Corporate partnership
Intellectual rigour combined with the spirit of adventure for commercial outcomes.
Friday evening 5th August 2022. 1805hrs standing on Observatory Hill looking north. On a brisk Friday night in winter, everyone is rushing to get back to their houses to sit inside, this view and this experience are available to everyone.
Most of the iconic photos of Sydney are taken in the opposite direction during daylight hours. Standing on the city's western side at night is a metaphor for how I work. I take better photos on my phone than many amateur photographers with a DSLR camera simply because I’m willing to go and look where few people do. I don’t have unique access or knowledge. I am curious and committed to keep looking long after most people give up.
The composition comes not from theory but practise. I see hundreds of amazing scenes each year, and take many thousands of photos, of which a small percentage capture the moment. To quote James Clear: "You need a lot of shots on goal. Not everything will work, but some of it will. Keep shooting."
I'm a PhD-qualified statistician, adventurer and athlete.
I speak, consult and write about the opportunities that come from pursuing The Hard Way; choosing to create situations of difficulty, backing ourselves through preparation and experience. I blend analytical insight with adventuring into the unknown to create programs and experiences unlike anyone else.
Over the last decade as an independent statistical consultant I've saved my clients millions of dollars through my research approach. I've applied these skills to do what no one thinks is possible in adventure cycling. More people have been to space than ridden the Birdsville Track in summer. More people have died in the desert than in space.
In 2023 I am expanding my offering from how to answer hard questions using analytical insight to why to pursue difficulty when we live in a world of ease and convenience. The use of analytical insight is best applied to difficult problems. The great opportunity is for your staff to want to pursue these professionally and personally.
The work that matters is often difficult, fraught with failure and easy to put off. Working together, we can instil the characteristics many of us desire but don't know how to find. This is not an esoteric exercise in personal development. This is aimed at making businesses more profitable by creating sustainable competitive advantages through the people you have.
This is not adventure-tainment; this is intellectual rigour applied to seemingly impossible endeavour. Instead of meaningless feel-good quotes by people who have never worked in a corporate environment, this approach is hypothesis-driven scientific inquiry. Whilst I can't offer to bring in Olympic medals, I can work with any part of the business to improve profitability by using data. I've taught statistics at a Business School for a decade; I know how your analytical staff are trained (and what they missed out on).
My offer is simple: you can purchase my new corporate packages at a discounted rate by backing me for my 2023-4 trips. In addition to working with me, your organisation has the unique opportunity to see how the project evolves and develops; an insider's view.
Each organisation will be able to choose its own engagement package of speaking, training and/or consulting. I recommend my keynote for either your executive leadership team, a department or the entire organisation. I have never delivered less than a 10x return on my statistical consulting for any client.
This still is from a series of keynotes I gave to CEOs around Australia as a part of a roadshow. There were over 100 CEOs in the room for the filming of the keynote in Sydney.
The keynote - CEO Decision Making with Data showed the audience that using a framework I developed based on a decade of teaching statistics at university and realising that (despite winning teaching awards) few if any, students understood the key concepts. The framework is that there are only three types of questions that can be answered with data:
Count - questions about probability (e.g. what is the probability of at least 50% success?)
Compare - questions about differences (e.g. does method A result in more sales than method B?)
Contrast - questions about relationships (e.g. if we increase our training budget, do we see an increase in productivity?)
The challenge for organisations is to form a question into one of these three categories. My most popular (and successful) workshop is framing questions and having staff collect data and answer them in a few days.
My speakership is backed by intellectual rigour without peer, as exemplified in this supporting website.
Interested in working together?
Send me an email (andrew@andrewpratley.com). Let’s find a time to speak.
Want to know more?
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This is a summary of the outcomes from the keynote. I work with every client to tailor the key message you want to hear.
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This is a complete recording from a keynote to over 100 CEOs in Sydney and was the fifth and final keynote in a two-week roadshow in Australia in 2017.
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Here are a few ideas I see as consistent and defining who I am.
The Australian desert is a harsh and unforgiving place in summer. Few people travel through here in air-conditioned 4WDs for obvious reasons. I choose to ride my bike to seek out the most challenging situations and embrace them head-on, to experience the world beyond the convenient and comfortable lives we all lead. The fact that I'm the only one out there doing the ride is a minor footnote.
More people have gone to space than have ridden the Birdsville Track on a bike in the middle of summer. A more appropriate comparison is probably with people that have walked on the moon. We're both in harsh, unforgiving environments where the ability to make intelligent, informed decisions directly impacts success and indeed survival.
Keynote - The Hard Way
Wednesday afternoon 26th January 2022. 1545hrs I am heading east on Mossgiel Road. I see signs announcing to take a selfie with Santa. Just after I take this photo, I'll see one of the handful of cars out on the road today. The person driving will not be the first to offer me a beer which I decline. The people in the car fill up my water bottles with ice. By the time I finish the first bottle (in about 30 minutes), I can't tell the other bottle that was filled with ice. Every bottle on my bike is hot and not pleasant to drink. I will end the day 20km west of Hillston (day 09 Strava link) physically and mentally exhausted, having ridden 395km very hard kilometres in three days. I am only a third of the way across NSW and still have 700km to get home.
My story is not that of a traditional adventurer. I'm driven by ideas, not by suffering. How do we pursue excellence in the face of difficulty?
When people reflect on their lives, the experiences that define us and become memorable are the moments when we've struggled through difficulty. The Hard Way is the belief in creating situations of difficulty and backing ourselves through preparation and experience. By choosing to do this, we're creating the defining memories of our lives. On our terms, in our way.
These ideas can be applied both personally and professionally. The keynote's value is linking adventure's approach and methodology to corporate work, not furthering the adventure-tainment market. Teams are a defining feature of corporate work. It's all but impossible not to rely on other people to contribute, which can be an endless source of frustration. I arguably learnt more about the value of a team through my pursuit of adventure than I did through my PhD, which involved predicting team performance. It's only when you decide to do something by yourself, do you understand the value of a team. Every time I relied on someone else to help me out, the value of a team became readily apparent. My perspective on working with others changed when I relied on them to do work that ensured my success.
In this keynote, I'll provide new approaches to the systemic problems in the modern workplace. How to engage employees in meaningful work; how to improve retention beyond bonuses; and how organisations can create competitive advantages by applying the concept of The Hard Way.
Outcomes from the keynote:
Your staff can be part of the 1% Club, embracing the rewards of spending 1% of your time each year doing something well beyond what you usually do.
Understanding that undertaking difficult work and backing yourself to do so opens up new and interesting experiences.
Appreciating that difficult work is not about suffering and burnout, rather, the key is finding joy.
This is a keynote for senior executives to create the space and culture for The Hard Way and for staff to become excited about the possibilities of professional development outside the usual narrow constraints of training courses, conferences and further education.
Riding a bike through the desert, alone, in summer, might not be a broadly appealing prospect. Few if any people I speak with have had a comparable pinnacle to their year in work or indeed in broader life. Fewer still seek these experiences out, I believe on the basis that what initially appears 'too hard' is easily dismissed. I look long enough to wonder where this might lead. Defining experiences are those that change our lives in ways that, when we look back, we wonder who we were before. We'd be lucky to have a handful in our life.
Sunday morning 23rd January 2022, 1000hrs on Arumpo Road heading out to Mungo National Park. Today is my 'rest day' (Strava link) I'll ride 120km in six hours to have a look at the road conditions and look for water. Most people that ride out from Mildura turn around when the tar ends. A small number make it to Mungo National Park, and few, if any continue east, as I was to find out. I will not find water, but I'll run into someone who invites me to drop in at their place. That visit will be a defining moment in the trip and, arguably, my life. You can read about my experience on day 07 (Strava link).
In this keynote I show organisations how to become data driven and not data distracted.
I applied the framework I developed of 'three types of questions' (probability, differences and relationships) to the five most common categories of questions business leaders want to know about (sales, leadership, strategy, pricing and products) to produce 15 questions you could use to improve the business through data.
The framework I use to think about developing hypotheses is:
Count - questions about probability (e.g. what is the probability of at least 50% success?)
Compare - questions about differences (e.g. does method A result in more sales than method B?)
Contrast - questions about relationships (e.g. if we increase our training budget, do we see an increase in productivity?)
If you're unsure where to start, every organisation can benefit from a question of differences.
To understand the variety of questions about differences the following table shows the most common types of questions and the statistical tests that should be used.
Example keynote - CEO Decision Making with Data
I believe we're far more capable than we think. My journey over the past few years is testament to the power of combining an analytical mind with The Hard Way philosophy.
In January 2022, after almost two years of lockdowns, I set out on my first multi-day bikepacking trip, riding over 2,000km in from Melbourne to Sydney via Mungo National Park in 15 days. The route I chose took me on some of Australia’s roughest roads, solo and unsupported at the hottest time of the year. I saw nothing out of the ordinary with my choice of trip or timing despite the feedback of others; the goal was not to create unfortunate headlines, but rather to experience the full range of conditions and emotions that only come from doing what no one else is willing to do.
Since this experience, and in planning upcoming bikepacking trips, I am struck by the question of why this undertaking was so utterly incomprehensible to so many. People understand the interest, but want to do it as a series of shorter, easier days.
Riding a bike through the desert, alone, in summer, might not be a broadly appealing prospect. Few, if any, people I speak with have had a comparable pinnacle to their year in work or, indeed, broader life. Fewer still seek these experiences out, I believe, because what initially appears 'too hard' is easily dismissed. I look long enough to wonder where this might lead. Defining experiences change our lives in ways that, when we look back, we wonder who we were before. We'd be lucky to have a handful in our life.
Over the past decade, as an independent consulting statistician, my work with companies has often involved trying to answer the 'too hard' questions. Many organisations see the difficulty in data analytics the same way people see the difficulty in my rides. They want the quick and easy version, the answers that ultimately don't mean much and result in little, if any, change. The companies I work with solve problems they didn't think were possible. We can do this not because of machine learning and artificial intelligence but because I understand statistics from first principles.
Both statistical consulting and adventuring are based on robust and reliable models rather than intuition or guesswork. The challenge of adventuring is looking far enough into the distance to see where you want to be and know the path to get there, backing yourself to overcome the problems you'll encounter. This is the same approach to statistical consulting that doesn't rely on software and technology; I can see the path to the outcome and am confident we'll solve problems as they arise. In short, I can find water in the Australian outback because I can solve difficult statistical problems in organisations.
Consistent across my rides of any length is the great joy I experience and share with the people I meet. I've (illegally) camped in people’s yards and been invited back when I meet them the next morning. I've knocked on more doors to ask for water than many charity workers and sometimes been so side-tracked with the conversation I've had to cut my ride short to catch the last train home. I've met people out when riding and visited them months later when I'm in the area. I've sat on a porch and cried when they spoke about their husband dying from cancer, riding away with tears streaming down my face. I've had guys out pig hunting in regional NSW at dawn stop when they see me on the side of the road and drive back to their house to get me a bottle of water. I’ve shared high fives with dirt bike riders out on gravel roads, and fielded photo requests from complete strangers when I've been out in torrential rain wearing ski goggles.
My corporate work mirrors this diversity and joy. The companies and people I've most enjoyed working with are those that start on their own journey of self-discovery through looking long enough at hard problems to wonder where this might lead.
Over a decade of teaching statistics at a tertiary level, I focused on the 'why' of statistical problems rather than the complex equations behind them, inviting students on a journey of discovery and understanding. It's easy to teach statistics from equations and proofs, it's much harder to teach from models and ideas. Rather than deriving satisfaction from students’ ability to perform in exams, I sought to render the subject interesting and relevant to their broader lives, often resulting in my being the highest-rated lecturer in multi-stream classes.
Some might see the bike and my work with data as inherently solitary pursuits. I see them as a way to engage with people I’d never meet otherwise, for us to share something together, be that a moment, the same intellectual space or even a common goal. Ultimately, I hope we both take something away from the experience that we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.
About me
Wednesday morning 26th January 2022. 1100hrs I am on Claire-Mossgiel Road, which does not seem to exist on most maps. I was told I would see no one out here, and just a few millimetres of rain would be enough for me to be stuck and unable to move for days. I may be the only person to ride this road on a bike this year, possibly this decade. I wonder about all the experiences I've missed out on because I didn't turn up, wasn't prepared, and didn't back myself.
There is no I could have had to prepare for making the decision that morning to either take the safe and easy option or to cross an unknown road with a storm threatening. I'm not going to teach you how to do this. I will show you the steps you need to take to get to this point. Ultimately you'll decide if you're ready. Chances are, you never will be. A year ago, I couldn't have imagined I'd be here at this moment. Now I can't think of anywhere more fitting.