Dean Curtis - Learning from sports

In this episode, YS Chi speaks to Dean Curtis about his unconventional professional journey which has seen him skip university, start a career in finance, move into professional soccer coaching at major UK clubs including Tottenham Hotspur, and then onto risk and compliance.

Today, he’s leading two growing businesses that provide data and analytics. YS asks Dean about how these different paths have served each other and how his insights into sports, elite team performance and psychological safety informs his business decisions and leadership skills. Together, they discuss “co-opetiton”, the combination of competition and collaboration in the age of Covid, insights into how analytics are helping the airline, travel and petrochemical industries make better decisions, and our responsibility to support their transition towards environmental sustainability. 

Dean Curtis is group managing director of ICIS and Cirium which respectively provide data and analytics solutions to the petrochemical, and airline and travel industries.

This podcast is brought to you by RELX.

Transcript

YS Chi: 0:00

The Unique Contributions podcast is brought to you by RELX. Find out more about us by visiting RELX.com.

Dean Curtis: 0:11

And that's really important. You know your passion, particularly in the environment that we're in now, where it has been pretty tough for most people, you have to believe in what you're doing.

YS Chi: 0:41

Hello, and welcome to Unique Contributions, a RELX podcast where we bring you closer to some of the most interesting people from around our business working on industry shaping issues that matter. We explore how they and we collectively as a firm, create positive impact on society through our knowledge, resources and skills. This is what we call our unique contributions. My guest today is Dean Curtis Group Managing Director of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, and CEO of both ICIS and Cirium, which respectively provide data and analytic solutions to the petrochemical and airline industries. Dean's career is a fascinating journey. He's moved from finance to professional football, or as Americans call it soccer coach at Tottenham, and a couple of other major league clubs in UK. And then went on went into risk and compliance. And now he's leading two growing businesses that provide data and analytics. I'll be asking Dean, what can sports and the psychology of sport teach business? What can data and technology together with effective relationships do to support industries, especially those that are on a path to digital transformation in the middle of global pandemic? Dean, thank you for joining the podcast. It's great to have you here today. You're based in the UK, how have you been holding up these days, especially given you case current second lockdown?

Dean Curtis: 2:08

Hi YS, and it's a pleasure to be here and and discuss with you. I'm pretty similar to most people, I would say around the world. I mean, I often use the phrase in the business, I'm not sure that we're all in the same boat, we're all in the same storm in different boats, and everyone's had their unique journeys, and mine has been up and down, you know, similar to so most people around the world. And similar to yourself, I obviously travel a lot. And this period of time has meant that I've had no international travel for a number of months, which I try and take the positives from in terms of time of reflection and to decide what's really important. And I've also had to change my own personal habits around my own personal performance in the form of exercise, diet, hydration, and kind of the content I consume and how I consume it based on the fact that I'm obviously sat remotely the same as many of us are or have been so I've had some good times and, you know, being in a good place. And then there's been other times and challenges where workload has got on top. But overall, I'm really, really well given the circumstances. Within within the business itself, I guess, you know, we had three priorities in this order. The first was to care for the staff and their well being and their families. The second obviously was our customers and ensuring we were there for our customers and, and the third is ensuring the businesses are ready for the future when things begin to positively change so we're able to capitalise on that within our organisations and largely speaking so far, that's gone very well.

YS Chi: 3:57

Yeah, I know that you really like communicating with all constituents in your business life. And I'm sure you do with your friends and family too. What is the best method you have found to communicate most effectively at this time?

Dean Curtis: 4:15

Oh, that's very good. I'm using obviously video not just in in the form of Teams and Zoom and other things, but video messages for internal and external communication, much more than I ever did before. And to be honest with you, that's quite an effective way of doing things. I think that that's hugely important. And I also think that in this period over communication has been important as has proactive communication and I try and encourage the staff to be much more intentional and proactive with their communication. It's not like in an office where you can see someone's not in a good place or having a bad day. And kind of receive a pull, from your colleagues, you have to really kind of be positive and proactive and go and ask for help and have a high degree of courage and curiosity. And that's what we've been encouraging of the staff to ensure that we remain connected together. And so over communication largely by video, like everybody else, I have had Teams or Zoom fatigue, because there's a lot more of those in the day, and I actually find it harder I have to be honest, whilst the the flexibility in working is always valuable to everybody, I think that only a certain part of communication is what you say, and trying to judge, sometimes a room full of people or a virtual room full of people by a two foot box around their head can be slightly more tiring than actually being in a meeting room where it comes naturally. But we're doing well, I'm pleased to say,

YS Chi: 5:56

Yeah, thank you for your leadership. I, by the way, enjoy all of your postings on social media too. And I think that's another way to amplify your voice. In times like this.

Dean Curtis: 6:09

Thank you, fortunately, we we've been both of our businesses ICIS and Cirium, we have had our commercial teams go through digital selling training for want of a better word where were we communicate digitally with our customers, and LinkedIn is a is a big part of that and other forms of social media. And we began that actually, before the pandemic, largely speaking, because how relationships are built have changed. And there is a high element of digital engagement to relationships similar to yourself when someone comes to meet you in the good old days in your offices, they would have already formed an opinion of you based on what they see online. And it's important that we individually and collectively put that forward in a positive way, and begin the relationships that historically we would have built in person from that NLP and pacing and sizing someone up and in the digital world. So we were kind of almost ready there. Let's say I wouldn't say we were ready for this, because I don't think anybody was.

YS Chi: 7:17

As we say in golf. Better lucky than good sometimes.

Dean Curtis: 7:22

Absolutely. Yeah.

YS Chi: 7:24

Well, let's just turn a little bit to your fascinating personal journey, personal and professional journey, because it is about, skipping around in ways that is not conventional. Right. So tell us a little bit about this journey of just deciding to skip university education, and going into workforce and then finding something else and then returning and going back and forth. It's very fascinating story.

Dean Curtis: 7:52

Yeah, I don't believe that journey was planned. And, you know, some people still say, I don't know what I want to do when I grow up. And I played a lot of football or soccer at school, and was okay at it. And as I was taking my GCSEs, I was having a number of problems with injuries, and it became apparent that my future career wouldn't be in football. And, as a result of that, I was doing my A Levels and was in the process of applying for university and somebody I knew from football actually was having a successful career in the city. And I happened to write a few letters and I received one of three A Level leavers apprenticeships, essentially at Rothschilds. And for two years, I had the pleasure of going around Rothschilds and working in all of the areas of their business, which was an absolute privilege given particularly in the UK and globally that the impact of the financial services sector on our world and so by the time I was 20 years old, I had a very good understanding better than most people that work in a particular department for a number of years of a financial services business. And so that was a brilliant foundation. I then moved into private client stock broking and subsequently worked at HSBC investment management and Investec, but in between that, weirdly, my father was a football coach and when I finished playing I stayed a bit away from the game because it you know, I was kind of disappointed as a young lad like lots of young lads and and ladies dream of being a professional sports person. And that wasn't going to happen, but I happen to be with him one day and they were a coach short, so I jumped in and it was being filmed. And they said, oh, you've got to take your exams and I started to take all of my football coaching exams and when I was on my UEFA course, there was a somebody there from a from the Premier League club, Tottenham Hotspur, and they said, "why don't you come to the club?". And so that's kind of how the transition back to football happened. And which I'm very, very grateful for. And then that's a very turbulent world if people think business at the moment is turbulent, and sometimes professional football is even more so in that in business, you get a period of time and quarters or whatever to try and resolve problems in football, it can be games for games is two weeks, and the average tenure of a premier league manager and his team is I think, less than two years. So as I was kind of maturing, I suddenly realised that that wasn't going to be the most stable career if I was going to have a family and I moved back into banking with Investec the South African bank. And then rather weirdly, which is how I ended up here was, whilst I was at Investec, it was not long after 911. And risk and compliance had played a significant part in my previous roles in financial services as regulation become more prevalent. And I got headhunted to go and work for a tech startup down in Putney in London. And they wanted someone connected in all of the banks to be able to assist them in selling their sanctions and anti money laundering and anti terrorist financing products. At the time, which the market there was fairly mature, obviously. And it was a response by the industry after 911. And that went well. And I moved to a couple of other different information providers before arriving at RELX in 2014, which is where I joined risk solutions business to assist in the early stages of their international expansion from the United States.

YS Chi: 11:58

Wow. All these chance happenings, but actually looking back at it, I'm not sure it was all chance. There was a reason for all these things to happen. At a time when young people are busy collecting brands in their resumes. I guess you really did not think about planning those out?

Dean Curtis: 12:20

No. And all of them have served me well for where I am now. Right?

YS Chi: 12:26

Tell me a little more about how those different paths have served each other.

Dean Curtis: 12:31

Yeah, so within sport, and I take a lot of my learnings from sport into the business world, probably more so than I do in business, it's my personal belief currently. And I don't think this will always be the case, I hope that elite sport does performance far better than the business world in a number of different ways. And the first one there is around performance, and, the definition of performance. And what I mean by that is business can often be infatuated with results. And what you learn in sport is that being focused on the actual result, I need to win a gold medal I need to win this game I need to do this is pretty unhelpful. And the thing that helps you get there are the performance elements to get to the outcome. And I think that's true in a career where I have ever made decisions on outcomes and outcomes could be I want this title, this number of people this salary, they've always been bad decisions. And so what I try and do in my career is focus on the performance elements and the things that make me a better individual. And that hopefully opens up the choices that come along, for me to be able to progress as I want to progress.

YS Chi: 13:53

And it has served you well so far.

Dean Curtis: 13:56

So far. I hope so. Yeah. And I hope I continue to do so.

YS Chi: 14:01

The unique contributions podcast is brought to you by RELX. Find out more about us by visiting RELX.com. Let's move into your roles at RELX. You're serving industries that have been really heavily impacted by the pandemic, both the aviation and air travel industry in particular. Can you talk to us about how these industries have coped and what you and our company have done to help them along the way?

Dean Curtis: 14:34

Yeah, sure. Clearly, it's been a difficult time for everybody, some more so than others, even from an industry perspective. But I would begin by saying that you try and look at the long term opportunity in all of this right. And I think that that's really, really important. And there is a piece in the famous business book Good to Great around the Stockdale paradox Which comes from Admiral James Stockdale. And in it basically there was a quote that said, You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose. But a kind of discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be, is critical. And so that's kind of how we've gone about it, right, that longer term vision and what we feel the market and the opportunity, you know, provides in the longer term, and history shows as well, right, that all of these kinds of crises accelerate change in our lives, and also drives a greater distance between commercial success and failure. So I would begin by saying, internally, and to a large degree in our customers, our businesses have excellent teams with strong long term visions that we stay focused on in highly opportune markets, but with a with a deep purpose. And that served us well, we're also fortunate enough to solve some hugely significant problems for some of the largest organisations on the planet. And I think it's fair to say that both aviation and the chemical and energy industries have been in need of a greater digital acceleration for a long time. And both were suffering from pressured margins in their business models. And this period of time has accelerated some of that change. And I'll give an example. In aviation specifically, I mean, it's acceptable to think that aviation is very advanced there. And it does have some phenomenal data sets. But many of these are in silos in legacy disparate systems. And that limits their effectiveness for the use of digital transformation. And, Cirium, our aviation business is a data and analytics company that is enabling that digital transformation to help shape the future of travel. So, you know, we're able to do that by kind of freeing those silos. And what we see from our customers at the moment is, is just the need for more timely information to make some pretty critical decisions. So it begins with the customer. And I have a saying in this environment, that is customers will remember how we made them feel for a long, long time. And largely speaking, our customers have hugely appreciated the way we've managed this period and got closer to them and try to support them with the information they need. We even had airlines CEOs join calls and expected to thank our team for the way they've gone about that. And I think it's it's that deep customer understanding and those strong relationships that provide the foundation for us to know how to continue to invest to help them solve their problems of tomorrow.

YS Chi: 17:57

So just going back to what you said earlier about this infatuation on results versus focusing on performance. In times like this, how do you create that culture, that emphasises the performance when the pressure is on the results?

Dean Curtis: 18:16

So fortunately and and I say fortunately, and from my own personal perspective, you know, one of the best things that I found when I came to RELX Group is that we take a long term view. And performance is exactly that. It doesn't mean that the short term doesn't matter. It absolutely does. And ultimately, as a business leader, I'm judged on results. But by that my infatuation with the result, as I said before, is is not helpful. So a longer term view helps you create a better culture for the longer term. And one of the things that I've seen throughout my career that the very best teams in business in sport anywhere, have an ingredient that is so so important. And that ingredient is psychological safety. And it's a culture where people feel safe to say what they feel without fear of being judged, to be able to raise issues. And anybody in elite teams knows that every single elite team they've been in has that particular ingredient. The other part of psychological safety is it drives a level of diversity, which creates in itself innovation, people from different backgrounds, and experiences that bring them to the table. And to widen a view in the business world particularly becomes becomes hugely important. So for me, one of the key cultural elements is psychological safety within the team. But it starts with, and I mentioned this earlier too a common vision and purpose as an organisation, you know, our staff individually and collectively absolutely need to align in terms of what we're here to do as an organisation. And, that's really important, you know, your passion, particularly in the environment that we're in now, where it has been pretty tough for most people, you have to believe in what you're doing.

YS Chi: 20:27

Right? When the water level is rising, it doesn't seem to be a zero sum game. But in tough times, like pandemic today, it seems like someone's gain has to be someone's loss, which is not necessarily true at all. And yet, the perception is that way. And I think your emphasis on this psychological safety, and more importantly, competition versus collaboration, even within the industry seems very important. So specifically on airline industry and travel, do you think that there is a sense of collaboration that is trumping the previous modus operandi, which was competition?

Dean Curtis: 21:06

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd phrase it as, as Co-Opetition, right. And from that regard, and collaboration around the industry purpose and working together, to be able to solve and find the best possible ways to create the industry of the future is really, really important. And largely speaking, we're seeing airlines do that faster now, obviously, you know, it's the biggest crisis the industry has ever faced, and they are coming together very well, and that also, in terms of how they use the data that they have, so, you know, we help with that data from over 2000 different sources from all corners of the aviation industry. And some of that data is beginning to change and customers and, the airline industry itself know they need to do that to create the industry of the future. So they're working together to do things like create a need for a kind of touchless and informed travel experience. And a key thing is better ways of forecasting traveller demand. That's really important. The industry is looking at things now like what flight routes have been searched and not booked or sentiment, and that could be in places like social media, but people may be speaking about a holiday or destinations that have no quarantine rules. And all of this now is providing more dynamic intelligence to the industry. And so that airlines are able to plan, I mean, over 40% of bookings now are being made no more than three days ahead of the trip. Prior to the pandemic, nearly half of all tickets purchased were more than 20 days ahead of travel

YS Chi: 23:04

Wow what a change in profile!

Dean Curtis: 23:06

You can see the change in dynamic there, which is pretty significant.

YS Chi: 23:09

Wow. So how do you see the airline and travel industry recovering, as we find some way to gather people back in physical contacts? And where does Cirium play a role?

Dean Curtis: 23:29

Yeah, so we've started to see some markets that have green shoots of recovery in the industry. And that typically at the moment markets with high volumes of domestic flights like China in the United States, but at Cirium we don't estimate a full return to 2019 levels until until 2024. Airline travel and recovery and immunity for safe travel, which is clearly highly dependent on a vaccine to build that confidence again. And what you see here, the Pfizer announcement on the ninth of November around the experimental vaccine was the response to airlines in the market with huge. Delta gained as much as 17%, IAG rally 15%. But even with a vaccine, it's going to take longer to see the impact of it globally and the return of international travel to previous levels. So, you know, as I mentioned before, that more dynamic data is really really important to airlines, airports and aviation finances. And Cirium is the business that is able to bring that together and provide that timely, immediate and complete data set that ensures that they are able to make the right decision and what that means then is that they can look at their Flight schedules and aircraft utilisation bookings and best manage their business. And that was that was important even at the start of the pandemic. I mean, we were tracking over 25,000 flight cancellations every day at its peak. And the airlines were having quickly to decide which aircraft to fly, where to fly them. And now those longer term decisions have suddenly become daily or weekly decisions for the for the airlines.

YS Chi: 25:27

Right. Now, on the other side and the petrochemical and energy side, I've always thought that the service that we provided at ICIS was much more timely, right, very time sensitive, whereas I thought of Cirium data as being more of the long term data. Certainly, you've accelerated that on the airline side, how's that affected on the ICIS side then it was already very timely stuff.

Dean Curtis: 25:55

Yeah, I mean, it's got more timely, you know, some of the petrochemicals were reasonably illiquid, compared to some financial services markets, and both businesses are in real time really now, and I mean, the chemicals industry or the energy industry was an interesting one, because at the same time as COVID, we also had the Saudi-Russian oil dispute. And that created a double Black Swan moment in the industry, where for a while, we had negative oil prices, which clearly affected the whole of the industry. And so, you know, timeliness, there is really, really important. And similar to the aviation industry, the ability to effectively use data is so important. What I mean by that is, information now connects every human and all of the goods on the planet. And that's challenged most industries to rethink its business model. It's changed the way economies work and how wealth is created. And I guess the way that chemical and energy companies do that is fundamental. So before the pandemic 32% of firms in the S&P 500 invested more in their balance sheet on intangible assets, such as data, R&D and brands, then they did tangible assets. So what again, this has accelerated the industry in the chemical industry, because mastering the intangible even in a business driven by the most tangible assets in oil in the world is becoming increasingly significant. So the real trend is people wanted transparency of trading in that market. So everybody wanted a price. And what we've seen over the last few years is that's now moving more into analysis and predicting the future because by very definition, if you wanted to know what the price was yesterday, you should have some interest in what it's going to be in 18 months and some of our energy and power forecasts go forward 50 years. And, and that's being able to provide more content and analysis to predict the future so that they can adjust their strategies accordingly, during periods like this.

YS Chi: 28:17

We've got a couple of things that I really want to cover before we run out of time. One of them is something that RELX cares deeply about, which is environment, as a leader in in the industries, in many ways about various SDG components, you know, environment is clearly one of them. Both of these industries that you work in travel and petrochemical energy, are directly implicated in this right. Tell me how you see, as the CEO of these two businesses, how do you see the impact on our commitment to environmental future? Because they are conflicting in many ways?

Dean Curtis: 28:58

They are yes. And and I'm pleased, you know, RELX, as a company, obviously, we've signed up to the sustainable recovery and various other things to ensure that we are not tactical about how we plan for the future. And I think that that's hugely important, you know, the petrochemical industry has a pretty tarnished image. And that has been in the past around clearly, carbon, but the chemicals in particular around the stigma of plastics on the environment, right. And the demand for plastics weirdly, has increased further by decarbonisation, because you're looking at lighter forms of transport as plastic is you know, and, and also plastic is a more sustainable material, often compared to carbon intensive product produced materials such glass and metals. You know, most people would think I'm drinking out of a plastic bottle that's worse than a glass bottle, but that's not necessarily the case. So the industry has had work to do before this on what I would consider to be its persona and and how the world thinks about it. And the businesses in the industry are working really, really hard to solve those problems. And we're involved in working in Europe with the Alliance to End Plastic Waste with the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry in Japan. And we've we've produced the first recycled plastic materials benchmarks and deliver products around where people can source those materials, to ensure that that industry, or that part of the industry can accelerate as we look to a better future. And it's, it's similar, you know, in airlines, and, you know, the aviation industry is also placing sustainability at the front and centre. And these businesses need to because that the younger generation care more about purpose than profit quite often, and consumers are becoming increasingly aware of those impacts, and that's changing travellers behaviours accordingly.

YS Chi: 31:12

Indeed, in this time of transition, in how we think about the environment, as we have seen, also in the result of last week's US election, I think it becomes even more important that companies like RELX, and the divisions ICIS and Cirium, have to play a bigger role and bigger voice, to help lead the industry in the right direction.

Dean Curtis: 31:37

Absolutely, it's a once in three or four generation opportunity to achieve a step change in that and, and I think everybody on the planet today clearly has a responsibility in that.

YS Chi: 31:48

Exactly. I cannot leave this conversation with you without touching on something that is particularly meaningful to you, as you and I sit down from time to time to just catch up with each other. And that is about culture, which you mentioned before, and people. You are someone who really focuses on putting together the so called an all star team, but also one that really focuses on people aligning, right? Where have you learned those lessons on your skin, and that not by books, but you know, by really living through it, I'd like to hear if there was a point in your life where that really came and hit you.

Dean Curtis: 32:35

Oh, I don't think that there was necessarily a defining moment, YS but I couldn't agree more on culture. And what I mean by that is if I take the very definition of personal performance, first of all, when we think of our favourite sports person or whatever, you think of the defining moment, the big hit the kick the moment of glory, crossing the finish line. And that's what everybody knows that particular individual or team for, and but quite often, it's not that has achieved it. That's the outcome again. The result, it's the performance before that it's the the days on the on the rainy training field where that begins to happen. And there hasn't been a defining moment. But what I do believe is that a culture defines every business and I've been in businesses with great talent, but they haven't been a world class team. You know, we have world class teams here who take a long term approach and focus on doing some pretty amazing things for our world in the right way. And when you have that deep sense of purpose, and you're very, very clear of what you stand for, and your reason for being that creates a level of motivation, that is unparalleled. And then when you get to that point, and people are connected by that vision and driven by the passion of the purpose, if as a leader, you can then provide a high degree of clarity about the how their role contributes to the outcome. Each team member contributes to the outcome but also interacts with each other. And then most importantly, the customer value it provides, then you begin to get something really really special. And, RELX is a great example of that, right? If you look at our transition as a business from a publisher to a data and analytics, business and a provider of decision tools, it's one that everybody in the business can be proud of, in my opinion. You know, Cirium emerged from Flight International, a magazine set up in 1909 and ICIS from oil and paint and drug reporter in 1871. And those businesses have continued to provide the insight their respective industries need to continue to be relevant and competitive for many decades, and we as an organisation have to change with that. And so we've done that, with that culture, we've been able to attract new talent, and to be part of the of the family, and particularly in areas like technology where our team has grown tenfold and analytics and other areas. And we've also got a large majority of our team that due to the individuals themselves and the culture that the organisation has, they've travelled that journey and developed their own personal performance over that period of time at all. So, you know, for me, it's that is the fundamental differentiator.

YS Chi: 35:49

I agree with you on that. I hope that our customers and our business partners do see Cirium and ICIS as a leading role model when it comes to the these cultural issues - a culture that, as you said, respects psychological safety, right? Where there is no intended or unintended silent or invisible exclusion, where inclusion is natural. I want to also touch on something light. When this is, you know, somewhat I say there's no point in time when it's over. But when we are able to reassemble in physical proximity, what do you look forward to the most?

Dean Curtis: 36:41

It's exactly that it's, you know I think I've filmed something like 11 videos this morning, I try and save them up for for one particular day. And being in a room with people, I even introverts, I've spoken to self confessed introverts during this, and they've struggled with the lack of interaction and personal connection, being in a room with people is something that I hope everybody will value more after this. And rightly so. So you know, being together with teams with customers, and truly looking at people in the whites of their eyes is something that I think is, is hugely important. And it's like, you know, it's a, it's a basic human need, I would say, and for me, probably more so than others. So I'm really looking forward to that. And I think we've got a good opportunity YS in terms of it would be a real shame that we've gone through a lot of pain across the globe, over the last year. And it would be a real shame if we didn't take the lessons from that to make ourselves better. And so to some degree, whilst we long for the past, it would be a real shame in some areas to go back to the way things used to be given the learnings that we've had. And I hope that humankind comes out of it more positively as it has done over generations. And we can define a new, better future with things like sustainability and other things front and centre to that.

YS Chi: 38:25

Exactly. And as a golf diehard, I would have to use a golf analogy again to say that sometimes when we don't play the game of golf for a while, some of our worst habits do disappear. And we have a clean start to a better swing, right. So I hope that we do shed some of our bad habits when we are back to being able to be, you know, together. Dean, thank you so much for spending time with me today. And I hope that the audience will enjoy listening to you. Thank you also, for our listeners for tuning in. Don't forget to hit subscribe on your podcast app to get new episodes as soon as they're released. Tune in next week for another episode of our unique contribution series. We'll be joined by Rhett Alden, who is the Chief Technology Officer for Health at Elsevier. In that episode, we'll look at healthcare and the ongoing work to create better clinical solution tools, a critical topic in the age of COVID for sure. Thank you again, stay well and stay healthy. And the audience thanks for listening.