Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Elliot Moss
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today, I am very pleased to say, is Helen Tupper, co-founder and CEO of Amazing If, what a great name, a company on a mission to make careers better for everybody. In 2013, Helen and her university friend Sarah Ellis noticed how their careers had changed from the early propulsion of traditional career ladder graduate schemes to roles that developed them in lots of different and enjoyable directions. Knowing peers were unhappily stuck on a linear career ladder that was holding their development back, Helen and Sarah decided to help other succeed in, as they say, “more squiggly careers.” Creating a side project of small scale training sessions in London sharing practical tools and actions, the pair became “accidental entrepreneurs” as they said, naming their new venture Amazing If. Amazing If now delivers learning programmes with organisations including – drumroll – the BBC, Levi’s and Microsoft, and they offer individual and corporate consulting and coaching alongside two guidebooks and a weekly ‘Squiggly Careers’ podcast, about 400 of them apparently. It’s fabulous having you here, Mrs Squiggly Career person. What is a squiggly career when it’s at home?
Helen Tupper
Okay, good place to start. A squiggly career is the opposite of the ladder-like career that has been around for such a long time and makes people see that direction is only about become more senior. So, when they think about their career, success is kind of going up the ladder and we’ve been presented with that for quite a long time and it leads to quite a lot of problems because there often aren’t enough opportunities for promotion for people so they end up kind of getting frustrated by that and also, everyone doesn’t always want to go up the ladder, they might want to develop in a different direction. So squiggly career is a bit of a reset, it’s about saying how do we give people the freedom and flexibility to develop in a direction that is right for them rather than creating a career that they need to conform to and it and also acknowledges that this is not likely to be linear and predictable, there’s going to be lots of change and that doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong, that just means you’re working in a world where that that is now the norm and so the way you think about your development, the way that you invest in your learning, needs to, needs to reflect that squigglyness.
Elliot Moss
And when did you realise and why that your own career of the ladder going nicely, in a nice linear way up from the left bottom bit of the graft to the right bit of the graph wasn’t for you?
Helen Tupper
I think when I was at Virgin. So, I definitely started with quite a ladder-like career.
Elliot Moss
You were in marketing?
Helen Tupper
I was in marketing, I was in marketing and started out actually in sales and I liked graduate schemes so much, which is quite a ladder-like thing to I think to go onto after university, that I did three of them back to back.
Elliot Moss
I, I think I read you started at Alliance Boots?
Helen Tupper
Yes, I did.
Elliot Moss
And then I imagine you went to, is it Britvic?
Helen Tupper
I did. Yes.
Elliot Moss
And was the third one Procter & Gamble?
Helen Tupper
It was.
Elliot Moss
Wow!
Helen Tupper
I mean, I mean…
Elliot Moss
It’s like three out of three.
Helen Tupper
It’s slightly spooky but you know that. But yeah, so the point I was at Procter & Gamble, I thought I probably can’t do another graduate scheme.
Elliot Moss
I was going to say, when obviously we do do a bunch of research, Stu Produce and I, and that’s like, I look at those CVs and I’ve been hiring people for too long, thirty years almost, and you go wow that’s a busy, that’s one of those busy ones, that’s a two, two, two and you go “Well, are you only going to stay with me for two years?”, you say to Helen and Helen says…
Helen Tupper
I think I was working out what I wanted to do and what I enjoyed and I think part of the problem actually with ladder-like careers is we don’t create the possibilities for what we call “squiggle and stay.” So, if you give people squiggly structures, they can move around an organisation and they can work that out for themselves but when we put people in very siloed structures, often the only way that they can work out what they’re good at and what they enjoy, is to go and squiggle to a different organisation. So, actually, a lot of work now is with large companies, saying, “You don’t want to lose these talented people that are trying to work out what they’re good at and what they enjoy, we want to create opportunities for them to squiggle and stay and kind of try before they apply or they’re going to basically leave in order to learn about them.” So, I think I was coming up against the ladder and saying well if I can’t find my opportunity for learning here, I’ll do it, I’ll do it somewhere else and I think my early career was sort of, was shaped by that and then at the time that I was at Virgin, so that would have been probably sort of about ten years into my career when I was at Virgin, I think what I’d realised and what my business partner Sarah had realised, was that actually letting go of this idea of up is in the only way and we should always be going progressively more senior had led to lots more interesting opportunities, lots of sideways moves, lots more learning, meeting interesting people and we had had a lot of support to enable us to do that in the form of coaching and mentoring and managers that gave us learning opportunities and we recognised that other people wanted to have the same development, they want to try different things but they weren’t able to access the same level of support that we had and so that’s where we thought well how do we help people succeed in these increasingly squiggly careers and give them access to the same sort of learning opportunities that we had and that sort of drive to democratise career development was a very big desire from the outset from us really.
Elliot Moss
I am with Helen Tupper, she’s my Business Shaper today, she’s the co-founder of Amazing If. We’ve been talking about the squiggly career and your career, which was the ladder career, well done. Three trainee programmes for the price of one, who knew, but you, you’ve gone and done it but the serious point is you got to a moment where you said actually, I’m really interested in this notion of career development with Sarah your friend, now your, your business partner. What was it from an emotional point of view that connected you with the idea of doing something to help other people’s careers? Why?
Helen Tupper
I think I had had a desire to be a manager for a really long time and I, I remember my first management position was at E.ON and I felt and honestly I look back now and I feel slightly guilty for these basically career development guineapigs that worked for me because every week I had a new tool that was trying out in a team meeting, a new exercise that I was doing in my one-to-ones but I realised that like the difference that you can make to someone’s development when you care about their career because I don’t think everybody has the same level of passion that I do about career development, which is fine but I think the impact of that when you’re a manager is that somebody maybe isn’t as self-aware because they’re not getting as much feedback, they can’t see beyond the role that they’re in so they become quite restricted when they’re thinking about their opportunities and I know really the bigger the team that I managed, the more I realised the difference that you could make to people and I think if you help people in, I really believe if you help people in their career, you help them in their life, like they, they take that home with them, it affects conversations they have with their family, you know there are financial implications of people finding the right fit, I think there’s a whole load of things.
Elliot Moss
And how did it make you feel, you helping these people and continuing to help them? What’s the, what’s the connection you have?
Helen Tupper
I think it just makes me feel like I’ve made a difference and I think in my day, I’d be working on different marketing campaigns and you know debating budgets and plans and that was intellectually interesting but then I would have a conversation with someone about their career and that, that feeling of having made a difference to that individual was very, you know that, that felt very different to debating a marketing plan and whilst I like both, the thing that I took home was that conversation that I’d had and just a desire to do more of it, to help more people, to sort of scale that impact and honestly have kind of more that, more of that feeling of reward.
Elliot Moss
And when you were younger and thinking about life and the universe and work…
Helen Tupper
Yep.
Elliot Moss
I want to come, I want to come to work and identity in a bit but when you were younger, were you the kind of friend that was always thinking about other people in a way that you know was different? Was there more of it? You know did you ever think “I’m going to go into the caring professions?”
Helen Tupper
No, no. I always thought I was going to go into business so, my mum, and I didn’t really know what that meant and I remember having a conversation with a friend’s dad when we were probably about thirteen, fourteen, he owned like quite a few businesses in Lincolnshire and he said, you know, “What do you want to do when you grow up, Helen?” and I was like “I want to work in business” and I thought I was being so, you know thought I was being so clear and confident and he was like, I remember him laughing and being like, “But what business?” and I just rode it out and I was like, “Well you know, you know business, business obviously” and we just skipped on but I, I’ve always had a desire to work in large organisations and it’s why you know working for places like Microsoft you, I love the impact of large businesses and it was probably one of the reasons that I didn’t run my own business sooner, was because I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to work in those large organisations.
Elliot Moss
And these large, I mean if I start, go back to the Boots, Britvic, P&G, these are big companies. Microsoft rather huge.
Helen Tupper
Yes.
Elliot Moss
But you felt, did you feel like a person in there, a human in there even though these were enormous companies?
Helen Tupper
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Elliot Moss
And why though because that’s not easy, a lot of people, I know a lot of people who’ve done, some have done, are still running big Procter & Gamble businesses and others who kind of went in, felt they were just a number and then left. How did you navigate those big environments?
Helen Tupper
Well I think early on in my career I was part of a cohort. Because I’d done so many of those sort of community based learning, you know there was the graduate scheme and the experience graduate scheme, I was always part of a community so even though you’re in a large organisation, I had that sense of connection with lots of people that I had started with and then I think probably one my skills is that I’m good at building relationships relatively quickly and also once you’ve worked in a few different places, you’re less daunted by you know doing it again so, working in lots of different businesses meant that I could, you know I could do that, I could build connections really quickly and I wasn’t kind of scared by, and I, I love building relationships, I love learning from other people and so being in those large organisations, for me, it’s just, it’s just an opportunity to learn from lots of different people as well as the impact that you make I think in those businesses, you just, you have more reach with your work because of the, you know the scale of those, those companies.
Elliot Moss
Makes perfect sense. Stay with me for much more from my Business Shaper today, it’s Helen Tupper, she’ll be back in a couple of minutes, she’s the co-founder of Amazing If, which is a great name. Right now though, we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series, which can be found on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites business founders to share their industry insights and practical advice for those of you thinking about getting into an industry and starting your very own thing. In this clip focussed on the Airtech industry, we hear from Chris Kahler, co-founder and CEO of Kinnu, a gamified learning app designed to increase the rate of knowledge acquisition.
You can hear all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again if you pop ‘Jazz Shapers’ into your podcast platform of choice. My guest today is Helen Tupper, co-founder and CEO of Amazing If, a company on a mission to make careers better for everyone.
You and Sarah, co-founders…
Helen Tupper
Yes.
Elliot Moss
…friends.
Helen Tupper
Yes.
Elliot Moss
Why are you friends?
Helen Tupper
That’s a very good question. I think sometimes we ask ourselves that.
Elliot Moss
That’s like saying, “Why are we married?” But that’s a different question.
Helen Tupper
Well we kind of borderline are, you know, you share a bank account and I talk to her more than anybody else so we borderline are. Yeah, it is a good question, “Why are we friends?” We have a lot of differences and, and I think sometimes, sometimes that’s challenging when we’re kind of debating things but I think we know, we’ve known each other for so long now, we’ve worked together for such a long time that we realise that our, that our differences are what make us better. So, we’re writing our third book at the moment for example and Sarah is a very thoughtful, reflective person, who can work in a bit of a bubble, so she can write our book for days on end, which is brilliant because it needs that level of intensity, whereas I’m much more reactive and active so, you know I will kind of solve problems fast and make things happen and but that means that I can move elements of the book forward quite quickly, it means that I can run the business while she’s doing more of the writing and…
Elliot Moss
But you will say to her, “Hold on, you’ve written ABC but I’ve been thinking, Sarah, I think actually we don’t, we’ve said that, we thought that but we’ve changed our mind, it should be a bit more that” and she’ll go “Oh that’s better” and then she’ll go off into a bubble and rewrite.
Helen Tupper
Yes, 100%. That, that is the exact process that is happening right now and so we don’t try to be each other, like I don’t try to be the thoughtful, reflective person because it’s not where I add the most value, I can quickly you know engage in something that Sarah has done and spot what we need to do differently and either I’ll go and make it happen quickly or if it needs a bit more thought, Sarah will pick that up and that, that approach applies to how we manage our team, how we run the business, how we create content, write books and so I think we’re friends because we’re better together, in all honesty, and we like each other but I think the business.
Elliot Moss
And has it changed your friendship now that you work together because it’s one thing being good mates and there’s another thing, having seen this happen many times, you know inevitably it does change.
Helen Tupper
The boundaries are very blurry so, she messaged me last week actually about something that had, something that had happened in the business and she sent me a message, I was on the train, and saying “Oh I’m not sure how I feel about this this thing that I had done” and so I instantly responded with a “Gosh, I’m really sorry, let’s think about how we can solve this” and straight into you know reactive, solve the problem mode and then she messaged me and said, “ Oh, I was just kind of wanting a little bit of support from a friend, I didn’t really need my business partner to kind of solve this for me” but because we are so close, it sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the friend and the business partner, so I think it has changed over time, you know more of our conversations now are about the business and very little about life outside of work.
Elliot Moss
But you’re able to be honest with each other because I think, there’s one thing we always say, you know, you read the textbook, “it’s very important to be honest and there’s nothing wrong with conflict” and actually, conflict can be very productive, that’s hard as friends sometimes you know, the people we love the most are the people we’re least likely to be the most honest with because it’s just too painful and actually, if I’m loved by a sibling or I’m loved by you know somebody and then they criticise me, I find that hard.
Helen Tupper
Yes, it, I think we have got better at giving each other feedback because it gets in our way if we don’t. So I remember there was a meeting, it’s like six or seven years ago now, it’s really stuck in my head, with Penguin, it was when we were writing our first book. We were both really excited about it and it was a, I think like a, an early meeting with Penguin about the content and the context with Sarah and me is we’ve both led in corporate roles so we’re quite used to leading, we’ve never, at that point we hadn’t kind of co-led something and I remember the meeting and Sarah basically took control of the meeting and I kind of sat down and listened and got increasingly more frustrated about what contribution I was making and we, we came away from that and I think I probably simmered for a little while and then it, we had a very emotive discussion about what value we both brought in those situations. Now, we are much better at spotting when we are better together and planning for, well okay you take the lead in this situation, we’re, we can call it and take action and also when we don’t need, when you don’t need to of us, I think in the early days we were like “two is always better” and actually, sometimes you think no, like I’m the better person to work on this and we can give each other feedback and I think we are much better now at using the insight to improve our business performance, I think we were so long in corporate careers, it was all about your individual performance and co-founding and co-running a company, I think we’ve learned to do something different now.
Elliot Moss
Why is work so important do you think? Because if we were having this conversation, which wouldn’t be through the radio or on a podcast a hundred years ago because it didn’t exist, but if we were having it a hundred years ago it would be a very, very different notion of what work meant in someone’s life.
Helen Tupper
I think work was much more kind of defined and limited, whereas now I think it is very blurry and it’s much more connected to our identity so, just from the time we spend at work so, in our life most of our time of our hours in our life is spent sleeping but the second thing that you do most with your time is, is work and so, work, you know sometimes people say, “Oh don’t worry about it, it’s only work”, I kind of go well, nah, it’s quite important, it is where you spend most of your time, you spend more time with people at work than you do with your family and it is a really big part of our identity and…
Elliot Moss
And yours.
Helen Tupper
Yes, like a huge, yeah, a huge part of…
Elliot Moss
Because you’re a mum as well, two kids.
Helen Tupper
Yes, yeah, exactly and I think the way that we feel about work doesn’t just affect how we show up when we’re doing the work, it affects how we show up like with our children, with our friends and so, for me, you know work is such an important part of people's life and if there’s a way that we can help people feel a bit more in control of what they’re doing at work, a bit more confident about where they’re going at work then I think that that has a really big impact on all the other things that they do with their time as well.
Elliot Moss
Is it though, if I just be tough on it for a sec, is it a luxury to think ‘squigglely’ because for a lot of people they’re just grateful they’ve got a job, money comes in, they do leave, it means less to them than you or me, it’s not about their identity, it’s something else and actually it’s an aspiration to say well I could move left and I could move right.
Helen Tupper
But I guess there’s a, there’s a carrot and stick to Squiggly I suppose so, the carrot is invest in your squiggly career, develop the skills and you will have more opportunities, you’ll have more choice, you’ll have more opportunities because you’re not kind of limiting yourself to one particular position, like lovely carrot message. The stick message is, if you don’t invest in your squiggly career, you are much more likely to get left behind because what happens when we, we’re just in a role, we wait for our manager to come to us for opportunities, we don’t learn in advance of where we are, is we become very vulnerable to change.
Elliot Moss
There’s no agency basically.
Helen Tupper
There’s no agency and actually, skills that you need to succeed change, organisational structures change around you and you haven’t got the relationships that you might need to navigate that change, you’ve not got the skills that are going to support you to get to a new role so, I think you know for some people, like I say it is a carrot maybe more about your kind of luxury point but that, that doesn’t mean hat we shouldn’t think about how do I invest in my career so that I have more control over my development, I think that is applicable for everybody.
Elliot Moss
I mean, are you really saying you know people should just take control of their lives and think about what it is that they want to do in it? And is that quite an old message but have you, is there something deeper than that because I’m, as I’m listening to you I’m thinking you know what I always say to people, “it’s your career, it’s your life, we want to help you but at the end of the day you’ve got to decide”. Is it more than that?
Helen Tupper
I think that, well, I think there’s a difference between sort of platitudes practical stuff.
Elliot Moss
I think Helen just accused me of a platitude, which is fair enough, you know what it was a bit, as I say, I thought that’s a kind of obvious thing to say but, but you’re right, so what’s the, what’s the underbelly of that? What’s the substance?
Helen Tupper
It’s giving people the practical tools. So I could say to you, “Ah Elliot, it’ll be all, all be right, don’t worry about it.”
Elliot Moss
Will it?
Helen Tupper
“Just keep, keep working hard.”
Elliot Moss
Keep saying that. Just keep saying that.
Helen Tupper
“You’ll be fine, you’re a talented guy, you’ll be fine.”
Elliot Moss
Oh good.
Helen Tupper
So I could say…
Elliot Moss
Finally, someone said it. I’ve been waiting to hear those words for thirty years.
Helen Tupper
It doesn’t really help you, it maybe makes you feel a bit better in the moment but the next day you’re like, “I’ve got the same problem, I still don’t know what to do about it”, so I think what we are trying to do is give people practical tools, like things that they can use to help them think “Well, what do I actually want to be known for?” and “How do I use those strengths more?”
Elliot Moss
And give me one example of a practical tool?
Helen Tupper
Helping people to think about specifically about their strengths so, if you think about in ladder-like careers, people get very hung up on their job titles so, this is my title therefore this is what I can do next, it sounds similar and a bit more senior, that’s the way we think when careers are like ladders. In squiggly careers we’re not thinking about titles, we’re thinking about talents so it’s much more what work gives you energy? What do you actually want to be known for? And how can we help you transfer those talents? So I if I was working with you, that, that is a very different conversation I would have with your career than “let’s look at your job title, Elliot and see what other things look like that.” If we start with your talents, they take people much further into roles that they might not have considered because they need what they want to be known for even though the job title might look very different to what they do today.
Elliot Moss
That makes perfect sense. Stay with me for my final chat with my guest, it’s Helen Tupper. And we’ve got some Roy Ayers for you as well, that’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
Helen Tupper is my Business Shaper just for a few more minutes. I’ve read somewhere that you said you and Sarah were “accidental entrepreneurs.”
Helen Tupper
Mm.
Elliot Moss
And I’ve also, I love this little thing I read about I think it’s to do with the, the gremlins, the confidence gremlin thing. So I put the two together…
Helen Tupper
Okay.
Elliot Moss
There’s Helen doing well, really well, all these different roles. She then has this moment saying, “Do you know what, I want to pivot away from marketing, I think my life is going to be around developing people’s careers because that’s what really makes me excited, found my partner to do it with” but wasn’t there a “Eegh, but can I do this?”
Helen Tupper
Mm, interesting. I, I think the “eegh” as you say it was more about who am I without the big brands that I work for? So, I, I don’t, I don’t think I had the “eek” or what if doesn’t work.
Elliot Moss
Because you, you were confident enough in yourself?
Helen Tupper
Yeah, and I, I, you know we’d planned so that there was sufficient money. I had about a nine month runway to turn, so I went on the business full-time before Sarah and I had a nine month runway to turn it from what had been a profitable side project into a scalable business.
Elliot Moss
And how long was the side project for?
Helen Tupper
About six years to that point.
Elliot Moss
Oh okay, quite a significant time. So it was a good, minimum viable product experiment?
Helen Tupper
Exactly. And we’ve kind of proved it, we’d already worked with lots of large organisations at that point, I was using all of my holiday to work with them as that was part of the…
Elliot Moss
You must have been exhausted.
Helen Tupper
I was, yeah, I had two children at that time and a five day a week job a Microsoft and using all my holiday to run the side project, so it was time, if it was ever going to go beyond that, it was time to do it. And so I had a sort of nine month financial runway to try and turn it and worse case scenario, I thought I would just you know go back to marketing which was a job that I enjoyed in a large organisation because I’d built relationships so, I was sort of confident that if it didn’t work, it would be okay. But I think the thing that I worried most about was the, you know the who am I without these big brands that I work for because my, my identity I think up until that point had been like” I am successful because I work for Microsoft”, “I’m successful because I work for Virgin” and there was definitely that, that, that moment of well who am I now and that, that definitely took a little bit of…
Elliot Moss
And who were you then? What did you, what was your answer to yourself?
Helen Tupper
Well that’s, I never held this, because you know you mentioned the entrepreneur and the “accidental entrepreneur”, I never held that identity, I don’t actually think I hold it that much now that I do of an “entrepreneur”, I think of myself as a business owner, which I don’t know, I think I attach something slightly different to that as a, as a feeling. I think I am now the person who helps other people succeed in their squiggly careers and I have attached myself to that identity and I think I find that more comfortable because it is more about other people than it is me.
Elliot Moss
Yeah. And in that, in your thing about talents, not titles, what are the top two or three talents that you think you have that you have nurtured and made sure are the things that you’re using as you build this business?
Helen Tupper
I think I’m very good at creating clarity for people so, what you tend to find when people are talking about their careers or thinking about their development is there’s quite a lot of confusion, you know they don’t know that they want, they don’t know what to do and I think I’m, I have a skill in helping people create clarity and that applied to marketing as much as it does actually to career development so, transferrable in that sense. I also think I have the energy to make things happen so, you know whether that is you know doing, growing things in the business or you know creating campaigns for the podcast or whatever it is, if I, if there is an idea, I attach kind of my energy to it and it will happen and those, those two things have been helpful in many of the different things that I’ve done in my career.
Elliot Moss
I’ve definitely picked up on the energy.
Helen Tupper
Ah, that’s…
Elliot Moss
And it’s lovely, and your clarity, you’re super clear on that moment and what you’ve been doing ever since and it’s fab. These podcasts as well.
Helen Tupper
Yes.
Elliot Moss
Where can one hear your podcasts?
Helen Tupper
In all the places people find podcasts so, Spotify, Apple, you’ll find us, Squiggly Careers are there.
Elliot Moss
And you’ve enjoyed doing them.
Helen Tupper
Yeah, I love it. It’s a weekly moment that Sarah and I get to think, talk and create together and no matter how busy things are, there’s always that moment for that.
Elliot Moss
I agree and I can empathise with that, I have the same feeling. Very lucky too, eh. Thank you so much, it’s been lovely to meet you, lovely to chat. Just before I let you disappear, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Helen Tupper
My song, my song choice is Stay High by Brittany Howard and I love, I love her voice and I think whenever I listen to it, it just takes me back to a really happy place. So, I could be having a very busy, challenging day and I can hear the first bit of that song and instantly kind of feel, feel better about what is coming next.
Elliot Moss
Brittany Howard with Stay High, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Helen Tupper. She talked all about the importance of giving yourself options in your career, that is the point of a squiggly career. She talked about co-leading and how when you lead a business with somebody, you need to work out when you should have both of you in the room and when you only need one of you. And finally, she talked about that lovely phrase, “talents not titles” and when she talked about the talent she had, creating clarity was number one and bringing energy to make things happen, number two. Great stuff. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.