Nichole Wynne:
0:00
Project management is an art. It’s less of a science and more of an art. As we know, with art it’s in the eye of the beholder, so it’s complex, but it’s very simple at the same time. Delivering a project is very different to that. You have to be agile, and I don’t mean agile in an agile delivery approach. Here’s a drawing of what an agile and putting sticky notes on walls. I don’t mean that I mean you have to be able to move with the project. You sticky notes on walls. I don’t mean that. I mean you have to be able to move with the project you need to understand where the project’s going, you need to see what’s coming.
Michael van Rooyen:
0:28
Today, I have the pleasure in interviewing Nicole Wynn, who is the CEO and founder of a company called Nickstar. We’re going to be talking today around all things project management, in particular, around ICT, an art that many don’t think about in delivering projects, but very fundamental to the outcome for customers. Welcome, nicole. Thank you, michael. Before we get started, I’d just like to take a moment to congratulate you on your nomination in the WICTA, which is the Women in ICT Awards.
Nichole Wynne:
0:56
Thank you In the Achievement category.
Michael van Rooyen:
0:58
Yep For many listeners who don’t know, this is an annual award that they run for women in ICT, which I think is fantastic, and the award that you were nominated for was to recognize standout candidates who have delivered an unrivaled contribution in the industry, and I know you’ve been doing this for a very long time, so it’s a worthwhile category. Part of that award is about evident outstanding professional and personal achievements. The individual individual earned a reputation as an esteemed thought leader, hence why you’re here today Thanks, Nicole Following a distinguished career in both business as a business leader and a role model for aspiring executives, and this award particularly achievement categories for candidates with over 21 years of experience within the ICT industry. So that speaks volumes alone. It’s been a while. I don’t know how you’re still doing it.
Nichole Wynne:
1:43
project management afterCT industry, so that speaks volumes alone. It’s been a while. I don’t know how you’re still doing it. Project management after that long.
Michael van Rooyen:
1:47
So again, well done and thanks for the time today.
Nichole Wynne:
1:50
Thank you, Michael. It was certainly humbling and very much an honour to be nominated, to be amongst those kind of people. It’s not until you kind of look back on your career that you realise how long you’ve been doing it and what you’ve achieved. So it was a good opportunity to reflect.
Michael van Rooyen:
2:05
Well again, congratulations, and well deserved. So in today’s session I was really wanting people to understand things around project management for the industry and the importance of that. Project management obviously extensively important in all industries construction, everything like that but I think it’s an underlying thing that people don’t really perceive as how important it is in the ICT industry, considering how critical it’s becoming. So, before we get started, do you mind sharing a little bit about your journey in the ICT industry and what inspired you to start NICSTAR in 1999?
Nichole Wynne:
2:40
Thanks, michael. Yeah, I started. I grew up in a very small country town in New South Wales called Wellington, out near Dubbo, where there’s not a lot of opportunity for ICT, certainly not back in the 80s and 90s when I was at school. So I decided I wanted to be a computer programmer and at the ripe old age of 14, I started writing letters to IBM in Sydney requesting them to employ me. Of course I didn’t hear anything back, but that didn’t dampen my spirits. I just maybe try and work harder to get where I wanted to be.
Nichole Wynne:
3:14
I left Wellington at the ripe old age of 17 when I finished school and went to Armidale to study computer science at the University of New England. I was there for about six or eight weeks and looked around the room and just saw a whole bunch of A men, b, very mathematical and scientific type people which I didn’t really fit the crowd for that and made a decision to change to financial management and information technology, which was probably the best move I ever made. It was a business and technology degree that I never finished. However, it certainly kick-started my journey to get me to where I am today. So from there I spent a year at uni and then realized I couldn’t afford to stay there. So I moved to Sydney and I scored a job with a distributor who happened to be.
Nichole Wynne:
3:55
I was the 12th employee of the company in Australia. They’re an American company that had come out distributing hubs at the time and switching was just starting off and Fiber and Coppe and I got an opportunity to be involved in a business that was a startup business in Australia, which also gave me an opportunity to do a lot of training. So, being an American company, they’re big on training. We had opportunities to go into the office at seven in the morning and a vendor would come in and give us a spiel on their product and how it works. So I got to involve myself in the industry at a very young age. I was only 19, just turned 19. And it was an amazing opportunity to do that. I worked down there for three years, I think, and then I moved to Brisbane and I was going to continue my journey with the distributor then. But I got sold off to another startup company, which is again it’s a series of fortunate events is how I would describe my history and my journey in this industry. I got to start with a cabling company, so layer one, an emerging company that was starting their branch office. So I got to start up a business, got to find clients, got to employ staff, got to understand how the admin side of a business works, how the startup side of a business, got to find clients, got to employ staff, got to understand how the admin side of a business works, how the startup side of a business works, and got to make contacts and start to make a name for myself in the industry in terms of layer one, physical layer, cabling and design.
Nichole Wynne:
5:17
From there, at the ripe old age of 23, I decided it was time for me to venture out and start my own business. So Nick Starr was born. So, against the worldly advice of my dad who said don’t do it, I said nope, I’m going to do it. And Nickstar was born and very much focused. I saw a gap in the market. Cabling was getting stronger, comms networking was getting stronger in the market. A lot of businesses knew they needed it but they didn’t know what they needed. So I started off more in a consultative sort of business, working with the client, working with the end user to understand what they needed and then designing and implementing and managing cabling solutions for them. That grew into project management and took us to where we are today. So it’s introduced us to a lot of interesting clients, both government, corporate and the financial. We did a lot of work with Suncorp and the universities and Optus and, yeah, various different markets.
Michael van Rooyen:
6:08
Right, right. I mean, look it’s. Not only do you cover project management, you are layer one is such a thing that people don’t consider right the importance of that and how badly it can go wrong. I think that’s a fundamental thing that people still downplay. They think it’s just cables, but if you know, if you don’t get that right, everything relies on that right. I mean, whilst protocols and servers and systems and networks really allow for that, but it’s still fundamentally an art on its own right.
Michael van Rooyen:
6:35
And I think we’re seeing less and less of it, I think. I don’t want to go into the beehive of NBN build, but we’ve seen some bad instances there where just layer one’s not understood properly Absolutely. And then project manager on top of that right. So pretty unique right.
Nichole Wynne:
6:55
Yeah, understanding that that transport layer is integral to. I used to have this analogy when I first started the business that it was like driving a Ferrari on a dirt road. It doesn’t matter how good the car is, if the road’s not good, you’re not going to get the best performance is if the road’s not good, you’re not going to get the best performance.
Nichole Wynne:
7:04
So that’s something that I’ve taken with me through the last 25 years. That’s the basis and the importance, and so many times when we’re managing cutovers for network architecture, it comes down to layer one issues. It’s polarity issues with the fibre. It’s things that we can manage because we’ve got that knowledge from that transport layer.
Michael van Rooyen:
7:24
So it’s very important. And look, 25 plus years of experience in design and project management. What’s with some of the key challenges you faced early in the career and how did you overcome them?
Nichole Wynne:
7:33
Certainly being a young woman in a very male-dominated industry.
Nichole Wynne:
7:38
So, we think back to 1997, 98, 99, I was one of the only women that was working in the industry. There were some people in defense, some women in defense that were working in IT, but other than that there really wasn’t any women in the industry. So I rocked up in Brisbane this green young woman who really wanted to make a mark in the industry and I was knocking on doors and I found I could open the doors. That was never a challenge. I could always get a lunch or an appointment with somebody in government or somebody in corporate or financial industries, but being able to take home a sale or take home an opportunity was hard if you didn’t know what you’re talking about. So I found one of the biggest challenges for me was making sure that I was at the forefront of the industry, understanding technology better than what was expected of me, so that I could not just open the door but I could hold a seat at the table and I could talk the talk and walk the walk at the same time.
Nichole Wynne:
8:33
So, that was really important. I think that was one of the key success criterias for me.
Michael van Rooyen:
8:37
Oh look, it would have been right. I mean, luckily, the industry and the world’s evolved a lot more. You know inclusivity and the world’s evolved a lot more. You know inclusivity, you know seeing that, but obviously doing it back then would definitely have been tough and it’s a well thought out play there to be able to talk the talk and walk the walk as well and really, really challenging. I still see you doing that today and off that. If I think about how yourself and the company has evolved over the years, what kind of leadership principles have guided you to growing your business to where it is today?
Nichole Wynne:
9:06
I think the most important thing I’ve learned through business and I think it just comes from my grounding, from growing up in a small country town I think integrity and authenticity are the main driving factors for a successful business and a successful leader. I always try and remain authentic to myself and I follow my gut. I’m a very open person, which can be to my detriment at some times, but I find being an open and approachable person, being able to talk to people at all levels these are things I learned in my childhood, growing up in large Aboriginal communities where you’ve got to communicate and coordinate activities with a diverse range of people. I think those skills I learned when I was young that you don’t know, you’re learning, you’re just growing up have really come into play in terms of my leadership and what I do as a woman in the ICT industry. Effective communication is really important. Being able to talk, as I said, to different people at different levels is really really important.
Michael van Rooyen:
10:01
Yes.
Nichole Wynne:
10:01
And being adaptable.
Michael van Rooyen:
10:03
Yes.
Nichole Wynne:
10:03
Being adaptable is the most important thing. This industry changes so fast and being able to deal with different people, with different technologies, with different companies is really important. So, yeah, being able to listen and learn is really important.
Michael van Rooyen:
10:18
Those are all great guiding principles, right? I think some people forget those fundamentals, and they really work, right. I think some people forget those fundamentals, and they really work. Uh, talking about significant changes, I mean 25 plus years, it’s been a lot of change in the industry, or whilst maybe in some areas around layer one and project management, you know, may fundamentally still be the same at grassroots level, uh, you know what? What are some of the trends you’ve been seeing in the infrastructure space today compared to what you used to see, you know, around networks, building, project management, has it changed a lot or is it fundamentally the same?
Nichole Wynne:
10:52
I think the focus has changed. It used to be just around having a network, having that connectivity, but now I think the three main drivers now are probably speed, security and sustainability. They’re the main drivers, I think, the main trends that I’m seeing driving the market where it is now. So certainly the speed we all want speed. We’re not going to sit around and wait for screens to load anymore. It has to be readily available to us all the time. It needs to be secure, obviously, and that’s something that’s massively in focus at the moment. That security, that zero-trust architecture, that’s something that’s massively in focus at the moment. That security, that zero trust architecture that’s being built into every network now, was not something that we looked at in the past other than if we were doing work for defense and sustainability, understanding the sustainability of networks and, over time, understanding future-proofing. And future-proofing now goes so much further than just future-proofing your layer one network. It’s future-proofing your entire network and your business and your disaster recovery, and that yes, we talk a lot about cybersecurity, right?
Michael van Rooyen:
11:49
So how do we secure endpoints? How do we secure client to cloud? How do we do all these things from a cyber point of view? But you do touch on a very good point, which is around the physical security. Right, I think they’re sure things are secure. But it’s interesting because it really becomes part of that same framework where it’s sometimes missed. People just assume it’s connected. We know that there’s also wiretapping capabilities, et cetera, so it’s something that would be fascinating to see. Let’s talk about the sustainability first. Well, let’s top of mind. Over the years of these design networks, this cabling, et cetera, have the vendors and what you’ve been delivering seen a change in sustainability? Is it more recyclable materials? Is there a way they deliver it differently? What’s the sustainability play in the layer one space, if anything?
Nichole Wynne:
12:43
Yeah, it’s certainly part of their marketing, whether it’s part of their actual approach and it’s an NF, it’s front of mind for every, every piece of infrastructure. Not necessarily they’re more focused on I think the company. Companies are more focused on, particularly right now, the PoE and the impacts that cable, that PoE has on cabling and the way cabling was traditionally run. So in bundles and we’re looking at heat dissipation and running 90 watts of power down an ethernet cable, it can become a hot and dangerous environment.
Nichole Wynne:
13:13
So certainly sustainability around design is becoming forefront. So not just from a green perspective but also from a cost perspective. The cost of energy is going up. We all know that and we know that computing takes a lot of energy. So the sustainability of that on the long term I think is quite in focus type data centers using immersive cooling technology and and setting up uh data centers right next to solar power stations so that excess solar can be used rather than sent to ground, and just lots of the focus yeah, the focus has changed a lot from let’s just build a data center and we have to cool it and we have to give it power and make sure that the the lighting’s right yes uh to how can we make this sustainable cost effective over over the long term?
Michael van Rooyen:
14:04
Yes, and we’re seeing the birth of AI. We have to talk about AI. It’s the topic of the month or year, and edge computing is coming. We’re seeing this as well about workloads back at the edge. How is it affecting your infrastructure design and project management?
Nichole Wynne:
14:18
AI is having a massive impact, obviously, on everything in the world at the moment, everything from kids doing school assignments to how we do, how we run our businesses today. Certainly, the edge computing, bringing that processing power closer to the device Everything’s in and of things now.
Nichole Wynne:
14:33
I mean if I think back to what my house was five years ago, to what it is now, everything’s controlled by Google or Alexa or everything’s, and then when it goes down, it’s nothing but a pain. So, and AI now having automation tools and being able to find problems before they exist that predictability it’s changing the market. It’s changing the design of everything. It’s making us think about not only what we’re doing now, but what we’re going to be doing in the future, and the possibilities seem to be endless. So I think that visionary look ahead that so many people in our industry have is changing what we’re doing today, because it’s going to change the future tomorrow.
Michael van Rooyen:
15:11
Yeah, look, it’s going to be interesting to see where we land. A lot of people are on the one side of it’s revolutionary and I agree. It has some real substance behind it and we’re still working on all the use cases for it alone. There’s others who think it’s more of a dot-com bubble and I think it’ll be somewhere in the middle right.
Michael van Rooyen:
15:27
I think there’s a lot of investment, which is great, and a lot of play, but it’s definitely going to see interesting how it plays out Changing a little bit away from the technology. Now, if I think about you, know, you and I have had chats over the time and I know that you’ve always talked about a gap between customer expectations and project outcomes. What are the key factors that contribute to this gap and how can organizations or people close that?
Nichole Wynne:
15:54
Look, I think one of the key success criteria is in my world from a project management perspective is early engagement. So what a lot of corporations tend to do from my experience is they sell something and then they hand it over to delivery and they expect it to be delivered.
Nichole Wynne:
16:10
And I think a way to close that gap between what the customer expects and what the salesperson sold is that early engagement with the PMO. So getting the PMO involved early in the engagement, talking to the customer, setting those expectations, understanding what they’re required to deliver, can close that gap between what they’re expecting and what they’re actually getting at the end of the day. So maintaining that stakeholder management, that’s not just stakeholder management, it’s managing the narrative, it’s not just. There’s a lot more to project management than just governance, than just a PMBOK or a Prince2 approach. It’s understanding people. It’s understanding, it’s controlling the audience, it’s looking ahead to what the problems are going to be and then working back from there. So yeah, it’s early engagement. I just can’t emphasize enough how important that early engagement is.
Michael van Rooyen:
17:00
I think about. People talk about project management holistically. Right, and project management is its own industry and art on its own, and I think about some people say it’s pretty universal, you can apply it to all sorts of industries and to some extent that’s correct, with Prince2 and Pembok and all that as you just touched on. But if I think about ICT particularly and your kind of niche play that you’ve built your business around, you know, you guys, or Nextar, is really focused on the project delivery rather than just project management. Can you elaborate a little bit more on what makes this approach unique and why it’s been so successful for your clients? Is that early engagement or is there more to?
Nichole Wynne:
17:37
that there’s a little bit more to it, and it’s interesting that you called project management an art because a lot of people don’t pick that up Project management is an art. It’s less of a science and more of an art. As we know, with art it’s in the eye of the beholder. So it’s very. It’s complex, but it’s very simple at the same time. The reason we focus on project delivery rather than project management. I see project management as being quite structured quite limited and it’s quite governance focused.
Nichole Wynne:
18:04
When we talk about project management, when you learn about project management, you learn a lot about governance and structure. Delivering a project’s very different to that. You can write a plan on day one that looks completely different on the day of delivery. You have to be agile, and I don’t mean agile in an agile delivery approach. Here’s a drawing of what an agile and putting sticky notes on walls. I don’t mean that. I mean you have to be able to move with the project. You need to understand where the project’s going. You need to see what’s coming, and focusing on delivery rather than just management’s important.
Nichole Wynne:
18:35
Just enough governance. We talk about just enough governance in our organization every day. So the governance is important, the reporting is important, but what’s most important is listening and understanding where the project’s going. To ensure that what we tend to do as a business is we look where the project needs to be and we work backwards. We don’t work forwards. So we work backwards with our WBS. We work backwards with our timelines. We look at where we need to be. We try and pick up the challenges along the way. None of the NICSTAR team are highly. They’re not engineers, they’re technical in their own respect. We’ve got a very diverse range of skills in the background, but their ability to collaborate and talk within the team to make sure that we’re picking things up as we go along has been really, really important, and that drives that delivery focus as well.
Michael van Rooyen:
19:23
That’s fantastic Because if I think about the days I was an engineer and I’m so passionate about engineering and of course we work closely together with some of our engineering teams and I know that some of the projects I’ve seen, the real differentiator for those projects has been the project management right, and it’s quite interesting to see how, how polar opposite that can be from someone who’s effective project delivery outcome focus versus just the project management and of course, like every industry, there’s different skill sets and different quality of people, but but it’s actually always fascinates me how different a project can run if it’s not project managed or at least project delivered correctly. It’s actually very intriguing. One of the things you talked about about earlier and you might have already touched on it, but was the importance of partnering with clients and fostering the real, effective communication, and you and your team are very effective communicators. Again, is that another different chat? Or how do you ensure that the client expectations are understood and met throughout the project? Is that really the seed at the beginning?
Nichole Wynne:
20:17
That is the seed at the beginning. Absolutely, it comes from from the early engagement, but it also comes from putting the right people and putting the right teams together. So one thing that we’re really focused on at next star is putting together good teams yes um, because if you’ve got a great team, you can achieve anything.
Nichole Wynne:
20:33
In my experience and in my opinion, um, it doesn’t matter. What we’re doing is if the team’s right. So, um, what we see a lot in project management is I have a project manager available. They’re a project manager, they’ll get the job done. What we try to do is match clients with the correct project managers, with the right experience, with the right attitude, to engage early, build relationships. It’s really important, because everything’s great when it’s going great.
Michael van Rooyen:
20:57
Yes.
Nichole Wynne:
20:57
But if you haven’t got that relationship and you haven’t got some substance behind what you’ve been delivering, if you haven’t celebrated the small wins, if you haven’t set achievable goals to be able to go hey, look over here. Here’s the great things that we’ve done, that we’ve achieved together as a team. Now let’s focus on the challenges. We know they’re going to be challenges, but we know we can get through because we’ve got the right team behind us. It’s really. The personalities are really, really important when it comes to delivering projects.
Michael van Rooyen:
21:22
Yeah, fair enough. And if I think about that alone, in relation to the many partners you’ve worked with ICT organisations to deliver project customers, is there some learnings that could be early adopted by the sales process, the sales person? You know to really think about that, because generally what happens is and you touched on it earlier which is sale happens. You know it comes along and then all of a sudden it’s just the project manager’s problem to deliver it. Is there ways that the industry could improve in relation to that, not just in engagement, bringing project managers in, but maybe seeding? Maybe is it an education that salespeople, pre-salespeople need a bit more better understanding of the project management methodology and adoption as part of the lifecycle.
Nichole Wynne:
22:02
Absolutely.
Nichole Wynne:
22:03
I think it would be beneficial not just for sales, but also for engineering, one of the things that I’ve been looking at as part of some additional studies that I’ve been wanting to do time being, the limiter there is bringing engineering teams along, because what engineers tend to be really good at is developing solutions, but being able to deliver solutions becomes harder and if they understood just some basic fundamentals around project delivery, I think it would help them kind of drive timelines and understanding of where things are and where challenges might be met, rather than just looking at it in a very analytical context. So certainly definitely from a sales perspective and definitely from an engineering perspective. There’s some training, some very simple, just concepts that could be adopted and recognized in both sales and engineering. That would enhance the end user experience basically.
Michael van Rooyen:
22:54
Right right Off the back of that, what are some of the critical elements to delivering a successful ICT project right and especially if I consider some of the complexity? You talked about prisons before you talked about transport.
Nichole Wynne:
23:07
Experience, collaboration and integration and testing. What we often see is there’s not enough focus on integration and testing, having like a pre-prod environment where set up, where we can test, particularly for large government organizations that are in a rush to deploy for whatever reason end of financial year or we’re going to lose our budget, whatever it is often we’re at that stage of the project and testing gets minimized rather than actually focused on. So definitely, integration and testing is a real key success criteria to delivering successful projects in complex and government environments. Having that experience and knowing what the pitfalls are, knowing where things can go wrong, is really really important and definite collaboration collaboration with the vendors, collaboration with the client and just people in the industry, understanding and knowing you know what’s gone wrong in the past, what can happen.
Michael van Rooyen:
24:02
Yeah, it’s really important. Ultimately, all problems can be solved. It’s just a matter of working through, collaborating, you know, really getting together. I think part of what we suffer a little bit today is people aren’t wanting to have that hard conversation. I think that people shy away from that today, I don’t know why but and then they’re relieved when they’ve had the conversation. It’s actually the sky’s not going to fall and people are okay. I know you deal with this all the time in the role you have to do, but it’s quite intriguing to watch how kind of you know push someone in front of you because you’re really worried. It’s fascinating.
Nichole Wynne:
24:29
Yeah, you do need to push back, you do need to have the ability to say no, and that only comes from experience, true, true? So having the confidence in yourself to say no, it’s not going to work. Because of these reasons, one big project that Nixstar turned down was the Queensland Health Payroll upgrade. Thank goodness, down was the Queensland Health Payroll upgrade, so we were asked to have a look at that and we didn’t feel that the testing and integration was given enough time and enough focus.
Michael van Rooyen:
24:55
Ironically, that’s what it was and that’s what it was and fortunately we walked away from that and that was a good business decision. So actually, off the back of that, then, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve encountered when developing an ICT project and I know you’ve seen many over 25 years. Yeah, but what are? Give me some examples. Obviously, you don’t have to name customers, but what are just some of the biggest challenges?
Nichole Wynne:
25:14
Oh, we’ve had some challenging projects. Certainly One of the biggest challenges is getting across to our partners sometimes, but certainly to clients, that project management doesn’t fall into that 20-80 rule, that 20% should be 20% of professional services and that’s what it should be. It’s horses for courses. That’s one of the biggest challenges getting across how important project and sometimes it’s not as important as other times. But certainly if there’s a complex project, it’s a new or emerging technology, it’s a difficult client, it’s a large rollout. Project management needs to be given the focus that it deserves to make sure that the project is going to be successful. But in terms of challenging projects, well, we’ve delivered. We were given the challenge and this turned out to be one of our best projects ever. We were given the opportunity to do the design, so the layer one design, and provide the project management of the infrastructure upgrade for 10 correctional centres throughout Queensland and police headquarters.
Nichole Wynne:
26:11
The only catch was it had to be delivered within 16 weeks, oh geez. So very, very constrained timeline Took a team, a big team, which I was the head of. So I was running around prisons, which brings its own challenges, just getting in and out, doing infrastructure design, so walking around plant rooms and looking around residential areas and coming up with a new network. Then to project manage the implementation of that new network over the top of the existing network and then cut it over, because obviously we can’t have any outages, particularly police headquarters being a 24 by 7 high availability site, they had two risers per floor. We had to run a complete network over the top of the network and not disrupt anything.
Nichole Wynne:
26:53
It was a very challenging project, just from the day-to-day organisation and management. But one of the things that we were given were incentive milestones that if we met each milestone we would get an incentive payment. So rather than price the project that we would, you know, maybe get these milestones or not, we drove the team to meet all these milestones and then all the milestone payments, we used to take the entire team to Vegas for 10 days, oh nice.
Nichole Wynne:
27:18
And that was probably not and we didn’t. That wasn’t planned in the beginning. It wasn’t like. This is your incentive. When we delivered, everyone delivered. We were pulling 24-hour days, weekend work. Everyone really threw everything at it because we just didn’t want to fail. We were told that we couldn’t do it, and that’s like a red rag to a bullet. Next time, if you’re told you can’t do it, we’re going to do it Fair enough.
Nichole Wynne:
27:40
Regardless. So yeah, having that opportunity and then having the ability to reward the team afterwards has been the most was a really rewarding experience and a great team building opportunity, obviously.
Michael van Rooyen:
27:51
That’s fantastic. And I think just to wrap up that area is do you feel that sometimes project management gets kind of shelved as, oh, that’s just a function, someone will do it. It’s just really running a GAN chart, it’s reporting.
Nichole Wynne:
28:05
it’s just reporting. It’s building a schedule and doing some reporting. It’s far from that, and that’s the difference, I think, between that project management and project delivery. It’s looking at the project for what it is and what the client is trying to get out of it, and without promoting scope creep or increasing budgets. It’s not a coin-operated business. It’s a business that drives outcomes, to be able to stand next to your partner and say we did this, we did this together, and to be recognized. One of the best things I think about being in business for yourself is the opportunity to work with who you want to work with and not work with people that you don’t want to work with, and that’s given me great scope to build strong relationships with yourself, with other business partners, and to be able to stand side by side at the end of the project and say we did this.
Nichole Wynne:
28:47
yeah, it hurt but, we did it, or you know, yeah, it was great. Or you know, next time we’re going to do it differently. Life’s a learning experience and every project we learn something more and we take that to the next project and, yeah, that’s.
Michael van Rooyen:
28:58
That’s probably the most rewarding part yeah, and I think we touched on it earlier. But I I I think I agree with you and we should probably think about how we educate sales and engineering teams about the importance of it right, even just at a very high level, what it means and why it’s so important, so that people don’t think, oh, that’s that team and just dump on them. You talked just in that really key project. You talked about motivating the team.
Michael van Rooyen:
29:21
Sure, there was an outcome, and I know you’re very driven on outcomes. So if I think about from a leadership point of view and I will talk about a couple of things about your leadership is you’ve maintained a diverse and highly qualified team over many, many years and you continue to attract talent in this area. If I look at some of your latest people who have joined your team over the last 12 months so some very good talent there. How do you continue to foster that company culture and to encourage the collaboration, respect and pride in work, because it can be a brutal field to be in right Absolutely.
Nichole Wynne:
29:54
I think it comes down to those leadership principles that we talked about before remaining authentic, remaining in touch with the team. Culture is a touchy word. Culture is not something, in my opinion, that you can just say we’re going to have a culture and the culture is going to be this. The culture grows with the business.
Michael van Rooyen:
30:08
Yes.
Nichole Wynne:
30:09
And it comes from leadership. It absolutely comes from leadership. So making the team feel empowered, making them feel like they’re part of something rather than just an employee, giving them the opportunity to speak up and giving them the opportunity to be appreciated drives culture. Choosing the right team is so important. To be appreciated drives culture. Choosing the right team is so important. We have this thing in Nextdoor where we say sometimes, if we haven’t worked with a person before and they’re going to become part of our team, we do what we call a try before you buy, where we will put somebody maybe on as a contractor for a while and just see how they fit with the team, because sometimes they can have the best skills and they might be fit for a particular project but they might not be fit for the team and the culture. It’s really important to me that we continue that as we grow, and the hardest thing I’ve found to manage lately is growth and maintaining that culture, maintaining that team spirit and team feel.
Nichole Wynne:
30:59
But yeah, culture’s a hard one. Like I said, it changes over time too. I don’t think you can, as a culture, say this is our culture and this is what the company’s built on. The company’s been built on multiple cultures over multiple years and it’s grown with the company and it’s grown with the people. And people bring their own flavor to the team and that changes and you have to be open for that. You have to go okay, well, we used to do this, but now we do that. We used to do a lot of camping.
Nichole Wynne:
31:24
We don’t do that so much anymore. But we catch up in other ways and we do, you know, smaller things together and we have team catch-ups and through COVID. It was very, very hard to maintain through COVID, obviously, when you haven’t got that direct contact, everybody’s not in the office and the landscape’s changed post-COVID. People are working from home more and you’ve got to be able to foster that attitude and be supportive but also make sure that you know the outcomes are still being driven well.
Michael van Rooyen:
31:55
It’s a challenging place for any business manager. I think, if I think about those challenges you just talked about and we just talked about some project challenges maybe you could give me you know what has been some of your biggest challenges you’ve faced as an entrepreneur not just in a particular project and how you’ve never gathered these challenges as you’ve been growing your business and yourself.
Nichole Wynne:
32:13
Yeah, I think, looking back, I wouldn’t have said this probably 10 or 15 years ago. But looking back, I guess starting a business when I was 23, 24 years old, not having really okay, I got exposed to how to set up a business by some bigger corporations, but not working within major corporations, not working for government. I used to joke that I was the only person in the IT industry that never worked for Telstra back in the day, Not actually working in those corporate environments. I didn’t get a lot of exposure to how corporate environments worked, only working with them. So now, as we’re working with bigger corporate companies, trying to understand the lay of the land is a little bit more difficult for me as a person and that’s a challenge as an entrepreneur to grow without being surrounded by people and watching how business is done. Basically, fair enough.
Nichole Wynne:
33:05
So I think something I never put enough focus on, I think, when I was younger, was mentorship, and that’s something, now that I’m older and I’m starting to become a mentor for some of the younger people coming up in the industry, male and female I wished I had have actually reached out when I was younger and sought a bit more mentorship. It’s a double-edged sword. I grew to the person that I am today because of the struggles that I had, but I probably would have been a braver person if I had reached out when I was younger and said hey, you know more about this than me, Give me a hand. And I think a lot of that. A bit of it was. I’m a Taurus, so a bit of it was the bull attitude, a bit stubborn and wanting to pave my own way, but a little bit it was. I was a bit intimidated.
Nichole Wynne:
33:46
I was a woman in a male-dominated industry and I didn’t want to put my hand up and ask for help. Had I done that, would the business have been different today? It probably would have been a little more mature than it is now. I’m really starting to, in retrospect, mature the business now, and I probably could have done that a bit earlier if I had reached out. So, from an entrepreneurial struggle, yeah, being brave enough to put your hand up and say, hey, you know more about this than me give me, your hand rather than struggle through.
Nichole Wynne:
34:12
I see my learning curve has been really, really steep at a lot of stages in my career, which is a good thing and it builds resilience and you know you get knocked down a peg and you go again and that’s great and I recommend that for anybody in industry. But yeah, certainly that’s been a struggle in industry and, look, I don’t think it’s just from being a woman, I think it’s been just being a stubborn woman.
Michael van Rooyen:
34:32
What advice would you give women who are entering or trying to build a career in this ICT space, or just trying to get into starting their own business? Is it similar to what you said or is there other advice you would give if you reflected on it?
Nichole Wynne:
34:44
I think, reflecting on it, my biggest advice would be don’t get into the ICT industry to be a woman in ICT. Get into the ICT industry because you’re passionate about it. I think there’s an overemphasis on promoting women in IT. I think if you’re an individual and you’re good at what you do, you should be at the forefront of your industry, regardless of gender. I think that people need to be passionate about what they do and if you’re passionate about what you do.
Nichole Wynne:
35:10
It drives you forward. I think that’s the most important thing. If it’s ICT, if it’s nursing, if it’s engineering, if it’s whatever it is, if it’s building bridges, be passionate about it. That’s my biggest advice. So, if it is your passion, absolutely open the door and go for it, because there is so much opportunity. And, as I just said, I don’t think it matters if you’re male or female.
Michael van Rooyen:
35:29
I think it gives you.
Nichole Wynne:
35:30
There’s an amazing opportunity in this industry for people to grow and to contribute and to be part of something that’s only just beginning, in terms of what we’re doing with technology and AI and how it’s driving our everyday decisions.
Michael van Rooyen:
35:45
Last one for you is and I ask this of all the guests who attend is tell me about the most significant technology change or shift that you’ve been involved with or seen in the industry. So it can be anything. It doesn’t have to necessarily be ICT design or anything that you’ve specialised in, but just the biggest shift we’ve seen in your time 25 years or more.
Nichole Wynne:
36:04
I think it’s just connectivity. Connectivity, everything’s connected. Yep, everything is driven by a computer somewhere and availability. Everyone’s available 24-7. Everyone’s connected 24-7. I’m not saying it’s a good thing.
Michael van Rooyen:
36:19
No sure.
Nichole Wynne:
36:19
But it’s definitely a. Thing.
Michael van Rooyen:
36:20
Yes.
Nichole Wynne:
36:21
It’s definitely something that’s been a big change, a big shift. Again, you know watching your kids grow up knowing that when you’re a kid, if the phone rang on the wall, you wouldn’t have a conversation because the whole house could hear it, because it was in the kitchen. And now you know these kids. They’ve got so many platforms that they can communicate on.
Michael van Rooyen:
36:36
Yeah, discreetly, yeah, exactly.
Nichole Wynne:
36:38
So it’s just yeah, it’s connectivity.
Michael van Rooyen:
36:40
Yeah, hyper-connected, yeah, hyper-connect. That’s a great point because everything underpins that. I mean, as you know, I’m a digital plummet heart and I just think people still don’t. You talk about project management art. I think connectivity as an art is just people don’t see it. It’s just there and reliability has changed. You know you talk about availability, but also think about the internet as well, how reliable it’s become. It’s an underlying mechanism and I completely agree, it’s revolutionised the world, right? Absolutely, nicole, again, appreciate the time today. Uh uh, thank you for coming in and spending time with me excellent, thank you for having me no problem.
