Today, I'm connecting with Paul Redfern, Chief Operating Officer at Big Picture Medical.
Laura Nicol connects with Paul Redfern, Chief Operating Officer at Big Picture Medical. He’s someone who’s spent most of his career toggling between product and operations, and getting pretty good at living in the grey. And becoming “reasonably okay-ish” in a whole bunch of different worlds.
This episode is all about a tension every operator knows too well: the never-ending juggle between growth and scale. Serving today’s customers while building for tomorrow. Every decision has a cost. The real skill is knowing which ones are actually worth it.
Inside this conversation:
Want to connect with Paul? Find him on LinkedIn.
Also mentioned:
Connecting with Paul Redfern, Chief Operating Officer at Big Picture Medical:
[Note: This transcript is AI-generated via Descript. Please expect typos]
[00:00:00]
Laura: Connecting with Paul Redfern, Chief Operating Officer at Big Picture Medical.
Paul says something so interesting in this episode, and I wanted to highlight it at the top: athletes have structured push rest cycles, operators. Most of us push until something breaks.
what is that about people? What is that about? So Paul's on the pod this week to share a more sustainable approach to leadership. How to do meaningful, high impact work that your kids will be proud of without burning yourself out. We talk about his journey from feeling like a fish out of water to chief operating officer of a 60 person health tech.
Big picture, medical. his face literally lights up when he talks about this team's work, and it's incredibly special to see.
we also explore why great operators treat the company itself as the [00:01:00] product designing family systems, shifting from COO Paul to Dad Paul as you walk through the door to red line monitoring with his wife Nick, founder, empathy and why people pleasing at scale becomes organizational debt.
Thank you so much for tuning in. Enjoy the episode.
Paul. Welcome to Calling Operator.
I have been loving the number of human, human human chats we've been having lately, so I am
Paul Redfern: Me
Laura: to frame this conversation with that in mind. And I'd love to start with getting to know who is Paul outside of being a Paul in the real world?
Paul Redfern: In the real world. I'm a dad to our seven month old daughter Elke. So yeah, first and foremost, I'm the husband to my wonderful wife, Nick. I am a tragic and long suffering West Tigers and I love to read, although that has dropped off since we've had Elke. I'm [00:02:00] probably a, ever aspiring athlete, though I dunno what sport it would be.
It's just trying to keep well and move regularly. So yeah, that's probably how I am outside of my title,
Laura: you, you mentioned you recently became a dad. How has that fatherhood journey been begun for you so far? I.
Paul Redfern: it puts you in a very emotional, different emotional world. It's quite an intense experience. You have to make decisions, a lot of decisions. That you've never had to make before. And they are so tightly coupled to, a feeling of love. And I think also maybe fear that you could be making the wrong choice set at any given time.
But on the whole, it's been very rewarding. yeah, it's a very formative change in the way that I see the world from having
Laura: What's it teaching you about time?
Paul Redfern: what is time? What is, um, I think making sure that you are managing your time and energy really consciously. you have to do that I [00:03:00] think by nature of the job. But I think this has really forced it, upon myself and our family. It's also the idea that they mirror everything that you do.
So if you have a frustrating day, and you're a little bit emotionally charged and you come into the environment and Nick just spent minutes or hours trying to comfort Elke, it's not good enough that you show up, not thoughtful about your energy regulation in that environment because she will turn, she will look at what's going on, she'll observe and that feedback will be real time and confessionally.
I know that I've done that in the times that you've had Alki, and it's just a reminder that your energy and how you show up is a consistent thing you need to work on. that's definitely taught me a lot about time and presence and how I show up.
Laura: So you've had the most stressful day. What is your tactic or tip that you are doing as you walk through that [00:04:00] door?
Paul Redfern: I take more pauses than ever. the context switching that you have to go through every day is so immense. So when I have to switch gears to being a dad, making sure that I, I do this little breath work trick, and I think you've spoken to a lot of people about how good breath work and how important that is.
But my favorite one, it's not the box breathing one, although I do like that one. My favorite one is taking a really deep diaphragmatic breath in and then when you think you've reached a peak, taking a little bit more. Then the exhale. And I find if I do three of those before I get into that environment, it helps me immensely.
and also when you have your fallible moments, just being a little bit kind to yourself as well, because even when your amygdala is hijacked and you're in that emotional state, you, are going to make errors. So yeah, just, trying to also be kind to yourself through that experience.
Laura: let's get into your career. I really love the product and ops journey that you've been on, and I guess you've [00:05:00] moved across industries which include advertising and creative FinTech accelerators and now health tech. So what threads tie this arc together.
Paul Redfern: thank you for highlighting the diversity that I've had in my career. But I think it's probably a really intense interest in a lot of different, complicated things, like a deep curiosity for different worlds. when I started in advertising, that was a perfect way to do that because I would be able to work on everything from.
cancer Institute, new South Wales. We did a, program of work with emphysema and smoking cessation and lung cancer. And so how would we raise education and awareness and eventually behavior change to help make a positive impact in that space, but equally you get to work on, sheep worming medication and, what is going to help farmers [00:06:00] understand a better sheep worming medication program that's gonna, have better outcomes for their flock.
I love that diversity and then it was always constantly changing in advertising, so it was a great way to get that it scratched. I also was fortunate enough when I was at the campaign palace in my advertising days, shoes of Prey, which was one of the earliest startups in. known memory for the Australian ecosystem.
Jody, Michael and Mike were just building that in the office alongside us. And so watching them build very early on in my career and understanding there was this whole world out there that I hadn't even known or experienced also gave me a bit of a prompt.
Laura: 'cause I guess anything to do with like PR and advertising, you are there for such a small portion of the build, like everything's built and you're there to create that big song and dance.
Paul Redfern: Yeah, it is. It is. but I used to work in strategy and one of the great things about that was you were trying to solve a [00:07:00] communication problem creatively, but the more and more I got into that work, I mean they're fundamentally business and people problems. So the sheep drench one or the work we did with a large pharmaceutical company, it was really a problem around the way that people were interacting with their product or how to education or awareness of the product.
And so a lot of it was the things that you'd expect typically, but a lot of it was how do you help go into there, find ways to communicate more effectively and educate, upgrade that education. And I just found that fascinating. I just found that fascinating to, as a behavior change program. yeah, that ultimately led me into a whole number of different avenues.
Financial services went into banking properly. and I think when I look back on it, a lot of it was luck. You have some design elements that you try to go for. You say, I want to go into these directions, but to be able to traverse, those different industries, you need people to.
See you back you give you an opportunity. And when I made the move to the Bank of Queensland, there was a group [00:08:00] executive there at the time, a wonderful gentleman who's since passed away, but he gave me the opportunity to move from marketing into their product and portfolio management, team.
And because of that, that really set my career off on a different trajectory, which meant that I had subsequent opportunities at, Fintechs Tyros, a company that listed like all these wonderful things because of one lucky break.
Laura: across this journey, as we say, FinTech accelerators now Healthtech, what drew you to ops after product and vice versa. 'cause you've gone ops product and I'd love to like hear what this journey has been like.
Paul Redfern: Yeah, the switch to me was, I've read this great piece somewhere, but it was that great operations people see the company as the product. And I thought that was really fascinating because you just think about the problems to solve through the company. how do you optimize and build a company and a team, a structure, an operate, a rhythm, a cadence, the [00:09:00] tool set to allow for you to achieve the company's goals.
And I really, really love that idea. Moving into this company and this role. I think the two greatest challenges really on the cusp of society are climate and healthcare. And so I have this wonderful privilege to work in this organization that is doing incredible things in the healthcare space.
And, I took all that product experience, that ability to see the problem, unpack it, look at variations of all options that we could choose, think about what the minimum slice would be to get an effective result and start applying it to our company. And loving that transition.
Laura: you are the Chief
Operating Officer at Big Picture Medical. we'll get into this role in a moment, but let's reflect back on, the journey so far in tech. I'd love to kind of go deeper on some of those hard one lessons that have potentially shaped you to who you are as an operator today. what's been the [00:10:00] toughest challenges? What have been those big rebuilds during your career, or any like mindset shifts that have shaped how you operate today?
Paul Redfern: Uh, the big experiences that have shaped how I operate today. I think one of the biggest shifts has been going from an individual contributor, so a really effective, individual contributor, and then the shift to team management and, broader team management responsibilities.
There's just so many lessons around mean humans are the most complex. Machines we're the most complicated complex, and we've all got those things going on in the background, all the time. So trying to find ways for me to be thoughtful about the design, and the always ambitious goals of the company, and balancing those two things, that has been a huge challenge for me to make sure I get as right as possible as many [00:11:00] times as possible.
I think when we were doing this in the product building stage in the world, there's a lot of team cohesion that you're trying to solve a very specific problem, and when you get more experience and larger sets of responsibilities, I think being able to balance that energy and that mindfulness to be able to give each one the right amount of time.
But there's certainly been times when I've got that mix wrong, that balance wrong. I've spent too much time on a problem that really didn't matter. I've possibly invested too much time in people that, weren't the right fit for the team or the structure of the organization, and I've probably spent too much energy fighting, battles that weren't worth fighting about.
So yeah, those are some of the things that probably come to mind.
Laura: staying on the team building. thread, what have you learned about, building great teams and like that transition from IC to people manager to then leadership. then I guess your managing managers of managers.
Paul Redfern: What have I learned? [00:12:00] gosh.
The first thing is that it's harder than you think, because of that incredible complexity in people's lives. we talked about Elke, who's been such a great gift, but it was a few year journey for us to meet Elgi. And at the same time, you have to continuously show up, upgrade yourself, upgrade the leverage and capacity in the team, and, hit these ambitious goals or strive towards them.
And so that was a really good reminder as we were going through that experience that even the most resilient people can have their. Their breaking points, their thresholds. but when you are in that individual contributor space, like you have your tasks, you have your jobs, you have your conviction around things that you need to build and do, and you are influencing and you're pulling people together.
But yeah, that gets hugely more [00:13:00] challenging over managers of managers. And I can see why, large organizations have a lot of challenge around that because you have to show up in a human way and you have to deliver these aggressive results. So yeah, the biggest lesson for me, or the reminder for me was that it's harder than you think.
and everyone's got something going on, and even if it's a one out of 10 pain or challenge, and you put the one out of 10 challenge across 10 people, 20 people, that's gonna impact your. velocity that's gonna impact your effectiveness across the org. So making sure that we're okay with that, that culturally we need to factor those kinds of factors in and as we evolve as a company or a different teams, that we are very cognizant of that.
So yeah, hard lesson to learn and still learning it, frankly. And the reason you're still learning is because people are evolving, companies are evolving. So that really sticks out.
Laura: Yeah, totally. And thank you for sharing. do you think as a [00:14:00] leader you've just learned to almost switch off emotions once you get to the front door of work? how do you. Handle that intensity of life pressure and then having to show up for hundreds of people.
Paul Redfern: No, I think switching off is the wrong thing to do. I think it's more about switching on, because there's, gosh, how many ways you can numb the pain these days. but I don't think that is the right way to grow yourself. And if you're not gonna be able to grow yourself and develop yourself, then you're sure is gonna have a challenge growing others.
about two and a half years ago, my wife and I gave up. We gave up alcohol,
stopped drinking. And for those who know me for a long time, I used to love, events and socializing and that was often partnered with alcohol. And so I think being able to, I. remove that as a way, I wouldn't say it's directly numbing, but it's also a [00:15:00] distraction in some ways.
has allowed me to be okay with me feeling or being aware of being stressed or over emotional in certain stages. Now, it doesn't always mean you execute well, but I think being more aware and acutely aware of it actually is a better thing. that's what I mean about being kind to yourself. Sometimes you are just the best version that is the best you can do.
Sometimes you show up a little bit more lethargic. Sometimes you're a little bit more aggro, and, you need a community around you to allow you to be that, because otherwise you're just a robot. even though we work in tech, we're still, again, we're very, it's a people business.
Yeah.
Laura: I also gave up alcohol and it's the best thing that I ever did. Don't get me wrong. When the girls are having a red wine, especially at this time of year, I'm like sniffing the glass
Paul Redfern: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. meet him and if others, [00:16:00] I had a great check with Sean Greeley, one time, and we were talking about this, look, if others, yeah, love a drink, go for it. but this is about the empathy, I think, for my circumstance and my situation, and yeah, I just, it's just, I wanna pause it for now.
I'll never say never, but yeah, I'm definitely taking a pause.
Laura: And actually reminiscing on the first time I met you, you were leading a. start mate session for the women's fellowship, on finding the right stage of company you want to join. And actually, as I was prepping for our interview, I had a question in here around have you spotted any patterns across these different companies stages that you've worked at? And then I was like, reminiscing back I was like, oh, this is how I know Paul. [00:17:00] D o you have any, learnings there?
Paul Redfern: the consistent learning, across all the different stages, and not just personal, direct, but also people I speak with, is that there is always chaos around the corner.
Laura: Always.
Paul Redfern: is always chaos around the corner, and that change will bring a whole new set of challenges. So your mindset and skillset.
having high degrees of adaptability, it becomes so important, it becomes so critical and these stages can change really rapidly. You could win, a couple of big customers investment could come in or not come in. there's a number of things that changes that. So I think that idea that you're always gotta be ready for some degree of chaos.
Take your breath, celebrate the wins. They're all important parts of the experience and the journey. But yeah, just remember that's always gonna be a new degree of chaos. And that's why your communication patterns need to upgrade. That's [00:18:00] why you need to revisit. do you have the right team structure, people, all those things need to be constantly revisited.
So yeah, that would just be the piece of learning, I'd say through all the company stages. I'm sure someone at Canva could at attribute that, you know, different degrees of organized chaos and different sizes than someone like us where we're 50 or 60 people has the same sorts of challenges just in a different shape.
Laura: And with that scale journey becomes more and more people, which we understand then brings more and more systems of chaos.
Paul Redfern: and also, you're gonna get different experiences and you're gonna get different impressions and different people's gonna have different processes and ways of doing things. And I think what's really important as you go through those different stages is you are assessing what works for you, your company, your people, your team.
I think playbooks are great. There's best case examples about where you can apply them and sometimes they're really useful 'cause they can accelerate the types of transformations or the. Upgrades to the next point. [00:19:00] But also equally, if you get a dogmatic approach that can be quite harmful. I remember going through this at Tyro actually, when we were looking at different ways of working, styles of working.
And ultimately we borrowed some from some part and we borrowed some from other parts and we cobbled it together and it worked really well for us, our style. And so I just think that's a lesson as well that as you grow, great, take the things that work for you. If you've got a founder that likes to work in a particular style or if you've got a cluster of people that come from a different sort of organizational structure, don't dismiss it.
'cause it could be the thing that actually unlocks you to growth.
Laura: And I feel like you would've learned a lot about founder empathy during this process as well. 'cause you've been in a number of head of or chief, either product or ops roles. What has your journey so far taught you about founder empathy coming from the operator seat?
Paul Redfern: what's the saying? That it's not your name on the door. and this goes back [00:20:00] to the idea of sometimes I might have fought for things that realistically it shouldn't have been the thing that I put my energy into. And, enthusiasm and passion are great attributes until they're not like a lot of things.
I remember one moment, when I was at Bright and we were making a really challenging decision strategically about which way we put our focus, our investment and product tech and the customer teams. And, I just spent the best part of the last four weeks I.
on a previous direction, on a direction that we had already previously agreed to. Everyone was behind it, we're backing it. And I was essentially road showing that and going through with the teams and helping them understand it. And then, creating understanding. And then this opportunity came up for work with one of the Australian, government states and territories.
it was a branch from where we were going. It wasn't very neatly aligned. And Catherine, the founder, had a really strong conviction about why we should do these things. She had deep [00:21:00] industry expertise and knowledge about why we should go in this direction. And we had a robust discussion.
I still remember the room we were in, the CTO, a bunch of us in that room. And ultimately we landed on Catherine's decision and there was a part of that where. It was, it's not your name on the door, but it was part of also us entering into really robust discourse that allowed everyone to have their voice heard.
And when I actually heard that point of view and there was information that came in that I wasn't, privy to previously, that helped me understand why this bet is worth taking. And so I think just being able to have those kinds of trusting, robust discussions, they're absolutely necessary for both the business to move forward and for everyone in the, especially in the leadership crew, but everyone in the company to build empathy with what the founder's going through.
Laura: And then also becoming that bridge of that information, to help the rest of the [00:22:00] organization understand that bet. I see so many people missing that as an integral comms piece,
Paul Redfern: Absolutely. Yeah. Couldn't agree more.
Laura: brings us to today.
Paul Redfern: I.
Laura: today you are at Big Picture Medical. what's the one liner on Big Picture Medical? What was the spark that attracted you to go there and what you hoping to learn?
Paul Redfern: I'll start with maybe why I wanted to come here actually in the spark to come here. When I was looking for the opportunities, and as I mentioned, there was really climate and healthcare. I thought are the biggest challenges of our time. Blackbird has this value, which is we will make our kids proud.
And I really love that. What I love about it is it's quite a scalable value that you can think about small pieces that you could do daily or greater ambitions. And so, with healthcare, one of the biggest challenges that actually exists is the supply and demand equation.
It's just completely out of whack. So there's these people that need, everyone [00:23:00] needs better care. They're in need of higher quality care, and there's actually technology that enables that. And there's ways that we can enable that, to be more effective, but. It's so slow to make this transformation happen.
it's actually moving a little bit better. went to a conference, a couple weeks ago and going to one Amsterdam next week. we're going to see some practices and technologies that are moving us forward, but it's still pretty slow and it's not moving fast enough. And so this is a universal experience.
It doesn't matter whether you are, in Australia, the UK, or in the us. What big pitch is trying to do is accelerate new models of collaborative and distributed care and using technology to do that. And so we want to reduce the cost and complexity to build care and research pathways. I was learning about this when Tom was actually giving me the pitch, the founder, and he was saying that, all the data that sits in healthcare system, so I'm sure someone that you know or yourself has had this experience [00:24:00] when you show up into some sort of care setting where it's a hospital or a specialist and you're like, why don't you have my details and my data, and why don't you have a full picture of what's going on in my life?
so if you're going to see a healthcare specialist for one condition, that's not that you should have all my understanding so you can evaluate me holistically. And Tom, our founder, was telling me this and how it's all based on proprietary models. All based on proprietary structures. my mind was blown because in financial services, all the systems or a lot of the systems are in place, so you can manage the money, the margins, everything to the moment, to the interaction. But in healthcare, it's completely fragmented. And so we want to stitch up the healthcare system. We want to enable patients to have a holistic experience to clinicians to evaluate holistically, and we can build these care experiences and these journeys.
in days, we built a breast cancer screening pathway, which allows you to go get a scan, run an AI algorithm on top of that scan, [00:25:00] produce those results into the platform so the clinicians can see who's high risk and low risk. and we built that in days. And so that would typically take months to do so.
Yeah. Tom shared this vision with me. mapping the data between systems, creating these care pathways incredibly flexibly, and we are on that journey. It's incredible to be part of it.
Laura: Big picture.
I guess from what you've just said that's given you like the bigger picture of all your health and accessibility to that.
Paul Redfern: It's
Right. so no matter what your use case is, and especially if you are a large hospital group, or, we were talking with a provider that does the AI for diagnostics, so we don't want to, we're not gonna build that. or if you are a scribing technology, like we're not gonna build that.
But we can pipe that into this very flexible modular platform. they will get an accelerated route to market. Fantastic. So new technologies, improving care. we'll provide the [00:26:00] flexibility for providers to build use cases across different specialties. So it's not isolated bespoke solutions. If they wanna look at different factors of Laura's health, they can, and you can actually provide research benefits off the back of this because we map between proprietary structures into an open data standard format.
So all of that's possible. technology is allowing us to do that. It's incredible to see where this will go in the next year or two.
Laura: I can just even see from your smiling face, how pumped you are to be there,
Paul Redfern: I'm I'm so excited. Yeah.
Laura: to find your
Paul Redfern: I am. I am.
Laura: So you joined as Chief
Paul Redfern: I.
Laura: Officer and you've since transitioned to COO. tell us about some of the projects you've worked on. What's the journey been like, and then why that switch to COO?
Paul Redfern: The wider switch, we talked a little bit about, the great thing about this company is we've been building a long time, pretty much in [00:27:00] stealth. So until very recently, we've had some customers that we've been working with and co building with. it's been incredible.
We've got some global exposure, but we are ready to grow and launch. we're 10 years old actually, which most people just wouldn't believe 'cause maybe a lot of people haven't heard of us, but we, in the last sort of months. We're just ready to grow. And so as part of that plan, thinking about do we have the right structures, the right people, are we focusing the right areas the work that the team's done in the last period, incredibly proud to be able to build that kind of capability.
I just mentioned in days, it takes a lot of effort. It looks slick now. It's effective now, but gosh, that's hard work. So my responsibility is are getting the right structure in place, the right personnel, making sure that matches our founder's vision and yeah, helping our team, get along the way for that.
Laura: if you've just semi come out of stealth, how big is the team given [00:28:00] that it's a 10-year-old business?
Paul Redfern: That's right. So there's about 60 people across London and Sydney, across the UK and Australia.
Laura: from your seat,
What are the problems that you are facing as a COO? What's top of mind for you?
Paul Redfern: It is the inevitable challenge of balancing growth and scale. we've got customer needs of today and demands that we are, responding to, and we have really ambitious growth targets for, our global footprint. So just getting the balance of that right, which means that, there's pressure on us to.
Deliver, there's pressure on us to, make choices that always have a cost or a consequence and how much we're prepared to, yeah, to have that consequence play out. and I don't think that'll ever go away. As we've talked about through the different stages, the chaos will persist. But yeah, that is certainly our challenge, at the moment.
And along with that, you're thinking about, what got us here? [00:29:00] Is that the right mix that's going to get us that next level? the answer could be yes, by the way. but I think interrogating that is important. So accept that 10 year milestone. 'cause it is a massive achievement for startups.
And hopefully we can go for 10 more, but we wanna make sure we've got The right mix of things in the business, which includes technology, people, operating structure that will get us to the next 10 years and beyond.
Laura: I reckon our listeners will be listening right now and asking the question, how do you balance growth and scale?
Paul Redfern: if I find the magic formula, I'll let, I'll let people know. or they can find me somewhere and we can have a conversation about it. but I think it also means that you are evaluating whether, the vision still can remain, but the how you get there, it may evolve many times over.
just to give you a point of view in the healthcare space, there's a lot of talk about how you make the data interoperable, and there's a, few ways that, you can go about it. And we've [00:30:00] got our way as well. Now when Tom, the founder, amazing gentleman, by the way, one of the co-founders, amazing gentleman.
he started a career in finance and then he retrained as a doctor whilst he worked full-time in fi. I mean, this is probably the archetypical founder type. Yeah. Quality. and then he topped medicine at Sydney Uni, and then he went and started this company. So
Laura: Whoa.
Paul Redfern: I, yeah. whoa. And so you can't not be a little bit inspired by that level of commitment and conviction.
he sees where the technology and healthcare can be and can go. And so our job is to try and find the most. Capital efficient, way for that to occur. So are we putting the right bets in the right place? And the way that we've built some of the interoperability measures early on were in one way.
We've had to rebuild a bunch of them along the way, and then a bunch of them again. the [00:31:00] pain of feeling that is difficult, but it's actually necessarily part of the journey. balancing that up is just managing the expectations around, the senior leadership group and the company that's okay that we don't like, see the vision and nail the vision in, three years time.
it's like it's an ongoing growth process.
Laura: I feel like you're really thoughtful around managing up, down, and sideways. What's working really well for you? managing up to Tom and then across the leadership team, and then to all the employees?
Paul Redfern: there's a saying around you can't ever over communicate. what we've been really conscious of, again, as part of this leveling up for us, is maturing and working on our communication patterns. Everyone absorbs information and communicates in different ways, and I think that's also really important to be aware of.
So just experimenting with, doing a lot more recordings and video shares or, making sure that we have a, [00:32:00] this is a, probably a sensitive topic, but enough documentation and written content around because, a lot of one-on-one conversations happen. Chair turning, which is what I call it, is fantastic when you're a really tight, small unit.
And that still should happen, obviously, through the company. but if you do multiple one-on-ones and multiple chair turns, the context gets quickly lost. and we're just so fallible, we forget the kind of conversations or decisions we had. Laura said this and you said, no, I didn't. I meant purple.
You said, no, you meant green. So making sure that our writing, we take a little bit extra time to do that, and that really helps with, I think communication. Dispersion. and then if you need to augment that with, an oral or a, meeting, I think that's really helpful. So people have pretext you can color in between the lines.
Laura: that I guess goes back to, you said at the top of the call about treating operations like a product. Is that kind of what you mean in terms of how you're filtering in all [00:33:00] these comms?
Paul Redfern: Definitely. Yeah, definitely. so we're a notion, company, most of my life is on notion, which is probably a bit sad, but also so is the, that I. yeah. look, and honestly, when we were prepping for having a baby, it was all notion. It was, put down your concerns, put down what you're worried about.
and we still, my wife and I have weekly notion check-ins where we talk about what's happening in the week and where we're gonna find flex. But that practice comes from working in startups. And so, in our organization, we've got so many different types of roles. We've got product people, clinicians, informaticians, designers, and so I have a real, a newfound definitely appreciation for the clinical team that work in our org.
I mean, they, they've been doctors their whole lives. They haven't had to work using Slack and what is best practice. So yeah, helping us establish that and improve that as we go is a, critical part of my job.
Laura: And actually you were talking about your [00:34:00] ritual with your wife there and do you've shared something with me before about your red line? Are you comfortable sharing that concept with everyone here?
Paul Redfern: wonderful mentor and friend of mine gave me this concept because in the middle, I would say in the middle stage of my career, actually, I dunno where I am in my career, but, maybe say five or so years ago, I was definitely running too hard and, we'll maybe talk a little bit about it, but I was running too hard and it was almost what I just described in the company building sense, is that what got me.
To this point is not gonna take me to the next point. And this person gave me this model who said that everyone's got a threshold, everyone's got a red zone. they're be on the red line and you can't use anyone else's measure to understand what that red zone red line looks like. You have to have your own, you have to reflect, you have to look at what the attributes are that are getting you there, and then you have to understand how long you can hold it there.
And it's a really great [00:35:00] concept. This person's an athlete. So I really love that kind of approach to doing this. 'cause athletes do push and rest where we just push. Where we just go, yeah, we can just keep going until we crash and burn out. what I did through that exercise was understand what my tipping points are, what kind of things.
Push me into that red zone, past that red line, how long I can hold my VO two max, how long I could be beyond that red line for, and then what do I need to do to take time off and get back in the green and how long will I need? And so my wife and I use that lexicon in that language because we immediately understand.
And so, a couple weeks ago she said, which is the great part about having great people around you, whether it's your partner or others. She called me up in one of these check-ins and she wrote it down on the notion page ahead of time and we do a pre-read. So I knew it was there.[00:36:00]
and she said, han you are red line. You are way beyond the red line. And you have been for a week. My threshold's about, I think it's probably about the two week mark. It depends on the level of intensity, but, she said you're way beyond and so you're a week in. So I'm just flagging it now at this check in.
you've probably got one more week of this level of intensity and then you are gonna absolutely crash. So, we as a family now, and that's a really important dimension to like, how we show up in that conversation because she said, if you are out, I'm one, I'm down, I'm looking after her full time.
so you've got about one more week left of you so your choices now are, do you push equally as hard for that one week and then it's gonna take you circa a week to recover, so you'll be 50% more as effective in the week after? Or do you want to pull back some stuff now to get back in the green and or to the amber, so it takes you two days to recover.
let's chat about that. And I told her, I said, this week that's coming up super [00:37:00] important. We've got customer meetings and partner meetings, and we're at a critical, juncture, whatever, I'm gonna have to push. So she was like, fine, great. Let's build in what that looks like off the back of it.
we had a trip to Tasmania, which is our little, like spiritual home I guess. So we knew that was coming and so we used that as the anchor, but she was also really specific in saying, I don't want you coming to Tasmania and just being a shell of yourself. So I'm fine with all of that, but we use that language to make sure we're talking the same thing.
Laura: Ah, Paul,
that's so powerful. How do you begin to learn how operators think about this intentionality and how they show up when you are hiring?
I guess I'm teasing out the mindset piece.
Paul Redfern: gosh, it's such a great question. people have lessons and stories to tell. So one of the things that I look for in hiring great people, I think a critical skill. You touched about comms, but the banner I [00:38:00] would use is storytellers. stories are how we learn. Stories are how we connect the how we empathize, the how we, pull out the things of meaning.
You need to be able to go from data into narrative, and everyone has a story to tell Now. The storytelling part is a great skill, but the ability to go into something where they've faced a challenge and that takes courage to be able to sometimes go into a spot and then share it.
I think that's a really important attribute for a high quality person in the team.
we had an interview with a product person recently, and they talked about their career highlights as you should, and then we talked about some of the messy stuff they encountered, and the first line of questioning, we only went one level deep, but this person clearly.
Was a quality operator. instead of just checking that box and checking out of that part of the conversation, we went deep. [00:39:00] We actually probably spent about 15 minutes around this thread. But gosh, it was good because we sort of crafted that story together. So I'm not expecting this person to be Shakespeare, but because they felt okay.
And so this is probably like a partnered thing about being okay with that discomfort and that level of discomfort and they were okay to go into it and help unpack and un craft the story. And I would ask that question. It's a bit, it's a bit Socratic inquiry type work. that was amazing.
And so for someone to be able to have that kind of conversation and interview, I was really impressed. that's the bit of a specific example.
Laura: to round out I always ask folks what they think their superpower or genius zone is as an operator. I'd love to hear that from you.
Paul Redfern: It is a bit of an uncomfortable one, isn't it? Because you have to try and think about what you think. So I asked a few people as well. I tried to get some feedback. the consistent theme that came back was one is being a generalist and being able to jump [00:40:00] into and between different worlds reasonably okay-ish.
and that's been my career theme, and my bias that served me reasonably well. But I just wanna say that I don't think that Why thought that was a superpower very early on. when I was early in my career, I actually felt. Like I was a fish out of water. I felt like I never fit in. and there's a great book that I'm sure you and many listeners have read, which is ranged by David Epstein, and he talks about that level of, broadness of generalization and skill.
that wasn't around and generalization and generalist wasn't a thing. I got to flex that a little bit in advertising, but it certainly didn't, I felt like I was just not fitting in anywhere when I was doing that early stage career. And then as I got to the middle point and somewhere in the middle, it all started to coalesce.
You start to, do good work enough times and solve enough problems with enough, good outcomes and then hopefully you [00:41:00] get some people around you that can back you and give you a shot. And so that is the formula for me being able to jump between, 'cause people go, how could you jump between? It was just trying to have a go and have a crack at those things and then a little bit of luck for people to do that.
And then I think what I just mentioned there, the other part is I'm pretty comfortable just having a crack.
and those two things, being a generalist and having a crack, are absolutely things that people could cultivate. Anyone can cultivate that.
And also just going first, like it's amazing what going first can do in terms of relationship building or like putting a document out there and getting response and feedback. But yeah, all very cultivatable skills.
Laura: what you did there in terms of asking for feedback. Maxine always calls it heat seeking feedback and it's such a great way to like really get clear on what others value in your work. So if you are mapping that out at the moment, anyone listening in terms of where you fit in the market, that's such a great exercise. But let's flip that. what's a blind [00:42:00] spot that you're still learning your way through?
Paul Redfern: I'd say something I'm still working on, I think is a throwback to. early life. I think mine's people pleasing.
I think I have a tendency to say yes to too many things and too many people. I feel like I have this imaginary infinite battery that's why the redlining thing's so important to me, and that gets me in trouble sometimes.
I'm really working on this. I've been working on this for, I think for the best part of the last five years, more deliberately, which means I take more time to pause, evaluate I have this like a little trick. I think about two things. I think, is this gonna move me closer to my goals this week, or is this gonna move me closer to my long-term goals. And then I think anything in the middle kind of makes it difficult for me to have a sharp focus on yes or no decisions. So I just use those two really quick checks as like, this week's been really busy, really full, I have to say no to a couple of things and it's [00:43:00] not gonna move me close to my goals this week.
And it's definitely not gonna harm or hurt or advantage my long-term vision. So, bow out, a couple of social events.
Laura: yeah, social battery is a thing and thank you. Thank you for saying yes to spending this time with me. That feels like such a privilege.
Paul Redfern: I feel incredibly privileged. Yeah.
Laura: That's very kind. So we're gonna look ahead. I would love to hear what is your outlook for APAC as a ecosystem?
Paul Redfern: like a lot of startup people, a lot of people in tech, what does the future of work and how we work look like and how is AI going to change that? the startup ecosystem is incredibly rich with talent and quality people. I think we're going to have, we have a surplus of these incredibly talented humans across the APAC startup ecosystem.
And just to broaden that, there's this, maybe just 'cause we use that label, maybe this story about [00:44:00] startups versus non startups, or corporates versus startups. Some of the best people I've ever worked with are also in, corporates, and I think it's very good for the APAC startup ecosystem that more of these conversations, these intersections are happening.
The great event that you ran with Notion was just such a good example of that where all these people, I didn't stop laughing, thinking and I just walked away so inspired from that 60 Minutes. So I think it's a very healthy, future ahead.
Laura: it is so exciting just to, especially when you bring together like a really niche group and you're all so aligned, it just makes me so excited for what's to come.
Paul Redfern: Meto and new ideas. New connections. new relationships. Some of those things might take years to grow, but they've been planted.
Laura: there was a thing actually that came up at that event that networks are no longer just [00:45:00] optional. They're almost like the foundation of you as an operator and how you get work done. And it was a theme that kept coming through that event and I was like, wow, I've never thought of it like that.,
Paul Redfern: and, you have to make time for that, that is a good investment of time. I think the model of looking at energy and time management, that's why you can't say yes to everything, or at least I can't because you need to be able to have patterns and moments of deep work, and you absolutely need to have moments of connection and connectivity with community.
it's very much not one or the other. And I think in order to be more effective in what you do, absolutely, you need to foster those relationships, connections, because there's gonna be hard days. Oh my goodness. And so there'll be times where. I might message you, I'll be like, oh, I just need a moment, Laura, can we just chat about what this situation is and can I just get really real with you?
if you don't have those relationships built on some sort of common theme value understanding, then it can be very lonely.
Laura: oh. Extremely lonely. what's next for you?
Paul Redfern: for [00:46:00] me, the focus is just trying to continue this customer growth and, upward cycle for big picture. we have an incredible team and I just want as many people to know that we have an incredible team and incredible proposition we're solving valuable, problems in the healthcare ecosystem.
So yeah, a lot of it is time with customers, team building, and obviously looking after a beautiful seven month old daughter.
Laura: I'm excited to watch that journey unfold. if you had to name an operator in the A NZ or wider APAC ecosystem that more people should know about, who are they and why?
Paul Redfern: I'll give you a few. Kate g Gladbrook, who is the head of Impact and operating principal at Blackbird. if you don't know her, a really incredible human, and such wonderful, diverse experiences as well. Yeah, she is a fantastic person. another interesting lens is there's a woman called Priya Vase, who's the partner of [00:47:00] executive search at the onset across product and technology.
And she's seen, she gets exposure obviously to so many different models, people's behaviors. and also some of our conversations just go from everything from leadership to how do you raise a child and balance the workload. very real. And also, a gentleman called Ben Coley, he's the general manager for Stone and Chalk South Australia.
he's been in the startup ecosystem for a great many years and recently took up that role. and equally as per the other two, one of the best people I know.
Laura: Awesome. That's a great group. we are going to jump into a quickfire round, so just say what comes to mind. first product you ever shipped.
Paul Redfern: first product over shipped, which probably comes to mind is I remember shipping a Domino's Pizza television commercial. Arguably a product. But I think the other product that comes to mind is in the Bank of Queensland, their personal loans product.
Laura: Oh, great.
Paul Redfern: I know with, as your [00:48:00] listeners now know, very limited banking experience.
So that was nerve wracking.
Laura: Best tech stack for operators.
Paul Redfern: We talked about it, but it's gotta start with notion and Figma and Chat, GBT always at the hip pockets ready to go.
Laura: A framework,
book or tool. You swear by.
Paul Redfern: Okay. book. I reread way too many times. The Obstacle is the Way, so clearly not getting the message by Ryan Holiday and often gif that one too. I just think it's a really easy, approachable short read on stoicism. I like the idea where I use the flipping when I feel like I'm in a dark zone.
I use, I get to instead of I have to. I use it if I find that I'm using that language. Terrible. And I think the tool that you should definitely, I swear by is build your own personal care event board. Go to notion, build it.
Laura: One life hack for being a new dad.
Paul Redfern: for any of your parents or new parents out there and your dad's out there, be kind to yourself and remember that everyone's experience and journey is just [00:49:00] different. So you can read all the books, you can see all the social media posts, but just be kind to yourself.
Laura: Coolest AI use case you've seen or use recently.
Paul Redfern: I'm gonna not so humbly brag about this, but honestly, what we've been able to build at Big Picture Medical, we are using Gen I that accelerates the mapping between proprietary data formats and open data standards. It just has huge upside potential. We're speaking with some of the largest and most impactful tech and care organizations at the moment, so it is really impressive what, some of the team have been able to specifically build around this.
Laura: A leader you admire.
Paul Redfern: two come to mind. I mentioned Tom, one of our co-founders who took a pivoting career from finance to healthcare to being a founder. just incredible levels of grit, resilience, and intelligence rolled into one. And, you've actually had this guest on your pod already, but Jackie Beck, I think she is one of the most wonderful living [00:50:00] examples of the phrase we contain multitudes.
I,
Laura: Oh, she's so great. She's like a sunflower in human form. You just smile every time you see her.
Paul Redfern: yeah. And I, we had this coffee recently and she was, I love this idea that she's oh, I'm a clinician. I'm a CPO. I'm a athlete like her. The ability for her to not get too tethered in identity. and I always, yeah, she's a sunflower. I always feel better speaking with her and I always learn something when I speak with her.
Laura: Oh, go Jackie.
one piece of advice you'd give to a future COO stepping into their first C-Suite role. I.
Paul Redfern: Take the chance
to rethink your own operating system and patterns. I think, going back to what we were talking about earlier. I wish I'd known this, but it's a real level up moment. So think about what other life upgrades you need to have around you in order to be successful. So by extension, the team and make sure the team is [00:51:00] set up for success.
It's a real shift, and I didn't probably appreciate that at the time. a minor example that comes to mind is. lots of meetings, lots of different conversations. So my, apple Watch, step count is, reminds me that I haven't moved at all. So I bought a walking treadmill.
Amazing.
bought a walking, I bought a walking treadmill.
it's currently at, it's currently at home. I'm in the office. make sure you are looking after you make sure you've got the right things in place so you can operate at your highest license.
Laura: as we have alluded to a lot in this conversation, building and scaling companies is hard. I love to end the podcast with almost like a mental wellness tip and trick. what's one mindset or daily practice that helps you stay grounded and the chaos of scaling?
Paul Redfern: Can I give you three?
Laura: Please do.
Paul Redfern: The first one is to look for some type of movement, ideally outside every single day. for [00:52:00] me, foundationally that has been such a critical, it's been movement has been part of my life since I was a kid. it continues to be a critical part of my life to feel my body, to feel present. So I would say that's a huge way, that's a huge tip journal.
I'm sure a lot of people do this, but build the journaling habit. There's a great little YouTube clip. I'll try and find it to share it with you and so you can share it with the listeners. I think it was with, I think it actually was with Ryan Holiday, but he was talking about how professional athletes watch video playback footage even though they're extremely elite.
So they're looking always to reflect and look at ways to improve at the way they've behaved in a game. And so I really love that. I so journal. And I think the third one, which is really simple, is use your do not disturb mode on your devices. They're there, use them. They're incredibly powerful in terms of system design.
So you can just focus on one task and not be distracted. and when we were having Elkey, pretty much I was on do not disturb [00:53:00] mode a hundred percent of the time, apart from my wife. and then we were just so present with our growing child. So yeah, definitely they're the three, I would say
Laura: Paul, that is all we've got time for today, so thank you so much. Where can people connect with
you after this?
Paul Redfern: probably just on LinkedIn. That'd be the best place to find me. Thank you so much for having me on. This has been, a incredible conversation. really loved it.