Harsh Thakkar (00:01.209)
Tom, good to have you. How's it going?

Tom Siebeneicher (00:03.872)
can complain, typical Tuesday I would say.

Harsh Thakkar (00:06.369)
Yeah, tell me, this is exciting, you're a consultant, so I wanna ask you, if you had to summarize in two sentences or a sentence, what it's like being a consultant, what do you have to say?

Tom Siebeneicher (00:21.406)
It's a hell of a ride every day. I think that that sums it up quite well and quite easily because it's ever -changing circumstances, ever -changing contacts, and you meet so many people.

Harsh Thakkar (00:32.013)
Yeah, so I'm guessing burnout comes with that pace, doesn't it?

Tom Siebeneicher (00:37.662)
It comes and it comes not right away, but it will slowly creep your way to it. So it's quite often not a question, will it happen? So it will, it's just a question. When does it happen? If you're not aware of yourself.

Harsh Thakkar (00:41.562)
Mm

Harsh Thakkar (00:48.691)
Mm.

So speaking of burnout, what does burnout look like for a nine to five employee that's working in a company versus a consultant that's basically working with global clients pretty much longer hours or around the clock? How does that look like?

Tom Siebeneicher (01:09.868)
Yeah, I think both in a nutshell look the same. So the indications feel the same. You are draining energy, you get in a bad mood, you are lacking sleep, you just don't have the energy to get up. But for certain people, they just connect it to, yeah, I worked a lot. yeah, I had a lot of stress the last days rather than, something is actually off and something is actually wrong. Because one thing I recognize and it applies to both sides, but it's more

Harsh Thakkar (01:18.724)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (01:38.602)
relevant in the consultancy life is people around you will give you first hints. They might don't see it straight away, but they will give you an indication what the issue is. And as a consultant, you're so much used to telling people what to do. You're normally not that good at listening, actually.

Harsh Thakkar (01:48.012)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (01:54.231)
Hmm. Okay. So if, if somebody's not good at listening, that could appear as a sign that they're burnt out. Okay. Yeah.

Tom Siebeneicher (02:01.44)
potentially or that they're maybe self aware or way that there's something is off but just don't want to admit it to themselves because and I think especially in a high performance consulting world admitting that you cannot cope with what you're doing is committing to failure and they don't want to do that. And it was also something I experienced when I got really, really close to burnout. I always said, well, I can do it. I'm still fine. That can't be a burner.

Harsh Thakkar (02:06.756)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (02:17.081)
Mm -mm.

Harsh Thakkar (02:30.389)
Right, right. What are some other signs other than, you know, not actively listening?

Tom Siebeneicher (02:36.3)
Yeah, I think it's not actively listening. Quite often you are also really jumpy. So your mood changes quite quickly from your 100 % on a cloud. It's happy. It's perfect to shit. That's all crazy. It doesn't work like I want to have it. And also the tiny things. So the patience is running out easier. So for example, if you are in a board meeting and someone is saying just a tiny note that it's not perfect, but overall it's still good.

Harsh Thakkar (02:44.025)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (03:04.928)
you're frustrated about it, while normally you would say, yeah, well, he said it's good, right? So that's just a small tiny footnote.

Harsh Thakkar (03:11.549)
Right, right. I feel like on the second point, you were talking to me directly when you said jumping from one thing to another. I feel like I've been a culprit of that many times. And now when I think about it, maybe it's a sign that I had too much on my plate or maybe I over promised a bunch of different things to my team and clients without understanding if I'd be able to, know.

Tom Siebeneicher (03:15.456)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (03:37.081)
do all of that or personal stuff happens with kids and family, so it's not always about work. As a consultant, when you're working with clients, when you're working with people or executives, what do you give them as three strategies for preventing burnout or five? I don't know how many you have, but I wanna hear all of them.

Tom Siebeneicher (03:42.848)
Yeah, yeah, I imagine.

Tom Siebeneicher (04:01.854)
Yeah, well, it differs, right? So I think after being roughly a decade in the field as a consultant, I think that the things are quite similar at the beginning. So one thing is transparency. What is happening around you and what is relevant out of the things which are happening around you? And what are your key priorities? So quite often, if you go to a C level member, he will say, my top priority is this topic, and then something is happening. But now it's this topic. But if you really condense it down to what is normally relevant for them,

It's the survival of the organization. So if you're on that high level of management, one of the key things is, are we making money and are we actually making profit with it? And are we clear around our priorities? And the other thing is that, can you let go of things? So for example, I met a board member right before my vacation in July and he said, Tom, I'm really, really frustrated about the whole SAP migration. And I said, well, okay, you're frustrated about it because it's not moving fast enough.

Harsh Thakkar (04:56.645)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (05:00.896)
but you can actually not do anything about it, right? Because you are the chief marketing officer. This is something that IT team is currently doing. So why are you bothered by it? Yeah, it just should be faster. said, well, yes, but you cannot influence it. You just said so. It's not affecting your teams yet. So what's the matter? And this is these things. And I always have the great comparison to my mom because my mom is a great driver, but she has no patience at all.

So the last time we drove together, was a car parking in front of us and she couldn't bypass it. And I said, well, mom, you are now complaining about it already for two minutes. We cannot bypass it. We are not in a rush. So why are you frustrated? Yeah, but it's a typical yeah, but situation. And that's the first thing which is jumping in your face. So what I always say make transparent what is happening with you and around you. What are your honest priorities, which are stable.

And what can you influence and what can you not influence? Because whatever is outside of this circle of influence, why should it bother you?

Harsh Thakkar (06:04.766)
Yeah, and that's the driving example is really good because a lot of times we, and then also the main point that you tried to meet is at the end of your talk there is what is in your circle of influence, right? A lot of times we might want an outcome, right? So I might want an outcome in the business or I might want an outcome for the client.

but there are certain steps maybe the client has to do in the project. And I can tell them the risks of not making that decision or I can tell them the consequences of making the wrong decision, but I cannot make that decision. It's the client's decision. And a lot of times that's frustrating because I'm waiting, I'm like, what are they gonna decide? Because we're just on standby, but I'm getting more

you know, cognizant of that and trying not to affect that because at the end of the day, you know, that's the client's choice, right? So in your case, yeah, so that's pretty interesting. Do you have any examples of any clients or any people that you worked with and what did their burnout or stress look like before they worked with you and how did it look like after?

Tom Siebeneicher (07:27.86)
Yeah, so I was working with a big, big pharma company a while ago and what they were doing is they were trying to roll out an omnichannel marketing strategy across the globe. And to fulfill that, they wanted to implement a certain tool. So what I was a tooling needed, which would support the strategy from a technical perspective. our project leader, he was always saying, yeah, we should do this until end of next week. And the other thing we should do until end of next month. And then I started to say, but wait a second.

Harsh Thakkar (07:30.958)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (07:38.233)
Hmm?

Tom Siebeneicher (07:58.3)
Why? So what is the reasoning that you put this timelines and this deadlines into the calendar? So what is driving you? Because by driving so fast, you're stressing out the team, yourself and everyone around you. And you said, well, I think the customer or the management will like it. I said, well, rather than thinking, let's check. And then actually the management told us, well, you're great in what you're doing, but I think for the countries you're moving too fast. Can you actually slow down? So instead of

having a proper dialogue with the asking party, he was just driving himself into hell mode because he believed he needs to be that fast.

Harsh Thakkar (08:36.161)
Interesting, Yeah.

Tom Siebeneicher (08:38.132)
And what we then did is I said, well, then let's be more conscious what's possible and let's tune it down a bit. So we worked on transparency, proper alignment with the stakeholders, but also with the end users, but also list starting to listening what's feasible and what's not feasible. And I think over the course of two months, we really turned it around. I mean, at the end, we maybe eased it a week there, month there, but the overall program was not effective because we could combine it in a clever way.

Harsh Thakkar (09:05.775)
Right, right. Yeah, and that's going into understanding, like, having assumptions. It's okay to have assumptions, but you also have to have a way to identify if those assumptions are true or false, right? Because if you think you know what your customer needs, or if you think you know what strategy is gonna work, you might end up putting too much effort only to then find out, you know,

maybe that's not the right way to go, right? And then that can lead to a lot of frustration. So yeah, that's a great example. Speaking of pharma, pharma at the industry, life sciences as a whole is extremely heavily regulated. We all know that. Some people love it, some people hate it. I always hear people complaining that it's hard to innovate in pharma because there's so much regulation. And now with AI,

When the EU passed the EU AI Act, I know a bunch of big pharma companies had a knee -jerk reaction. Hey, this is going to stop us from innovating this 450 page AI act. I know you've talked a lot about leading from a sandbox in some of your content that I've watched. How can, you know, industries in a heavily regulated industry like pharma, how can leaders and companies lead from a sandbox?

still give their employees, you know, encourage to experiment with ideas while being innovative.

Tom Siebeneicher (10:39.041)
I think here certain things come to play we already mentioned. think the one thing we already mentioned is the circle of influence. So my experience with pharma companies and certain departments was, yeah, we can't do this. We are not allowed to do this. We are regulated. then, I mean, me as an outsider, I'm always the dumb one. I would ask, yeah, but what is the boundary? So what can we then do? If you say we cannot do this, what is actually allowed? And then quite often people said, well, actually, we don't know. We just anticipated that we are not allowed.

Harsh Thakkar (10:50.414)
Mm.

Tom Siebeneicher (11:08.374)
to do this. And the other thing is then I had a really eye -opening meeting with the FDA years ago where a pharma company I was working with said, the FDA will not allow us to do that. I said, well, then let's talk to them. Let's ask them. So we asked the FDA. And the FDA said, well, yes, you're right. You're not allowed to do that. But we can give you an exception if you behave in the following way. So just to test it out, we are willing to partner up and test it. And this dialogue was really valuable. So my biggest advice.

is always are the boundaries clear? So what is the sandbox? Did you told your employees what is the sandbox that can behave, we live in? And then did you figure out a way to maybe stretch the boundaries a little bit? Or do you know what you need to stretch the boundaries? I I also heard about this 400 pages AI act. So I totally agree. My first reaction was straight the same as the one you said. So by the day, I started to dig into it and actually figuring out what can we do? I still believe it's not a good.

piece of rock, admit that openly. Nevertheless, I think there's still freedom to grow in it. Could it be more freedom? Yeah, well, always.

Harsh Thakkar (12:15.513)
Yes, yeah. And that's usually what happens with any new regulation in an area like this where AI is so new. Historically, the industry has been very conservative with risk and the appetite for risk is not high. And it's clear why, because Pharma were making ultimately products and there is zero room for error, right?

That's why it's one of the heavy regulated industries. yeah, what are, so I know some examples from what I've researched on the internet. I know Google has maybe set aside some hours where the employees can test out certain ideas. So that's one example. I know 3M had

has something similar where they allow their employees to have one project, one passion project and you can do, or you can build a product or design a product. And I don't know if this is true, but I think the posted notes was actually an accidental invention that some employee found, because he or she didn't like the glue behind the notes and they kept falling off the monitors or whatever. And ultimately he found the perfect one that worked.

and Post -it notes is, you know, it's just a piece of paper with glue, but it makes a lot of money for 3M, right? So have you, do you give your clients any, you know, practical steps of, hey, give your employees X hours to play or give them X dollars of money to experiment? Do you have any ideas?

Tom Siebeneicher (13:59.84)
Yeah, and here comes my second passion to play agility because in an agile way of working, you quite often work in a, let's say in a time box way, a time box can be two weeks, time box can be a month. And there's always worthwhile taking an hour or half a day aside or doing a hackathon in a wider sense to allow the employees to actually just play around or figure something out. if you do this in smaller iterations, it's also easier.

Harsh Thakkar (14:10.756)
Mm.

Tom Siebeneicher (14:28.364)
a manager bill or you can have an easy oversight about it because if you say yeah well this employee now has 10 % of his day day -to -day time to do experiment everyone is saying so it's 10 % less capacity if you say well that's one day a month or it's half a day in the next two weeks and then we look again it sounds more adjustable and the people feel more comfortable because in quotes they can always take it away but normally whenever you start these small experiments no one is taking it away so I worked with

quite of some of the big tech companies and they also say well every hackathon is on one hand a huge waste of time because so much bullshit comes out of it but in the second thought so much crazy ideas we are not actually using are coming out of it then we just go with it and I think that's the benefit quite often also startups are having versus big corporate companies they still experiment they're not limited by it because

Well, every thought, every idea is great. So let's figure it out. So for me, it's less investing heavily rather than do these tiny experiments and see what freedom you can create. But I think what we all need to acknowledge as well is that we are trained or educated in an environment where profit is valuable because profit is the key to pay my salary. So I rather do what my boss is telling me than coming up with a new idea.

Harsh Thakkar (15:29.156)
Yeah.

Tom Siebeneicher (15:55.946)
Because, well, there are other people to have new ideas. But where are these other people? That's quite often the question.

Harsh Thakkar (15:59.556)
Mm -mm.

Right. Do you have any real world examples either from any of your work or something that you've read or came across on content, either in tech or life sciences where, you know, these kind of strategies or techniques have led to an invention or like amazing product?

Tom Siebeneicher (16:22.56)
Yeah, I actually was part of a hackathon from Miro, the whiteboard tool, because one of the developers said, well, actually, I want to do in Miro what Jira does, but we can't do it. So what they were doing is they started to build functionality with Jira is doing in Miro because they said, all my death work is orchestrated in Jira, but I'm developing a whiteboard, how can we do that? So then they came up during the hackathon, then the next step was just reaching out to Atlassian and now they cooperate.

Harsh Thakkar (16:26.67)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (16:33.188)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (16:52.35)
And I think there are even other things, if you follow my work as a product down the road, which are coming up like this and all these ideas, a lot of these ideas came up during hackathons because someone said, actually, I want to do this in there, but I can't. So let's figure it out. And that was a great experience for me to just be part of it because as you rightfully said, quite often where are the ideas coming from? What are good examples? It's hard to pin down.

Harsh Thakkar (17:01.913)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (17:07.386)
Right.

Harsh Thakkar (17:18.298)
Yeah, that's a good example. haven't, I've done a few trials of Myro, but I have never really used it. It's a very interesting product. But again, you know, I'm not into that kind of work, so I've tested it. But yeah, that's a good one. So talking about, you know, having this sort of environment where you can experiment or having, you know, giving employees the freedom to come up with different ideas.

What's, I think for all of this to be successful, you have to have the right leadership that can figure out how to motivate their employees to do these things. So what are some of the qualities that you feel leaders need to have so that their teams can thrive and experiment like we were talking about?

Tom Siebeneicher (18:11.552)
Yeah. Well, they need to be self -aware and then they need to be willing to let go. So I have a little example I always use. Is it a decision you take frequently? Really often, then you probably should start delegating it into your team. So if you need to take this decision every week, every time, well, then give it to your team. If it's a decision you take once a year, which is life -threatening to the organization, if you go the wrong direction, well, then as a decision, you should do yourself. So that's the one thing. And the other thing is...

Harsh Thakkar (18:16.185)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (18:41.558)
Creating this psychological safety that the people actually believe they can come up with recommendations and propose things really take time. So I think there's a great video about it about the submarine. I think the reason for intent. So if you say, now steer with intent and not with directions, and this really helps. But I rarely see a leader or a manager who's willing to let go so much because they are scared themselves. If we do that, they get beaten up for it or there's something which comes out of it.

Harsh Thakkar (19:06.628)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (19:11.468)
that they get as a penalty. creating this sandbox or this freedom as a servant leader is really hard. I mean, the way I always try to describe the two leader is think about driving on the highway. So a highway has boundaries left and right. So, and you can tell to your employee, you need to drive maximum 100 miles, which is quite fast, but let's say that's maximum on the highway, but it's three lines. I don't care which line you are driving. So,

Harsh Thakkar (19:24.664)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (19:39.948)
You can start adding more and more rules, So that is flowing. You need to keep driving on the right lane. You shouldn't be faster than 100. You cannot leave on the exit. You need to drive certain car. But the more rules you add, the more difficult it gets to be free. And then I said, well, let's take some things away. So let's keep the simple things, right? Don't damage anyone else. Maximum drive a certain speed and don't leave the highway. And then they will do certain things other than it will work. But...

As soon as you then really go down that path, I explain to them, well, see, it's still hard on the highway. Let's go back to kindergarten. Let's think about the sandbox. I mean, I have a son. My son is six months. My son will not do at all what I want from him because he doesn't comprehend that yet. But I can put him in the sandbox. I can say, here's a shuffle. Here's something. He will probably start eating the sand. I say, well, if this is your solution, go with it. Down the road, the kids get older, so you add certain things.

Harsh Thakkar (20:31.183)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (20:37.398)
This is really the starting point. You need to think as simple as a sandbox and then take it from there.

Harsh Thakkar (20:42.303)
Right, no, I can definitely relate to that because my son's now three years old, so I've already gone through that journey. He doesn't eat sand anymore, but I think he's eaten plenty of sand in his early years of growing up. But I can definitely relate to that. Another point that I was thinking about, as you're mentioning, was, okay, giving them the freedom, having all the...

Harsh Thakkar (21:11.349)
not giving them too much direction, but giving them the boundaries and letting them explore. And then one that came to my mind is also having a mechanism to capture ideas. I feel like that's one thing I've observed, know, lot of companies don't have a mechanism. if they're in meetings and they're having amazing ideas, as a leader, I love when

You know, I've had managers in the past who are like, Hey, Tom, that's a great idea. But right now we are on this priority. I would love for you to put it on this notepad or put it in this Teams folder. And then when three weeks from now, when we're done with this project, let's talk about that. Right? So you're not immediately disqualifying the idea. You're still parking it, but you're not giving the assurance like, Hey, yeah, go spend money and do it.

but that way maybe you've got a few weeks to process whether that idea is good and that's creating that psychological safety almost tying into that point where everyone feels like the idea is going to be heard, whether it's going to be implemented, that's a different story, but it will be heard. What are your thoughts on that?

Tom Siebeneicher (22:30.284)
Yeah, and I think this is already great because it's a great stepping stone to get it because the next thing for me is, I always try to teach leaders or managers that is, okay, now you put it somewhere, you put it on the parking lot. But if you never look on the parking lot, that will not help. So you need to create a moment that needs to be something which the team remembers. It can be a meeting, it can be a day, it can be an email whatsoever where you as a leader take a look on it and say,

Harsh Thakkar (22:44.515)
Mm.

Tom Siebeneicher (22:59.776)
By the way, John, you had an awesome idea five weeks ago. I thought about it again. Let's now spend some time on it. Or by the way, I think there's still not the time doing it, but I believe in the next quarter it could be valuable. Do you also still believe that it's valuable so that the employee knows someone is coming back to it? Because I was working when I was still a student, I was working with Siemens. They have this wonderful, highly

professional design process for ideation. So as an employee, I have an idea, you can put it in, you need to fill out 25 different fields, no one understands. And then may or may not, years later, you get a feedback, by the way, you be implemented your idea or no, and then you get a voucher or whatever. So actually, I put in an idea when I was a student and two years later, I got an email out of my private email address with the information, we thank you for your idea, but we will not proceed with it. Yeah, what do I care about it if it's two years later?

Harsh Thakkar (23:26.724)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (23:40.515)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (23:54.55)
So if there's no frequency, there's no clear cadence, and you're right in sense that it needs to be a central point, everyone knows that's the central point, it also not helpful. And one other thing is also, and this also qualifies for me a great leader is there's an impediment in doing it. So something's holding us back to proceed in this idea. Can we budget, can be time, can be whatever. If the leader is capable of pushing aside or getting rid of the...

Harsh Thakkar (23:54.574)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (24:18.063)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (24:22.94)
bottleneck or the situation was holding us back that really makes it great because I'm John I have an idea my manager said the idea is great I got time for it but I cannot proceed because I'm blocked by something and no one is helping me I directly get frustrated again and I will not do it

Harsh Thakkar (24:38.562)
Right, Yeah, and I can, you know, everything you said there is super important. The key takeaway for me here is set the right boundaries for your team. Make them feel that safety that all ideas are going to be heard and then have a mechanism to capture them, review them at a frequency.

And if you're going to move forward with some and keep some later, make sure that all of that is communicated in a good format, not like yours where two years later, you almost don't even remember what the idea was. That's far too long, right? So those are my three takeaways there.

Tom Siebeneicher (25:22.848)
Yeah, I agree.

Harsh Thakkar (25:24.645)
Let's switch gears and go into agile ways of working. I've constantly, many times I hear in pharma or especially in regulated industries is that there is this tug of war between being agile and still trying to make progress or make improvements. Because when people think of agile versus like waterfall,

There's different philosophies. if someone like you who's been in this field consulting, what are some of the main challenges companies have integrating an agile method of working?

Tom Siebeneicher (26:11.574)
think challenge number one is they make a huge mistake right at the beginning because what they're doing is they take the framework and try to implement it one to one. It is okay, this worked somewhere else, it needs to work for us, let's squeeze it in. But it doesn't because the way it's designed, it's designed for a world which is highly flexible, highly reactive and so forth, which you can't be because mean, pharma is regulated for a good reason, right? Because if something goes south, that's an issue. And the next thing is then,

Harsh Thakkar (26:20.377)
Mm.

Harsh Thakkar (26:34.766)
Right.

Tom Siebeneicher (26:39.668)
I always say do agile where agile is due. So I think that's it is, it's a mindset. It's something which is nowadays mainstream, which can work perfectly in a, in a pharma world. But for example, if it's a research study, takes a certain time. There's biology behind it. So you can't just skip that. That doesn't work. If you think about marketing and sales, well, there are elements where you can use it and then implement it there. So I think the challenge the pharma industry has, they try to copy it one on one and then

They didn't broke it down to an element where it can work. So that's beneficial for them because quite often someone said, everyone needs to do it. Yeah, but that doesn't work. That's not how it goes. So let's define areas where it can work. And let's also admit there is a red will not work. But if we have area A and area B, let's create a clear translation between them because they want to communicate with each other, but they might start talking different languages. So what's the translation template in between?

Harsh Thakkar (27:13.839)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (27:37.605)
Right. Yeah. And another example I've seen within, you know, this area of Agile, especially like in software implementation or technology implementation, I'm seeing more and more companies are open to Agile compared to, you know, 10 years ago or 15 years ago when I was starting out. It was mostly waterfall where you had to have a clear plan. And if you deviated from that plan, you would have to go and change all your documentation.

whereas now companies are constantly updating their documents, they're making small changes to features and functionality, and constantly keeping everything in sync. The initial perception I've got or I see from people is, agile is a lot of work, because you have to keep doing it again and again. But my argument to that is agile...

If you're doing it again in a confined timeline or a sprint and you know that you have two weeks to work on this topic and then you're going to test it and then you're gonna go back and you're gonna get two more weeks to fix it, it's a good way to know if it's gonna break, right? Because all you're losing is two weeks versus if you work on something for three months and then find out that it's broken, now you've lost three months. So what is...

Do you have any counter arguments to people who are opposed to agile?

Tom Siebeneicher (29:07.978)
Yeah, and here directly my the combination and I think it also comes together now now so so so beautifully is that burnout and also agility is quite connected because you said it rightful there's a sprint. Have you ever seen a sprinter and athlete who does a sprint after a sprint? So where's the of breathing time? And the thing I always say to people which are opposed to agility or say it doesn't work is that, well, what did you heard about it? So what's your perspective, perception about it?

Harsh Thakkar (29:18.197)
Mmm.

Harsh Thakkar (29:23.983)
You

Tom Siebeneicher (29:34.54)
What are the things we actually change? And what are the things you believe will not work for you? I think that's the one thing I always say. And then, as I said, is due. So if you understand the problem completely, so the root cause we try to fix with it, and then how do we go into it? One of the most interesting thing is that I was at a conference, I think it was two years ago, it was an agile leadership conference. I was talking to 200 people and I said, okay, who of you ever worked in a scrum team? And out of 200 people, only

10 % raised their hand and I said, okay, have 200 people in front of me. 90 % of the people in front of you never worked with an agile method. And how many of you expect their teams to do so? And more than 90 % of the people raised their hand. said, well, great. So you're expecting something to happen in your organization, which you never tried yourself. And that's also the one thing I always say to someone who's opposed to agility is have you ever tried it? And what have you ever heard about it? Because

Harsh Thakkar (30:23.781)
Hmm

Tom Siebeneicher (30:31.488)
Given the fact that agility is so mainstream by now, so much around it, there are so much things which are wrong. I mean, you can Google it, right? You can ask Chet to PT about it, what it is, but maybe it's wrong. Maybe it's not fitting your situation.

Harsh Thakkar (30:43.645)
Right, right, no, I have to stress the second point, which is what have you heard about it, right? Because that is directly, you're not directly attacking their understanding, but you're basically asking them, what do you know about this? Or, know, like this is the same thing happens with implementing AI, because a lot of times,

companies are like, we can't implement AI because the regulations are not clear and we don't want to implement it and then find out from FDA or some agency that we didn't do it in the right way. And it could be as simple as what do you think AI is, right? And in many cases, companies or people don't have a good understanding of what it is. Maybe they know a little bit about chat GPT or whatever it is, but that's a very, it is a very simple question.

But the information you can get from listening to the response is huge. So yeah, I love that question a lot. What do you know about this? Or what have you heard about this? Because that's bringing the assumption straight to the table. And then you can have a very constructive conversation to say, just so you know, these things are not accurate, but this other part is true. And here's how you can fix that, right?

Tom Siebeneicher (32:07.402)
Yeah, exactly.

Harsh Thakkar (32:09.571)
Yeah, you worked in many different countries with a wide range of clients. What's like one of your most lovable parts of being a consultant or doing the work that you're doing?

Tom Siebeneicher (32:26.806)
think it's actually this ever -changing environment because I love to fix problems and whenever I go somewhere there's a new problem and I have this wonderful situation which I accepted over time. I think I struggled at the beginning of my career with it. I'm always working on the system not within the system. So I can ask bold questions or also give recommendations from the outside to say, I think you need this or have you thought about this while sometimes you're hesitant to do this.

Harsh Thakkar (32:29.05)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (32:33.765)
All right.

Harsh Thakkar (32:42.693)
Hmm.

Tom Siebeneicher (32:54.336)
within an organization. So for me, it's the beauty of it to sitting outside and giving this, but also, and that's what I always try to do in every of my projects, stick around until it's actually implemented, until the change actually happened, and not just dropping a concept and say, this will work. It's wonderful. Did it five times, then leaving and actually it crashes the second time leaving.

Harsh Thakkar (33:11.512)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (33:15.869)
Right, right. Yeah, you know, there's, there's, I feel like every day I come up with a new definition of, of a consultant, you know, like we started the topic by going over that and there's a hundred different ways. Every consultant has a different personality, the different way of approaching. But I think as you mentioned, every consultant I've worked with or I've had on my team, they all have this common

desire to solve problems, right? How they do it, that's what separates them from others, glad to hear. I personally feel the same way. That's what drives me to do what I'm doing is I love attacking new problems and figuring out a way to solve them. So for our listeners who want to connect with you, maybe chat with you, work with you, what are some ways they can find you or your content on social media?

Tom Siebeneicher (34:13.184)
Yeah, so the easiest way is definitely hit me up on LinkedIn. So just drop me a message or comment a post of mine. And then we definitely can get in contact. You can also find my speaking engagements on Spotify or YouTube. If you want to dive into more content, you will find it there, but always open the chat because every new contact is a new experience.

Harsh Thakkar (34:31.679)
Yep, and we'll make sure to put that in the show notes. Before we drop off and conclude this, are there any final words or messages you want to share with the audience?

Tom Siebeneicher (34:44.222)
Yeah, I think that the really, really important thing I want to get across, we started with it is that burnout comes quickly. If you recognize it, if you don't recognize it, it comes slowly, it creeps on you a little bit and it can happen to everyone. If someone says to you, you look stressed, you look tired, think about it. Are you tired? Are you stressed? What's happening? Because you can prevent it and that's the best thing. Safe awareness is the best thing you can do.

Harsh Thakkar (35:10.307)
All right, we'll leave our audience with that note to reflect upon. Thank you, Tom. Nice talking to you. Cheers.

Tom Siebeneicher (35:16.566)
Same, thanks, Hans.