2.143 Building High-Performing Teams Across Cities- With Mark Swinnerton

What if your team was spread across three cities and still worked as one team?  

In this conversation, Karen Kirton sits down with Mark Swinnerton, CEO of Green Gravity, to unpack the practical leadership habits that keep people aligned, fast and focused as you scale. 

In this episode, you’ll learn: 

• The simple weekly rhythms that cut noise and build trust 
• How to recruit in a competitive market by blending mission with clear success measures 
• Why onboarding should deliver context before complexity (and what that looks like) 
• How to help specialists get comfortable working in ambiguity 
• Turning culture from a poster into visible behaviours people are recognised for 
• What only the CEO should hold during growth and when to let go 
• Why competent management is the most underrated retention strategy 

Top of Form 

Bottom of Form 

Ready to translate these ideas into your business? Book a free discovery call with Amplify HR: https://meetings.hubspot.com/ronita-fourie

Visit https://www.amplifyhr.com.au/ for more insights and resources.  

Get in touch with Mark:  

https://greengravity.com/  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-swinnerton/ 

Get our free eBook packed with practical strategies to attract, engage, and retain top talent. Perfect for business owners and leaders focused on building a thriving team. Download it at amplifyhr.com.au/downloadable/find-grow-keep

Transcript

Karen Kirton   0:03
Welcome Mark. 
Mark Swinnerton   0:14
Thanks, Karen. Yeah, it's a real pleasure to be here today. 
Karen Kirton   0:17
Thank you. And I wonder if we can just start with an overview of green gravity. So when did the business start and what's your elevated picture of what you do? 
Mark Swinnerton   0:28
Oh, so yeah, thanks very much. We started in 2021 and we've been working really hard on the technology ever since. And our company is all about leaning into the renewable energy transition and specifically around how we firm renewable energy, so it can be used when it's needed and that's energy storage and our technology specifically is called gravitational energy storage. And the way it works is we lift giant heavy objects up a legacy mine shaft to consume energy when there's too much renewables.
And then when we want to redistribute that energy back to the grid again when it's needed, we lower those heavy objects right back down the mineshaft again to turn a regenerative electrical motor and generate the electricity back to the grid, thereby storing renewable energy for when it's needed the most and doing so by using an asset that's no longer in use.
Use being an old legacy Mine shaft. 
Karen Kirton   1:23
Amazing. You know, I we've mentioned this before the episode many years ago, I worked in the energy industry. And so the nerd in me is like, this is like, so cool. Anyway, perhaps that's for another podcast. As we do talk more about leadership and people here. So going into that. 
Mark Swinnerton   1:33
Yeah. 
Karen Kirton   1:42
Space. You know you do have employees split across three states, including Wollongong, Brisbane and Melbourne. So what's the biggest benefit? And also, I'm sure the trickiest operational challenge that you've uncovered so far with having that geographical spread. 
Mark Swinnerton   1:59
Well, the biggest benefit is that we can access such wide labour markets. So when we're we're doing something so cool people, you know, genuinely want to work for our company and we're able to to bring, you know, really high end talent into our organisation. 
Karen Kirton   2:04
Hmm. 
Mark Swinnerton   2:14
But you want to be able to offer an environment that's flexible and tap into the widest set of people that we recently can for our size company, so that actually drove our decision to have more than one location even early in the stage of the company was all about. 
Karen Kirton   2:27
Mm-hmm. 
Mark Swinnerton   2:30
People how how to access people, people who were on our journey, how to make sure that they could feel comfortable and and could lead their life the way they wanted to. 
Karen Kirton   2:39
And because I think you're in my experience, sometimes when you have those different locations, it it can be tricky, especially as you're getting bigger. So how do decisions get made across the sites or what rhythms or rituals do you have to kind of keep everyone aligned   
Mark Swinnerton   2:58
 
Yeah, team alignments are, you know, any organisation that has multiple sites is always going to be dealing with the question of how do we align a team, how do we build all of the right relationships and then how do we have routines and decision making processes that are optimal around that. We we've had a a really strong focus on building relationships.
Across the team, so again, even as an earlier stage company, we made sure that we had a sufficient travel budget so that people could routinely meet face to face, that we would hold team meetings in one location and make sure we cross pollinate that. But we've got a really rigorous.
System and systemized approach into how we drive team alignment and and engagement, and that rests on something called the EOS process and we're we're a big adopter of that, meaning we have rigorous team meetings. We have also mandated one on one processes between managers and subordinates that are weekly, we have quarterly routines and these sorts of things. So I think the secret to making sure you can align across different is really common purpose, common tasks and transparency around those and then really heavy routine management to make sure that we can use the technology that's out there.
In today's world, with teams and and the kind of collaboration options that we've got also make it easier than it's ever been to to keep people aligned. 
Karen Kirton   4:23
Yeah, absolutely. And for those that don't know, EOS is the entrepreneur's operating system. If you've never heard of it, go and pick up a book called Traction by Gino Wickman and you can then have a look at it and see what that process is. So even though it's called a system, it's not a piece of software. It's more of a a way that you, you work and hold people accountable and run meetings.
So great to hear that it's been really successful for you as well, but I've had many businesses that get into the EOS processes and I like the people side of that obviously, but it's it is a good one. So. So you've currently got 22 people in the team and you've had a lot of growth over the last. 
Mark Swinnerton   4:56
Hmm. 
Karen Kirton   5:04
12 months. That's a 30% growth rate, sounds great, but there are always challenges with growth. Tell us what lessons have you learnt? 
Mark Swinnerton   5:13
Oh well, I mean, firstly, it's a lesson that everybody already knows, but it's important to remember it, which is you've got to spend the time making sure you select the right people and on board them in the right way. It's a huge investment bringing somebody into a team and it's a false economy to think that we'll just make a quick decision. And and this person will work out if they're not quite.
Right, because ultimately they often won't. And then there's a huge amount of additional cost and effort for their unwinding decisions. So #1 take your time and get it right at #2 have a extremely clear framework in which.
You're hiring into, so don't hire someone without a position description. Don't hire someone without a really clear cultural plan to understand. How am I going to bring them into a team, and what the expectations are, and be clear about that in the hiring process. Be clear about that in the way that you give feedback in the workplace and how you reward success. 
Karen Kirton   5:56
OK.
And. 
Mark Swinnerton   6:11
On that incremental basis and we do that through a cultural framework where we have a series of very, very clear behaviours we're looking for and our team meetings are all about reinforcing those and celebrating where people are succeeding at those. So we've got from pre hire right through to how we're remunerating aligned around a really clear framework.
Both culturally and the way we define roles and objectives, I think those are really just again very basic management techniques that make such a difference when you're growing a team. 
Karen Kirton   6:42
Yeah, but they get lost so many times, don't they? 
Mark Swinnerton   6:44
So.
So easy to lose them. Yeah. And you're busy. Everybody's busy. Because, of course, the problem with hiring is it's extra work, and it's actually extra work on a group of people who, because you're trying to add people, presumably they're already under pressure and they're under resourced. So it's a challenge. It's always the case. It has been since the beginning of time, but the investment. 
Karen Kirton   6:48
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah. 
Mark Swinnerton   7:04
There's only one way because you have to put the extra effort in and make that investment in adding capacity. And let's not forget the onboarding, it it you know it's again an important lesson to always remember, it takes a lot longer for someone to onboard and get the full context and therefore be able to succeed at the rate you want them to. It takes a lot longer than you think it will.
Because your background knowledge is, you've got all this context and you just assume others can absorb it and they can't. And so I think it's, it's really important to be patient and have a process that actually has progressive onboarding and brings people up to speed so they can then perform and set the expectations realising that. 
Karen Kirton   7:24
That's true.
Yeah. And it’s the little things, isn't it like acronyms and you forget that not everyone knows that or you're the right person to go and talk to or you know, this thing that you did 18 months ago that just becomes everyone assumes you know that the knowledge is there and it's not really. Yeah. 
Mark Swinnerton   7:44
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah, that's right. And it's both technical and the way we work our culture as well. And and both can be quite different like, you know, especially in a startup and a the tech focused startup trying to do something that's never been done before. 
Karen Kirton   7:57
Yeah.
Yes. 
Mark Swinnerton   8:09
By definition, there's going to be a series of areas in our tech that no one has experienced in and, and that's really important that people also need to adjust to that mindset. And it's not common that particularly in heavy technical areas, so engineering for example, it's not common for people to deal with large ambiguity. 
Karen Kirton   8:14
Yes.
Yes. 
Mark Swinnerton   8:27
And and so you have to create an environment where people can get that comfort and that can take a while too. 
Karen Kirton   8:33
Yeah. And you mentioned, you know, like in, in what you do like, I can appreciate because of my experience that would be really, really exciting to a lot of people in the energy sector. But in saying that, you know, we still do have skills shortages and engineers in particular have been something that's been, you know, pretty hard to get. 
Mark Swinnerton   8:44
Yeah.
And. 
Karen Kirton   8:53
For many years now, so although you've got something great to offer, you know are there the people out there like, how have you found the employment market and you know, how have you developed your recruitment process over that time? 
Mark Swinnerton   9:03
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah. The people are out there, there's no doubt. And there is a lot of competition for the right people, which I think is always gonna be the case anyway. But what I've really learned more than ever before in my career is people value. 
Karen Kirton   9:10
Hmm. 
Mark Swinnerton   9:23
A range of of different propositions when they're making a decision to take a take a role and and one of those is remuneration, both current and future. So you know people will play some level of value on things like stock options in a company that they believe can grow and be really successful. So there it it the the makeup of the finance. 
Karen Kirton   9:28
Thank you.
MMM. 
Mark Swinnerton   9:43 
Transaction is different and interesting and people get that, but mission and what you are trying to achieve is people put true value on that. So do they put the value on the culture, the people, the way of work, you know who they're working with. And then finally things like flexibility and workplace and. 
You know those sorts of areas and what I've learnt is even a small company, you can largely compete really effectively on all of those dimensions, especially with today's technology. You know we can offer novated leasing options to our staff, which we do. 

Yeah, I don't think 10 years ago or 20 years ago, small companies could do those sorts of things and now we can compete with the big end of town on this. We can't compete dollar for dollar with a BHP or a National Australia Bank or whoever, but we can compete really effectively in terms of a reasonable makeup of a salary with a lot of long term opportunity that people can look at and say, OK, I can make. 

Make that work, and very importantly is mission, and we've been picking up very experienced engineers who have specialty knowledge we need and we kind of have to get those people. And while there's a certain number of them waiting out and finding the people who do value what we're doing and why we're doing it cuz they are there, that's been a Hugely important part of our business and we've got a very high retention rate. We've got very high level of skill within the team and that's been our strategy is to get experienced capable people early on, more so than many startups would, which means we have a slightly higher labour bill than we otherwise would have. But we're getting huge benefit from it.  

And now we're able to layer in slightly less experienced people and then ultimately we'll get to be able to hire graduates and and you know these sorts of people, but but only when you've got the superstructure, the culture, the leadership, right and we're on that path now, which I'm really pleased to say. 

Karen Kirton   11:23 
Yeah, that's awesome. And I think that it's something that people often forget is they think I'm a small business and I just, I can't compete. They've all got more money. You know, worries me. The people that want to work for the really big corporates are not the people that you generally want anyway. Like it's it's such a different culture, isn't it? Such a different way of working. 

Mark Swinnerton   11:52 
Well, it it it, it is and you've got to make that interesting judgement of people that have been in a big corporate can they learn to adapt to that environment or can they not? And then there are a lot of people that don't like the kind of the structure and approach of a big business which does ultimately deliver, I think a lower level of innovation than what you're.  

Finding a smaller tech startup like what we have in Green Gravity, but also I think a really important secret for attracting because people talk. So you attract people and then retaining of course is how competent is your management within the company, how easy is it to work, is it bureaucratic, is it always confusing? Using and does it? Does people go in circles or is it really aligned clear? You know a success and delivery focused organisation that has all those right values around pushing a boundary and understanding when you know when failure is actually just a lesson and when it's not. So I think making sure that you've got your ducks lined up around how you're managing your business. 
Is, is, is as important as anything to attraction and retention actually. 

Karen Kirton   12:56
Yeah. You just touched our leadership a little bit there. So I'd like to ask you, you know, what are maybe three things that you feel that only you can do at this stage? And are there anything within those three or others that you're keen to delegate next as the business grows? 
Mark Swinnerton   13:07 
Yeah. Look, it's really interesting. I mean the the first one that's is setting the vision for the for the company. And while there's a collective component to that, there's also just a straight role of a leader to enable that vision and to be able to push that boundary. And and I think that it it starts with that, that vision. There's a great book out there. Start with why, you know your vision is around. Why what how that these elements are are really critical for the senior leaders to to to really build out. And I don't see myself delegating that in the near term and I think. 

I've got a role and maybe I'm shrink that role over time as we have really empowered group of people in the organisation, but ultimately setting that that the ultimate vision I think still very much rests in my space. I think the 2nd is is around. 
Setting the cultural intent of the organisation has rested with me. I do see this becoming less and less about the founder and most senior leader in the organisation and becoming much more of a collective of leadership team and we already have. 
Heavily vested that, but I think that's something that's important to me to set how we're going to do business and how we set our culture, how we define it, because it's not amorphous, you can define what you want and if that wants to change with time, which everything needs to adapt to its circumstances, I think that's less my role and more the role.  

The broader leadership group to be able to flag and make those changes as time goes on, and once a culture is set, it's hard to unset and you know, I've always believed in it's like a magnetic field. You bring a person in as long as you've got it really right. People will snap lock if they've got the right type of person, they'll lock into the direction of your. 
Culture and it's, you know, it's it's powerful if it's heading in the wrong direction, you've got a real problem. If it's heading in the right direction, you're really powerful. And so I'd say that's been a a huge role of mine. And then I'd say finally, my role has been very much around the storytelling.  

Of the organisation and that sets our public positioning, it sets our internal stories and therefore supports the vision and the the culture in the way we have dialogue and what are the folklore? What are the how, what, how do we speak about things? What is our position on things? 
I think increasingly that will be less my role and more the collective role of the team and the leadership as well, and that that's something I'm really keen to have happen. But it is a really important role, the senior leader to be able to create that dialogue and know what the right words are to set external and internal positioning on so many features and that's something I've put a lot of effort into it, since the company was started as well. 

Karen Kirton   15:58 
Yeah. And it feels like to me, you know, outside of looking in you, you've done a lot in that space, you know, even just having EOS and, you know, understanding the importance of recruitment, onboarding, for example, and having that mission that a lot of people the same time frame that you've been in business would not have even like picked up a a book or listened to. 
Podcast about any of that? Yeah, because most organisations, when they first start, you know, it's just cash flow and it's, you know, finances and kind of the people culture side gets left and until frankly, quite often it's too late because that culture's been set incorrectly..  

Mark Swinnerton   16:19
Yeah, for sure. 
Karen Kirton   16:35
What is it that made you understand that from the get go to go, I need to make sure that I'm investing in this. Have you had mistakes in the past that kind of you do? Thought I don't wanna do that again or. 
Mark Swinnerton   16:47 
Absolutely, absolutely, Karen. I mean, it's this, this is the thing we learned from. Hopefully we try and learn from a set. So I mean, I've had a long history of leading teams and some very large teams and it's it's evident from the outset when you start as a as a you know shift supervisor or junior.  Leader and leading teams up to leading organisations and some of the fundamentals of leadership and management become ingrained to the point where you do learn what works and what doesn't work. And if you don't set a really clear vision and set a really clear, compelling understanding of why you're doing something, then people will spend a large amount of time wondering and that makes them.  

A lot less productive and the moment people start to be less productive, all sorts of other things start to go wrong, and so you want to make work fun, compelling and purposeful and easy. And if you can do those things and that's the role of a leader, is to set that vision about what that is and then to put the mechanisms in. 
Place to make sure it's fun to make sure it's clear what, why we're doing something and to make it easy. And that is don't give crappy systems to people to use. Make sure that they're actually make sense that you use them yourself. I often find with young people coming into leadership that they think. 
The more senior they get, the more they're going to be the general in charge of the army and they don't have to get their hands dirty and do something themselves and they'll have people do that. That's absolute rubbish. You know, the more senior you get doesn't mean you do any less of the base work and the basic work in an organisation that you what you always did. In fact, you should do just as much. 
And you just need to get more productive at being able to do it. You need to understand how things are done and make sure if it's really hard to do, you're feeling that pain yourself and and and therefore you're in a best position to be able to make sure you unblock things and make it easier for people to do their job. And I think that's part of the learnings I came into green gravity with, which is a a laser focus.  

On saying we're not going to be bureaucratic, we're not going to make things hard, but we're going to build this company to be scalable and if it's going to be scalable, that means we're going to need to hire a lot of people and deploy a lot of resources over time. And I don't want to get five years down the journey and go well. Let's now try and build something and have already locked in a culture and a way of doing business that then has to. 
Be unwound somehow, which is really, really hard. And so let's get it right from the beginning. Let's make sure we understand what culture is going to do for us. Let's understand our ways of work and build that incrementally and add to it, and then it's going to be really easy because we don't have to re engineer things later on.  

Easy said than done, but we've worked really hard and I found EOS and and and it spoke to me really easily to say many of the things I knew I wanted to do in leadership and management. The framework of EOS spoke to all of them at once so it was easy for us to adopt that and to adopt it without change actually. 

 
Karen Kirton   19:33
Yeah, excellent. Last question is it one thing that you wish that you knew earlier about running a business or leading a team? 
Mark Swinnerton   19:45 
Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really that's a great question. There are a lot of things I wish I knew earlier. Actually I, you know, I'll, I'll. I'm gonna. I'm not gonna give you one though. I'll give you a couple. I mean, it's different audiences that you might have if you've got an audience, people within your audience that are thinking about starting a a founding.  

Start up. I mean I I encourage those people to get out and have a go like the it's a it's rewarding, it's impactful and you're going to stretch yourself along the way and hopefully create a lot of success for, for people and and yourself and everybody else. And in doing that. 
Make sure that you reach out to help. What I didn't know that I should have is there's a huge support network out there in Australia and all of the cities around Australia. There's startup incubators, there's support from government and universities and other institutions. Reach out to me. And if you do that, you're gonna get a lot more support and make it a lot easier on yourself. And I didn't know that. I wish I did.  

And you know, secondly, to the people who are coming through the leadership ranks and are increasingly leading teams of a few people or dozens of people or hundreds of people, you know what I would say to those people is. 
It's the the most important thing in the team is, is respect and the the ability to listen. I remember early in my career the Harvard Business Review had this wonderful article that was doing the circuits for a long time around empathetic listening. 
And it's always stuck with me that that it's you're not going to form a relationship and form trust and therefore form the respect to enable you to lead unless you've got an ability to listen with empathy and understand what people are saying and why they're saying it and your job as a leader isn't about you, it's about them and. 
It's about. It's about unlocking the capability of your team and if you can't hear what they're saying and understand it, you're not gonna unlock the problems that they've got. And that's your job, not someone else's. And so to me, that's The thing is, it's under. If I had a known all of that even earlier, I would have been more successful, truly. 

Karen Kirton   21:44
Excellent. No, I think that's really great advice. And yeah, it's something that actually comes up quite often as people say, I wish I just need to ask for help because we feel like, you know, I've started this business. I have to be successful. I don't want anyone to think I'm not successful. But actually there is a lot of help out there. 
Mark Swinnerton   22:08
Well, Karen, it's even. It's there, there is and something that I learned is that people truly respect in Australia, people respect. Somebody are going, having a go and that you you are not going to call someone and they're going to say go away, but it just doesn't happen like my my experience has been people will go out of their way to help someone who's having a proper go. 
Karen Kirton   22:16
Yeah, that's true.
 
Mark Swinnerton   22:28
And they they'll go. What can I do to help you? And it's a small amount of contribution from them to you. But you you have got a lot of people out there and it adds up to a huge contribution to you. So don't be afraid to ask and people will volunteer. By the way, we've we've relied on volunteer labour for years in all sorts of areas of ultra specialist.
Items because people they they believe in what you're trying to do, they're willing to give some time and so don't be afraid to ask and reach out and collaborate. 
Karen Kirton   22:48
excellent. Look, Mark, I could sit here and talk to you for hours, but I don't know that everyone else will enjoy having a podcast at 3 hours long. So. So look, just want to say thank you for joining. And what's the best way for people to get in touch with you? Is it LinkedIn or through your website or another means? 
Mark Swinnerton   23:02
Probably not, yeah.
Yeah. Look, Karen, absolutely, we love LinkedIn, so send me a message on LinkedIn. Alternatively, on our website there's a contact US option there which goes straight through to an inbox for the company as well. So we're always happy to hear from people. 
Karen Kirton   23:23
Excellent.
Great. And I'll put those links into the show notes. So thanks for joining and for those that are listening. If you've received value from this episode, I'd love it if you could leave a rating or a review over Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So someone else can also find the episodes to help with their business. Episodes are released on Mondays, so click subscribe. 
Mark Swinnerton   23:29
Thanks Karen. 
Karen Kirton   23:45 
You'll be notified of when it's available. If you have any feedback, questions or ideas for future episodes, head on over to amplifyh-r.com dot AU or connect with me on LinkedIn and we can start a conversation.