Delivering Diversity: Energising Game Changers
My guest for this Inclusive Growth Show interview is Nathan Ott. Nathan is the co-founder of a fantastic tool called the Game Changing Index, or the GC Index. The GC Index is a revolutionary organisational metric system that was created by Nathan Ott and Dr. John Mervin Smith, who I interviewed back in March 2022. They focus on identifying and nurturing talent by assessing how individuals prefer to make an impact.
Unlike traditional tools, the GC Index emphasises the specific impact and energy that individuals bring to their roles rather than their inherent personality traits. By aligning roles with an individual’s energy and impact preferences, it provides actionable insight into how people can best contribute to their teams and organisation. The index supports diversity and inclusion by valuing different thinking styles and contributions, which fosters an environment where everyone can thrive. Organisations can then enhance respect, belonging, empowerment and progression amongst their workforce. This approach not only promotes cognitive diversity, but it also helps create inclusive workplaces where employees feel valued and can make meaningful contributions.
To get us started, I asked Nathan to tell us more about his role as a Chief Polishing Officer.
‘Polisher is one of the five energies which we refer to as proclivities within the GC index. I called myself a Chief Polisher quite early on because I’m not what people would expect of a CEO. I don’t look, sound or feel like a CEO. I’m not that specific type of strategic or articulate person that’s always cool and calm when they should be. I called myself Chief Polisher because it makes me feel more comfortable and authentic. I think it’s helped me be myself.
I was curious how Nathan ended up in this space and how the GC Index began.
Nathan responded, ‘It’s been a wonderful journey. Dr. John and I call ourselves co-creators. I had an idea and Dr. John substantiated it. I’ve always spent a lot of time in the world of diversity and social mobility is a topic that is important to me. Through my work in the space of professional services, I attended many diversity events but always felt a bit different. I was the only one that was a white, straight, young man. I remember thinking, “Why can’t we just see people for the impact they make? Can we not start there?” Those were the first questions that led to the creation of the GC Index.
The second thing was the amount of businesses asking for people to make a change. In conversation with these businesses, I found that they were using traditional talent frameworks which they couldn’t describe or explain to me. They described pixie dust, the je ne sais quoi. We termed these people Game Changers.
We researched for three years, and then we launched the DNA of a Game Changer. These are people who are highly obsessive and imaginative. That was our first bit of publication and organisations seemed to like it. One particular organisation, Orange, which when we were presenting said, “I’ve got these Game Changers, but what does it mean if you’re not a Game Changer on your metrics?”
At the time we didn’t know what it meant if you weren’t a Game Changer. We studied for two more years and that’s when the framework appeared. Two core constructs of the GC Index are imagination and obsession. Academics found this interesting as imagination and obsession have been studied independently for years, but not together. That’s what underpins the GC Index.
I got here today by working wholly through partners and clients. I do feel like a fraud sometimes when they say I’m the co-creator because all I had was an idea, but it’s evolved for the last five, six, years around the world and without the help of our partners we wouldn’t be here. It’s wonderful to see. It’s an amazing journey that everyone has contributed to.’
I thought what Nathan said was interesting. When I explain the use of the GC Index tool to clients, I say that you asked yourselves, “How can we identify these people in an organisation, the Game Changers, and is there a way of statistically identifying and measuring these folk?” In the course of your research, you said “Yes, it is possible to identify these Game Changers.” However, at the time, there were three other dimensions of how people make an impact. We’ve got the strategists, implementers, polishers, and in between, the playmakers. These are the people that like to build consensus and ensure everyone’s pulling in the right direction.
We’ve used the GC Index as a part of inclusive leadership development, team development, team cohesion and also within the recruitment process. When a client of ours was appointing a new board of directors, the GC Index was instrumental in that recruitment process. We found it helped have a conversation about diversity in a different way. We have diversity of traditional characteristics like gender, ethnicity, disability and socioeconomic status, to name a few. However, a lot of business leaders like to talk about diversity through these five psychological proclivities to ensure they have diversity of energy in their team.
We’ve worked with teams where there might be a bias towards being a Game Changer as they are idea driven and blue-sky thinking, but their team will be lacking in implementers. This leads to frustration within the team because they can come up with fantastic ideas, but they lack in execution. They realise the reason why they’re struggling to execute those ideas is because they don’t have that energy in the team to implement.
I wanted to know more about the wider impact that Nathan has noticed the GC Index having on different organisations.
‘There are a number. Part of the challenge with the GC Index is that it can be used in so many ways because it’s just a data point. We see it most successful in three real core areas: teams, recruitment or succession, and understanding of projects and processes.
There are two core component parts to the GC Index. One is the language, which is devoid of people. “What do we need to do here? Do we need to create an original bachelor project or create original ideas? Do we need to strategise to align things? We need to get stuff done. We need to get stuff done better.”
Whether we’re working in a business, team, school or university, it doesn’t matter, these are conversations that we always have time for. The GC has framed the language so that it allows everyone to talk about what they need to do in an effective and efficient manner.
We use the individual, team and organisational data to help us make decisions. The language used is the bit that’s unlocking teams and aligning people with the right projects and processes. It’s another data point to make sure we’ve got the right people in the right role, which is a huge link to wellbeing.’
I agree with Nathan that a shared language is powerful. My team and I use it internally all the time.
One of our team members might pipe up and say, “Hang on, we’ve spent an awful amount of time in game changing territory. We’re coming up with loads of great ideas, but we aren’t implementing anything. We need to switch gears and move to implementer.” Within my team, we know who has the energy for each proclivity. Once we implement the shared language structure it helps us progress our projects and we find it to be an incredibly useful tool.
Another example is when we used the GC index for one of our clients to help them recruit a new senior leadership team. They were recruiting a chief strategy officer, chief technology officer, finance director, and a chief commercial officer. All of the candidates did the GC index and then we discussed the different proclivities during the interview.
The client told us that the conversation drastically changed in the interviews and they were using that shared language. It wasn’t about personality, it was about how they were going to impact the organisation and how they were going to help the organisation achieve the vision strategy that they developed. Shared language is key.
Nathan endorsed this point adding,‘I think it’s the depersonalisation of the language that makes it so effective. Frame the conversation you’ve just had without the language of impact. Everyone will understand clearly when an individual says, “Look, we’ve spent some time game changing on that, can we just see if we can get some practical outcomes and implement some stuff here?” However, if the language was changed drastically to, “Please stop going around and around in circles with these stupid and have crazy ideas. You don’t understand what we’re trying to do here. You’re always away with the fairies.” The language used begins to become overly personal, which we see happening in businesses all the time.’
I found through my own use of the GC index that you can organise projects around the framework which I like because it’s a natural way to develop a project or product. You can start with game changing to come up with fantastic ideas that think outside the box. The strategists make sense of those ideas and focus on why something should be done and how it should be executed or rolled out. The implementers step in and go, “Brilliant, we’ve got the idea, we’ve got the plan. Now let’s just crack on and do it.” We know that the implementers aren’t about perfection, but that’s where the polishers come in to make the project better and take it to 100%. The playmakers are in the middle and play a crucial role in trying to bring everyone together and making sure the mission is going in the right direction. The framework is a great way of organising a project or a product.
Nathan agreed that you can start anywhere, ‘It gives you the language to ask, “What do we know?” I had a team last week that couldn’t get work done. This particular project had a plan and strategy. They just needed to start implementing, so we didn’t have to go around the loop.
Whereas another project might start with playmaker bit first and get the right people on board. It introduces a different level of thinking before they even start game changing or strategising. It gives a nice and simple framework to follow which is completely depersonalised. Many organisations find the reason they’re behind is because they lack implementers within their team. Nobody has the energy to fulfill that proclivity. Following the framework helps them develop a balanced team which means they can deliver on projects much more efficiently.
The biggest learnings that we’ve had from our community is that low scores aren’t necessarily bad and high scores aren’t necessarily good. The low scores are huge strengths in the right context. It helps with projects and processes because it moves us away from needing implementers to do this and needing game changers to do that. It moves us into, “This is your proclivity. How are you going to contribute to this process?” You don’t want a game changer the last two days of a project when you’re trying to get it out the door. A low score there is a big strength.’
I agreed with Nathan’s point that a high score isn’t always good news. For example, Nathan and I are very high polishers, which means that at our worst, we are perfectionists. We might not get stuff out the door because we’re constantly trying to make things better. We might drive our teams around the bend because we’ve got high expectations and standards that we expect our team to meet. When I took the GC, I found the self-awareness that it brought was very impactful to my own leadership abilities.
Nathan agreed, ‘I was pretending to be a strategist playmaker but that’s not how to get the best out of me. That’s why I now proudly call myself a chief polisher. A low polisher score is great in the right context because they can cut their losses. They don’t over-agonise or over-deliver. Whereas polishers will take weeks trying to deliver the perfect email, which isn’t always the right thing to do.’
A key community that Nathan works with and that is used by the GC Index are HR. I asked Nathan, ‘What are some of the trends that you’re noticing at the moment that the GC Index could help HR professionals with?’
Nathan replied, ‘There are a number. We’ve written a response to Ghana’s top five HR priorities for 2024 because there are some key areas, specifically around projects and cross-functional teams, that the GC Index would certainly help with. There’s a lot of work that is getting done more globally and cross-functionally and the GC Index is helping teams work well together and getting the right balance.
With the GC Index, HR are now able to understand what type of change is happening throughout the project and process. “Is it change at all? Is it business as usual? Is it incremental change? Is it transformational change?” You can start to see that through the GC Index. We hear a lot around changing mindset and transformational change, but people need to know how they can contribute towards it. That gives HR real data to go back to the business and share how their people can best contribute to the change that they’re trying to drive.
Well-being is an important element. You can map the energy required for the type of work which allows us to understand how that project is going to affect our employees. It’s a great indicator for well-being. How do we get people running towards work rather than running away from it? How do we stop our people getting burnt out?
Protecting the energy and well-being of our employees is more important than training people to be resilient. I have a real issue with resilience training. It makes no sense to me. Why are we trying to make people resilient? Why not put them in environments, teams or work where they don’t need to be resilient and where they can actually flourish?
The GC index is an equity tool in terms of democratising impacts, that permeates everything we do. Everyone, whether they’re in a project, a team, a role, we’re going to value them for the impact they bring. It’s that democratisation of impact, which is going right through.’
I found what Nathan said about energy to be very relevant to my my latest book, Builidng Inclusivity, where I discuss the GC index. As an individual, if you understand what energises you to make an impact, you can lean into that. If you are a diversity and inclusion leader, and you are high game changer or implementer, that means you get energised by coming up with fantastic ideas, and then wanting to crack on and implement them.
Imagine you’re working for a boss who is a high strategist. They might then come to you and say, “It’s amazing that you came up with all these fantastic ideas, but you need to be more strategic in the way that you approach your work.” If you score low as a strategist, you’re probably sat there scratching your head thinking, “What does my boss mean by being more strategic? What does that mean? I’ve got these ideas. I want to implement them. I know they’re the right thing to do.”
Understanding the different dynamics of the proclivities is powerful because then you might be able to plug that gap. I worked with a diversity and inclusion leader who was high game changing and high implementer. One idea that we came up with was creating a virtual strategy board. They would take their ideas to the board which would make sense of them, think about if it was the right thing to do, how it should be executed, what the roadmap looks like, and then we could crack on and implement. That mind shift was impactful for them.
Nathan added, ‘Employers often bring the phrase, “more strategic” into play. It’s a scenario that happens a lot when people are going for a promotion and through the ranks. If you implement a polisher, then the question is, “Can we make this person strategic now?” However, if we can give them the tools to understand how they can best contribute to the process of strategy whilst using their implementer product, it’s much easier for them rather than just simply stating they need to be more strategic. There’s a lot of teamwork from leaders where the actual leader is not a big strategist.
We often don’t notice the relief across that leader’s face when you say, “You’ve got some strategic people around here. You’re the leader so you can approve the strategy but let them go and create it. You go and do what you’re good at.” They haven’t got to pretend to be this person anymore. That’s the sort of stuff that I like seeing.’
I interviewed Nathan’s business partner, Dr. John, a couple of years ago. The GC index has evolved significantly over the last couple of years. From what I see, the network of GCologists is expanding. Like Nathan says, they deliver the GC index through their network of partners. One of the other developments is the creation of GC Translate where they’re using a bit of AI to help them with this. I wanted to know what GC Translate is and how it’s used.
Nathan emphasised the fact that GC Translate is quite visual, ‘The GC is thought of as a language. GC Translate has a glossary of words that are associated to each proclivity. If we think of implement, the words that appear are ‘build, deliver, delivering, execution’, that type of stuff. Under polisher, there’ll be things like ‘excellence, perfectionism, improving, best standards’, and so on. There’s a data bank that influences the glossary, which is generated with human-assisted AI.
It takes any content, job profile, LinkedIn profile, website, marketing copy, D&I strategy, or charter, and it will translate that into those words. It’ll pick up words associated to the proclivities and give you a profile of what that content is saying in GC index term.
For example, if we have a certain role profile that’s using a lot of language like ‘build, deliver, execute, very implementer focus’, it will show that it’s 60% implementer. It helps you answer whether or not it’s going to be the right role for you.’
My team and I, at Mildon, used the GC translate tool when recruiting the new senior leadership team. We cut and pasted the job adverts into the tool to identify the language that was being used. Let’s say we took the job of chief strategy officer, unsurprisingly, it came out as high strategy language and high implementer language. We could go back to the client and ask, “Is this the language that you want to be using? Do you want to attract a strategist implementer?” It was good because it allows for the client to make sense of that fact that they attract people who are energised by strategy and as a leadership team, you want to make sure that your team gets stuff done.
Nathan said, ‘The GC index is a diagnostic tool, it isn’t the diagnosis. We wouldn’t just recruit because of the GC index. We wouldn’t say, “The role profile must be like this because GC translate said so.” We must be very clear that this is just a diagnosis. This is what GC translate is saying, “Is this what we want? Is this what we need?” The GC index and GC translate in that recruitment example is to help you select people in, not select people out.’
The penultimate question I ask everybody, and even Dr. John had to answer this question a couple of years ago, is ‘What does inclusive growth mean to you?’
Nathan enthused, ‘People need to understand how they can contribute to growth and feel valued by their contribution and value others in order to have inclusive growth. It’s where we all understand that this is how we can get the best out of each other to drive growth, whether that’s financially, commercially, or altruistic.
I love Mother Teresa’s phrase, “In the sense that you can do things I cannot, I can do things you cannot, together we can do great things.” That, for me, is what inclusive growth means. If we can get there, then that’s growth.’
I was looking back at what Dr. John said when I asked him this question, where he defined inclusive growth as an ambition to reach a broad and diverse range of individuals with the GC index across various settings like education, sports, and the corporate world. His vision was driven by a desire to prevent people from feeling excluded or written off as he experienced early in his life.
Dr. John said he wants to help individuals understand where they can have an impact and how they can make meaningful contributions. Inclusive growth ensures that everyone has the opportunity to thrive and be valued for their unique energies and strengths. This approach not only promotes personal and professional development, but also helps foster diverse and high-performing teams.
To learn more about the GC Index, Nathan advises you can visit the GC Index website where there are loads of resources for people to watch, listen to or read.
For further information and resources from Toby and his team, head on over to the Mildon website, proud partners of the GC index.
