#64 - Liz Male: Communicating Complexity: How to Craft Messages That Resonate and Tell Stories that win Hearts and Minds

We explore the art of communicating technical subjects effectively with PR expert Liz Male MBE, focusing on how consistency in messaging builds trust and the power of storytelling to convey complex information.

• Communications in the built environment have improved but remain inconsistent across the industry
• Consistency in messaging is essential for building trust with your audience
• Effective communication starts with clear business objectives beyond just selling products
• Laser-focus on specific audience personas rather than trying to reach everyone
• Understand your audience's challenges, information sources, and influences deeply
• We are hardwired as humans to communicate and remember through stories
• Position your client as the hero of the story rather than your organisation
• Measure communications success through the four R's: Reach, Reaction, Resonance, and Results
• When communicating risk, focus on rewards and opportunities rather than just fear
• Purpose-driven organisations achieve the most effective communication outcomes
• Show your workings and be transparent about challenges to build credibility
• Open, honest communication during crises builds greater trust than deflecting responsibility

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Liz Male LinkedIn 

Liz Male Consulting 

Chapters

• 0:26 Introduction to Air Quality Communications
• 2:33 The State of Communications in the Built Environment
• 14:47 Personas: Understanding Your Target Audience
• 24:03 The Power of Storytelling in Technical Communications
• 37:47 Measuring Communications Success: The Four R's
• 59:25 Communicating Risk Effectively
• 1:07:58 Purpose-Driven Communications
• 1:28:59 From Art to Construction: Liz's Career Journey
• 1:43:19 Trustmark and Building Safety Advocacy
• 1:43:19 Lessons from Grenfell and Crisis Communications

Transcript

Simon: 0:00

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters. We already have the tools and knowledge we need to make a difference to the quality of the air we breathe in our built environment. The conversations we have and how we share what we know is the key to our success. I'm Simon Jones and coming up a conversation with Liz Mayle, founder and MD of Liz Mayle Consulting. Author and OBE, liz is a specialist in public relations and communications in the built environment. She and her team help change makers, purpose-led innovators and thought leaders in construction, property and the built environment more broadly.

Simon: 1:06

Communicating the complex and technical is a challenge and, at the same time, the key to driving meaningful change in our sphere. I've known Liz for years and blame her almost entirely for setting up on my own, so it was revenge time. Seriously, though, liz is a mentor in this space to many and her influence on the sector, recognized with an OBE for services to construction, cannot be overestimated. Her insight into the sector is brilliant how we communicate change, risk and innovation, and more is worth listening to. So if you want to understand the how, the importance of storytelling and more, this is the podcast for you, recorded live from future build in london.

Simon: 1:49

I really hope you enjoy this one. Don't forget to check out the sponsors in the show notes and at air quality mattersnet. This is a conversation with liz male, I think, because I I'm banging on about this all the time on the podcast about we've got to get better at communicating technical subject matter, and none more so than ventilation and aircraft. I'm sure it's not unique, but I mean, when we look at communications in any technical field and you've been involved in this field for a while, particularly the built environment what does comms look like in in 2025?

Liz: 2:31

or perhaps what does it look like and what should it look like, is the question okay, fine, fine, um, what it looks like is, uh, currently, I would say is better than it did when I started my career. You know, it's over 30 years ago, um, and, but it's still patchy. It's patchy and it's and it's inconsistent. And the most important thing in communications is about consistency, because consistency builds trust. There's countless research projects on this. You could go and look at what Ipsos Moria published on the subject Edelman, their trust index. If you look at what creates trust in a sector or in a business, it's consistency.

Liz: 3:22

And what does comms look like right now in built environment? Very inconsistent. You know some people good at it strong branding, strong messaging, engaging stories, clear technical content that is verified and and is totally reliable. You know code for construction, product information, level verification, um. And then you've got the rest, which is is not so good and and actually you've got large amounts of the industry which doesn't communicate at all, and that is either through the fact that they feel that they've got nothing particularly to say, which is never true, or they are lacking in confidence and don't know how to go about telling people about it, or they're just busy and it's just not at the top of their priority list.

Simon: 4:13

So there's all sorts of different reasons in there and that consistency thing is that often borne out because people either didn't plan and strategise properly at the beginning or just give up to it. I mean, you see this all the time in communications people think that you can do a conference or an exhibition or or a marketing piece yeah and somehow that you're done like that's it, job done.

Simon: 4:41

But but if you know, if any, if things like brexit and maga and these things have taught us anything, is that effective communications is often just fixing a position and repeat, repeat, repeat, consistently building a frame and a story around something, whether it's nonsense or not, it's that consistency of messaging is absolutely critical, isn't it?

Liz: 5:05

if it's nonsense, it'll be found out that it's nonsense.

Liz: 5:08

So actually I would never advise that. Yeah, but you're right, I I say to clients you know, number one, um, saying something once, you might as well never have said it at all. It's just not worth it. You know, um, if you're going to commit to being a communicator, you commit. And two, you will get sick of the messaging and the story like way sooner than your audience will, and you will be shocked at how many times you have to repeat, repeat, repeat and have, yeah, as you said, consistency of messaging. You can say the same things in different ways, you can bring it to life in different ways. But actually, yeah, you're right, it's about strategy.

Liz: 5:56

So, when we start working with any organisation and it doesn't matter if it's a sole trader, small startup, innovative startup or a big international, global business, same principles you start out by thinking one why am I communicating? What am I trying to achieve for business? Now, personally, on this point, if you're just communicating to sell more stuff, don't be surprised if you find it very hard. If you're actually communicating vision, purpose, values, passion, um, learning you'll get much higher engagement. But but know first of all what it is you're trying to achieve. Okay, second step know, therefore, who are the most important people for you to talk to, and quite often the answer that will come back to us are oh, yeah, yeah, no. We want to talk to developers and house builders say Okay, so specifically, what type of developer or house builder? And actually, the more granular you can get, you know, you can really really pinpoint specific small groups of people who will probably deliver you 80 of the value in in terms of achieving your, your objectives.

Simon: 7:24

That you've set at the beginning is that where you hear things like um personas being described, where you're saying, where you're trying to actually imagine the person that you're talking, so, rather than saying we're trying to communicate this to building professionals or major developers, those kind of too big too big, and even engineers within those organ. No, it's specifically what person am I imagining you talking to? Yeah, and people might feel that that's too narrow, that you're kind of. You might be missing somebody by doing that, but it's not a trope, is it?

Liz: 8:04

it's a very valuable part of marketing and communications is understanding who the person is you're trying to communicate with yeah, if you don't, if you don't get into their socks, you know, walk a mile in their shoes, as the saying goes. You know how, if you can't genuinely find that empathy with them and understand what's keeping them awake at night, what, what's on their boardroom table, what are the decisions they're having to make, what are the things that they're googling and trying to find out? Where do they hang out? Where do they get their information from? What are they influenced by? Who are they influenced by?

Liz: 8:39

Until you genuinely get into that psyche, into their real lived experience, how can you pitch properly to them a message that will resonate with them? Because we are just bombarded with noise messaging all the time, communications all around us all the time, and it's just too much. It's just too much, but sometimes something will cut through. So my perspective on it is you laser focused on the business objectives you want to achieve and then laser focused on the people you need to talk to. If it's house builders, ok. So we're talking volume house builders. Are we talking regional offices of volume house builders? Are we talking small, regional innovators? Are we talking really small SME builders? Are we talking small, regional, you know innovators? Are we talking really, you know small SME builders, thousands of them.

Liz: 9:29

Where are you pitching it? Because I can tell you they are as different as chalk and cheese. You think that you put them all in one big lump, but they're worried about different things. They talk about different things, they share different things, they hang out in different places. Um, there they will be tuned into different messaging and actually I mean that's just one of the what I call the tribes. But you know, if you think about architects or engineers or um, multidisciplinary consultants or test houses, I mean you just think of all the different parts that make up the ecosystem that is construction. We have to know, I have to know my job, I have to understand all those different tribes, I have to know where they hang out, I have to know what they're interested in, what they're talking about, and I have to even know the language they might use for exactly the same thing and it's bonkers, because we don't all actually use the same language for the same things.

Simon: 10:39

No, we do not no.

Liz: 10:42

So yeah, so that's the second point is to be really laser focused and you're right, it will mean that you are not going to be able to cover everyone, you know, but that's fine. Focus for six months, 12 months, on really really making an impact and getting engagement and genuine empathy and building relationships in one sector. Know specifically and check. You know, how is that going for us, how is that impacting on our business and our objectives and our purpose and everything we're trying to achieve? If it ain't working, then look at another part of the market and say, right, ok, okay, maybe we should put a little bit more attention into that yeah.

Simon: 11:26

But I suppose I suppose that negative feedback you won't ever get if you haven't drilled into that persona properly. Because if you're just doing blanket communications, there's no marker for success. That you know. Know, you're just shouting into the void. You are yeah, and you've got no idea whether that's how that's resonating with somebody. But if you've, if you've designed your communications around a persona or group of personas that meet a business objective, you can then audit that in a way that you know whether it's been successful or not. If you don't do that, you've got no chance of measuring it. It's like, yeah, it's like publishing an ad in a magazine that's got nothing to do with your sector yeah, it's impossible to figure out whether that landed with anybody exactly you know unless it's a code or something they entered to get a deal or something.

Simon: 12:22

But that aside, you'd have no sense of how, whether what people's thoughts or feelings were about that communication, what a and b, profiling certain language to see what resonates more and better, and refining, you know, and particularly in this world of social media. Yeah, we're all in digital marketing. We've got an ability to capture an awful lot of information.

Liz: 12:45

There's just so much more now I mean, I don't want to over complicate it. No, you know, any business, even a tiny business, can do targeted communications. You don't have to be you know. Um, you know digitally, ab testing, everything and all that jazz. Um, I mean, you can be as sophisticated as you want really with it. But fundamentally, if you just always keep in mind that principle of knowing who are the people that will you know, it's that old Pareto principle, it's that 80-20 rule who are the people that will generate 80% of the benefit?

Simon: 13:21

Yeah.

Liz: 13:22

Who are the 20% that will generate 80% of the benefit? And focus on this 20%. You know it takes a bit of time to figure it out and you test it and you see how it works.

Simon: 13:33

And, as you say, be consistent. I mean, you see that so often people think consistency is a six week run at something. Oh, and then they. And then they're just wondering why and somebody put this to me really well not so long ago, was that? Even cause I'd worked quite a bit on LinkedIn and even my most successful comms projects on LinkedIn, cause most of it's strategic, is still only reaching a fraction of the audience. So you can repeat the exact same message and often half the people that see it may not have seen it the last time. So you think you're being repetitive, but, as you said, it's not repetitive repetitive. It's only repetitive to you because you, you know, you know the scheduling, you know it's going out over a period of time and this is the messaging and this is the track, but everybody else from the outside is going oh, look, so and so saying something interesting that's resonating with me again, you know, so I found out something from one of my colleagues.

Liz: 14:41

She's an absolute whiz at social media, in particular LinkedIn, and I didn't know. Actually I'll share this. I had no idea the algorithm, the way it works. Linkedin. You might say you're, you're followed by I don't know. Say you've got a thousand followers or connections, okay, you post something on LinkedIn doesn't mean that goes to the full thousand people who follow you. Linkedin will serve it up to say, 100 and it will wait and see how people respond. Do they like it? Do they share it? Do they comment on it? Do they repost it? If they do, in the first hour of going live they'll serve it up to the next hundred hour of going live, they'll serve it up, yeah.

Liz: 15:28

Next hundred, yeah, and so it goes. I didn't know this until recently. My colleague was explaining to me how it worked and I was just like my god, that's just incredible. So little tip, get people to engage in the first hour yeah, and that's um there's.

Simon: 15:38

There's three or four tips I give to people when you're doing social media, particularly LinkedIn, because there are four or five things in a post that get that algorithm moving. The first one is clicking and expanding the links. So good ad copy, something that hooks you and makes you want to read the rest of it, is incredibly important.

Simon: 16:02

It needs to be long enough to create a bit of dwell time with your, because it tracks your mouse and it knows how long you're reading it yeah you then need a call to action that takes people to the comments, because when it sees you looking at the comments, it refers extra engagement if you can get them to comment in the first hour first hour that is a multiplier effect and if you can get them to click on a link it has.

Simon: 16:31

So there's these series of actions that it's tracking everybody to. So the the best thing you can do on linkedin I've found is be available the first hour that you post so that you can comment live to people that interact with it, because that will give it more of a chance yeah so, so you make time in your day that, when, when you, and if you can only do it once a week or twice a week, that's fine.

Simon: 16:58

But if your job is to create framing and narrative on that particular channel, be available for the half hour hour after you've posted it, because that will accelerate and you're absolutely right. You can have 15 000, 30 000 followers, it doesn't matter, it will serve it up to a range of people. Test the water and if it's, if nothing's happening, you might as well have not bothered.

Liz: 17:23

I know it's weird, isn't it? Isn't it weird? Yeah, so there you go, and everyone can do that. Yeah, but your point was about consistency and repetition. So then, yeah, you can look at other ways of saying the same thing and repeating it and seeing if you can try different ways to get that engagement.

Simon: 17:40

Yeah, but you've got to understand what you're trying to say. I think that's what you were saying at the beginning is so important.

Simon: 17:50

if you don't understand who you're trying to reach and the framing, the narrative that you're trying to create, yeah, you then can't do that iterative process of tweaking because you you're not doing it in the context of anybody, you're just going. Well, that didn't work, so I say something completely different, whereas if you've got somebody in mind, you're far better off, a bit like us having a conversation. If I'm trying to communicate something with you and it's not quite landing, I'm trying to figure out how I say it slightly differently to get it to land. Yeah, exactly yeah, but I can't do that unless I'm in front of you, talking to you. And it's similar in, I guess, when you're trying to reach out into the void, you've got to have that person in mind You're going. I wonder if saying it this way to that person is going to hit that note with them.

Liz: 18:35

Yeah, yeah. So that's why we would typically you know my job, my role is genuinely understand the business drivers for this, the purpose behind doing this work, and how does a client want to achieve their purpose, achieve their mission, change the world for the better, the built environment for better. Really understand that. Then understand specifically who they need to be talking to, research it if necessary, go out, engage with those groups, listen, listen, listen, listen to what they're saying, bring it back, refine your messaging and thereafter just become a fantastic storyteller. Get, be creative. You, you know, do things that are engaging and fun and that are like exactly as you've described, simon.

Simon: 19:29

They are totally in tune with your target audience yeah, and beyond the classic marketing ad copy, from what from my conversations with you, you see storytelling as a central tenant to good comms.

Liz: 19:46

Don't completely yeah we are higher hardwired as a species, um, to communicate via stories. We remember, our memory is based on stories. Uh, we repeat stories to each other. Um, it's the simplest, oldest, most basic psychological function of human beings is to be storytellers. And there's a brilliant book Christopher Booker wrote it and it's back to the 90s. I think you can still find it.

Liz: 20:20

It's a bestseller and it talks about, effectively, sort of seven archetypes, seven typical stories, story structures that you can follow, and these are so ingrained. I mean almost every every Netflix series you've ever watched, every movie you've ever been to, every book, fiction, book you've ever read will somewhere or another link back into these sort of seven structures of a story. Every play Shakespeare wrote is the same principle. And once you understand that, you can begin to sort of say well, actually that's really interesting technical topic I want to talk about. But how can I bring this to life through a literally, you know, time-honored way of creating an engaging story that's memorable, that's got some emotion behind it and therefore will stick in people's minds and they'll repeat it and and it will get that whole word of mouth thing going.

Simon: 21:23

Yeah, you know and I going, and I think the risk is people see storytelling as cheesy that these aren't all lines about a hero and a pain point and overcoming an obstacle. There is all of that, but I think most of us instinctively know you just think back to the last conference you were at. You'll remember, you'll have forgotten 99 of everything that happened at that conference, but the things you will remember were the stories that the speaker that told a technical point through a story. Yes, that's just, your brain is literally hardwired. Yes, to hold stories. Yes, not bullet points and fact sheets and new values and air change rates, and you know, forget it.

Liz: 22:19

But they will remember something that spoke to something yeah, that resonated with you and not a not a sales story no you know, if you think you're going to go out there and say, well, what I did first was I did this and then I did that, and then I did the other and, um, it was a massive success. Yeah, no one's going to go. Well, bully for you and they will throw in a couple of brand names and a logo and you've lost everyone instantly.

Simon: 22:48

Yeah, instead you're talking about three quarters of the case studies that you see from manufacturers out there. Liz, are you basically?

Liz: 22:57

yeah, basically yes, sorry, yeah, no, turn it on its head. Talk about your customer, your client, as the hero of the story. Okay, talk about the challenge that they were facing and they come to you for a technical solution. So, my God, have they had a challenge? They didn't just wake up one morning and decide to, you know, get some expertise on air quality. They've been battling a problem for a while. It may be a regulatory compliance issue. It could be their client that's, you know, putting pressure on them. It could be that it's part of their technical passion and mission to improve.

Liz: 23:41

You know, there'll be a reason behind this and they will have been working really hard at this. And suddenly, you know, they set out on a journey. Excuse the cliche, but it's part of these archetypes. They set out on a quest to solve a problem, to slay a dragon, to overcome a hurdle. Watch any grand designs tv program and it has the same structure. It has the hero of the story. They've got a vision, they've got an idea, they've got a concept what they want to do. They set out, and about two-thirds through in the program, kevin mcleod look at the television and go well, yeah, it's not going to work.

Simon: 24:26

It's not going to work, yeah.

Liz: 24:27

That's called jeopardy. Yeah, the technical term for it is jeopardy. It's built into every single plot. Yeah, they'll find a crisis.

Simon: 24:36

There's a point of crisis.

Liz: 24:38

Yeah, you know, it looks like the end of the world. Frodo is going to succumb to the ring of Sauron and all that jazz. There's always a point of jeopardy where it looks like your hero is not going to succeed. And then you come. You come with a solution, with some ideas. You start talking to them and at the end there's a resolution and there's a success. But the client takes the credit they have achieved this. Isn't it amazing? And this is what their customer has said and they can bask in the glory of having chosen the right consultant.

Liz: 25:24

Or the first word of the first line saying Acme and Technologies Inc did X, Y and Z project in Ashby de la Zouche, you know. Instead, it's this customer went through this process and your company name actually might not appear until paragraph four, five, six actually might not appear until paragraph four, five, six. You come in later in the story Now, from a customer's perspective, reading that. I'm looking at it and I'm going, wow, that sounds like me. I've been through that problem before. That's really interesting. How did they solve it? Oh well, it's on this guy's website actually. This is really. They probably got a solution here. That's really interesting and it's a whole different way of looking telling stories, looking at it through the lens of who you're talking, to know who you're talking to yeah, and you've built this structure and this narrative and the framing for organisations more broadly, that everything's leaning to that as well.

Simon: 26:27

It's not just one case study or one story. There's a series of actions over a period of time, creating this funnel of context, if you like. That's building the narrative around that particular organisation's goal or strategy.

Liz: 26:46

And it's demonstrating your expert status over and over and over again yeah I mean, I say many times um I you know, people do not just do business with people, people do business with experts, particularly in construction and built environment. We are looking for expertise. We're always on the search for the person who can help us with complex, complicated, wicked problems. You know, we're looking for the experts. There may not be best practice or good practice to look at, it may be emerging practice, but we're always looking for the people who can help us. So if you have got a reputation as someone who you know, yeah, has consistently helped organisations through really complex problems and given them the credit of that, and you've shown your expertise in different ways and you do that consistently over time and we're talking 18 months, two years, yeah, of consistency you will build a reputation as an expert and as someone who puts the client's interests first and who genuinely knows your stuff and can solve difficult problems.

Simon: 28:05

Yeah, that's really interesting and my mind's eye is going to experts as well when you're saying that, and I'm thinking that the last thing you want to do every time you speak to an expert or read something for an expert, they're flip-flopped to another right. So that consistency thing doesn't just run from the consistency of output.

Simon: 28:26

There's got to be a consistency in messaging as well, and framing and words because, what you don't want is, every time you speak to that expert, it's like well, the last time I'm sure you would. You lose confidence in an expert if they're not consistent. Yes, right, um, so the same has got to be that for communications, when you're trying to build up that expertise, or for people to trust you about something that's not obvious or technical or is always going to be outside of their sphere of expertise. They've got to believe in what you're saying, and if every time they look at what your output is, it's different, that's not going to breed consistency over time.

Simon: 29:04

So, although it might feel monotonous, oh, you'll get bored way earlier than anybody else will you just got to trust the process and, like all processes, how, I mean, how do you measure success? Like it's all well and good, like having a plan and you know, hopefully this is a good plan, and you build some consistency and you say, right, okay, for 12 months, this is the narrative we want to build, these are the people we want to speak to, this is the way we're going to do it. And you set out on that journey. How do you understand at the end of that process or through that process, that what you're doing is working?

Liz: 29:44

okay, so I use a. There's a four sort of stage or four step process for measurement, or four sets of different metrics.

Liz: 29:54

Maybe that's easiest way to do it and you can put them on levels okay so level one, you can just say, okay, I've, I've put out all this outputs, all this communication, case studies, stories, interviews, podcast episodes, whatever I've put myself out into the world, I've communicated. How many people have I reached? So the first it's the four, it's the four R's, I call them. So the first R stands for reach. How many people have I reached through that? And there are all sorts of ways that you can figure that one out fine, but that really doesn't tell you very much, other than you were very noisy and potentially quite a lot of people saw it or heard it but it's a start.

Simon: 30:42

I mean, you've got to know if you're not reaching people, because if you're, if you're speaking to an audience of one, you know no, but that audience of one might have been your business objective that's right. You know what that's actually really true and you know and a lot of people that aren't in enterprise communication, for example, yeah, don't appreciate there could be a lot of effort going in to build a story around one individual because that one individual is so important to your engagement with, with something I know a business that does exactly that yeah they stalk, they literally stalk an individual, yeah, who they see as particularly influential or at that major customer that they want to get into.

Liz: 31:27

They follow them everywhere. They go to, every event they go to. They look at everything they post on social media. They just research them inside out. They then go off and create a piece of content which is utterly directed at that one person, without being stalky Without being stalky.

Liz: 31:45

Without being stalky. Don't break any laws. Please Do not rummage through any bins. Yeah, they publish this content as if it's ta-da we've done this and they find a way of sort of accidentally dropping it in front of someone you know, tagging them in on something it's all designed for that one person to see or even building narratives for the people around that one individual, so they're hearing the same thing from different people around them so that means to kind of brings on. Yeah, so that's probably jumping ahead.

Simon: 32:17

Yeah, so that's all right, so reach is like, okay, first thing, like normal circumstances, that if you're not big enterprise, stalky, stalky one big ceo or ceo X. Most of us are communicating to a broader set of people generally, so we're trying to get to as many of them as possible. So that's the first R Level one reach. How many are we being effective in actually getting the message?

Liz: 32:39

to as many people, and at least you're measuring something that's good, that's a really good start. Then you're looking for reaction. That's the second r. So when that information went out into the universe, what happened with it? This is where you're starting to get into the um, the outcomes of your communication. So it's it's not just the output and how many people reached it, but now what's starting to happen with that. So, again, at a quite a simple level, a reaction could be like a thumbs up, maybe a share.

Simon: 33:17

So the kind of social media-y type, our understanding of, or a click yeah.

Liz: 33:22

Someone's clicked on something and read a bit more, you're beginning to get a sense that they're not just going oh, that's noise, I'm not interested in that. They're actually now starting to sort of engage with that content. Then you're looking at the third R, which is the resonance. So they've reacted to it. But actually has this? Now this communication started to take on a life of its own? Is it starting to be shared or repeated by other people? Are you beginning to build a sense of a momentum around some of the messaging and the ideas that you're putting out into the world?

Liz: 34:05

yeah and then the fourth are, of course, is results, and this is where you can get deep into looking at long-term impacts or commercial sales leads, inquiries, those sorts of results so on that reaction.

Simon: 34:21

That's where you will start at a very basic level, like we said, the social media, that's likes and shares and that kind of stuff. But a more at a more fundamental level is that you're kind of getting also into your call to actions, where you might be driving people to do something. You know, sign up to a form, join a club, something right. So that that's, that is what I'm doing, actually causing somebody to stop and react in some way. It is very simple. I call that a result.

Liz: 34:54

Yeah, I mean if that's what you set out to do in the first place that might be the simple.

Simon: 34:57

Your result is just to get as many people to sign up to your doodah as possible. Perfectly valid promotional objective.

Liz: 35:04

So actually that's level four.

Liz: 35:06

It's actually did we achieve our objective. But there are these stages in between and I differentiate reaction from resonance because I think reaction is quite a quick, cursory engagement. Resonance is something different. Resonance is where you actually start as I use this word momentum you start to actually your communication becomes an agent for change.

Liz: 35:32

And you know, when people talk about thought leadership all the time oh, I rant about this all the time, so forgive me, but you know, 99% of thought leadership is not thought leadership, it's just thought, it's a point of view on something that gets put out into the world and it's tomorrow's fish and chip paper.

Liz: 35:53

It's failed to get resonance.

Liz: 36:00

It might have got a couple of thumbs up likes in our first hour on LinkedIn, but actually have all that effort that you've put in to sharing your expertise, has it fundamentally, you know, built a coalition of interest and some sense of momentum behind it.

Liz: 36:20

And I, when we were talking earlier, we talked about this concept of you know, leadership is literally, you know, sat on that horse with the sword, going follow me troops. You know and you don't want to be that thought leader who goes follow me troops and look behind you and there's no one there what we try and do, and I do fundamentally believe that in the built environment, we are heavily reliant on on us, on our relationships and our supply chain, and on doing things collaboratively. There is no one organization that can do everything. So actually looking for collaborations, coalitions, people where, who can get behind that communication and start to create genuine resonance and you know, you know when it's happened, frankly, because you go to a show like future build, where I've been today, you sit in a conference, one of the stage, you know settings and one of the speakers references your work and goes.

Liz: 37:25

There was a really interesting piece of work published by so-and-so or. I was at a talk the other day and they'll tell a story about the story that you told.

Simon: 37:34

That's resonance yeah, we talked about this earlier and there's a. There can be a real subtlety to this, can't they? And and I know you do this because you think about it so deeply at a strategic level, but it's all the way down to even hearing fragments of sentences and ideas that you've constructed in a way. Yeah, that you know when you're hearing it back, that there's only that there's a fingerprint. Yes to the, to the communications that you're putting out there, that you can see coming back to you DNA fragments of those comms. That's resonance. That's when you know it's resonating.

Simon: 38:15

And I think all of us that have been in positions of lobbying and communications or even sales, that salespeople will know this communications or even sales, that sales people will know this that when you land, you start hearing yourself in the person that you're talking, that they're saying, they're saying stuff to you. You're going. I said that like we've never met, but that's what I say, you know, and so you get this sense that something that you're putting out there is resonating. That's got. That's a golden metric, I imagine it's, it's, it's wonderful.

Liz: 38:50

It's the point where you see something take on a life of its own yeah we did, um, we did a campaign.

Liz: 38:57

Oh, and I call it a campaign, it's more like a movement. Now, you know, it started off very simply. A group of manufacturers who made fire doors wanted to basically get people to take fire door safety more seriously. Fundamentally they wanted to sell more fire doors, but actually they were significantly worried about the quality of the products that were being installed, the quality of the installation and therefore the risk and the issues. And this is pre-Grenfell, this is way before Grenfell.

Liz: 39:33

So we came up with the concept of Fire Door Safety Week and it started off with a few organisations collaborating together with some consistent messaging, some consistent facts and figures about the state of fire door safety in the UK. We took that. We created creative stories, creative content. We used every channel we could and we gave people the opportunity to sign up to Fire Door Safety Week and if they they did, then during that week they could create their own content and we would amplify their content as well. And it became a mutually supportive thing and it went from you know, I don't know about 10, 20 businesses to start with to 120 businesses to 300 businesses.

Liz: 40:21

We got the fire minister involved. We got the government fire kills campaign. Supporting it, we had fire and rescue services around the country doing activities. We had schools involved, we had social housing organisations involved. This thing grew from actually really small little campaign with some consistent messaging and some good materials, some factual stuff with a strong sense of purpose behind it and therefore emotion, yeah, to drive it. I mean, it's been going I don't know how many years now probably eight, nine years and it's still going strong. And that is genuine. That's genuine resonance now because it's become a thing. It's in the diaries. If I talk to the editors of half a dozen trade mags, they'll tell me that in September they have scheduled this year a feature on fire door safety to coincide with that activity.

Simon: 41:21

And you just go right now, we're getting somewhere, yeah does it take some skill and purpose to measure success in communications? I imagine, like you have to know what you're doing. It's very difficult and I'm guessing that's probably why a lot of people get so disheartened, because perhaps they don't have the structure going into it. But equally, they're not necessarily understanding how to capture success. And, like in any endeavor, you want to know that what you're doing is working, it's worth it, and there's a lot of effort goes into consistent communications, so you want to know that this is worthwhile. The effort is it quite difficult ultimately to measure success? Is there a certain amount of skill to it or you've just got to have a plan for think? You've got to think systems, think it through and go. How am I going to know what is my benchmark for success?

Liz: 42:24

yeah, that's the first question. That's the first question we'd say right, what is your number one business objective and how would we know if we've achieved it? And if you can answer that right at the start, then everything else is actually relatively straightforward. It doesn't mean that it might be time consuming and, as you can imagine, a business like mine is full of people who've got tools and techniques and software and tracking of everything that moves. So we try and measure everything as best we can, for the simple reason that our clients don't have bottomless budgets. They can't afford waste. So you've got to measure, you've got to hold yourself accountable to your clients and show the return on investment in communications, but also you've got to learn when something isn't working and you need to cut that and try something different. Yeah, so sort of yes and no, it's it. It can be quite complex, it's certainly time consuming, sometimes it's expensive, um, but actually then there are usually sort of what would I call them like proxy metrics sometimes that you can use.

Liz: 43:35

You know, in an ideal scenario you would do post, pre and post research. You'd go to your target audience, or however big it is, and you'd look at what they know about a topic, what they know about a topic, what they know and understand about air quality, what their awareness is, what their level of trust is in advisors. You'd go and do that research beforehand. You'd do your comms campaign for a year, two years, and you'd go back and research them again and see have you shifted? But that's, that's premium level, sure evaluation. Actually I would say you can use the four r's in the meantime and you can find some proxy measures to say, actually we think we can track this, yeah, and we'll see how it shifts over time we had um, I had dan hide on, for everything is user experience there's brilliant brilliant, and you know he makes the point and he's, you know he's right.

Simon: 44:34

Everything is user experience, like literally, and he says so often you're talking to clients customers the people that are listening to this podcast about something like a persona, for example, do you know who your customer is and they go yeah, yeah, have you actually ever spoken to one? Yes, you know, and you go. What do you mean? No, I sell to them all the time. I know them. Yes, but have you actually ever spoken to this person you're trying to communicate with? And it's amazing how often the answer is no, or very cursory, quick conversation with somebody who might vaguely be reminiscent of that type of person. But very rarely do organizations actually fundamentally understand the user, and it's it's so fundamental to outcomes and I I guess you do a lot of that in comms it's that like okay, yeah, but have you actually spoken?

Simon: 45:32

like, have you got, have you got commentary and transcripts? And is there something I can read?

Liz: 45:38

oh, no, no, no, like john the sales director knows those people, I don't have time necessarily so that's where we can come in, is we can advise them and say actually, if you're looking to communicate to these people, you just might want to dial this down and dial that up.

Simon: 45:53

Yeah.

Liz: 45:54

So we can advise them on a lot of that.

Liz: 45:56

But yeah, I did a workshop not long ago with a client and I was trying to get their marketing and sales teams to really understand who they were trying to talk to. And I got a load of white sports socks and wrote the names of their target customers on the toe of the socks and in the workshop I said, right, take all your shoes off, put your client's socks on and I used it as a metaphor, but literally put your client's socks on. So you were both a Beatty, you know your Kia construction, your Barrett homes or whatever and they literally had to wear their socks and say, right now, you personify that customer. Now, knowing what you know about that customer, look again at your communications, look again at your communications, look again at your marketing and and give me your honest opinion about what, what, what you think is going to get their attention. And that was a point where you see you can tell the people who genuinely know their customers yeah and those are actually are making a lot of assumptions coming up with tropes.

Simon: 47:14

Yeah, yeah, and you've got to be very careful about that.

Liz: 47:17

Yeah, because the most effective and exciting communications are when you accidentally stumble upon some insight. It's not accidental, sorry, but you. The point is, you have some specialist insight into a type of customer which is like, oh my God, that's genius. Of course that is going to be the thing that will be different from what anybody else is saying, that will genuinely resonate with that audience and where I can claim that that's my territory. You know, I can be a thought leader, a specialist, an expert in that area. So, knowing the territory that you can own, and if it's based on genuine insights and knowledge and understanding of that customer that you're trying to reach, gold pure gold.

Simon: 48:14

There's a book you were saying there's a book I was reading recently about negotiations and this idea of the black swan and you never find it unless you actually have conversations with people. That there's always a thread in someone's life or story that if you can find and unpick that's where the gold is. But you don't find it unless you can walk either walk in their shoes deeply or have those conversations with them. And that's a very well understood negotiation tactic is trying to find that black swan in the story. That gives you that leverage, is the hook you need to make that communication resonate with somebody and we've all been on the receiving end of someone who's got it wrong, haven't we?

Simon: 49:00

oh yeah you know?

Liz: 49:01

oh, hello liz. Yeah, yeah, it's. Are you having a good day? Yes, oh yeah, this is chris from widgets inc. Yeah, yeah, so I was just wondering, you know, um yeah, what you're doing about your telecom system. You know, because obviously it's really important when you're on site, isn't it?

Simon: 49:20

yeah, yeah, and they've said there's a technicality to a cold call, for example, that there's a process that people understand about walking people back off of a no and the ledge and so on, and you can have and understand that process and be a very good practitioner at it and you can throw a lot of mud at the wall and enough will stick if you follow that process, that you can get some measure of success. But that ain't communications. That's. That's using a known process to manipulate somebody into doing something that works. Because we understand how communications work and if you know that you can walk somebody back from a no relatively well for most people. But that's not what we're trying to do here.

Simon: 50:05

We're trying to find ways of communicating things in more effective ways yeah to tell story better, to resonate better with somebody, to and this was the other question I was going to have you that, in air quality particularly the challenge we have is that we're we're often trying to communicate risk, and risk is an interesting conundrum because it's a it's an esoteric something. There's a science behind risk and there's epidemiology behind risk and health behind and all of that good stuff, and we've got things like the hierarchies of control and things that people listen to. This podcast will hear me talk about ad nauseum, but risk communication is a certain something, isn't it?

Simon: 50:54

it is yeah and you've been involved in that for a while, and is it a? Is it a fundamentally different approach or is it just about again? I guess it's about understanding who you're trying to communicate with and what resonates.

Liz: 51:11

Yes, but you're walking a particular line with risk communication aren't you, you are and you have to be really careful. I should say there's an ethical responsibility around this. You know, everyone knows that. You know fear, anxiety can be a powerful motivator for certain behaviours. But if you're playing on that and building up that, you know you are, you're in very difficult ethical territory, I think.

Simon: 51:49

Because you can do it and you can manipulate that and it will get a reaction well, what do you think trump's doing right now?

Liz: 51:55

yeah, yeah you know, it's exactly as we're being manipulated in this way with fear and anxiety, and and he's using it as a very powerful weapon. Um, I don't think it's an ethical way of behaving, I, and I I actually also don't believe in the long term. It works very, very far. We've seen a lot of this with um, climate change communications yeah for a very long time it was.

Liz: 52:25

You know the planet's burning. The polar bears are dying, the bees are dying, the plants are dying, humans are dying, are dying. The plants are dying, humans are dying. You know the end is nigh and, yes, to a degree, you know, it will motivate certain people for a particular point in time. But actually if you want to genuinely tackle tricky problems, actually it seems to be at the moment proven to be much better to actually flip that Mention risk but actually focus on reward.

Simon: 53:04

Yeah.

Liz: 53:05

Focus on reward. We're stronger as a species to respond to the opportunity of reward, so actually inspire, excite.

Simon: 53:16

I'll have you back in just a minute. I just want to borrow you briefly to talk to you about 21 Degrees, a partner of the podcast, formerly the Green Building Store. They were founded in 1995 by three exceptional building professionals and the company grew out of their frustration with the poor availability of ecological building products, and I've known them for years as the go-to company in the UK for end-to-end design-led MVHR systems. You see, your home should do far more than just provide shelter and be energy efficient. If designed correctly, it'll be a far healthier and more comfortable environment. So whether you just want to start with a single product solution or need a comprehensive range of technologies to make your home more comfortable, 21 Degrees can help. In 21 Degrees you won't find a more trustworthy, straight-talking, passionate about what they do and approachable group of people. I speak a lot about the performance gap on this podcast and what we can achieve if we value ventilation highly enough. 21 degrees embodies that sentiment for me. So if you're building a home, looking to install ventilation or need to talk to experts in the field, I can't recommend them highly enough. Links are in the show notes at airqualitymattersnet and you can find them at 21degreescom. That's 21degreescom.

Simon: 54:47

Now back to the podcast. Yeah, I had Douglas Booker on the podcast and he was talking about. He talks about air quality from the social justice angle, and social justice angle is interesting because it's particularly with air quality. There's a it's often marginalized communities or poorer communities or communities from certain ethnic or religious backgrounds that suffer the consequences of poor environments, and the built environment's no different really. But when it comes to communication, he makes a really valid point.

Simon: 55:20

We've got to be careful when we're communicating risk, because if someone doesn't have the agency to change that risk, then communicating risk without giving somebody the agency from change, it just builds anxiety and stress and hopelessness. Yes, right, and ultimately you will get a reaction, that communication, but it's not for the good, it doesn't help. Um, it may raise awareness, but you've got to find a way of communicating that risk in a way that holds some agency. And I think that's the challenge of risk communication is that we're trying to tread this line where we're talking about often yeah, again this kind of wispy, esoteric notion of risk to people that they understand and resonates with people, but in a way that they can do something about it.

Simon: 56:14

And again, I think that comes back to storytelling, because storytelling is a fantastic way of presenting the the challenges of risk, but showing people a pathway through that or a way to a better outcome, as opposed to just saying we're all doomed. I mean, we're all being. This is being recorded in beginning of march, so I think the whole planet's doom scrolling at the minute with a sense of hopelessness, right, but, um, but, but we, we've got to find ways of telling stories and setting context for people to go. You know, know, look, yes, this is a challenge, this presents a risk, but here's some examples of how people made this better as a result, and if you're listening to this post-apocalypse, you can tell us that we got it all completely wrong.

Simon: 57:09

That's very true. Yeah, the other interesting thing about risk for me is is that the other interesting thing from a communication perspective and we're really interested in your thoughts on this is risk is rarely eliminatable, it's usually just mitigatable. So what I mean by that is we have to find ways of talking about it that reflects the nuance of risk. The risk in modern communications, in the modern world, is we get quite binary, black and white good, bad, evil, good, that kind of thing. But genuine risk isn't like that.

Simon: 57:50

It's messy, isn't it? It's messy and the built environment's messy and particularly air quality is messy. You can do everything right and stuff can still go wrong. Yeah, so how do you like when you're sitting down with a client and they're saying, right, we've got this, this technical solution, or we want to communicate this particular approach to something, but it's not straightforward, like we don't genuinely know what an outcome is going to be. How do you kind of start to unpack that with people to say, right, okay, well, is it just? Is it case of just right? Okay, back to basics, what? What do you think good looks like? How do we get from here? Is it about just the basics of the strategy?

Liz: 58:39

Yes. So let's let's make let's make an assumption. I'm talking to a client who fundamentally wants to demonstrate their expert status in order to win trust and credibility with a potential client. They've got a technical solution which has been tried a few times. Not everything's worked perfectly along the way. There's been some hiccups, but they're getting better and it's this emerging good practice coming out of this that they're learning all the time.

Liz: 59:16

I would lean into that 100 percent because, what is more, the most credible story you can imagine, most credible story for me, is We've got a vision, we've got this idea, we've got this technical solution. We had a fantastic client. They had a really tricky challenge. We tried it with them. This is what worked, this is what didn't work and this is what we learned from it. These are the lessons we'd pass on to anybody else. If you're trying to do a project like this, don't make those mistakes that we made. Show your workings out. We all learned it at school. Show your workings out. We all learned it at school. Show your workings out. Share, share lessons, share knowledge. That demonstrates a degree of expert status. It demonstrates a degree of confidence. It's enormously high integrity, high trust, building communications.

Simon: 1:00:13

Yeah.

Liz: 1:00:15

Very difficult for some organisations who are like you never let the cracks show, you never admit that something hasn't gone right. But actually no, you just need to build it into the story and you can say dot, dot, dot to be continued. And then you can come back to it later and go. You remember that story earlier and we'd hit this jeopardy moment, this crisis, but you know what? We solved it together, working with our client. We found a solution and our client has gone on and done these amazing things with it is that?

Simon: 1:00:45

is that to do with the world that you inhabit, like a little bit? I mean, you know, I know you're very passionate about you know you said we were kind of poking thought leaders a little while, but I know you love working with genuine thought leaders and I know you love working with organizations that are forging new furrows and working for good and and doing the right thing right. Yeah, the stuff that we're talking about here is that, by the nature of the, the, the customer base that you occupy, or do you find yourself working for those naysayers and the, the, the, the gray men in suits that are just trying to kick cans down roads and obfuscate and you know the other side of comms, which is is, I know, exists right, because we'd come up against it. Are you at a point where you just don't work with those kind of organisations? You get to work with people that are passionate and mission-driven and, you know, trying to do the right thing.

Liz: 1:01:47

That's where I focus my energy and my attention, and they're the people I want to work with. Sometimes we'll find ourselves working with an organisation that says they want to do this but actually ultimately don't. And guess what? It's not a very happy relationship. It's not, and we don't get great results.

Simon: 1:02:08

No.

Liz: 1:02:10

When we were in COVID and we did lockdown, my colleague and I, dan dan and I did um the crown ford university business growth program, bgp, and one of the. It's like a sort of, you know, really intensive investigation into how you run a business and it takes apart every section of your business and you have to, you know, rebuild it. And then you do like a dragon's den type presentation at the end and there's there's business counsellors that the university uses to challenge you about different things. And one of those counsellors kept saying to me Liz, liz, liz, you need to be really clear, um, you know who is your absolutely perfect ideal target market. You really need to know who you know. Where is your growth going to come from? What you know? Who are you? You know who are your best customers, and they showed me all these university ways of doing it. You know. So you can segment your customers by size, by geographical location, by the services they buy from you, by the fee level that they give you.

Liz: 1:03:18

And I would sit there night after night looking at this going. I can't see a pattern. I just can't see a pattern. My best work it could be small, tiny business, you know, sme startup doing, looking for you knowE startup doing, looking for you know um series a funding through to global multinational business. You know it. Just, there was no pattern.

Liz: 1:03:43

And then one day it was a Sunday and I'll never forget this moment I'm sat my study on a Sunday afternoon and I looked at this list. I wrote out the list in two columns, the list of all the clients that we've done good work for, perfectly professional, really fine. But then I had another list of the clients who I actually felt we'd done our best work for and who I was still in touch with years later and in fact, I created friendships and relationships that were going to even when we'd start working together. I'd bump into them at Future Build or wherever. And I looked and I was like that's interesting, I've got my happy clients, okay, but I've got the special ones that we did something really meaningful with and I'm really proud of that work.

Liz: 1:04:42

What was the common denominator? And it suddenly dawned on me that all the ones that we'd done our best work with were the organisations who were purpose-driven. They had something else going on. They couldn't help themselves. Yes, they had commercial targets to meet. Yes, they had, you know, sales directors. You know with, with, with clear plans, but actually they they fundamentally had a culture and a set of values which was like we will not rest until we've addressed this issue yeah, and you can't buy that like that.

Liz: 1:05:15

That's either there or it isn't, yeah, so I went off to Cranfield the next day and I was like I've got it. I've got it. I know who we were made for, who I was made to work with and my team. And I came back to my team and I just said I've nailed it. I know exactly why we are here, why this business was born and where we're going to do our best work in future. And so now, when we start working with a client, we'll ask questions about so what is the impact you're looking to create? And if they say, oh yeah, we just need to double turnover, you know, um, in the next 18 months, I go no, no, no, no, no.

Liz: 1:05:51

But why, yeah? What are you trying to do? You're trying to get to the dna that, that certain something what is it that makes you get up in the morning and and do that hard slog of running a business? Because it's just not easy. Tap into that, understand the why and if you can find it it's like right now we can help you with that and there's gold there, I think, in comms.

Simon: 1:06:15

In general, I you know regard, but I think particularly in ventilation and air quality.

Simon: 1:06:21

Apart from a few bad players, it's a mission driven I think it absolutely is so that there are people who are absolutely driven to make a difference and air quality remains the single biggest environmental risk we face as a human species. So this is this is important stuff and people are driven to make a difference and you know listeners to the podcast would have heard people like uh plum stone on the podcast recently talking about air quality is an accessibility rights issue for people that are suffering with long-term illnesses. This stuff matters to people and you can't buy that and it's tapping into that is the gold. I think so if you're an organization in this space, whether it's an academic organization trying to disseminate what you do better, or a commercial company trying to unlock markets and sell something you know is going to make a difference to people's lives yeah I think.

Simon: 1:07:18

I think there's been a lot in this conversation for those types of people. How did you end up here not here talking to me at Future Build, because you know we love our chats, but in comms in construction? Because we were walking here this evening and for listeners it took twice as long as it should have taken to get here, because Liz kept stopping to take pictures of cranes and I was like, every time I turned around, liz had stopped and she was taking a picture of another random building scaffolding. Um, like, clearly you were built for this. Um, how, like, what was your kind of journey to finding yourself following me to do a podcast, taking photos of cranes and talking about cons for a couple of hours?

Liz: 1:08:14

at this point, my family are wetting themselves and so are all my colleagues, because they're like oh god, yeah, that's how. Yeah, so, so, so, so, so, so, god, I mean back mate, I mean I've been.

Simon: 1:08:28

I was looking back through linkedin and I suppose the first obvious constructionally related role that you were doing was back in HBC days, was it before that?

Liz: 1:08:37

Oh yeah, no, it was before that. So Actually, do you know what I think it it's? I went, I did an English degree and I did an art, a fine art degree and my fine art degree. I did an English degree and I did an art, a fine art degree and my fine art degree. I spent three years drawing pylons, scaffolding and construction sites. So I find them visually. I just can't get enough of lattice steelwork structures. It blows my mind.

Liz: 1:09:16

If that's my happy place is to just look at lines and space between lines and function and form.

Simon: 1:09:21

I can get seriously nerdy about the aesthetics of, yeah, scaffolding, yeah so. So it needs to say like structures in your blood, like you.

Liz: 1:09:26

Just there's something about it, something about buildings and well, actually literally in my blood, because, um, I found out when I was in my 20s. I knew I'd been adopted, and I found my birth parents in my 20s and it turns out that I have got construction. I had an uncle who was an editor of a construction journal.

Liz: 1:09:48

I had a grandfather who was a chartered surveyor Isn't that funny? So nature nurture, who knows? Yeah. Journal, I had a grandfather who was a chartered surveyor, isn't that funny? So nature nurture who knows? Yeah. But anyways, um, no, what happened was, uh, I thought I wanted to be a journalist and a writer, um, and uh, then an artist, and I, just I, I sort of lost my way.

Liz: 1:10:08

In your 20s, you try lots of different things and after trying a couple of fairly disastrous short-term roles, I took a job working as a press officer, I think it was for a firm of architects and I thought, I think I thought it was going to be terribly visual and aesthetics and I'd get to see lots of beautiful architectural drawings and that would be my happy place. Back to where I was, you know, not college and stuff, and it wasn't. It was, um, it was building physics and it was specification and it was land use policy and it was um, interpreting briefs and the and the, the finance of development and and all this stuff. And honestly, you know when that just moment happens in your life and that little light bulb goes off and I just thought this is it. I'm just fascinated by it and that's what's happened all the way through my career architects and planners.

Liz: 1:11:12

Then I went to work for a firm of PR consultants where I got involved in energy efficiency and launched the first energy rating scheme in the UK, worked with a whole load of different types of businesses house builders, energy assessors. From there I then went to the NHBC and was head of comms for the NHBC. So again really got to understand a lot more about house building, the construction process, the risk in that, the insurance issues, the consumer protection issues. That's a really interesting overlap of construction and consumer protection is again a really interesting area for me yeah, and I guess comes back in some of the later roles as well.

Liz: 1:12:00

Exactly, yeah it's a theme that's gone through. And then from nhbc, then I went to a big london agency and did some big stuff with you know, big property development initiatives and things and then, um, I was married and had just had my first daughter and, uh, found out that we were moving house, literally burn it. And then um thought, well, that's it, I'm gonna set up on my own, and I was off and away. Yeah, never looked back.

Simon: 1:12:33

It was brilliant that was the start of this male consultancy yeah, that was nearly almost 25 years ago now yeah, and when you set that up yeah at the same time, you've also had some really significant roles in organizations that have had big impacts in our built environment, like trust mark and each home counts, the bonfield review and national energy foundation, like real pillars of what I think if you're from the uk you come to understand have been really important organizations one way or the other, and for good and bad over the years, in us finding us ourselves where we are now so like trust mark you were involved with for quite some time, weren't you the?

Simon: 1:13:17

the iteration before, the one we kind of have now that looks over past 2035, and things that people know about it right from the beginning, yeah, yeah.

Liz: 1:13:27

So I, funnily enough, I met the new um coo of trust mark today and I was chatting to her and I was telling her the history that I know and I remember the day that the Department for Trade and Industry as was, phoned us up one day and said can you help? We're trying to set up a new government backed consumer protection scheme in the the repair and maintenance improvement, home improvement sector domestic rmi, um and we need to launch this in the next couple of months. And we've just found out there's some major problems with branding and comms and all that sort of thing and can you help us? And it was like, yeah, we can, we can do that. So we took that on as a client. The CIOB were very much a real force in that right at the beginning, so I think they'd helped to sort of introduce us to the department.

Liz: 1:14:23

When we took on that contract to set up what became Trustmark, the government had suffered a hideous experience with a scheme called Quality Mark. They'd beforehand failed massively, so they were not prepared to go through that experience again. They needed a new model. There was a really interesting guy called Dan Bernard who brought together various trade associations and industry bodies and we worked with them and we created this Trustmark scheme. We did a launch to the industry, to trade associations I think it was November 2005, so it will be 20 years ago this year and then we did a huge consumer PR push and launch to the consumer market in January 2006.

Simon: 1:15:15

But more than that, you chaired it as well.

Liz: 1:15:17

Well, that was so. That was phase one. That was my experience with Trustsmart.

Liz: 1:15:22

okay, and then we helped Trustsmart build their own in-house capabilities, their own in-house marketing manager, and we, you know, we just basically helped them set up that infrastructure, because it was literally a tiny startup at that point, but albeit with a government license and and a lot of clout and the support of some really forward-thinking trade bodies who decided to collaborate to make it happen back to collaboration and resonance again. But then we stepped away from it. I stepped away from it, my team stepped away from it for probably about I don't know three, four years.

Simon: 1:16:00

Because your job was kind of done. You did your.

Liz: 1:16:03

Yeah, I'd done my client piece of client contract completed Happy days, won loads of awards for it, measured before and after.

Liz: 1:16:12

Could, prove what we'd achieved. And then about 2010, I get approached to say, liz, you sort of know construction and you know the different trade bodies and you were involved in Trustmark and we're looking for an independent chair. So someone who knows the industry but hasn't actually got any vested interests in any one of the organizations okay, will you put your hat into the ring? And I'd done a little bit of non-exec work with the construction youth trust and a couple of other organizations that I'd done some voluntary work for, and I found that that was my um sounds a bit cheesy, but that was like my growth edge. I was learning more from those, some of those interactive activities or that, those interactions sorry with those boards and those organizations, than I was probably learning from my day-to-day client work. So I thought why not Put in my CV? Got the job Amazing, absolutely amazing.

Liz: 1:17:16

So went out to everyone who'd been involved in Trustmark since 2005 and just asked them the question you know what's working for you, what's missing, what do we need to do differently? And back came all of this stuff. So we I went back to the minister and said do I have your permission to tear up the master license and start again? You know a new license from the department for business, a new set of core criteria, core standards at the heart of the scheme. You know, some marketing budget, you know. Can we have a bit more government support? And please, minister, can you just turn up to a few things and say a few helpful words, because that is, it's like. It's like scattering fairy dust over some of the people.

Simon: 1:18:05

Yeah, yeah, interesting and it worked.

Liz: 1:18:09

It really, really worked, and so I was chair of Trustmark for seven years, while still running my PR business, and but what it did was it gave me the opportunity to develop my non-exec career. So I now do lots of other non-exec activities and it's still my growth edge. You know I'm still learning all the time from those experiences and was that?

Simon: 1:18:32

was it that your time at trust smart that got you the mbe as well?

Liz: 1:18:37

yeah, yes, yeah, yeah so that was for services to construction and consumer protection wow because that's what trust smart fundamentally was trying to do yeah it was trying to and so it was. You know, let be honest, it was a reflection of where Trustmark had got to and the relationships and the support it had from trading standards bodies and all the trade associations and different tribes and certification bodies that were involved in it. You know it was.

Simon: 1:19:11

Trust mark was and is still at this point in time, a collaborative change initiative yeah, and and it in its way a reflection, and always will be a reflection of industry. Any organization, umbrella organization that is involved in quality and construction is going to reflect the times that it's in to some degree. And little did it know, a little did you know, I suppose, back then, that you would then go through the, the each home council or the bond field review, and the trust mark would then consequently become so central, central, tenement to managing the outcomes of that review yeah, yeah, so and that was a real peeling back of the industry, that process, and anybody will share a link in the the show notes for this.

Simon: 1:20:02

There's a great video that you did, I know, with peter rickaby where you really unpacked that that period of time. Yeah, because it was. It was really fundamental. I think, particularly in retrofit, a lot about what we understand around risk now in this sector, isn't it?

Liz: 1:20:20

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think collaboration isn't easy. It's messy, we know construction. As I say, it's not a single industry, it's not one organization to do everything, it is it's coalitions, it's it's relationships that are forged and then break down, unfortunately, and need to be reforged over and over. And trustmark sits at the heart of that messy middle where you are trying to balance lots of different competing interests and areas of concern and you've got to find a way to tap into the core purpose, the core shared values. What is it that makes us work together as opposed to pull?

Liz: 1:21:09

us apart together as opposed to pull us apart. If you can harness that energy, you can then use that to address societal failures like call them cowboy builders and scammers, and frankly they're not builders at all, they're just criminals, you know. So you can address societal ills through criminal activity. You can address societal ills through failed retrofit and I don't believe I can. I say those two things are very separate. I don't see them as the same thing. I do not call a failed retrofit the result of a cowboy builder necessarily yeah, in some cases it was, and where, at each home counts, we were presented with evidence of frankly just criminal behaviour and fraud.

Simon: 1:21:57

Yeah.

Liz: 1:21:58

And the government knew that it was utterly politically and societally unacceptable for taxpayers money to go into supporting big retrofit programs where there was that underbelly of activity yeah, and there's a big difference between poor outcomes as a result of lack of knowledge and skills and training and poor outcomes as a result of malintent non-professionalism.

Simon: 1:22:26

You know, talking to david pierre point about this last night, yeah, that there's that professionalism is key and you know people that are professional, they care about outcomes and they will work. They'll even work against lack of knowledge and understanding and skills and still get a good outcome because they care about results. They'll find a way of making it work. Whereas at the other end of the scale and a lot of the stuff that was out came out of the Bonfield review was that the other end of that scale of organizations that it's that my job's done here and people walking away from stuff that you can't believe. Somebody looked at that and went I've done a job. You know, we see this and and anybody that follows me, and particularly nathan wood from bisa, is a litany of images and pictures of ventilation systems in his case, where somebody has walked away from that and thought I've done my job and it's for people that are mission driven and care about this stuff. It's. That's not enough. You just can't understand how something you know it doesn't take skills and knowledge to know that that's just not good enough.

Simon: 1:23:42

Yet it happens over and over and over again and that's why it's so important for organizations like trustmark to exist, and they'll always get a hard time, I think, because by the nature of what they do, they are the interface of consumer protection and a very big, broad, technical, complex, messy world.

Simon: 1:24:01

Yeah, and, as a result, they're going to a lot of mopping up to do and always will be to be fair, yeah, but essential, absolutely critical as a. As a result, they're going to a lot of mopping up to do and always will be to be fair, yeah, but essential, absolutely critical as a as a role. There's a lot of jurisdictions that don't have that. Actually, liz, you know that that organization that found itself as an umbrella organization and a lot of like ireland's a really good example. We're even now, 20 years on, probably about the same time we had a boom in the early 2000s where we produced some really poor buildings. This is new build sector and there was lots of inquiries and things came out of it. It's only, I think, this year that finally, the umbrella consumer protection quality organization has been set up, really, that's fascinating that long.

Simon: 1:24:51

Don't ask me why, but it's just, and there are other jurisdictions that are the same, yet we did seem to get there. One of the interesting things I think for me about the Each Home Count review is it it got people thinking in terms of managing risk in retrofit, particularly that was the, the birth of things like past 2035. That started to go right. Okay, how do we produce a structure that can collect, because not everything is going to be a holistic, one-off big retrofit where you're taking it from a really bad place to a good place. Most buildings are on a journey over a period of time. How do we build a structure that can manage quality in that environment and deal with the challenges of this year?

Simon: 1:25:43

pvs the hot topic yeah two years ago it was heat pumps or whatever air source machines or whatever. So you've got to have some underlying structure and organization that's got consumer protection and that's got policies and and quality control. It has to exist, doesn't?

Liz: 1:26:02

it, yeah, it does. It has and minimum common standards and what each home counts did, which was so, so powerful and I think full credit goes to peter rickaby for this was this whole house understanding that, yes, you don't have to do, not everything will be a whole house retrofit, but if you take that lens, if you look through the work that you're doing through that lens, it changes.

Simon: 1:26:31

It changes everything I think you and me have been very lucky in our careers to and I think I suppose most people can point to this, but I count myself very lucky to have known people like the Peter Rickabys, the Chris Saunders, the Neil Mays, real visionaries in the sector that.

Liz: 1:26:54

I'll get emotional thinking about Neil Mays. Oh, I know, me too, me too.

Simon: 1:26:57

Let's try not to go down that one. But people that have both understood the sector talk about knowing your personas. People like Peter and and neil and others knew deeply how people in this sector worked, but they're also philosophers and systems thinkers systems thinkers that were able to pull strands together in a way that to come up with these approaches that make the difference.

Simon: 1:27:25

Um, but going back to the communications, none of that works unless you've got a way of communicating it effectively. And like nothing's going to put you to sleep faster than the past 2035 document, I can tell you, uh, and that and this is oh dear, you know, but it's true, isn't it? And I was only saying this to a regulator the other day is really the pinnacle of our expectations? Going all the way back to the first question, is the pinnacle of our expectations for communications when it comes to things like standards, a 55 page pdf document that, quite frankly, even if you're really into it, like I know you and I are you struggle to read those things Like they are hard graft, yeah, particularly if you want to understand them, because they take you off in different directions to different standards, and that there are a clusterfuck of information. Often, just by the nature of the lot, they're consensus documents often, which means there's lots of confounding ideas in them and standards to reach.

Simon: 1:28:30

Yes, Is that really where we are? There's got to be. I just get this sense that there's got to be a new way of communicating. We complain constantly that people aren't able to meet the standards that we provide, yet the pinnacle of outcomes around these standards is buried in almost unnavigatable texts. So is it any wonder, quite frankly, that nobody knows what ADF is on about? Because have you ever tried reading ADF from start to finish? You know I was saying to Peter Rankin about it. I said I love ADF, like I've probably read it as much as most people have, and even now I still find something in it that I didn't pick up the last time.

Liz: 1:29:23

I read it yeah and that's me like.

Simon: 1:29:26

So if I'm still picking stuff up in on it, what hope has most of everybody else got? And I think that's the that's where there's real potential in communications is unlocking new ways to resonate and find the stories and to bring those dull, dreary, technocratic documents to life in ways that we can drive the outcomes that we want yeah, do you know what I mean?

Liz: 1:29:56

and we're suffering exactly the same. Uh, issues with the new building safety regime the new building safety act, all the subsequent legislation, all the new standards coming through, that the industry is just reeling from data information overload and yet, at the same time as saying it's not clear, I don't know what you expect me to do, the industry is pushing back and saying we're not getting sufficient information, the communication is not clear enough yeah, there's, the intent isn't there.

Simon: 1:30:29

And then there's the technical detail and that and you know big movements like the building safety act is always going. You're always going to find holes in it for some people or some parts. But if we're not getting the, if the intent isn't clear, the story and the communication behind it isn't clear, you're not gonna roll people in behind it to go. You know what it's not clear there. But we'll find a way through that. They'll just point to the technical problem, yeah, and ignore the intent how did you learn your most complex algebra at school?

Liz: 1:31:02

um, was it sitting there reading a textbook, going over and over and over on your own trying to figure it out? No, somebody sat with you and found the motivation, the thing inside of you where that communication would resonate. I mean, I can say personally dreadful at maths at school, until that one teacher you know we all have that hero teacher who found a way to explain it and drew it For me. It had to be communicated visually.

Simon: 1:31:37

Found a way through.

Liz: 1:31:38

Found a way through and I managed to fly through with a good grade in my maths. A good grade in my maths that came down to good communication, knowing who it is that you're talking to and finding a way to engage with that person in a way that really means something to them, that resonates with them, and understanding how to communicate actually something that's really quite complex and make it simple, and then guess what? It sticks in my mind and I'm off and away.

Simon: 1:32:08

And this stuff matters. You know the Building Safety Act matters. It was born out of a tragedy and a system that was broken and this stuff matters. In the same way, the conversations we have on this podcast matter, yeah, so we have to find ways through, and communication is how we do that.

Liz: 1:32:27

Yeah, we have a responsibility to take our expert knowledge, our take our superpowers. And what was that wonderful quote? What is it? Something like the purpose of life is to find out your superpowers and the meaning of life is to give them away.

Simon: 1:32:49

Yes.

Liz: 1:32:51

I've misquoted that, but it's that idea Find out what you are the best in the world at, become an expert in it and then use your communication skills to share that knowledge and to communicate that and to make the world a better place as a result. Yeah, that knowledge and to communicate that and to make the world a better place as a result. Yeah, and use whatever communication tools, resources, time that you have, and every organisation will do it in a different way, and that's fine, but just keep going, stay consistent, keep don't stop.

Simon: 1:33:24

Just keep going sharing that and the clear, the clearer we can communicate these things, that the more likely we are to find the right people to do this work. Did you see um I mean because I can only imagine you were following it quite closely that the kind of grenfell inquiry stuff, and there was that. There was that press conference that the three leaders of the Grenfell Inquiry and it was the lady who spoke- Judith Hackett.

Liz: 1:33:56

No no, no you know the lady.

Simon: 1:33:58

I mean, I can't think of her name and I'll see if I can find the video clip of it for the show notes as well see if I can find the video clip of it for the show notes as well. But something she said stuck with me and the Grenfell has clearly affected this lady. You could see when she was talking. This was a to sit through the Grenfell inquiry must have been an enormous responsibility. Yeah, but she said and I remember it really clearly she said look, we understand that the the Grenfell Inquiry and the Building Safety Act and what we're going to be asking of the industry is onerous and is complex and is going to be asking a lot of you. But if you don't understand how important building safety is, you're in the wrong business and you need to get out. Yes, yes, and that the hairs talk about communicating.

Simon: 1:34:57

This was a woman who had sat through. Just I can't even imagine what she'd sat through and it was almost a straight to camera moment. She said if you don't understand the gravity of a situation and the responsibility you have, you are in the wrong industry. This isn't the industry for you, and I thought that was amazing. Yeah, as a comms piece as a like. The world's changing and you know, I'm afraid that this is the wrong space for you. But if we don't, I'm afraid that this is the wrong space for you, but if we don't again, if we don't find a way of communicating the DNA, the intent, the mission, the purpose-driven element of what we're doing, there are several consequences of that. One is you don't get to communicate effectively what you're trying to say. But the other thing is you don't get to bring on board the people that you need to make the changes that you want, we don't get to reach them.

Liz: 1:35:52

Yeah, yeah. Now, honestly, if I mean let's take grandfather as an example we're what? Seven coming out eight years post that tragedy? I think a large part of the industry thinks that it's history, it's over, it's, you know, there's nothing to see here anymore. Others feel that there's a lot of change still to be addressed and are very frustrated at the pace of a play that was at the National Theatre. I think it was called Grenfell Stories or something like that. It's got Grenfell in the title, so you're not going to miss it. It's not a long play, but watch that piece of theatre, I swear, seen in my life on this planet. It left me just um, yeah, just knowing, just knowing completely that this, this, can never happen again and that, whatever ability I have as a human being, I've got to play my part in helping to, you know, make a difference, and so make sure that doesn't happen again and another tip from me is, if you're into books, the peter apps show me the bodies yes, an unbelievable piece of storytelling that.

Simon: 1:37:39

And then he's, he intertwined stories with the timeline, with the technical detail in a way that I mean, I, as it happened, I either had it both on in books and and in audio. Yes, and I was listening to it in the car and I've never had an audio book where I've actually had to pull over. Yeah, at certain sections, yeah, because I was either in pieces, yeah, emotionally, or so cross, I was gonna do some damage on the road unbelievable. Peter storton, grenfell is a lesson, I think, in unchecked, what can happen in the built environment, and I think it shows what slow creep looks like as well. Which I think is really important from a comms perspective is, and for those of us from industry, we've all been in those meetings where we find regulations or standards obstructive, and rightly so. We're trying to find ways to navigate that, but it's, it's a slow creep from that to trying to find ways to navigate around it or to obfuscate and can kick, or to find ways of communicating, to sow doubt. You know, doubt is our um.

Simon: 1:38:54

Whatchamacallit, the tobacco thing yeah that was our doubt is our weapon, so I can't comment quote, but it's it's. It's interesting to see how that creeps in and people look to those big organizations and say and those emails that went round and the horror stories that associated with it, and wonder how did they end up there?

Liz: 1:39:16

Well, they don't.

Simon: 1:39:17

You don't end up there overnight. You end up with over years and years of thinking that you're fighting an enemy You're not and justifying the unjustifiable. Ultimately and I don't think anybody ever wants to be in an inquiry like grenfell justifying the emails that we saw being circulated- but actually look at what some of those organizations did.

Liz: 1:39:43

You know you've got the organizations who went. Do you know what that was wrong? And and we don't know possibly how we ended up here, but we recognise there was mistakes made and we completely hold our hands up to that and that can never and we will make sure that never happens again. We're going to put into place whatever systems and processes needed. Um, now, I would say this because I've been, you know, working with labc, but they're a classic example in point where they just said that was just not right. And I'm looking back, we can't defend it, but we're going to be open, we're going to share with you what we know, we're going to cooperate with the inquiry and we are. We're not waiting to legislation, we are making the changes straight away and we want to be part of the solution. Then you've got the other businesses that are going. Well, we don't accept responsibility for this. That wasn't our, that wasn't our job and that was somebody else's job. Our job finished here.

Liz: 1:40:44

We didn't, we had no responsibility for that bit demarcation, demarcation, you know um yeah, nothing to see here, nothing to learn siloing, siloing, yeah, yeah, all of that stuff. Yeah, you see it and so I mean it's the classic thing that everyone says you can mess up. It's how you deal with it that matters, and you can actually build more trust in a brand by how you'll seem to respond to a crisis and how you'll seem to respond to a mess up than if you go basically in denial.

Simon: 1:41:19

No, you find you get, do you find yourself like, by, just by the nature of being in comms, that you find yourself in those firefighting roles where you're, you're actually having to advise, and strategic because, come you know, there's the comms, the technical comms, part of firefighting obviously, but behind that is a structural element to say, right, okay, what are you actually accepting, or what, what the what's the position? Like you, you must be involved in this a lot of crisis communication.

Simon: 1:41:47

Yeah, yeah, I have done all the way through my career, can't be in construction and communications without being in, and I say that there's enough. I think we'll have to leave that for another podcast. I'd say we'll do a part two of crisis comes with. Liz may help. Oh my god. Then we'll get some stories no, I can't.

Liz: 1:42:02

Well, there's the stories that we can't tell no but no, you're right, there's, there's, there's a whole thing where you're keeping people out of the media and and helping organizations deal with that. But it's the same principle, simon. It's the same principles about know what's the outcome that you're looking for, know who you need to be talking to show integrity, tell stories, prove that you're doing the best you possibly can, share lessons, share knowledge, even of cock-ups, you know.

Liz: 1:42:31

Be open yeah the lawyers hate it, by the way, um, but pr people know that this is how you achieve trust and respect and, uh, ultimately, you know, make a difference in the world.

Simon: 1:42:46

Liz, it's been amazing talking to you, as it always is. It's probably no surprise to anybody. You're a great communicator and able to bring this subject matter to life, and then I hope you know people and listeners get something out of it, because I think we all all of us are mission driven in some way and we're trying to communicate what we're doing. So thanks a million. I really appreciate your time.

Liz: 1:43:10

And can I just say huge you know snaps to you what you do and the podcast and the issues you're looking at, and again, your communication skills spot on Well done.

Simon: 1:43:21

Thanks a million Cheers. Thanks for listening. Before you go, can I ask a favour? If you enjoyed the podcast and know somebody else who might be interested, do spread the word and let's keep building this community. This podcast was brought to you in partnership with Errico AECO, ultra, protect, imbiote and 21 Degrees All great companies who share the vision of the podcast and aren't here by accident. Your support of them helps them support this show. Do check them out in the links and in the show notes and at airqualitymattersnet. Don't forget to check out the youtube channel by the same name, with plenty more content due to come on that channel. Thanks very much. See you next week.