Talent Talks with Peter O’Connor: Building teams that stay and thrive

Julian Buschmaas: Welcome to Talent Talks by Be Impact, the podcast where we speak with leaders across professional services, technology, and consulting about what it really takes to attract, grow, and retain top talent. I'm your host, Julian Bushmas, CEO and co-founder of Be Impact. And our software enables your employees to teach what they've learned to teams and nonprofits and startups, because we believe that teaching others is not only the best way of learning something, it's also the best way to create, or as we say, to be impact. in each episode, we explore how firms are rethinking development, leadership and culture and what it takes to basically build teams that stay and thrive. And today I'm sitting down with Peter O'Connor, CEO of the Target Group. Peter, prior to working with Target Group, I think you were the managing director at Capita. Yes. You've also worked in big banking, Lloyd's, for quite some time. And now since two, three years, the CEO. definitely. Yeah. So first of all, thank you for the invite Julian and the opportunity to have a, just a nice chat with you really about Target Group, our company, our like values, our family feel, and most importantly, what we're trying to do to look after each and every one of our colleagues. So I'm super excited. It's always scary when you hear your own resume portraying against you of all the jobs you've done before, but ultimately have. worked in a range of roles over the last 20 plus years, mainly in banking, financial services, but always with a core focus on looking after the colleagues that I either worked with, led, or was part of the same team. So super excited. Fantastic. And before we telling us a little bit more about what's on the, basically where the focus is currently in 2026, the target group for our listeners today's episode, as always, we're going to look into a bit of... ⁓ company culture, we're going to look into learning and development also, but under changes that are coming through, through AI and the ways that we're working. ⁓ and about social impact and what it means for businesses. And in the end, have our quick fire, ⁓ before we close up on the, episode. So Peter, yeah, welcome. ⁓ Can you tell us a little bit about currently what's on your mind in 2026 when you, you think about target group, but also the industry for sure. Right. So, ⁓ By way of introduction. So I'm Pete O'Connor. My job title efficiently is a chief executive officer at Target Group. Target Group for many that don't know is not the American supermarket. We have a blue logo, they have a red, and we do not do stuff in supermarkets, albeit that is a cool discipline. We are ultimately a company that's been around since 1970, the late seventies, 45 plus years. And our aim and our purpose beyond looking after each and every one of our colleagues and our clients. is to provide either IT services or outsourced BPO services, business process outsourced services to a range of clients, predominantly in the UK, but also much further afield in terms of who Target is in our size. We've always been based in Wales. I'm really proud of that fact and had a large site presence in Newport and Cardiff, but also North Wales ⁓ and are a company of about 500 colleagues based geographically remote across the whole of the UK. really embraced hybrid remote working, the use of those various tools. ⁓ And for us in Target, really, whilst we aim to look after all of our clients, where we see in 2026 going, it's kind of quite simple really. We want to further delight our existing clients. Number one is in that be delivering great services to them at a competitive price and showing them the value in the might of Target Group, but also the might of Tech Mahindra who own Target Group since 2016 and there are 150,000 people company globally, 6 billion revenues. So they've got size, scale and the oomph behind to like energize Target Group further. So first things first is you want to delight our existing clients too. We want to be able to showcase the new clients, new businesses, the scale, the size, the experience that Target has mainly in financial services. And most importantly is our 500 plus colleagues. keeping them as happy, entertained, motivated, energized, as you can do in any kind of work environment with an element of reality that allow them to flourish. And I guess the letter is really the center of our conversation today within financial services. It's a people-based business. Nothing works without the people. So let's start by talking about that. As a leader, when you, when you look in the teams that you're working with, what kind of behavior do you cherish the most? What kind of behavior do you value as a... The ethos and the values of AIM since June 23, when I took over as the CEO of Target Group is to continue, improve its family feel, right? Yeah. Because a family has trust, has ⁓ openness, has transparency, and ultimately you work together as a, as a team. And what I am... trying to embrace and ⁓ empower colleagues within Target Group is to work as a family. And my role as a leader is it's quite simple, is to enable that. And that's what we are striving for within Target. We don't always get it perfect, but we do try to achieve that from a goals perspective. So how does that work for you on a... day to day, what are like the small maybe rituals that you're bringing in or that you maybe also role model as a leader that you would like to see in others. Yeah. So whilst everyone has specific job titles and we have organizational structures, right. Within the organization to basically help it run efficiently and to look after our colleagues and clients. We are, I have aimed to create it to be very open and honest. give you some examples of that. Anybody can email. me and they will get a response. Right. I sit, when I go to our offices, we, ⁓ all of the executive, ⁓ team, ⁓ we sit out with colleagues side by side. Yes. There's sometimes you need to do meetings in a room and so forth, we are open and honest. I love that. Yeah. I remember now into a call, I think you were, you were sitting right. our, the very team in Cardiff. Right. So ⁓ that's good for me, but good for the teams. It's also a bit bad because it means I can go to finance and ask them a question direct on something. And so it kind of works both ways. But joking aside is what we, what I've tried to do is create an open culture where anyone can talk to anyone. As long as you're professional and you're doing it from the right place. Yep. Then we're supportive. Also said that it's all opportunities to learn. And all I ask people to do is try new things and give it a go. Some things do work. And they work brilliantly, but some things don't. And it's not a case of like fail fast as people say, it's a case of we just all learn. So I try and emphasize to the teams through giving them increased empowerment. You can go and talk to clients. You can go and come up with new ideas and saying is we have got the support network that says we'll help you to do that yet. We don't try and bring in that it's somebody's fault. Yes, some things don't work and we need to understand why. But we're not into saying it was that individual's and that's unacceptable. That's not the culture I want. Cause ultimately, like if we think about it in hierarchy, it all resides with me and I'm cool with the accountability and the good things that come with it, but also the challenging, it's about allowing the team to flourish. That's part of that. And when you look at teams, when they're functioning really well, and maybe some teams that are struggling a bit more, what separates the two from each other? Yeah, I think the first thing is communication, right? Is that ⁓ any team, whether it works really well or isn't working as well as you would like, it comes down to, you understand those people that you're working with? Right? We do work in a very remote world. So we've got colleagues predominantly based in South as well as about 200 to 250 of the 500 colleagues, but the rest are like in the Shetland Islands in Scotland to the Isle of Wight, to Norfolk. ⁓ quite disparate, right? Number of hundreds of miles. And some of them might never have met each other physically. They might've just seen them on own calls. So a lot of it comes down to communication in terms of how do you engage with a person? Do you understand who they are? What's their background? Where have they worked before? Where they're willing to and open to sharing like, you know, their family or anything like their hobbies. The key bit of any successful team is that that team feels that they work as a team because they understand each other. The teams that maybe don't work as well, some of that is down to that people haven't spent the time or the effort to just maybe get to know each other, right? And understand, well, what is the goal they're all trying to aim? And mostly it will be the same. It's just maybe how you might approach it. You might communicate it. You might write it. And that's what we've certainly found in Target, certainly with some of our teams that are based in our extended teams, and they are extended teams, in India. There's very different work patterns and styles. there kind of rituals or, or let's say ways that you then set up new teams or projects that allow for that time and space to happen so that the people get to know each other on that level in this remote set up? 100%. So from an executive down, so from an ex-co, every single member of my executive team has done a get to know you session with the entire company. All right. It was recorded. So ⁓ one of our colleagues in communications does it, does a bit of an interview, right? And the brief is you can explain as much as you like about your work life, your personal life, your friends, your family, but it's your choice, right? But all I ask is that that executive person becomes more human and more real to all of the colleagues. then, so that's the first bit. So all of my executive team have done that similar and I've learned new things about some of my team in a good way, right? That I maybe did not know before in their hobbies, in their backgrounds. And that's available to all colleagues. And then we've done, as you would expect, right? We've done that with our senior leadership team, our management teams to kind of just make people more visible and more real. We've shared our team sheets and put people's faces on, right? Like, so you know who that person is, because you make an assumption how somebody looks like or could interact with or their background. the real test is sometimes seeing them off screen and suddenly, Yeah. That person is quite tall. Or accents or dialects and stuff. So, so we do that in addition to that, it's a range of communications in the sense of, ⁓ there's always, there's always a bit of give and take. Some people like lots of emails, some don't, but we use tools like the forums in work to be able to share information like a Yammer. So each week I will do like a weekly post of like where I've been, who I've taught to. Yeah. Some people will love it. Some people will be like, It sounds like you live in a jet set life. I can say it is far from that, but we also just ask people to communicate whatever they think is relevant on that forum. Now we're talking, it talked about what, what's important for teams to work well. Now, when you look at individuals, how do you spot a top performer early and what is it that, ⁓ that they are doing different than some of their colleagues? think in terms of top forms, all, colleagues have. the ability, the option, right, to be a top performer. It's a bit like playing football or a sport. You just need to make sure you create the environment for that individual to flourish, right? And whether it be in a certain position, a certain role in the team, understanding that person. So the first bit we try and do, certainly when targeting, is understand the person. So yes, we've used tools like. Myers-Briggs, the colors, just to understand where is someone got a potentially more dominant color, like a red, like is more directive, more like outcome focused versus someone who likes to be planned. So, and then from that, try and we are trying to create the environment that says, well, where would that person naturally play in? Right. Is it, they would be more of a senior leader within a certain role or of a team player or more of a technical specialist and taking some of those like data points, well as the places that they've worked before. We kind of, we kind of use that as a bit of an assessment of what is the role that would best fit. within Target, right, there's many people that I've hired over the last two or three years where we've had a great conversation like this. Did I have a perfect role for them in the organization? No, I didn't. But what I realized was is that person had a lot of skills, attributes, care aligned to our values. And I thought, well, I've got the ability to help create them a role within our organization. or talk to some of my management team. So ideally finding the right person and then saying, what would be the role that would match to their skills, right? Rather than I've got a role. I'm yeah, I must go and find this exact person. Cause actually that might not be what that individual wants. Right. Yeah. In addition to that, from a, like a top performer perspective is to say, yes, we do our calibrations. We do our checks that people are delivering what we'd like them to in, the right way. But ultimately saying that Every colleague has the ability to add value in the organization. How do we basically just enable them to do it? Yep. And we've kind of played down like there needs to be five or six people that are always seen as the go-to and not an elite, but in that, in that regard of top performers, because ultimately I need all 500 colleagues to be able to answer thousands of calls in a month to manage 800 servers, to look after 26 clients. You can't rely upon one or two people. It's not fair. for a start, but also if you only focus on your top performers, other colleagues quickly become demotivated. And again, it's the team then that does the team performance. Yeah. Now I would say it's not easy. And at times you regularly, unconsciously, but probably is unconscious bias is you give work to the people that you know is necessarily easier or that you're perceived as top performers. Yeah. Well, let's not call them top performers, but let's talk to maybe... influencers or champions of a kind that that role model, maybe certain behaviors that are just necessary, maybe as they grow their career. So I'm also talking about more junior colleagues that wanna see themselves or one day I want to be the CEO. ⁓ What kind of skills do I need to have to make that happen? So I think it's evolved a lot in the last probably decade in terms of like what all of our roles are and what skills and stuff. So if you think when I was at university, when I was at kind of university age, it was like you had to go to university and then you had to go through a certain path to become a senior manager or a head of or a CEO. That path is now very, very different in a good way, right? In that people can take a higher education route. They can jump straight into it. So I think the first thing is, that, ⁓ A lot of it is down to people's own desires and aims. What do they want to achieve? And being clear on that, A to themselves, but B to the, like not employer, but the company that they're working for. Cause if somebody knows what you want to achieve, it's quite simple, right? It's up to you as the leader and the manager to enable it. Cause the person's already motivated and engaged. They might just need you to make some time available, put them in contact with the right people to share experiences, guide, solve problems. give them the right training and support, but ultimately just give them the environment that says, you can go and do this, right? And I believe in you and my job is just to enable it from there. So in terms of being a CEO, I think many people say that's like a career aspiration, I guess, from a hierarchy and a job perspective, I'd say there's lots of different routes into it. ultimately, I think you've just got to follow your passion of like the area that you want to work in, whether it be a sector or a type of business or a company and ultimately then, you know, give it your best shot. normally some of it's luck. a lot of it is good calls and three is having the right network and of people who believe in you to help enable. And support you. And also the latter can't be, I mean, now as a young entrepreneur on that, it's the, it's the network that makes you happy and that's can be self-worked, right? It's not necessarily a hundred, a hundred percent. like that. Networkers morph in many years, like many years ago, you went to lots of dinners and networking events, ⁓ face to face, right? Now you do that through various online channels. You do it through direct messages. You do it through just like WhatsApp and so forth. So I think you've got to have a view of being flexible and adaptable and like seeing how you can achieve your goals. the, on the last topic of more cultured. Do you see a change or shift in employees' expectation, they want from an employer in 2026? Oh, 100%. So I started my career in like 2003, think it was, beyond jobs where I was at university and so forth. And at that time, were looking from an employer to say, I need a job and I want a job security and I want a decent pay with some... regular enumeration, right? And career progression, right? And that rightly probably at the back of the time was perceived as you would give everything of your working hours to deliver for that, right? And to get rewarded off it. I think now in the last few years, and some of this is a driver of COVID, people's view of work has changed. And I think it's in a good way, right? Work is definitely important, right? For many of us to A, meet new people, learn new skills, deliver things and just keep us occupied, right? But many people, and I say this in Target and Target's average length of service is now 7.8 years. that was 5.3 back in June 23, right? So, and our attrition is around like one and a half percent. So it's quite low. Okay. But those people have like built up an affinity and loyalty to Target and more of its people probably than at times the work that they do. And I think that's what's happened in 24, 25, 26 is that people enjoy the people that they work with and the work that they do. Yes, they understand the brand or the company they work for, but that isn't necessarily seen as something that needs to be a job for life anymore. And I respect that, right? Like you need to follow what you, your heart tells you and what you would like to do and keeps you energized and rewarded. And I think that's certainly what we're seeing is that people are a bit more open where they've done 10, 15 years, where many years ago they would have said they would never change jobs. They would, they are committed because of various reasons. a 30 year career. Yeah. People now are going, I fancy a change. And I think that's a super brave and that excites me in that it's sad when you colleagues move on who've been with you for a long time, but I'm only sad for a short period of time, right? In the sense of if they go into something that they want to do and Yeah. They will do a great job and they have our full support and hopefully it works out perfectly. But if it doesn't, we're only a phone call and an email away, right? It is. Yeah. And I guess it's also a bit about growth. You always look, I guess, to change as part of growing, I guess, in that kind of way. And that transitions us a bit to the next topic that I would love to talk a bit more about, which is, yeah, helping and supporting people, I guess, to do their best at work. And that might be also through training, learning and development and. Can you tell me a little bit about, from your perspective, when does training work best and when does it not? Yeah, that's a, it's a very good topic to discuss because we've, as an executive team, but also with our senior leadership team, been talking about it a lot. So if I give you the context, so across the 500 colleagues within Target, They do a mixture of different roles. Some are more operational roles, answering calls, emails, processing documents. Some are in the more technical space. like coding, testing, some are more in the project management space. So a business analyst, project managers, testers and so forth. And then more in like what you would call management roles in terms of ensuring a team functions. We engage with our clients. We look at growth areas, find solutions to people's problems. So from a training perspective, you've got to acknowledge and realize that one size of training will not fit all of those cohorts of people. So the first thing you need to do is dial your ears up and listen to what your colleagues say, because yes, we could come out with, and we do have training curriculum, right? We're doing a license to lead at the minute. like a refresher for all of our managers on some of the basics of managing a team. Yeah. As well as like, well, this is how you'd engage a remote team. This is how you would communicate with colleagues across different time zones and in different places in the world, right? Who celebrate different holidays ⁓ and different things from that. The first thing that you need to do though, is just ask colleagues is what would skills and capabilities do they need to have to do their role even better than they do today? Yeah. What would they, what would they benefit from? And specifically ask them as have they explored any of those? Because yes, we could Google, you know, what's the best training for a project manager, right? And I could probably get five or six different options. We select what we think is the best one. Some of it is asking our colleagues, right? And then it's a mixture of what we found is colleagues really crave certainly in target in the last two years is they'd like more external qualifications. Yeah. Yeah. And they would like more where you're in a, I wouldn't say a classroom. Yeah. That sounds kind of antiquated nowadays, but you're offsite. You're away from your day job rather than sat on a team's call for an hour, which is no bad thing by the way. Right. No, but I think it does add something to the, to the environment. Of it. I remember my time working at Boston consulting group. were basically sent a week away. ⁓ and I had the whole training and it was team bonding. was culture building and then yeah. Yeah. It brings us, I think it's a mixture. So absolutely ask college. You do need to have a training curriculum and a career path for people because some people, because everybody is different. Some of my executive team needs to have a very clear plan of how they would, what skills or capabilities, what experience needs to have to transition to their new role. So you do need to have some form of career paths and then you need to regularly ask your teams. And we don't always get it right. And by no means we're perfect at this. saying, what are the... skills that you need to do your job versus the soft skills as well. So like you could be the best developer in the world. Right. And that would be awesome, but you need to be able to talk to your customer or your team manager. that might get no more important than ever, I guess, in terms where AI is maybe taking on quite a few of the traditionally hard skills to leverage that. How's your thinking on that topic currently to set up for the future ready, let's say. It's ⁓ definitely an interesting one. So to give you some context, the target group is part of Tech Mahindra and we're ultimately a global IT firm. ⁓ the reason why I bring that up is not in a promo, more that our strategy is to enable businesses from an AI perspective. Okay, that's our like strategic North Star for one of the better reasons. one of the better word really from there is an in target group. We're trying to embrace AI. Yeah. At least learn from it. Right. And I think from a, a training and a personal perspective, one thing's first is just bringing awareness of it. Right. There's lots of good thoughts, potentially bad or somewhere in between of what AI could and couldn't do. Right. From us. And a lot of us are still learning. There's not a textbook, right? There's many books on AI, but there's not a textbook on how you to deploy it. So from a target perspective, we're just trying to learn, is in each of the colleagues roles, what AI tools, technology are available, who's tried something and made it work, who's tried something and learned from it. And then actually just giving people the platform to be able to say, ⁓ hey, look, like last week I saw ⁓ a product just when I was Googling and it said, I can write all of your slide decks. So I'm like, I was super keen to kind of like go on there and think, brilliant. I don't have to write another slide deck ever again. But in my head, I was like, go to my information security and say, if I start using this, where would it flow? Right. And, so forth. And I think the view with AI, certainly in our company is, it's there to compliment a colleague and to help them do an even better job than they do today. It will help them accelerate learning and it will help them to accelerate some form of like output. But It's there as a compliment. It's not a, it's not a replacement, but we're still finding our way and we're by no means perfect at it just yet. Yeah. guess many companies are on that journey right now. How does that translate to the kind of skills that I need as an employee? think from an AI perspective, we still finding it out, right? In that I think the thing we have found is that everybody's like core IT skills. are really important, right? Because AI is like at the, at the heart of it. So we make the assumption that everybody knows everything about it, right? And that they can use their email, their teams, all of their chats and so forth. Whereas a lot of it, we've actually just given people a laptop and a desktop and said, right, go. Like, it doesn't necessarily mean everybody knows all of those details. So we've gone back a little bit to basics of that, right? Of like connecting on different things and wifi and the security aspect of it because now a lot of that information on like you as individuals is just like Google it right and find out lots of things away posted on Facebook on Metta, whatever it may be. So we're trying to kind of re-educate ourselves on like the IT and the things that are secure and are not secure. And then simply just create a forum to discuss what we've heard that's good, what things have been tried. what things we should succeed and then fostered a bit of a culture of try some things. So like proof of concepts, we call them. They're really much simpler than that. Like two weeks sprints to go and try this product or go and try writing all your yammer. And who's involved in that? Because you mentioned earlier the different type of work that the people in Target are doing. Is that driven from the traditionally more techie people or is there others mixed? teams, how could I think about a setup for such a sprint? Is that the sales team? it the- So we're trying not to make it too prescribed because ultimately it's a bit like learning and development, right? If you've got a real hunger and learning to develop a certain skill, then you're halfway there, right? Because you're going to want to spend the time on it. yes, we've got, you know, like an AI user group and like ideation sessions. But then we've said to each of the teams like technical operations, change IT and so forth is if you want to try stuff, it in your own teams, make sure it's safe and secure first and foremost, but give it a go rather than it be seen as like a set of governance steps or hurdles, right? That people need to jump through. I would say we were probably finding our feet in that regard. Some element of it is I have found something on the internet and said, that's cool. Should we look at it? And some of it is the teams have said, well, we've seen this or we've tried this in co-pilot. So it's a bit of a, a bit of a mixture. does success look like for you when it comes to training initiatives or learning initiatives? I'm for context, I'm going to a lot of conferences and events with learning and development leaders. And one topic that basically across the line comes up at every single of the conferences is how do I get budget? for my training and learning initiatives from the exec teams. What's your take on that? if you were to advise an L &D manager at other firms. There's a few ways. So previously within Target, we would have said, we've got a training budget, right? And, know, then people can apply and leverage that. We tried to adapt that in the last few years to say, we will make the training available and find the sums and the monies to be able to do it, right? ⁓ so rather than it's seen as like, there's a cash limit is to say if someone's got a real desire and an aim to grow and develop, how would we do, like, how do we enable that? Yeah. Cause otherwise in your mindset, someone will go, well, you've almost used all of the budgets. So I better not submit it because it's really cost. That shouldn't be a shackle to, ⁓ anyone being able to grow linked to that in terms of the outcomes. We're sim we're simply looking at it from a career growth. So how many people may have been promoted or seconded into new roles? Or, and I know this sometimes in scene is a negative, people have outgrown their role in target group, but need to go and find a role elsewhere. Like we will support that as much as we can, right? If people go on to the new roles elsewhere, then that's a good thing, right? Like at the time it's sad because you've lost somebody that you really liked and you valued, but if you don't have a role for them, you should give them the best possible chance. So there's one in terms of the promotion, the secondment metric. Who is it is I guess. Some of the core is around like attrition, absences, like colleagues' wellbeing and so forth, which we manage through like a best company survey. So what are our colleagues actually telling us? And the metrics, if you've got high absence or attrition in a certain area, that normally points to a number of things. One is people maybe have got a feeling the strain of the work, maybe they don't have the right support, or they might maybe don't have the right training. So it kind of pinpoints you to some areas of ⁓ focus from there. And then three is through our like regular colleague pull service, we ask people and say, how do you feel about the training? So some of the things being honest recently is saying, you and the team in tight, it's been great, the training, but you've done a lot on soft skills around like mindsets, wellbeing. How do you ⁓ decamp from work, right? After a busy week, which the teams have really appreciated. ⁓ But they've said, well, I haven't had seen any technical training on how do I become an even better project manager or a developer. So we've taken that on board. that then is communicated with those teams. Yeah. That makes sense. And we can take it forward because everybody's individual needs and the way that they receive information is very different. We try and be open to all. And there is no, you know, one shoe fits all kind of solution with that, especially with learning. No, not with, as you will know, is working in different organizations. Yes. Our colleagues want to be engaged, supported, communicated is very different. The best thing you can do is listen, first of all, and aim to take as much action on the feedback that you get. Now I want to talk a little bit about purpose and impact. In your introduction, you mentioned you guys have the Welsh roots in the business. You have the parent company. ⁓ And, and I think in our interconversation, we also talked a little bit about, okay, how can we even further increase that ⁓ these roots essentially or, and so what role does social impact, community purpose play for you as a leader, but also in the role for, for Target Group? Yeah. So it's really important because we, we, and I recognize in Target Group, And yes, we want to serve our clients and look after our colleagues. But we're an employer of 500 people, predominantly in Newport and Cardiff. Yeah. So we're quite significant in that area. There is obviously bigger employees, but we've got a big role to play. Right. We're proud of our Welsh history. We're proud of the number of colleagues who are from Wales who still work with us. ⁓ And some people's like now sons and daughters who first started at Target now work with the company. Right. So we're proud of that family feel and we feel that it's like obligated on me, but also my senior team is to give back to the community. So yes, we have the ability with our facilities, right? We've got two buildings. Could we make that available to local groups? ⁓ 100%. There's no cost or anything from that. That's ultimately, we should make that available to help a charity or a local area to do that. Two is from a... training and a development perspective, we offer career paths to people in schools or higher education or to tell them a bit about what working in financial services is like. So we, went to visit Whitchurch High School in December and do a talk. Now schools have changed massively since I was there, right? In a good way, I think, definitely for sure. But it was like great to talk about like my career, what we did and the questions that those people ask will kind of. help guide them on what they might want to do as a career. we see that A, our roots in Wales is really important, but B, we should be helping the next generation of people to seek their new role, whether it be with us, give them the right opportunities, you know, to come in and internships, make our facilities available. Ultimately try and work with the local governments, the councils on how do we leverage, you know, some of the right support from those kind of bodies to help us. there something you wish the local government then would do more in order to guide or pinpoint also the businesses and what they can do? Like where their responsibility sits? Is there anything there you think, ⁓ that could be working better? I think there's a bit on awareness, right? I respect everybody's busy people, right? And busy with lots of different things. But sometimes to get the information to understand like, where could you get investment from your local government or support on certain activities? Sometimes it takes probably a few hoops to go through or to find the right person. But once you find those people, they are super, super helpful. But we've got the ways and the means to be able to probably cut through that more than other companies and employers. So I think to make some of that a bit more accessible, maybe AI helps with that, right? Maybe just Google it nowadays and it'll tell you. part of the answer. And I think the second bit is just communicating what's already happening. There is a lot. I went to a Welsh investment summit in late November, December time, and the amount of activity that is ongoing in Wales specifically, but it is across the country around social mobility, helping people to train, whether you're in your early stage of your career or your late stage of your career is vast. We sometimes don't dial up the noise on it. It's It's not as communicated as we would like. So it's my job to amplify it, but it's also many of ours. I think that would be great to talk about the good stories. Yeah. Is the role of businesses in that then also changing? think in our inter-call, we also talked a little bit about the traditional way businesses had been engaging with, with the nonprofit sector being also quite a bit physical labor-led rather than skills-based. I really liked the idea of providing the space. and the office, have one of our clients partners that now offer their, yeah, their office for board meetings, because of the nonprofits they support because they had no, yeah, no board meeting room. So I think that that is fascinating. How's the role maybe of businesses changing or what, where does it need to go in an optimal world? think it's changed that businesses like Target Group and many others understand that their role is much broader than to... ⁓ return a value to shareholders and look after its colleagues. It's also to do good, right? Because A, we feel good from doing good and it has to be with genuine intent. Yep. Yep. It has to be with a thought through rather than potentially seen as like something that could be used for media purposes, right? It has to be, cause you'll feel it that you've added value and that's become a lot clearer in the last few years that companies realize we should and we have to and we... we have the means to give back and also to help those people that are trying to grow and develop. We should just enable it more, right? And I think it's now become much more of a regular topic. So whether that be around like carbon footprint, whether that may be around your facilities, whether that be like what you're actually doing in the community is now a topic that's regularly discussed rather than potentially seen as you get close to a year end and you go, sugar, what have we done? Let's quickly. do a couple of things. have the soup kitchen. Yeah, like which is absolutely valuable, but it should be done with like a purpose and a longer term value. Yeah. Rather than a short term. And regularly. think that was before starting this and I interviewed more than a hundred nonprofit CEOs and was really asking them as well, what do you need from the businesses? And it is really a long, term engagements. So something that they can rely on. from a strategy perspective. So they don't get this like inflow of people during Christmas. And then for the rest of the year, they need to look for that. And then I guess the longer term engagement, think is the core of that and enablement for that. has to be, and it has to be aligned to those like not for profit or companies, their values, what they want to achieve. Our role is to just enable it more than it is. That's how they've established and that's the ethos of those companies right from there. So that's what I think many businesses like I and others are trying to do. We don't always get it as, as right as we would like, but I think the heart's in the right place. Yeah. we can see a shift in that and also in the way we talk about it. Yeah. Pete, let's finish with our quick fire. ⁓ Seven questions, seven short answers. Go for it. What do great leaders do better than anyone else? Listen. What's one talent mistake organizations keep making? Look after the people you've got. What's the biggest leadership mistake you've made and what did it teach you? The biggest one is thinking I can do lots of things at the same time. by trying to take on all these things, I don't allow people to grow. What's one thing you would stop doing in employee development right now? Telling them what we think we know. rather than asking. What's one thing you would double down on? Allowing, allowing new talent and new people to enter the company or to see it ⁓ quicker than we do today. Okay. In 2026, the most valuable management skill will be? The easy one is communication, right? Yeah. But I think the biggest one in our business is ⁓ allowing people to thrive and to flourish. Empowerment, be the one word. And related to that, if you could change one thing in the industry about how people or how organizations approach the growth of their talent, what would that be? Openness by allowing people to work in different teams or sectors or with their competitors. You're ultimately helping the person, right? Now I know that from a talent retention is like scary. You lose some of your best people, but if it helps that person grow, they go to your competitor. Probably the right outcome whilst at the time you might be like sugar. You're helping that person and that's what we're here to do. And last, what's one belief that you have changed or an opinion that you changed within the last two or three years? Oh, belief. That is a very good question. Might have to think about that for a second. That's okay. Not normally one to think belief you've changed. I think the first bit is that people are really... Resilient and all and want to do good. Yeah. think so they can take people can take challenges. and they're ultimately, they want to do good for an organization or for themselves. Fantastic. And with that, ⁓ Peter, thank you so much for this really thoughtful conversation. ⁓ I learned a lot for this and I hope our listeners, ⁓ as well, if they want to get in touch with you. after this episode or want to just learn a bit more about your career or what's like working at Target, where should they reach out to you? ⁓ absolutely. So first of all, thank you for the invite and thank you. Like that time's flown by, Which is full credit to you and just the nice conversation that we've had. So if anybody would like to reach out, my door is always open in the virtual sense or the physical sense of that. You can find me on LinkedIn or my details on Target group are there. Feel free to email me and I'll be sure to respond. You're more than welcome. Fantastic. And to our listeners and watchers as well. Don't forget to like, subscribe this episode, follow our channel ⁓ if you're interested in attracting, retaining and growing your talent. ⁓ And yeah, if you want to find out more about what we do at Bimpact as well, feel free to reach out to me at julian at bimpact.co.uk or visit our website, bimpact.co.uk to see what we do ⁓ for you. Perfect. Love it. In that case, yeah. Thank you so much, Peter. Thank you very much.