Human on the Inside with Cinc’s Peter Campbell
Human on the Inside. We’re big believers in the power of human skills. But don’t just take our word for it - the evidence for excellence powered by human (‘soft’) skills is everywhere! In this engaging, ever-enlightening series, we speak with industry leaders, innovators and game-changers to learn a little about their personal career journeys, and how human-led strategies, philosophies and cultures are proving a force for good in their working worlds …
Maxme: Welcome Peter, and thanks for stepping into the #SuccessIsHuman Spotlight!
You’re the Founder of Cinc. Consulting, a boutique consultancy specialising in operations, process optimisation, and business performance improvement.
In 1 sentence - what does this role entail?
Peter Campbell: Building a great team, doing high-value work for clients, creating innovative solutions and growing a vibrant business. We’re still a small company so there’s not much bureaucracy, emails or meetings to distract us - we can actually get stuff done!
M: While Cinc is a fresh 12 months young, your impressive career is of course far more mature! Before establishing Cinc, you were a Partner with Ernst & Young (EY) for over eight years, leading the Supply Chain and Operations practice for Oceania and serving as the global lead for Intelligent Operations.
With 20+ years in lean manufacturing and process improvement to your name, you’ve worked across diverse industries including banking, insurance, manufacturing, telecommunications, and logistics.
Your CV also features leadership roles at KPMG, ANZ, and Volgren Australia, where you drove large-scale transformation projects. A PhD holder in lean engineering from The Australian National University (ANU), you’ve contributed to industry development as a former President of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (Australia), and past Chair of ANU’s Research School of Engineering Industry Advisory Board.
How does all this work speak to your personal purpose and what drives you as an individual?
PC: I think the decisions I made on where I went in my career fundamentally reflects a personal drive to make things better and have impact.
When I did my PhD with the Australian National University and Ford, we were based in the Geelong Stamping Plant. We had to pick a thesis topic that was both an original academic problem, and something that would create value for Ford. Some of my peers picked finite element modelling of deep-draw presses, or developing better press lubricants. These were all interesting ‘point’ problems, but the whole plant was full of inventory and didn’t seem to flow very well, and my natural inclination was to look at how to optimise the broader system.
This led me down the path of lean manufacturing (and re-writing my thesis after I went to Japan and realising they had a better way of approaching the problem).
Then, as you develop in your career, you move from doing the work yourself to working through teams, or as consultant - through client teams. The transfer of knowledge, capability and the passion for improvement to others has been a really rewarding process. I get a real kick out of the successes of others, and witnessing those people then teaching other people … and hopefully that leads to something bigger.
M: Tell us a little about your personal education pathway/s - what led you to where you are now? How closely do your formal qualifications match your current career?
PC: I love learning - 14 years at university speaks to that. Engineering and Lean are still very central to what I do today.
I also did an Honours Degree in Economics. My theory was I did very little work and got great marks, so I thought maybe the world was telling me that economics was my thing. It turned out the extra economics year got very theoretical and I hated it (the silver-lining was it made me double-down on engineering). However, it did teach me very useful logic and ways to think about systems.
To do well in economics you don’t rote learn; you understand the models and how changing one thing impacts many others. And then to get 10/10 on an exam question, there’s usually some background dynamics that aren’t captured by the model, and you need to be able to articulate those as well.
That type of thinking serves you very well in dealing with complex real world systems and problems. It’s easy to find 100 problems - the skill is in identifying the 1-3 problems you need to fix to have the biggest impact on performance.
M: If you could share one piece of career advice to your 21 year old self it would be ...
PC: I don’t really have any major career regrets, so probably best not to meddle with younger me.
However, I do see lots of young people now choosing money and/or ‘work life balance’ (not working as hard), over opportunities to learn and develop.
When you’re young, you don’t have kids, or a mortgage - that’s your time to build your skills and experience. Find what you’re passionate about, get a great boss you can learn from, become an expert in your chosen field and build a career you love.
M: Maximising the potential of individuals, communities and businesses through the power of human skills is the reason Maxme exists. Can you tell us a little about the role and / or value of human skills in the process engineering/optimisation space right now?
PC: Respect for people is central to everything we do.
Go into any business and the leaders see their world through their current mental model and make decisions they think will lead to the best outcomes. To get better, we have to teach them a new way of looking at the system, so they make different decisions that show them they lead to better outcomes. Then we hold their hand through a few periods of stress (so they don’t revert to old patterns). After a few successful cycles you have sustainable change, because they know the new decisions lead to better outcomes. There are process principles that underpin those changes, but fundamentally you’re changing the way people think and the decisions they make, so human skills are vital.
One of the key changes we make in almost every project, is to metrics and measurement (to expose problems) and to the cadence of monitoring (so that it’s more ‘real time’). Our philosophy is to design the system of work so it’s ‘easy to see struggle, and easy to succeed’.
‘Easy to see struggle’ means we deliberately highlight issues. ‘Easy to succeed’ means providing timely assistance to people who are struggling, and giving them systems and processes that, when followed, allow them to achieve target outcomes with a consistent level of effort. This shift must be supported by strong human skills, or it gets perceived as micro management.
M: Self Awareness sets the critical foundation for all Maxme learning experiences. With that said … what’s your strongest trait / personal super power?
PC: I love to think deeply about complex problems and come up with elegant, practical solutions. Sometimes it’s 4am in the morning when I’m trying to sleep, sometimes it’s walking the dog, but I’m good at staying with the problem until the pathway to a solution becomes clear.
M: And on the flip side, what’s one human / ‘soft’ skill you’ve had to really work on improving over the course of your career?
PC: Just one?
One of the most powerful things I’ve learned is that a sophisticated thinker is always seeking to change their point of view to something better. Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson (schoolofthinking.org) does a great keynote on this. Typically, when two people have different points of view, they debate, and the ‘winner’ is the one who proves that their point of view is best. Each person puts their energy into defending their Current View of the Situation (CVS), and there are only two possible outcomes.
A more sophisticated thinker puts their energy into understanding why the other person holds a different point of view, with the goal of shifting their CVS to something even better - a Better View of the Situation (BVS - ideally 10x better). So next time you’re arguing with somebody about climate change, or net zero, try and find out why the other person has a different CVS and see if you can get to a BVS (CVS2BVS). The goal is to change (improve) your point of view. It’s liberating - most people feel changing their point of view is admitting failure and now that’s your goal.
M: If you could share one piece of career advice with recent Uni graduates or candidates keen to explore the world of process engineering & optimisation, what would it be?
PC: Make sure you truly understand why things work (don’t just blindly copy solutions) and get mentored by someone who really knows their stuff. I was lucky to work for Bosch very early on in my career and we got to go to the best plants in the world (e.g. across Japan and Mexico). We were also mentored by an ex-Toyota guy (Tony McNaughton) and spent hundreds (if not thousands) of hours learning through practical application.
It’s the old ‘10,000 hours to master a skill’ rule (hopefully I’m getting close by now).
M: You’ve been granted approval to add one University graduate to your team, but have 100 applicants, all with outstanding academic results. How do you find your perfect candidate - what are you looking for?
PC: How they present themselves is important - they need to be polite and personable and that’s non-negotiable.
Then I have a little ‘beer coaster’ problem I give them. It’s based on people queuing for service, and builds up from trivial to simple, to quite complicated over three steps. Everyone gets the first two right, but only a handful of people (out of thousands) get the last one.
I’m not too fussed about whether they reach the right answer - it’s more about the process they go through, their logic, and (probably most importantly), if they enjoy the challenge.
M: In the words of John Dewey, “education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.”
What’s next on your #learning agenda?
PC: There are two things that are brand new for me right now.
One is running my own business, paying people out of my own pocket, and winning work without a big brand behind me. That’s all great fun and progressing well, but the learning curve is steep.
The second is we have been building some software to improve business performance - think productivity, skill development and improved delivery timeframes for our customers. The product is awesome, but I’ve never sold software before. Whilst it really streamlines our consulting delivery (deeper insights, faster), it’ll be interesting to see if we’re able to decouple the software from the consulting side of the business!
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