy. And actually, as a leadership team, we do want to make sure that we get stuff done.
Toby Mildon: So we're quite happy to have this high implementer energy as well. It was a really useful way of validating the job ad that was published.
Nathan Ott: Yeah. You're right. I must stress to any listeners here, though, what we're saying. We're making people decisions. The GC index is just a diagnostic. It isn't the diagnosis. So we wouldn't just recruit because of the GC index. We wouldn't just say, oh, the role profile must be like this because GC translate said so. We must be very clear that this is just a diagnosis. And like you've just said there, this is what GC translate is saying. Is this what we want? Is this what we need? We want to make sure that people aren't thinking that we're saying that this is what GC translate says. You've got to hire the exact candidate. It's back to that inclusivity bit. The GC index and GC translate in that recruitment example is really to help you select people in, not select people out.
Toby Mildon: Yeah, that's cool. So the penultimate question I ask everybody, and even Dr. John had to answer this question a couple of years ago, what does inclusive growth mean to you?
Nathan Ott: Inclusive growth means to me, if people don't understand how they can best contribute to the growth, and they don't feel valued about how they can contribute to the growth, and they don't value how others are contributing to the growth, I struggle to see how we have inclusive growth. And it's where we all understand that this is how we can get the best out of each other to go to drive growth for whatever that might be. That could be financial, could be commercial, could be altruistic, whatever we think from a growth.
Nathan Ott: But that's what it means to me. And it's quoted quite a lot, but I love Mother Teresa's phrase, in the sense that you can do things I cannot, I can do things you cannot, together we can do great things. And that for me is what inclusive growth means, whether you're in a classroom, school project, honours board, working in a big, whatever, big board of a big company, a fortune forage company. If we can get there, then yeah, grow. I think politics is going to be a little bit behind though, Toby, from being perfectly churlish, but that's another conversation to have.
Toby Mildon: That's probably a topic for another episode. That could take up a whole episode in itself. I was just looking back at what Dr. John said, actually, when I asked him this question, where he defined inclusive growth as an ambition to reach a broad and diverse range of individuals with the GC index across various settings like education, sports, and the corporate world. And his vision was driven by a desire to prevent people from feeling excluded or written off as he experienced early in his life.
Toby Mildon: And he wants to help individuals understand where they can have an impact and how they can make meaningful contributions. So inclusive growth ensures that everyone has the opportunity to thrive and be valued for their unique energies and strengths. And this approach not only promoted personal and professional development, but also helped foster diverse and high-performing teams.
Toby Mildon: So I just wanted to share that with you to try and close the loop as we're catching up with you two years later.
Nathan Ott: It wasn't too dissimilar, was it? He was just a bit more articulate than me as usual, that's all. We're sort of aligned, I like to think.
Toby Mildon: I hope you're aligned. I mean, you both set up the company and you both work together every day.
Nathan Ott: Well, this is it. As I said to you before, we had this idea to create the research and then it's just been a wonderful journey, Toby. It's just, if we can, you know we've got an ambition to help more than 10% of the world's population understand their impact. And we can't do that on our own, but it's a constant journey.
Nathan Ott: We're constantly learning. I mean, just with your team, how this can be applied to more concrete needs or diversity and inclusion and equity space, right through to those using it in chains, those using it with schools, using it within universities, charities. It's just so wonderful to see how people are embracing this language and making the most of it. So yeah, as I say, I feel a little bit of a fraud when I say I'm the creator of this because, it's so many such wonderful people continue to take it on and long may that continue.
S21: So if the person listening to us right now wants to learn more about the GC index, maybe they're interested in exploring how they could use the tool with their teams, what should they do?
Nathan Ott: They should go to the UK's, possibly the world's best diversity, equity and inclusion consultant, Toby and his team, Mildon Limited. That's what they should do, quite frankly.
Toby Mildon: That's one avenue. So one avenue is to contact me and my team, because we are partners of the GC index. Another avenue is obviously you've got an amazing website with loads of resources that people can watch and listen to and read. So it's worth going on the GC index website.
Nathan Ott: Yeah, absolutely. You can come onto the website. But equally, as with all of our partners, anyone in your network that would like to try it for themselves and get the best, if they're more like experiential learning, then they come and talk to you guys and yeah, pretty good, but more fruitful outcome. But please do look at our www.thegcindex.com. But Toby and I will have a polish off on that answer. I think you should go speak to Toby and his team personally, rather than looking at our website, but we'll see.
Toby Mildon: And we didn't plan that at all, did we?
Nathan Ott: No, we didn't. Toby, we have a combined strategy score of negative 10, but we definitely didn't plan anything.
Toby Mildon: I've got a very low strategy score. So that would not have contributed to that at all. Nathan, thanks ever so much for joining me today. It's been lovely to catch up with you.
Nathan Ott: Oh, thanks for having me, Toby. And thanks for your continued support and insights and yeah, and laugh and fun. Thanks very much to you and your team. It's great having you with us. And yeah, let's see if we get Dobs John back on in two years time and see what's changed.
Toby Mildon: Yeah, I mean, we love using the GC index. And the reason why we like using it is because our clients love using it with us. And they just give us positive feedback. So every time a client enjoys using the GC index with us and get some really positive results for them and their team. It just spurs us on to keep using the tool. So it's a perpetual loop. So thanks.
Nathan Ott: Thanks, Toby. Keep doing good and being great. And I'll see you soon. Thank you very much.
Toby Mildon: Thanks very much. And thank you for tuning into this episode of the Inclusive Growth podcast with Nathan and myself. Hopefully you've learned something that you can take back to your organization. Hopefully the GC index is a useful framework that you can use to help identify how you and your team are energized for making an impact so that you can really make a dent in the world. So thanks for joining us. And I look forward to seeing you on the next episode, which will be coming up soon. Until then, take good care of yourself. Bye-bye.
Intro: Thank you for listening to the Inclusive Growth Show. For further information and resources from Toby and his team, head on over to our website at mildon.co.uk.