Below you'll find the transcript of the podcast interview with Chris McCullough, co-founder of RotaGeek.
About Chris
Chris McCullough is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Rotageek, a SaaS workforce management platform which helps some of the UK’s leading companies find more efficient, flexible and more productive staff work patterns.
Born in Barnet, North London and educated at Hitchin Boys School, he moved to Edinburgh for his university years to pursue a career inmedicine. He has a number of qualifications from the University of Edinburgh, including a Bachelor of Medicine, a Bachelor of Surgery as well as Bachelor ofScience in Molecular Pathology and a PhD in cancer genetics.
Chris started his post-graduate medical training in Edinburgh, before finding his passion in Emergency Medicine first at University College Hospital, London and at St Mary’s Hospital, one of the largest trauma centres in the UK.
It was this tenure in medicine that prompted Chris to found Rotageek, alongside business partners Professor Roy Pounder and Nick Mann in 2009. Struggling with the outdated processes around staff scheduling within hospitals, and the impending implementation of the European Working Time Directive (EWTD) for junior doctors, he saw an opportunity to use technology to help solve the problems in his A&E department.
Chris focused Rotageek’s initial proposition on the healthcare sector, based on his experience, but later explored the retail and leisure industries, as opportunities for the solution to solve particularly difficult challenges within those sectors.
Transcript
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0:00:05.2 Robert Peak: So welcome everyone to another Change Your Game with GTD Podcast. My name's Robert Peak. I'm here with Todd Brown.
0:00:11.4 Todd Brown: Hello everyone.
0:00:13.5 RP: Hey Todd. And today we have a special guest who I'll introduce in just a minute. The podcast that you're listening to, the purpose of this is to help you to become a little more effective in your life and in your work. Also while, you know, not having to sacrifice your wellbeing in the process. So how to achieve more of what we call stress-free productivity and individual and team effectiveness. And on that note, delighted to have Chris McCullough with us. He's the CEO of RotaGeek, which is a digital scheduling software company. And they do scheduling for a lot of household names and brands that, that, you know at scale. So great work and a great guy. Chris, delighted to have you with us. Would love for you to share maybe first of all just a little bit about kind of your background, the different worlds you inhabit and kind of hats you wear in your life and in your GTD practice.
0:01:16.7 Chris McCullough: Yeah, of course. And thank you Robert and Todd for inviting me along. So as you say, I'm Chris. I'm the CEO at RotaGeek. Prior to establishing RotaGeek, I was an emergency medicine doctor, so trained for 16 years in the NHS, the last eight in emergency medicine. And in those roles I guess needed to manage quite a lot of workload and wasn't using GTD at that time. So an interesting kind of reference period. And then for the last 10 years, have been establishing RotaGeek. So founded it and commercialized it 10 years ago and continue to run the team. So I'm the CEO at RotaGeek also run the sales team. So sort of two different hats within that role. And then I suppose relevant to GTD, I'm also a dad of three boys who are 11, 13, 11 and six and single parent half of the time. So my ex-wife and I co-parent. And so I'm a full-time dad 50% of the time, which again becomes relevant for GTD things and have yes, have leveraged GTD and becoming a more effective parent. So happy to talk to you about those as well.
0:02:29.1 RP: Super cool. Super great. Yeah, we'd love to hear, yeah, just a little bit about, about your journey with GTD in particular, sort of where you started, how you heard about it, what attracted you to it and kind of how it's, how it's been going in any and all of those lovely domains.
0:02:46.1 CM: So probably easy to talk you through it, sort of on the timeline. So I first discovered GTD, gosh, it must over 10 years ago, I think, kind of bought the GTD book. And that was in my sort of role in medicine and emergency medicine. So rewinding way back to '98, which is when I graduated as a doctor, the role of a junior doctor then was to cope with immense amounts of tasks and workload and to, to get work done as efficiently as possible. So it was a big proponent of of to-do lists to record everything and tick things off as I got them done. But the problem with those is obviously it's a relatively a more of a to-do list and not sort of context aware, but was a kind of an all right tool at the time.
0:04:32.3 CM: And I think if you speak to any junior doctor back in the day, that was their job was to run around the hospital, find bits of paper, get jobs done, order tests, etcetera. So that was really sort of the mainstay of how I managed workload and that that kind of serves a, serves a purpose. And it it worked relatively well until you get to a certain level of, I guess, seniority and or performance when it, it sort of tops out and you need something a bit more a kind of a bit more contextually aware. And that's where I, I looked at GTD, so I bought the book and read the book and it seemed like a very sensible way to manage workload and I really liked a lot of the principles in it, really struggled with putting that into practice. And I must have read the book three or four times and tried three or four times to get it off the ground, but never really managed to establish that. And so always kept sort of falling back to to-do lists. And I still have that drive now is to, to go back to paper and pen and to-do lists. So I'm sort of aware that it served me really well, but actually I need a different model.
0:04:48.3 CM: And then actually it was when Robert and I met not through GTD actually, a role at RotaGeek and you mentioned that you coach people in GTD and I said, "You need to coach me 'cause I need to make this work." And that was really the thing that allowed me to embed that practice was, was really someone looking at what I do and why I do it and how I can embed those principles. And it, I remember that it, it felt really unnerving. 'cause I had a model that kind of worked and it worked quite well. I imagine I don't play golf, but I imagine you hear like Tiger Woods changing his golf swing or snooker players changing their queue and it really knocks their game off. And I think I was very aware of I just think at the point that you wanna look at something like GTD, you're really busy. And so it's probably not an, it's a good driver, but it's not an amazing time to, you know, change your swing and make yourself inefficient even if it's momentarily. So it's really aware of that sort of anxiety of what if I change it and it doesn't work and then I'm steps behind or what if I change it?
0:05:51.7 CM: But there's a learning curve in order to, but actually it's, the principles and the basics are relatively straightforward and I think I saw benefits quite early, which kind of helped me to sort of embed that practice. So yeah, so that's how I got into GTD properly. I think I required someone to say, here's how you do it. Here's what you're currently doing. Here are the benefits. Go and make that happen. I think I've respond quite well to by next week we want to see this, do you know what I mean? Like, I need to be held to account, I'm my deadline held to account type of person. So that really helped me embed my practice. And that must have been two, maybe two and a half years ago.
0:06:31.1 CM: And since then we've done a number of things within the business is, I think what I found is two things. One is my practice drops every now and again, so's some things that I do religiously. I love checklists, so I love the checklist bit of GTD or maybe tell you about where I use those. And I really see the value in things like the weekly review, just capturing everything, making sure that I haven't missed anything planned for the next week. I think I still have that, that sort of fallback position of doing things on paper and checklists. And so I feel like I sort of drop off the GTD wagon every now and again.
0:07:17.4 CM: But what's different is I know that my way to recover is to go back to GTD. So almost it gives me a level of comfort that when things get really overwhelming, it's almost when I need GTD more. I used to struggle with that a lot. I like, I'm sort of high performing. I like to do things exceptionally well, and I hate the fact that I drop off the wagon a GTD wagon, but I've sort of learned to accept that it's quite powerful knowing that I've got this thing in the background that can help me recover. So it gives me that level of comfort when things are overwhelming. Does that all make sense?
0:07:53.6 TB: That's great. And this is gonna be quite valuable for a lot of people. You sort, and I'm not using your words, but my sense is that what you came away from your reading of the book with was this idea that, well, two ideas stood out for me. One is, Hey, this is very sensible. This is the right way to go about it. But the book didn't give you sort of the practical tips about how to implement it. And that's fair enough. And the book was not really designed to be sort of a technical guide to the implementation of GTD. So I think an awful lot of people and in some ways that's really one of the cores of our business, right, is the fact that people need some help figuring out how do I take these incredibly commonsensical. David Allen talks about GTD as being common sense on steroids, right?
0:08:43.8 TB: But how do I take that common sense and make it work for me? But the other thing that I thought was interesting and I'd be interested in your thoughts on was, what you also seem to imply was that your, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, but your sense was, Hey, I've gotta implement all of this. I've gotta sort of implement all of GTD, and yet what I think I hear between the lines of your experience with the coaching that you did with Robert was actually an incremental approach could also work as well, right? That it doesn't have to be sort of big bang, everything changes overnight. That it actually can be, "Hey, I'm gonna implement these ideas over time." Did I have that right?
0:09:23.2 CM: Yes, exactly that. And I think it's really interesting. I think I learn a lot about myself in processes like this. And part of my failing, I think, or my strength maybe, and my failing is I want to do everything right now as well as I possibly can. And the reality is you can't bite off all of these things. And that's part of the, one of the fundamental principles of GTD, right? What's the next action? You've got these big projects, but actually I only need to worry about the next action, don't worry about anything else. And so it took me a while to learn that. 'cause I absolutely thought I needed to do everything. I need to do everything right now, wonder if other people go through that same process of it. It feels maybe like quite a lot to change your entire sort of organizational process at once.
0:10:09.5 CM: But actually you don't need to. It's that incremental. I'm going to focus on this bit. How do I capture information? Then how do I process that information and how do I sort of do delegate, defer, etcetera. And so, yes, until very recently I had that poster there up on my wall. 'cause it's quite helpful just to look at it and kind of refresh your memory. So yes, exactly that incremental rather than big bang. But it feels like that was a me constraint rather than a GTD constraint in between.
0:10:36.4 RP: Yes, but also relatable. I think a lot of our people are high achievers with high standards. So they go, "I'm just gonna take this wholesale and get it and give me GTD in an hour." You know, [laughter] Yeah. We had that few people in finance and some of those professions seem to wanna think they can just digest GTD in an hour. But there is a behavior change element, right? And behavior change takes time. And I love that you kind of pointed out that whole bit about how uncomfortable it feels to sort of change your golf swing, right? If you've been doing things that have been working for you, but actually there's these cumulative set of adjustments that are gonna make things work better. It can feel weird, it can feel different when you're building in kind of new habits.
0:11:17.6 RP: So again, I think a lot of people are gonna resonate with wanting to do it, you know, really wholesale right away. And also great awareness that look, it's gonna feel uncomfortable. And that's actually okay, keep focusing on those incremental benefits and gains and gains you're sort of getting. What are some of the things that really excite you about your system? You mentioned checklists and kind of teased that maybe there's some fun ways that you use checklist, but what comes to mind as elements of your system that you get excited about, perhaps too excited for the average person to totally understand.
0:11:54.6 CM: Oh, I'm revealing, gonna see my full geeky side. So I think checklists, in healthcare there's a big sort of there's a chap called Atal Grande who was a big proponent of checklists for the surgical safety. I really love a checklist. I love that pilots use them. And I think people should use more often than particularly now. So in sort of my practice things like the going away checklist, going on holiday checklist, I'm going with three young boys. Snd so they all need different things. And if I forget they're charging cable for their iPad, that could be horrific. So having, I have a checklist and actually now going on holiday or going away, I pull the checklist and I know that I've got everything. So it's that sort of, it removes that level of organizational anxiety and friction. And one of the things that Robert, you taught me is the sort of going dark checklist.
0:12:48.8 CM: So one of my... Things that I used to do, and I really try not to do, is I used to work while I was away. And so actually that probably because part of the challenge was I didn't manage that going dark process of I'm gonna be on holiday, here are the people I need to let know, here are the people I need to hand over to, here are the people that need to be able to contact me in emergency. And being able to do that means that you can then go away on holiday and switch off for a period. And clearly I need to be contactable, but I think it's just that level of organization that buys you the headspace to switch off, really helps. And then three kids go into three different schools with three different requirements is often entertaining. So I made checklists for the boys, so each of my boys, 13, 11, and six have checklists for what they need the next day.
0:13:40.8 CM: So then I can say to them, have you done your checklist? And invariably they haven't, but they'll say yes, but it's all written down. So we sort of minimize in the morning, where's my peak kit? Where's my shoes? I can't find my, it's all done the night before on a checklist. So again, it's that sort of trying to minimize the friction of life admin so that then I guess my view is the quicker and more efficient you can make that the more time you've got for doing nice things rather than it being all stressed in the morning. That said, it doesn't always work. Today was horrific for all sorts of reasons. So, but it's sort of the, I can't remember the last time it was a tricky morning. Do you know what I mean? And I think that's what you're trying to do is minimize the probability that things go wrong. So love a checklist.
0:14:25.6 TB: It's funny, those you long listeners who've been with us for a while, will recall that one of my side hustles is I'm a jazz musician. I had a gig last night and one of the things that I was talking about with a drummer was how much we love our checklists. Because when we go off to a gig and look as a bass player, I do have a fair few things that I need to make sure that I take with me. And as a drummer, I mean, just forget about it. The total number of bits of kit that he needs to show up for a gig and be effective. But the point that he made and again, I'm getting this between the lines of what you're saying is it's not about, you know, some people hear, "Oh, you've got a checklist, and they think, oh, you must be organized."
0:15:06.8 TB: Oh, you must be some sort of neat freak kind of person. But the whole point of checklists is as you've implied, it's not about the list itself. It's about what that allows you to do and be sort of mentally. It's about the sense of calm that you can then achieve because, you know, everything's been handled, right? So when I'm driving to the gig, I'm not thinking, oh my goodness, I didn't bring my whatever, right? I didn't bring my bow or you know, or my kettle lead or whatever. It's all there because, and I know that because I've been through the checklist, right? So it's about that mental clarity, that sort of freedom that comes from knowing that you're prepared. And I love the fact that you shared that despite the fact that you had a checklist this morning, didn't quite go to plan, right?
0:15:55.0 TB: So control, we can do what we can to control the world and be as prepared as we can. But as the quote goes, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans," and we can't, surprises will happen, right? And actually bringing that back to the checklist idea, one of the things that I've found is that over time my checklist, if I treat them as organic things, and I expect that they will grow over time, right? If I add things that if I get to a gig, but actually this happened last night. It occurred to me that there was a new bit of kit that I needed that it hadn't really occurred to me before. And so I added that to my list, right? And that means the next time around I'm gonna be better prepared. That said, again, I'm not, my goal is not ultimately that I'm prepared for all eventualities. 'cause that's just not realistic. But I can be sure that I'm as ready as I can be given my history and given, given what I know about what it's like to getting to be getting prepared for a gig like that.
0:17:01.1 CM: Yeah. I think that is right. And I think it's the talk about that sort of mental clarity, I guess instead of the school run, instead of thinking and have I got, have I forgotten actually, you can just spend that time having nice chat with the kids or sort of enjoying the school run. 'cause at some point the kids won't need me on the school run. I'll miss it. And yes, and I suppose that the GTD framework allows you to think, like today when things didn't go well, so what didn't go well and how do I stop that next time and how do I plan that? And as you say, sometimes there just are unexpected things that you can't plan for, you wouldn't plan for. But having that framework, I guess gives you the confidence that you can handle the unexpected because quite a lot of the friction has been taken out. Yeah.
0:17:45.9 RP: Yeah. What we say, control, control what's controllable and then adapt as you go kind of thing. Yeah. I think that's quite, seems quite fitting too that you've done a lot of emergency medical work. I can only imagine that the, the balance between controlling what you can control and also responding in the moment is just as important there as well. I'm curious how you support others around you. You know, one of the things that people so often that get this kind of go is, how do I get everyone to do this, right? How do I support other people in doing this because it's helped me so much in my life. And A, there's an altruistic element, I want to help them, but also people doing this around you, whether that's your kids or in your professional life or whatever, has a very much a personal benefit to you too. So it's a common question, how do we spark the awareness and understanding of how valuable this can be to those around us? What have you found that maybe works or even doesn't work in that regard? [laughter]
0:18:52.5 CM: It's really interesting. I remember when I guess when we started coaching and I got very excited about establishing the GTD practice. I want to tell everyone and always become evangelical about it, and that, I think can be really annoying for people because I want people to know all of this stuff, and particularly people close to me that in a professional capacity or personal capacity, which then becomes very awkward with partners when you're like, "I think you should do GTD." So I've kind of over the last couple of years changed my approach slightly on a sort of professional level. We've now trained the team in GTD practice and principles, and I think one of the reasons... A couple of reasons for doing that. One is I want the team to be as effective as possible and I see it as my job to sort of create an organization and a business where exceptional people are able to deliver exceptional things.
0:19:51.4 CM: And part of that is how do we cope with the normal interruptions of life and how do we manage to do less? And quite a lot of running an organization is making sure that we get through things effectively and, and make effective timely decisions with the right number of people, etcetera. So we trained the team in those principles, which meant it felt like I was delivering value and allowed them at least access to the tools rather than mandating it, access to the tools in order to become more efficient. But it also helps in communication when people start talking about, great, so what are the next actions? And having a waiting-for list. Waiting-for list is something maybe we'll come onto I found challenging that I'm managing someone else's to-do list, but actually really valuable because then I'm on top of our team delivering for a particular timelines.
0:20:43.1 CM: So I guess in a professional capacity of have taught the teams, give them the skills, but also to allow that more effective communication. And then I think, so actually last night I was talking to my partner about GTD just in a, "Hey, there's this framework thing that I find really useful just to sort of sow the seed rather be in the evangelical about it." Just sort of like, I find it really useful for getting lots of stuff done and leaving it and seeing, seeing if anything comes of it. So I've learned to be a bit more, I guess a bit more balanced in recommending it to people in a personal capacity. But that said, I think it's, you can see the benefits of people, I can see the benefits of people close to me in a personal capacity being more efficient and I spend quite a lot of my time thinking you could do that stuff in a better way. But inside voice is helpful. Used to be an outside voice. I've learned to internalize that.
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0:21:41.0 TB: I love it. And something else you said there, Chris really, really took me back to my early days with this methodology 20 years ago now. One of the things that I recall was you mentioned this idea of a waiting-for and this little at the time, I had a little bit of an uncomfortable feeling about the fact that, well, what this basically means is that I'm sort of, I'm expecting other people to do stuff, right? And that I am interested in the results of that. And when you say it like that, it's like, well of course we all are waiting for people to do stuff, right? You know, you order stuff, you're waiting for it to be delivered. Somebody says in a meeting, I'll send you that document and you're waiting for that to happen.
0:22:29.6 TB: And for me, there was a real... It was interesting because as I started to talk to people about the fact that I thought that that was important and waiting for us was something that were things that we were gonna want to track. It was really pushing at an open door, right? People were sort of like, well, of course, right. In almost all cases it's like that's just being, one person actually said to me, well that's just being adult about it, right? It's like, we've got an agreement. You're gonna do this? Yes, fine. I'm waiting for you to do that. Right? Whereas there was, and again, I've seen this in several clients over the years. There's somehow for some people the little bit of hesitation, Ooh, that feels uncomfortable, right? That I'm checking up on you or some people sort of in interpret it as well, you don't trust me to do this or something like that.
0:23:16.8 TB: So I'm really glad you shared that 'cause I'm wondering how many people out there might have that same sense of it and hopefully some of them might come away with a sense that yeah, this is really something that just by tracking it can really help both parties right, and to be really upfront about the fact that that's what's going on.
0:23:37.4 CM: Yeah, I think that's you, that view of perhaps it feels uncomfortable tracking someone else's to-do list is an interesting view. My challenge with it was, I think I spoke to Rob about it. My challenge is I'm, it's their job to do it. They should manage their to-do list, I don't wanna manage their, I'm managing my to-do list. Now I'm managing their to-do... That seems wrong, but actually it makes me a better leader and a better manager because I can check in nicely with people and where are we on that thing that you promised to do, rather than it dropping off and then it becomes an issue when it hasn't been done.
0:24:11.1 CM: And that's when we capture it. So in some ways it's in some ways it's like lead gen for GTD. You're like, Hey. And I'm gonna keep nudging you because I know that this should be on your to-do list. And if it's not and I keep nudging, and you don't know about it, we need a better system for you to manage your workload. So I've got comfortable with it, but it felt that probably of all the GTD sort of elements, that's the thing that felt the most uncomfortable, 'cause I felt resentful about having to track other people's to-do-list.
0:24:38.7 RP: That's great, that's a great confessions, confessions of a CEO with a waiting-for list, I love it. I totally love it. Chris, time always flies in these conversations, I feel like we could riff on all of this stuff for much longer. But having been through the journey that you've been through, I think you've shared a lot of really relatable nuggets, I think for people out there listening, and I'm curious kinda what your advice would be maybe either to your earlier self or to others who are maybe in a slightly earlier stage than you are with approaching the GTD methodology and kind of owning it and making it theirs. Where would you start, where would you tell your earlier self to take at least a next step with sort of making the methodology more effective for you?
0:25:29.3 CM: So I think the bit of advice that hopefully has come through in our conversation in the last half hour or so has really for me was I would've got there quicker if I didn't think I had to implement all of it all at once. So I think getting an understanding of the methodology and perhaps picking one or two elements that you think would solve a particular problem right now and then build on that. And I think one of the key places to start is capture. And I still find this maybe somewhat tricky.
0:26:02.2 CM: Because life is fast, actually ways to capture your to-do list in the moment as quickly as possible. Because I think I still find this, I think, yes, I must do that thing. And then I don't write it down, it doesn't happen. And then I remember, if I have to think about something more than once, it annoys me. And so that's when I know that my system's not, I'm not using my system as I should. And I think, particularly when things get busy, that ability to capture the tasks or the information that you then need to do your weekly review is really important.
0:26:39.9 CM: Because often, you're out and about, or my kids will say, don't forget, you need to do that thing. And I'm in the middle of, you know, making a dinner or ironing or, you know, on a call. And actually, I need to be able to capture that and put that into my system. So that's still the thing that creates friction for me. And actually, that's the thing that I would focus on first, I think, like get everything in one place.
0:27:00.4 RP: Brilliant. Yeah. And there's a reason we really start with capture as kind of the first phase of the methodology, because if that's leaking, you're in trouble downstream from there, you know. So absolutely, that's great. I think that's great advice. Todd, any kind of parting thoughts in summary about this conversation or things to pick out or highlight, or?
0:27:23.7 TB: I just want to say thanks, Chris. I think, I was, over and over, I was just hearing in your journey and your description of kind of what you've done, how you've done it, the benefits that it's brought, the hiccups that you've run into along the way. I'm guessing that there'll be a lot of people out there who will, you know, in many cases, smile and nod, because they've been through it already. And also, in many cases, sort of avoid the pitfalls, maybe that you've gone through or follow your path in terms of the best practices and how best to implement them. So, no, I think it's been a wonderful kind of toolkit for folks ranging around GTD and various elements. And I'm sure it's going to be very valuable. So again, thank you very much.
0:28:16.3 CM: Not at all. Thank you for inviting me.
0:28:20.8 RP: Wonderful. So for those of you out there listening, if like Chris, you find it annoying to have to have a thought more than once, you might be a good candidate for the Getting Things Done GTD methodology. So please do like and subscribe if you want to see more of this kind of content. And of course, if we can help with any of that in any way in supporting you with getting more done with less stress in a more streamlined way, using an incremental approach, as Chris mentioned, to maximize those continuous sort of gains as you go along in the journey, reach out to us at next-action.co.uk. Meanwhile, from me, from Todd, and especially thanking Chris for being here, thank you all for listening as well. And we'll see you next time. Bye for now.
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