James Williams

James Williams, General Manager & Vice President, Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games at The Coca-Cola Company.

Transcript

SH: James, welcome. I am thrilled to have you as my guest on Talk with Sally. Could you please introduce yourself and your role at Coca-Cola?

JW: Super excited to be here and to have this chat with you. My name is James Williams. I’m just closing out my job of being the General Manager and Vice President of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games here in Tokyo Japan for Coca-Cola.

SH: And crikey, what a journey has been for you, James, because I've had the privilege and pleasure of sporting you on that journey as your leadership mentor and was, to be honest, just in awe of how you how you pulled that together and kept the focus and delivered word that's used so much uncertainty, could you even deliver it? Would it even happen? How did your management style and leadership style evolve to really be effective in that situation?

JW: In terms of my leadership style. I would say one is adaptive. And if I look back over my career today it's been in so many different places. So, whether it was in Europe when I was in the UK, whether the London Games there or whether it was in Brazil for four years or whether it was here in Tokyo, you always have to adapt to the situation, the culture and everything that's around you.

And I would also say that it was evolving. I constantly feel as though I need to evolve as I get more experiences, work with different people, different situations, my leadership style has evolved. I always use the analogy of wine. I think leadership is like wine. You can never stop learning about wine in terms of the different types, the different places it comes from, what it goes with etc. And for me, that's what leadership is, you're constantly learning, growing, evolving and developing your leadership style as you get older.

And then I think the final one for me would be I'd like to think it was inspiring I think as leaders, we have a responsibility to inspire people to be the best that they can be in what they do and deliver their best work

SH: Absolutely. And in terms of the evolving, I'm curious to understand what would you see as your key difference from delivering, say, in Rio and then delivering in Tokyo, given what happened with the pandemic what was what would be the three very different things that you saw or witnessed your leadership start evolving to within that context?

JW: So I think when I was here and during the pandemic, there were certain muscles that you grow as you become a more experienced leader. For me, I probably over indexed on a few things because of the pandemic. And one was my listening skills. I had to really listen to my team because there was so much going on, not only in the work point of view, but also the home point of view.

And for me, it was listening to the nuances of what's going on in that private life because we were in lockdown. So if we think of the situation March 2020, we have a team of 60 of us, suddenly the rug being pulled down from beneath us and suddenly there's no games. And then you're told to sit at home and deal with it on your own.

The other one was trust. We had a change of leadership so in 2020 I went from being the VP of Marketing to then being the GM towards the end of 2020 and that meant leading a whole new team in a different way and really having to give them trust and believe in them.

The next way my leadership style adapted was empathy. People were going through so much on so many levels. Because we forget the pandemic side of it. So for me, it was about the empathy is really starting to engage with the team and not keep it all about work.

And then the final one, and this was one for me, is the vulnerability. It wasn't just about saying great, this is fun. Let's go. And I never forget. It was 11 days out from The Games. The organizing committee decided to cancel spectators, everyone. The whole team was looking at different ways whether it was hospitality, consumer promotions or just internal ticket. And I called the team meeting the next day because we found out the night before and the first thing in the morning and I just put up this photo of this person, a black and white photo, just crunched in the corner of the room and said, “How did you feel? Because this is how I felt last night.” We've gone through so much. We're 11 days away from it. And I think that really helped the team to go, OK, you know, it hurts. And it did. To share that with them, I think made a lot of difference.

SH: I’d also say, knowing you as well as I do, they're natural traits of yours to have to index on, which is very helpful in the context of what you're having to do. And you mentioned that also about getting the team to trust in themselves, but certainly from our work together, I also witnessed just how much you invested in helping them to trust you as that new leader, which when you're recasting from within a team, is not always an easy feat.

But I think you achieved that brilliantly and it's down to those areas that you've been sharing just now on our call that helped that duality piece happen. I think your stories will be interesting because you almost have a mini whirlwind of what other companies are going through on a much more marathon-esque ways of working.

So were there any changes, James, or any structures or frameworks that you found really helped with flow, with keeping momentum when you had such intense volatility in such a condensed time frame?

JW: It's now coming flooding back! It was a classic moment for me where everyone was looking to me to go, “So do you have all the answers?” And it wasn't just my team, it was also the organizing committee in Japan.  And I was like, well, I'm not entirely sure I've done one of these before. I haven't done a pandemic, least of all an Olympics in one. So what I did for the team was really to break it down into pieces for them because again, it's that you've got to understand the team and what they're going through. 

And for them, the house of cards just come tumbling down. So I broke it down into bite-sized pieces for them. And the first one was, OK, what's the immediate thing that we have to do? We have to stop this freight train that is the Olympics that's been planning for four years.

And what do we need to start what do we take? What can we save? What can we repurpose?

The other one was you never get a chance like this in the Olympics to stop, review, reflect and also celebrate. It was March 2020. So we delivered about a year and a half of work. But you're working at such a pace that it just keeps going and going. You don't have time to stop and look, one of the things we did is we redirect all of our legacy fans and said, OK, what's working, what's not 

And then the bit that you alluded to before that we worked on, which was how do I get the team to focus on rebuilding themselves so actually find their individual purpose? And we did this piece of work with them. Taking a leaf out of Simon Sinek spoke of Find Your why. I got all of the team to start remembering why they joined, to go back and find out why you're here. Why you doing this and the power of this? And, then we slowly built that up to be the engagement of the team.

What's our team purpose? And it kept them focusing on building. Not only that, the behaviours that we wanted to have over the next year, the values that we believed in so that we could be this kind of phoenix out of the flames without knowing what it's going to be. So a lot of that was preparation and preparing, but taking their eye off the big hairy thing that was, we don't know if we've got people, we don't know if there's a games we don't know if people can get into the country, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

SH: Yeah, and I remember that time and I remember what was also really, I think, exciting is the right word to use. When I saw what you were doing is you shared yours, too, so you were absolutely in and among it, I think that gave an access on an emotional level. To you as the new leader, but also for each other as the team in a very quick, clear, visual way.

JW: Yeah. Because you gave me the idea of the superheroes. So, yes, we created all of these things, these little, Japanese superhero caricatures. So for everyone on the team and we've got it now, is this painting. And that was a theme that then ran through the next 18 months that you guys are a bunch of superheroes, but you've got your individual superpowers. Each of you brings collectively something to the table, which in Japan is sometimes a bit challenging because Japan likes everyone to be consistently the same.

It was also important to give them permission to get things wrong. And I think for me that was because everyone was well, what do we do about this? What do we do? I don't know. You don't know? So let's go with what our gut feel says. This is what we all think. It makes sense. Let's give it a try. And if it's wrong, then fine. We'll take a hit on it. But that's it. We learn from it and we move on. And I think we had to do that very quickly and very rapidly across all of the different projects.

SH: Calling it out, though, and making it a permission, t's really liberating, isn't it, for you as well as well as for the rest of the team.

JW: Yeah, it was. And you're right, biggest brand in the world, biggest sporting occasion in the world comes with a lot of pressure. Everyone felt it like, well, what are we going to do? And injecting a bit of fun just took the edge off it and everyone's got a book now at the end of it where everyone's got their super hero image in that photo and everyone signed there. So everyone takes that little piece away with them.

SH: Which is wonderful. And given how hard everyone worked, absolutely deserved all that you mentioned about behaviour and seeing how the team looking at the behaviours you wanted in the team, recall seeing that in the context of the pandemic and the volatility, uncertainty, were there any times when you noticed a bit of a pendulum swing, either positive or negative? And what you as their leader did to either address a negative quickly and recalibrates it, but also celebrate and amplify the positive?

JW:  There was a big restructure going and people weren't massively engaged as a team. And I think part of it was actually how do we, how do I change that? And that was for me, it comes back to the trust and the honesty piece.

So we went through and each week we would have for each month in our town hall, anonymous questions and I encourage the team, ask whatever you want. It's anonymous, so I'm not going to know who it is. And we got a sense from my leadership team, guys, what are the problems?  What are you feeling? What are your teams’ feeling? Let's bring it up. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Because everyone had built that house of values and behaviours, everyone who got the chance to vote on them. So we call them and police them themselves because hey, it's not me choosing this. In fact, to a point, I started to step away from it when we got into the nuts and bolts of it. But that's when you call out the behaviours and we call them “teamship roles”.

SH: Was it anything specific? Either the pressure or the uncertainty or the constant changing that was anything specific in that really intense period you dealt with that you saw had the biggest negative impact on your people?

JW: It's the negative. The negative news. So after a while, it just started to continue to be negative. You woke up in the morning, OK, we've seen this has come out in the press. We get a heads up about an hour before we try and download that to the team. It was a case of OK,  we can't control what you can’t control. Worry about what you know. Don't worry about what you can't control. And we always highlighted positive contribution no matter how small so people felt confident.

SH: So it's really obvious from listening to you how much you've learned, how much you and I can I've got the privilege of knowing you as your mentor seeing how much you developed and strengthened through the experience, what three tips, James from your unique experience in the Games, in that microcosm of all roads leading to uncertainty to deliver this incredible world event, what three tips would you give for any other leader who equally has to deliver a fixed outcome?  

JW: It's a great question. I think if I break it down into probably three different areas. So the first tip would be it's all about supporting the team, but doing that in a genuine and honest way, and for me, it's about how do you empower them? How do you provide them with the direction without telling them what to do, supporting them instilling belief in themselves.

How do you allow them to be the best to be themselves and that takes trust and it takes belief.

The other one is that there was a lot of pressure and at times it was lonely. I'll be honest. That was it was definitely moments I felt as though I'm on my own. And what I developed was then probably a bit more of an external network so there was about five friends, now close friends that worked on The Games outside of Coca-Cola, but different parts of the games, and we would have regular catch ups with people that were going through the same thing because you need to bounce ideas off people – ask ‘how are you dealing with this?

That protected me a little bit.

Then the other one is just breathe. I think what happens is, we just go 100% and we just don't stop when we feel that's what we need to do. But what I quickly realized was because it was it was going to be a yearlong piece of work, this with the pandemic and then delivering the games and everything, I had to give myself the breaks.

SH: So trust and belief in your team and getting them to really believe in that and feel that getting that peer support for yourself so that you're not having to cope completely in isolation as the leader and then making sure you're taking time out. So that your perspective can keep healthy and you can pace yourself to get through the endurance of the event as opposed to falling under the pressure of the event.

I am always interested when I work with a guest on Talk with Sally. What's been the most impactful or helpful nugget of advice or framework or tool that you've taken away from our work together James, and how has it helped you?

JW: It's been incredible. It's been so helpful, and I wouldn't be probably here today if that if you hadn't helped me through those moments so I'm very grateful for that.

And I think that's one that you've got a number of tools that I helped that really help in different situations. You provide that honest sounding board and been someone that's going to challenge me on the way that I'm looking at something else. You're not afraid to question me on where I'm going or what I'm thinking. And that for me is refreshing because there are a lot of people who don't challenge me on that. So for me, during those periods, it was great to have someone that could actually go “Hey, do you think that's the right thing? Or maybe you should be doing this?” and working through the problem with me, which I thought was super helpful for me over those times.

And then the one thing we always talk about this is Leadership Vision Board. For me, that as a tool for me to be able to project where I want my leadership to be and where I want to move to and the areas that I'm going to work on for me because it's visual and I'm visual as a person that really helps me to understand, hey, where I am and where I want to be and again, you challenge me on, OK, is that realistic?

But I think just to a general sense of will you very succinctly challenging where I'm thinking and questioning me to be looking in a different direction, I think this massively helped me.

SH: Thank you. It's always nice to hear the feedback, but also to know how it's helping. And it's been an absolute pleasure and privilege to support you James, throughout your various roles as you've been with Coca-Cola, and I just see that flame in the background there and what an incredible legacy you've left in how you and your team did deliver in such circumstances, I'm sure you, in your wildest dreams, you never thought you'd lead through so many different challenges and do it so well. So hats off to you, James, and to your team. And thank you so much for being a really great guest on Talk With Sally.

JW: And thank you. It's been great!