Change happens

Change Happens Podcast

Conversations on authentic leadership

Hosted by
Jenelle McMaster

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In business you're either driving change or on the receiving end of someone else’s.

In this podcast series Jenelle McMaster digs deep into the mindset of leaders and individuals who harness the transformative power of change to unleash the new, the next and the unthinkable.

Through story and conversation we'll uncover unique ideas and insights to help you become the type of leader who makes sure change happens.

Jenelle McMaster

EY Oceania Deputy CEO & Markets Leader

Season 5

Robert Pradolin
Founding Board Member | Housing All Australians

Warning
This podcast discusses issues related to mental health and suicide which may be distressing for some listeners. If you need support, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Jenelle McMaster
Sometimes change can happen when a problem and a solution sit uncomfortably side-by-side, prevented from intersecting by a mountain of societal obstacles between them.

News Headlines
“Homeless people are being forced to set up camp at an alarming rate”

“Homeless numbers are up 23% in a year”
“… and while they’re out in the cold many buildings lie empty”

Jenelle McMaster
This was impetus for Robert Pradolin to take his 40 years of experience in the property industry to create an organisation that repurposed empty buildings to deliver on a fundamental human right – shelter for all.

Robert Pradolin
The thing that stuck out in my mind, in New York on one night there’s 78,000 people homeless. We do not want to become America.

Jenelle McMaster
This is a story about shining a light on a crisis that has become normalised. It’s about compassionate capitalism. It’s about giving back and reshaping the national narrative. It’s about educating, creating respectful unrest and galvanising collective collaboration. It’s about stories, it’s about heart and it’s most certainly about making Change Happen.

Hi, Rob, thank you for joining me on this episode of Change Happens.

Robert Pradolin
Thanks, Janelle.

Jenelle McMaster
Rob, you’ve had a long history in the property and housing space and all of that has led up, I believe, to where you are now as the founder of Housing All Australians. You’ve said it yourself, that it’s all felt very serendipitous, but I want to go back to the beginning. Tell me, what inspired your passion for housing and property?

Robert Pradolin
Well ever since I was three, when I built my first cubby house I assumed that all people knew what they wanted to do ever since they were small, whether it’s the cubby house or whether we build something underneath our parents homes and we, you know, stole some bricks from the place next door that was getting built and put the concrete in and did all that, and felt like it’s our little hideaway. I’ve always been involved with things as far as I can remember.

Jenelle McMaster
Amazing! You have had a very impressive 18-year tenure at Frasers Property, which was formerly known as Australand, and I imagine you’d learned many things about building things, as you’ve said, and about the industry during your time there. What are some of the biggest lessons that you learned from those experiences?

Robert Pradolin
Well look, I was quite fortunate to cover a whole gamut of different types, whether it’s a subdivision or medium density town houses or 60-storey apartment buildings. And during Frasers and subsequent to that I was also involved in Salvation Army housing, so social housing, disability housing through Summer Housing which is now called Liverty Housing. So, I’ve come across a fair bit of the housing continuum which gives me a little bit of an insight as to how the system works, and I’ve just found it’s just a slow evolution of learning. You know, I’m always curious and I almost want to see what things we can do better and when I was sort of selling, you know, housing, land and apartments to people who can actually afford to buy them, like most Australians I assumed our governments would look after our vulnerable people. And I worked out that they weren’t - and I’m in the industry. And I said, “I wonder how many other people don’t know what I didn’t know?” And that’s really started a little bit of the journey that’s culminated in Housing All Australians and, by the way, it’s not just me, it’s everyone around the country now. We’re in every State and Territory except the Northern Territory. We’re businesspeople wanting to help Australia through its housing crisis. So, it’s not the individual, it’s the collective that’s important.

Jenelle McMaster
Love that question, how many others don’t know what I didn’t know. Rob, very often we can just assume oh, maybe it’s just me that didn’t that, but I think there’s real power in thinking well, if I didn’t know it, there’s a good chance that others don’t as well. That’s a really good take away. You’ve sort of morphed into sort of the learnings and what sort of questions came up for you, tell me about the story of how you came to be the founder of Housing All Australians. It does seem quite extraordinary. I’m interested in hearing more about how that idea came about.

Robert Pradolin
Yeah, look, founder is a generic word that people always use and it always comes from ideas and then people get around you. But one of the pivotal moments was when I was having a cup of coffee with my daughter in Degraves Street in Melbourne, opposite Flinders Street Station. And a few days earlier there was a news story, where there was a story about the grand hall being empty for 10 years. And during that cup of coffee with my daughter a homeless person came up and was getting a bit of coins just to find a bed for that night. So, we gave him a few coins and after that I said to my daughter, you know, this grand hall’s been empty for 10 years and look what’s sleeping below – homeless people. I wonder how many buildings in Melbourne are empty? And subsequent to that conversation I sort of spoke to the City of Melbourne and Launch Housing and we started to look around for empty office buildings just to provide some shelter for people during the winter months. And we found a few – we were going through a few processes and then one day I got a phone call from the City of Melbourne and they said the ABC has heard about the idea and they like it, they want to run a story on it. I said, yeah but we haven’t found a building yet. So, like I always used to do, I always used to return the journalist’s call even though I may have had no comment, and I said, look, we haven’t found a building yet. He said Rob, don’t worry, because at the same time the ABC headquarters in South Bank was undergoing renovation, so he said let’s pretend that’s one of the empty buildings. So, we shot the story, it was on the air, next day I was on Neil Mitchell for talk back for half an hour. And then I started getting calls from everybody. From wealthy families all the way through to a homeless guy that found my on LinkedIn and said “I’m one of the great unwashed, thank you for trying”, and everything in between. And they said roughly the same thing – we know we’ve got a problem, just tell us what you want us to do.

And that started a whole set of ripple effects until someone that I knew was on a board of not-for-profit called CaSPA Care that had just built a new aged care facility in South Melbourne and the old one with 52 rooms were sitting vacant. And he said, Rob, is that something that you can use for your model? So cutting a long story short, we refurbished 32 rooms out of the 52 room facility with Metricon and their staff and subcontractors and we gave it to the YWCA for vulnerable women. Over 4 years those 32 rooms helped over 130 women stabilise their lives for no capital cost to government.

Jenelle McMaster
Wow!

Robert Pradolin
And now Hansen Yuncken are going back to do the last 20 rooms. They’ve started on site, pro-bono. We’ve got Mirvac doing it in St Kilda. We’ve got another charity called Bridge It – it’s all about young people under 25. We’ve got Henley Homes doing an old convent in Sandringham that’s owned by Mercy Health that they don’t need for 5 to 10 years. We’ve just finished 31 empty apartments by the Better Living Group with all the subcontractors and trades and material supplies – 31 apartments were sitting empty. Over $7 to $800,000 dollars’ worth of works, we spent $50 grand cash. And people were living it in now. So, they’re all occupied. I think there’s thousands of buildings across Australia sitting empty during a housing crisis and they don’t need to be built, because we’ve got material problems across the whole industry. So, next 5 years market will not build many housing because it’s not economical viable, yet we’ve got a housing crisis with our population increase, which I support the population but we have to house people. Homelessness is going to go through the roof. Why don’t we sweat our existing infrastructure better? And that’s why I think some of this idea is quite powerful. And already we’ve got two in New South Wales we’re looking at. We’re doing stuff with Uniting Church in Perth. We’re doing stuff in Tasmania. This is something the whole private sector organisations can get behind – every business has a role to play in helping our society through this housing crisis, because to be quite frank, it’s too big for government to solve on their own.

Jenelle McMaster
There is so much in that and the power of I guess the impetus of that story was the juxtaposition of an empty building with a homeless person there. It makes me sort of think about how many other juxtapositions are around us. You know, we have hungry people with food waste side by side, so I think there’s real power in starting to ask ourselves questions about how do we sweat assets in a better way to create distribution of assets to people who are in need.
You touched on, you know, this groundswell of people who sort of came forward to you and said, you know, we know we’ve got a problem, tell me what we can do. There’s so many problems around us, right? One of the things that I see is there are so many causes, there are so many issues, we often feel a bit overwhelmed with how to respond and where we respond. What do you think it was about this that made people gravitate toward you in a sea of so many things going on? What do you think you’ve learned about captivating the interest and the motivation of people to help?

Robert Pradolin
Look I think we have got so many issues going on in this society now that we’re seeing probably sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed. What I probably go back to is every person understands subconsciously that you need your fundamental human needs to be met. And that’s food and that’s shelter. And in fact we should start – because, again, it’s so confusing for our politicians. You know, where do you focus on? You know, where’s the political self-interest? But let’s get back to basics and say, look, without fundamental needs being met our citizens cannot function and become productive citizens towards society. So shelter to me is a fundamental human need that if we don’t supply we have unintended human consequences that manifest itself in physical and family violence, mental health issues, it flows on into justice areas, policing, long term welfare dependency. We’ve done economic studies or commissioned economic studies through SGS Economics that have shown the strong business case behind housing all Australians, rich or poor, it’s greater than any infrastructure. It’s got a cost benefit ratio on average in Australia to two to one. Most infrastructure projects don’t actually get that. So we’re saying forget calling it housing, this is economic infrastructure for a future prosperous Australia. And as business we’ve all got an obligation to lay the foundations for future generations, and that is what Housing All Australians is trying to do.

Jenelle McMaster
Amazing! Rob, you were the Executive Producer for the Australian documentary “Under Cover” that highlighted a problem which, I have to admit to your question of how many people don’t know this, I didn’t know that women over the age of 50 are the fastest growing cohort experiencing homelessness in the developed world. Staggeringly for me, I do find this statement 405,000 Australia women over 50 are at risk of homelessness today. In prepping for this interview, I did watch Under Cover, and I have to say I was profoundly affected by it. It was incredibly powerful, poignant, confronting – particularly the hidden nature of it. These women live in their cars. They stay on friends’ couches, they are on sofas or they’re in short-term accommodation. Can you tell me about that project and how that came to be?

Robert Pradolin
Well, all credit to Sue Thomson, the Director, and Adam Farrington-Williams is the Producer, because we, again serendipitously, came across each other pre-COVID. So, some of it was shot during COVID. You know, as a man when I discovered that fact that I didn’t know, I was actually ashamed. And Australia, we’re one of the richest countries, we keep on hearing that sort of saying, yet we’ve allowed women to sleep in cars and it’s growing horrendously. And we still do screenings around the country and men that didn’t know that, after watching the film, say I didn’t know that, what can I do to help you? So, it’s a bit of a galvanising call for everyone to actually watch Under Cover, the full version, because unless you don’t know or learn about what you didn’t know you can’t actually say how can you help. And it was really confronting – I still tear up when I watch that back.

Jenelle McMaster
Me too. It’s how I was, yep.

Robert Pradolin
And I’ve watched it so many times but to allow it to continue, well it’s our choice. And when I say our choice, I’m talking about the business and the community generally. It’s our choice whether we want to accept that or maybe – and this is where I sort of started – maybe there’s a few people out there that have similar views to me. Well, I’ve got to tell you, I’m overwhelmed by the business community and, in fact I’ve started to use the term “compassionate capitalism” because, you know, people that are in business are assumed to be all focussed on profit and greed and that is not the case. We are being badly branded as we’re all greedy bastards and there are at least 95% actually really care and the 5% in any segment is always the outlier, yet we’ve allowed it to tarnish the whole industry. So, I think we’ve still got hope in this country to try and turn it around but it needs a collective effort by business to help educate the Australian public about what they don’t know and through that, we create respectful unrest that generates political self-interest, and that’s the way the system works.

Jenelle McMaster
It’s a really powerful set of learnings because you, I guess, in understanding the architecture of the system and how to work the various nodes in the system – where power is, where money meets power meets influence, I guess that’s where you do make change happen.

Robert Pradolin
Well, look, profit and purpose are not mutually exclusive and when you align them they are extremely powerful.

Jenelle McMaster
Certainly, when I watched the documentary it reinforced, as these things often do, the power of storytelling. Tell me about some of the people you’ve me on this journey, maybe some of the homeless people. Are there any stories or encounters that spring to mind for you that have stuck with you throughout the years?

Robert Pradolin
Yeah, look, there’s one that sticks out in particular and, in fact, just thinking about it still makes me tear up a bit, is that in the lake House, which is the one I sort of mentioned to, when we were filming it there, there were a couple of women there and we had a bit of chat to them and one of them said “Can I give you a hug?”. And so she did, and she didn’t want to let go. So, we gave women hope. And I keep on remembering about the fact that she didn’t want to let go. And we’ve got homes for free. Now, I’m a very emotional person, you can probably tell by the sort of tone.

Jenelle McMaster
No, make me tear up.

Robert Pradolin
But, yeah, you know, sometimes there’s just that little gesture that makes a big difference to someone’s life. Even a smile can sometimes make a difference. And even stories of others, I’ll share one more story which, again, was quite impactful to the individual. We do the screenings of this around local municipalities and we had one in the Macedon Ranges in the Kyneton Town Hall and this time about I asked this local real estate agent to help us lease a house that a local councillor decided to lease it to vulnerable people, but I said can you do it for free because, you know, no one’s making anything out of this – and he did! And he did. So, I approached him during the screening – before the screening – and said, “Why did you do that?” And he said, “Rob, a couple of years ago this lady came in desperate, desperate for a house and we couldn’t help her, and two weeks later I read that she poured petrol on herself and burned herself.”

Jenelle McMaster
Oh, God.

Robert Pradolin
Now, that stuck in his mind. That is what he wants to do, how he wants to contribute and there’s a number of these stories around there that, if we start to share them, we can then do something about it. It sometimes feels overwhelming, but I’ve got to say collectively we can solve this problem. And it’s only through collective collaboration and true collaboration that we as a country can stop this happening for future generations. And, in fact, one of the things we’re doing, we’ve got this international speaker coming in September, called Gregg Colburn, and he’s just done a research about America’s housing system, and while that’s all different, the thing that stuck out in my mind, in New York on one night there’s 78,000 people homeless. We do not want to become America. And that is what drives us.

Jenelle McMaster
Wow, thank you for sharing that. You know, it is one thing to have a brilliant idea and, you know, have a whole lot of energy and enthusiasm around the idea. It’s another thing to execute against that idea and it’s clear that your passion and your resolve for the cause has been the driving factor behind Housing All Australians success, but I can imagine it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. I can imagine that you’ve come up against hurdles or obstacle after obstacle. Can you tell me about some of those obstacles that you’ve encountered and how you’ve gone about addressing them?

Robert Pradolin
And before I sort of do that it is a collective. We’ve got a national board and our Chair, Louise Rutten, is fantastic. We all dedicate a lot of time, so it’s just not about me.

Jenelle McMaster
I understand.

Robert Pradolin
Because some of the things, I’ve got to say, if I’m really honest, some days I do wake up and say “What the hell have we created here?” because you do have your bias. Sometimes you think you’re making progress and sometimes you think you’re beating your head up against a wall. So, persistence is the secret to that. As I said to my kid, you know, curiosity, belief and persistence – persistence is actually the hardest one. So the obstacles are always ones where people say well, you can’t do that. You know, why are you wasting your time for, you’re never going to solve the problem, it’s too big for us to solve. I said well, if it is too big for us to solve, that’s fine, but guess what? I’m not going to die wondering because unless you give it a crack, you’re always going to die wondering “What if?”. And that’s something I think all of the people that are involved with us across the country don’t want to sit back and say “What if?”, let’s give it a crack and see what happens.

Jenelle McMaster
Where does that conviction, or the persistence or that confidence to at least have a crack come from?

Robert Pradolin
That I don’t know because sometimes I feel, and I heard this in some of your past episodes, the “imposter syndrome”.

Jenelle McMaster
Yes.

Robert Pradolin
I do feel well I’ve had that all my life. And sometimes you wonder, you know, why people listen to you because, you know, you’re not that much smarter than anyone else to be quite frank with you. But then, you know, the thing that really kicks me on is when someone does reach out – I get a lot of people reaching out saying can I catch up and have a chat. And then you listen to how some of the things that you and the organisations able to do the – allow them to come forward and say “Can I help you?”. And that inspires you because that means that there is hope out there. People do care. And, collectively, we can make an effort. So that sort of picks me up from some of those down moments that we all have and it’s – I’d be a liar to say that I’ve never had a down moment on this journey because that’s just not the human being, or the human psyche. But more often than not it’s the persistence because you believe in something and ultimately, you know, when you’ve had a reasonable career and you’re, you know, comfortable, you want to try and give back. And that’s the position I think a lot of us are actually in.

Jenelle McMaster
Rob, this year’s theme for Homelessness Week is “Homelessness action now”. What does that mean to you?

Robert Pradolin
Well that really what we’re doing, you know? We’ve all got a role to play in these things and we don’t need to let it happen. It’s incrementally happening every single day. It’s being normalised therefore we expect it. But when you look at the long term impacts that we’re leaving for our grandchildren then we have to take a decision to stop that and I reference back the 78,000 people in New York. And once upon a time New York never had any homeless. It was allowed to be normalised, and that’s the problem. We have to draw the line, it’s like enough.

Jenelle McMaster
You know, it’s so interesting when I hear you say we’ve allowed it to become normalised. And I guess statistically if you look at it, that’s absolutely a true statement. That has been what’s happened and yet I found that very jarring to hear, because it was like well, definitely not. I don’t take it as expected, I don’t – but obviously that is what’s happening. The thing that struck me as I was looking at this and watching the documentary is the fact that it can happen on a dime, you lose your job, it’s been through COVID, you’re in a domestic violence situation, a whole lot of different reasons, the tenuous nature of the situation. You can’t even put it in a bucket, nor should you by the way, it says oh, there’s a certain profile of person that would happen to. The pervasive nature of this, the likelihood and possibility and, in some cases, probability that it will happen was really profoundly eye-opening for me. I don’t know whether there’s the normalisation element that is happening but then there’s the registration of that in your mind to really make that hit home.

Robert Pradolin
There’s a lot of sliding door moments.

Jenelle McMaster
Yeah!

Robert Pradolin
There’s people out there that are working that are one or two pay checks away from homelessness. And this is why, yet again, we want to bring the American chap over because it’s all about research, because he’s dispelling some of the myths that homelessness it’s a result of drugs and alcohol. Well, that’s not based on his research. It’s reflective of house prices. So, unless we look at the whole housing continuum and ensure that our citizens have a roof over their head, we’re going to have long term implications that can’t be turned around in 30 seconds like politicians might want to expect it. It’s going to take decades if we start properly with a long-term plan and it must be bipartisan because this is in the interest of all Australians. But the thing that keeps me up at night in some respects, and all of us have, or most of us have kids, is that because the additional cost to future generations is so high and the first economic report, we commissioned established that by 2032 there’s going to be an additional $25 billion per annum in today dollars needed for the unintended consequences. With all the pressures on governments that’s probably going to be too much to add to the ballooning expenditure elsewhere. So, what’s the consequence? Reducing the level of care for those vulnerable people. So, what’s that? Our Australian values are going to get watered down. It’s going to change the future society for our grandchildren in a way that we probably as individuals if we could transport ourselves would feel quite unsafe compared to what we are now. So, in my view, we are heading for a lose-lose scenario, unless we reshape the national narrative with a combined collective support by the community to create this respectful unrest on both sides of politics so that political self-interest is triggered. Because that’s the only way that our system will actually function properly.

Jenelle McMaster
What have you learned about engaging different stakeholders? Understanding self-interest, collective purpose, how you appeal to all those different factions to get people to work together to align to care and to drive outcomes? What’s – what have you learned? I’m thinking about all of us in worlds that don’t operate in the same way that you are, but we all have different experiences with engaging different stakeholders, so I’m wondering what the takeaways are?

Robert Pradolin
I’ve learned that we can’t afford to wait for government. And they are a key stakeholder, there’s no question about that, and we’re always happy to engage with government at State, Federal and especially local level, but we’re not prepared to wait for them because the politics of the way our system works, there’s three and four year windows. If it sits outside of that it’s a bit hard to get them to focus on anything other than getting re-elected. Some of the Ministers have said to me several years ago in a one-to-one meeting that Rob, unless those people vote for it we aren’t going to do much about it. So, recognise the realities of life. Don’t wait around and always bang on their doors because they don’t know what they don’t know either. Make shit happen, which is what our motto is. And guess what? If it suits their self-interest they’ll come along and say, how do we help you? From a democratic perspective, if the voters decide to actually support someone or reject someone based on the polities they need to be fully informed, which is why education is such an important element to it, which takes time. And people say, “How can we help?”. One thing you can do is share the story. Share the story and get other people to understand, get them to watch the documentary, learn and say how do we collectively help. And we had a situation where we finished these 31 apartments and from a company based in Coburg that had all their staff come out to start the demolition – this is the Better Living Group. And as part of that we had a celebratory barbeque. And we had the local pastor of Coburg to come down and supply all the food. He said, look, I don’t think it’ll make any difference at all, but I’m helping in my small way to say thank you for those that did. Well, we’ve all got a role, and his role was to actually celebrate and thank people in his way. So, I’ve got faith in the Australian public, they are very, very generous in times of crisis. Every single business I think has a role to play, whether it’s using their networks, using their products, using their staff and services. Someone that can charge $6,000 dollars a day for their services or do it for free, it’s their choice. And we’re saying, come on board and provide for free and let’s see what we can do without government.

Jenelle McMaster
Have you been able to recruit the next generation in the storytelling and the contribution to this at all?

Robert Pradolin
We’ve started to engage. In fact, the YIMBY movement we’re quite close to in sort of sharing our stories, because ultimately they’re the ones that are going to suffer the consequence of the lack of housing and there’s obviously a bit of a tension between what the Yes in my backyards versus the No in my backyards and I’ve been involved in a number of developments that the outcome after we’ve had so much objection and people were – come out and said afterwards oh, if I would have known that it would have looked this good I wouldn’t have objected. People naturally have that negative reaction, which I can totally understand, and our obligation is to try and teach people or show them that it’s not as bad as you think. And then let the reality of density done well, we must increase our densities in our suburbs where the existing infrastructure sits. We can’t keep on expanding the urban growth zones indefinitely. We have to sort of create an acceptable density where we can grow as a population, provide the fundamental human need of shelter as well as the food because ultimately we just want to live a happy life. It’s not that complicated.

Jenelle McMaster
That’s right. And so, is it as simple to say that success for you is every single Australian has somewhere to live? Is that what the nirvana is here?

Robert Pradolin
Success for us is closing down.

Jenelle McMaster
Ah, nicely put. Put yourself out of a job.

Robert Pradolin
Yep.

Jenelle McMaster
Rob, I’m going to wrap it there. I think this has been such a, I don’t know, there’s all sorts of emotions I feel in talking to you to be quite honest. I fell disappear, I feel great hope, I feel inspired to act and in fact when you and I first spoke I did exactly what you said you want people to do is they ask the question how can I help? It’s exactly where I went as well and I hope that people who listen to this do feel exactly that way, they feel a completion to act, if nothing else please anyone listening to this watch Under Cover, it is a powerful evocation of the stories that demonstrate the criticality of this and I imagining the little kid building the cubby house, if he knew then what he knew then what he was going to be building for so many others. You know you’ve been building cubby houses on a much bigger scale for so many people and offering life lines to so many that have needed it. I love the question Rob about how many others don’t know what I didn’t know and opening up the education and understanding that shelter is a fundamental, universal human right, that we all have the right to expect and we all have the ability to help make it happen. And an understanding that making change happen isn’t easy but at the heart of this is curiosity and belief and persistence because there are times that you’ll run into those obstacles, there are times that there are naysayers, there are times when it feels incredibly overwhelming. If you need to use those times to ride off the hope of others or to remind yourself of a story - a hug that someone didn’t want to let go, a smile that keeps you going then so be it, because this is, as you say, a really powerful, conscious, compassionate capitalism and long may you continue to create that respectful unrest that drives the intersection of purpose and profit to effect the kind of enormous and significant and much needed change that we have to have.
Thank you so much Rob.

Robert Pradolin
No, thank you Jenelle. It’s been a pleasure to share some of our thoughts and as you said we can all make a difference. We just have to make the decision to say I want to be a part of it.

Jenelle McMaster
The Change Happens Podcast from EY, a conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

End audio recording

Leisel Jones OAM

Jenelle: Even Olympic gold loses its shine. What happens when everything you set out to achieve, that you worked around the clock for, that consumed your entire being ends up just feeling like a fleeting moment? Sure it’s something that you look back on with pride, but it ultimately gets put away in a box. What then?
Leisel: It sits in a bank safe and I never look at it again. I thought it was going to change everything and it didn’t. Go, oh yeah and move on - next thing.
Jenelle: This is the story of Liesel Jones. An Australian icon, Liesel is regarded as one of the world’s greatest ever female swimmers, winning 7 world championships titles, 9 Olympic medals and 10 Commonwealth Games gold medals.
Audio of commentators at competition: Jones is absolutely blitzing the red line.
Gold - a World Record, Leisel Jones.
Jenelle: Liesel is now a published author, media personality and celebrated radio host. In this interview, Liesel talks about her journey as a young girl in the public eye, winning gold but losing her spark, making her decision to retire, finding her spark again and the lessons she’s learned on identity, purpose, success and what winning really means.
Hi Liesel, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Change Happens.
Leisel: Thank you, I’m really excited.
Jenelle: Yeah me too. Before entering a 12-year career as a professional swimmer, you were a child and swimming was just a fund hobby, a social activity. What motivated you to make that switch from recreation to competition?
Leisel: I think for me it always was about recreation. I loved that social side of things. I really enjoyed swimming with my friends and having my best friends around all the time was probably what kept me in the sport for so long. So that transition from just a child swimmer and doing what I loved into a professional, the transition was just purely based on making Olympic teams. So I didn’t consciously make the step to become a professional swimmer but it just kind of happened naturally.
Jenelle: Nice way for it to happen. You really wouldn’t have understood too much at that point about how the world works. There you were, age 14, as part of the Olympic team, surrounded by well a whole lot of amazing athletes and a whole lot of adults as well. What was that like?
Leisel: It was very difficult because the next person in age to me was actually my roommate and she was 18. So in terms of a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old, that’s a big gap.
It’s a big gap and you don’t really have a lot in common and it was 18 and then it was probably in your 20s. Like we had people like Suzie O’Neill who was at the end of her career, retiring. Haley Lewis – the changeover was really handy because I had so many great role models on that team of people who showed me what the Australian swimming team was all about, and the values that we lived and died by really and we took on the world and at that time we were really dominant in the world and so for them to pass those to me was such a great honour to be a part of that.
Jenelle: Well tell me about some of those role models. Who were they and what were some of the lessons that you learned from them?
Leisel: Suzie O’Neill was definitely one of the most iconic mentors on that team. And not that she had an official role because she had a job to do at the Olympic Games which was to win a gold medal which she did. But she led by example and I think that was the big thing. Someone like Suzie who’s very introverted, really likes to keep to herself, goes about her own business, puts her head down her bum up, and gets the job done. She was a great person to have and to look up to.
Jenelle: I’m holding up your book here. You talk in your book, Body Lengths, about the early experiences of having your very public actions misconstrued. And one of those was being dared by a friend to do the peace sign on camera if you were to win a particular race, which you did. And I think that you did that for a laugh, a bit of a private joke, but it was interpreted as a “V” for Victory as if you were lording your win over others. You talked about learning quickly to censor yourself, to become grey, to talking cliches and sports speak and just say what was expected of you. What do you think now when you look back on that time and that unconscious or perhaps it was conscious adaptation of yourself then?
Leisel: Yeah it makes me really sad to think that I did have to change everything because the innocence was completely lost in everything that I did really because I was still so young and the peace sign was literally a dare. That’s all it was. It was so simple, yet media made it into this big thing and then people read that and so people think and make assumptions about you as a person based off what they read in the paper when it’s actually not true. So I found that really hard to deal with and you just become this really vanilla version of yourself which is very safe. You don’t want to say anything, yeah, and you just tag the motto, you tag the company line which is you know, I’m always happy, I’m always pleased with that race. You can’t be disappointed and that’s just not the truth. We’re very high achieving people and we get really disappointed when we’re .05 of a second off the time we wanted. So don’t be surprised if people have got emotions about that because that’s their life’s work and people are going to be disappointed.
Jenelle: I think that’s a point well made. Like you have to apologise for the very thing that is spurring you – is the win – and then when you don’t having to pretend that that’s not what you were there for.
Leisel: Yeah. It’s so interesting.
Jenelle: That’s incredibly weird, isn’t it?
Leisel: It’s so weird. And that’s an Australian thing too. It’s really not represented around the world like that. The US and
Jenelle: You mean like a tall poppy syndrome here?
Leisel: Yes, very much so. Yeah and the US are the polar opposite to us. They are loud and proud of every achievement. They shout it from the rooftops and very proud of emotion and people having a personality. It’s celebrated most of the time and we have the polar opposite, you know. Even look at like someone like John McEnroe, his massive outbursts playing tennis and he was a hero in America because people were like – yeah, like this is amazing. The spectrum of human emotion is massive and if we just play in the vanilla bit in the middle it’s pretty boring.
Jenelle: And then how did you deal with that pressure of having to, I guess, subdue that part of you or maybe put on a self deprecating kind of tone where perhaps you were incredibly proud of where you got to or incredibly disappointed with where you got to. How did you deal with hiding that part of yourself or changing that part of yourself?
Leisel: I very much got used to it in the end. I didn’t consciously make that change but just over time I just learned to be smaller, smaller and smaller, and not make such big comments or statements or emotions and it just eventually died. I think that vibrancy just went away, just became just a very boring version of myself.
Jenelle: I’m going to come back to this theme because I think it’s incredibly powerful. I’m hoping that we get to a part where we talk about how we revived the colour in you.
Leisel: Yes, yes.
Jenelle: But I want to just stay for the moment on the drive. Like as you say, you know, you were compelled to win. In your book – I’m going to read a couple of sentences from your book that really stuck with me. There’s a really powerful paragraph where you wrote,
“Let me tell you this. I don’t get up at 4.00am every morning and swim 12kms a day just to be there. I don’t do three-hour gym sessions just to be there. I don’t do weights until I want to cry, I don’t eat like a robot and I don’t give up school and my friends and being a normal kid, just to be there. I do it to win and when I don’t win, when I come third in an Olympic final that I’ve the fastest qualifier for, when that happens, it hurts so much I want to die.”
Twelve years on from writing that Leisel, tell me about your views on winning now.
Leisel: Yeah, well it’s probably very different now. That was a lifetime ago and I feel like a very different person now to what I was then. But the drive was real and the desire to win an Olympic gold medal outweighed everything else in my life at that time and I put all my eggs in one basket to win that and as you just mentioned I sacrificed so much. I put everything on the line for that moment and to me at that point in my life a bronze medal was the most disappointing outcome I could have asked for. I was there for gold and I was extremely disappointed and upset with myself and I felt like I let my whole country down and let my coach down, I let everybody down including myself. So to be disappointed is probably going to be expected, yet I was severely criticised for it.
Jenelle: I do wonder whether the expectations that everybody else that you just named then, your coaches, your family, the country, are as high as yours were for yourself.
Leisel: No, definitely not. No way.
Jenelle: It was a loaded question, I’m quite sure.
Leisel: Well the expectation on yourself is far higher than anyone could possibly imagine because we work so hard, we focus on ourselves the entire time. So I expected nothing less than gold.
Jenelle: Ok, so then conversely what happens when you did win gold? How did it feel? Was it what you expected, was it the high as high as what you expected, did you find all purpose and value and meaning when you finally had the gold in your hand.
Leisel: Oh gee, I wish. I wish that was the case. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like anything you think it’s going to feel like. I expected it was going to be roses and glitter and everything was going to be wonderful, and I thought it was going to change everything about my life and unfortunately, surprisingly it doesn’t. So an Olympic gold medal is – it’s a great thing. I’m so glad I achieved it but surprisingly it does not change everything about your life. You just go on the next day and other people have won gold medals and life continues.
Jenelle: And so then what was that realisation like? If you were so, so driven by it then you achieve it multiple times by the way, you achieve it, but it doesn’t bring you the golden and glitter and rainbows and unicorns that you thought it might have, what happens then?
Leisel: It sits in a bank safe and I never look at it again. So it’s funny because that’s where you think yeah everything is going to change but when it doesn’t you think – aww I worked so hard for something that I thought was going to change everything and it didn’t. That’s like life I think. That was a hard lesson to learn. And look I am very appreciative I ever did it. I would hate to leave the sport and have not achieved it, cause I was more than capable of it.
Jenelle: For sure.
Leisel: Yeah, that would be a horrible thing to live with. But in terms of it not feeling like it, I think that happens more often than not. I think a lot of people have a very similar feeling in their everyday life. It’s funny because I’ve – and I put this in my everyday life now. I’m looking at buying a brand new car and I’m really looking forward to it, it’s so beautiful and it has all the lovely things. All the beautiful trimmings and it is – it’s a little bit out of my reach but I really want it. You get that new car and that new car smell disappears after what three or six months or something and then it’s just like every other old car that you get used to and that’s the car that you have and it’s funny that I like refer to it like that because an Olympic gold medal is a very rare thing and it’s a lot of work to put into, but it was a little bit out of my reach. It was very elusive. It was very fancy to have and it was a nice thing, but you get used to it after a while. You just go, oh yeah, and move on, next thing. So it just keeps – the goals just keep moving. And it happens in everyday life. We’re all guilty of it. Loses its shine after a while.
Jenelle: I guess when you were swimming, winning gold was how you measured your success. Now that you’re not in a competitive sport, what do you use as your personal measures of success?
Leisel: Who I am as a person is a big part of that and how I impact others’ lives, is so important to me. That I’m a good friend, or I’m supporting other people, or that people enjoy having me in their lives is just probably one part, because so many people are hugely successful. They’ve won multiple gold medals or – but they’re just an awful person and so for me, yeah, I just – I really want to be just a great person and my friends couldn’t care less about the medals that I have. They’ve got their own medals. I would hate to be coming out of my career with all these gold medals and not one single friend. Yeah being a good person is my aspirations. It’s very simple, but it’s hard to achieve.
Jenelle: It’s interesting that your measures of success now are something so intangible, as you say, when your life as a professional swimmer was incredibly tangible.
Leisel: It’s funny that the things that are tangible get put away and you never look at them again and you work so hard for something that you can hold in your hands and other people get so excited to see yet for me I just – it’s not that I couldn’t care less – I can’t remember the last time I looked at it. So to strive for so long for something that I could hold in my hands that gives me a little bit of joy but probably more satisfaction than anything, but what gives me the greatest joy is sitting with a group of friends that have had dinner, I’ve been laughing the entire time, we’ve been talking about great memories. That leaves a smile on my face for weeks afterwards. So it’s really interesting yeah that you work so hard for things that are just things. We fill our lives with things yet it’s the feeling, it’s the internal that we really should be striving for.
Jenelle: Ah so powerful. So you retired in 2012 after your fourth Olympic Games. You took – I think it was a total of nine Olympic medals at that point in time, three of the were gold. After spending more than half of your life at that time being a professional swimmer, how did you make the decision to retire – I mean you’re still very young – how did you make the decision to retire? What was that process like?
Leisel: The decision to retire was actually probably the easiest part out of all of it because I really hated the sport towards the end. The last 12 months I knew that I was retiring. I counted down the days until I finished. The Australian swim team had changed immensely from what I saw with Suzie O’Neill in 2000 was a completely different team in 2012. A lot of people were a lot younger. I was the Suzie O’Neill of that team and I was struggling with people that didn’t really want to be guided or live by the values of the swim team. Everything had changed. So the decision to retire was actually really easy and what makes it most easy now is I have no desire to go back. So many people say - oh do you wish you could still swim? – No. Oh I thought I was going to get an exclusive comeback interview. – No, definitely not. I’m very happy watching from the sidelines. And not because I hate the team at all but just when I was participating I didn’t want to compete anymore. I’d lost my competitive edge. I had nothing I wanted to achieve. I had done everything I ever wanted and more in my sport and I thought I’ve got a life to live. And also the transition is very tricky so a lot of people are very scared of that transition out of sport and so hold onto it for as long as they possibly can just to delay the transition.
Jenelle: Well let’s talk about that transition cause you have spoken before about feeling lost and grappling with identity and purpose in the years following your retirement and that’s notwithstanding your readiness to retire. So like you said, you’re ready to do this. But you have talked about that transition period of a loss of identity. Can you tell us a bit more about what that was like for you at that point in time.
Leisel: I probably still struggle a little bit with the transition now and I’ve been retired for 12 years. That sense of identity because that was really moulded for me that sense of identity when I was young. I started on the team when I was 14. It was probably given to me that identity of being an elite athlete and performing and doing all of that. Whereas I didn’t really get the chance to discover what I really liked or what my hobbies were. I didn’t have hobbies because I didn’t have time to have hobbies. I had no idea who I was as a person and that’s still a journey I’m on today at 38 years of age that I’m still trying to figure out what I like doing and who I am as a person. So that transition makes it hard when you’re trying to figure those things out. The reality is you still have to make money. So you have to get a job doing something and you don’t know what that is because you have no job experience and I liken it to people that leave the military because we do very military style training. My sense of timing is very to the minute. So if I say I’m going to call someone at 9.00 o’clock I call them at 9 on the dot. And that really rigid military style training is just ingrained in us. And so when we don’t have that, and we have the freedom, we actually don’t know what to do in that freedom space. We have no clue how to fill our time. You just feel very lost most of the time and you feel like you’re blindly just feeling your way through retirement. No one guides you. No one tells you how to do it. It’s hard.
Jenelle: And everything’s prescribed for you. Exactly what you’re eating, when you’re eating, when you’re swimming, how many laps of that you do. So decision making is taken out – away from you.
Leisel: You don’t have to decide anything. Yup it’s all written for you. So – and that was a nice way to live, because like tell me what to do, I’ll do it. I’ll do it to the best of my ability. But no one tells you in life how to do things or what to do and even simple things like feedback. You don’t get feedback in real life whereas swimming
Jenelle: Oh it’s so true.
Leisel: Yeah and people are really scared. So I’ve done an organisational psychology undergraduate degree and learning about feedback and giving people feedback. So people are very happy to receive it and take it but they never want to give it. They don’t want to give any negative feedback, whereas I thrive on that, because that’s my whole life. I need negative feedback to improve. So I’m so used to getting that most of the time. This needs to be better, this is not good enough, improve this, move this, go here, do this. Whereas in real life you don’t get that at all. You can beg for feedback and no one will give it to you because they’re like – oh we don’t want to give you negative feedback. So – I live on that.
Jenelle: Well I would love to hear any advice you have. It’s something that we’re trying to drive much more in our organisation as well, and how do people see that not as a negative thing but as a constructive thing and how do people see who are giving it, see it as a kind, helpful process to deliver feedback as well. I mean any advice for those who are like – yeah how do we drive this – how do we make the conditions safe for people?
Leisel: Yeah, it’s probably there’s a lot of trust involved. So if you do have a mentor or a coach or someone that you work with they probably know you a whole lot better or a manager that understands who you are as a person. Because some people are open to feedback and some people are not. But if you’re someone like me who’s begging for feedback. I really can’t stand, it’s my pet peeve, is the sh*! sandwich. You know when they give you something good then they give you the feedback and then finish off.
Jenelle: You’ll be like just get to it.
Leisel: Please don’t – but just get to it. What can I improve? Like give it to me right between the eyes. I need to know. Don’t waste my time with but you’re doing this so well. Please don’t. Just tell me what I need to improve on. But that’s my style. That’s not everybody’s style. Some people are much more sensitive and need that sh*! sandwich to remind themselves that they are doing things well. So I think it’s individual. But the best thing you can possibly do is know or understand the person you’re giving feedback to. As a manager you should know what their personality styles are like and how they work. And that’s what some of the best coaches I’ve ever worked with and Rowan Taylor is an example of that. Just knew which buttons to push for which people. We would have sometimes 30 people in a squad, he knew individually how each person reacted to feedback or improvements, and he adapted himself to all of those. Yes it’s exhausting and it’s a lot of work but sometimes that’s how you get the most out of people.
Jenelle: You mentioned your undergrad degree in psychology. One of your earliest coaches I know in your career was not a proponent of sports psychology and was not backwards in coming forwards with his views that seeking psych support was for weak people, for losers not winners. You’ve separately talked about your mental health struggles which I expect both of those things might have factored into inspiration for why you studied psychology. What were your biggest takeaways from completing that study and what have you personally taken forward from it?
Leisel: From the study itself I’ve probably learned more from working with sports psychologists and working through my own issues and if I look back in my career, my first coach who said that sports psychologists was for the weak and that only losers were the people that used sports psychologists was probably the most damaging thing that happened throughout my career because that’s when I needed a sports psychologist the most. I was so young, I was only 14 when I made the team. I needed guidance and I needed help more so than ever at that time. I would have been fine when I was at the end of my career because I was older and I had learned But I had no support, absolutely nothing when I was young and that has set me up for failure really, the whole entire time. I could have saved myself so much upheaval in my brain because I could have had some help and a bit of guidance when I needed it most and I think that’s pretty disappointing that someone can have that impact and make that decision for someone who’s so young and so impressionable.
Jenelle: Yup I can relate on that, I actually had a – I used to be psychologist in the military and I used to get back in the day, a long, long time ago, I used to get introduced as everyone folks, the psych’s here, you know what we say, dry your eyes princesses but she’s here to have a talk to you. That’s how I used to get introduced back in the day.
Leisel: Are you kidding?
Jenelle: Nope, nope.
Leisel: Unbelievable.
Jenelle: And I mean we’ve come a long way since then but I can relate to that mentality and then getting introduced like that. Very hard gig to then you know work with people under that kind of intro.
Leisel: That’s an uphill battle then isn’t it, because they’ve already got them offside.
Jenelle: It is. Already making it unsafe for people then to stick around and talk to the psych who’s there to help.
Leisel: It’s so funny because I’m really, obviously really passionate as you are about psychology but that – I find that very fascinating that we have come a long way but yet we’ve still got so far to go in terms of how people can embrace our strength through understanding emotions but whereas people think emotions are weak and whatever. It’s like – uhh no. If you can manage your emotions, you are unstoppable. So yeah. And not just managing but understanding them.
Jenelle: I want to come back to the point that you made earlier which I said I’d come back to. You said early in life you learned to hear the message that you needed to make yourself smaller and vibrancy died within you. How did you make yourself bigger because you did. You have. I can see how many things you do. You’re a well known media personality, you’re a published author, you’re a radio host, you’ve had stints in corporate management roles. How did you revive the vibrancy and make yourself bigger?
Leisel: It took a long time and it took a lot of trust and a lot of work on myself. I’ve done plenty of work with psychologists and coaches and spiritual and all that sort of stuff on myself to discover who I am as a person. And to grow into that person is really hard because it’s kind of like that lobster analogy where, you know, the lobster grows into its shell and once it gets too big for its shell it sheds it and then it grows another exoskeleton on the outside and keeps growing that way and you just slowly keep doing it where you just outgrow your shell and then you build a new shell and then you keep outgrowing and keep moving. It’s probably just a bit like that, you just get a bit more comfortable and get a bit vulnerable and you go – oops I was okay then, I’ll try it again. So keep just expanding in that vulnerability of – oh I’m still okay. And the more you realise that the feedback you get is I’m still okay, you just keep growing.
And so it’s been a long time in trusting the process and being more myself is so much easier than it is anything else. So if you try to be someone else it’s so exhausting, or try to be the perfect person or whatever and I’ve just found life is just so much easier when you just truly are yourself. Don’t feel like you need to apologise for taking up more space or being the biggest, loudest voice in the room. When I started I certainly was extremely shy and I was probably naturally a little bit shy but as I’ve grown I’ve realised, no I actually am – I’m a pretty loud person and I probably actually quietened myself a little bit at the start.
Jenelle: You seem like a really fund, goofball, if I’ve to be honest with you.
Leisel: I am, yeah, totally, and that’s what I’m like and that’s why working at Triple M works for me because I get to be that person every day and I get to be as silly and push the boundaries a little bit and my office is so loose. Sometimes I think this is so me, I love this.
Jenelle: Oh that’s so good. Well Leisel we have the, of course, 2024 Paris Summer Olympics coming up. At EY we’ve got actually four elite athletes potentially going to the Olympics/Paralympics. Give us some background on what they would be feeling and going through in this lead up.
Leisel: Yeah, well as we record this the trials are actually happening. So it’s a lot of nerves because you’ve got to make the team. That’s the be all and end all. You can’t be nervous at the Olympics if you don’t make the team. So it’s very cut throat. Yeah, they’ll be pretty nervous in the lead up to Paris. But it’s exciting, because once you’re on the team you’re like – well I can’t lose here because I’m on the team – and Paris I think would be a wonderful place to have an Olympic Games. I’m just really excited for them.
Jenelle: And what’s your advice to not just the EY athletes going up but all athletes going up for it? What’s your advice to them in this trial period?
Leisel: Yeah I try not to give them too much advice because they’re so competent. They really know but the most important thing is just to have fun because it’s really serious and they put so much pressure on themselves. But it’s those little moments where you have a laugh with your friends in the massage room or the training partners that you travel with or sitting on the bus and it’s those really simple things that they’re the memories I have. And a lot of people always ask me – oh what do you remember about the Sydney Games – walking through the crowds outside some of the events or getting McDonalds cookies which were free, and I was just so excited. It’s those things that you remember. I remember nothing about any of my races – and the friendships. You know, I’ve got great competitors from the US who I’m still friends with or like Croatia, German friends. It’s really cool.
Jenelle: Aww that feels like a nice full circle moment actually when you said you started out doing competitive swimming cause of the friendships sort of almost led you into it. That’s really beautiful. So last question for you. You’ve done and achieved so much in your life, I’m curious to know what’s next for you?
Leisel: I actually have no idea. I have no five
Jenelle: That’s exciting.
Leisel: It is exciting. I have no five year plan. I’m just loving work at the moment and just plodding along. It sounds boring but
Jenelle Aww you’re happily plodding – no, no I can see the joy in your face and I can see a real contentment there which is so fantastic. Such a pleasure to talk to you. I have taken away a lot of things and I know our listeners will all take away a lot. I think if I reflect on the conversation, you talked about from moving away from the achievement of things. In fact there’s a lot of doing in your earlier life. Doing great races and achieving goals, and you’ve moved to much more of a relational measure of success. What kind of person are you, how can you give back to others, what kind of impact can you have on other people, and it’s funny when I think about that shift from doing to being.
When you look back on your life and you’re talking about – it’s the moments where there is the warm down or the getting the cookies at McDonalds. It’s all very relational. So I think there has been that strong thread for you throughout. I think it’s powerful to know when to make a change in your life. That’s a really critical moment and so many of us will hold on to status or things that we think we should be doing, well after we’ve fallen out of love with it or the things that we were drawn to are no longer there for us. So I think there’s real strength in knowing when to make that call.
We talked about the power of giving feedback. Feedback is a gift and so too is the gift of knowing how to deliver it in the way that different people can receive it well in the way it’s intended. We talked about no shame and in fact there’s great strength in seeking mental health support and guidance when we need it. The ability to manage your emotions is a super power and something that we can all benefit from, and it seems to me that, you know, you’ve been known as Lethal Leisel in the past and I would say Lethal Leisel the Lobster – how’s that for a new one for you – constantly outgrowing your shell, and I think that growth seems to keep occurring through more and more exploration of vulnerability and the strength that comes with that and not making yourself smaller and stop apologising for being yourself and stop chasing perfection and rather just think about how you can impact others. So there’s some of the things that I took away from our conversation and really, really enjoyed the chat.
Leisel: Yeah, great, thank you so much.
The Change Happens podcast from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Prof. Dr Megan Davis
Pro Vice-Chancellor Society | UNSW

Jenelle McMaster
Hi, welcome to season five of Change Happens. I'm Jenelle McMaster, and I have the great privilege of speaking with influential and interesting leaders on their experiences of leading change and the lessons that they've learned along the way.
This podcast is called Change Happens, but what about when it doesn’t? Today, I spoke with Professor Megan Davis, a constitutional lawyer known for her work on creating the Uluru Statement from the Heart and for her advocacy work for the Voice Referendum. That's the referendum that didn't get passed. It's the change that didn't happen.
News Headlines
“Australia has said no.”
“…overwhelmingly rejected a Voice to parliament.”
(Prime Minister Albanese) “This moment of disagreement does not define us, and it will not divide us.”
Jenelle McMaster
In this conversation, Megan shares the highs of being the first indigenous Australian to be elected to a UN body, the highs of working on the Uluru Statement, to the deep woes of the no vote. Megan is very clearly a constitutional lawyer, a deep thinker with that kind of lawyer-like detachment that you need when you're taking on this kind of structural reform, except that there are those moments. You know, the ones that really get you, when you're reminded of just how deeply it impacts lives.
Megan Davis
“Aunty, I'm really scared.” That's the first thing she said to me on the referendum day. You didn't go into this thing to make children feel unsafe. We did it to give them a better tomorrow.
Jenelle McMaster
In this episode, Megan takes us through her journey from lawyer to leader and discovering the power of leading not just with the head, but also with the heart.
Well, hi, Megan. Thanks so much for joining us on Change Happens.
Megan Davis
Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here.
Jenelle McMaster
I've heard you described a number of different ways. I've heard you described as shy, stubborn, very measured, an introvert, someone with a great brain, someone who, you know, when they speak people listen. I know that you're the middle of five children and your sister Lucy has described you both jokingly, and I dare say lovingly, as bossy and a nerd who carried the constitution around when you were a kid. Tell me, how would you describe yourself?
Megan Davis
I don't know. I mean, I suppose all of those things. Lucy calls it nerdy, but certainly I see myself as a deep thinker who takes indigenous rights and Australian democracy very seriously. Definitely stubborn, but I carry my opinions lightly, meaning if there's a plausible argument for me to change my position, I'm not an inflexible thinker. So I will change when faced with evidence, but yeah, I mean all of those things and none of those things I guess.
Jenelle McMaster
I understand. What was it about the Constitution that could capture a 12-year-old's mind?
Megan Davis
Although we weren't a very political family, meaning neither of my parents were particularly politically involved, we were definitely schooled in Australian politics and part of that was an understanding that decisions made by Australian politicians have a really acute impact upon indigenous populations. The Constitution is an important part of that because it contains the rules about what the Commonwealth can and can't do. So, if you don't understand that rule book, it's hard to understand how the system works.
Jenelle McMaster
But as a young girl walking around, there must have been something that intuitively or inherently you grasped about that. That I imagine might not have had these kinds of words applied to it, but it ignited something in you back then.
Megan Davis
Probably my mum, who she, she's really brilliant and you know, we laugh about it now, but I believed everything she said. Everything! There's one family story where she used to say to us if you kids drink your Milo or cup of tea with a spoon in it, she’d tell this story about a family in which the mother’s eye popped out and rolled onto the table when the spoon... Anyway, I believed it right until quite late actually, a bit embarrassing on my part. But she has all these kinds of funny myths. She should have authored fairy tales or cautionary tales, but she, I suppose she was really articulate in not just Australian politics, but global politics. I remember being in grade 6, 7, 8 debating reasons for World War One and World War Two over the dinner table. Like she was just a very worldly, intellectual kind of person. But also Dad's family at a very young age, you know you, you start talking about things like Protection Act. You start to realise that lengthy period of racial segregation that our people experienced and you talk about different reserves and missions, Aunty this and Uncle that visiting from this reserve, this mission. At an early age, you're pretty cognisant of the fact that these are laws that are passed to restrict your movement, restrict your freedoms, and maybe it was just that's what I was meant to do, meaning I was attracted to the notion of rules and laws and how they're used to oppress people but can be used to redeem people as well.
Jenelle McMaster
With all those conversations, and I've heard as well you talk about discussions with your family, about giving voice to the voiceless amongst all those conversations. Was there an end game that you and the family sort of talked about what you hoped to achieve or see change?
Megan Davis
Maybe no. You know, she used to talk about speaking up for people who can't speak for themselves. And I'm not diminishing that people have a voice. But it's a metaphor for power and power structures that I think it wasn't just about being Aboriginal, growing up it was about being poor. So that underclass very rarely have advocates who advocate for the rights of the underclass, because people just assume if you're poor, you're poor because your family didn't work hard enough. Well, when in fact we know that there's all sorts of reasons why people are poor or impoverished. If we look at Aboriginal people, you had generations of people that worked for 60, 70 years, 80 years for some people, as servants and their wages that they earned were stolen from them by the State. In the early ‘80s, Joh Bjelke-Peterson, he built highways and hospitals using the money of Aboriginal people who had worked their entire lives on the railway, you know, as domestic servants, et cetera. So part of Aboriginal intergenerational poverty is that property and income were taken from people. There's a complexity around poverty.
We lived in a family that was a housing commission family where mum didn't have savings. If something went wrong, we had no money to draw upon. We had no one to help us. And that feeling of vulnerability never leaves you really. It always stays with you. For people who just don't have options, that really drove that idea of how do you - how do you find a voice in a world that doesn't think you deserve one?
Jenelle McMaster
If I just fast forward a bit, one of the many memorable achievements that you've accomplished was becoming the first indigenous Australian woman to be elected to a UN body. What did that kind of milestone mean to you sort of coming from that background you've just outlined there? What did it mean to you and how did it then impact your career?
Megan Davis
So, it's actually the first indigenous Australian because people think Mick Dodson was the first, but he wasn't elected. So, Mick was appointed. And so, I was the first indigenous Australian to be elected to a UN body. It was, it was really important. I mean, I started at law school looking at international human rights law, that's when I first went to do some UN work at UN conferences when I was working for an Aboriginal organisation in Southeast Queensland, and then in my final year of law school received a UN Fellowship in Geneva. So, I started that work at a very young age, then came back to Australia and continued to participate in the drafting of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And then I did my PhD in the area, and my masters in the area, and it was an important trajectory.
The position came open and Jenny Macklin was the Minister who asked if I would like to be Australia's candidate. I am still eternally grateful for her because if it was any other Minister, it would have been an Aboriginal man, a “usual suspect”, who got that position and probably not qualified to have that position. So, I was really grateful for the Minister, to actually know that I was qualified in this space and that she chose a young Aboriginal woman to do that role, and so I ended up serving 12 years all up. It's been a huge piece in my professional career, that sometimes I forget about actually, when I think, when I'm doing all the all the Uluru work. It's been good post referendum to be able to kind of return to some of my international roots.
Jenelle McMaster
You certainly have made a huge contribution in that period of time, but you are, as you make reference to the referendum, your moment of change came from the work on the Uluru Statement from the Heart. You ran many dialogue sessions during that time, you spent a lot of time with government, a lot of time with community. What did you learn about engaging stakeholders through that?
Megan Davis
I learnt a lot from the first process, the expert panel process, because we were as appointed as experts. I learnt a lot about making sure First Nations people are properly included and consulted on what those options are, otherwise it's all decided for them by other people and in that consultation, I learnt about how governments, when it comes to Aboriginal issues, are really unimaginative and they choose the path of least resistance, and they call it political pragmatism. That's politically pragmatic. That's what we’ll get up. And there's no time for them to reflect, nor do they want to, on the merits of a particular option. I learnt a lot about governments and politicians in this process as well. I don't think they realise they're patronising people. Even people like Aunty Pat, who's my colleague and is 83 years old, they almost infantilised citizens and say, look, you don't understand how politics works. But citizens have changed the world in many ways beyond the ballot box, and one of the lessons post-Uluru was very few of them had read the Uluru statement or the report, and so we were always grappling with a political elite that were illiterate on what Uluru really was about.
Jenelle McMaster
How do you keep going when you are trying to drive that kind of change and there is double talk, I guess, around the need to be pragmatic or the cultural illiteracy? How do you keep yourself motivated and continuing to push forward?
Megan Davis
It was a difficult year last year and then you get to the end of a process, which is an earnest process, that so many of our people participated in. It's frustrating. You just have to keep smiling. It's tough, partly because you feel frustration that, yes, you're in the door advocating for this but so many of our people desperately needed that change, particularly in relation to disadvantage and poverty. And having many, many people speak on your behalf, it's frustrating for them. You keep going. The seven months after the referendum were really difficult, but you know, I feel really energised by the 6.2 million who voted yes. There's so many kind Australians stopping me everywhere who said they voted yes, that support the reform and that's what keeps you going. Like, I feel energised to keep pushing on.
Jenelle McMaster
You have lightly touched on the seven months period there and I think about that huge set of roller coasters that you've been on, whether it was the high of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the low of the rejection from the Turnbull government in 2017, perhaps the high again of it going to referendum, then as we all know that the referendum was ultimately unsuccessful. Let's just start there with the day of the vote. What was that like for you before, during, after that day?
Megan Davis
I mean, before, we were just very nervous because the polls didn't look great. I was more worried about my staff, about the Uluru use and the impact that the campaign and the referendum result would have on my nieces and nephews. I'd really thought about it as a constitutional lawyer, but I do recall the morning, so my little niece, Mimmy, who's named after me, she’s called Megan. But Mimmy said, “Oh, can I sleep in auntie's room?”. So she slept in my room and we had this big, beautiful king size bed and I remember waking up in the morning, because she's got the most stunning, snow white, cascading curls, and I woke up and her little face was kind of staring at me and the sun's coming through and she looked at me and said “Auntie, I'm really scared”. Like, that's the first thing she said to me on the referendum day, “Auntie, I'm scared” and you know, that was awful cause you didn't go into this thing to make children feel unsafe. We did it to give them a better tomorrow. I hadn't really thought about the impact on all the jarjums on Monday who had to go to school and to be faced with an Australia that was seemingly hostile to them. And for so many little kids who've grown up in an era where they learn language, they do welcomes or acknowledgements, you know, kindergarten and those early years are really precious, but have been magnificent in teaching. They learnt about the stolen generations, they know about NAIDOC, they know about reconciliation, and we've seen them grow up through this. It never happened in my time. And then I felt like, you know, are we undoing all that good work because now they go to school knowing, at least in Mimmy's electorate, most of the mums and dads voted no. It was tough to see the impact on the community. That's been the hardest is to see how hurt people are.
Jenelle McMaster
How have you navigated those feelings? What's the conversation that you had with Mimmy?
Megan Davis
Her mum was a really big – she ran her organisation in Southeast Queensland called Mob 23 so they were really actively really involved in the campaign and she's really cleverly walked them through it. I think most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families kept their kids home from school for the first few days, if not week. And we've spoken, they understand, you know, obviously in our family we do a deep dive analysis based on the data about what went wrong and you know we don't want them just running around this world saying well the vote went down because the nation's racist. I don't think that's why the vote went down. And so we work with them to make sure they understand in a nuanced fashion what happened. You know, post referendum our people just hug their kids and held them tight. My oldest brother kept his kids home for three days and they flew the flag and watched Aboriginal movies or listed to Aboriginal songs and I think that's what the community did. We got each other through it. It still hurts and I think many people feel really hurt and rejected. I just stayed at home. I mean, I was obviously over tired, so I slept for about 7 weeks, but it's a bit different from me because it's so intellectual in my head and I lived it 24/7 for 12 years. You know, it was a lot of work.
Jenelle McMaster
I wanted to ask you about that because a lot of what you've talked about is the, you know, the head part, the mechanics of the Constitution and how the architecture works, and then most moments that you talk about with Mimmy and the community is heart and what have you learnt when you think about driving change around the head and the heart and what needs to happen to engage both?
Megan Davis
I've learned so much. In the early days of the dialogues, you know, a lot of the old people kept saying reconciliation was the wrong framework. And I remember, I've heard it so many times from elders over the years that I just kind of switch it off because, you know, mentally in my head, I'm like 1991 the Act was passed and then there’s Council did it’s work and then brought out its recommendations and John Howard said no in 2001 and then, you know, I've got this trajectory and I can think it through intellectually, but I started listening, which is the point of dialogues, and really hearing what the elders were saying, which was reconciliation presupposes that there's a relationship and that we're actually just reconciling a friendship that had a conflict or attention. And they kept saying, but we're not reconciling because we haven't met. I learned a lot about listening and not being such a know it all in that space and actually what the elders were saying was probably true. The choice of the centre of the country was about the heart. I don't want to keep crying through this interview. That was a big lesson about love. Our elders have been through so much. I was so blown away by their generosity and the dialogues, because they're the ones that went through compulsory racial segregation. They're the ones that ate, you know, rice and flour and peas with weevils in them. You know, some of our senior elders now are kids who grew up in that protection era. They've had their children removed, they've grown up away from family. The things that they've seen and experienced and they come together and like all the young generations, angry and the older generations saying, let's offer an olive branch to the Australian people. You know, we need to coexist and we need to work together and they need to belong to our culture and we need them to feel like they belong to our culture because they grow up here and they - they're born here and they die here. I mean, I remember sitting there in some of the dialects, just going holy, what? And it's the most extraordinary thing. And there was so much love put into those dialogues and so much, you know, there was anger, but there was a lot of love and care about the messaging and about the fact that Australians need to feel a part of this Aboriginal footprint because it's part of them too. And that was Uluru, it was meant to be an invitation to Aussies to feel a part of us. I learned a lot about emotion and heart and maybe switching off that part of your brain, which is so structured and only thinking about acts and only thinking about courts. It's why it was so heartbreaking to see it just deteriorate into this terrible campaign that suggested that these people, who weren't the usual suspects, they were just ordinary people from communities that were picked by their own people, were derided as being elite. You know, people in low-income jobs, low satisfaction jobs. It was heartbreaking, but I did learn a lot about softening, I guess, my approach to listening and law reform and change.
Jenelle McMaster
Megan, when we spoke in the lead up to this, you mentioned that you didn't see yourself as a leader and that, you know, somehow you found yourself in a role that was being asked of you or you were in that position. Tell me about why not and where you are with that now and your, I guess, comfort with that mantle.
Megan Davis
I remember the day Turnbull ruled out a referendum and the Voice and I remember one of my lawyers, we were driving to an award or something and she just burst into tears. We had to pull the car over because she was driving, so it's really dangerous, and I remember thinking to myself, I've been up all night on the phone to Noel and Pat worried about the reform and I thought oh, I haven't thought about the impact it has on my team and how they must be feeling because they are all young and they've never experienced the Australian government saying no. And they just didn't understand why he would just say no. And I remember consoling her and thinking this is what leadership is, like, this is what it means to be a leader. I became a leader in that movement, I guess. That obligation, we felt very strongly about it. I'm in a position where I can do that as an academic, whereas most of the mob have to go back to work. They don't have the time and the resources to devote 24/7 to structural reform. Yes, I'm there because I'm a constitutional lawyer, but you also do become a leader in that space. And I'd like, you know, I’d like to get to that place where I don't always have to explain and justify, you know, to, you know what I mean, hey, like?
Jenelle McMaster
I do, I do.
Megan Davis
Not always having to say I'm not a leader, I'm not a leader and I'm sorry and apologising all the time.
Jenelle McMaster
What's next for you, Megan?
Megan Davis
Next is a chair at Harvard Law School. So, I'm teaching a couple of classes on recognition and another class on indigenous peoples in international law. And we'll just spend, you know, the year there regrouping. We've started a listening tour, so we're already out talking to our 6.2 million Aussie friends. We've been doing a lot of research on who those friends are. They're very staunch in their vote, which is terrific. They're deeply saddened by the loss. It's important and we can see many, many issues happening across the Federation of the past seven months, where, you know things would have been different if the voice to parliament had have got up. For example, the new Rapid Review Violence Against Women Committee doesn't even have an Aboriginal woman sitting on it when Aboriginal women have been at the forefront of activism and advocacy and law changes in relation to violence against women, we’re still being not included. We're still not at the table, and in fact that particular group appointed an Aboriginal man to the committee who will now speak on behalf of Aboriginal women. It's urgent. We're not closing the gap. It's just, it's not happening.
Jenelle McMaster
Megan, if I was to ask you what you feel most proud of as you look back on the many things you've done, what would your answer be?
Megan Davis
Uluru. Yeah, the dialogues I'm really proud of.
Jenelle McMaster
And the legacy you want to leave behind?
Megan Davis
Well, I hope at one point, we will have some form of constitutional recognition. It's the only thing we haven't tried as a nation. The only thing. We want to leave a better Australia, right? And if that means more Australians feeling a part of Aboriginal culture and more Aboriginal people feeling a part of Australian culture, that's the kind of nation that we want to nurture.
Jenelle McMaster
I think that's well said, and I hear in you still a lot of fire, a lot of hope, a lot of positivity and lot of determination in there and I think that probably harks back to those attributes that you opened the interview with, you know, you said you're stubborn but a flexible thinker, and I've seen that borne out with the way that you've been operating here and I do feel like I've gone on a bit of a journey with you in this discussion when you were talking about structural reform. I could see that deep thinker that could really understand the framework of change that needed to happen and then towards the end, as you were talking about your learnings and the emotion, your whole affect moved with that and it was beautiful to see. Thank you for sharing with us those moments, you know, vulnerability never leaves you. I could - I could hear it in your voice as well from your upbringing to now, the fire of democracy is built to change. And so therein lies the impetus to do exactly that. And I think that, you know, your willingness to lean into the hard stuff, not take the simple, superficial answer, but move into the complex and really get to the heart of it, the power of listening, the power of driving community to create solutions, the realisation of how head and heart have to work together. The last thing I'll say, Megan, is that I hope that you never from here on in, apologise for being a leader. Be proud that you are. That's exactly what you are. And so doing it all day, every day out there and long may that continue.
Thanks for your time, Megan.
Megan Davis
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jenelle McMaster
The Change Happens podcast from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Simon Crowe
Founder and Managing Director | Grill'd

Intro: Hi, welcome to Season 5 of Change Happens. I’m Jenelle McMaster, and I have the great privilege of speaking with influential and interesting leaders on their experiences of leading change and the lessons that they’ve learnt along the way. Not many people would be able to say that they’ve built something out of nothing and stayed true to their vision and purpose the entire way through, but I think that’s very much something that is true of today’s guest, Simon Crowe, Founder and Managing Director of Grill’d. Grill’d is known for its quality burgers and sustainable food practices. Simon had to overcome many obstacles to get to where he is now, most noticeably a public court battle with a former co-owner and business partner. Simon says, “It was the most horrendous thing that’s ever happened. It was really challenging and certainly unfortunately, it made me distrustful of people which is just not my normal stance”. This was a really surprising conversation for me. Simon is so hard on himself. You’ll hear in the first half of the conversation that he keeps going to the things he hasn’t done well and this is all despite him building an unbelievable successful business and having mastered the formula for successful burgers and franchises with almost 175 stores. He’s on a mission to liberate burgers from badness. Hear, hear, I say - and thankfully, for all of us wannabe an actual burger eaters, he’s absolutely achieving this. Yet his humility, his self-judgement and his vulnerability is palpable throughout the discussion. I took a lot away from this interview. I hope you enjoy this chat with Simon as much as I did.
Jenelle: Hi Simon, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Change Happens.
Simon: Pleasure Jenelle.
Jenelle: Let’s start with where it all began for you. I know that your father owned his own business. Tell me, do you think it was always destined to be that you would own your own business.
Simon: Yeah, I do, actually. Undoubtedly, travelling to dad’s pharmacy after school, walking there with my sister, waiting for my mum to finish serving customers and then doing the delivery rounds and dropping off the prescriptions to the old people’s houses and saying hello and them telling me how much I had grown since they’d last seen me. They always ran their own business. I watched dad in the local community. I saw him serving that community with pride and probably didn’t know what a lot of friends dads did in the workplace. So yes, in short, I thought one day I’ll have my own business, that was inevitable. The question was “what was the business to be and how long did it take to find!”
Jenelle: Well that’s a great segue to the next question. So I understand that you’re a person who’s had lots and lots of ideas, created many many business plans and I know you had other ventures before Grill’d but given food wasn’t necessarily where you had your expertise, what was it about that idea that made you want to have a crack at that.
Simon: I often think it’s time and place. I have written business ideas. I looked at pet insurance when I was living in the States. I looked a myriad, of silly ideas, including one where it was a hand car wash before car washers were popular. The business idea took a long time to find. Knowing or determining what to do. If you had of said “food” to me some years before, I would have said “no way, that’s not my piece.” I would certainly focus on a consumer or direct-to-consumer business but the food piece was quite scary upfront and really it was a time and place. I was almost 30, I’d been looking for business ideas. I knew that I had sacrificed personal relationships and I hadn’t bought a home simply because I wanted to be eligible or able to take risks without consideration for others. So again, eventually I think I got to the point of contemplating ideas and never executing or jumping into the deep end and, at some point, with a bit of daring from my friends, I did.
Jenelle: Okay! So, the friends dared you. What was the aspiration at that time? Was it to be the little burger shop that was quite good and successful or was there an aspiration to be Australia’s largest burger chain or the world’s largest burger chain? What was the plan?
Simon: No, I think I’m driven less by outcome and more by intent and that’s both a strength and a weakness I might add but I was at a company called Procter & Gamble. I left there in a hurry to have my own business and went to work directly for a business founder and entrepreneur called Clyde Davenport who owned Davenport Boxer Shorts and it was a wonderful learning experience and then I went to Fosters International and worked out of Melbourne, almost with the best job in the world, I was selling my country in a bottle. I thought when I was with Davenport, that success would be having enough money to travel overseas once a year. It would be about creating a lifestyle where I could be proud of what was created but I always saw it in the parlance of a small business, never a big business. Success for me wasn’t properly defined except that of determining and driving my own train. At Fosters, I’d seen a round of redundancies, not once but twice. It was interesting to see some of the guys who I respected almost duck their heads trying to hide from the redundancy bullet, if you will, and I thought I don’t want to be that, I want to create my own destiny and actually control my future. So it wasn’t about a big business, it was about a business and pleasingly then, Grill’d gave the opportunity for scale but that wasn’t part of the proper consideration up front. It was to have a million dollars. I didn’t know if that was pre-tax, post-tax, cash-free. It was just a million dollars.
Jenelle: [laugh], one million dollars!
Simon: [laugh], yeah yeah exactly [laugh]. It sounds so silly, doesn’t it!
Jenelle: No, it sounds awesome. You’ve got to start somewhere. Tell me about that sentence that you just said “you would drive through intent over outcome”. Can you explain more about what you mean by that.
Simon: I think, you know, I have a fear of failure. That’s because there’s two things. One is I think at heart, I’m a perfectionist. Two, if setting a goal and that goal is not achieved, then it feels like failure and interestingly, I probably live in that perpetual state of glass half empty because when I set a goal, I generally set it to be pretty big and therefore the chances of getting there and achieving it are often slim but for me that’s not the issue. My view is if the goal is big enough, then achieving one third/one half or two thirds is generally better than not actually starting or reaching for something that’s more challenging.
Jenelle: So that doesn’t sound like a fear of failure to me! That sounds like you leaning into some big hairy audacious goals.
Simon: Look, I think there’s a truth to that in that I can see opportunity or I see opportunities sometimes as big. When I get to committing to that, there’s a cliff that you need to stand on before you jump and I need to be pushed off that cliff.
Jenelle: So that push for you was some mates daring you. Is that what the push looked like for you?
Simon: Yeah absolutely. A lot of my friends have known for a long time that I wanted to have my own business. It’s why I went to Davenport. It’s why I went to Fosters International. The intent was to bring back ideas or concepts from overseas. My friends have been with me all the way through, daring me to do it because at some point they just said “you just have to commit” and a wonderful friend of mine, Andrew Barlow”. I had my 50th just over a year ago and I read the letter that he wrote me from that time because I’ve kept it and it was very much around “we believe in you, you haven’t got anything to lose but ego, you’ve got all the skills, you’ve got the capability. Just do it”. But it really goes back to having people that care about you, who believe in you and I was very fortunate that I had that situation.
Jenelle: That’s an incredible friend and friends around you that did that and I think that’s a fantastic story. The story starts to take a little bit more of a sour turn now unfortunately. You did start Grill’d with two partners but not long after you started the business, one of your partner exited and a few years after that, your other partner took you to court and ultimately ended up leaving the business too and that was quite a public court battle and given what you’ve just said then, all of that background about fear of failure, about trust, about being pushed over the cliff, about people believing in you, what was that time like with those two partners. It feels particularly poignant now when I understand a bit more of your background there, what was that time like for you?
Simon: Look, those two gents are called Simon McNarama and Geoff Bainbridge. Simon left on June 30 2010. I had to sign contracts at about 11.50pm that night. My wife had been hit by a car during that day and I still remember the hospital saying to me “I want to let you know that Sophie is still alive” and they were first words they said before then explaining that she was in a pretty banged up state after being hit by a car when she was out running. Signing the deal for Simon at that point was put into context of this thing called business is not that important because I had nearly lost my … or she wasn’t my wife then, my fiancée and we had a little kid who was nine months old, but Simon and I had some real challenges. He was fundamental to the business early because he is such a great operator. He’s an accountant. He was based in Melbourne and he had done it before, that is, he had built a small business and had made that business very successful, I might add. So we had a challenging time for a while there and, no surprise, my fiancée, his wife, who was also a friend of mine, those two got together and said “what’s going on here, this is ridiculous” and Simon is still one of my best best friends. For Geoff, that was actually 2015. We had an enterprise agreement issue at one of our franchise partners, understandably that has a halo affect across our brand and Geoff wanted to exit the shareholders agreement because he said “I don’t want to be involved in the business anymore”. We’d been challenged and/or frictional for a couple of years. It probably wasn’t a surprise and then he chose a course of action and took me to the federal court. It was the most horrendous thing that’s ever happened. It was really challenging and certainly unfortunately, it made me distrustful of people which is just not my normal stance.
Jenelle: I’ve got to believe that you have built back trust with people over time. How did you do that, it would have been an incredibly confronting period of time for you.
Simon: Yeah.
Jenelle: How did you run the business during that time, how did you build that.
Simon: Look, there’s a couple of moments in our journey and every business has significant challenges. Nothing is an easy or linear path and certainly over time, you learn to ride those bumps differently and better but that was the first significant episode for me and for Grill’d because we’d had a wonderful ride in terms of publicity, in terms of consumer appeal, in terms of momentum and when you’re small and you’re on a growth pathway, you almost feel invincible and a wonderful mate of mine who’s the CEO of AESOP, Michael O’Keeffe. He also wrote me a wonderful letter at a point in time, you know, and this wasn’t entirely linked to the Geoff scenario but it was about businesses hitting a plateau when once upon a time you were defined by energy and excitement, potential and momentum and then you actually have to realise “who are you and what do you stand for”. Well interestingly, that plays true to me through the Geoff scenario because I felt compelled to protect my people from all that was going on. I therefore tried to wear the stress and the challenges of a significant and ongoing legal dispute on my shoulders and I asked the guys to keep running the business. If I had my time again, I would have changed that dramatically. I would have brought them into the fold. I would have asked them to support me. It would have been a collaborative thing together, albeit I still didn’t want to or wouldn’t want to burden them too much. I thought it was my fight to have, not theirs but upon reflection, when I alienated myself and/or withdrew, that wasn’t good for my relationship with them either, in terms of trust, in terms of working together. So all of that played through and Michael’s email to me about “well, you better know yourself”, that came to pass through and out the other side of the Geoff scenario and that was for me to say “well who am I, what do I stand for as a person, let alone that of a professional” and if you believe in being vulnerable, if you believe in being trusting, if you believe that people need to have a voice and if you believe that genuinely, there are wonderful ideas across the group, you just need to listen. I started to find myself again, but it wasn’t easy. It took a long time. I can talk about it now without there being emotion associated with it but it certainly and another future event, but those two events certainly shaped me meaningfully. It made me stronger, it made me more resilient but I think that they did take a chip out of the … the duco of the car and that chip was one of trust.
Jenelle: Thank you for sharing that Simon. I think that’s incredibly … you continue to be vulnerable in sharing that. I can still hear the emotion in your voice and I think they’re always really powerful questions to ask anyone to ask themselves at different points in their life, who am I, what do I stand for, what do I believe in. How would you articulate the answers to those questions. What did you learn about who you are?
Simon: I know Jenelle, it sounds silly. I used to be, I think, very evolved for a 27 or 30 year old on an emotional level in terms of engagement with others and clear in my own self identification. I think as time has passed, I’ve become less about Simon the person and more about Simon the businessman which isn’t, I think, balanced or something I should be celebrating. I’ve got an opportunity and that’s what Grill’d has given me, optionality. I’ve just got to learn to take it but the optionality is there for me to actually make sure I’m not just a decent or reasonable businessman, but a great person and I sometimes think that I’ve let one lead and one lag and who am I. Well I know in a business sense who I am. I’m resilient, I’m perseverance, I have a drive and I have a desire to actually be proud of what we create but that’s not who I am as a person. I hope I’m considerate. I hope I’m loyal. I hope I’m there for people when they need me and I hope I’ve actually got patience but no doubt, my patience and my time, my connection to my friends isn’t what it should or could be and I’ve let Grill’d either be the excuse or the reason for not being engaged enough with that friendship group. You can’t keep taking cookies out of the jar and not put them back in. So I’ve got a finite amount of time to make change to the way that I lead and operate so I can be a better person, not just a reasonable businessman.
Jenelle: It sounds like those are the things that you are going to get to but I know that you have been doing them. So what are the things that you are proud of that you have been doing, in light of all of those hard lessons and hard battles that you’ve had in there. What have you been doing to get the balance of Simon of the businessman/Simon the human to where you feel really comfortable.
Simon: I don’t think I’ve been doing enough. I know that going to the gym makes me better physically and mentally and yet I’m not doing it properly. I know that I get energy when I actually engage with friends, particularly one on one. So I’m not doing enough of what I should do in that regard but in terms of being a servant to Grill’d I feel proud of that. I feel like I’ve got to make sure that ego doesn’t get in my way relative to having founded the business. You know, do I know everything! I know Grill’d really well but I don’t know everything and in fact I think our business could be far more successful. How do I put a CEO into the business so I can play to my strengths and again, I was very very fortunate that I went to a business moons ago called Procter & Gamble and I hope that Grill’d can become a place a little bit like that, changed my life for good and I’d like to do that for lots of people that are in our business.
Jenelle: In what way did it change your life for good?
Simon: Look, I was young when I joined Procter & Gamble. I’d been rejected by numerous companies including P&G, coming out of university and I had called them to ask why I didn’t do so well in the interview and then six months later, I called them after I got some better results at university because I didn’t engage with university the way that I should of and then the gentleman that answered the phone, the guy that interviewed me, his name is Simon Fraser, he’ll always be important to me. When I said “look, I’d like to be reconsidered because I’ve now got some better marks, is there a possibility of doing so”. He said “that’s great initiative”. Simon, about … I’m going to say 2010, six years after Grill’d had started rang me up and said “Crowie, did I ever tell you what happened that morning”. I said “no mate, what happened” but he said to me “sometimes things happen for a reason. You rang and only half an hour before that, a graduate who was supposed to start on that day said she had pulled out and therefore there was a space available which hadn’t been available had you called the day before. So you know, I’m not being fatalistic, as my wife says trusting in the process of life. Procter & Gamble then taught me the benefit of brand, how brands stand for something meaningful, how they pass the test of time and how they cross borders internationally and they also taught me how values are inherent in the business that wants to be something that’s beyond only selling a product and those learnings have been with me ever since.
Jenelle: That’s amazing and I have to tell you that is exactly how I got my break into my working career …
Simon: [laugh] … really!
Jenelle: … I also got rejected from a job and like you, I called back to get some feedback and as it turned out the person had declined the offer, maybe an hour before I called and that’s honestly set me up in life but I would say, I know you say you got lucky, but you know, the definition of luck is where preparation meets opportunity. So your preparation, you went back and did your studies and then the opportunity came. So let’s not deny both of ourselves some kind of hand in that [laugh]. I’m really glad Simon, that you talked about the things that you’re feeling proud of. This year is Grill’d 20 year anniversary. You have almost 175 locations, I think, across Australia. Your first international restaurant in Bali in Indonesia. You’ve given away millions of dollars to charity, you’ve invested in sustainable businesses and anyone who’s listening to this who doesn’t know about your background could be forgiven for now realising the extent of that success but despite all that growth and all that success, you’ve managed to stay true to a motto that you’ve shared many times “get big and stay small”. I can hear that as an undercurrent in what you’ve been sharing with me today but what does that mantra mean to you and why is it important to you?
Simon: There’s a rational reason and an emotional reason but I’ll try to deal with you the rational first. We’re in the burger landscape and the burger landscape is arguably the most popular food category in the world.
Jenelle: Oh!
Simon: Yeah! The category has historically been dominated by multinational fast food players who are at the bottom of the rung relative to food quality, food integrity and service in terms of engagement. So we have a brand that tries to play to a local environment because we believe that we can make a difference in local environments, to communities, we can actually engage with them and that’s what my dad did and my dad did that exceptionally. I still remember every Christmas, he would close the doors the day before. All of his customers would come in and they’d come in throughout the day and have a glass of champagne and have a chat with dad. So the first time I had sort of seen him in mere type role and it was lovely to watch because I could see how he was positively impacting them and their lives. So there’s a vocal piece that is fundamental to our business. That’s about staying small. There’s a rational piece that says we’re never going to have the money that McDonalds does and McDonalds defines the burger landscape because they spend so much money. So don’t try and compete with goliath head on, make sure you’ve got your own style, you know who and what you stand for and make sure that therefore you play to your niche. Now I don’t want our niche to be small. I want our niche to be big. You need to be able to engage people’s hearts in business. I think playing local does that to our people internally and if we engage our people internally, you know, respectfully I don’t need to worry about our guests because they’ll always get looked after. So if we’re going to be different and therefore rebels with a cause, we had better know what actually we anchor ourselves in and for me that’s local, that’s sustainability, that’s high quality product, that’s being proudly Australian and that’s making sure that our front line teams are the hero of this business and the real hero is the restaurant manager because the restaurant manager in our business is the person that leads the charge across those 175 restaurants which therefore means 175 communities and that means a truckload of people per week.
Jenelle: That’s fantastic and I have been long trying to herald the … the goodness of burgers way before there actually was any ability to have good burger, usually after a big night out I would herald such a thing and I’m very grateful for you doing that genuinely. So you’ve talked quite a bit there about the heroes of the business and really trying to engage hearts. You’ve talked about the importance for you growing up in your career of having access to development opportunities. How do you create the environment at Grill’d for your staff to develop their experiences and learn leadership skills?
Simon: Look, I’d say for us our people are always going to be our greatest asset but have we nailed this – no, but we’ve got a turnover post-covid that is greater than it used to be, even at a restaurant manager level. At a restaurant manager level, we got to a turnover less than 25% which means that our guys were in the position for four years and given that most of them have actually grown within the business, that meant they were often were with us for 6/7 or even 10+ years. So our business turnover is greater than I’d like it to be and that’s the challenge and the opportunity. How do we become a brand that gives people a career. How do we give them the development and the learning that they need and want and we’ll always try to get talent from the outside but growing and developing talent from the inside is really the hallmark of a business that has a strong culture and therefore by default, often and generally a strong brand. So we do have training programmes internally which are getting more and more robust all the time. We engage them to say “be part of your community and the local matters”. Each restaurant each month gives away $500 across three different groups in their local community. Our people and our teams then go and often work with and side by side with those community groups. We encourage them to do that. We’re now trying to set up an ownership structure which is in existence. It’s called “Our Grill’d Partner Programme” where notionally the RM or the restaurant manager owns 5% of the business. We’ve got 12 of those in 170 restaurants. We’re about to put down another five and then we’ve got a pipeline for another 15 to 20 and we’ve migrated the GP programme, which is Grill’d Partner to a JV – a joint venture programme to an ownership programme and eventually to then franchises or franchise partners and what’s the intent of that. Well, there’s nothing more significant in our business than (a) our purpose and that’s to positively impact the lives of our peoples and communities through engagement, energy and education and that plays into our values and our values are passion, leadership, ownership and trust. They’ve been with us from the start and in 2021, we added sustainability and if our guys believe in our purpose, if they understand our values, then the thing that I want to do is double-down and triple-down on one of those values being ownership and we can positively change their lives if they can take an ownership pathway and grow significantly their earning capacity and also their management and leadership skillset and that’s what we’re trying to do, feel that we’re going to be an employer that is best in class and that because if we want to be the brand that presents itself or the opportunity that presents itself, then our desire and need is to have brand in business inextricably linked. That means people on a journey for a long time and believing in what we do because we are more than just a “burger joint”.
Jenelle: So clearly there’s been an increased focus on sustainability and ethical consumerism across the convenience food industry in recent years but Grill’d was the leader in sustainable food practices well before it was fashionable. I know last year you introduced the “game changer burger”, understood to be the world’s most sustainable beef burger, produces 67% less methane and now you’re investing millions into companies that make sustainable products that you can use across your business. Tell me about that strategy, where that passion comes from and how you came up with that so much earlier than perhaps others have.
Simon: Look, I am fortunate that I’ve got permission to make Grill’d the brand I want it to be and I had this argument with my chiropractor just the other day. He was saying businesses should have no say in societal movements. Their intent should be just to make money for their shareholders and I disagreed with him vehemently. I know I could make a whole lot more money at Grill’d if it was only about dollars but that’s easy. I could squeeze this lemon so tight and make a whole lot more money and drop that to the bottom line and the beneficiary of that is potentially me but it’s just not of any interest. It doesn’t mean that a successful business with a scorecard with increased profits isn’t what I’m driving to but not at any expense and my view is if we’re playing a long game and we’re playing a holistic game then Grill’d is my vehicle for making a difference to society and that means I want to be proud of it and that means that when I talk to my kids, they’re always interested in what’s going on from an environmental perspective and from a sustainability perspective, but it’s not my kids only. It’s actually the people that work at Grill’d. They are the ones that actually made us take action. The front line of our business is the front line of Australia’s future and they’ve got views that they speak openly about and eloquently about and passionately about and my view, again, is if we’re running this business to make them proud, we’ve got to be conscious of what’s happening in their consumer landscape and the political landscape and the socio-economic landscape and look, I am a fan of all things sustainability but we talk about sustainability in a broad sense. Animal welfare, number one. Natural resources, number two. Our people, number three and our communities, number four. So all of those play into how we think about sustainability at Grill’d and we try and make that a focus across all parts of the business and if we can take little steps, I believe often the little steps actually create momentum and I think we’re being good at taking lots of little steps because we believe in that.
Jenelle: So really uplifting to hear you talk about that. As you say, maybe there’s more dollars made other ways but to create more ethical, more sustainable practices is a road that is a little tougher. What have you learnt from choosing to go down that road – upside and downside?
Simon: Yeah look, there’s … there’s both. I see myself and it’s not true but it’s just how you … it’s just self talk – right. I see myself as an outsider. I see myself as a challenger of the status quo and I see myself as an opportunist that says “if someone says no, I’m going to find a way” and I read about asparagopsis which is a native red seaweed out of Australia. I read about it in the paper and it was the CSIRO about to do something, raise money to actually then try and commercialise by feeding asparagopsis to cattle. It reduces their methane expulsion and I just dive into these things because I get curious and if I get curious and I can see that it might intersect with Grill’d, I get passionate. If I get passionate, I try and understand it and dive deeper and deeper. We’ve got an investment in a business called Great Wrap. It’s a gladwrap made from potato peelings …
Jenelle: Oh wow!
Simon: … and it has therefore no plastics associated with it at all but that’s the space that I enjoy playing in, putting our money where our mouth is and trying to help sometimes small businesses grow. I’ve had that benefit from people believing in me. I want to try and believe in others.
Jenelle: Fantastic. So final question for you. Extraordinary amount of knowledge and lessons and experience and pain and joy in all of that, but looking back and knowing what you know now, thinking about your younger self, the person that was waiting to be pushed off that cliff by his mates … what would be the advice that you would give to that person now?
Simon: I think I have an intensity and sometimes a lightness but I’d play more to the lightness. I expect to be proud of Grill’d always but for me, it’s about remaining playful. I sometimes forget that everything we’re doing is about a journey and I’m trying to get to the outcome too quickly. I’ve got to remember that I operate with an intent to jump fast and quickly and businesses as they get bigger can’t move at that same pace and if I try and do that, well then I create upheaval rather than positive change but if I go back a step, you know, one is I’ve had pretty good people in my business always but occasionally when you get it wrong, make changes quicker. Put a structure in place ahead of your growth curve. We did that really well in the early years and I would say probably that’s one of the things that I haven’t been challenged on enough by not having other shareholders in the business. I haven’t put the structure ahead of the growth in some parts of our business. At 170 restaurants, we’re playing catchup from pre-100 and once you get behind, it’s really hard to get in front and the other one is which I probably keep doing time and time again “hey Simon, if you’re doing this again, don’t get sucked into the detail all the time – learn to be the master, not the slave”. Having said that, I enjoy being the slave and I enjoy being in the detail. So that’s a hard one but if I was to say again, you know, starting a business today, talking to my younger self, I don’t think I would have done it if I knew what was ahead but what I do know is that my super powers, if I’ve got any, are passion, drive, resilience and perseverance. So it would be knowing that you are going to need those super powers and you’re going to need to rely on them often and meaningfully.
Jenelle: Very well said and in fact if I was going … I’m just going to go to a wrap-up now and you’ve called out all the words that I would have said exactly about your passion, drive, perseverance, resilience. I’d add vulnerability. I’d add courage to those words and it’s funny, as I’ve listened to you and I know we started out with you talking about your fear of failure but I have to say I don’t even know if I’m buying it. I think your curiosity and your purpose and your passion has trumped any fear of failure every day of the week and thank god it has because you’ve done remarkable work and even when it’s been tough, you’ve been able to forge through that and come out with some really powerful lessons. I’ve really reflected on your comments about, you know, surround yourself with people who care about you, who believe in you and who are prepared to safely push you off that cliff when you need it. I loved the counsel from your friend about, you know, you haven’t got anything to lose but ego and I think, you know, where there has taken a chip along the way, you’ve done that in a way that it’s kept your confidence in yourself but perhaps made it more about others along that way. I’m grateful to the role modelling of your dad and what that has meant for you to stay close to community. I am really impressed with how you’ve managed to stay true to the mantra of “get big and stay small”. I think the intent behind that is really powerful, that you can mobilise a contingent of passionate rebels with a cause and engage hearts and clearly connect purpose to values and, as I said, I think that your fear of failure, the fact that you said if someone says no, I’ll find another way, it means that you’re prepared to face into it. You said you were an outsider, you said you’re an opportunist, you’re a challenger of the status quo and so if you add to that a bit of the lightness that’s going to trump the intensity, my god, you have nothing but amazing feats ahead of you as well. So Simon, thank you so much for your time today. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation.
Simon: Thank you Jenelle, me too.
The Change Happens podcast from EY – a conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Simone Clarke
CEO | United Nations Women AU

Jenelle: Hi, welcome to Season 5 of Change Happens. I’m Jenelle McMaster and I have the great privilege of speaking with influential and interesting leaders on their experiences of leading change and the lessons that they’ve learned along the way.
News broadcasters: “The mounting loss of life” – “almost a woman a week” – “in the fight against domestic violence” – “killed by men they knew”
Jenelle: Are we going backwards?
It’s a big topic. When it comes to the achievement of gender equality and the fighting for human rights, the path to success requires big changes to happen. It needs to happen in homes, in workplaces, in communities and societies. It also has to happen at many levels. It needs to happen at policy, system, mindsets, cultures. A whole lot of things have to change. The goals are big, they are hairy, they are audacious. The KPIs and the markers of success for achieving them can be unclear and at times seem immovable. With International Women’s Day coming up this month. We thought the CEO of UN Women Australia, Simone Clark, would be the perfect guest to discuss what success looks like in the arena of gender equality and women’s rights.
When it all feels overwhelming, and it certainly can, Simone looks at the impact that can be made on a granular level. She talks about stories. She talks about the creation of empathy. And the changing of lives, one person at a time, and how that can fuel hope and ignite something much bigger.
Simone: The imagery of the large aircraft leaving Afghanistan and people literally climbing up the landing gear trying to get out, she was pregnant, standing in a drain near the tarmac, breastfeeding her baby and subsequently being able to come to Australia; resettle.
Jenelle: Simone is dedicated to fulfilling her purpose of making an impact that is felt rather than tangibly counted. She’s worked in lots of places, from UNICEF right through to the AFL. And her work has benefited the needs of women and children everywhere and has empowered communities all around the world. Simone’s passion for the causes she believes in and the roles that she takes on makes her journey even more captivating. Here, she shares the lessons she’s learned on being comfortable with discomfort, with creating the space to make big changes and looking for moments of hope even in the darkest of times.
Jenelle: Well, hi, Simone and thank you so much for joining us and kicking off what is now Season 5 of Change Happens.
Simone: Fantastic. Great to be here with you.
Jenelle: I want to start – we can start all over the place – but where I’d like to start is with where you are today. You are the CEO of UN Women Australia and you have been for the past two and half years. What led up to you taking that role?
Simone: It’s been quite a journey as the cliché goes. I have spent a large proportion of my career working in international development, in sustainability, both for the private sector and for the UN as well as for individual organisations and causes. So, it’s been a cumulative build, if you like, to this point. My focus has always been on women and children, to a large extent, and then more broadly in terms of the environment and how we treat the environment and how that has an impact on our livelihoods and humanity more broadly. So, somehow, I’ve always been involved in spaces that try to tackle our big, sort of, hairy, audacious goals as a planet and as humans and really it is the culmination, I think of probably the last 30 years of my work. In particular, working for sustainability and international development and for women and children more broadly. So, it feels like absolutely the right place at the right time after, you know, quite a lengthy career and quite diverse career really. Interesting the things you learn along the way that contribute to where you end up, so to speak.
Jenelle: As you say, a bit of a culmination of so many experiences that you’ve had. What does it feel like now to be personally seated in that position of leadership and to be part of this massive global movement?
Simone: It’s very interesting, I think, in terms of timing, there’s probably been no better nor worse time to be in the gender equality space, and I mean that with all due respect. I think there is collective will globally around the value of women and what they bring and obviously that’s reflected in the sustainable development goals, in particular, number five around gender equality. So, it’s certainly an opportune time to be working in that space, but cumulatively we are also seeing a regression along a number of the statistics. So, it is both a huge responsibility, I think, and a challenge, but also a coalescence of intent which really is the thing that spurs me on every day because I feel like there are a lot of colleagues, a lot of people, including yourself, Jenelle and others who are working in the space who are committed to the contribution of women and how is that is best reflected and how we move the barriers for that sort of full participation of women. So really important time and I think it’s a generational shift; it will continue to be a long game not a short game. So, it’s a wonderful role, a lot of responsibility in terms of trying to bring people along but also it’s very hard to point to a definitive outcome and say, if you invest X you will return Y. We try to do the lot, but I think it’s particularly in the role where we are generating funds for programs in developing countries as well. It’s building that empathy base and that collegiality, for want of a better word, between women and men globally to ensure that women have an equal role to play; an opportunity more than anything really.
Jenelle: You’re right. I mean these are big, hairy, audacious goals that we’ve got here and necessary ones. When I looked at the focus areas of the UN Women Australia website, or actually it was the UN website, there was no shortage of very lofty goals in there, and amongst a number of them were ending violence against women and girls, there was ending poverty through enhancing women’s economic empowerment. There was women’s inclusion in peacemaking processes and negotiations. So lots of really important audacious goals in there. You’re, I mean I think you’re amazing, but you are still human in this. What do you see as success on your watch? How do you measure your contribution? Talk to me about that for yourself.
Simone: Sometimes it’s very easy to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenges we face and with all due respect and with most of my colleagues in the UN and others working in the sector and beyond, it can be a bit overwhelming and I suppose so when you talk to impact it’s really about looking at the outcomes and the impact on a much more granular level. I have had the joy of meeting with individual women that have been touched by UN agencies, like UN Women, UNICEF, UNHCR, and the thing that keeps all of us going I think that work in this sector, in particular, and those who support us, is the fact that there is - even if it’s one woman’s life that we can change – if there is one opportunity or possibility we can open up for a single woman or a community or a country or a gender, that is a really positive thing. So the scale is vast, the challenges are vast, but for me the thing that keeps me going I think is that hope that when you meet women who we work with and they tell you their stories about the impact that we have had in whatever organisation or agency I’ve had the fortune to work for, that’s really at the core, what it is we’re trying to do. You know change takes time, but it is also very individual. So how do you make an impact on one person’s life when you are also reporting on global goals and things like the SDGs and the gender gap report. Those stories are the things that keep us going and there’s a litany of those and most of them are positive, although often in really appalling situations. So, it keeps us all going really.
Jenelle: Yeah, and it’s an interesting point about the power of story in there and moving things. When you and I spoke; we were chatting last week, and I was talking to you about, you know, change and you said, change is less often about that, you know, seminal moment on the big thing that happens, and you said it’s often super slow and happens over a thousand iterations. Tell me a bit more about that and one of those stories that has stood out to you is potentially one of the moments that made that difference to you.
Simone: So I think on a really personal level, throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to women one on one about you know the challenges that they face and more recently towards the middle of last year we held a round table in Brisbane and it was focused on Afghanistan and the women of Afghanistan and I had the good fortune to have a conversation with an amazing woman. I’m sure you’ll remember the imagery of the large aircraft leaving Afghanistan and people literally climbing up the landing gear, trying to get out of Afghanistan in what was a pretty appalling situation, and the woman that I met; she was literally pregnant standing in a drain near the tarmac, near the runway, on that very day, breastfeeding her baby, and had subsequently been able to come to Australia, resettle and had been supported by agencies along the way. And when I stopped and had a conversation with her and she said thank you, and I was like, thank you, I haven’t done anything. But she was – she said you know again, and again, thank you, because support of UN Women and organisations like yours means that I am now here, sheltered, in a transition program, I’m employed and I’d like to do more work and my family are safe. Yeah, when you’re standing there literally putting yourself in her shoes and understanding, albeit from a distance, what she must have gone through, the faith and the hope around that is that we’ll continue to be able to do that. So it goes back to the starting point where we talk about you know one woman’s life, one child’s life, one family’s life, that’s where it starts with.
To know that you can have an impact that’s – I mean to me that’s the reason why we do what we do and why colleagues far braver than I work in these hotspots all over the world. Our rep in Afghanistan is an Australian woman. She’s absolutely amazing and every day she literally risks her life to work with women in Afghanistan and I don’t think you can put a price on that or a value on that, and as you can appreciate, working as a woman in Afghanistan, particularly after recently when international workers in particular, women, were told that they weren’t allowed to work in the country, that became really problematic for a lot of women who were working in international development. So it’s situations like those that really give you grounding in being part of something bigger but also engaging Australian women and men here to understand what that looks like for other women and the shoes that they walk in.
Jenelle: That’s really powerful and I guess even just listening to you describe that woman on the tarmac and talking about her gratitude for being able to work and feeling safe. I mean these feel like basic human rights that should be afforded to anybody. So the fact that that is something that’s being called out is remarkable; is really sad to hear actually, it’s bittersweet.
Simone: It is.
Jenelle: It’s so distressing that we find ourselves in a situation that that should be an exception for her.
Simone: And you know another story was around the FIFA Women’s World Cup last year. I had the good fortune to meet a young team of female footballers who were under the stewardship of a local football club in Melbourne, and they were just excited that they could play football. I mean for them it was just about to be able to get out on the pitch and kick a ball around. But knowing that they were here alone and that their families were back home, potentially unsafe, but they were able to be here under the stewardship of a program. Incredible to think that something as simple as playing football or soccer as we call it, is denied to so many and yet here was a, you know, a great example of Australians doing amazing things for young women and girls who are living under threat of violence every day. It’s those sorts of stories; it’s knowing that somehow we are making a difference, and I mean that collective “we”. It’s not just our organisation. We work in partnership with literally hundreds of different organisations. That’s the critical mass we need for change.
Jenelle: You mentioned something a little earlier around one of your measures of success, around building an empathy base. What did you mean by that? How do you build an empathy base?
Simone: Yes, that’s a very good question. One of the key challenges we have in Australia is to share the stories and the understanding of what life for women looks like in countries other than Australia, because granted we absolutely have our own challenges; we have an aging population of women who are homeless in this country, which is appalling; we have high gender based violence statistics as other countries do across the globe. But to do the work that we do, and don’t get me wrong, Australians are incredibly generous per head of population and as well as our government and our overseas aid program. But one of the things we often struggle with is trying to get people here to understand, just the day to day challenges, and I think sometimes it’s really hard to even begin to comprehend what it would look like for a woman in Papua New Guinea going to the markets and knowing that she was under threat of violence every step of the way. What the life for a young girl going to school in Iran looks like and taking off her head covering so that she can have her own autonomy. When we look at Roe v. Wade in the States and sexual reproductive rights. There are things that do affect us, but then there are things that we have to try and create an understanding and empathy for the fact that things we take for granted are so often not even available in other countries.
So when I talk about that empathy base, very often we have conversations about, well you know charity begins at home and we need to look after our own women and children; absolutely. But when you look at the comparative scale of gender issues facing women in other countries, compared to ours, whose lives are actually at risk even for talking about gender based issues, some countries they’re accused of being witches, there is violence against women who choose to speak up. So it’s really trying to get Australian women and men to understand the challenges of women elsewhere and what they can do about it. Because, it’s also very easy to feel powerless and I think that’s one of the things that we as human beings, absolutely identify with. It comes back to those stories. How do you build an empathy base, how do you get people to care? I think fundamentally people care but sometimes I think the extent of the challenges. I mean if you look around the world at the moment, there is war crisis conflict in a range of countries and it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. And I think it’s easy also to go, well that’s not our problem, it’s someone else’s issue to deal with. Unfortunately, it does have a ripple effect.
Jenelle: What have you seen personally, Simone? You’ve lived a very global life which must have helped to see how women are treated in different parts of the world. You were born in Fiji, you grew up in Sydney, you’ve had a chance to work across South East Asia and North America, what was some of the things you saw that then has impacted your world view?
Simone: It may sound incredibly basic but I’m always struck by the fact that it doesn’t matter who I meet and in what situation, we all want fundamentally the same things. We want to be able to feed ourselves and our children. We want our kids to be safe. We want to be able to live safe. I’ve been in parts of remote China and met a woman who was dying of pancreatic cancer and she had young children and she was concerned that her children were not going to be able to fend for themselves. That she would die. Who was going to look after them? And it always just strikes me that somehow, sometimes, we think, oh that’s, you know, that’s other people’s problems, that’s other women’s problems. We all face the same challenges. We all want the same things for our families. We want the same things for our kids and we all want peace and security, and yet everywhere I travel - I was in Timor Leste, after you know, in the late 90s. Same situation there. I’ve worked in quite a few different emergency situations. The response that’s needed. It’s the same, you know, it’s water, it’s sanitation. For women it’s sanitary products. We do a thing called the Dignity Kit because if you think about – if all of a sudden your home was being bombed, what would you need. You know, it’s like the bushfires, when there’s emergencies. What do people do? What do you grab? What are the key things that are so important? So you know we’re looking at technology and how even personal records can be protected in and through things like blockchain. So it’s fascinating that the number of things that can be done but it always, to me it comes down to that commonality of how do we want to live our lives, and that’s pretty fundamental as a basic human right; water, sanitation, somewhere to live and a livelihood and food; these are the pretty basic needs. I don’t think people are asking for too much and sometimes I think we forget that. My experience is just again the commonality of humanity more than anything.
Jenelle: Such a great point about that. I’ve often said there’s more that unites us than what divides us.
Simone: Absolutely.
Jenelle: And sometimes it doesn’t feel that way, but I think that’s what you’re speaking to there. You’ve certainly worked with an impressive collection of organisations. You had that role with UNICEF, Mission Australia, Safe the Children Alliance, even AFLW. There seems to be a real commonality around social conscience and purpose. Am I reading that correctly, and if so, where does that come from?
Simone: I don’t know. I think I’m probably the – well I’m not probably I am the youngest of five children. You had to fight to get a word in. So I think that’s probably the – living in a challenging environment is not something that’s new to me. But I think it’s just always been something that’s driven me, that being purposeful has been at the core.
I mean, I remember when I came back from working with UNICEF and I joined the AFL and I got a lot of questions; what are you doing working for a football club? And I was like, well, okay firstly, what woman in Australia gets to be part of a start up of a football club - (a) - and (b) the genesis for the football club in Western Sydney, the Greater Western Sydney Giants, was really about creating the community club that embraced all the community. It’s a very culturally and linguistically diverse community and it was really about how football could be a way of bringing people together. So at the core of what others saw simply as setting up a football club, the really strong driver for me was, but here’s a really interesting vehicle around how sport can bring people together, how it can cut down barriers and it can mean, you know, different cultures, different approaches. We had a large population in Western Sydney of women who wanted to play AFL and there was a really strong local club of women who were involved. You know, wearing the head scarves while they played. They were amazing. I mean these were just amazing women who loved playing AFL and they brought this, you know, culturally and linguistically diverse dimension to Australian Football League. It’s that galvanising purposeful driver that is the thing that gets me out of bed I suppose very morning. It’s also the thing that depresses me sometimes because we feel so far away.
How do you make an impact? An impact can be felt in lots of different ways. Like I often speak to people who work in the private sector and say, oh wow you know what you’re doing, you know it’s so altruistic and it’s great and yes it is, but don’t underestimate the impact and the change that you can have wherever you are. You don’t have to work in the not for profit sector. You can have far more impact working in the private sector, for example, in government. I think it’s really just about what is an impact you want to make and how do you make it?
Jenelle: How did you learn where best you can have impact? What gave you the strength of conviction where others might have looked at something that had a really lofty set of ambitions, and go, yeah yeah I think I am the one to be able to effect change here, I can make impact? What has given you that self assurance and level of conviction?
Simone: It certainly started I think way back with my first role with UNICEF because at that stage it was about children and women and children firstly and then women and I always believe that you know children were absolutely innocent, they have done nothing but been born into a world where for better or for worse they will struggle, whether it’s through nutrition or access to water or whatever. So I think we need to be their champion.
Jenelle: We’ll use that as a segue to my next question, speaking of children. You can’t be a woman working on gender issues and not be expected to ask about the impact of motherhood on your outlook. So even though it might be slightly cliched, I do want to understand your perspective on that. You’re a mother of three, two daughters and one son. Are there differences in the way that they see the world because of what you do?
Simone: Absolutely. I think it would be an absolute understatement if I said it – it didn’t have an impact on them. They are all in their 20s and they are adults in their own right. It’s obviously had an impact on them. How they choose to respond and live their lives I think is probably governed by being exposed to that and seeing mum go off to work each day and thinking well what are you doing mum, and why are you doing that? So I think it’s built in just through osmosis that that’s been built into their DNA.
Jenelle: And maybe also the other way around. Their impact on you and your view, your world view.
Simone: Yeah. Well, and again, you know, I look at my children when they were young kids. I mean we would go away on holidays and invariably it’s just a very weird thing. But usually at Christmas time and around that time of year you’ve got disaster season, you’ve got emergencies that happen and I used to sort of pinch myself and think here am I with my three young children and we’re incredibly safe and you know there’s much to get caught up in.
Can I pay the mortgage or whatever those day to day concerns are. When you compare your life and your livelihood here in Australia with what is being experienced – I mean it was back when the invasion of Kosovo happened and that was back in the late 90s. I was away with my kids who were very young then. How would I feel if all of a sudden I had to pick up my belongings and walk across the Victorian border, for example. Because this is what some of these women and families were doing and the kids were with them and I just – everything we talk about, every type of impact is predominantly generational so I need them to be better humans. There’s a bit of hope there when I look at my daughters’ generation because even when they tell me about things about you know what’s happened at work, and you know, how things are going, they have much more confidence in negotiating salaries or being able to have a conversation about their worth and their value.
Jenelle: Absolutely.
Simone: Way more than I did as a young woman starting out in my career, right. So I take absolute hope and the faith in that. It’s interesting with my son because I often, you know, look to him and you know he’s an amazing young man as well and works really hard. But the interesting distinction is I don’t think my son ever questions his seat at the table. I don’t think my daughters do either as much as I possibly did but it’s just an interesting observation that, you know, and we joke and he always gives me a hard time about the gender pay gap and just because he knows it will give his mother a rise, but
Jenelle: My kids do the same to me.
Simone: Yeah, exactly. Just prod the beast. Don’t do it Sam I’m not in a good mood. You know I just think it’s the difference between women now, hopefully and in the future. You know that notion that women question or challenge themselves around whether or not they should be at the table. Well I think that’s changing, and you know that you can’t do what you can’t see. The more women in senior roles like yours, the more women who are speaking out. And young women can see that when they are in the office, wherever they are working. That’s a really important message because how do I aspire to be something that I can’t see? Quite frankly when I finished school a lot of girls were told, well you can be a secretary, you can be a dental nurse, you can be a teacher if you’re really lucky. You know the conversations around graduate programs and working in large corporations certainly wasn’t happening in my cohort of friends. And that’s not because they weren’t all educated.
Jenelle: It would be nice to see the load not just fall on the women to push to have more of a seat at the table but maybe the men also helping in redesigning the table itself.
Simone: Absolutely, and I think we’ve seen that now. I mean I speak to a lot of men about this and you know gender equality isn’t a women’s issue, it’s a community issue, it’s a human rights issue, and there’s a lot of men that see the value. Again it comes back to making space at the table, absolutely, and you know being able to also juggle parenthood as well as time out from careers with having families, because that is a reality. Or trying to do it all, and you know I think a lot of us try and do it all and we do as well as we can. But there’s always trade offs and so I think it’s probably a combination of opportunity, possibility and I heard somewhere recently, someone said possibility is a privilege, and I thought what a great way to capture it, because possibility is a privilege. Because when you don’t have any possibilities where do you go? Where’s the aspiration, where’s the ambition?
Jenelle: Staying on the theme of gender equality here and we do have coming up March the 8th, it’s International Women’s Day, and I know that that’s one day and we’re talking about this every day, but it’s a real opportunity to shine more of a light on the issues that we’re talking about. Tell me what does International Women’s Day mean to you on a personal level? What does it look like on the day?
Simone: Well again it’s been a bit of a progress. I remember talking about International Women’s Day years ago and you know you get the same old, oh why do we need an International Women’s Day, you know that’s every day of the year, and you know I sort of say now, well you know it’s one day of focus but we need 365 days of action. But what it does do is increasingly we’re seeing more and more businesses, corporations, even schools and other things, really focus on women, focus on the need for more women engaged in you know leadership. We’re seeing more conversations around investment in women. So for me International Women’s Day is a really important day to say let’s not forget what we do in those other 364 days a year, but also to really focus on what are those barriers, whether it’s political leadership, whether it’s representation, whether it's leadership in companies, whether it’s living a peaceful and secure life without threat of violence, and gender based violence against women. So I think it's a really important day to remind everybody of also the value of women because you know when we look at first responders through COVID, when we look at front line medical workers, when we look at teachers and we look at those lower paid occupations by and large, the majority of those people are women. They take on amazing amount of responsibility doing those roles. How do you assess value and it’s not always in a pay packet? Recognising the value of women I think is really what it’s about. And even if it sparks a conversation that goes on, on that day, but continues with friends, with families around the dinner table cause the more conversations we have, it’s more about visibility and understanding. That’s a good thing.
Jenelle: Now this year’s theme for International Women’s Day is count her in. So it’s about accelerating through economic empowerment. Talk to me about that. You mentioned – you know when we were talking last week about if ever there was going to be a silver bullet in something that’s so complex and so layered that we should be looking to financial literacy and economic empowerment. Tell me a bit more about your observations of that.
Simone: As an organisation financial empowerment is a strategic priority for the organisation and we know that if women are at risk or don’t have control over their own livelihoods or their finances, it’s very hard to fundamentally reach equality. It’s also very difficult to avoid and/or remove oneself from an abusive relationship. We know financial coercive control is a big problem as well. So if we look at investing in women and women understanding that and being more across and in control of their own financial literacy and their own livelihoods, then it means that they are less at risk of those other things that undermine them. Whether it’s gender based violence, whether it’s leadership, whether it’s in emergencies and in times of crisis what they do. So it is a silver bullet insomuch as if we can address financial and economic empowerment, then we know that that is going to be the silver bullet for addressing some of those other cross cutting issues that impact women.
It’s also really important because you are investing in a cohort of people who have a huge contribution to make and continue to do so, but often considered as a less value. Venture capital for female led enterprises. We know that female led enterprises are more productive. They are usually more profitable, and yet less than 4% of venture capital, even in this country, goes to female led organisations or endeavours. So what would that look like and we know that there’s been a raft of studies that have been done around, you know, if you invest in women the returns are tenfold. India at the moment are looking at this very complex problem around not having enough women in the workforce and/or not enough investment in their own enterprises. And so again if you go back to the stats and the data that sit behind it, we know that if we invest in women, and we have more female led enterprises, and we have more women in leadership positions and running businesses, the profitability and the return on investment is higher. So why wouldn’t you? So there is an economic case for support and I think sometimes that gets lost and then sometimes you get a bit frustrated cause then – why do we have to keep creating a business case almost for why women should be equally represented in a boardroom or why they should be equally invested in. But again, if we look historically – the Industrial Revolution – it’s been largely driven by men, for men, and so I think now we’re playing catch up. But we have to play catch up a bit faster because there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Jenelle: There is and you talked about how change and frustration go hand in hand, particularly when there’s no real visible measures of success. You talked just then about your daughter or how the next generation have got a level of confidence that perhaps you and I didn’t have in negotiating things which is fantastic. But I mean alongside that I see week after week after week a woman is killed at the hands of a man that they generally know. You see report after report that talks about, you know, whether it’s 80 years to 150 years to 300 years before we get gender equality. Are we going backwards?
Simone: Yeah, probably we are. Look in certain indicators I think the other thing is too is we’re starting to measure more. So there is a sense sometimes that we’re going backwards and it’s taking us longer. But if we look at the complexities and the indicators that we’re using to measure that progress, they are becoming more complex in and of itself. The point that you made at the start of that was really around violence against women and gender based violence. And I suppose out of all of the priority areas that we work in, that’s probably the most flummoxing to me, because we can stop it. It’s not something – we’re not trying to find a cure for cancer. We can stop violence against women. So what’s holding us back?
Jenelle: That was going to be my question to you.
Simone: Well, I don’t have the answer except to say that you know I think it fundamentally goes to the value of women. So if there was still people wanting to control and to undermine and to exert that control, the power through physicality and violence, how are we ever going to address that imbalance? And I mean the fact is, and I have this conversation with women all the time, gender based violence could stop tomorrow if we just stopped doing it. So why aren’t we? So that’s where it comes back to – you know we talked about either building empathy or understanding all value around women. Why is it okay to – for a partner or someone that you know, abuse and or you know inflict bodily harm on a woman? I don’t get it and I know that I work with a lot of other organisations on the ground. Here every year we do a campaign about ending violence. So what’s at the heart of that? And you know we often talk about it’s really – it’s a cultural change. But it’s also not just an Australian cultural change. We’re seeing it across the globe, so again to me, it always comes back to the – well how do we value women and how do we let others exert their power over us?
So again I’ll go back to the coercive control example where a woman through her bank account, her former partner was sending her one cent into their back account a hundred times a day and saying I’m going to kill you. So you imagine when you get an alert saying that you’ve paid for something. This was coming up almost you know a hundred times a day. So the coercive control – and that was through the banking system – was not enabling that but he was able to do it, and we’ve just seen some recent reforms around that which have been fabulous because the major banks have now said, if we see behaviour like that now, we will shut down those accounts. There’s a role around systems change, around protections that aren’t just about physical violence. They’re around what are the systems that are enabling those kind of behaviours to perpetuate and why are women still at risk. Then there are policy levers. Then there are systems levers. Then there are you know the way that we think and the way that we act and then there’s cultural and there’s ethnicity and there’s a whole lot of other things that impact the way we view women. So we’re not just working on one front, we’re working on a whole range of fronts and that’s where the complexity can sometimes be overwhelming.
Jenelle: How do you make sure that you don’t get overwhelmed, that the overwhelm doesn’t take over?
Simone: That’s a very good question. Look I think we all get overwhelmed at certain stages and it doesn’t matter whether you work in this space or not. I mean I get overwhelmed when, for the last two years, every time you look around there is something else awful happening to women. You know we look across the globe, whether it’s Africa, whether it’s the Middle East, whether it’s Central Europe, and to be perfectly honest it’s hard not to get overwhelmed. A number of times that I know colleagues do the same thing. It’s just, this is just too hard. Like how do we get traction? I think the only thing that gives you hope is that some things are changing, and so we do get overwhelmed and I think you know when there’s criticism about – oh you’re not doing enough – you know as part of the UN system you’re not doing enough, you’re not doing it fast enough. Look I appreciate that. I completely agree with that. But also conversely it’s what would you have us do differently? And so that’s where innovation, technology, new ways of thinking. You know the old construct of philanthropy of here’s a dollar go away and feed yourself, or let me teach you how to fish. You know that old adage, it’s that, it’s how do we use new technologies, new ways of doing things that are going to help us overcome some of the – I mean the climate crisis is also having – you know - and that’s an intersectional challenge that is impacting women more greatly than men. So where do you work? Do you focus on climate change? Do you focus on gender equality? These are all joined up and so that’s why it’s hard to sometimes to decouple them. So organisations like ours choose to work on the priority areas where we see are the greatest risk to women and try to do something about them. But yeah it’s – sometimes it’s a lot easier to be overwhelmed than to maintain the rage, so to speak.
Jenelle: And in those times is there a particular story, image, policy change, system change that you take your mind to, to help you kind of keep going with it? Remember when we did this, or you know, what do you do to pull yourself out of a situation when you were in the overwhelmed stage?
Simone: I think sometimes other people do it for you which is fabulous as well. So not so long ago I received an email from someone who was more or less defending an aspect of work that we were doing years ago and sort of went out unasked and unprompted – sort of took a position to defend the work that was being done and outlined the list of reasons and sent it back to me because it had come across her desk in a different world and it wasn’t about UN Women, it was about a program that was being run, and there were criticisms of it. I think it was context within the UN system and when she came back, and as I said, unprompted and unbeknownst to me, she went back and said well actually I think that’s incorrect. So let me tell you this is actually what did happen and this is what’s happening and this is what’s being done, and to have that happen, to have somebody else step in to defend or lend a hand or that solidarity. And I think that’s one of the things about the women’s movement that is the most all encompassing is you know women looking out for each other and that notion of solidarity. That’s what pulls me out of my hole sometimes. Because it’s very easy to go, wow this is all too hard, it’s all a bit personal, it’s all about me. Well it’s also about half the population. So it’s those moments and those acts of humanity at its best, that’s when it drags you back out and says, okay we’ve got this, there is hope on the horizon. I think you know we’ve had this chat before about hope being the eternal motivator, cause if you didn’t have hope you wouldn’t stay doing any of this, and if we lose hope then we lose any sense of ability to change what it is we have in front of us. So I think that’s the other thing that keeps all of us as humans going, as you know hope for a better world, and what’s the legacy we want to leave our kids. I don’t want my kids to grow up in a world where you know women are abused and racism is just part of the DNA. Absolutely not required. Shouldn’t be here, so how do we change it?
Jenelle: And what is the legacy that you hope to leave in the time that you are in this role? When you move on what would you want to be able to point back to?
Simone: It would be ridiculously, and incredibly overstated, to think that you know I would be able to go, great my work is done, and we move over. I think, and there was a great quote; I think it was from a former head of UNICEF which was all about, you know, we don’t inherit the world from our parents we actually are custodians of it for our children and for the future. So I think what I would like to leave is perhaps, whether it’s a positive view or perspective about how we can change things, whether it’s pointing to a group of women or a program or an initiative and over the course of my career you know there’s been some where I’ve thought, no I’ve had a hand in that, I’ve had a part of that. The legacy I want to see left is that our children, our daughters and our sons, we have an absolute joy living in this country, being incredibly grateful for what we have, having empathy for those who don’t have the same opportunities that we have and that the privileges that we have and that we leave, that basically it sounds very corny, but that we leave Australia a better place than we found it. And not just Australia, the globe perhaps.
Jenelle: I think that’s a really powerful legacy. Really powerful legacy Simone and I do think it’s easy to get disheartened by what seems so massive a task. But what you’ve achieved and your ability to keep going despite those challenges is phenomenal. From the conversation today, you know, it’s really reminded me about the importance of building a strong empathy base, sharing the stories, helping people understand what it looks like to walk in the shoes of other people that might not be in our natural orbit. A reminder about the commonality of humanity that regardless of who we are or where we are – actually we all fundamentally want the same thing – peace, security, sanitation, dignity. These are human rights, and so why would one person be more entitled to that than another. The reminder that you gave us to not underestimate the impact that all of us can have, no matter what sphere that we’re working in. To challenge ourselves on where we think we can have impact.
A reminder we’ve got International Women’s Day coming up and it is a great opportunity to listen to the stories of others, to reflect, to think about the value of women, to learn, to engage, to spark a conversation that hopefully sparks further action. When you talk about change you’ve talked about the power of story telling. The power of invoking images, whether that’s an Afghan woman standing on a tarmac holding her baby to ignite something, couple that with systems change and policy levers, it happens at multiple levels, and I think when the overwhelm gets high, remember that we cannot lose hope. We need to remind ourselves who we’re doing it for. We can get caught up in ourselves and whether or not it’s us making enough of a difference. But to remember who we’re doing it for and lean into the solidarity of that very group to remind us what we’ve done. So lots of takeaways, Simone, I really, really appreciate your time.
Simone: Great – thanks so much for the opportunity. Thanks Jenelle.
Male voiceover The Change Happens podcast from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Season 4
Season 3
Season 2
Season 1
Power Bites

Darren Burgess
High Performance Director, Adelaide Football Club

Jennelle McMaster: Hi. Welcome back to season four of Change Happens. I'm Jennelle McMaster and this is a podcast exploring leadership through key moments of change. And in speaking with leaders over the course of this podcast, it's clear that they almost always have somewhere in there a story arc that required a call to adventure or a call to action, a crossing of some sort of threshold or the encountering of some messy bits, and finally, some sort of insight and enlightenment. So, in this season of Change Happens, I am focusing more closely on my guests’ critical moments and I'm seeking to understand how they cross the threshold and discovered what it was that they learned along the way. So with that, I could not be more delighted to be kicking this season off with Darren Burgess. Actually, it's Dr. Darren Burgess, a name that will be immediately recognizable to most people with an interest in sports or high performance. His is a name that is well and truly synonymous with elite high performance. Working with the likes of Luis Suarez and Alexis Sanchez. With more than 20 years’ experience as a performance coach in one of the country's, if not the world's, leading sports innovators.
Jennelle McMaster: Darren has worked in both Australia and the UK in top-flight sporting organizations, including director of high performance at Arsenal Football Club, head of Sports Science of Football Federation Australia, which included the period that the socceroos made it to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and head of Fitness and Conditioning at Liverpool Football Club. In his two years as high-performance manager with Melbourne FC, Darren helped his team, the Melbourne Demons, win the AFL Grand Final in September 2021, ending the league's longest winning drought of over five decades. He currently heads up the performance team for the Adelaide Crows. With decades of performance insight and experience and a PhD to his name, Darren has had multiple papers published in peer-reviewed journals and has spoken at many, many industry conferences. And just when you thought that he couldn't possibly hit any higher or more dizzying heights of success, he also lays claim to the title of my best mate. So, yep, they have it. Full disclosure, Darren and I have been besties for around 30 years. So it's both an honor and a little bit weird. Not going to lie to be interviewing Darren today. BoJo.
Jennelle McMaster: Welcome.
Darren Burgess: Welcome. Nellie, how are you? Thanks.
Jennelle McMaster: Did you organize that tooting, in the background?
Darren Burgess: Most unbelievable timing.
Jennelle McMaster: Now, do you think it would be fair for me to summarize one of the characteristics of our friendship as being one where you always gloss over the big things that happen in your life forever reticent to give me any kind of details, and where I am relentless in trying to get more details out of you?
Darren Burgess: Yeah, it's fair to say that you love to explore the minutiae of any sort of scenario and I'm kind of keen just to gloss over it. That would be a fair comment.
Jennelle McMaster: Okay? So gloss over it we shan’t. Consider this a public intervention where I'm going to now try to on the record here, try to my best to get you to open up around your story, which I know that there is some bias here, but I think yours is a life that's been an incredible one. You've lived many lives in your time and I'm really keen to unpack at least one part of that. Now when I asked you ahead of this recording what would be that critical time in your life that we'd want to focus the conversation on? You “uhmed” you didn't even get to an “ah”. You “uhmed” for what felt like a nanosecond and then you said Liverpool FC. What was it about that experience with Liverpool that made you immediately go to that as that seminal moment of change for you?
Darren Burgess: It was a combination of things I've that I'd written 94 letters to English professional football clubs from the First Division to the Fourth Division when I was when I just graduated from uni. And it was letters back then there was no sort of emails or anything like that, so I got three back all saying no. But I appreciated the time it took for them to write back. And I guess it was to get a job in the Premier League, which was the biggest show in town for a football loving person. So in my industry of which was a really sort of new industry, so there wasn't many jobs around. So to sort of forge my way to a Premier League club and not just a Premier League club, to Liverpool, which was and is one of the top ten clubs in the planet, I guess in all sports. So it was probably that moment, not to mention the stuff that I learned on the job while I was there, which has carried me and I'm definitely a changed and better practitioner and person having lived that experience.
Jennelle McMaster: And I'm really keen to unpack some of those lessons that you learned. When you say that you wrote to 94 football clubs, I can imagine this young kid bright ideas about what the future could hold for him. I know that you have referred to yourself as something of an underdog in the past and sort of seen yourself as the boy who couldn't on the field and wanted to get out there and do something big, but you got to have some tenacity and some chutzpah to keep pushing at it the way that you did. So where did that come from? Where did that sort of conviction that you could and that perseverance come from?
Darren Burgess: I was never blessed with the greatest physical sort of attributes. I wanted to play sport for a living if I could. And when I realized, sadly that I couldn't do that because I was a chubby kid and I wasn't always first picked. I had this desire to prove people wrong, and I did okay on the sporting field, but that probably extended to the fact that once I graduated, or you certainly didn't at that stage, look up in the paper and find a job for a sports scientist or a fitness coach or a performance manager. My sister's a teacher. My two other brothers are in finance, so there's jobs everywhere for them. And I didn't get a full-time job till I was probably 28, 29. And so there was a lot of knockbacks, and, no, you can't, and, no, we don't have a position. And so, I was doing part-time jobs everywhere, and I was just really determined to make a career out of it. So never did I think that that career would lead me to anfield, but certainly was just really determined to see how far I could go with it, because I just had a passion for that industry, I guess.
Jennelle McMaster: So with that as a backdrop. So 94 letters you know dreaming up a job that really didn't exist in the way that we might see other professions. How did it feel when you got that call up for Liverpool? What was happening in your life? What was your - tell me about the emotions when you got that call.
Darren Burgess: Yeah, I was working for the socceroos, so I was busily preparing for the 2010 World Cup, and tt was a lot involved in that, traveling back and forth from South Africa to look at hotels and training venues and making sure it was up to standard and playing in friendly matches. So myself and two other Aussies and the doctor involved, Peter Brookner, he'd been, I guess, contracted by Liverpool to have a look at where their injuries were or why they had so many injuries, and he certainly recommended that they bring in somebody in my area. So I was doing the World Cup job. I had a wife at the time who was pregnant, so there was a whole lot to consider around that space. There was a couple of AFL clubs that were interested, but when you get the call from the CEO of Liverpool to say, we want you to interview for this role, anything else just took a backseat. Certainly any other the football clubs or anything like that that was going on just took a backseat, because I remember clearly, Peter, the doctor saying to me, I know you've always wanted to work in the Premier League, but could you work for Liverpool?
Darren Burgess: Because I was a Manchester United fan and said something like, everyone has their price, doc, and I thought he was taking the mickey. So, yeah, it was pretty cool. I remember getting off the phone because the negotiations took a little while because it was a big step, obviously, personally and professionally. And I remember when the contract came and I had the Liverpool emblem on, I thought, this is pretty cool. This is pretty cool.
Jennelle McMaster: There's your typical understated summary of things. Pretty cool. So, despite the fact that this was a lifelong dream for you, you've talked about having a pregnant wife at the time and being a Manchester fan. Was there any part of you that did hesitate about saying yes? Were there things that you were worried about that, notwithstanding an aspiration here, did give you pause?
Darren Burgess: The main thing, Nellie, is, could I do it? That was the main thing. And there was those massive amounts of self-doubts when I took the job about a month later. So in South Africa, just before I was about to fly out, the coach, Rafa Benitez, got sacked or resigned, depending on who you listen to, and took 18 staff with him. So the whole department was gutted. There was one assistant coach left and literally we turned up on day one and there was no one there. There was me and an assistant coach to take the superstars through a training session. And this is Liverpool. It's not, with all due respect, a third division club. So going back to your question, I had some doubts about whether I could do it and then I had just enormous doubts once Rafa got sacked. And yeah, there was no one there. So we arrived on a Friday, and after being pitchside for Australia versus Serbia on a Wednesday, and we're interviewing people on the Saturday and Sunday to start on Monday. So it was an incredible whirlwind.
Jennelle McMaster: I was about to ask you the question of what was it like to walk through those doors on your first day? Or better yet, what did it feel like to step on Tanfield Stadium? But listening to you, I'm thinking maybe those things got drowned out. The excitement of those kind of moments got drowned out by the reality of what you were faced with? Or did you still have those feelings existing side by side? The excitement of what it was versus the terror of now, an empty staff listing?
Darren Burgess: I'll probably give you two examples of that, which might sound a bit trivial, but I remember them. The very first session that we had, because the World Cup was still going on, a lot of the superstars weren't there, but there were still a few. A lot of the Liverpool superstars were still performing in the World Cup, so they weren't there on day one of preseason training. But because there was no one else around, I had to take all of the preseason, all of that first session. I'm sorry. And I had to demonstrate a drill that I wanted them to do an exercise. And that involved me sprinting at my top speed to one of their players playing a ball to me, and I'm demonstrating to these Liverpool players and the whole time I'm going, what am I doing? My first touch is awful and these guys are just going to laugh at me. I'm an Aussie from who was a hack soccer player trying to demonstrate a drill. And fortunately, it's the greatest first touch I've ever had in my life and dropped at my feet and I played it back. And then I just looked at him.
Darren Burgess: So that's how you do it, really casually. But inside I was just thinking, what the hell? That was an amazing touch. How good was that? So that was the first moment and then the second moment. It was about two weeks into pre-season and we were still training at Melwood, the training ground, and one of the physios said, Bergo, I'm heading out to Anfield today just to check a few things because we've changed the change room. Do you want to come out and just familiarize yourself? And I just went, Holy crap. I just sort of went, okay, yeah, I'll come out and have a look and it'd be good for me to get used to it. But inside I was thinking, it's Anfield because of what I described earlier. He just went into process mode. Process mode, process mode. I need to hire staff, I need to do this.
Darren Burgess: We had a preseason tour in Switzerland that I had to organize and all these sorts of things. And then when he said, I'm just going out to Anfield to organize a few things. Do you want to come? It just smacked me. Yeah, no problem. But it was a really big moment. I remember walking in, dressing was going, My God, and seeing the sign there which football lovers who might listen to this will know that this is Anfield sign. And I didn't touch it then because I didn't want to let the physio know that I was excited to touch the this is Anfield sign. But, yeah, it was pretty cool.
Jennelle McMaster: That's amazing. So putting aside the kind of almost the giggly excitement of being in this in Anfield and Liverpool and sort of stepping back on that professional level, what was, did you move into the role with a clear intention of what it was that you wanted to drive at Liverpool? What were there certain changes that you were seeking to institute and implement while you were there.
Darren Burgess: The year before they had come, I think maybe 7th, which is sort of unacceptable for Liverpool. And the common belief at the time was that they had suffered too many injuries. And the CEO at the time had said, we need to sort out this injury crisis that he described. And so he bought in the Aussie doctor, who then implemented the changes that he did. And so my remit was keep the star players on the park. And that involved working with the local physios who were really good. So it wasn't an issue there, but it was more just a training philosophy that was attempting to build resilience into the players so that they could cope with the demands of the Premier League understanding. I never worked in the Premier League, so I had to sort of learn on the job and learn pretty quickly. But that was the main thing when you work at places like Liverpool and perhaps Arsenal and Manchester City and United is two things really keep the players injury free. And by that we meant sort of soft tissue injuries, hams, muscle pools and things like that, and also enable the players, make the players resilient enough to play Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday, Wednesday at the fastest, hardest league in the world.
Darren Burgess: So those were the two things.
Jennelle McMaster: Did your definition of resilience change in working to that brief? Was it just fitness or was there a broader definition of resilience? Did you learn things about what resilience, what constituted resilience as you worked with these players?
Darren Burgess: Yeah, I really did. I had no appreciation of the fact that, for starters, in the two and a half years or whatever, I was there, there was three days over 25 degrees the whole time. So these players turn up every single day and they train every single day. And the common perception of soccer players in Australia in amongst the rugby codes is they're a little bit soft and they roll around the ground when they get touched and all that sort of stuff. But I can assure you that the Aussies that make it over there and the international players are tougher in a multitude of ways than getting tackled, rugby style, on a rugby field. Every single day it's raining or snowing and windy, and every single day they train, they play, like I said to you before, three times a week, and they train every single day. So you mentioned Luis Suarez in the intro. In the 18 months I was fortunate enough to work with Luis, had three days off. That's it. In 18 months, where he wasn't traveling or flying to Uruguay or playing. And a lot of people say, well, if I was getting paid that amount of money, I would have three days off.
Darren Burgess: It's just not true. In my experience, dealing with athletes and people in general, you are what you are, and money sort of amplifies, magnifies or shrinks that. And the resilience that people like Luis Suarez and Steven Gerard from my time at Liverpool is extraordinary. Not only are they judged three times a week by millions around the world and 60,000 people live at the ground, but they do have to have the physical resilience to turn up three times a week because every single team that comes to Anfield wants to win and wants to beat Liverpool when you play home or away. So, yeah, their resilience both on and off the field was extraordinary and something that I didn't appreciate till I lived it.
Jennelle McMaster: As you talk about your experience and forgive me, but I can't help but have style visuals happening in my mind. This guy coming in, and at least you're in the right code and you're in there. But how were you, an Aussie lad, able to influence the likes of a Kenny Dalglish, football royalty? What was your way of getting the kind of cut through that you needed or making a difference? Or having a voice out there as the Aussie that's never worked with Premier League to go in and cross over there and play that role well.
Darren Burgess: To give you an example of the challenge, when the English players first came back from the World Cup in 2010, Stephen Gerard, who is probably Liverpool's greatest player, along with Kenny or Sir Kenny Dalglish. And I presented to some of these superstars about how I was going to extend their career and these are the things that we're going to do as a department to help you guys win the league. Bit of a rah rah talk. There was only five or six players in the room. It was about half an hour and Stephen Gerard stood up. It's the first time I met him and he said, Are you finished? And I said yes. And he said, we'll see, and walked off and I just went, wow, challenge accepted.
Jennelle McMaster: Was it embarrassing?
Darren Burgess: I just thought, what did I just do? That was just 30 minutes wasted. Like, just do it through actions, not through words. Like, this guy's seen it all. So from then on, I just made sure I was first in, last out, and not just in terms of time spent at the training ground, because that can be a little bit of a false sense of work ethic. But I just made sure that every time the players were required to do something, that I was there, even though it might not have necessarily been my job. So whether it was a young player, 17/18, or Steven Gerard or Fernando Torres, that it was me who was doing it when players were injured, it was me who was there on days off to take them days after games when we lost. And you have five or six international players who did not want to be there the day after a game training. And it was just me and them training. It was just me who took them off and the coaches weren't there. And I could have delegated that to one of the other fitness staff, but I just made sure that I turned up every single time and that every conversation I had was about getting the best for those players once they knew.
Darren Burgess: And about five months in, I remember doing a light warm-up lap, which is a typical sort of thing that you might do before training. And Stevie said to me, I said, well see, you're one of us, and then just sort of jogged off. And I just thought that's about as best validation as I've probably had in my career. So, yeah, it was more about just turning up and just showing up and just making sure there are legitimate questions in my field, as there probably are in any field, about whether people are there just to sit on. The sideline at Anfield and not necessarily doing the job to the best of your ability, but acting in a way that helps the players, keeping them happy rather than protecting your own job rather than challenging them when it was time to challenge them. I sort of took the other approach of making sure that they knew that I was there for them, but that I would also challenge them.
Jennelle McMaster: And then, I guess, conversely, is there a moment that you remember a game match where you kind of go, oh, my God, that is my work, or it's come through here. That kind of pinch yourself moment of everything that we've been working towards here right now in this moment, I can see it. Is there something that stands out in your mind?
Darren Burgess: I guess there's two Janelle. Not to say that there was that many and I'm spoiled for choice or anything, but there are two contrasting ones. One was Carling Cup final. We were playing Cardiff, who we should have beaten, by the way, but Liverpool hadn't won a trophy in a long time, and the game went to extra time and then penalties. And I was pretty active in that extra time period with motivation and supplementation and things like that. And I felt that our guys handled that situation better than most, and that was due to some of the stuff that we'd done beforehand. Just to prepare for penalties and to prepare for that. We sort of instigated, and it's pretty common now, but this is back in 2012, preparing the players for the high pressure penalty situation by making them walk from halfway all the way down to take the penalty shootout, try and simulate that pressure, simulate penalties in training. And like I said, anybody who's involved in sport now would say, well, yeah, that makes sense, but it just wasn't done at the time. It was something there was no Twitter or anything like that where you can see video of teams training to do that.
Darren Burgess: This was something that we'd not heard done, but we instigated, and our guys handled that situation better than better than most. The other situation was a less fortunate one, but Liverpool had been taken over by new owners when I was there, who are still there, Fenway Sports Group. And they own the Boston Red Sox as well. And so they were really heavily data driven. And I bought in a data mining company from Australia into Liverpool at a reasonable expense and a great sort of personal risk. And they developed an injury prediction algorithm through a stats tool called a neural network, which is really reasonably common in military and finance. And there are many positives and negatives about a neural network, but essentially it acts more or less like a human brain, and that as you feed it more information, it learns about training loads, and it can by no means predict injuries. I have to say that because people within my industry who might be listening to this podcast saying will be saying quite rarely that you can't predict injuries, but what I can do is produce warning signs. Watch out for this, look out for that.
Darren Burgess: There's an increased risk for this player. Anyway, we instigated, and I put a lot of work into it. We're playing West Ham away, and the coaches at the time, who I won't name but decided to play Steven Gerard in a game in which by both common sense and our neural network, had said that he shouldn't play. But we were desperate for a win. So he played. After about 60 minutes, he scored, and one of the assistant coaches sort of looked over and gave me this glance like, See? I told you. This is why we picked him up, losing the game. But afterwards it was discovered that Steve had a fairly serious adductor injury and missed a couple of months of football. And after that, the coach came in and said, how did you know? I want to know all about it. So fair play to the coaching staff. They just said, what were the signs that you saw that made you sort of warn us? So that was really good sort of validation, I guess, for a whole range of us who put a lot of time into that process.
Jennelle McMaster: Okay, so now I have a Moneyball visual happening in my mind.
Darren Burgess: Not sure about the Ted comparison.
Jennelle McMaster: I think you got to own it, but you've always been really data driven as long as I've known you, and certainly way before that became quite mainstream. How have you been able to use tech and data? I guess that's a great example. Have there been other ways that you've been able to really use tech and data to influence and shape behavioral change?
Darren Burgess: Yeah, I guess the first point is, and you know me well enough, I'm reluctant to sort of say this, but it was 2012, so it was a long time ago, and a lot of the practices that are now more commonplace, they certainly weren't back then. So to answer your question, my PhD was on things like prediction and predicting career success in the AFL, given a certain set of information. So I just became really familiar and interested with various statistical modeling techniques early on. No doubt I relied on the numbers too much and left aside the personal input into it, or I guess the brain's input into some of that modeling. So I probably made some errors by looking at the GPS traces too much and didn't take into account some of the tactical nuances of the game or the personal scenarios of each of the players that I worked with. So what I think I've been able to do reasonably well is marry those two up. So I've been able to sort of say, okay, the data is telling us this, but the player is telling me that I'll lean towards the player, whereas previously I would have leaned towards the numbers.
Darren Burgess: So it's definitely a science and art scenario.
Jennelle McMaster: So you said there were a lot of learnings from you for you over that time and experience with the club. What would be some of the key learnings that you reflect on, that you've taken forward with you to your subsequent roles and in life?
Darren Burgess: In my field there's a lot of sort of common beliefs around. You have to train this way in order to get this result. You have to have this nutrition in order to maximize performance. You have to recover this way over there. I was exposed to maybe 20 different nationalities within the 25-person squad and they all had different upbringing and they all had a different training philosophy. So to go over to Brazil, which when I was there, we had a play who did his knee, to go over there and see how they rehabbed an ACL and work with the Brazilian national team people, they just did things completely different to how we'd been taught at university or through English, Australian common performance practices. And there was no difference in their return to play or return to train time frames. To get close to some of the Spanish players and see the fact that they have their pregame meal at midnight the night before, because that's when Spanish people eat. And it just blew my mind. I thought, no, this is wrong.
Jennelle McMaster: That would have blown your mind.
Darren Burgess: Absolutely like you have your pre-game the night before the game meal at 07:00 because the carbohydrates won't have time to digest in time and all those sort of things. To work with players who traveled from Uruguay to England the night before and then play the next day and still dominate when common literature tells you that for every time zone change, you need to go a day beforehand to be completely accustomed to the new time zone, let alone climate, and you just don't have time to do that. So it showed me the impact of the mental on the physical more than anything else, the number of players out of contract who are under pressure to perform, who got injured, versus those who are comfortable in their contract. So it really did teach me the more holistic aspects of performance rather than just the numbers and the data.
Jennelle McMaster: On the, I guess, the topic of resilience, there are some titles, I reckon, that have enormous pressure built into them or job titles. So comedian must have enormous pressure to always have to be funny, or a psychic must feel enormous pressure to always know stuff, what's going to happen. And you've got high performance in your title. And I think about headlines. I've seen one in the Evening Standard UK newspaper which said Arsenal have hired the best in the world. Fitness guru Darren Burgess can help shape gunners into winners. Talk to me about your resilience. Do you feel the pressure to personally, not just driving in others, but your own high performance being the absolute best in the game at all times? Have you ever felt like you've hit the wall? How do you face into the weight of the expectation that goes with what your title holds?
Darren Burgess: And there's been a few of those over the past five or six years. So that's where I feel the most pressure, when I'm unable to give my all, I guess, to the players, both from a performance point of view and also as perhaps a mentor to the staff as well. So that's when I feel like I'm under pressure. Tomorrow night, there'll be decisions around players who to take off the field, who to leave on. And I've been lucky enough to be in every coach's meeting for 25 years. I tried to work it out maybe a year ago, but I've probably been involved in, I think it's over 1100 games, at least a national level.
Darren Burgess: So with that, even through Osmosis, you're going to learn to handle pressure, okay, and be a bit more comfortable than others in that environment. So I really see it as my job, when the heat is on, to just calm everybody down and see if there's a process that we can go through that we've discussed during the week to come out the other side of the pressure. So how do I handle it. I've put myself through a transcendental meditation course about ten years ago and that's really helped. I'm not always as disciplined as I'd like to be, but certainly trying to read a lot around awareness and self-resilience and just everything from parenting to other people in my position or in similar positions. CEOs of big organizations and things like that, how they have handled it and just try and learn from as many different sources as I possibly can. I think that's answered your question, I hope.
Jennelle McMaster: Yeah, I reckon it has. And I do, I know that you do put a lot of work into taking care of yourself and always self-improvement and focus and meditation and priorities at home, so I can attest to that. I know there's been 94 letters that have been written.
Darren Burgess: It's a good question and having traveled a bit for work, the priority at the moment is to get the kids through high school in this sort of situation that they're in. So after that, though, I'd maybe like a crack at the NFL, perhaps, but I'm in no hurry, honestly. To win a flag with a Premiership with the crows and help build a team from scratch. That would be the number one priority for the moment, but, yeah, in no real hurry for anything else in the near future, that's for sure.
Jennelle McMaster: Well, you've had a pretty good job of manifesting the dream jobs for yourself, so look out, NFL. Now, I'm going to wrap up, Darren, but at the risk of making this sound like we're scripting your epitaph, when people say, Darren Burgess, what would you like them to remember about you?
Darren Burgess: I think humility would be top of the agenda. I think the ability to be humble in all circumstances is just massive. I think very giving and generous. I take the role of elder statesmen in the industry, from a professional point of view, really seriously and mentor a lot of people in that role. So generosity and then, I think, loyal. I'd like people to think that I was very loyal to them personally. So, yeah, I think those three, having not given that question any thought until 30 seconds ago, those three would probably be pretty good.
Jennelle McMaster: Very good. And look, I can say that, and I'm sure our listeners would agree that your humility certainly has come through. Certainly, given your illustrious career, the fact that you would describe yourself as the hack Aussie soccer player with a lucky first touch would probably underscore the humility that is very much part of you. And there'll be a lot of takeaways from people listening to this, some people who are much bigger football fans and sports followers than I am. But certainly for me, the idea that you keep the star players on the park is something that I think is highly relatable for us in the business world, thinking about our talent in our organizations and how we keep them on the metaphorical park building resilience into players. And that may well include, as you've pointed out, preparing people for how to handle setback and loss, or understanding the impact of the mental on the physical or the willingness to not avoid discomfort, to lean into that discomfort, are all the ways that we keep our star players on the park. I think that one of the other takeaways I have observations of you is your power of actions over words.
Jennelle McMaster: I love that we'll see comment which basically says you can say the things that you say, but your leadership is through your actions. And I think you've exemplified the power of turning up, the power of showing up, the decision to not sit on the sideline but be on the pitch. I think the takeaway around using data more holistically, the ability and willingness to get confident with data, understand it, but then put it to the side and listen to the human. I think that's where we see the real magic happen, the secret source between the data and the humanity. And I think finally being open to different ways, to different cultures and different approaches. And my takeaway from that is it's A-OK for me to have a snack at midnight. If the Spaniards can do it, so too can I. And I shall have no more criticism from you, Darren Burgess, about my consumption habits. So I wanted to thank you for your time today. As always, I love talking to you and thanks for the generosity of your insights today.
Darren Burgess: My absolute pleasure, Nellie. Look forward to catching up in person soon.

Dr. Kirstin Ferguson
Founder & CEO | Kirstin Ferguson Pty Ltd

Voice Over: While there is no extended conversation on the topic, this podcast does briefly mention domestic violence. If you find yourself in need of assistance, please call 1800 Respect, or if you're in danger, call Triple Zero. We'd also like to thank Channel Seven for the use of audio from the morning show.
Jenelle McMaster: Hello, and welcome to season four of Change Happens. I'm Jenelle McMaster, and this is a podcast exploring leadership through key moments of change. And in speaking with leaders over the course of these podcasts, it's clear that they almost always have somewhere in there a story arc that required a call to adventure or a call to action, a crossing of some sort of threshold or the encountering of some messy bits, and finally, some sort of insight and enlightenment. So in this season of Change Happens, I'm focusing more closely on my guests’ critical moments of change, and I seek to understand how they cross the threshold and discover what it was that they learned along the way. Now in this episode, I am talking with Kirsten Ferguson, and specifically, we're looking at the critical change moment that she led with the viral hashtag Celebrating Women.
Voice Over: Famous for creating the hashtag Celebrating Women. Her social media campaign empowered females everywhere.
Voice Over: Dr. Kirsten Ferguson is a globally recognized leadership expert, best-selling author, columnist, and company director. With over a decade of experience on a range of public and private company boards.
Voice Over: This leadership powerhouse is set to inspire while addressing equality.
Voice Over: And she was recently awarded an AM, in the Australia Day honors list in 2023 for her significant contribution to business and gender equality.
Voice Over: Let's go back to your 2017 social media campaign, which was hashtag Celebrating Women. What was it that fueled your desire to start it?
Kirstin Ferguson: Well, like many women, I was fed up. And I've always believed that every single woman is a role model for someone else. And so I made a commitment to see if I could celebrate two women every single day from all walks of life and all over the world, and by the end of the year, celebrated 757 women from 37 countries.
Voice Over: So what happened in 2017 when Kirsten found herself sending out a tweet with a simple but powerful message behind it? A change movement with a story worth sharing.
Kirstin Ferguson: We all thrive if women thrive. So I want everyone to be able to achieve what it is they want to achieve.
Jenelle McMaster: Kirstin Ferguson welcome back to the pod.
Kirstin Ferguson: Janelle, I feel so privileged to be back again. Thank you for inviting me.
Jenelle McMaster: Well, for those who don't know, you were the very first podcast guest I ever had on Change Happens. Let's be clear, I didn't invite you back because we're running out of guests. Not by any stretch to the imagination. It was really when I think about as I said, the focus on this season is all about zeroing in on those key moments of leading or experiencing change, I just couldn't help but think immediately of you. That's why I rang you and the change that you created with Celebrating Women movement.
Kirstin Ferguson: I guess that time in my life in 2017 when celebrating women sort of came about out of nothing was a really significant moment that I could never have predicted was going to happen.
Jenelle McMaster: So I'm dying to get into that with you. And as you say, you can never predict it happened. I would even push it even further and say I have it on the public record. In your opening speech at an event a year before in Brisbane, and I think you were speaking to about 1000 people, it was an International Women's Day event. And you actually said, and I quote, my gender is the least interesting aspect about me. It is the only thing in my life I have no control over, the only thing I had no part in choosing. So that strikes me as quite interesting because fast forward to a year later and you created a global movement around profiling and celebrating women and then writing the number one management book Women Kind. Tell me what happened, what changed? Why did you make the thing that you called least interesting about you an actual thing?
Kirstin Ferguson: Oh, Janelle, I have to congratulate you. You've probably done the deepest research on all the interviews I've done on Celebrating Women to find that quote, because you're quite right, I hope, for most of my careers. I've just turned 50. And celebrating women happened when I was about 45, I think 55 years ago now. So for the first 45 years of my life, I hoped no one noticed I was female at all. And that's because I'd come through really male-dominated environments. I'd joined the military when I was 17, I'd done really well, and I'd sort of learnt that keeping my gender, the least interesting part about me, as I said, worked. Now, obviously, research supports why we do that, because if you keep your head down, you survive. How wrong could I have been? And you were quite right. A year later, I would never have predicted that I would have been loudly and proudly celebrating women on social media or that this thing was just going to grow out of control and go the way that it did. So what happened, I think if anyone listening remembers back to the start of 2017. Women were taking to their streets in their pink pussy hats.
Kirstin Ferguson: America had just elected a man who had boasted of sexual transgressions. We had very few women heads of state around the world, still very few women CEOs, and one woman every week on average was losing their life to family violence in Australia.
Jenelle McMaster: It was also a time, I think, from memory. Harvey Weinstein was being brought to trial that year as well, wasn't he?
Kirstin Ferguson: A bit later. So, interestingly, MeToo all happened in the same year, but later in the year. But there was clearly this groundswell of women generally feeling fed up and I was one of them. And I remember I'm online, I use social media a lot, I really enjoy it, but I remember seeing a thread of tweets aimed at an Australian female journalist and it was just this typical abusive thread of tweets. I can't even remember what they were. And they were aimed at Patricia Carvelis from the ABC. And I was on the board of the ABC at the time and I remember thinking, if someone had said that while I was standing next to her or anyone else, you would do something, you call the police on some occasions, but when you're online, you really feel like a bystander. And I just, I was on holidays it was right at the start of the year, beginning of January, sitting on the beach in a hammock, and I just remember feeling really pissed off and thinking, well, what can I do? I'm sick of watching this, I'm sick of seeing everything that's going on. So I took myself off for a walk along the beach and went off to a local brewery.
Kirstin Ferguson: I wish I had a better story, because I knew I was going to tell this story so many times, but I had a shandy at the brewery, so I'm not even particularly interesting. And I remember writing down on the back of a napkin, like in the movies, four questions. And on the way back along the beach, I rang my mum and asked her these four questions and I posted her answers and some photos onto social media. And I didn't tell anyone she was my mum. And I noticed that my newsfeed was just that bit more positive temporarily. And Mum was a retired nurse. Nothing or anyone particular that we would normally hear about. So, not being one to do things by halves, I then committed the very next day to seeing if I could celebrate two women from all walks of life and from anywhere in the world every single day of 2017.
Kirstin Ferguson: The four questions in celebrating women firstly, I only introduced every woman I celebrated by their first name. So I asked them how would they describe what they do without using a position title? And that's not that easy. So anyone listening, men or women, think about how you would tell a five year old what it is you do. The second questions was, what did you want to do when you're at school? And I asked Mum that because I literally just had no idea. So I was curious. The third question was three words to describe your life to date. And the last question was, who do you hope to inspire and why? And there was no qualifying criteria to be involved. All I needed was someone to identify as a woman. And I certainly celebrated trans women as well. And just through word of mouth, through the celebratory nature of what I was doing and through the lack of obstacles, I ended up celebrating women from all over the world. 757 women from 37 countries, and they were as diverse as house painters, business leaders, women at home with their kids, military officers, truck drivers.
Kirstin Ferguson: Some were famous, most weren't. There was a pet whisperer from no surprise, California, and everything in between. And the whole thing was self-nominating. And I had no resources. This was just me and my laptop and a bit of an idea, and it just grew and grew and grew. And I think one of the really important lessons for me was not to overthink things. If I had thought through how this was going to go or how big it was going to get or where it would take me, I would have spent far too long planning and thinking about it. And I'm so glad I didn't.
Jenelle McMaster: Such an important lesson. Before we get into that, I want to go back to I'm imagining you walking on the beach, and you go to a brewery, sit down with anger and you write out furiously on a napkin these four questions. What was it about these four questions that I'm not sure how I can connect this anger with those beautiful questions? Take me through the bridge to that.
Kirstin Ferguson: Yeah. And that is another really good question, because I'm not someone who has ever responded to trolls by being angry and I'm just not a confrontational person anyway, so it never would have crossed my mind to do anything other than something positive. And the four questions then came about from me thinking, well, if I'm going to ring Mum, what am I going to ask her? And those four questions never varied and I would have given them ten minutes thought, if that sitting, drinking a shandy. So it's remarkable that they ended up being answered by everyone from, like, the Foreign Minister at the time, Julie Bishop, right through to a hotel cleaner who I celebrated, and they applied. And I think that universality of asking people about what do they do without using a position description. And little did I know, but that was probably the most inclusive question, because it meant you could say, I look after children or I help children read books to the all those kinds of things that you might want to answer. It didn't matter. And I remember getting a very senior CEO sort of use her title and I send it back and went, no, thanks.
Kirstin Ferguson: You need to tell me what it is you do. Yeah.
Jenelle McMaster: What I really like about this, when you think about the power of mindset change, one of the things I remember that I do it with my kids. In fact, they do it with me too. If you say if you find yourself saying I have to go to work today, or I have to go and study today, and you change the word from I have to, to I get to, I get to go to work today, I get to study, it completely shifts your whole affect. Like biologically you change, you sort of go, oh no, it is a privilege to have a job to go to, I get the access to go to school and study. It's sort of counteracting something with a very different way of looking at it. And I guess if you've been talking about the denigration of women, but now you've shifted to the celebration of women, was that what the intention was, to counteract something negative and shift the mindset and the whole affect to something positive? Or was it not as much as that, it just evolved.
Kirstin Ferguson: I think it was a combination. I have always understood the skills and the benefits of reframing situations, but I think I did that unconsciously at the time. It would be probably false of me years on, having now written about it so extensively to claim that there was some great meaning behind it. I suspect it's more reflective of who I am and that even watching that thread of tweets from the troll, I would never have countered it with angry words. It seemed more natural to want to fill my newsfeed with really positive stories, as opposed to I wanted to try and drown out that denigration as opposed to tackle the denigration head-on. And one of the benefits of doing that was remarkably, I received and the women involved received little to no trolling throughout the campaign. And I ended up collaborating with Twitter throughout that year because it became such a significant movement and did an event with Jack Dorsey, who was the founder of Twitter and certainly was still leading it back then. And he too was amazed because most of these kinds of initiatives, especially if they involve women, unfortunately would be the subject of fairly torrid trolling.
Kirstin Ferguson: And I was terribly worried that these women who I was being allowed to share photos and things like that and their stories would be trolled. But it never happened. And I truly think it's because of the positivity of the campaign and because I was celebrating those trolls. Mothers and sisters and neighbors and teachers and everyday women, it never sought to put particular women that we often hear about in the limelight. I really wanted to show that every single woman is a role model. And I like to think that the reason we didn't get trolled was because of that.
Jenelle McMaster: Why did you call your mum first?
Kirstin Ferguson: Well, she's not on social media. And I thought she'll trust me to just answer the questions and send the photos without any real explanation, and that she did. So I just needed a test dummy, really. And it was perfect because those four questions were questions I wanted to ask mum and she answered them with a sentence as I asked her. And she gave me some photos. So she was my very first profile and profile number 757. The last one was my eldest daughter. So it was really lovely how it all came full circle.
Jenelle McMaster: It's beautiful. It is beautiful. As you said, you had no idea. If you had known then what it was going to be, you probably would have gone back and started overthinking things and looking for resources. When did you realize that this tweet or this was shifting from a moment to an actual movement?
Kirstin Ferguson: I can remember. The day was when there was a three-month queue of women wanting to be celebrated and they were chasing me, saying, when is my turn? And I'm like, oh, my God, what have I done? Because it was a full-time job, it became and I obviously had all my existing responsibilities that were keeping me busy anyway. So for a year, my family would laugh, I would get up early. That's the only time I could do it and celebrate my two women post my ladies, I used to call it, and do that. And every single day of the year, whether I was overseas or sick or Christmas or birthdays or whatever, I did it and didn't miss a day. And as the year progressed, and it obviously became well known, I had lots of offers of help, but I turned all of them down. I really felt this was something I had committed to and I wanted to make sure it was me doing justice to the women who had put themselves forward, most of whom 90% of whom I didn't know. And I felt a huge sense of responsibility to tell their stories and to celebrate them in the way that I thought they deserved.
Jenelle McMaster: Did it ever feel overwhelming?
Kirstin Ferguson: Yeah, every day. I think I got to about July and I was thinking, oh, my God, I've got another six months to go. But I've never really been a quitter. I said I would do this and I did. And again as it progressed and people loved it and it became a daily habit towards the end of the year, I had many people saying, can you keep it going? And that was a clear, oh, no, absolutely not. And I really believe in handing the baton on as well. And so one of the most rewarding things of that experience has been the number of spin off. Celebrating women in firefighting was one. Or celebrating women in New Guinea is another I'm aware of. I don't own this concept. I want other people to take it and run with it.
Jenelle McMaster: What did you learn during that period of time?
Kirstin Ferguson: I think I, as a leader, learned a lot about diversity and inclusion. And it's not enough as leaders to just say, I want diversity and hope it's going to follow unwittingly. And I think it's just, again, because of who I am, it was incredibly inclusive, so I had no barriers to entry. I celebrated every single woman equally. And as a result, that visible difference meant that more and more women saw themselves in people they wouldn't have normally seen being celebrated. And I remember there was an autistic lady who openly said she was autistic and I celebrated her and it opened me up to this whole network of other women on the spectrum because they had seen her. And so I would always see this sort of pattern where I might celebrate someone like that, and then two weeks later, I'd have this influx of other women on the spectrum wanting to be part of it, which is magnificent. And the same thing happened in different countries. I'd see a wave of Nigerian heritage women from the UK that was another sort of subset that somehow discovered it. And I think it's a real reminder that inclusion must be the strategy, and from that, diversity will follow it's not the other way around.
Jenelle McMaster: Well, that all sounds really magnificent and positive, but as you say, people can be pretty brutal, especially online, because they become faceless and you can troll without consequence. Was there a dark side in all of this? Did you face any trolling? Did you see any downsides in doing this?
Kirstin Ferguson: I have to be honest and say no. I think I remember one person being critical, and this is how rare it was. And then that person being absolutely flooded by all the fans of celebrating women, that I didn't really have to do anything at all. It really was an example of putting positivity out into the world brought that back. I still meet people today who I celebrated, and they tell me about how it gave them the confidence to go and apply for a job or things like I almost can't get my head around that posting and celebrating someone online could do that. But if you're someone who's never been recognized publicly before, (Jenelle: so many people feel seen.) Yeah. Even in what to us, you and I, who has a profile and we do this sort of thing a lot, it doesn't feel like that would actually make a difference, but I know it has made a difference. And in the book Women Kind, which I wrote with Katherine Fox, we interviewed a number of women who'd participated and they talked about this confidence that it gave them having been seen.
Kirstin Ferguson: Probably there were critics at the time, especially at the beginning, who may have thought it's pretty superficial what does doing a post about with four questions actually mean? And I understand that, but I think it judges the importance of simple measures to celebrate and amplify women. And this was a simple but highly effective way that was consistent.
Jenelle McMaster: That's so fantastic. And I sort of reflect on that simplicity comment. I know that. I remember Catherine Fagg. I think it was in your book, but Catherine Fagg, she was the President of Chief Executive Women at the time, said the concept of celebrating women showed you can make a difference quite quickly, you can keep it simple and step forward, and you don't need to go to a highly complex model, which I think is exactly what you did
Kirstin Ferguson: It definitely wasn't complex. It was just a lot of work.
Jenelle McMaster: Was there anything about from the four questions themselves that you learned? Because you are right, they're simple questions, but perhaps that surfaced some insights in and of themselves.
Kirstin Ferguson: My dad. He was a big supporter of the whole thing. Every day he'd ring me up and every single profile want to talk about the person but he made a word cloud of those words at the end and he had it printed on everything. It was very lovely, but what it meant is I could see the most common words and the most common word to describe your life to date from those women was “challenging”, and then very quickly after was “rewarding”. So it's that real mix of there were a lot of women that had tough lives, but they ultimately found their way through. I think the most telling question was, who do you hope to inspire and why? And that one always revealed a lot more about the woman than you'd think that question would, because if it was a woman who had gone through domestic violence, they would often say, I want to inspire other women living in fear with my story of having escaped that.
Kirstin Ferguson: Or it might be other single mothers, and so there was all these different paths that women's lives took, and it often came out in that question.
Jenelle McMaster: What did you learn about yourself during that time?
Kirstin Ferguson: Well, I never did the profile I kept getting asked, and I never wanted to do it myself. I think I learned I'm very determined, so even when I really had so many other priorities, I never stopped on this one. And I think, as you said at the beginning, and it's only really thinking about it now as you're asking, that it is in my nature to always turn things around and reframe it from being a negative to how we can benefit from it and wanting to benefit as many people as possible. And I never, ever would have guessed that I would end up doing something like this or that it would be so meaningful to me, but it was genuinely the most rewarding year of my life.
Jenelle McMaster: You know you've got this whole kind of combo of Barack Obama and Ted Lasso in here with the positivity and that whole when they go low, we go high vibes coming through.
Kirstin Ferguson: It is a bit I hadn't thought of that.
Jenelle McMaster: So on the other side of that time, actually, that's 2017. We're 2023 now. Have you had any further reflections? If you think about the reflections in that time and what you're experiencing to life after, lots and lots of things have happened. You've done so many things since then, and I want to cover off your latest book in a moment. But what are your reflections from that period of time that you then took on to apply to what you then subsequently did?
Kirstin Ferguson: I think it was this wonderful reminder at the time, which I've now really embraced, this idea that no one gave me permission to do this. No one said, I think it's time for you to go and do this. And here now we'll give you the authority to go and post about women. I just took it. And we look at so many people that lead movements or far bigger and more meaningful and impactful than mine, but things like Black Lives Matter or Greta Thunberg or Me Too, which all sort of came through that year. And it really all starts with just a single person saying enough is enough. And while celebrating women was minuscule compared to those, it's the same principle. And I think it's this reminder that anyone can do this sort of thing. It didn't really depend on who I knew because I wasn't asking people I knew. It didn't really depend on a profile as such because at the beginning of that year, my profile wasn't anything like it went on to be. I think this movement created a profile around that. So it is definitely something that we can all, if we're passionate about it.
Kirstin Ferguson: And the reason you're doing it is pure. Now, I am sounding like Ted Lasso, but if you're doing it to think that it'll lead to book deals and different things, then I doubt it will happen. But if you genuinely have no expectation of anything other than wanting to make a bit of a positive difference, then I think you're in with a shot.
Jenelle McMaster: You went on to do many other things, including writing yet another best-selling book called Head and Heart the Art of Modern Leadership. And I'm deeply proud of getting a chance to read an early version of that, or the version one of the first versions of it and writing a testimonial. But there is an interesting parallel, I thought, in that book, to the celebrating women movement, in that with the hashtag, you chose to celebrate female role models from all walks of life, not just those in the public spotlight, as you've said. And with this latest book, you chose to focus on everybody as a potential leader, not just those in the workplace. That holds an official title on an org chart. So I was going to ask you whether that was a fair line to draw between the two, a continued desire to make more types of role models visible and accessible. It's in there, it's in all of us. Can do you draw that same sort of direct link between?
Kirstin Ferguson: Yeah, I think I can now. It's clearly something I've obviously believed for a long time. And I really wanted to remind not just women this time, but men as well, that we are all leaders. Whether it's just of your family or you might be a single parent. It's just of your kids or in your community or at work, whatever it is you're leading in your role. And there's a lot of nuance to this, obviously. There's also formal leaders that might have lots of followers. But let's put that to one side and just think about all of us. And I did really want to bring that out and remind people that if you are already leading, you may as well leave as positive a legacy as you can. Because I think for some people, they haven't either considered the impact of their words and actions and behaviors and that they are role modeling that to those around them every single day. And modern leaders, obviously in this book, I argue those that we need and can lead with both their head and their heart. And you can do that in any context.
Kirstin Ferguson: So whether you're leading at home or whether you're at work, the best kind of modern leaders actually integrate the leader they are across all those spectrums.
Jenelle McMaster: And so, the book has been doing amazingly well on the charts. I know it's been flying off the shelves. Where to from here for you?
Kirstin Ferguson: Well, I'm going to be writing another one. I'm just working through now with my wonderful publishers, the next book. But I am loving working with organizations around what it means to be a head and heart leader and helping people from the most entry-level graduates in an organization right through to the CEO. It's the same principles and thinking about it. And I would encourage anyone listening to visit headheartleader.com because you can measure your own head and Heart leadership totally free. And it's just interesting to see what your strengths are and areas you might like to focus on and then see whether or not you're more inclined to be a head or a heart leader.
Jenelle McMaster: We go. I actually did fill in that questionnaire myself. You and I had a chat about that, if you recall. (Kirstin: Yes), well worth doing. Now, finally, I'm going to draw to a close, but you mentioned that your dad had done that wonderful word cloud analysis of all 757 women profiles. And I know that you also said you refuse to do answer the four questions yourself, but in that word cloud, he had the top three words came out, as you said, challenging, rewarding and fulfilling. What would be your words if I asked you at least just that question?
Kirstin Ferguson: That's a good one, which I have not prepared an answer for. I don't want to use those three because I think they do apply to all of us. I think mine is always my life has been surprising, loving. I've always felt loved through my life and exciting. Like, I love my life. I love the different things I get to do. I love that I write books while I also sit on boards and I get to go to writers’ festivals, which I've just done the last two weekends, and yet I'm also sitting in audit committee meetings. Like, my life is very bizarre, but I love it and I feel very privileged to live the life that I do.
Jenelle McMaster: That is fantastic. They are three phenomenal words, and you used I get to in there as well, which I love hearing, because it does change the emotional temperature. And I have to say, you've talked about something that was big in your life in 2017. And the way your face lights up, there's such a glow. There's such genuine pride and joy in what you did, but also what you experienced, who you met, what that's created. And you can't make that up. You certainly can't carry up that kind of energy unless you feel it from within. And it's so evident to me.
Kirstin Ferguson: Can I tell you, I was on a flight just a week ago, and a lady came up to me and quoted her profile number and told me how much it had all meant to her. So it really is phenomenal.
Jenelle McMaster: It's so amazing. And so for me, there is so much in this conversation, Kirsten, but I love that you showed what you can do, even with a negative emotion. You were fed up, and you channeled that. Rather than just a little quiet rant, you did something about it. I love that you asked yourself the question, what can I do? And I think it's a good reminder to not overthink things. I'm a great offender in overthinking things. And the more I think about it, the more I think, oh, I better not do it, and I don't have enough resources. And you overegg it on a whole lot of things. You moved into a space without, I guess, anointed permission. But clearly there was a huge need and a desire and a yearning for that. And I think you have shown the power of positivity, the power of reframing. And I love the point around reducing or removing the barriers to entry, because what that makes me realize is that there are so many obstacles. There are the obstacles that we have in our own minds about, I can't do this, I can't do that. There are the obstacles that you can see and then the obstacles that you can't see.
Jenelle McMaster: And so by just removing any hurdle, you've removed the visible and the invisible. And I think that level of accessibility opens up so many new pathways, and that genuine intentionality with no other ulterior motive means that that's always going to trump the negativity. No one ever can pull you down when you know that's the genuine motivation. And I think you've also lived and breathed what a grassroots movement can be, how that operates. I think your three words I understand the three words, I think they are so genuine. And long may the many, many chapters of celebrating women continue to unfold around the world. And thank you, just thank you for your continued work and can't wait to read the next book.
Kirstin Ferguson: Yes, I may come and interview you for that one, Janelle.
Jenelle McMaster: I'm here for it. Got the mic set up.
Kirstin Ferguson: Thank you for having me.
Jenelle McMaster: Thanks, Kirsten.

Dr. Jemma Green
Co-Founder & Executive Chairman | Powerledger

Jenelle McMaster: Hey, Jemma. Welcome.
Jemma Green: Hey, Janelle. Thanks for having me.
Jenelle McMaster: A lot of people do have, you know, their epiphanies or their awakenings when hiking the Camino Trail in Spain. Take me through yours. What was it about the moment on the hike that got you thinking about what would eventually become Powerledger?
Jemma Green: Well, I had left London and was moving back to Perth, where I am from. And then when I was on the hike, I just started to get this idea in my head that I wanted to build an ecovillage. I related to it, like, it was a bit random and audacious and although I worked in banking in London, I worked in sustainability in my last part of my career. So I think that's partly where the kind of idea had come from in working in sustainability. And then eventually I shared it with a friend of mine and she had suggested that I speak to Professor Peter Newman at Curtin University in Perth. And I just wrote him an email and said, oh, hi, I'm a returning Western Australian. This is my background. I would be keen to build an ecovillage in Perth. I knew it was a very audacious thing to just write in an email, but I just wrote it, I think, because I was on a holiday and I felt more void. And then he wrote back almost like immediately, overnight, and he said, oh, that's a great idea. And he copied in the Mayor of Fremantle.
Jemma Green: And within a week of my getting back, I had, like, coffee with the mayor. We had found this site just in Fremantle, in the suburb of White Gum Valley that was already doing, contemplating quite a lot of stuff. And the piece that I added to it was the energy system, like a shared solar and battery system within that ecovillage.
Jenelle McMaster: What did the ecovillage mean to you? Like, are you a citizen? I want to build an ecovillage. Why? What was the idea in your head and why did you think that was something you wanted to do? And importantly, why did you think it was something you could do?
Jemma Green: I think it was a random thought. (Jenelle: Okay). I listened to another podcast that you had done with Kirsten Ferguson and she explained how she just got this idea in her head to interview her mum and it was a bit random and I would put it in that bucket. It was like really out of nowhere idea that kind of just popped into my head. But it wasn't random in the sense of, I'd been working in sustainability and I was very interested in that and I just completed a Master's. It was just random is the best way to describe it.
Jenelle McMaster: There's something nice about when you are free from the constraints of your normal day-to-day activities that something gets unlocked in you, right? Your sort of more creative in thinking separate thoughts, kind of follow the paths that they do. And maybe that's the beauty of taking breaks and allowing that creative thinking to kick in. And then add to that a sight of audacity or audaciousness, I don't know which one works in that sentence, but then you have it there, you have the genesis of your ideas, but then what about thinking that you could do something about it? That's the element of, yeah, I've got this idea, but I reckon I can make this happen. Where does that come from?
Jemma Green: Well, how you just described that I think is perfect. Like something about taking yourself out of the matrix. And also hiking for me is like meditating. Like, when I now have thoughts I need to figure out, I go for a walk and that helps me clear my head. I mean, it's no surprise there. But this was like a bigger thought, I guess, from like, a bigger walk. And then in terms of like taking action on it, I think when the idea started to have a life of its own, in a sense, when I pitched it, that was kind of like some more momentum around it. And then he said, we can get you a PhD scholarship. I said yes to that and then probably halfway through the PhD, I got really stuck.
Jenelle McMaster: You got stuck?
Jemma Green: Yeah.
Jenelle McMaster: Where did you get stuck? What happened?
Jemma Green: Well, I wanted this shared solar and battery system for the ccovillage and I'd settled back into life in Perth and I actually met my husband, like, a week after I got back to Perth. That's another story. Like, I met his parents in Italy in a restaurant and they set us up on a blind date. But anyway, I got married and then I had a baby. Thought I'm having a bit of maternity leave and I was also stuck in my PhD. And the stuckness was about I wanted to create the ability to share energy and trade energy within the Ecovillage, and I could not find any software that did that. So I wanted, like, say you and I lived in the Ecovillage together and I worked FIFO. I got allocated some of the electricity from the solar panels and some of the electricity from the batteries, but then I'm not home to consume it and I wanted to be able to trade that with you and then you pay me some money and that offsets my electricity bill. I was searching for software that could do that and I couldn't find anything that could do that.
Jemma Green: And about seven weeks after having Emily, my first child, I got an email from like, a former JPMorgan colleague of mine introducing me to John Bullitch, my now business partner. And he had developed some applications using blockchain technology in other sectors and he wanted some introductions to my network. And I kind of read the email and went, I'm on maternity leave. And I just shut the email down, I'm just going to ignore that. And then I just thought, oh, no, I should reply. I met him and he was telling me about this technology called Blockchain and he was so enthusiastic about it. This is February 2016. At that time, not many people had even heard about Blockchain and my awareness of it was very limited, really. I'd heard of Bitcoin, I said, what could it do for my PhD research project? This is my problem that I'm stuck on. And we started to look together. We saw so many possibilities and a lot of the problems that exist with centralized record-keeping systems in the context of energy, and also the problems that exist with centralized energy systems, they could be solved by this technology.
Jemma Green: And so we got very excited and we just decided spontaneously to set up a company. And I put that also in the random bucket I didn't expect.
Jenelle McMaster: Jemma, you've been talking around the elements of this in a little bit there for Energy and Blockchain solutions, but in reasonably simple words. So more than a slogan, but less than a PhD dissertation. What is the change that you're trying to drive?
Jemma Green: Yeah, so energy markets have been centralized for a century. So that's like coal-fired power station or gas fired power station, bringing electricity one direction to people's homes and businesses. And then in the past 20 years, we've started to see a two-directional system, a bi-directional system caused by people installing solar panels on their roofs and wind farms and things like that, that are not at the transmission end of the grid, but are sitting in the distribution part of the grid. So it's not just electricity flowing one way, it's two ways. And the way that that was facilitated was through what's called a feed-in tariff, which is basically saying if you export your electricity, you get an amount of money. And it was very successful, but also very expensive. As we know in Australia, a third of the houses have rooftop solar now, but what it didn't do is it didn't make sure that the electricity got put where there's actually demand. And electricity, you have to balance supply and demand in all parts of the grid, otherwise the grid fails and you have brownouts and blackouts. And when you've got a one-directional system, the whole system was geared up to balance supply and demand using the One Direction.
Jemma Green: And when you start using the Two Direction, it starts to not cope with this. So you've got too much energy in one suburb and not enough in another. And how do you solve that? Well, you solve that by upgrading a substation or a transformer or millions of millions and tens of millions of dollars to do that. And so what has started to happen is we've had to change the grid infrastructure, the poles and wires, and it's become really expensive. So the feed-in tariff model became almost a victim of its own success. And now what's being seen around the world as companies and countries set net zero targets or renewable energy targets, they realize that that model is broken and they need a different way to encourage more renewables on the grid without it pushing up the price of electricity. Because in all countries that have a lot of variable renewable energy, so that's solar and wind, they have the highest electricity costs in the world. So the concept of a distributed energy market is that there are price signals for you. And I say you and I live on the same street to trade energy with each other.
Jemma Green: Or say I have solar panels and you have a battery. You can store my solar, excess solar in your battery during the day and then I'll buy it off you at night. And that helps balance supply and demand on the grid. I hope I didn't get too technical.
Jenelle McMaster: No, I feel like what I'm hearing is it's about aligning supply and demand in a two-way distributed energy market in a cost-effective way.
Jemma Green: Perfect. Yeah, exactly. And so how do you do that? How do you actually make that trade happen between you and me or the shopping center and me, it's not just necessarily households, but it's other businesses as well. So you can do that with a centralized system. But what we've seen in centralized record-keeping systems is they can be very costly to maintain and they're fraught with issues. So most people don't know how many problems exist in these kind of centralized systems. But just for example, Dole Food, the Pineapple Company, they had issued 30% more shares than existed. And this got discovered, I think around 2017, 2018, because they weren't managing their shareholder registry correctly. And in the case of energy, there are so many issues with incorrect bills, the record-keeping systems from centralized databases of fraud. And sometimes, like, there's a case in India, sadly, recently, where somebody's bill was like, you know, thousands of dollars when it would otherwise be just, you know, under 100, and they couldn't get anywhere with the utility and they committed suicide. Yeah. And so the system isn't necessarily geared up to deal with addressing these issues particularly well.
Jemma Green: And there are also cases like that in the UK and Australia, actually, all around the world. So I could see there's a problem with centralized energy systems and the centralized record-keeping systems. And there's also this problem that exists in electricity grids as we put more distributed energy in. And what the blockchain provides in that scenario is an ability to track each kilowatt hour with a really rock solid audit trail that's very trustworthy, but allows that trade of energy and also the payment of money between you and I to happen very seamlessly and efficiently. And so I think that if you have a decentralized energy market, if you have a distributed energy market without a decentralized record-keeping system, I think it's going to be fraught and that you won't get as many people participating in it or there'll be lots of issues. And in terms of the blockchain, okay, I think there's probably just to say about blockchains, they're not all created equal. So everyone's heard of the bitcoin, and that is a particular type of blockchain that just, you know, has a bitcoin on it and you transfer it from one person to the next and it can only process seven transactions per second.
Jemma Green: It's very slow and it doesn't have any functionality in it. And then the kind of next era or generation of blockchains has what's called smart contracts. So that's like programmable tokens that can perform a function. So for example, if I said if the weather is 47 degrees, pay Janelle $500, you can put that functionality inside the token. And that's called a smart contract. And that was like a big innovation from the bitcoin, which we'd call a gen one blockchain, to Ethereum, which is like a gen two blockchain. But the problem with Ethereum is it's also slow. It can only process ten to twelve transactions per second. And so it has been great for experimenting with new things and I'll give you a couple of examples in a second, but it suffered from this speed issue. And then the third generation of blockchains, which is where we're kind of seeing right now, is around smart contracts that have this programmable aspect to it, but that also have a lot of throughput. So they can process 50,000 transactions per second. So it's a big shift. And why am I saying that what it provides is transformative. I'll give you some examples.
Jemma Green: So on gen three blockchains, which is Salana as an example, and the difference between the reason they can process 50,000 transactions a second versus ten to twelve is they process all the blocks at the same time in parallel, whereas Ethereum processes one block and then another block. Don't want to get too technical, but just to explain why it's been able to do that is really interesting, for me at least. But what it makes possible is huge. So if you think about how did Uber get invented? Uber got invented because there was GPS and then there were maps, and then lots of people had phones, and then because of all those ingredients existed, uber could be invented. And lots of people talk about blockchain, about it's just another record-keeping system, but that's just the base layer that it needs to exist for the innovation really to be unlocked. And some of the I'll just give you three quick examples. So there's a map solution built on Salana, which actually everyone who's got a dash cam can send information to the map and they get paid in tokens, which they can redeem for money. And so the map is constantly updated, whereas the Google Maps only gets updated, say, every 18 months.
Jemma Green: So this map is super fine-grained, and it's engaged citizens in an ecosystem using a token economy. To do that, and to do that map, keep it updated, you need 50,000 transactions per second. You need a lot of throughput. Yeah, or another one, cloud computing. Not everyone's using all their cloud services, and they want to have a secondary market for trading surplus cloud allocation. So using tokens, they can give access to their cloud and receive payment for that. And so they're basically utilizing surplus cloud that is very expensive. And then third parties can access cloud from lots of different providers at a cheaper rate without having a contract in place. The same goes for and that has a lot of transactions per second. So you could never do that on Ethereum, but you can do that on a gen three blockchain like Salana. And then a third and final example would be for WiFi. So I've got a great connection. I'm not using it all. I can just set up and basically sell my excess WiFi and monetize that and it's securely giving access to a third party. And through the token system, I get paid, and then I could redeem those tokens for cash.
Jemma Green: So that whole thing, it's analogous to that Uber example that I gave. But you can't necessarily envisage a lot of this stuff in advance. You didn't know that Uber was going to invent itself because you had GPS and maps and wide adoption of smartphones. And I think in the case of electricity, you've got basically a secondary market for surplus energy. It's the same analogy. And what we're seeing now is the changing of regulation to enable these new innovations to kind of pop up. So, yeah, I think the blockchain is really known about the record-keeping system, but I think that's the first step. The second step is what can that record-keeping system plus high throughput on a chain actually provide in inventing new commercial models and new business models?
Jenelle McMaster: Amazing and complex stuff. And I can hear the passion coming right through you, Jemma, when you speak about this. What I'm interested in is - not everybody that you speak to gets this.
Jenelle McMaster: I might put myself in that bucket or they'll be having different lenses on it, right? So they might be a technologist who literally gets blockchain, or they might be an energy regulator who gets that space, or they might understand more about business models in this space and whatever, but they don't get that whole picture. Or they might not be anything to do with any of those things, but they need to be convinced of this because they're going to unlock capital or whatever the thing is. So what's it been like over these years? And I can imagine that your own learnings have come thick and fast around. How do you distill the messages and how do you explain and verbalize this idea to people? What did you learn about communicating in a space. As you've just said, a lot of this stuff couldn't even be envisaged at the time, or there wasn't even the technology capabilities at a certain time, or they weren't applied to this. So you had to paint a picture about possibilities at times when people either didn't understand it or it wasn't even quite there yet. Tell me about your learnings on the communication on a journey like this.
Jemma Green: Yeah, well, it's crucial to acknowledge that there's a lot of viewpoints and criticisms regarding Blockchain technology, and then there's lots of people that hold critical opinions on it on Blockchain deeming it like ineffective or overhyped or lacking problem-solving capabilities. So you have to recognize those sentiments. Like, for example, like Nurial RabinI, who's like an economist and professor at New York University. He says Blockchain is a solution in search of a problem. And there's an author of David Gerhard, he wrote this book called Attack of 50-foot Blockchain of the 50-foot Blockchain. And he said Blockchain is the most overhyped technology ever. It's no better than a Glorified database. I could go on. There's lots of them and I actually respect those opinions. And I think if you don't actually accept them and respect them, you don't actually engage with them and realize that there's a communication job to be done there. That is the sentiment, because perhaps they don't understand the problems that exist in centralized databases. So, like, you know, those examples that I gave you are about Dole or the billing systems. Most people wouldn't know that those things exist or that there's resistance to deal with issues when they get brought up, or they think that Blockchain is a record-keeping system, but they don't realize that it can unlock that.
Jemma Green: So it is all about my job, I think, is more about explaining those things and trying to find a way to connect to people in terms of what is relevant and important to them. And yeah, my success at that is varied. I would say sometimes I'm more succinct and sometimes I go. But you can see when you get a better reaction to something. Like, for example, I talk about Blockchain as being a bit like barcodes. In supermarkets sometimes Jenelle doesn't go to the supermarket because of the barcode. She doesn't go, I'm going to Kohl's because it's got barcodes. But the fact that it's got barcodes means that the stock control is better. Or when you go through the till, it's fast or there's less mistakes, but the equally legitimate is the corner store that doesn't use barcodes. So it's not like you can't have a supermarket experience without barcodes. And it's the same with Blockchain. You can do a lot of this stuff without it. But what it provides in having it is a more efficient system that builds trust and that can unlock innovation, I would say. I think you've got to recognize that there are these alternative views, and you've got to take people on a journey that they can relate to.
Jemma Green: And yeah, I have varying success with that.
Jenelle McMaster: If you think about those varied experiences of success, tell me about a time when you really felt, oh, my God, we are totally on the same page, and it was one of those breakthrough moments. Does one come to mind for you? Anything that's made you go, wow, this really hit, this landed, and now we're going to be able to do something as a result of having unlocked that understanding or ignited a desire to participate?
Jemma Green: Yeah, well, just a couple of months ago in India, Uttar Pradesh, which is the largest and most popular state in India, changed its regulations and wrote into the regulation the ability to trade energy peer to peer using blockchain. And I didn't envisage that happening. We weren't working on that, as in, let's try and make the regulations change there.
Jemma Green: That just happened out of it. But I interviewed, actually, the chairman for the regulator for a report. Like, he's writing the foreword for the report, and I asked him, Why did you do this? And I realized that the things that we'd been saying actually landed and gelled with him as well.
Jenelle McMaster: How did that feel for you, Jemma, when you had that realization? What did that feel like?
Jemma Green: I was so relieved because taking on a project like Bowel Ledger, let's change an energy paradigm. There's a lot of stuff you do and you don't know what impact it's going to have at all, and if at all when. And so to get, you know, that feedback was, you know, like, one the regulation changed was, like, amazing. But then to hear from him, actually, the sentiment shared around, oh, this can grow renewables without it becoming too costly. This can engage citizens in getting renewable energy even if they can't afford solar panels, this can make it happen more efficiently than if we used a traditional database. I was like, wow, these things actually make sense to other people. I was so relieved. But also, I was very proud. I was definitely proud that that had happened.
Jenelle McMaster: I love hearing those words because it sounds really purposeful like. You felt that there would be positive community impact as a result of that, the access it gets released, et cetera. Is that what you were ultimately seeking? Was it a purpose around that from the get go? Or has purpose found its way in there as a result of just sort of tripping into this path?
Jemma Green: I would say the democratization of power for a sustainable future is our vision from the get go. But you've got lots of incumbent players that have a system that isn't about democratization, it's about centralization. That's been first and foremost in our minds. And lots of people would say, well, you can't do the uber fication of electricity because it's different. And for me, it was like, well, it's not like you can't, but it takes something more. And maybe we're really naive in anticipating actually what it would take, but it actually can happen. Yeah, it was very encouraging and motivating. And now Delhi, the neighboring state, has draft regulation doing exactly the same. And there's six other states that are also in a conversation around this in India. So you can see now how that idea could take hold in a much bigger sense in India. And other places will be looking in fact, they already are looking at what's happening there. I didn't foresee any of this and I think when we set up the company, we thought we were just making some technology, putting it out there. I think that was very naive. I realized that it's so much more about explaining things because if people don't understand it, then they don't trust it.
Jemma Green: If you want them to do something new, incrementally new, that's a different explaining job. If you wanted them to contemplate something completely different, which is what we're doing. I think I completely underestimated how much work that was and what that involved. But now I can see at least we're making good headway in that it's very motivating.
Jenelle McMaster: It sounds like you've really sort of been on a journey of trying to strike that balance between communicating in a way that people understand and want to change, but not oversimplifying it, so that they wouldn't underestimate the complexity of what has to happen in order to affect that change. Do you feel like that's been a constant, I guess, a seesaw of considerations when you communicate?
Jemma Green: Yeah, it is a very good way to describe it because different places in the world have different concerns and so you can't just rinse and repeat. You've got to understand what's going on in a particular place to know exactly what the message is that's going to resonate there. So in India, they want to hit 500 gigawatts of renewables by 2030 and 50 gigawatts of batteries. That's huge. And they are lagging behind on the targets and it's just out of the question that they're going to not do something to get it. They've got a much bigger appetite to hit the renewables targets and so they saw this as a way to get there. And interestingly, they don't have a lot of renewable target sorry, renewable tariffs. So you can't sign up and get a green tariff until recently in India. But as soon as they started to offer them, people said, how do I know it's really green? And so the need for a blockchain to be able to say it's all recorded on the blockchain, that has become quite important there. And I didn't anticipate that, but that understanding that situation meant that we can be more on the front foot here around the blockchain and what it provides.
Jemma Green: Whereas in other places, say, for in Europe, they don't really care in many cases. And so why would you over talk about that. What they do care about there is these energy communities, and they already had created the regulation to do that in 2018. So it's just around can you make are you a solution provider that can do that efficiently? That's what they care about there. So, yeah, the communication job is very different in different places based on the circumstances.
Jenelle McMaster: So when you're talking about that, Jemma, it seems almost matter of fact. It seems almost like, okay, so this isn't as relevant to you in your country or your region or whatever this is. I'll change my narrative to this, or I'll focus on that. But how does it actually feel for you as the CEO and co-chair of this co-founder of this business? How does it feel for you as somebody who's committed to the cause? When you get a no, or you get a series of no's, or you get a constant no, we can't what's that feel like for you?
Jemma Green: Well, it depends on the day. But there's a great graph which says a day in the life of an entrepreneur. Have you seen it?
Jenelle McMaster: I think I might have.
Jemma Green: It's like a zigzag that goes up and down like this. And it goes it's amazing. It's terrible. It's awesome. It's horrific. And it goes like this. It can be very raw, but I think the better and more correct way of looking at it is, am I making more good decisions than bad ones? Am I getting more yeses than nos? So overall, when you add it all up, what does the ledger say? I'm actually making progress here. And so you've got to take the nos in the see the context. How many nos? How many yeses? Am I moving backwards or forwards, ultimately? And if when I do that, then I can be very accepting of the nose and go, well, I need to do a better job explaining next time, or maybe that's planting a seed that will germinate later. And we see a lot of that like, happening. A lot, actually. So I think that as an entrepreneur, it's actually more of a job of managing your own internal state. Because this idea that entrepreneurs and businesses just scale in like two years is highly unusual. It's normally a decade-long project. It's a marathon, and you've got to sustain yourself throughout that.
Jemma Green: And one part of it is your vision, like what you want to create. And the other part of it is actually just putting nos and failures in the right context, I would say, to maintain momentum and your mood, because if you don't do that, you're not going to keep working on that project.
Jenelle McMaster: Absolutely love that. And it reminds me of actually one of an insight from another Change Happens podcast alumni. I can call people who have joined me, which you will be now, which is Holly Ransom, who she said which she said that the greatest lever of driving change is momentum. And I think that's placed to what you're saying there the ledger of yeses and nos. If you're still moving forward, if the yeses are more than the nos, and then you've got momentum and that is an impetus for change.
Jemma Green: Yeah, I think that is a great way to describe it. I would also add that movement isn't necessarily progress. So you do have to take a cold, hard look at things sometimes and curb your enthusiasm.
Jenelle McMaster: I hear a show in that. So, Jemma, when is the job done for you with this?
Jemma Green: This is probably not the right answer, but I don't know.
Jenelle McMaster: There's no wrong answer here.
Jemma Green: I think for me, the sense of satisfaction is from seeing what we've done with scale attached to it. Like, for me, that's where then I can see the democratization of power has happened and it has contributed towards a sustainable future at large. Yeah, when we started the company, we're a startup, and so we had to prove that technology worked and that we could deliver. And people wanted to see a project in their part of the world, like a Malaysian client didn't want to see a French project. So we had to do a lot of lighthouse projects to demonstrate that we could deliver. And that projects and models that people could relate to. We're in a different era now, which is we've done that and now we've identified where's the biggest opportunities for scale and we're focusing our efforts there. And that would be Europe and India for renewable energy certificate trading, the US. So I'd say it's really focusing on those things and getting scale in those places. That for me would be like what I would say a point for punctuating, accomplishment and satisfaction.
Jenelle McMaster: Fantastic. So, final question for me. Jenna, what do you jenna, Gemma, Bruce, what else do you think needs to change to make this work bigger and better in the future?
Jemma Green: I think awareness of distributed to centralized energy markets, that is a big piece, and in some cases regulation, but it's not necessarily like regulation works in some parts in a particular place, but not in others. So it's not like a ubiquitous regulation in this particular area. But I'd say that the regulations around energy are as companies and countries set targets, they're starting to set a regulation for targets. So those things are focusing people's minds on the target and then understanding how do they get there. So that's the awareness piece. Some people wouldn't like that they have other competitors in their market. But because the project is so big, I actually really value the work that our competitors are doing because they're helping to explain things such a big. Exactly. Yeah.
Jenelle McMaster: That is fantastic. Jemma, I really want to thank you for your time today. And I know lots of people take away lots of different things, but for me, some of the great pearls that you've shared that stand out for me are break the routine. And like I said, I'm on holidays tomorrow. So breaking the routine allows you to unlock yourself from the matrix, as you put it, remind ourselves of the power of a meditative state, if only to foster the random ideas. Couple random ideas with a bit of audaciousness and a side of naivety and you have yourself something quite special there. I also learnt that getting stuck can be an incredibly powerful way to stumble on solutions. If you hadn't got stuck, you wouldn't have stumbled upon the blockchain solution which underpins what you do. I have learned that engaging and respecting and engaging differing opinions can be incredibly well. It is very important, but also instructive to how you might need to change your communications to have impact. And you're working in an area where it's not easy and sometimes possible to envisage things in advance. There may well be solutions that you need that aren't yet developed or invented.
Jenelle McMaster: But to stay the course, what you need is an overall ledger that guides you, that says, am I making more good decisions than bad? Are we moving forward? And puts the nos and the failures in perspective. And finally, I think, the guiding light of purpose yours is the democratization of power for a sustainable future, is an amazing beacon to have in front of you. And I want to thank you for working in this space and please continue to keep doing the amazing things you do. It feels like we are on the verge of a tipping point here and I think you've been instrumental in that. Thanks so much, Jemma.
Jemma Green: Well summed up and thank you so much. That was great.

Craig Tiley
CEO | Tennis Australia

Jennelle McMaster: Hi, Craig. Thank you for joining me on the podcast today.
Craig Tiley: It's great to be here. Thanks, Jenelle.
Jennelle McMaster: Now, Craig, you have lived a lot of lives as an athlete, as a coach, as a director, as a CEO. You've had an incredible range of experiences throughout your career, all over the world. But when you and I spoke a couple of weeks ago, I asked you when the most significant moment of change in leadership was that you can remember in your life. And I have to say it was without hesitation that you said, well, holding the Australian Open during COVID In fact, you held two given we then had omicron. We all felt the impacts of COVID but none more so, I think, than Melbourne, which was widely quoted as the most locked-down city in the world. So I want to go back to that time if I can, which I have to say to me, always feels like a really distorted dreamlike bubble. I lose track of the years, I lose track of the months. But I think we're placing this as probably mid 2020. And I wonder if you could paint for me a picture of what was happening in the world at that time and in Melbourne with respect to COVID and your initial thoughts back then on how it would be impacting or could be impacting the AO given. I expect it gets planned a long way out, right?
Craig Tiley: It certainly does. And let me start out by saying that time was extremely difficult for everyone, and certainly for those that had impacts on family and family members. And like anything, when you face with adversity, within adversity, there's always opportunity and it always is how you approach that adversity. And you have two choices. You either approach it in a positive way with a greater outlook, with opportunity, or you approach it in a more negative, challenging way, where you make it bigger and make it really impact your daily life. So that context always from a leadership point of view, I've always looked on the silver lining, the opportunity, the positive outcome being part of the solution, not part of the problem. So when we were faced with that challenge, it was basically the middle of 2020. In fact, this came off the beginning of 2020. Keep in mind, Australia, particularly the East Coast, was severely impacted by the bushfires and we were on the verge of having to postpone the Australian Open because of the bushfires. And we were very fortunate. The smoke haze lifted and we were able to continue. But it did have an impact on the beginning of the event.
Craig Tiley: We were also advised at the end of the event that there was this virus that had likely got out of Wuhan. We had over a thousand guests from Wuhan that were with us that week, and so what would we be doing about it? So we did start a testing regime early back in January and not having any detection of any type of disease or anything. And through our medical team who were working closely within the infectious control leadership of Australia, we went about our merry way in our normal way in February. Little did we know a few months later we were going to be dealing with the virus that had globally spread and was going to be significant for us. The first time I called the team together, I said to them, look, don't worry, this is going to be about a month and we'll be back in the office. And it just shows you again how little you do really know about these things and you can never really look into the future and think this is what it's going to be. And I think that's a good learning I took from that. It ended up being two years over two years, but we had to plan an event.
Craig Tiley: We worked closely with the Victorian government in deciding the conditions that we would have and no one knew the conditions. They were forever changing every single day, basically. And so we pulled the teams together and said we are going to run the Australian Open. Not only because the cost was going to be less to run it, which sounds surprising, but also because you need to use it as an opportunity to show people what's possible and we can get out of this. We can get through this. So I started to use it as a platform for much bigger than it was, just running a sporting and entertainment event. We started there the beginning of the middle of that year, started planning for what was going to be an event, regardless of the circumstances and the challenges we were going to have. Little did we know we were going to have to bring in over 1200 athletes and their teams, only a 25% capacity on planes that we had to charter from around the world and have them in lockdown for 15 days. And you put athletes that are high performing and they're coming about to play big grand slam in a room in lockdown for that period of time, then expect them to get out and compete at the highest level to be showcased around the world.
Craig Tiley: It was a difficult task.
Jennelle McMaster: Craig the level of conviction as you talk about that now and you sort of say we are going to go ahead with it. First of all, was that a brave face for others or was that a true, I have no doubt we need to do this, or were you having some doubt but just trying to put on something? Where does that conviction tell me about that, because it feels so certain now, talking about it in retrospect, but what was it then?
Craig Tiley: It's a good question because it's easy to talk about now because we threw it and we can draw back on the things that we remember. But I do recall a leadership has to be authentic. And I felt that at any time, I honestly believed, honestly had never had a doubt that we were going to make this happen. I don't think I ever said this wasn't going to happen. Many people told me no ways. Many people told our team no ways. I also know when you have a really good team, which I was fortunate to have and you have people that have alignment in thinking it wasn't a brave face, there was certain element of extreme optimism and convincing people and persuading people. But that comes into your sales skills, which I think it's really important for everyone to have persuasive their sales skills. And it was more than a brave face. It was an absolute belief that we would find a way to get it done. And I was told by the international playing Group, by the International Tours, that there's no way this was going to happen. In fact, the outcome of 2021 and putting all the athletes in lockdown the entire year, the player compensation that was paid to professional tennis players, tennis Australia paid over 30% for the entire year because we were one of the very, very few events that actually went ahead that year.
Jennelle McMaster: It's quite an incredible story, and I love the conviction that's born from having such a high-performing team, I love the upfront conviction. I've spoken to many, many leaders who talk to me about a side dish of naivety when they've taken on big challenges. Was there some naivety there as well? And were there moments where even if you had the conviction, it got wobbly with certain challenges?
Craig Tiley: There were many wobbly moments up until even the night before we were delivering it. And I think the difference in this, compared to any other leadership challenge most people have had, is everyone around the world was in the same position. This was a virus for everyone. So the comparison to see these people did this in this environment, no one had done this before. There wasn't a roadmap that we could go and copy. So we were forging that pathway ourselves. And that was the great opportunity. And I definitely used that at that time to motivate the team, to say, this is an opportunity to set a standard, not just a standard in Australia, but a global standard. And that's what we did. In January, February actually, 2021, the wobbly moments came is that the government had a date when players could - international people could come into the country, and it kept on being pushed out. It started in December, then went to late December, then early January, then mid January. We was pushing the Australian Open back every week. And so we actually only started in February, which was two weeks, three weeks later than it normally happens.
Craig Tiley: And that was a wobbly moment. The other wobbly moment was certainly when we knew to get the players here. We had to get them. We had a deal with an airline to charter all their planes. We chartered close to 30 major aircraft from different cities around the world. The airline pulled out on the eve of us bringing the planes in.
Jennelle McMaster: Oh, that was right up until the night before.
Craig Tiley: We had to go and find other charters. We thought we had a hotel that we could use as a quarantine hotel. They pulled out, we had to get another one. So this wasn't as simple as asking a question. We work closely with the Victorian government. In fact, many of the leaders in the quarantine task force put together by the Victorian government were A380 pilots. All the pilots were out of work. And they are great logistical people. They know systems and processes and discipline and they were great leaders of our quarantine program. Just the pilots. Many of them came from Qantas. I could go through a list, I could talk to you for hours and hours of all the variables that we had, but we had to get 1200 people, of which more than half of them were superstar athletes on a plane in a city tested with no COVID, have to go through protocols wearing full PPP gear. Only 25% of the plane could be filled. Arrive in Australia, get transported, singularly in a bus, no contact with anyone, get into quarantine. We had thousands of buses get into quarantine and stay in quarantine.
Craig Tiley: And if you tested negative, you were allowed out for 5 hours a day under a very strict regime. Every 30 seconds there was a movement for 18 hours a day. Every 30 seconds there was a movement on getting players in and out, and of which about 30% were in hard lockdown because they came in and either were on a plane, they didn't test positive, they were on a plane where someone tested positive. So the whole plane had to be locked down and getting on the phone, getting on a zoom call with those 1200 people in different groups. We did that about six to 7 hours a day for 15 straight days. They're pretty upset, so you got to go and motivate them. And if they say when are we getting out? Sorry, I can't tell you. And then having to manage that. So I could talk for a long time on the specifics, I'm really summarizing it, but great learnings in leadership, in having to deal with that, great learnings in communication, the accusations of players on the other side that we can't get to stuck in a room that they have against you or the organization.
Craig Tiley: Because why they're stuck in this room, it wasn't the case when they came from the UK. Or when they came from Bulgaria or the US. And this is what it was coming into Australia.
Jennelle McMaster: I actually have a real desire to spend hours talking about this. But when you talk about those learnings and you talk about the diversity of people that you're interacting with, If I think about that stakeholder landscape that you are navigating locally and globally, looking back on that now, what would be some of those learnings that you had on managing such a broad stakeholder landscape?
Craig Tiley: Number one, communicate and start out qualify the communication. And I know for a fact I don't have all the answers. This is how you start. I know for a fact I don't have the answers. I know we're both in a very uncertain environment, but we're in this together, and I'm going to do the best I can to make it work for you. And every bit of communication started that way. We were communicating with the media. We flew in media from around the world. We had about 100 media. We normally bring in over 1000. We had 100 media come in. We flew them in. New York Times, Washington Post, Global Papers. So we had to manage them as well. I think the biggest leadership lesson was communication. And the second one was let everyone know that you are taking full accountability and responsibility. And if something goes wrong, you the ones there needs to be a single point that you the one said, I will fix it, or I'll do my best to fix it, but I'm accountable, I'm responsible. Be the person that stands in front of the community and the media and let them understand you're accountable.
Craig Tiley: So if something goes wrong, you're ultimately accountable. And you'll have to pay the price for anything that does go severely wrong. Even to our own team, even to them, talking to them, I said, this is on me. So you don't have to worry about you do the best job that you possibly can. I will take full accountability and responsibility for this. And you have to verbalize that. And a lot of leaders are afraid of verbalizing that because I may lose my job. I may be blamed for something. It wasn't my deal, but it is what it should be.
Jennelle McMaster: Craig as you say, this is something that we had never experienced in the world. There was no roadmap. The likelihood that anyone could know what was going to be needed or what we're going to have to navigate is zero. No one knew. Why did you have and how did you have that confidence to put yourself at the front, to assume full responsibility and accountability? Where does that confidence, the personal security, safety? Tell me about what is it in you that gives you that confidence to shoulder all of that?
Craig Tiley: I think for everyone, it comes from your leadership journey or from your journey, your life journey. And that's why I also do believe I feel like in many ways I'm just starting my career because there's just so much to learn and so much to take in. And I honestly believe that if you have the approach to your career where you don't have all the answers, everyone else does. And you're going to learn from them, and you're going to learn from the opportunities you get every single day. You're going to have an empathetic approach to it and not put yourself in front, but be the one that's willing to do all the work. I think the approaches principally that you take on the journey, and I do believe that those over time will come back in spades when you really need them. I was surprised on myself personally how I responded, and even going into 2022, which was even more difficult than 2021, I was surprised how I responded to that intense pressure globally, because I thought I would sleep less, be much more stressed, and really struggle with it. But I didn't. From a personal point of view, I slept really well.
Craig Tiley: I felt very calm, and it was very clear to me about what we needed to do.
Jennelle McMaster: I have to ask a secret. I'd like to know how in all of that, did you sleep so well? It feels like you found the Holy Grail there.
Craig Tiley: I don't know. I didn't take any sleeping tablets. That's a question. I think it was just maybe there was so much going on that by the time you got to take that opportunity to have a few hours sleep, you were just really tired. I think it may have been that I don't have the answer for that, but I do know, I do remember very clearly about having a lot significant sense of calmness on it. But that's why I always remind the lessons when I talk now about leadership in that is that everything you do every day is a building block. And if you do the right thing every day, if you learn every day, if you connect with people, if you listen and if you become part of the solution or part of the problem, and you have a great deal of care and compassion. As you do that, that becomes the building block for the next day and the next day and the next day. And eventually you've suddenly got this mountain of opportunity and learnings and experience that you will draw on even without knowing you're drawing on it.
Jennelle McMaster: As you outlined in there so many logistical challenges, communication, complexities decision challenges. There would have been a lot of human emotion throughout all of that time. All understandable (Craig Tiley – accusations). Accusations, yes, that's right. And they got personal. What did you find to be sort of sitting back or even reflecting on it then? What was the biggest challenge for you?
Craig Tiley: I'm a big believer in loyalty. When the pressure is on and the heat really gets on, you really find out from a leadership point of view, there was never really issues with people in the organization, but it's people that are impacting the organization from the outside, so who's really going to stick their neck out? And so you really find out the true colors of people in that period. And I got calls from people, friends that I hadn't heard from a long time, got calls from people that wanted to provide some advice and I will be forever grateful for that. And it was a great lesson for me. And now when I see someone having a difficult time, someone getting fired from a job or someone having a really difficult leadership time, particularly in a sport, and I always reach out, make a call and say, hey, do you want to have a chat about it? What's going on? This is what I've seen in the paper and it's not going to be the reality of what's really happening, so find out. And I didn't do that as much before that and it could be in any other sport or any other environment, and now I do it.
Craig Tiley: And I've actually really enjoyed doing it. Because you yourself learned some things too.
Jennelle McMaster: Yeah, that is a really important lesson. I do think it's those critical moments that people remember. We've had a few of them ourselves of late and it gives you pause when someone does take the time to pick up the phone and go, hey, how are you doing?
Craig Tiley: Yeah. And it's the time when you step up, the great leaders step up into the most adversity. I think if you welcome adversity as a tool to get better, you'll always get better. But if you look at adversity, as I mentioned at the beginning, at the outset, if you look at adversity as a problem, you are going to become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Jennelle McMaster: Such a good reminder. So we've taken all of that leading up to the event. Your planes have come in, even the one the night before has come and you've sorted through all of that and things have been planned within an inch of its life. What was it like during the event itself?
Craig Tiley: Players were in lockdown, staff were in lockdown. We had to secure in a matter of a few days, 800 exercise bikes, 800 treadmills, get them into the rooms. Teams had to take them into the rooms. This is where these 30 secnd movements had the bike was brought to the room. There could only be one person moving on the floor, which was the Quarantine team, full PPE, only one person in the elevator. I mean, the list goes on about the logistics of it. There were about over 2000 people just working on the logistics of the Quarantine program for the two weeks. And it was run independently by the Victorian government. So we worked closely in partnership with the Victorian government on that. And a remarkable achievement for the government to let us have that happen and then to showcase the event 2021. We're the first to do it. Having a global sporting event, bringing athletes in, our broadcasters stayed on the same level every nation in the world, and it was uplifting for people. They got back to seeing sport. Sport was actually happening in the middle of COVID so we were proud of the fact they were able to do that.
Craig Tiley: However, during the event, extremely difficult to give you a bit of a snapshot. The site was divided up into four parts so people could only move in a part they bought a ticket for. The way we had to wear masks, the way people sat in the stadium, the way they moved in the stadium, the way they queued, that all had to be monitored. And then the players, the interaction with the players we made a commitment to the government that we would not be the cause of one result of COVID spreading in the community because of people and international people we brought in. And we were not the outcome at the end of it. There was not one case that resulted on from putting on the event. So we did the right thing. It was confirmed, we did the right thing. It was high risk, obviously, but the right thing was done. But during the period, I think the thing I remember the the most was the absolute logistical challenges. There were some people that were still in lockdown. There was one athlete that came, and it ended up being for 27 days in lockdown, didn't get to play.
Craig Tiley: And so managing that and managing the health of some of the athletes, but remarkably, the 1200 people coming in, I think there was less than 20 or so that tested positive. But because they were on planes and around others, there was about 300 in full lockdown. No movement. We had to feed them in lockdown. A lot of funny stories that came out of it, if you look at some of the instagram accounts on how they use their room. So that was the most difficult part. And the difficult part was also was having to answer for things around health and quarantine I knew nothing about. And the media expect you, you're the spokesperson, they expect you to be an expert on that, and you're not. So you have to deflect a lot of those answers. And that's never easy because you do want to give someone the answer on something. So I think that was tough. And then I think that the concern each day that are we going to be shut down? Because there's the spread of the virus and completely shut down. Now we're at this position. But it was four weeks, we got through those four weeks.
Jennelle McMaster: As you said earlier, this was something that the whole world was experiencing and you had thousands of people that you were sort of responsible for or taking carriage of events around. You would have seen lots of emotions. What did you learn about the human experience and humanity and human nature?
Craig Tiley: I think people have changed generally I'm speaking after COVID than during COVID because I think during COVID there was a togetherness that we’re kind of in this together, we've got to find the solution together. And I think more than ever before, the world came together and then now we've all lost our minds after COVID the way politics are going on and business and economics. But during that time, I think the biggest learning I had is probably the art of what's possible, I think, to try and replicate how people behave. During that period, we were focused on people's lives, protecting the elderly, protecting the community and ensuring that people didn't get sick and if they had to go to hospital, doing the best thing they could. And then I think the other thing is, I learned, is the reminder that people in our workforce, the teachers, the nurses, the doctors, the security, the police, I will forever, during this period, be the massive advocate. I mean, I've always said they should be paid a heck of a lot more than they currently are. They should be the highest paid in our community because they keep it going.
Craig Tiley: I think there was a big learning in that. It was that group of people again that kept it going and it was a really good reminder, and I'm sure I've left out some. But to come back to where, in a very stressful, negative environment, we were always looking for the positive things we had to do, because that was the only way we're going to get out of it. And I think if you can put that on everything you do, every single day, you will achieve great things.
Jennelle McMaster: Yeah, I often think we should bottle to all of that in a different way, because, as you said, through adversity comes opportunity. And I think that opportunity was a united goal. To experience this world together.
Craig Tiley: You really have to embrace adversity, because we, as humans, we have a choice. There's one choice you have every single day in your life that only you own and that's how you respond to anything. And you can choose on your response to be whatever it is. And when things are tough and it's adverse, it's really hard work to choose to have the choice of looking, having a positive outlook and finding solutions and be part of the solution, because misery enjoys company. Negativity and misery, they are horrible traits, but they resonate a lot because a lot of people approach things that way. I think embracing it, I've taught myself to have that always only be my only choice.
Jennelle McMaster: Very powerful. And speaking of embracing adversity and choosing your own response after that, successful, although trying Australian Open come through on the other side of that and then we get smacked with a new strain. It's called omicron. So tell me about that and what that meant then, for the next Australian Open.
Craig Tiley: Well, just like a year before, I told the staff we'll be back in a month. Got it completely wrong. In September, I said, we're in the clear, COVID's done things are going well. So I think they start to look at me and say, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. We started planning for a full event. There may have been some restrictions on the number and the capacity. We started planning for a full event. And then it was actually only December when Omicron showed up, and we had to go through then start the exact same routine. It was still at that point, the government, if you recall, were trying to manage Omicron, so we're going back to lockdown. And then they realized that there's no ways this is too infectious to be able to put people in lockdown. It's too long, we can't manage it. So we just got to do the best we can to keep our distance. So they gave us permission to go ahead, but again, had to fly people in, had to manage the teams, put them in one hotel. There wasn't the two weeks of Quarantine we had before.
Craig Tiley: If there was positive cases, there was quarantine. So keep everyone apart, wearing masks, wearing PPE, and then running an event at that point. It wasn't like that a year before, but now there was a requirement to come in Australia and have proof of vaccination. And there were still many countries around the world that hadn't reached vaccination levels more than 10%, and there were still many people that were unsure about getting vaccinated.
Jennelle McMaster: We can't talk about this, Craig, without.
Craig Tiley: Exactly and that's the one that got all the global attention. I made people I hadn't seen since primary school contact me because they'd seen me. Some of my face plastered some way. So that was then the biggest challenge. 2022 was about vaccination, was about Omicron, was about keeping people safe.
Jennelle McMaster: Different waves, strategy around how to approach that. And we've now sort of danced across the Djokovic issue, which, as you say, generated quite a buz in the sports community, actually, the community more broadly. Even beyond that, it was what was going through your mind when people were questioning your leadership? You got your primary schoolmates weighing in with a point of view about it that you haven't heard from in I don't know how many decades. What was happening for you at that time as you again, once again leading from the front, but what was happening for you at the time.
Craig Tiley: That was more difficult, because that wasn't all of us together trying to solve for a solution, not the year before. That was becoming a meat and a sandwich. That was not having people on your team or on your side on it, because it was a highly politically charged environment. There was state and federal elections months away. It was a highly globally charged environment. There was massive arguments in the community about vaccination. And to be very clear, I think I was probably one of the close to being the first being Vaccinated. I think I've had five shots minimum. Already, I'm an absolute believer and you need to get vaccinated. The medical professionals know this best, and that was my personal view. But we had a process, we had a system in place. There was also a lot of uncertainty about what it was. There was no clarity, and if there was clarity, things would have been easy. But not just clarity from everyone, and including the tennis community. So people came in under conditions that they believed were the right conditions to come in on, had the right exemptions that they believed at that point. And then, as it turned out, at the 11th hour, like happened the year before in Omicron, things changed, and particularly changed for one, they changed for a few people, but the one person who got the most attention was Novak, because of his stance on vaccination.
Craig Tiley: I deal with Novak often, and my dealings with him have always been very good. He's very professional in dealing with it. He's upfront. We spent a lot of time together, and even after that whole incident where there was reports about us having a very strained relationship, we spent some time together. So that hasn't changed anything in the relationship. But it was a very difficult time and there were many Australians. It's the part I felt the most lonely, and again, it was how you respond to that loneliness, because there were many, in that case Australians, that I was blamed for trying to game the system bring, bring someone in that was not vaccinated and it was not the case. But you took the heat for that. And then when Novak left, then there was the stronger Serbian community, which is very large, who felt that he left unfairly. And then I became again, a lightning rod for that result, that outcome. But it goes with being a leader. Leader, it goes with the territory. You have to take it on, you have to speak to the community and speak to your own team. I was most concerned about our own team because a lot of people flying accusations all over the place that this was missed.
Craig Tiley: You shouldn't have done that, should have done that. Hindsight is always a great way to summarize a situation, but when you're in it, it's definitely not the same. So we made a decision that it's in nobody's interest to start pointing fingers, to start defending yourself. What was in our interest is to get on with it. Day by day, you just get on it. And people wanted sculpts, people wanted people to explain exactly what happened and did this. And it wasn't just that, it wasn't that straightforward, it was not possible to explain exactly what happened because a lot of things that happened we didn't even know about, but what was possible, what we could do. And that's again in leadership, making the decision when all that the heat was I had media security, whatever, parked outside my house, my home, here for two weeks. I was chased, there were death threats, but that goes with the territory at that time and people were highly charged and emotive in Australia too, in Melbourne, we were locked down for a long, long time and everyone were emotive about it. And I completely get that. I was in the same boat as everyone in that.
Craig Tiley: So it is a time when I don't think I'll ever face that kind of heat in leadership, hopefully ever again. But in that time that was very difficult because you felt like unlike a year before, where everyone is in the same boat. And now the community became more divided. And I think unfortunately, I think the community has taken a little bit of that ongoing post COVID of how we treat people and how we respond to adversity and how we respect our leaders. And I think it's also now been driven by the macroeconomic conditions. So I think there's understandably more stress and more pressure.
Jennelle McMaster: Thank you for your candor on that. That sounds horrific. I expected it wasn't a great time and that sounds terrible and I feel profoundly impacted when someone says that they felt lonely. It's a heavy word to use and I'm sorry that was such a tough time. What did you do? Apart from, okay, well, I'm in it and I just need to get through it day by day. Was there anything else you did to look after yourself and your family through that time?
Craig Tiley: Yeah, I think having great people, having a great team, I think again, a reminder as a leader, if you get an opportunity, have the people around you better than you are because that'll come back again and it'll come back to every single day in your organization. It'll come back to make it happen and then under real stress and pressure, it'll come back and do that. We had a board that was magnificent, so supportive in those situations. Obviously, sometimes you get boards that run for the hills and don't support their management team. And every single one of our board members at that time was led by Jane Hurdlick, who's the current CEO of Virgin. And she's obviously lived in stressful environments. Running an airline, I'm sure every day you worry about it and she led the board through it. There may be a couple of times there were some wobbly conversations, but never it was always they were rock solid. That was helpful. A management team that were under tremendous amount of stress themselves because they were all part of the process. So my job was to keep them motivated and keep them positive and that was probably my biggest challenge the whole time.
Craig Tiley: And then your family, how they being treated in the community was a challenge as well. But again, comes back to thing I said at the very beginning, don't go quiet, communicate. If you need help, ask for it. There's nothing wrong. And I think the team I lead the privilege I have right now to do it. I think they would say I put my hand up when we have a team chat I'll say things aren't going that great and I'll explain to you why and I just want to let you know. And so authenticity and transparency and that happened more than ever happened before and also not I didn't felt like from my team or our tennis community or our board that I was ever a target. I felt differently on the wider group and that's important and I think that's really important from your team, whether it be EY or wherever you are, you're part of this team and the loyalty to this team is really important and you can have disagreements but that's not lack of loyalty, that's just a disagreement. It's really surprising when people sometimes you don't know the tough time they're going through, that you have to lean in and support them and show your loyalty.
Craig Tiley: And an organization, you have to show your loyalty. And when things go wrong and it's not right, part of loyalty is calling it out, not being silent.
Jennelle McMaster: You're also, Craig, as a former coach, a highly reputed coach, how much of your own high-performance coaching strategies did you sort of call upon? Were you quite consciously deploying the very things that you worked with athletes on and or did you then develop new strings to your bow in this?
Craig Tiley: Oh it's a great question. I say it now is that I was so fortunate to have that grounding. I was actually listening to something last night is the Bud Light campaign and how a large percentage of the population in the US are boycotting Bud Lights like drop massive percentage points in sales. It was just interesting subject but there a leader that was an ex-Marine who's their CEO, a young guy in his forty s and he was talking about how he's dealing with this crisis and one thing that resonated with me said I'm not used to this. I've been in the Marines, I've been in the CIA. This is completely new to me to deal with this trying to figure this out and he put his hand up he said but I need people to help me figure it out. And you immediately felt for the person even though maybe was it a good decision or not? You don't know. I think in the case be able to draw on your background on I was fortunate I had a military background as well for a short while, for three years and I had a coaching background.
Craig Tiley: And drawing on those two and particularly on the coaching background, any parent or any person that has an opportunity to coach a group of kids, to grow to coach a group of adults in sport, in anything, go for it because the techniques you'll learn in that, you will use it's your best grounding. And I shouldn't say this when you talk about college because I have got graduate education and all that, but I think what's far surpassed all of that was my coaching background.
Jennelle McMaster: It's really interesting. I did seven years in the military and I will always it's funny, you sort of think we're in totally different contexts, but it's amazing. And I think you spoke to the building blocks of experience that you have and they are such fundamental building blocks around leadership, around camaraderie, around loyalty, around teaming, that absolutely help you grow.
Craig Tiley: I don't think compulsory conscription is a bad thing just for that setting up the community and population for the future. But I do think you're right. What's great about Australia as a nation is a lot of young kids, they finish school and they go and discover the world for a year or two and have their gap year. And I think that's a great thing too, because I do believe in getting out and finding out what's out there, talking to people, going to help things. I also believe in making a contribution to the community. You have to working for, not for profits, going to do things where you don't make any money, going to help people. It is your grounding. And any parent that has kids, if you're putting kids in that environment, you're setting them up for life and that beats even any formal education. So it is your journey and we have choices on how we approach that journey and just got to sit down, reflect and think and make the right choice.
Jennelle McMaster: So, Craig, what about now? We find ourselves in a different context. We're not in a shared situation of a pandemic, but we are in a difficult situation economically. The macroeconomic environment is tough, cost of living challenges, all sorts of stresses on us. What is it that you are thinking about and taking forward as you now plan the next big event in the current context?
Craig Tiley: Well, I'm careful how you answer about the future because based on what I told you before, I got it wrong in year one by saying it'll be a month and then I got wrong in year two by saying COVID's finished. But yes, I think the big difference now is in COVID we were all in it together, but from now an economic point of view, there's different levels of pain. So when you're in a leadership role and you have an opportunity to have an impact, you have to now have even greater levels of empathy for a much larger group of people, not knowing what different people are going through. So finding solutions primarily on how you respond to the environment and what contribution you make. So more than ever before, we have to lean in and find ways to help others because there's a lot larger group of people, I think with the economic headwinds that are ahead of us, there's a lot larger group of people that are going to be impacted. And as an organization, you got to think of ways you can do that, how you do that with your people, the type of flexible workforce you provide, the type of focus you have on what they should be paid.
Craig Tiley: And just realizing now we've gone through a tough medical time with COVID together and now going through a tough economic time together, but with different levels in that of where people's pain. Yes, I think it's now the empathy and the realization that more help will be needed.
Jennelle McMaster: Craig, I'm going to draw to a close here, not through want of wanting to ask you so many more questions. I was going to wrap up with what advice can you give? But I feel like this has been so loaded with advice. Is there anything else that you haven't covered off that you think is really important for our listeners to reflect on given the wealth of experience you've had?
Craig Tiley: Don't take it too seriously. We get this one opportunity to live our lives as do as best as you can, care for others more than you care for yourself, but still care for yourself because you've got to be in a leadership role and you got to set an example, be authentic, transparent. But again, don't take it too seriously. If you're not turning into the left lane because you've been slow on the light, you don't have to sit on the horn behind that person to get them to move. Just think about what that person may be in that car going through. You don't have to make it worse for them. So little things like that and all those little things, they add up to the big thing. And the big thing is the opportunities you create for yourself in life by doing the right thing.
Jennelle McMaster: Craig, thank you so much. You are the very embodiment of all of those things that you've said and I don't think we've ever had a crisis moment outlined as well as what you have done there painted that picture. The number one message for me listening to you is you own how you respond, that's the choice you make and through adversity is opportunity. And everything that you have said has shown your willingness and ability to lean into that adversity, to lead from the front. You navigated the unprecedented, you created your own roadmap. You did that with the help of others. And whilst you would own full accountability, take full accountability, you weren't afraid to put your hand up and rely on the and lean on the help of expertise of your team. The message around communication is really important as well. And I liked your questions around I don't know everything, but we will do this together and we'll work through this together. And I think that it demonstrates curiosity, it demonstrates empathy, it demonstrates collaboration just with those questions right there and your quiet confidence, your assuredness, but your humility and kindness is abundantly evident through this discussion.
Jennelle McMaster: So thank you so much for all of that. Plenty to reflect on, plenty for us to take forward. I definitely will think twice before I put my hand on the horn in the car, that's for sure, and ask myself, what's that person?
Craig Tiley: I hope that little comment does that. And I'm actually about to go to the Million Dollar Lunch, which is to raise money for supporting kids in cancer and kids with cancer. So I'm looking forward to doing that, spending a couple of hours and try and help them raise as much money as possible. But I think, again, I appreciate those comments, Jenelle, but at the end of the day, you're just trying to do your best. And I've been blessed, I've been lucky. I've got great people, I've got great family. And I've had adversity, particularly over the last several years, that I've been fortunate to be in a leadership role. So a lot of those things are lucky, too.
Jennelle McMaster: Well, many, many thanks. Good luck. Enjoy your lunch. And thanks for doing what you do Craig.
Craig Tiley: Great. Thank you.

Mike Baird
CEO | Hammond Care

Voice Over: The podcast discusses the events of the Lindt café siege and mental health and may be distressing for some listeners. If you need support you can contact Lifeline on 131114.
Intro: Hi and welcome back to Season 4 of Change Happens. I’m Jenelle McMaster and this is a podcast exploring leadership through key moments of change and the lessons that they have learnt along the way. In a world that’s constantly changing, it gets difficult to know when you’re going in the right direction or when it’s time to start a new chapter. For some people, moments of change whether it’s small or seismic comes into their lives but are not recognised for what they are until some time down the track. Others seek change and make things happen, seizing the moment and squeezing all the juice from the experience. For Mike Baird, his is a story and a life where the main constant has been change, a lot of which he seems to have fallen into and a lot of which he consciously chooses how and when to exit. His stint in politics, most notably punctuated by his time as New South Wales Premier is book ended by an exploration of theology and experiences in the world of banking. Now CEO of Christian aged care provider, Hammond Care, Mike uses his breadth of experience and knowledge to make meaningful change in the world around him. So with that, welcome Mike, I’m very excited to have you join us on this episode of Change Happens.
Mike: Thanks Janelle, great to be on Change Happens.
Jenelle: [laugh], now Mike, you’ve been in the limelight for a very long time and you have juggled different positions in many industries from, theology to banking to politics, back to banking and now to sports and aged care. It does seem like you have the appetite for a little bit of everything. When you look back at your career and all of those different things that I’ve talked about, is there a common thread there?
Mike: Look, I think the common thread is I’ve always had this sense of a wrestle and the wrestle was, you know, whatever I was doing, I wanted to contribute, I wanted in some way to kind of help communities, state or country through others. You know, how do you help others in that environment and certainly challenging myself is another thread. I mean, I love … I love change and doing different things is always stimulating. I love learning and I think that is something that’s … that’s been constant and I, you know, probably the last thing is it’s just, to me, any job that you’re in, you have to feel that you’re contributing, that you’re adding value and certainly not wanting to become stale and, you know, that’s something that I’ve always kind of reflected on and, you know, you know, career wise it’s certainly not linear. You know, there’s all types of different roles but I think all of those kind of the … probably the common themes as I go through them.
Jenelle: It’s interesting and we will come back to kind of recognising “how do you recognise when you are stale” so I’m interested in coming back to that point but before I do, your father, Bruce Baird, was a prominent political figure in New South Wales who served as the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party. When you watched him work, what did you think it was that politicians did and what made you want to do that?
Mike: Well, its probably the opposite! What I saw, I thought I don’t want anything to do with. I, you know, I watched Dad in a range of times and moments deal with significant stress, you know, back in the day there weren’t iPads and, you know, checking news clippings on your iPhone. There were newspapers delivered at 4am and I used to have many memories of him sort of being at the bottom of driveway in a not … let’s call it “not stylish dressing gown” waiting for the papers to arrive and then you could see what his response was like. You know, as he kind of opened them up at the bottom of the driveway and, you know, you knew he was in for a day/a week/a month of stress, you know, off the back of it. So I’d looked at that and being “wow, that’s not really something that I want for me”. Having said that, there were moments that I thought “wow, you know, notwithstanding that world, there is significant things that can be achieved” and you know, two things he did that stood out to me was the Olympic bid. He was charged with running Sydney’s Olympic bid and that was a massive moment in, you know, the city and state and country’s history and he did a fantastic role in that and I thought that was amazing and then the other … he was in federal parliament and he did a lot with refugees and certainly, you know, standing up for them and, you know, Australia’s approach to them was something I was very proud of, as he sort of went through that. So I saw that sort of many great things could be done but the overwhelming sense to me was “that’s Dad’s thing, not mine and I’ll try and carve another career out”.
Jenelle: So, attracted to the idea of being able to have impact but put off by lots of things that you saw there and so wanted to take a different track but somehow you did find your way into politics and not only that, a Premiership. So becoming Premier is something that many politicians aspire to achieve. You’ve had this wrestle with it and it was a little bit more of a serendipitous experience that make … that found you into the role of Premier. I’m wondering if you can just talk us through the day that you got asked to step up and what was going through your mind.
Mike: Look, you know, I mean obviously once I’d decided after a wrestle that actually maybe I could make a contribution in politics and, you know, from door knocking homes to … to winning an election that, you know, all the polls said I wouldn’t, to having the privilege of representing the community, I, you know, found myself then in government and Treasurer of the State and it was an unbelievable sort of time. The exhilaration of having the opportunity to shape and build, sort of the infrastructure that had been promised and never delivered. Things like metros and duplications of Pacific Highway and schools and hospitals. It was an incredible time but then, yeah, there was this day that came along where I was speaking at an event. It was a sort of financial analysis and we were kind of talking about state of the economy in New South Wales and our infrastructure spend and I thought that it was going well but my media officer who was at the end of the table kind of had this sort of pained look on her face while I was sort of delivering and answering Q&A. So much so then I look down, I said … the first thing I said … I said “Rach, like what was wrong, like I thought that went well …
Jenelle: [laugh] I did well!
Mike: … did I say something not … not right or not answer the question”. She said “Mike, no … no stop … you know Barry has resigned”. I said “What!” No, he’s resigned. You know, he’s … he’s leaving the premiership and I’m like “oh my goodness”. So it was like the world has kind of stopped and I had almost … well basically 24 hours of kind of madness that ensued and you know, at the end of that I found myself standing in the premier’s office and saying “my goodness, how did this happen” [laugh].
Jenelle: What … tell me what was going through your head though, not just the “how did this happen” but how did you feel?
Mike: At the end of the 24 hours or at the start!
Jenelle: [laugh] Before, during, after!
Mike: I mean at the start it was just this overwhelming sense. I thought like who would be Premier and I thought “well maybe I could”. So … and then I immediately thought of my family and, you know, what would that mean to them and have to go see them. My overwhelming sense was to go and see my family and talk to them. I spoke to a couple of colleagues on the way out and, you know, there was a sense like “look, we think that if you want to do it, that we will back you” and so there was this surreal sense to it. I didn’t, in the 24 hours, make any phone calls. There were people calling round saying that he’s not calling anyone, this is ridiculous like, you know, does he want it, but I was quite clear in my mind. I just needed to get to my close friends and my family and, you know, be clear in mind that this is something that we think, because it was a collective that we should do, because I knew the toll it would take. I’d seen it and it was significant and it required everyone. So that … that period was very much about being clear in the mind, okay. This is something I can put my hand up for and then once I decided that in the morning, you know, I spoke to Gladys and said “look, if I’m running, would you be my deputy” and she was very keen to do that, I wanted her as a Deputy so we put our names forward and we announced that she and I would run as a team. When the vote came in, I went back to the office, I’m standing there, it was a sense of bewilderment, excitement but also trepidation. I knew the journey was going to have its challenges and I was also weighed down with kind of the history and the responsibility. You know, all of that kind of crack down but the next day was an exciting one because my first appointment was to show Wills and Kate around Sydney. So … it was a royal visit.
Jenelle: Wow, that’s not too shabby! [laugh] and Mike you said, you know, I can understand all of that melting pot of emotions in there but the fact that you said, you know, I knew the toll it would take. So you sort of did go … as bewildered as you were about it, eyes wide open from having observed your father, was there anything that you remember thinking about, even in that 24 hour decision making window where you were like, I saw … I know the toll it could take, here’s what I need to do to protect myself and my family, if I’m going to take this on. Was there some conscious thought around what you might need to do to mitigate that toll.
Mike: The answer is no. You know, what … and I worked that out as I went, you know, that was a learning and I wasn’t perfect early on but, you know, by the time I got to the end of my time in public life, I think I had a pretty good rhythm in terms of protection of self and family, social media, criticism, all those sort of things, I think there were good mechanisms in place but it was learnt. It was learnt through …
Jenelle: Mm, along the way!
Mike: … experience and you know, adult battle scars. I mean that’s where it came but no, look you know, to me it’s … the most important thing was wrestling with the family and like any family, there were sort of challenges and, you know, there were perspectives that we had to go through and, you know, sort of close friends discussing those openly, you know, with the family every single one talking through it. Before you jumped at it, that foundation needed to be set and it was set strongly. So once I had that and it cleared, confidence in that, you know, everything I thought could be dealt with. In terms of the downside, yeah I’d seen … my father, he hadn’t been Premier but I worked alongside Barry as well and when you work alongside a Premier, you know and can see, you know, what they deal with on a daily basis. Until you get there, you underestimate it but what I’d seen as Treasurer and watching it, I knew in essence, that it wasn’t going to be easy.
Jenelle: It certainly wasn’t going to be easy. There were several tragic events during your time as Premier. The biggest was the Lindt siege in 2014. That was just eight months into your term. What skills did you already have and attributes I guess, to lean on through that period of time and what new ones did you have to learn.
Mike: Well, it was … yeah, I mean, confronting in every way to sort of, in a crisis cabinet and obviously leading that crisis cabinet at a time like that was, you know, not something that you really prepare for and to find yourself there is … is kind of surreal but you know, in that moment, there was a reliance on the experts, you know, were all around, you know, that cabinet. There were people undertaking specific things, you know, transport was sort of going up and down to make sure that transport was available and people were being cleared out of stations. We had schools connecting … the Education Department connecting into, you know, all the school excursions who were across the city, finding where they were and acting. We had the health department sort of clearing space and room in hospitals nearby, all the adjoining hospitals and lining up obviously ambulance support. So there was this almost machine-like approach. So it was relying on the experts, you know, at that time and, of course, the police were working, and you know, in time there was some criticism of the action that I can tell you that from every minute that I saw, every single person then was doing whatever was in their capability, skill and experience to get every single one of those hostages out and, you know, I thought the police did an amazing job. I met the person and the team that actually went into that café, you know, late that night. The person that goes in first of those teams will always call their family when they’re assigned because they rotate who goes in first with the risk and, you know, so you know, that person had called his family, a couple of young kids and, you know, hard for us to imagine, you know, what that’s like …
Jenelle: Absolutely!
Mike: … there’s no … we have these incredible people that are there for moments like that and they don’t happen on that scale but happen regularly in sort of suburbs, you know. For me to see that and witness that, you know, was incredible and, you know, relying on that expertise, you know, was something that was clear and it was something that I’d done previously but never to that extent. I never had that scale or requirement. You know, the other thing I think was, you know, how do you deal with the community in that. I mean, people, you know, there’s tragic loss of life and I’ll never forget, you know, standing there and hearing the ambulances coming and knowing that it was likely that we’d lost young lives and Tori and Katrina were lost and, you know, there’s a couple of parts with it. You know, the first is, you know, connecting into those families and it’s always something that I sort of tried to do, that is connect personally to people and, you know, empathy. Just empathise with this incredible tragedy. You know, we … very hard for us to understand in any way what that would be like but I felt their pain and I think that was part of the role of, you know, sort of being there, engaging, doing what we can to support, you know, sharing in pain and celebrating two incredible young Australians who we lost. So that’s just a human element, isn’t it and just trying to be human is what I try to do and, you know, I had a role but, you know, this was just, you know, me as my connecting into family members in a way to try and help with their pain and then all the hostages as well. I mean, what trauma they went through and, you know, engage with them sort of over weeks and months and even years. I’m still seeing some even recently. So you know, that human element, I think, was something, so experts in human and then, you know, the last is like how do you kind of lead people in response and I mean it could have gone two ways. I think, there was the sort of great anger and there was hate and kind of wanting vengeance almost for what had taken place and, you know, there was a great risk that that’s where the city could go but there was this sense of amazing grace and I think that rather than hate, there was love and, you know, you saw that. There was a unity and a love that came and, you know, the best of people was actually demonstrated so how do you connect with that and how do you create that. I mean I was … I was approached by a group of young Muslim leaders that I had engaged with in my time as Premier and, you know, they reached out and said “look, we want to go and put flowers” … if you remember the flowers, that’s how people showed it to me …
Jenelle: I do, absolutely! Such a powerful visual.
Mike: Yeah, and people just came to put flowers. You know, to tell Tori and Katrina’s families, we’re with you, we’re so sorry and … and I also think then to the hostages and say “you know, we’re glad you’re safe” and this city, we love this city and we love our freedoms, we love our values and, you know, there was all of that and, you know, these young Muslim leaders wanted to come and put flowers there and they contacted our office, you know, my office and I said “look, I’ll go with them”. I had met them previously and I said “no, let’s … let’s go and do this together” and, you know, there was trepidation in that but, you know, as we went down, I needn’t have worried. The response from the crowd … oh, it will stay with me always because, you know, there was, you know, fears about young Muslims and the ideology that was, you know, community kind of fear but here were young men that were against extremism. Now they had a Muslim faith but they cared deeply for what had taken place and they just wanted to express their concern and love. As they walked through, there were people that were patting them on the back. You know, they hugged them and, you know, there were tears and there were thank yous and it was … it was beautiful and as they put it down, you know, one of them said to me “I have never felt more part of Australia than today.”
Jenelle: Wow!
Mike: So, you know, in those sort of moments, you know, how do you connect into the best of people as opposed to visions of retribution and hate and, you know, I think we saw in the city that week in particular, the best of the best. There was this wonderful spirit of support and mourning and grieving and unity that I hadn’t really seen before. So you know, through the experience, all those sort of things, I mean it was a pretty impactful time for, you know, many people and obviously personally as well.
Jenelle: It’s … it’s a really great reminder particularly given the context that we find ourselves in today, that in times of crisis we can and should come together in solidarity, rather than factionalise in anger and, you know, polarised positions on things. During the same period and there was a long that was happening. Literally in the same period of time, you also had to comfort a family who had lost a son on Malaysian Airlines MH17. You also had to absorb the pain of the policing community after the shooting of the unarmed police civilian finance worker, Curtis Cheng. Lots going on Mike and as you say, you feel these things deeply. Who … who did you turn to yourself during this period of time.
Mike: Yeah, I mean that’s … I mean, as you bring them back, there’s flashes and kind of memories and yeah, I mean, you know, the pain of all those are real and, you know, those families said “are you still … would be feeling it, you know, acutely”. So yeah, look I would connect in with my wife. You know, she’s kind of been a soulmate on my journey and, you know, she was there in the darkest days and the best days and certainly these days, as I went through those. She was great comfort, you know, as a faith, I mean I have a faith so that sustained me, sort of through that and, you know, looking for encouragement and support and there is, you know, the church I went to were supportive. You know, many in there were supportive and close friends. You know, there was just a group of close friends that I engage with and, you know, could tell them honestly, you know, how I was feeling and the impact things were having because there’s, you know, there’s a sense of being authentic but, you know, your kind of deep pain is … is very difficult to kind of share, you know, on a wide public scale, you know. I mean, people are interested but not necessarily that interested [laugh], you know, can you just make the trains run on time please …
Jenelle: [laugh] Exactly.
Mike: … you know. So, and that’s totally understandable. So there is a sense that there is just a sort of select few that I think is important and, you know, it’s a lonely place. Leadership is a lonely place and, you know, someone once said to me that as a leader, that probably the loneliest place is in the busiest room, you know, or the busiest times and …
Jenelle: Wow!
Mike: … there’s kind of frenetic energy and things around you but it’s just you and your thoughts and dealing with complex issues, difficult issues and knowing there’s, you know, very few people that you can … you can kind of share that with. So having them, you know, that collection, was incredibly important in those times and, you know, that pales in comparison to all the families that you just spoke about, what they’d been through. So, you know, also mindful of that.
Jenelle: Thank you for that vulnerability. I mean I do think it’s a big thing to say about … to talk about the loneliness of leadership. On the discussion of leadership, when you and I spoke the other day, I was really struck by the way that you spoke about how you saw leadership and leadership roles. Almost like you had … you were so deeply connected to it but you also have a distance from it, almost like it’s an object. You said and I think these were the words that you used around leadership “hold it lightly, use it greatly”. What did you mean by that and tell me how … what that looks like and looked like for you.
Mike: Yeah I think as I have looked at leaders and observed them, been alongside leaders, there’s many who … you know, when they get into roles of significance and, you know, any senior management position really, you know, people start to kind of link, you know, their identity and who they are into the roles and, you know, to me that was always unhealthy because, you know, I mean leaders come and go and there’s much more about any person than just, you know, the job they do or the role they have or the responsibilities they have, you know, who are they as people, you know, what are their dreams and aspirations, you know, the dignity and respect of them goes well beyond kind of any role and that … that was always a sense to me. Like hold it lightly, you are not defined by it and, you know, just because, you know, I’m a CEO today, you know, I am no more important than a care worker that is currently in one of our facility in a specialist dementia cottage, you know, looking after people living with dementia, challenging incredibly important purpose filled work and, you know, they’re doing an amazing job and my job is to try and help them do that. Now, I’ve got roles and responsibilities as CEO but that doesn’t make me any more important than them. Indeed, anything I can do to help them, then I’m doing my job and I think that that’s, you know, the best form of mindset, you know, it’s just … you have this role and responsibility but it’s not you, you know. There’s much more to you in terms of humanity and character and values and dignity and value, well beyond a role and, you know, that’s one side of it. The other side is that, which is kind of connected, you know, I’ve read this book called “Martin Buber”. He speaks about two ways that we can communicate in life. It’s called “I-It and I-Thou” and most of the world is I-It and that is every single interaction is kind of transactional, you know, a boss saying to you on Monday “well how was your weekend?” Great, tick the box, okay this is what I need from you this week. That’s the classic kind of I-It. You’re not valued, you’re not engaged. It’s just functional and the I-Thou is different. It’s tools down. You know, it’s connecting in individually personally. Not with yourself involved. You’re thinking of others. You engage with that. You’re looking at events, moments and people, most particularly, with a context of who they are and the value and I try to use that and it’s the same thing in terms of holding it lightly. It’s … yes, you know, CEOs out there, if you’ve got the CEO title but that person in front of you deserves a Thou, not an It, you know, drop everything, your inbox, your next meeting, your last meeting, your important sort of board papers that are coming up – stop. Like right in front of you is someone that’s significant value and they are the most important person right now. What they need, what they need to say, what they need you to do. Just sit and be and listen and, you know, that takes the title out of it and the role out of it, the leadership position out of it and it becomes back to this, you know, human interaction. So that’s something which is holding it lightly. I try to do kind of regularly. From the moment I was kind of dropped into that understanding. As I said, if you read the book, it’s hard to understand. I had someone explain it to me, Electra, you know, that’s the stuff we do, very powerful and then using it greatly. I think that it’s the same thing. All leaders, like you’ve got a finite time, you know, an average kind of three to five years as a leader, senior leader. Well use it. Give it a crack. Don’t … don’t just tread water, you know, don’t just keep doing what is being done. I mean some of it sure, that might make sense but challenge yourself, challenge the team, look for the opportunities that others might have thought were too hard, take on the challenges likewise that have been put to someone else to deal with it – you do it. All of those things, like use it because that’s what I think is missing. If you talk to most political leaders, there’s this research that was done, almost all and it applies as much to CEOs and leaders of charities, not-for-profits, super funds, it doesn’t matter. When they leave their roles, their biggest regret is they didn’t take enough risk. So I think there’s that sense. You have this role, use it, you know, take the risk, be bold.
Jenelle: I love that, love that and can I say, whilst I have never said, never thought about the words “you deserve a Thou, not an It”, it makes me think, even the other day Mike, I walked into a room to speak to somebody and they were busy as I always am and other people are and they had their laptop open in front of them and I walked in and they put the lid down and that, whilst I wouldn’t have put these words to it, as I think about it now, that was a really symbolic moment of feeling like a “Thou” and not an “It”. They put their laptop screen down and said “I’m here for you, what is it you want to talk about”. I think it’s just incredibly powerful so really really stays with me.
Mike: Wasn’t that … isn’t that great Jenelle, like it was clear that you felt that you were prioritised, important and there was a different sense in that interaction than if that laptop had stayed up.
Jenelle: Absolutely. I reflected on it when I was driving back. I mean it really struck me. I was like the smallest gesture completely the temperature in the room. It stayed with me, the fact that I was driving home and thinking about that small move made me go “those are the things that matter and I’ll make sure that I do that too”. Mike, despite the challenges that we talked about then as you were in the Premier role, from the outside it did seem like you were living the dream. You made a substantial impact as Premier. You were thought to be a shoo-in as the next Prime Minister of Australia. All the signs were pointing to a long and successful career in politics but, and you know, we talked about what it was like to find yourself accidentally in the role. If that was a surprise advancement to make Premier, then I would say it was equally a surprise, if not more so to the country, that you then decided to resign halfway through your government’s first term. It was a decision that made many Australians wonder “what the hell happened there” and sadly, I’ve got to say when a politician steps down saying they want to spend more time with the family, we probably sort of, it’s maybe a damning thing on us that we’re almost conditioned to believe that there’s a scandal story about to emerge, that they’re wanting to get ahead of. So maybe we still haven’t made sense of it. Is there something that you want to come clean with now. What was the story there Mike?
Mike: [laugh]. No no and I’ve had people come up me afterwards and say “you know, I was just suspicious that there was something going on”. I mean they were lovely. They said we didn’t want you go and we wanted you to stay but it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve made but also one of the easiest and I think, probably three factors played a role in it. I mean, one – you know, there was sort of goals and objectives. If you go back to the beginning, I never wanted to go into politics and be institutionalised. I thought, you know, it would be great to have an opportunity to go in and make a difference and then to leave. So I had always in my mind had, you know, if I was given an opportunity to be, you know, treasurer I would use it as much as I could and then, you know, hand it across and go and do something else in my career. Just a chance to contribute was a way I look at it and before I went in, I did a list of all the things that I would love to have achieved if I was given the opportunity in government and in politics. So coming up to the third year, I … and I’d been three years as treasurer and obviously three years as Premier, so I was kind of six years in that front line roles and I looked at the list and I had ticked everything. I, you know, the big part was the infrastructure piece. I thought I could use the finance background I had to try and unlock some capital and deliver the infrastructure the state needed: schools, hospitals, roads, trains, you know, sporting facilities, cultural facilities, you know, regionally and in Sydney. So that had been achieved. We had just signed off on the final sort of transaction and that was a long journey. I thought “okay, I’ve achieved that”. The second which was also important was by the time I got towards the end, we’ve spoken about some of those difficult events and, you know, that’s the time and MPs, Ministers and Premier will often interact with people in really tough situations, tough circumstances and we’ve gone through some of those and I’d always been able to kind of connect in and feel the pain, you know, of those I was meeting with and I realised, you know, for the last couple of months, actually when I’d been in those meetings I had felt nothing. I was completely and utterly numb and that amazed me. I’d never had that feeling. I didn’t know where it had come from and, you know, I think that part of it is there is this sense of self that … that is broken when you interact, you know, on some of these stories or, you know, I remember seeing, you know, a poor man in public housing who was kicked out of public housing on Christmas eve, you know, so he had nowhere to live on Christmas day and, you know. That’s just one example but there are so many like that and that, you know, you feel that and I’d always had but that numbness concerned me and I thought “well I don’t know how I can do this job if I don’t feel that at all or empathise when you’re faced with those situations and people” and then the last one was the family and people are cynical on it but, you know, the toll. I mean my … my daughters were bullied on the lockout laws, you know. They were introduced by Barry. I continued them, you know, I believed in them because they were saving lives and, you know, my daughters copped the brunt. My eldest daughter never ever told me, never told me that she was being bullied. She just said she was proud of me for sticking to what I believe in but she had been impacted by politics. She ended up sort of moving out of Sydney, you know. She just didn’t like the attention. She obviously didn’t like me being attacked at times and so the family carried this burden, you know. My wife was unbelievably supportive, you know, she obviously concerned for kids and all, you know. We had intruders come to the house. We had security 24/7. We had drones fly around, you know, we have police follow us, every single member of the family at times for weeks. Television cameras at 4.50 in the morning. It all takes a toll. At the same time, my sister was unwell and my Mum was diagnosed with a serious disease and I was unable to be with her, you know, in this role. So that collection, you know, was a significant thing because it’s such a privilege and a joy to have the responsibility of leading the state and being the MP of my community but as I was weighing all that up and going away for a week and my wife said “no, it’s time, I think it’s time”. So the moment that decision was made, there was this sense of relief and, you know, since I’ve left I haven’t sort of wished I was back but the same time, incredibly proud and thankful for the opportunity I have.
Jenelle: Ooh, that makes complete sense and I understand it on every level, with your family, with yourself. It’s … there’s stuff that you’ve talked about there which I can completely relate to as a … somebody who used to be … I was a psychologist in prisons and when you give yourself, I mean you have a lot of empathy, it does take its toll and sometimes what you need is self-preservation which is where the numbness kicks in. When the numbness kicks in to self-preserve, your ability to be as effective because that … your very super power is the thing that you are keeping at bay. You know, that empathy, it’s really something difficult to grapple with so I completely relate to that. If you just think about that dynamic, when your super power, so your empathy, like your ability to connect to feel things deeply becomes the very thing that then takes a toll and you have to self-preserve. What have you taken forward from that as you’ve gone onto your other multiple careers, knowing that about yourself. What have you taken forward from there?
Mike: You know, knowing that, there’s … there is self-preservation. So, you know, I will be very careful now that if I am sort of run down or feeling not just tired but bone tired, or you know, not yet numb but feeling those warning signs, then I’ll disconnect and, you know, I will take time off and, you know, and with my incredible EA Belle, it will be no communication time, you know, so emails/phones like just time off and genuine time off. So I’ve got much better at that but also you don’t, you know, there are times that you need help and I’ve sought kind of help as well and I certainly think in terms of mental health, we don’t talk about that enough and there are kind of experts and tools that can help and, you know, if there are events and circumstances you’ve been through, sometimes you can’t see, you know, or feel or truly understand the impact, but being prepared to do that, I think is important. So, you know, that’s something that I’m much more conscious now than I never would have and, you know, that’s thanks to my Mum who, you know, after the siege she couldn’t sort of talk at the time, so she had to type, you know, for a period towards the end of her life and she said “you know, go see counsellor” is what she told me after the siege and I said “no, it will be okay Mum, it will be okay, I’ll be okay” but, you know, she was right, you know, I should have. So, you know, that’s helpful but it is protecting. I mean everyone has super powers, a bit generous Jenelle, I mean that … I’d call that, you know, something I love, engaging with and, you know, hopefully it’s part of my leadership and, you know, in that, you know, using it, you know, so protecting and in using it is important and I never want to shy away from it, you know, I never want to be in the position where I am numb. If something is coming, I want to be there and if you think about the Thou. If someone is in a really tough situation, they don’t want someone sitting there “glazed”, you know, they want someone to listen and to understand and to connect in a way that’s deeply human. So I always want to use it but, you know, you have to protect it. I think that’s right.
Jenelle: So speaking of you coming out politics looking for some restorative time there, but a month later you transitioned into the role of Chief Customer Officer at NAB. What was your thinking and rationale for heading back into banking.
Mike: Yeah, well it was … yeah I mean I was called the Saturday after I’d resigned and yeah, it was three months before I started in the role and it was what I was familiar with. You know, I’d spent 20 years in banking. I needed to work. I was obviously very familiar with banking, yeah I’d spent actually a lot of my career on the wholesale side and this was to run a wholesale bank and I was excited by it, you know, and I sort of certainly … the CEO was someone I respected and, you know, had known, high values, sort of great visions. So yeah, it was a brand new chapter. So you know, going from, you know, the Premier and then having three months off and it was crazy three months and, you know, if I roll back the clock, you know, notwithstanding the financial need because I mean there was no pension for my class and above. So since 2007 there are no pensions for MPs but I still should have taken more time. So, you know, to go back into a role was a bit early but having said that, I loved it. Really really enjoyed the role but it probably takes about 12 months to get through the dust and scars and turmoil of a stint in politics.
Jenelle: Politics, yeah! You took on few more C-suite roles before landing into your current positions as the Chair of Cricket Australia and the CEO of Hammond Care, two very different organisations.
Mike: Mmmm.
Jenelle: There seems to be a common thread of opportunities for change finding you at times when you’re ready to close a chapter and start something new. Is that how you see it and how do you make your decisions about which opportunities are the ones to take?
Mike: Yeah, well it’s … yeah, my wife would say as I went from politics and then to banking which had a royal commission during my time there and then I went into aged care where there was a royal commission kind of underway, so it’s kind of so forth
Jenelle: [laugh]. Okay, so you like royal commissions.
Mike: Well I do love a challenge and I love, you know, the opportunity to impact people, to lead teams, to change cultures, to tackle impossible things. I’ve always enjoyed that. You know, banking – there is a clear kind of outline, you know, with the royal commission on culturally what was wrong with the sector and, you know, I saw it in elements that, you know, when I was there. So I think they’re well overdue and needed in terms of that cultural reset across the sector. You know, the way you treat customers, engage with customers, engage with the community. So I think that, you know, to a degree there has been significant change. I don’t think enough change in that sector. You know, aged care similarly. I mean, we do it. There were some terrible stories of neglect and sort of broke the hearts of many across the country but, you know, I think the royal commission’s made a number of recommendations. The governments, you know, on both sides, significant funding commitments, increased funding commitments from the current government, there’s real hope there. You know, the opportunity to help, you know, those carers, you know, when I go back to my personal experience, I ended up in Hammond Care predominantly because I’d seen aged care through my Mum and the wonder of it. You know, how important it was and the carers and the work they did. So the motivation wasn’t just the challenge but there was a personal connection and I thought “wow, if I can, as CEO, help them, then that’s something is really worthwhile and purposeful in itself. So … and that’s part of it. I think that the sector was sort of under pressure, underfunded, undervalued and I’d seen to know “look, I get that and I can get this neglect but I can tell you I’ve seen the wonder of this, these care workers – they change lives and they have the biggest hearts and we should be celebrating them and we should be valuing them and I think as a country, we should be and we should be valuing our elderly”. So all of those kind of thoughts and perspectives, you know, to be able to roll into this role, I thought “well, what a fantastic opportunity to lead” and cricket … look cricket was a passion project, on the tragic cricket follower. Some people don’t like the word “tragic” but I … that’s a good description because there’s not a match I wouldn’t watch. I’d watch every minute of the …
Jenelle: [laugh]
Mike: … every test match if I could. The World Cup has just shown how incredible it is. Someone like Meg Lanning, I think is one of Australia’s great leaders …
Jenelle: Outstanding!
Mike: … and incredible achievement on the cricket field. To have the chance to shape a sport I love and I’ve, you know, been involved in club cricket, I’ve played a lot myself and sort of have the chance to serve and contribute in this way is … yeah it’s a privilege as well. So yeah, enjoying all of it Jenelle.
Jenelle: I can hear that. So for my final question. What’s left to do that you haven’t yet tackled or achieved.
Mike: [laugh] Well Jenelle, I’m not sure. I mean I think … I mean I feel still youngish [laugh] …
Jenelle: You look still youngish.
Mike: … I learned in the last couple of weeks that I’m about to become a grandfather for the first time … that’s kind of breaking news …
Jenelle: Congrats!
Mike: … and, you know, that’s a new chapter in life which I am very much looking forward to. I think that will be very special to have that. So look, I would say Jenelle, I’m … I’m open. I don’t know whether I would take another senior role, in times, so an executive style role or whether I might do portfolio. I’ll keep working. I think my wife said “you can wind back a bit but you’re going to keep working and if you didn’t, you would drive us all crazy”.
Jenelle: [laugh]
Mike: So I’ll certainly be doing something, but it’s kind of exciting. For a big part of my life, there’s been very clear idea of where I’m going and what I’m doing next. That’s … I’ve almost always had that but I think I’m at a period where I’ll just be open to what could come and sort of working with people or in cultures and purpose would be something that I look forward to, but you know, also a bit of grandfather time.
Jenelle: Ooh, that’s so exciting. Congratulations to you on that and I think I look forward to seeing how the many more chapters ahead of you unfolds. No doubt you’ll have huge impact and Mike, I wanted to say massive thank you for joining me today. What a wonderful discussion. For me, your purpose around contribution through others is really clear. You used the words and, you know, in really simple ways. You said “I try to be human” which sounds really simplistic and … but there’s a real humility and a real genuine and critical and powerful element to that, trying to be human really is what it’s about. It’s just being. I think as you reflect on some of those situations with you as Premier and the Lindt situation, there’s a real reminder in there about the power of coming together in solidarity, rather than turning on each other and the need to connect into the best of people. I think that’s within us all. I really feel the power in your words around leadership. Holding it lightly and using it greatly. Holding it lightly – that brings a beautiful stewardship philosophy to everything that you’ve done, that puts ego at bay and puts you very much in a servant leader position and then using it greatly. I love that call to action, have a crack, have impact, take on the challenge, be bold and dare I say “make change happen”. I will forever, hold on the words of “you deserve a Thou, not an It” and all of that represents and thank you also for sharing the toll that things have taken on you and what you’ve learnt about recognising the signs and the signals around seeking help, giving proper time off and my takeaway, by the way, from all of that was “listen to your mother” and so I’m going to make my children listen to this and that’s their big takeaway too.
Mike: [laugh]
Jenelle: So thank you so much Mike, it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you.
Mike: Pleasure … pleasure to join you Jenelle, really appreciate it, thank you.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Ronni Kahn AO
CEO & Founder | OzHarvest

Jenelle: Hi, Ronni. I feel like this recording has been a long time coming for us. As it turns out …
Ronni: Four times, maybe five we’ve moved it.
Jenelle: Maybe four or five. But you know, all good things come to those who wait. And as it turns out, this will be the last podcast of the season before we head off on a break. And I honestly couldn’t be happier to be closing out the year, and the season, with you. So, maybe it all worked out for the best. Thank you for joining me today.
Ronni: It’s an absolute pleasure.
Jenelle: Before we get into it, I do want to just check in and ask how you are, Ronni. You have a really strong connection to Israel, having spent 20 years there, nine of which I know you lived in a kibbutz. You had your two children there, and I know you were over there fairly recently, around about the time when the war began in early October. So, there’s no really easy way to cover this, but I just wanted to check in on how you are doing.
Ronni: Thank you so much. It is very hard to disassociate what is happening in the wider world and bring it down to … without bringing it into the microcosm. You know, I’ve just looked at some hate mail that’s come in, and it’s distressing, you know? It’s distressing that there’s so much … first of all, there’s so much pain on both sides. That we have leaders, or lack of leadership, on both sides that’s doing what’s best for the people. Although, how does one know what is best for the people, you know? It’s complex, it’s very complex.
So, on a personal level, it’s challenging. But I am hopeful. I spent the weekend with the most wonderful Palestinian peace activist, in conversations like I’ve never had before with my brethren, really. I lived in Israel for 20 years, we never had those kinds of interactions. So, I am hopeful, and intending to work with him on what a dual narrative could look like.
Jenelle: I do, and I love the hope in you. It is an unimaginable situation and complex, as you say, Ronni. But thank you again for joining me today, I’m ever so grateful for your time. And I do love the rattle of your bangles; ordinarily, I’d be like give me the … but it’s so inimitably yours, so, long may the bangles rattle away there.
Ronni: Well, I do always say to sound tech people when they look at me if I’m about to do a keynote or I’m about to do a talk, and they look at me, and they’re about to say, can you please remove your … and I say, your problem, not mine, this is what I come with.
Jenelle: I’m glad I didn’t dare make that request, I know you a bit better than that. Thank you, Ronni. Now, to kick things off, I want to start with cake. A lot of cake, thanks to your mother. She sounded like … she sounds like an incredible woman. Tell me about her.
Ronni: You know, it’s funny because I have just also received an email from someone who said, I have just finished your book, and the timing was so perfect, and I thank you so much. So, it’s so funny that I’ve been pulled back into it. My mother was extraordinary. Actually, my dad had an accident, and my dad landed up in hospital for the next two years, and they didn’t think he’d survive, but he did. They didn’t think he’d walk, but he did.
But the truth is, my mother had three young children and became the breadwinner overnight, cos my dad lost his job, of course. And she got up in the morning and said, what can I do? What do I know? And one of the things she knew was she was a great baker. And a friend in Italy said, why don’t you bake a few cakes for my little club, and it landed up to becoming 100, 200, cakes a day in her home kitchen.
Jenelle: Ronni, I don’t say this lightly, but you’ve lived so many lives to get to where you are now. But way back in the beginning as a youngster in South Africa, what did you think you wanted to be growing up?
Ronni: Well, you can laugh at the first, and you probably will smile at the second. So, the first was … I thought a postmaster would be really fun. Cos, I had a stamp kit set, and you know, I thought, how fun would that be? Just stamping envelopes all day. So, not that aspirational. And then I thought being an air stewardess would be very glamourous and a way to travel the world.
Jenelle: But you did travel the world, and you probably did feel like you were stamping lots of things metaphorically through your life. So, you know, it’s there.
Ronni: It all ties in.
Jenelle: It does, it does indeed. At the risk of skipping big chunks of your life which I’m sure we’ll come back to later; you ended up in event planning after your move to Australia. Why did you choose to get into that industry, and how did you get that first big break?
Ronni: When I think about it, the choices I’ve made have been to leave South Africa, to live on a kibbutz, to leave the kibbutz, to live in Australia, and do what I knew. So, the thing that I knew when I came here was floristry. When I left kibbutz, my sister had bought a florist, so I joined her. And we had a very successful florist. And then I came to live in Australia, and the only thing I wasn’t going to do was floristry.
I did a year of interior decorating and then somebody offered to set me up in a florist. So, I didn’t know I was entrepreneurial, but was I knew, I had my florist, and one day somebody came in and said, will you do the flowers for my wedding? I said, yeah. And they said, what else do you do? And I said, what else do you need? And she said, the hall’s a bit drab. And I said, sure, I can make that look beautiful. And that’s how I fell into event planning.
Jenelle: I have heard you say that you, you know, what you know you can do is sell anybody a dream, but then deliver on it. What gave you the conviction that you can deliver on it? Cos your dreams weren’t small ones; they weren’t tiny little visions here. You had some big, big, big, grandiose ideas, but you could deliver on it. Where was that, I don’t know, the confidence and conviction, the chutzpah maybe, that you could deliver on that?
Ronni: It’s interesting, cos I have actually … I guess that’s part of this ability to … for flexibility, agility, and the spirit of going for it. I had moved countries, I had walked into a shop that I had never touched a flower, and it turned out to be a perfect medium for me. It turned out that selling I was good at, and it turned out that business I was good at. So that, I suppose, without ever deconstructing it, gave me a level of confidence. I then knew that I needed to move countries with two children, no jobs for either myself or my then husband, and no money. But decided we could do this.
Jenelle: I mean, if I think about what you’re saying, though, that some of it was born out of necessity. Then, you started to build up little proof points in your own ... cognitive rewiring. I can do that, well, I can probably do the next thing. So, these rolodex of proof points that you were building up for yourself to give you that level of self-belief and conviction was there.
Ronni: Yeah, I love that notion of proof points. Because it is such an important thing, and as you say, it makes it much more simplistic to understand.
Jenelle: So, cow manure, a perm, and the lightning of Soweto. They may not be the most natural, or the most obvious, segues to my next question, but I want to assure our listeners that this does make perfect sense. Tell me about those three pivotal movements that led up to you forming OzHarvest.
Ronni: I think Soweto is really the most pivotal. Because when I went to visit South Africa for that week, and that’s … this is what I did before I started OzHarvest. I’d already had the idea, I’d started rogue food rescuing, my business was kind of growing, but I thought I was starting loving giving food away way more than loving draping ceilings and wrapping napkins.
But I went to visit this beautiful, wonderful woman, Selma, who’s an activist. Didn’t really know that much about the activism she was doing because I’d been out of South Africa for so long. She said, we’re going to go to Soweto. And growing up in South Africa, I’d never been to Soweto. It was three kilometres from my home, but it was a dusty, swarming, seething, mass of humanity that did not welcome white people. And that’s what I left; that’s what I knew.
And Selma says, we are going to visit Soweto. And as we drive into Soweto, when she turns round and says, just under her breath and matter of factly—and that was not the reason we were going to Soweto—and she said, by the way, I am responsible for electricity in Soweto. The hairs on my arms stood up. And all I could think of was, I want to know what that feels like.
And by the time we got to the AIDS clinic, which she had set up because she’s a doctor, I knew that my life would never be the same again, and that I wanted to know that feeling, and therefore I could rescue food, cos there probably were enough people—I knew nothing about the facts—that might need food, I knew nothing about the fact that 36 billion dollars’ worth of food goes to waste, I didn’t know that then. But I thought, wow, that’s what I’m going to do.
Jenelle: How did Selma come into your orbit? She seems like an extraordinary woman.
Ronni: My family and Selma’s family grew up next door. Selma was a doctor; she went to work, her children came to us every day so that my mother could feed them. But my mother went to Selma, cos she had a different kind of wisdom. So, they were very close, and as families we were like brothers and sisters. And I have to share something which I have not shared with anybody because this is what happened when I went to South Africa now.
Selma’s son fetched me from the airport because he is now the CEO of South Africa Harvest. And I went back, because they had just delivered their 50 millionth meal, and to see Selma. And Alan said, I’m going to take you to … past our houses. Our house, mine was number 17, his was number 13, and the numbers were odd, but the houses were next to each other. And he said, you’ve need to see something: somebody has bought number 13 and number 17 and combined them.
Jenelle: That’s incredible.
Ronni: As we were outside the house, the new owner drove out, and we said, stop. We need you to know that the energy from that house and the energy from this house is powerful.
Jenelle: What an incredible, incredible story. And I’m glad that we got to hear it here first; I think that is amazing. Ronni, so that listeners of this don’t think I am a crazy lady that just talked about cow manure and perm with no context, can we come back to that? Can you rescue me from this abyss that I’m in and put some context to those two?
Ronni: Okay, so, on the kibbutz, I worked in the refet, number one, in the cow shed. And actually, I loved it, because I was working with calves, otherwise I was working in the office. Everyone gets a roster of where they have to work every six weeks out of their everyday job, because their Saturday, Sabbath day, jobs that need to be filled. And working in the refet, in the cow shed, was a happy place for me. And I still think of cow manure and smell that and just think back to feeding those little babies and shovelling shit and throwing down hay. But while I—I’m gonna jump—so that is a special, special memory for me of the time on kibbutz. Cos they were challenging times, but there was also so many special times.
But I’ll jump to the perm, which changed my life, because I felt like a little mouse. I had dead straight hair, I never felt pretty, I never felt really very attractive. And went with my sister to a hairdresser in Haifa, off the kibbutz. And he was French, and he looked at me, and he said, we are going to do something different. And I just said, do it. And my sister said, do it. So, I’ll share very quickly; my sister came out with … like a Zebra. She had gold stripes in her dark brown hair, and she was hysterical. And I came out a new woman. My hair was fluffed and full, and it was like an injection of confidence, of new spirit, because even the hairdresser turned around, and kind of, very frenchly, went, madame, started making eyes at me. I walked back onto the kibbutz, and it was like, wow.
Jenelle: Look out world.
Ronni: Yeah, go girl.
Jenelle: That’s one hell of a perm. I tell you, I’ve had a few perms in my time, and I had nothing of the same kind of experience. I do have a series of very, very tragic photos for party events, but that’s about it.
Now, for you, being a successful event planner put you in a prime position to see how much food was being used and left behind and thrown out at every event. So, many event planners, food waste is just part of the job. You’d rather throw away food than have your guests leave hungry, and understandably so, I get that. When did you realise that there was a problem with food insecurity? Was it a slow realisation, was it an epiphany? And then, what made you go, I need to do something about this?
Ronni: Actually, I didn’t realise there was a … I mean, I knew there were people in need. I had no idea of the scale. I had a problem that needed to be solved. I was making and producing surplus food, so I needed to find a solution for my problem. And the food was perfectly good, the food was delicious, and at one particular event I had so much food left over, I … up until then, I was every other event planner throwing away my food cos it was easy, cos it was late at night, and you start early, and the day is long, and there’s stress, and all you wanna do is get out of there, clean up. And we threw our food away.
But this night, there was just too much food. So, I put it in a van, and knew of one place that possibly could use that food. I have no idea what would have happened if they said no, cos I would have had a van full of rotting food. But they didn’t say no. They graciously and happily took it all, and I thought, that was the best thing.
So, my events after that, I kind of, used to say to my clients, how would you feel if at the end of your event, any surplus food went to feed hungry people? So, they loved it, and I loved it, and made sure there was surplus food. And I did that for the next six years, until … while I … as I built OzHarvest, I continued working, because I’d never set up OzHarvest to support myself. It was to support my soul, and it became more and more and more fulfilling.
And I always say to anyone that I’m talking with, every day, we all have problems. Most of us turn round and say, I wish somebody would fix this. I had no idea why I was the person that chose to fix the problem of surplus food, but I was. I was. And that is the blessing that I have received, and the gift that I have received.
Jenelle: Tell me about the Hebrew word—and I hope I pronounce this correctly—tikkun olam.
Ronni: Tikkun olam. It’s a very powerful word. It’s really part of the ethos of the Jewish faith, and I was brought up in the Jewish faith. And what that does not mean I’m a religious observant Jew, but I am a ritualistic Jew and believe in the morals and the ethics and the ethos. And the ethos of tikkun olam means, repair the world, is the literal translation. But it means, the world is shattered. And or job is to be of service and find what it is you can do to fix and fill the cracks and be, in your daily life, able to give back. And it’s that principle that is a very powerful one. Again, it wasn’t that I realised that I was fulfilling it, but it’s a value and a deep, core driver to what I do.
Jenelle: So, some people seem to be born with that inherent sense of service, or the innate desire to do their bit and more. You seem to be one, Selma, you’ve talked about Selma, she seems to be one. But there are those that don’t have that. Given all the work that you’ve done, what have you learnt about igniting people to act on issues that they might not be directly impacted by? To live out this, whether you observe the Hebrew rituals, or the Jewish rituals, as you’ve said, but the incumbency upon people to do their part when they see an injustice. How have you ignited that in others?
Ronni: Well, it seems I have unwittingly. I certainly have never set out to do that. I do know that my book does that, which my story, therefore, does that, or again, a need to share that this is an unwitting side phenomenon that I’m in awe and wonder of every day. But I think that passion is very infectious. I believe that giving is a thousand times better than getting, and that is a message that I share every single day. And I just say, try it. Random acts of goodness, random acts of kindness, have the most extraordinary ripple effect, but I believe the biggest ripple effect is on the giver.
You know, I’d been in a position of getting, taking, needing, wanting. And thought that would make me happy, to get more, and more, and more, and more. Until I discovered that giving has made me happier that anything I’ve ever done. And that’s just the only message I can share. And it’s the only message I know how to share, because I live it, and I’ve experienced it. And I think that gives me that ability to say with conviction, go out and do it. Even if that was not your plan.
And that’s part of, very much part of, my purpose for leadership role now. I think if we haven’t got it, and not everybody has it, and I’m lucky to have it, we can learn it. And I can teach it because I live it. And so, I get very excited at the opportunity to coach and to talk with leaders and shift that mindset around the bigger purpose of why their companies exist.
Jenelle: You talked about, when you were with Selma, that you wanted to know what it felt like. What does it feel like? This thousands times better than getting; what does it feel like?
Ronni: Tell you what it feels like: it feels like every cell in my body is filled with gratitude. It means that I wake up in the morning happy with my first breath. Even when things are down, I can touch my bed, and know that I slept and woke up in a bed. And I can lift my eyes up and know that I have a roof over my head. I look out the window … and so, gratitude is the driving force for me, around knowing and being so grateful for being able to do what I do.
Jenelle: Beautiful. My son has a poster in his room that says obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off the goal. But you literally—I mean, it’s wonderful that you’ve had this idea, and with absolutely no disrespect intended here—you are not the first person to have a kind of Robin Hood idea of, you know, giving from the excess to the poor or the less wealthy. But there was—or the more needy, I should say.
But there was a very, very real obstacle around the liability that’s associated with, you know, if there are negative repercussions of a business giving food to others. So, you were at the forefront of igniting real change when it came to the Civil Liabilities Amendment act, which passed in New South Wales in 2005, and then the other states followed.
What made you think you could do something about that? Like, that’s beyond gratitude and trying to show what you can do. And what did you learn from that experience of actually affecting that kind of change? What did you learn about making that sort of change happen?
Ronni: I think the biggest thing that I learnt and knew, and actually want to reinforce all the time, I had an idea, I’ve shared that idea, and magnificent people have joined me to help me bring this to reality. So, when I go back to that, I knew what I needed, but I couldn’t do that by myself. So, I enlisted the best people to support me on that.
So, my ultimate lesson is collaboration, asking for help, vulnerability, admitting you can’t do everything, but that people around you are there to support you if you ask. And if you ask and the answer is no, then go to the next person, you know? Very early on in my journey—and I’m sure this is an urban myth, but it has stayed with me, and I love it, and have kind of shared it and keep it alive in me. I was told that Walt Disney went to 150 banks before a bank would invest in Disneyland.
Jenelle: Wow.
Ronni: So, you know what perseverance and resilience you have to have? And so, even if it’s not true …
Jenelle: It’s a good story.
Ronni: It’s just always made me think. Even if it was ten banks, or 20. When you are set on something. And so, to me, it was just so obvious. There was a problem, a hurdle; hurdles are to be got around, not to block the way. So, I love your son’s poster. An obstacle to me is just a challenge that I need to get around.
And so, I just went and asked the best law firm and said, how are we gonna do this? And sorry, but you’re not gonna get paid for this. So, cos, I don’t have any money. And so, I do believe in giving people the opportunity to be good. And they rise to it, they love it. And I think that’s hugely important. Instead of thinking people will say no, I think people will say yes, and I’m fascinated and blown away if they say no.
Jenelle: Wow, it’s a fantastic way to look at it. You know, something that’s evident in you, and it certainly smacks me in the face every time I’ve encountered you directly or from afar, is the extraordinary energy that you exude. And I know that we—at least in my world—often talk about time management, but I’m much more intrigued with energy management. How do you manage your energy? Which to me, at least, seems to be infinite.
Ronni: Actually, it feels a bit infinite to me, too. I do laugh, I can go out with people, we can spend a day at work, and I finish, and I’m like, okay, bring it on, what else are we gonna do? And they’re kind of ready to crawl … we laugh about it all the time. You know, I think, whether it was from my mother, or whether it was, you know, whether one day it’s just … and at some point, I’m sure it will, because I face my death every single day, because if I didn’t, you know, it encourages me to know how to live each and every day. How do I want to be today, not, how am I today. And so, I just think I’ve got an extraordinary amount. You know? Some people get dished out different talents and skills, I got a lot of energy.
Jenelle: We use words around resilience and tenacity and perseverance, but there’s an impatience in you as well that I feel. Impatience is … seems to spur you. And it’s not necessarily thought of as a virtue, I would say, impatience. Tell me about the good and the not so good aspects of impatience.
Ronni: Well, I think the good aspects of impatience—and I’m sure there are people around me who might say they’re bad ones, I’m a hundred percent sure—the good ones in me spur me. It’s like, right now, there are less than 3,000 days to halve food waste. Our country, we got our country, I got our country, to commit to halving food waste in line with the UN SDG goals by 2030. We did this in 2015, when we had kind of set a target to 2025; ten years seemed so long. I am impatient. I need this to happen, and we’ve now absolutely … I’m energised more to do this. We have less than 3,000 days.
So, to that end, it spurred us on to create a beautiful product: our ‘use it up’ tape. And I moved out of my study, I normally have it, but ‘use it up’ tape, you know, since we’ve discovered that 40 percent of food waste comes from households, I’m impatient to get every single citizen committed to halving their food waste.
Certainly, middle class, upper middle class, I understand we are a rich and abundant country, and there are third world countries where that might be less prevalent, but globally we waste a third of all food. And so, I am … so, that impatience drives solutions and results, and creates action. And so, in that respect, I think it’s quite useful. But it’s also very demanding. And you know, I walk into my office sometimes and say, I’ve got an idea, and my people duck and weave and jump under the table and say, oh no. What is she expecting us to do today? So, you know. [laughs]
Jenelle: How are we tracking against the goal of halving food waste by 2030? Where are we at as a nation?
Ronni: Well, the reality is we’re far. But I’m not deterred, because literally with this little tape of ours, which has been worked together on with Monash University and behavioural works and has got so much science behind it based on what we are willing to do. It’s been in the household of 45,000 households, and they have halved their food waste by 40 percent and their fresh fruit and veg by 50 percent.
And it’s given them two results; one, it’s saved their average household bill by about two and a half thousand dollars, and it’s made their garbage bin very small. So, there’s less going to landfill. So, that is incredibly encouraging. So, I just have to find a way to get 27 million Australian’s using our ‘use it up’ tape, or their own homemade version, their do-it-yourself version. You can get it free off our website, but if you want to make it, it’s a piece of sticky tape, you put it in the shelf in your fridge, you move everything that needs to be used up on that shelf. So, it’s about a visual reminder.
It’s a bit gamified, cos families can play with it. It encourages discussion, conversation, and in those families, those households, there’s been extraordinary success. And given it’s a global issue, I think it should go out into the world. The Netherlands have created their own, taken our prototype, Germany has just asked us for some. So, if we got everybody using it, we could achieve it.
Jenelle: That’s it. And also, we haven’t really talked about the angle of the impact to climate change, but obviously the less food we put into landfill, the less methane, which is a massive contributor.
Ronni: Yeah, food waste feeds climate change. And most people don’t know that. We could all be climate activists in our own homes. Not everybody can afford an electric vehicle, not everybody can afford solar on their roofs, but everybody could save money and stop wasting food, and save our planet at the same time.
Jenelle: That’s it. There’s literally no downside to this at all.
Ronni: Exactly.
Jenelle: Ronni, you’ve gone from delivering food in a single van to owning—how many vans do you own now?
Ronni: About 80, 85.
Jenelle: Okay, 85 vans across Australia. You’ve opened your free supermarket, down the road from where I live, actually. Subsequently, 50 other countries have sought to replicate that model. You’ve launched the CEO cookoff; I personally have been privileged to have a magic yellow apron and partake in that. You’ve achieved so much more, in fact, the OzHarvest impact report is well worth a read. It’s a wonderful read, actually.
You’ve always been upfront about the skills you have and the ones that you need help with, and you’ve talked about not being afraid to ask for help. But what were … what would be the, sort of, key takeaways that you learnt in the early days of OzHarvest that has allowed you to keep expanding beyond, beyond, beyond, where you’re ever at?
Ronni: Well, I think the interesting thing, one of the drivers when I think of it now, for coming up with new and innovative ideas, was this notion that funders in the very beginning … when the first funder after two years came and said, okay, I’m moving on somewhere else. First of all, I said, how could you move? You’re just watching our impact. Why wouldn’t you want to see what your money can keep doing? So, a lot of our funders have been with us for 19 years. Which has shifted their whole thinking.
I also realised that they do like shiny new things; now, I never, ever create a shiny new thing for the sake of a shiny new thing. It’s only if it’s going to be of greater impact, greater service, deliver on nourishing our country, which means it’s either going to stop food waste, it’s gonna feed people, or educate, or innovate within that framework. And so, that’s exciting, cos that overarching purpose to nourish our country means there’s a lot of ways I can nourish our country. So, I can keep doing special and gorgeous things.
Jenelle: You have managed to put OzHarvest, as we’ve said, not only all across Australia, but you’ve taken it internationally. It’s expanded into New Zealand, to Japan, to the UK, and …
Ronni: Vietnam, South Africa.
Jenelle: Vietnam. Well, that’s it, I was gonna say, what an amazing full circle moment. Even more so with your updated story with Alan and number 13 and 17 in South Africa. What’s next?
Ronni: Well, what’s very exciting is I made the decision that I wanted to ensure OzHarvest’s future. Succession has been on the list of so many … the lips of so many of our funders. And I’m young in spirit but my years are not as young as my head and heart feel. And so, I’m very excited that we’re bringing on a new CEO in March 2024.
Jenelle: I have to say, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to step into those shoes, honestly.
Ronni: Well, we did a big, long search. And we found James Goth, who currently is the CEO of the Seven network, will take over as CEO. And I step aside into my new role, which is not new in what I do, but has the title of Visionary in Residence.
Jenelle: I love that title.
Ronni: I know. And I’m intending to cut down to three days a week, but I’ve been intending to cut down to three days a week for the last … many years. But that is what I’m planning to do. And I’m very excited for OzHarvest because he brings a set of skills and wisdom that, even if I had a more energised to do other things and feel after 20 years … it’s our 20th birthday, we’re gonna have a big year. So, you have to watch this space.
But yeah, that’s a very exciting move. I’ve had so many people say, that’s so brave and courageous; it didn’t feel brave and courageous. It feels like it’s the right thing to do for OzHarvest. And I’m excited that I think we will work so well together; as the founder, I’m not going anywhere. And he’s very excited about having me in that role, and I’m excited about having him take over the things that he will be better suited to do.
Jenelle: One final question for you: in your book, you pose the question, right at the front, ‘is this life of mine good for me, and is It doing good for others?’ How would you answer that today?
Ronni: It takes me … it takes me back to that question that I said to you. What do you want to be today, and that you face … every day, I face my mortality. Because we spend so much time thinking about birth, but we don’t spend enough time thinking about death. And so, I think every day, if I die today, will I have achieved something? Enough? And I think, I think what I’ve done, what I’ve been able to do, means I have added something of value. I think I’ll be happy with that.
Jenelle: I hope so, Ronni. You have been extraordinary in your impact to the world. And I don’t know whether it was a perm that brought out that shy little mouse to have this kind of impact on you. When you think about what Selma did for you in unleashing that, ‘I can do something’, you know? I can effect that change. You have done for thousands and thousands of people around the world and continue to do. You are the embodiment of tikkun olam, that you … whether it was an unwitting change agent.
But you show what it means to receive so much more from giving, rather than getting. It’s the thing that gives you that infinite amount of energy, it’s the force that inspires others to be wanting to do what you do in any small way. I love the assumption that people will want to do good, that people are good, and will lean on that. Your ability to enlist the best people through collaboration, through asking for help, for assuming it’s going to be a yes rather than no, your ability to channel the impatience; you absolutely are, and always have been the visionary in residence, and I cannot wait to watch this chapter unfold. Thank you so much, Ronni.
Ronni: Thank you so much. I have loved and enjoyed chatting with you.

Michael Rodrigues
24-hour Economy Commissioner

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change. The good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: How do you knock out the hurdles of lockout only to run into the hurdles of lockdown? How do you lead a business called time-out when the whole world has been relegated to time-in? How do you change the collective mindset to shift from associating night time with alcohol and danger to heroing night-time as a place of safety and vibrancy? Today, I’m speaking to the first ever 24hour Economy Commissioner for New South Wales Michael Rodrigues, also known as Sydney’s first ‘Night Mayor’. But this isn’t a story just for the people of Sydney or New South Wales, this is a story about connecting with communities, revitalising cities, and shifting the collective mindset and zeitgeist and of course, it’s about leading change. Welcome to Season 3 of Change Happens. Conversations with influential leaders, on leading change and the lessons learned along the way. Welcome Michael, thanks for joining Change Happens.
Michael: Thank you very much for having me Jenelle.
Jenelle: Now, I read somewhere you being described as the ‘Fan Boy’ of cities. I don’t know how you feel about that mantra, or even whether you’ve heard it, but where did that love of cities come from?
Michael: I’m not sure where it came from, I know what may have built it over time as the excitement that the companies visiting them really and being part of it, so I am definitely one of many fan people these days (laughter) of cities around the world the world which have become also topical in context of the pandemic and everyone having a view on what does the future look like in what previously, or what I think will continue to be centres of culture learning and inspiration ah so, I don’t know, like I think one thing I have reflected on about that, sometimes in life and not necessarily respective of cities but sometimes people take things for granted, and I’m guilty of that in some regards. Definitely growing up in the south-west of Sydney and having an awe of Sydney City. Its beauty, majesty, its the size and scale of it and in the days I grew up, a slight trepidation about fitting in or navigating even and I can tell you when my dad very pleasantly bought me a Datsun Sunbird 1983 I think
Jenelle: Iconic, iconic!
Michael: It had so much play in the steering wheel Jenelle and I’d have drived this thing into the city and I just was, to keep going straight you kept doing it side to side and, you know, I’d be driving this thing on a Saturday night, just trying to keep the thing on the road frankly, so you know…
Jenelle: That sounds like me with a shopping trolley on a weekend. (laughter)
Michael: Those things have a mind of their own. So yeah, I think it’s an appreciation and respect for that comes from you know learning to discover and then being inspired by a place that you’ve grown up or places that you’ve visited.
Jenelle: I love it! So I want to stay on that for a minute, and get a sense of who you are, your cultural background. You said you grew up in Sydney’s south west, I think you grew up in Liverpool and went to school in Campbelltown if I’m correct about that. Maybe can you tell us a bit about your sort of formative years, what were they like?
Michael: The Liverpool that I was born into really was in the 70s and at the time it was, I guess, and still, although changing rapidly, lower socio-economic, would be the term and an area that had traditionally been, I guess, occupied by returned service people and then waves on immigration post war so… and this will come up in our podcast, not least of all, because of my background and yours, and the hard reality of it was that the White Australia Policy was still tailing off at that point and the consequence of it was, I wouldn’t describe it as a “tough” growing up, because I’m conscious that I had a house to live in and a family to love me and all those things, but yeah, you’re sort of singled out a bit and different and very conscious of it. I think that I at this time approached my engagement with the world around me by in those teen years in particular, learning to be invisible I think is how I phrased it in the past because it was a “safer way” of navigating agricultural high school, where you’re very much the minority students and the nature of growing up in that era, I think it has had a bit of an impact on the empathy that one feels towards people who don’t necessarily feel comfortable in a situation and I am not going to hold myself out as some sort of master of that but I do think about that a lot and then in terms of I guess professional roles that I’ve been in most recently, have really been in service of that, of trying to make Sydney cities for everyone. A lof of talk about visitors of course and visitors are all important, but how can it be a place that’s comfortable for visitors if it’s not comfortable for its residents.
Jenelle: You went on to become, I mean you said you’ve learnt how to become a bit invisible, but then you went on to become a construction lawyer. I would have imaged that there’s some amount of visibility in that. It’s a niche profession in the country in those days. Tell me about the “why” of that career choice for you.
Michael: It was definitely “hi vis” wasn’t there, strolling around in flouro on construction sights…
Jenelle: Definitely hi vis!
Michael: It’s come up in other environments so my dad’s used to me used to hearing me say it, but he was highly influential in my upbringing and I wouldn’t call it guidance but direction, as in, until I got the answer right ie the one that he was asking for, they were all unacceptable.
Jenelle: Try again (laughter)
Michael: So my brother having done Science and Law, when I was going through the University guide, we spotted this Engineering and Law degree and my dad when “ooh, Science and Law’s good, but Engineering and Law! Two professions for the price of one!
Jenelle: High value?
Michael: As it turns out, it was two professions for the price of two because you had to pay for them both, but yeah, it was so it was a bit, you know I was good in Maths and the like and not necessarily as weighted in school to Law, but Law is always seen as a good degree to do, especially those of us who have done them, coach everyone else into doing them so they can suffer as well. But then I just looked at it and went “oh Wow”. I worked out when I was registering for the degree, there’s only three people in my year that are doing it, out of all the law students and that gave me the clue that “hey this is going to be pretty unique” and then, where can I provide the most value, having done that and Construction Law Project Finance Law and those sorts of areas that I went into was really just playing to what I thought was a natural competitive advantage. I think that it was an element of working out where I could make an impact at that stage and having a lot of fun really… building construction projects for the Olympic Games was every 20year old’s dream.
Jenelle: That’s pretty cool. So speaking of having a lot of fun there, midway in your career you shifted base to the middle-east. Tell me about the catalyst for that decision. What drove that and what was that time like?
Michael: My poor bookkeeping. I’d be at Allens for three years, the Law firm, and I really had developed zest for life and everything that Sydney could offer and putting a lot of money into the pockets of hospitality by eating out every night of the week and everytime I’d max out one credit card another one would magically arrive…
Jenelle: Wow, I’ve never tried that code!
Michael: And it was three years of this and I was like oh, this can’t go on, so I was economic refugee and just moved to a tax free jurisdiction. No, a little bit of that, but the quest for international experience was the catalyst. In a bigger market you’re going to have international experience but you’re still part of a big outfit; thousands of lawyers. I wanted to work in a smaller area so I developed a greater awareness of the law because you can get really pigeon-holed really young here in terms of becoming a specialist and I developed quite a lot in a frontier market where no one was really sure what the law was if I was being honest. It’s a complicated legal system there due to historical facts and the intervention of different codes of law and it was a place that I was attracted to for a number of reasons.
Jenelle: And when you reflect on the experiences you had at that time, whether they were in work or in situ in the country, were there any experiences that you had that you would attribute to the kind of person you are today? Were they sort of seminal moments that have really played into the psyche of who you are or where you focus today?
Michael: I think the one that comes to mind was an uncomfortable experience in Dubai where I pulled up in my convertible Mercedes on the way to work and then a bus pulled up just beside me carrying labourers from the sub-continent and all of whom were my age. I remember locking eyes with this man and I don’t know what he was thinking of course, I don’t know what he is thinking, but in my head I put myself in his position and his day probably looked like going to working on a construction site in the high heat, risk of death and trying to provide for his family in a labour camp at night and the stories have reported now, and I thought what distinguishes him from me really, and other than being born into a privileged environment, which is why I contextualise any childhood “trauma” as minimal in comparison and I think that that just is as many people experience at some point, an appreciation of what you have and so these days when someone asks me how my COVID’s going, I’m like “well, amazingly well”. If I have to compare myself to people who’ve lost jobs or lost livelihoods or whatever else. So I think that that’s, it was a seminal moment and maybe that was insight into the duality of Dubai, in terms of… it’s really just one large labour camp where every strata only can dream of having the opportunity of money of the one above it even if you are a law firm partner earning a million pounds a year, that’s a fraction compared an Emirati might be etc and you’re not engaged with society in the way that… and I think maybe that’s it, there’s no real way of contributing it in a cultural sense or in a civic sense and that lead to a period of loneliness in Dubai where I just thought “oh this is” without judging of course like for me it was a whole lot of fun, don’t get me wrong, highly recommend it, but I wasn’t necessarily feeling whole.
Jenelle: It’s interesting as I reflect on you talking about sort of growing up in the south-west Sydney and feeling perhaps on the outer and trying to feel invisible there. Then you go across to the middle east and actually, you’re on the inner in the sense that you’re in the “haves” group, but still feeling not quite right; a sense of displacement and a sense of loneliness both ways, ingroup and outgroup; it’s an interesting duality to use yours word, yet in your own experience of being either side of an ingroup or outgroup,
Michael: There’s always another group as well, who is in that concentric circles or whatever you want to describe, because in that context I was an Australian Passport holder who looked like a labourer. So this came into play when of course when you’re going into nice bars and restaurants and you’re being stopped as a result of a policy, until you start speaking in your “strine”
Jenelle: Australian
Michael: Yeah, you’re Australian, you’re not allowed in. And so I think that that you know, it’s a good question; when do you actually feel at home and without pre-empting, I think that that is kind of… it sort of lead me along this path to wanting to feel like I live I am at home in the city and my kids can be at home in the city and then of course all of which is most true for people whose home it was. And now, we’re just trying to rush to have a better understanding of that and embrace it.
Jenelle: Let’s most to the media group you founded, which is TimeOut. You went onto lead that group for 15 plus years and with no disrespect, you had no prior experience in media when you took on that role. What were the principles behind that and why did you get involved. How did it go from idea to reality?
Michael: So, I’m pretty sure I’ve lost all following of my legal friends these days, so noone’s going to be offended by me saying that at that stage of your career; 5 or 6 years in there’s quite a crossroads for people, in law in particular. The best people can come up with is to go and open a café or a bar or a bookshop as an alternative career and what qualifies you to do that? Not much. And I remember when the TimeOut opportunity came up. I canvassed a few people…
Jenelle: How did it come up? How does that opportunity come up?
Michael: Well I was playing cards in Dubai.
Jenelle: Like all great stories start (laughter)
Michael: I just met someone that was working with TimeOut in Dubai over in social circles and with only the bravado the accompanies someone that is about to have a massive fall from grace, walked out to TimeOut’s offices and said “You know what you should do with the rights for Australia, is give them to me and my mate, we’ll do a great job for you.
Jenelle: OK
Michael: And an amusing anecdote was that at the end of my 20 minute presentation of why we should get the rights someone said, and my pitch was actually like TimeOut Global Brand, but actually you need Sydney; like we are such a good city. Reverce psychology some would call it. And the MD was just got a question “What target CPM are you looking at?” and I said “Very glad you asked”. But also “can you tell me what a CPM is?” (Laughter) Because I didn’t know anything about it and this would all play out very rapidly upon launch as it would turn out because we launched on the eve of the GFC, oh sorry, the same day the subrent mortgage collapse was essentially our birthdate and we were the child of an era that tells a story of rapidly evolving technologies and migration of audiences and how fast you have to run to try to keep up it if you want to monetise and maintain and build profitability into a business over 15 years so you can finally sell it and so the opportunity came up. I didn’t want to be the person that sat next to me at the dinner, going “oh, I had that opportunity once and I said no to it”. And as hard as that journey has been, by my own estimation and by I guess the estimation of those around me, whose counsel you trust, as for many people who take that risk the best decision you ever made as it became the biggest single growth opportunity of my career.
Jenelle: So did you have a fall from grace in that time? Other than not knowing what the CPM measure was, was there actually
Michael: Yeah, well it bottomed out in 2009, we launched in 2007. The company nearly when insolvent twice. I was all but exited from the company as part of the part and as part of the solution to new investors. I had to claw my way back in, build up revenues…
Jenelle: How did you do that? How did you claw your way back in and did you feel like you wanted to, or just had to?
Michael: I had to because… Here’s an interesting story. The founder of Fairfax, Mr Fairfax let’s call him lost a lot of money when he launched Fairfax in Australia but at the end of it he went as the story goes and repaid his investors back in the UK, every penny. And for me I brought family and friends into a very speculative venture which all made sense when you think back to 2006, when the markets were going bananas and it changed. And I had to take the view that there was nothing I would not give up while I could still impact the outcome. So when I got exited, it was, these things happen, it’s such a common founder story where you, in my case had a clash with private equity and you know, it’s just part of the game. It’s like OK well we need to sell the product onto new investors how do we explain it? Well the guy that didn’t know anything about publishing, he’s the problem, let’s get rid of him.
Jenelle: You’re telling me this story in a fairly matter of fact way, but what did it feel like, knowing that you had family and friends invested in this, knowing that you were being used, or at least as a scapegoat or solution to a problem or, how did that feel at that time to feel like “Ok, I’ve got to claw my way back in and fight? What was that like?”
Michael: You’re right to ask. Well it’s the hardest thing to go through. And it’s that Kipling poem that I won’t later, but it’s “if”. If you can see everything that you’re given, lost on a game of toss whatever the quote is, that’s when you’re a person and stoop to build a backup with broken tools. That’s the real measure of someone. And that’s what resilience is. And until you’ve been tested, how do you know how resilient you are. And like for me it’s partly as I age, and you associate more with serial entrepreneurs you can just measure the war stories and it’s very common and rarely know Jobs but the Jobs is an example. Exited from Apple, came back and the rest is now history. In my case, and we can get into it a little bit if you’d like. We’re really interesting point now around unconscious bias and seeing people and all of those things that I’m happy to say when you are trying to explain it to your niece aged 12 or 13, they’re like “what are you talking about?” Because it was on a different era. You can’t forget it, but we should learn from that and we should I think make sure that we do better. Yeah, it’s terribly leveling but you just become… I’d would like to think that I became a better person. That sounds really cliché, but any semblance of arrogance or misplaced confidence is maybe a better way of putting it and was taken out and you know, I was borrowing money from a friend in London to live and while I tried to get myself back into the company, and would ultimately go on and pay release rental part and building revenues as a sales person… very good at selling as it turns out and it sort of reset my life. The decision to start TimeOut was one thing, you go through that as your baptism and then come out of it and then build-sold company and then finally leave with titles of publisher of the year and publisher brand of the year with are nice acknowledgements but not necessarily any measure of you know they aren’t exactly that, they are an acknowledgement of something, I’m not saying they are definitive of anything. Be that as it may it’s the same characteristics and listening to Sally, your interview with Sally Capp, who, I don’t know personally, but is someone who I respect and follow and I think has a similar ethos I think when it comes to public service and listening and all these things that we talk about, but often talk about but necessarily do, what I’ve learnt about in public service is that if you can’t listen, you’re nowhere. And I think Sally really did a good job of articulating that to your listenership last episode.
Jenelle: Thanks for being a listener of the pod. Now while you were running TimeOut you also became the founding Chair of NTIA so the Night Time Industries Association, why did you establish that and what were you hoping to achieve with it?
Michael: Now I hope Sally’s listening to this podcast because that’s one of the best segways ever and I remember sitting in Melbourne in about 2016 and working with a very talented Artistic Director Jacob Boehme, but at the time he was directing YIRRAMBOI Festival First Nationals festival in Melbourne and I was talking to him about some concepts, I was trying to get away in Sydney and I just couldn’t do it. He was like “oh no, maybe you should do this, maybe you should speak to this person” and I had the emotion of wanting to move to Melbourne. And then I was like “oh no, I’m so proud of Sydney, how can Mike want to move to Melbourne?” And by that stage LockOut laws had sort of set in. Like to me, I didn’t love my city as I had at some point and then I thought, well you can move, or you can assess whether or not you can do something about it and make an impact. And by do something about it, that’s not pressing like on whichever social media channel, you’re kidding yourself if you think that you like something that you’ve done anything. That’s not doing anything. What have you really done when you press like? Is that ???3733 or have you gone and helped the person, have you contributed to a cause, have you taken part of you and invested it back in that problem that you’ve not liked and acknowledged?
Jenelle: So, but so if I think about that time with the lock out laws, highly emotive time for us, for many people from around the world. Sydney was seen as the city with its own bedtime, you know, so as you say, you could sort of pick the like button or dislike button, but what was the tipping point for you to decide that you wanted to shift from the presser of the like or dislike button, from frustrated observer of lockout laws to outspoken advocate for change, because essentially that’s what you were trying to do right, like you wanted to turn that around to fall back in love with Sydney and have everyone else do the same. What was that tipping point for you?
Michael: I love publishing as a business and I actually think it’s relevant to what my job is today as a 24-hour Economy Commissioner for reasons I can come to. So in publishing you work with editors and editors have a role to play around commentary and so in context we’d run a couple of issues on lockout laws and their impact, covers. We’ve written about it and I then started to engage my team; I’m like “hey our brand is all about going out”. If you can’t go out in your city, then we should have something to say about that. The response was, yeah well we have, we’ve done all these… either that hasn’t worked or we haven’t done enough. I feel, rightly or wrongly, and that’s what TimeOut is, it’s a tool to help you discover your city and be inspired by it. And so, in a way, compared to other businesses and there are line businesses, don’t get me wrong, but it was the villain to our hero, it was the enemy of our good, it was the battle that we should fight that if we didn’t, who was. And the answer to that was well no other publisher. Without being grandiose, our approach was, let’s get in and understand the issue and make a whole bunch of mistakes as we try how to positively impact something and that gave me an insight very quickly into some of the changes that need to happen in order to eventually see, it’s not just about lockout, it’s about a different narrative for Sydney. One that we now, you can hear soundbited and written about the press every week because we are now on our own journey towards a better vision for Sydney in my view. So I think it’s that thing of understanding if you are capable of having an impact, and if so, what is your duty to act. And for me there was a duty to act.
Jenelle: So as you said, if you’re capable of doing that at the time I recall and I know so many people will, it was an emotionally charged time with the one punch, you know the coward king hits, etc it was a highly emotive time, really important that the city was rallying around arguably a blunt instrument with the lockout laws, not just about that, but that was happening at the time, so how do you take a conversation on a macro level, that would have been quite an emotional loaded conversation and bring the nuance that’s required to that conversation. As you say it’s not just about lockout, but you were able to bring nuance and layers to that, how did you do that.
Michael: It’s one of those things that doesn’t necessarily happen in a linear manner, does it and I would always hope to acknowledge that there’s never one hero either, like it’s a team of people collectively working and this team, this cast is extensive. The bit that occurred to I guess the group that we talked about was that well is this a problem you can solve or not? And in that way, at that time, the language of the debate was very much characterised by police, alcohol, violence, health terminology, all that very emotive polarising language, which is great fodder for broadsheet media and was simplistic and obscured other issues like the demise of culture, city vibrancy and not just the economic impact of F&B not trading because it was far broader than that and it was recognising the ecology of going out and who had a stake in it and who needed to get active. So just some problem-solving analysis. And then I like to think I contributed something to it and perhaps the thing that I contributed was the story telling component and the legal bit which was if you can’t win on this debate, let’s go find another debate. And you’re never going to win on that language, and particularly if the core advocates are people with self interest in direct economic benefit from it. So night-time economy, city culture vibrancy, liveability is a much more complicated, much more nuanced discussion and it is a much harder discussion to have because you need to build alignment between stakeholders, who don’t, who see themselves largely as competitors when it comes to each of their artforms and entertainment offerings. So there’s sort of like a media branding aspect to this in a sense, a narrative piece. Find one language that you can move to. But then the other side was well how to unite people behind something and I think that this one may have been one of mine, it’s hard when you start seeing your own soundbites quoted back to in media, and then everyone’s a genius.
Jenelle: That sounds good
Michael: It was umm. So TimeOut right, like what it cares about is that you go out and have fun, doesn’t really care if that’s Ice cream, a walk on the beach, a bar, a music festival, theatre show, Hamilton, whatever… it just doesn’t want you at home for extended periods of time. So I’m really agnostic about what people do when they go out, I just care that they go out. And so I’ve basically said to that industry, I said “while you’re all arguing over whose customer it is, the couch is winning because Netflix and Uber aligned are offering a pretty competitive reason for people to stay in at home, particularly in context where the city is saying “it’s not safe, and you shouldn’t go out”. So it has a bedtime right? So like that became a unifying emblem in some ways of the campaign and I think stakeholder alignment, finding its first and second follower, all that kind of thinking is how you can build momentum around things, you know you’re winning when the politician gets up and says “it’s was my idea you know all along”. That’s the true measure of success.
Jenelle: Another measure of success was that the lockout laws have changed. What did that feel like when that was announced?
Michael: One shouldn’t under-estimate the importance of that, but it would not have been enough. Changing a law was not the only thing that was broken. And if you think it was, the opportunity cost of that decision is vast. What we said, or thought was that like anything, the reason Melbourne Victoria has done a great job on so many fronts is because they thought about, they said that’s where we want to be and we’re going to implement a strategy that is consistent with who we are and the people we represent and align everyone to it. Full Stop.
Jenelle: High intentionality around it.
Michael: Now as a state, that’s what New South Wales has not only done, but it’s gone one further. It’s said, we’re going to get everyone in a room together, across industry, councils, NSW Government, we’re going to work out what is the best way to take this forward. We’re going to pull together a strategy, we’re going to find some muppet, called Rodrigues to be the one that’s in charge of it and we’re going to get him and his team to help implement a government strategy that’s already got stakeholder alignment built into it, but not just for the benefit of venues who, once upon a time, had a close time earlier than they were hoping, but for the economic prosperity and the civic amenity of all. Like it’s a very different thing. The 24hour Economy Strategy for NSW is the only strategy of its kind in the country and has few direct comparators globally. And it comes because we learnt what happens when you really shut a city down and we thought we can’t do that again. What comes from that is “How do you stop it just swinging back to where it was before?” That’s the challenge of that situation and the bit that I’m there to try and oversee.
Jenelle: It’s interesting you know, because I think we’ve just jumped into the 24hr economy piece of it, but for me, when I think about the hurdles that you faced; we started with the GFC and we ran into the lockdown, the lockout laws, you jump the not insignificant hurdle of lockout laws and in the same period of time the world finds itself facing a pandemic and now we’re contending with lockdowns. And you are leading a company called TimeOut where the success measure as you quite rightly say is all about getting people out and suddenly we’re being relegated to time in. So I can’t imagine, did it feel like the metaphorical hurdles just coming? What next? What did you do that that time? Before we get into the 24hr economy piece, which I know is really related here, but I’m really interested in what that was like?
Michael: It’s all a bit of… it’s in that “the lost time of the pandemic”, isn’t it. Noone knows what year it was and how the thing went down but the lockout was a cold, this is pneumonia now, there’s a big difference. And by that stage I had industry bodies set up and what not so playing a dual role across night-time industries and time out you know went hard into the mission of the business, which was not only to inspire people to go out, but in circumstances where the whole ecosystem was being totally devastated, how could we preserve the infrastructure of the city and also and importantly the connection to the businesses that comprise that emotion, that feeling. Not only the revenue component; very important, so please buy from these people whatever, but also the connection between the hosts of the city, the people that put on the show, give you the fun vibes and their audience. And so the pivot as people love to decide was a global move by TimeOut and so I seldom, not never, seldom claimed credit where it wasn’t mine, but that was yeah the CEO, Julio Bruno at the time said we need to, it helped being part of a global business because as you would know, you’ve got data coming in from multiple sectors so you don’t stick your head in the sand and go “she’ll be right”. So that was a decision, but then I think not just about in that time the success of because ultimately that’s would lead to the awards and whatever else right. But because we were our best selves and we delivered against our brand promise and our brand reason for existence at that moment. The other side of it from a management perspective is the bit about the real reason you’re going to do that is if you’re an effective leader and you have, as I think others did, as was happening, you’ve got senior managers coming in and saying “hey we will take a pay cut before you’re going to them, because the moment that happens you know you’ve built the right organisation. That is what a good organisation looks like and you can’t get that overnight, you only get it for years of truly understanding what it means to lead people and that leaders as Simon Sinek says you could say eat last.
Jenelle: You’ve talked about, I was determined not to call you the “Night Mayor” because it sounds like nightmare if I say it fast, so I’m just going to go with the 24hr
Michael: That’s what my wife favourite message is! (laughter)
Jenelle: It was like how am I going to avoid saying nightmare. So the 24hr Economy Commissioner, tell me, it’s an exciting strategy, and we’ll talk about that in a second, but what is your night-time dream for Sydney?
Michael: This is one I wrestle over and it was asked of me a few years ago when Soapbox Mike as he was then known, looking for opportunities to get up on stages and just rant, and often did. So someone said “ok Michael, what’s your vision for Sydney?” And my answer’s I think still, as I said then, largely unchanged is I think that my dream is that we can have a dream that people can contribute to that dream and that that is only possible if you have equity of access to be able to do that and I like the work dream because it relates to the longest history of this country and this is really going to sound airy-fairy for some of your listeners, but I had the privilege of being at an event called “Fabrics of Multicultural Australia: where people of different backgrounds got up and as part of a fashion show and I’m talking from Afghani designers to Mauri to Indigenous to Indian and I had to an impromptu speech and it was at the National Maritime Museum which is really about Australia’s migratory past and I’d been inspired the night before by a First Nations speaker who talked about the water patterns from the different tribes of the Aura along the coast and into the harbour. And the metaphor of water being an intermingling of different stories is where I land on this and that surely is our greatest opportunity and it’s relevant to everybody because everyone’s come across the water and everyone has a story and that is true of our indigenous people, it’s true of our colonial forebears and it’s true of us recently arriveds. And so the 24hour economy strategy Mike, whatever you want to call it, has in publishing terms, I remain a publisher because the publisher doesn’t side the story. The publisher has to go out and find and enable the storytellers and that’s what I hope to do in this role. So when asked by those that want an easy answer to this, I’m like “Well, I’m not going to give you an easy answer. It’s not for me to decide what should go where and who should do what, it’s for local communities engaging with each other and their industry and in their area to come to an agreement about what their area means to them and how they want to express that story. And the people who do it well will have happier communities and people will want to visit them. That’s the thinking and because that makes it exciting. Like our competition to get people out of the house it to make our city as vibrant and multi-dimensional as Google are not trying to own Netflix, Binge, Stan to make it easier for you. I want you to walk out of the house and go “What are we going to do now?” you know and in a city like Sydney, it is one of few cities in the world, it’s 7th in terms of multicultural makeup I think. Combine that with our topography and our indigenous past, we have the ingredients that I think are without peer. I defy anyone to challenge me on that (laughter), but I think the state wants me thinking that way and I generally believe it so it’s not an ask.
Jenelle: So let me understand a bit more about this story telling through city. Where are cities that tell great stories, how does a city tell a great story and how do we coalesce our city or our councils and communities within city to agree on the story that they want to showcase.
Michael: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Look the collective and evolving answer and a historian I’m not, but at different times of history you will find no doubt that kingdoms have risen and fallen, reputations of cities will follow suit. I think that’s a really big question, I think that I can only answer it from the perspective my contribution to it, which is to enable and give access to people to better do that piece of story-telling. Does that happen everywhere? Probably not, even the cities that are the most highly regarded. And as we approach the challenges of climate, as we approach the challenges of actually being equal, that measure will change the reputation of cities. Although while we may have present day regard for City X, in 20 years will we have the same regard for it? Well only if these things remain true, will they remain true, will they evolve into. So yeah, that’s the deeper answer, the shorter answer is “have a good brand marketing strategy and rig the indices.
Jenelle: Well you use the word evolve so I’m going to going to stay on that one for a second, because I read the 24hour economy strategy, you would be very proud of me. And right up front, the 24hour vision is set out and what I loved was, I loved that piece because it personifies the city and there’s a line in there that said “True cities of the world never stop. They surprise and evolve. They are not just open to change, they embrace it”. So I’m keen to understand from you, what are the kinds of changes that you see that our city needs to embrace?
Michael: I mean in my capacity as 24hour commission, its pretty well laid out in that strategy, and it speak to principles of diversity, placemaking, pillars, there’s boxes, there’s governance committees, there’s a whole bunch of things there, but they are truly evolving and they need to, the story of that city needs to evolve with the people that that city is comprised of. In light of its history. And governments main role is creating and enabling an environment for that to happen. Dismantling of unnecessary regulation that impedes that I’m questioning and playing a role in, for example deciding that why would you not use outdoors since we love them, you could have el-fresco dining and in Sydney in times when use of the motor vehicle is now being changing while active transport is on the rise. So there’s a whole bunch of impacts that can be made as we better calibrate consumer expectation and future audiences to what the city is willing to offer and so in terms of the work that I think a lot about, which is embedded in the strategy, if not necessarily articulated, is “what does the future of going out look like”, another way of saying that is “what is the future of culture” in our city and so my reference point, as much as I need be conscious of and embrace our past and our history and our legacy but how do the story-tellers, the goal routerers, the experience seekers that are 15 and under, how will they make their contribution, what do they need. Because the Government strategy will have long lasting impact so how can I better-enable engagement for all. I’ll give you a couple of tangible examples, because I’ve been speaking in riddles for half of this, but an example of alcohol consumption. Declining per capita, fast growh of non-alcoholic beverages category and so in terms of product choice, health and well-being, those types of market forces will shape the future product. The Government’s role is to get in there and recognise that and then say well does the current regulatory regime, does it help or hinder and is industry matching and keeping up with consumer change and if not, how do we help them do that. Because that’s what the advantage of having a strategy is. So to get to those platitudes that reel off the tongue nicely diverse, safe, vibrant, this and this, etcetera, the Government’s role is really help create the environment for that to happen and then pull whatever levers it has. So investing in things is currently the case around many of our programs which is CBDs revitalisation and other things and/or impacting regulation and/or educating people.
Jenelle: Because as I think about you talked about what’s not a small question here, but what is the future culture of the city going to look like. Big question to be framing and shaping. It does imply or have inherent within that, the need to change a collective mindset from associating night-time with alcohol and danger and to seeing night-time as a place of vibrancy and safety and community so is it a combination of some of those tactical kind of legal hurdles along with a vision and along with story telling that is going to be really the impetus for making that kind of I think not insignificant collective mindset shift.
Michael: And to add to that sort of line of enquiry, the impact of the pandemic in all of it if you accept that pandemics tend to shape and accelerate things. For example, saying goodbye the top-hat and tails. These are the things that follow pandemics. And it is in that direction for sure. And I think the opportunity is to see the world afresh while everything is being questioned and understand Government’s changing role now in how to most positively impact those outcomes. If you take a really simplistic view “let’s do these five things and she’ll be right”, get rid of noise complaints, like repeel the lockout law, cut red tape, everybody loves that one, but more deeply and they are all really important by the way, don’t let me be too glib about them. Planning reform, in future use of industrial spaces, a whole bunch of things that are relevant to the future use of the city. The kind of deeper questions, how does the person I don’t know exist yet love and are proud of their city. That’s the kind of things where the pandemic makes everyone pause for thought, the businesses that can kind of positively shape the discussion, working proactively with governance, one of the best things that’s come out of the pandemic is the ability for Government to be engaged in conversations like this and many others, trying to work out how to better serve the public and adapt and use the crisis as a growth opportunity and that’s bringing the 24hour economy back I believe, I’m really privileged to overseeing that and in the context of investment NSW, which is the wider Government economic development strategy, now Department of Enterprise, Innovation and Trade. And that’s ‘seizing the moment’ and looking out for both citizen amenity and for economic prosperity in the future.
Jenelle: And Mike, you’ve talked about the diversity of the city, an inclusive city, you’ve talked about access, so we’re talking about the democratisation of access for everybody. What is that actually look like. I’m still sort of, if you think about you’ve felt what it’s like to be part of the “have nots” or not be part of the have nots and see what they’ve been like, so what should it feel like to have access democratised in our city?
Michael: The shorthand on this is the rise of the Western suburbs, Parramatta, a city in the West and then the third city also kind of speaks of greater degree of access, 15-minute etcetera etcetera and there is a lot of thinking in that space and I’m a supporter of it. I can only give you my lived experience Jenelle of what it means to me in-person and it is the engagement and the generosity of people who don’t have and therefore appreciate and leap at opportunity once they are given it. And I think these are the harder conversations because the impact of the pandemic on how we think about life and how where we live and how we value time and all of these things, play out in our city centres at the moment because they are for some time not as well populated, not as well frequented and as we come back out of the pandemic, what does that look like? The natural people moment away from centralisation also is partly in line with 24hour economy strategy which says we should have great neighbourhoods all over the place as opposed to everyone clustering in one spot and when you have great neighbourhoods like we do all across Sydney, these become platforms or opportunities and when it gets to story-telling, what makes a great story? It’s when it’s unique and compelling. And we’re not talking spaghetti Western style episodes now, we’re talking about the real story of Campbelltown and Darwell, it’s this sort of deep connection and we have such a stronger sense of place I think now and most of the metrics indicate it. And so in terms of the connectedness, how does it manifest, well it’s also matching the opportunities that then should follow that so that everyone can have access to economic, professional learning whichever metric you want to look. It’s a lot of people working on this, affordability of housing, all these sorts of things have a massive impact on it, but the thing about culture and how you feel and creativity all of these things are, you still have a contribution irrespective of whether you have a very nice in the inner West as I do, or you are live where my parents live or in other parts, you know, everyone has access to their story. So and now the question is, can I in my role as publisher or 24hour Economy Commissioner, can I make sure everyone gets a chance to tell theirs.
Jenelle: Where do you store inspiration from around the world. I mean I know that there is a Night Mayor model in Europe, in the Americas, are there cities that you would point to and say, we don’t have to figure this all out, we’ve got excellent reference points here to be drawing inspiration and
Michael: Yeah, for sure. Nitty gritty wise, we’re 2.0 or 3.0. MSDOS was there some time back and the cities that have gone before; London strategy, New York and these are the ones that people reel off, Berlin, anywhere where there is a Night Mayor, MAYOR
Jenelle: I know, it’s tough isn’t, we have to clarify this (laughter)
Michael: And so there’s a growing movement around night time economy, 24 hour economy, because ultimately it’s because of the role that home entertainment plays in a competitive sense to the out economy, that’s what’s fundamentally driving that trend. The market share that Amazon and Netflix and UberEasts have versus the proprietors of “fun parks” for example. So there’s reference points globally and it comes up all the time and it goes back to the Sally Capp thing. One of the core markets for us to look at is Melbourne and I’m really happy to say it, firstly because I love Melbourne as a city, I love visiting it and they have got a lot right and the reality is if you understand the economics of Australia, as we’re seeing now, you have Victoria and NSW in a friendly “rivalry” but working cooperatively, it’s better than us working us being against each other. Similarly audience size, time zone, a whole bunch of things that make it a pretty good thing to look at. So there’s comparatives across the world that you draw inspiration of, but for some of the listeners, they’re like going what’s he talking about? Like London, New York, they’re the best cities of the world. The difference is number one, Finance Markets, two climate, like firstly. Right, so do we think that people are genuinely going to fly all across the world to go into a basement bar in Sydney? Is that their reason for travel? Or do you think they want a roof-top bar? I’ve seen the harbour, you’ve seen the harbour, where would you rather be if you’re coming to Sydney? So reference point for us, should include places like Mexico, Rio in terms of how we think about our story telling, because our waterways are undersold, in terms of the communities, all those sorts of things. We have this chip on our shoulder about competing or being like London or New York, but lousy weather
Jenelle: We have afford to have a little more swagger in city, that’s for sure.
Michael: Indeed. Indeed.
Jenelle: So according to the 24hour Economy Strategy, many people want to have input into shaping our night-time economy, I think was something like 57% said “but they didn’t know how to contribute”. I love that you said earlier that people can contribute to the dream. So what would you say to people about how they can contribute in shaping the city?
Michael: And this goes back to the fundamental question and I think a lof of what you’ve been asking, it’s about the difference between theoretically having access and then being helped to have access, so there’s a job for me to do and the work I’m doing to make that product, that engagement more accessible. So we can talk about that, but I think that and leaving aside my all the other people bit annoyed now about what they’ve like and what they haven’t liked and thought that they’ve helped, but there is that thing of “what are you actually achieving? What are you actually contributing?” Like there’s a distinction, we often think a thumbprint on something means something, well question. I think that the most powerful thing is consumer spending. Where do you spend your money? And why? And if you wanna have a positive impact and you have cash and you’ve got discretion on where to spend it, think about what you’re supporting and what you’re not and why are you supporting it and why are you not. That’s the harder question, so now anyone whose anyone that we haven’t lost as a listenener is thinking “what does he mean”, well think about where your dollar goes when you make a decision on supporting a local business versus something that comes to you that’s got three intermediaries behind it. It may be easy. Easy is the enemy of, convenience is the enemy of sustainability, right, we understand that. That’s the thing that we have to wrestle with and I think that consumer spending is really increasing and happily becoming more conscious at the younger demographic than perhaps others when you have the opportunity and so, you want to support arts and culture, which artist do you care about. That’s the question! If you really care and genuinely community then should not we be supporting our artists in the community. And these are things that when after the first glass of wine and people start questioning by people like me at the dinner table, because “yeah, here’s how you can make a difference, are you willing to do it now?” is the question.
Jenelle: So I’m going to change tack now here for a moment here Michael, as we draw to the end of the conversation here, just for the fast 3 questions for you. Don’t deliberate too much, just what is your quick answer to it. What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
Michael: I have just completed, I’m going to throw that in there Leviathan, which is John Birmingham’s unauthorised biography of Sydney, written in 1999. Greater insight into historical lense on Sydney’s formative years since colonisation and the power structures that ensue. And I am part way, not yet there on completing Terry Janke’s True Tracks which is guiding principles for respecting indigenous IP.
Jenelle: Very good! Sounds like very powerful reads there! Now speaking of powerful… what’s your superpower? Now that’s additive to the world, or it could be a useless party trick.
Michael: (Laughs) I’ve been told that my superpower is to, I’ve got the power of speaking to people and making them believe something. Now I don’t…
Jenelle: I just believed everything you said so, I’m hoping it’s true.
Michael: I’ll tell you as an aside, we did this exercise at TimeOut when the pandemic hit and you’ve got a choice right, a lot of people downsized or whatever, I was like, well hang on a second… I value my staff and this do more with less thing? Whatever. It’s like do more with what you’ve got. Well what have we got is the question so we made everyone rate everyone in the business on what superpower they had?
Jenelle: Oh right!
Michael: So it wasn’t up to me to say what superpower and our Editorial Director was like, Mike you can just make people believe stuff (laughter) and so I don’t know, you be the judge.
Jenelle: Let’s go with Vision Setting, not VSing, hey? (laughter). Now if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be?
Michael: So this one I did give some thought to because I can you know, site some famous ones, but the one that I come back to is “Half Respect The Dress Code”.
Jenelle: “Half respect” OK. Tell me a bit about that
Michael: It doesn’t mean that you should underdress by the way, it’s just fully comply with it. Yeah.
Jenelle: Don’t be a slave to it? A nod to it, but don’t over service it.
Michael: Typically you’d find me either entirely overdressed or entirely underdressed. But either way, I’m using what I’m wearing partly to help me communicate and engage with people and shift potentially what they may think on issues that are important to me.
Jenelle. I like that. I like that a lot. Michael, hey thanks for your time today. Really enjoyed the conversation and it’s incredibly topical to come back into this new year with this conversation. I can see why they called you the fan boy of cities. I’ve enjoyed hearing your stories of growing up, I can hear themes of identity and acceptance and belonging that permeate what you do today. Thank you for your candor on the harder times. I think you know your line around the villain to our hero, you’ve had many villains to the hero of the city. You’ve had the GFC, you’ve had the lockouts, you’ve had the lockdowns, but building back up with broken tools is something that you have obviously shown. I can see the power of story-telling is going to be even more strong through our cities. I think your challenge for us all to contribute to the dream is an important one. I think it’s ours to make this be an intentional and conscious rebuilding of our city and I know I am personally really excited about reimagining and reengaging with our city and I hope everyone else feels the same and I would say this isn’t just a story of Sydney or it’s not a story of NSW, it’s around engaging with communities, creating vibrancy and community. So thank you so much for your time Michael, I really appreciate it.
Michael: Thanks very much Jenelle, thanks for having me.
Jenelle: Michael, if we think about, I mean, we’ve all been relegated to the couch for quite some time and have grown very comfortable with Netflix and Uber and what not, we’re now trying to talk about re-engaging in cities, what do you think that means for the collective psyche and the social conscience of us as we work to re-engage in our city?
Michael: Yeah, it’s something I do think about a lot and it’s at least a two-part answer, or there’s at least two main players in play there. The first, the consumer and the second is the business that wants to serve them. How’s the relationship changed? How’s the product changed? What’s the offer? And I think it’s a, if you think about labour market shortages, supply chain interruption, those types of things, then what you very quickly start thinking about is at scale, like at scale, so think not just me, you, but 8 million people, how do you potentially recalibrating the overall offer of what “out” is versus the now seemingly easy accessible offering of the home, so and you know, think about it, don’t think about going out, just think about any category play, and/or product differentiation and which way is the consumer going to decide at any given time and so how do you remove the barriers to going out? What role does technology play in that? What price? What people are getting for the overall experience? Whose control is the experience in? If you look at older demographics and I put myself in that category, very happy to be told what to do, have a semblance of choice, I’ve just chosen the most expensive one on the list etcetera, whereas in terms of future generations and on demand, who are more used to on demand and being in control of an experience or navigating a night out or a day out, how does that play and these are sort of like the capacity or the industry discussions that are already happening and my job really is to try to you know and I think that we have a shot at actually in NSW in light of having a strategy is to really work with challenge, and in inspire conversations in industry which is partly why we are in the process of preparing a report in the future of Sydney’s CBD really which asks this question “If you’re not going to the city to work, why would you go out to have fun? And what it does is say well, like people will go back to work, but if the businesses who are previously dependent on that as their main source of customer base, how would they change their product to be a genuine attractor and what conversations does that lead to. So it’s not a straight-forward answer, but it’s consumer choice on one side, but business and you know, it is the good thing of a free market, that at some point the customer will decide, yeah.
The Change Happens podcast. From EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Licia Heath
Chief Executive Officer, Women for Election Australia

Intro: Hi I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 3 of Change Happens. Conversations within influential leaders on leading change and the lessons learned along the way.
Jenelle: Today’s podcast is with Licia Heath. Licia is the CEO of a non-partisan, not-for-profit organisation called Women for Election. It’s an organisation that is all about equipping women to campaign for election increasing the number of women in public office at local, state and federal levels.
Now Licia’s story is interesting on a range of levels. You see Licia took on this role as CEO after she left her 19 year highly successful career in finance and asset management industry in London and Australia and after she helped establish and become a shareholder of a $5 billion asset under management Australian based business called Ironbark Asset Management. She also took on that role after she ran for public office herself. Now she wasn’t successful in securing the seat but as Licia will tell you that didn’t mean she wasn’t successful, nor did it mean that she didn’t love the experience of it. In fact one of the messages that really stood out to me when I spoke to Licia was how we need to broaden our views of success. Licia has launched a campaign called ‘Power Like You’ve Never Seen’ and I have to say those are words I’m all about paying attention to. Licia talks about the need to rebrand the way we think about power.
She also talks about there being 3 reasons for why people go into politics. The 3 P’s, they’re:

Political
Passionate, or
Pissed off

Now whatever the motivation Licia is certainly someone who makes no secret of being on a mission to make change happen. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Hi Licia, thanks so much for joining me today.
Licia: Hi Jenelle, thank you for having me.
Jenelle: Look I recognise it is a particularly busy period of time for you. How are you going?
Licia: Oh look great. My stamina is good. Its peak election! I call it peak election. South Australian state election on Saturday. Federal election coming up any moment so it’s exciting.
Jenelle: It is all happening. Now you have had a fascinating career to date. I understand you studied hydrologic engineering, you had an almost 20 year career in finance and asset management, you ran for public office in 2018, now you are leading a purpose led not-for-profit Women for Election. Now I recognise in that one sentence I’ve put every kind of spoiler alert out there on your background but I wonder if you not withstanding that can take a step back maybe paint the picture for me a little bit more. Just put a bit more colour on that background that you’ve had and maybe those earlier years in your career.
Licia: Oh look I’ve had a very fortunate career. Some of it has been very strategic and some of it has been more accidental. I love the sciences. Never ended up working in the sciences. Fell into finance in some ways after travelling overseas on a working holiday visa and found myself destitute in London with a terrible Aussie dollar to Sterling transfer and needed a job post haste and that’s how I fell into finance.

Licia: Yes, 19 years in that industry which was wonderful. Taught me a lot. Got fantastic networks as a consequence but found myself increasingly agitated sitting at my desk at the end of my financial services career wondering how I could be better using my skillset more ultra-realistically and there was a pretty fast paced couple of years to where I am now.
Jenelle: Well let’s just stay there for a minute. What were the things that were agitating you?
Licia: It was mostly that I was extremely frustrated about two things. Firstly, we seem to be in a total policy malaise in Australia. Policies of any worth are not being implemented and I don’t think that has largely changed. Secondly, just the inconsistency about how our Australian politicians were behaving or holding themselves and how nothing was enforced in their workforce knowing full well the differences that you and I and probably everyone else listening to this podcast had to live up and expectations of conduct and that total lack of alignment of interest was killing me.
Jenelle: Me too and there are lots of us that have felt that frustration over the years in different periods of time, maybe not even on the political front. That sort of mounting frustration. We’ll often have dinner time conversations about that but what tips you over, from being that kind of frustrated person to going you know what ‘I’m going to do something’. ‘I’m going to run for it myself’. It feels like a massive leap from being agitated and frustrated to going ‘I’m going to throw my hat in the ring’.
What was it for you that became your tipping point?
Licia: Well there was an incident that keeps coming back to mind for me. We were getting constant economic updates. We’ve gone through the GFC now investment managers and economists that are giving us insights into how Australia was faring, how the globe was faring. I had an earworm that had started about ‘well these numbers’ – how GDP is going, where inflation is sitting. Increasingly that was translating to more homeless that I was seeing. I was walking from the train station to my office or more accurately those numbers were never referring to changes I was seeing on the ground. That was certainly.. once that had ticked off in my head, that was something I couldn’t look away from.
Secondly, there was a particular event. We were out having a wonderful event on a yacht, on the harbour. We were socialising with clients. It was a client event. There was a big group I was standing with at the time. We were talking about productivity review and specifically a tax review that had been floated politically and what that would look like in terms of stamp duty changes or capital gains changes. The group I was standing in did say “Have you seen the plans for stamp duty changes in terms of investment properties?” We really have to make sure that doesn’t get up. It was a real pinprick moment for me because I knew how wealthy these individuals were and I knew how many properties they had and that was just such an opportunity hoarding statement that for me was such an important review that needed to happen and needed to be implemented changes to the status quo. Once I started that notion of ‘Jenelle I might be part of the problem – not part of the solution’ than one thing led to another.
Jenelle: Have you always had that level of social conscious about you? Is that something that is a continued thread in your life? Or did you feel something – you called it the ‘pinprick’ moment but the moment where it just kind of hit you at once? Or has it been a common thread if you think back on your life?
Licia: I think it has been a common thread that I very conveniently pushed down deep for a couple of decades. It was there – then it was quite inconvenient for a period..
Jenelle: An inconvenient social conscious?
Licia: Yep if I’m being completely candid.
Jenelle: Why was it inconvenient for you?
Licia: Because I was..
Jenelle: You had to confront a few things?
Licia: Yeh I was on the train Jenelle. I was doing all the right things. I was so clever. I had such a successful career. Had nothing to do with my privilege or anything like that. It was always bubbling - push it down. Bubbling – push it down. Bubbling – push it down and then it just bubbled and I couldn’t push it down anymore.
Jenelle: Wow. You’ve given into your social conscious. This is bubbling up. I’ve got to do something about it. I’m going to run for an election here. What happened? Tell me what happened from that moment.
Licia: I chose to take a sabbatical. I knew I wanted to something else as a career but I didn’t know what that was. I spoke to my husband. He said “Yes you should take a few months”. I don’t think he knew it was going to be a year and neither did I to be frank but figure it out. I was trying to figure it out the next step while I was working and it became apparent I couldn’t do that. So I took some time and I set about trying to work out – look what was agitating me was the state of Australian politics. I wanted to work out how to improve that. I set myself that task as my job for the following months. I set up my home office. I had a whiteboard. I started meeting with all and sundry in the political field.
Jenelle: So I love that unofficially appointed yourself the solver of the political environment for Australia and then you’d pick up the phone and call people and say “hello”? What does it look like to try to solve this and whiteboard this? How did you get those meetings? How did you position why you were doing something in this space?
Licia: Look I started attending a lot of things that I’d never attended before I was attending. Public service conferences. I part took in the mentor walks of Bobbi Mahlab and starting increasing my networks about meeting with ex-politicians, ex-staffers, current politicians. I attended a lot of the thinktank events. I would say 95% of people said “Yes”. They were very giving of their time and it just helped form my view about “Ok we understand the policy that needs to be implemented in Australia”. We do have that knowledge. We do have the research. Extraordinarily complex and astute research instead but what we have is an implementation problem. We have an execution problem in Australian politics. So why is that? Eventually I got to the spot where I said “Well it’s because of the individuals that we have in our parliaments”.
I came across Women for Election during that sabbatical year and I was an attendee at their first ever conference in that year. It obviously lit something in me because I was on the Board a few months later and helping them for their strategy as a not-for-profit.
Jenelle: At the risk of putting another spoiler alert out there. You didn’t win the seat that you went for. It was the highest profile by-election with that. Malcolm Turnbull was coming out of the Wentworth seat. Kerryn Phelps was the one who successfully secured the seat. What was the campaign experience like for you. What was it like for you to not win the seat? Tell me about the experience and what you took away from it.
Licia: Yeh look the experience of throwing my hat in the ring was one of the most positive experiences of my life. It genuinely was. That was the exact opposite of what everybody told me it would be. That stuck with me. I think because I’d partaken in those Women for Election events before that, there was a couple of things that kept resonating through my head through that training and one was:
‘You’ll never feel ready’. ‘You’ll never feel ready to step forward but step forward anyway’.
Licia: The other one was:
‘Timing is everything’.
So my ability to create some change in that seat because of the disruption that had just happened was so much higher than if I had just chosen to run in a standard general election where the incumbent was the Prime Minister. The experience was so positive and you are exactly correct I did not win but I did change the conversation during that
by-election and the ultimate winner adopted my policies and that is a win. That is still a measure of success. That’s something we discuss with the women who do our courses all the time.
There is lots of measures of success when you run for office. It’s not just about getting elected.
Jenelle: That’s such a powerful set of takeaways and I love the definition of success or the multiple definitions of success and if you were able to influence the outcomes, the policies, the positions and that’s what you throw your hat in the ring for anyway, that is most definitely a win.
What did you learn about yourself during that time?
Licia: I understood my courage that I had more courage than I had necessarily permitted myself to think before. Stamina – again as well. Now as a by-election that’s six weeks. Anybody can do six weeks. Anybody. But you’re under intense scrutiny and I flourished in that. I didn’t shrink in that. The other thing that I understood was so many women stopped me during that campaign and they just said “Keep going”. “I’m watching”. “You seem just like me.” “Can I buy you a coffee at the end of the all of this?” “Cause I’d like to do the same thing one day and I have no idea how to get started”. That’s where the notion of going back to Women for Election and saying “Look we’re playing down here”. “We could be playing up here”. “Let me be the inaugural CEO and let me take it there.” Because the demand was there for what we were doing.
Jenelle: I was just going to ask you then how did you go from being someone who was running for the seat to then moving on to become of the CEO of Women for Election. I guess was that it? Reflecting on the feedback that you’d been receiving along the way. Is that how you then moved into that role?
Licia: Look it was certainly reflecting on it. Literally it was scores of women and if you believe the different tropes that we get fed at different times well women aren’t really interested in politics dah dah dah.. It wasn’t true in that campaign and it has not been true since as the increase in our numbers of the number of women that come and get trained by us as shown as well. I think that’s an important takeaway as is the campaign that we released a month ago.
Jenelle: The campaign is ‘Power Like We’ve Never Seen’ and I love those words. I think they are really interesting words. It’s all about calling on women to rethink how they define power.
Licia: Yep.
Jenelle: Talk to me about that. How do you think we currently perceive power and how do you think we should be perceiving power?
Licia: Yes we have undertaken to rebrand power! Let’s face it. It needed a rebrand. Now I challenge everybody listening to this podcast go and Google ‘Power’ and see what images come up. The images that come up are ‘men saluting in front of an army’ or ‘banging a fist on a board room table’ or launching phallic shaped rockets up into space’. This is the imagery of power.
Licia: What was becoming more and more apparent to me was the power that women exhibit, literally every day. Every day. Working for their communities. Keeping our communities going. It has always been humming in the distance. It’s always been there.
So recognising that power and how transferrable that power is to public office and how needed it is in public office as well.
So I’m talking about the power of women that are running their local business chambers, or running the drought relief or bushfire relief, or mental health resources out in their rural communities, or the local P&C, or checking in on neighbours and working out what’s not working in a local community and then working out what needs to be done to improve it. That is the job of a politician.
Jenelle: What do you think is going to happen if we have this rebrand on power? We have more women in political office. What do you expect to see as a result?
Licia: I hope that what we would have is less women choosing to automatically deselect public office which is happening now. So women that do extraordinary work for their communities who say “Oh but I couldn’t do that job”, or “I don’t have the skills to do that job over there.” I want more and more women across Australia, regional, rural, metro of all diverse lived experience to proactively identify themselves as future political leaders because they care for the community and they want better for the community. That is what I want. That’s about rebranding power.
Jenelle: Do you imagine a tipping point? So the point at which you’re like Yeh this is now, we’re good here now. We’ve hit enough of a mass. It looks like this. It feels like this. We know that we’re there when we’ve hit this point. What’s that point?
Licia: Well look I can quote our mission. Our mission is about gender parity in all levels of government across Australia. But more than that it’s about a constant, ongoing pipeline of women who are wanting to be in public office and that those skills are tangibly having better outcomes throughout all of our communities across the country. Because those diverse lived experiences has such a better capability to understand what policies need to be put in place in Australia. Now, again, this could be at a local government policy level or state or federal. It doesn’t always have to be at the Canberra level. It does not. It depends what interests you as an individual as to what level of government you might seek to run for office. But that diverse set of lived experience puts us in such a better place in terms of understanding the policies that we need and then implementing those policies for the betterment of all.
Jenelle: Look I’m going to put myself out there as an example. I just know that there are many of us when we think about whether we might take on something like this. You do get a visual in your head. Your mind kind of races to a particular.. for me maybe the idea of facing a wall of leather seats in Parliament House in a combative situation. Maybe facing a bit of abuse from a blurry bunch of suits facing my way. I’m sure that’s not the only way that this would be play out, there is many other ways. But that sort of is the thing that conjures up in my mind and it might be in others as well.
What do you say to people who default to a particular frame. That might be it. There might be others. It might be a juggling thing. A load thing. How do you help people think differently about a role in politics?
Licia: Yeh well I feel like we are just so well informed, all of us, aren’t we about the negatives of going into politics. So informed. Overly informed.
Jenelle: I’m very informed.
Licia: Yes and I’m desperately looking forward to the next special or series that focuses on the other half of life in public office. What you can achieve. All that wonderful thing that women are doing out in their communities every day right now pro bono, volunteering, how they could be in public office and get more done and get paid for it as well. Focusing on all of that positive that can be achieved if somebody gets elected I think is a big part of how we combat all of that side and equally we get wonderful testimonials from women who come and speak with our alumni about their experiences. Yes, there were hard days. There were definitely hard days. There were hard weeks. But I would go back in a heartbeat.
Jenelle: You talk about this diverse lived experiences and you want to see people bring to the table. No doubt you have heard some incredible stories. Your own story is a great story too but there is many stories you would have heard of people who were doing their thing in the local community decide to run. They have seen some benefits from that.
What’s the story? I often say that stories are the key to unlocking, shifting mindsets and making change happen. Is there a story that stands out in your mind? This is exactly what I’m talking about. Why we need to do this.
Licia: Oh that is very hard to pick one story. We just helped a very large crop of women run in the NSW local government elections and so many of those women were doing exactly what I said. Doing amazing things for their communities already for whatever reason they weren’t feeling represented. We say there are 3 reasons why women run. They’re either, pissed off, they’re passionate, or they’re political. So there is those 3 P’s that drive them. Maybe it’s a combination of all 3 in some situations. They didn’t feel represented and they had got to a point where they’ve said “Right I understand now that it’s not going to get better unless I get involved”. “I’m ready to get involved now.” That’s part of this rebranding power. You’re already 9/10 of the job let us help with you with the 1/10 cause there is still a bunch of stuff that you need to know. That you’ll be better off if you know. But it’s that inherent leadership skills that is so important and that so many women already have. They don’t need new skills. That’s not what our parliaments need.
Jenelle: When you were launching the ‘Power Like You’ve Never Seen’ campaign I know that was underpinned by some research in this space. What stood out to you from the research that you did to inform the campaign?
Licia: There was a couple of things that stood out. That was how many men were interested in seeing more women in Australian parliaments.
Jenelle: Why do you think that is? That there is so many.
Licia: Cause I suspect many men in Australia have equal agitation as to the status quo and a flow on question was that how many Australians had a woman in their life that they would like to see in public office? Now maybe that’s intuitive again for the listeners of this podcast. You’ll instantly go to that woman, that woman – I’d love to see them in public office.
We’re funny creatures in Australia though culturally the way we talk about politics and that’s something that I always like to challenge everyone about. I challenged myself about it. A woman might say at a barbeque “you know what I’m thinking of running”. “I’m thinking about giving it a crack at the next election” whatever election level that is and that we don’t say as a community, like I know many of us has said “Are you crazy?” “What are you thinking it’s toxic”. “Don’t get involved.” If we change that discourse to say “You should go for it”. “I would love to see someone like you in an elected position”. “Tell me how I can help.”
We’re funny creatures politically/culturally in that respect. I’d like to think that we’re helping change that discourse.
Jenelle: I think that’s so powerful. It’s exactly right. I mean I would absolutely agree that would be the common reaction. “Oh seriously are you sure you want to do that?” “Why would you?” That kind of narrative is very much what would be the default. It sort of would give me pause if someone said “Oh my God you should totally be doing that”. “You would be born for this”. “This is exactly what we need to be seeing.” You almost feel like your shoulders would straighten up “Yeah I think I could”.
Licia: It’s not going to get better is it? It’s just not going to get better unless we put a stake in the ground and say “Right let’s improve the status quo”. I’m going to get involved to be part of that change.
Jenelle: Then I guess if you look at it from both sides of the equation. So there is the filling in the pipeline. How do we get enough people wanting to be doing this? But once they’re in the system how do we make sure that isn’t all the horrible things that we probably do fear, how do we then get enough in potence in there to create the change within the system as well which then becomes a reinforcing mechanism to attract more people. We obviously have to look at both parts of that equation right?
Licia: Absolutely yes because it’s hard enough to get elected in the first place what you don’t want then is then high levels of attrition of woman out. There is a few ways in which our organisation is trying to assist with kerbing that attrition and many other organisations and look massive improvements like Kate Jenkins report last year Set the Standard Report. That’s at a federal level but then each state government is responsible for improving the culture and the work environment and many reviews have taken place recently as the last 18 months. That review is happening in Victoria in terms of local government at the moment.
A similar review has happened in NSW and Qld in the last 2 years. How do we improve the culture? What is it that we need to change about our workplace to decrease the barriers to entry but then also to ensure that people want to stay, particularly people that will improve the diversity of this place. So mentoring. Ensuring that you have good support networks when women are in there. We have started last year Parliamentary Friends Group in Canberra which has cross party support to run forums for not just women who are elected in Canberra but their staffers. Even female journalists. To make sure..
Jenelle: Is that literally for friendships? Cause I do think it seems lonely for a number of people in there.
Licia: Yes absolutely and has been shown not necessarily a supportive network there either. So we initiated that last year and post the Federal election we have a number of different events scheduled in Canberra for the coming together again cross party to help provide a support network that hasn’t necessarily been there otherwise.
Jenelle: As you say Women for Election is a non-partisan organisation. You don’t have any kind of affiliation or preference for any political party, but we do have a Federal election due to take place in May. What kind of change are you hoping to see in this period of time?
Licia: Oh look I think. I’ve already seen some of the change I wanted to see which is even the number of women candidates has significantly lifted from past Federal elections and nominations for the election haven’t even formally opened or closed yet. I think that engagement is a big piece that I want to see and again we like to think we’ve played a part in that.
The equal other side of that is now how many women will get elected and that’s up to the public. That is up to the public to understand whose running in their seat and I would really like to think that they would look for a woman’s name on the ballot sheet. Now not to vote against your values for a woman of course but understand who is on that ballot sheet and vote for a woman if that aligns with your values. The only way we will get gender parity in those houses is if the public vote for them.
Licia: We’ve already got gender parity in the Senate so it’s the House of Representatives that particularly has to improve.
Jenelle: So as you know Licia this is a podcast all about change and you very much about making change happen within our political landscape, within the conversations that might be happening in backyards or at the various forums that you’re in and also the change that you were trying to drive yourself when you were running for a seat. What, if you look back on those moments of change on this platform that you are trying to drive. What have been your lessons on how to successfully drive change? When you think about the levers that you’ve pulled. The moments that have made a difference. What would be some of those lessons around change?
Licia: Yeh there is a few. I think particularly focusing our organisation on empowering more than just white women lawyers into parliamentary roles has been a big part of what we’re trying to change. Doing outreach to what I would say is politically underrepresented parts of the community from rural and regional women, to First Nations women, to young women, to women from a diverse range of sectors as well that might not have university degrees but have run an NGO for 30 years and totally understand policy needs in that particular sector.
So learning about how to do that outreach and to do it appropriately and respectively has been a lesson and out of that has come the partnership that we have with I call them our ‘sister organisation – Politics in Colour’, so those are workshops / training events just like ours but run and facilitated by women of colour that do the same training but the additional training as well that refers to the additional barriers to entry that women of colour face when they run. I think those contextualised training workshops are particularly important.
Also working with the parties has been a big lesson for me as well in terms of socialising what we’re doing with the organisational wings of the party. Letting them know who we are. What our intent is and equally who we’re not and why they should work with us to ensure that they’re never left high and dry if somebody suddenly resigns or retires from a seat. That they have a healthy and robust pipeline of women to be able to select from. Those would be the two lessons that come to mind.
Jenelle: From that I’m hearing that you really broaden the net. Lean into the diversity of society. Try to capture people who really are a true reflection of the country that we’re in and also establish areas of mutual gain in working together so when you’re working with the various parties show how this is of relevance to them. How this will lift everybody up. It’s not about anyone particular person or party’s interest, it’s in the interests of all to broaden our pipeline, strengthen our pipeline, have more voices at the table that can represent more.
Licia: Yes absolutely and I think the fact that we are non-partisan in nature is a big part of our success. Different people try to colour us working for the other side and neither of it is true and I think we’ve demonstrated that. We’ve helped women get elected across the political spectrum and that won’t change because we need women across the political spectrum. Women of all diversity across the political spectrum in those chambers otherwise you just end up creating more absolutism and a greater divide where one is further on this side and one of this is further on that side and we’re even further away from a collaborative environment. That is not what we want at all.
Jenelle: So what’s happening with the pace of this change now? Since you’ve been in the role. What kind of uptick have you seen of women in the pipeline? What kind of uptick have you seen of people successfully securing seats that they’ve gone for? Is that pace of change in the velocity of that pipeline moving well? Too slowly? Where are we at?
Licia: I think I would always be impatient that it’s moving too slowly but it’s sessions like this that allow me to pause and reflect a bit more about the successes we have had. In 2019 I think we trained under 200 women and in the last 12 months we’ve trained just over 2,000.
Jenelle: Is that right?
Licia: That is a significant growth and to be honest moving everything online just allowed us to scale at a rate that I had not forecast and that has been fabulous.
Jenelle: Is it because also there are more pissed off people? Of the 3 Ps which P is becoming the biggest driver for this?
Licia: You remember me saying earlier that timing is everything well that applies to this as well. Yes I think we picked our window quite extraordinarily well and women were on the hunt to find something that they could get involved with to make things better. Like we don’t gild the lily in our sessions at all about what it is to run, and what it looks like to run for a party, what it looks like to run as an independent. The money you would consider in each time. The time commitment. The profile raising all of that kind of stuff. So a percentage of women that come out the end of our training are crystal clear that they don’t want to run. I always say that’s still success. That’s an informed decision as distinct from deselecting something you haven’t even really considered but because they have greater insight into the process and how they’re individual skillsets might be applied within that process, those who choose not to run are fully dedicated to helping another woman get elected. So we have seen alumni connected with another alumni saying “Look I’m good at volunteer management” or, “I’ve got digital skills” or, “I know my way through data analysis and so forth I’ll help you get elected”.
Jenelle: Oh the flywheel of change. It’s good.
Licia: There is a role for everyone. Absolutely.
Jenelle: I imagine that so much of the benefit here is about lifting the lid on how it works. Demystifying this great big amorphous process that no one really knows anything about and sort of saying “Well this is what happens, then there is a step here, and a step here, and you going to learn about this, and you are going to be asked to do that”. To what extent is that a major blocker just the unknown of it?
Licia: That is a total major blocker. The whole process is thoroughly opaque. Some people would say that it’s kept deliberately opaque but the more transparent you make it the more likely people, particularly women I would say, are to step into it and you’re right we break it down into essentially a pragmatic to-do-list and there ain’t a woman I know that can’t get her way pretty well through a to-do-list.
Something you said earlier as well about how well informed we are about the negatives of politics and how toxic politics is and so forth. Again, I like to challenge people that just keep in mind that at least in part, that toxic narrative is maintained in part to keep us out. I thoroughly believe that because for every toxic story that I’ve heard I have another 25 that I’ve interviewed for our alumni that have no toxic story. Well we don’t hear about those. I think that’s an important thing to balance out as well.
Jenelle: That’s really powerful Licia. So if I was to just … I mean I feel like you have been saying it the whole way there is a very clear message to the audience but if there is any advice for our listeners, particularly women, who would be considering becoming more engaged in politics or men who might be thinking about people in their orbit that could be. What would that be? What would be your message?
Licia: My message would be understand the measure of success. As soon as you take off the pressure of its ‘about getting elected’. As soon as you relieve yourself from that, just understand that by getting involved, maybe that’s running yourself, maybe that’s you being up on that dais with those individuals, those campaign forums at the Town Hall, just by you participating in that and forcing those around you to discuss the things they might not want to discuss otherwise, you are having an impact on the outcome. You are improving the health of our democracy as well. Even if you’re not thinking of running in the next 12 months but you think that maybe it’s something you might consider in 10 years’ time – start gathering the information now. That’s really important. I hear way too often the different women that go through our courses saying “Geez I wish I knew this information 2 years ago or 5 years ago”. There was a massive disruption in my seat and I could have taken advantage of it then.
Jenelle: Fantastic. So I’ve got to ask the question Licia – do you see yourself ever running for office again?
Licia: 100% yes. I want to run for office again. My time will come again but I can’t help but feel that helping 2,000 other women to run in the interim is going to have greater benefit in the short term.
Jenelle: Well it may well do but it’s going to be incredibly powerful to have that on your CV when you run up for it next time as well.
The last three. Three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: I’m going to finish with the fast 3. Totally unrelated to the line of questioning that I’ve just put you through! And just off the top of your head don’t overthink this one. What are you reading, watching or, listening to right now?
Licia: I am reading a book by Wendy McCarthy at the moment actually who is one of our ambassadors. I picked up a copy at her book launch which I think was only last week. ‘Don’t Be Too Polite Girls’ is what it’s called.
Jenelle: I’ll definitely be reading that one next.
Licia: Yep fascinating read. Fascinating.
Jenelle: Fantastic. What is your super power? Now that can be something really useful and additive to the world or it can be a useless party trick.
Licia: Oh I’m a pretty handy shower singer. I’m not going to lie! But beyond that look my super power would be I feel like I’m a community builder.
Jenelle: Yep that’s a pretty cool super power. Actually both of them are but I’ll take that one as well. If you were going to put a quote on a billboard, what would it be?
Licia: I always thought they should do something about that! Then I realised that I’m ‘they’.
Jenelle: Oh that’s a perfect way to finish up. Perfect way to finish up. Thank you Licia for your time. I have to say I feel like I’ve had a real shot in the arm. This whole conversation for me has been a shift of narrative. A shift of perspective. From shifting the one looks at success. There is a simplistic way of looking at success where you can look at what were you trying to influence and how did you go about moving the needle on that.
There is a shift of perspective on the role that an individual can play. Am I part of the problem? Or could I be part of the solution?
There is a shift of perspective on the tropes that exist out there and how might we think differently about that.
Jenelle: I think about you’ve said there are 3 motivators for why people would do this. Pissed off, passionate or political. They most certainly can’t be the 4th P which is passive and I think all 3 of those Ps that you’ve said are incredibly powerful. What I feel like is you have brought in some other Ps that are important for us to be thinking about in a different context. The P of Power. Let’s not be afraid of that word. Let’s rebrand. Let’s own that space because we do have an incredible amount of power that needs to come to the table. Let’s rethink how we think about politics. There are some views of how that could be but what’s our opportunity to shift that. Let’s rethink the impact we personally can play in the space. I think it’s incredibly powerful to remember that we already have the skills that we need. So it’s sitting there. It’s not like we have to go up and dig them up and retrain. A lot of this just actually engaging and learning about what needs to take place here and actually leaning into there, being part of this.
I certainly feel really empowered and motivated to rethink my whole narrative and my whole mindset about this and I hope others feel the same. Thank you so much for your time.
Licia: That’s such a lovely summation Jenelle, thank you. I really appreciate talking this through with you I feel enlightened as a consequence as well. Let’s rebrand power together!
Jenelle: Woo hoo! You said it! Power up!
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Lucy Turnbull AO
Director, Turnbull and Partners Pty Limited

Intro: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 3 of the “Change Happens” podcast, conversations with influential leaders on leading change and the lessons learnt along the way. Today’s conversation is with Lucy Turnbull. Now Lucy is so many things – an urbanist, a businesswoman, a philanthropist. She has a long-standing interest in cities and technological and social innovation. Her roles have included everything from being a lawyer, a counsellor, the first female Lord Mayor for the city of Sydney, wife to the 29th Prime Minister – Malcolm Turnbull, the inaugural Chief Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission, a published author and an Officer of the Order of Australia of the Distinguished Service to the Community, Local Government and business. The conversation I had with Lucy showed me that she’s an unbelievably curious person with an unbounded energy to contribute to a better, more sustainable, more inclusive, safe and innovative society. What you’ll hear today in this episode of Change Happens, is we talk about power and we talk about identity and also what it feels like to be referenced as the daughter of someone or the wife of someone when you yourself are a force for change in your own right. We also discovered that we share a superpower but you’re going to have to listen to find out what that was. I hope you enjoy my chat with Lucy Turnbull.
Jenelle: Hey Lucy, thank you for taking the time to have a chat with me today. How are you?
Lucy: Oh, how are you going Jenelle, I’m well.
Jenelle: Lucy I want to start by getting a sense of “you” in your early years. Can you tell me a bit about your childhood days and maybe provide some broad brush strokes of your formative years growing up.
Lucy: Okay, so I grew up in Sydney, I was born in Sydney. Both my parents grew up in Sydney and their families have been, you know, in Australia for many many generations, so we’re very much, I guess, an Anglo Celtic cultural heritage and background which is much less common these days. We have happily and much more diverse and, you know, sort of mixed … mixed demographic society these days but in those days, it was pretty Anglo Celtic in the eastern suburbs. Interestingly, one of the first waves of immigration when I was growing up in the eastern suburbs, two sets of our next door neighbours were actually, the parents were holocaust survivors. The two sets of parents were in Auschwitz so from a very early age, I had a profound and sort of like understanding of the horror of war. I think both the mothers, certainly one of them, I’m not sure of the other one too, had been one of the people experimented on by Josef Mengele, so they couldn’t have children and all the children in both sides of the properties, you know, both houses next to me were actually adopted, although it was a very Anglo Celtic society in those days, I did have a, you know, and a very fascinating but disturbing exposure to the horrors of the Second World War and those families were, I think they were Hungarian by birth and so I was exposed to that and also, you know, I went to school in the eastern suburbs and … which was really interesting but it was actually a time of considerable social change in the … especially in the 70s. I finished primary school and went into high school. I finished high school in 1975. So I grew up in a time of, I think enormous social change, the Vietnam War, peace movement, the first Germaine Greer wave of the female liberation movement. So it was a … I grew up in a very interesting time indeed and I was very lucky to do that.
Jenelle: Well, you know, you talk about your Anglo Celtic background. You were formerly Lucy Hughes.
Lucy: Yes.
Jenelle: The Hughes family name carries a lot with it. So your … I think your great great grandfather, prominent Sydney landowner, your grandfather Sydney Lord Mayor. Your father, the Federal Attorney General. So no doubt, growing up as a Hughes would have been … I would imagine both a door opening asset but maybe also an expectation carrying curse. Was that how you found it?
Lucy: Its actually quite … its an interesting phenomenon which I’ve observed both on my own account and our kids account. Well it didn’t really worry me but, you know, not personalising this to my family but for some people, I wasn’t sort of so troubled by it and, you know, my brothers and I sort of like, I would say high functioning, you know, successful in our own way people but I think, you know, in a funny sort of way, you are conscious of it but I was very determined because I’ve always had this really kind of bizarrely strong egalitarian streak in me that I wasn’t better because of whom my parents were or what my father did or what his father did or his father father father did. I don’t know where this came from but I had this instinctive belief that, you know, you are the individual you are and I think I probably learnt this because my dad was in politics. You’re always framed as being somebody’s daughter. I guessed I pushed against that, not by being rebellious per se, but by developing a set of values where I take people on their merits and I don’t … I don’t get affected, you know, who they are or what their background is. I actually take them and you know, engage with them and get to know them as an individual and I guess that … in a way that makes me, I guess, dislike rather intensely this whole idea of culture wars, you know, where there’s the, you know, what very right wing conservatives on one side and the extreme woke culture on the other where people are easily characterised because of who they think they might … the people might think they look like being.
Jenelle: Yeah.
Lucy: I’ve actually always resisted that and given people, you know, the opportunity to speak for themselves and not to be typecast, stereotyped etc, according to what people might like to think they should be like.
Jenelle: Sure and I can … yeah, it’s a very obvious that that would have come from first hand experience of not wanting that to be done to you.
Lucy: Yeah. I think in the last 60s and 70s, there was, you know, there was an element of racism in Australian society and I always bridled against that. You know, I just sort of, I don’t know, whether … you know, my parents weren’t racist at all but there were sort of tones of racism in, you know, in I guess, civil life and society in our culture which I always bridled against as well because I just didn’t think it was fair to judge people on their colour, wasn’t right and you know, one of the earliest, you know, memories, I guess, apart from the … my first political memory really was the death of John F Kennedy. I can remember when my dad was elected to Parliament because I was about five and he told me that was a big moment for the family but the assassination of Kennedy, then his … a few years later, his younger brother Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and that that civil rights movement and the death of Martin Luther King really kind of awakened in me a keen level of interest in social justice and equality.
Jenelle: Throughout your career Lucy, you’ve been involved in so many things, roles across government, corporates, not for profits. You do a lot of things and you care about a lot of things and I’m hearing, like already and we’ve only just started this conversation. What is the common thread and the passion that has driven you during all these years and across all those roles. If you had to distil it to a kind of the common platform or purpose that drives you, what would that be?
Lucy: I don’t think there’s a common platform as much as I guess what I’ve done and what I do reflects my high level, you know, sometimes I’m sure annoyingly high level of curiosity to find out more and also a desire to actually, you know, informed by my experience that I’ve discussed, you know, my formative years with the neighbours from the holocaust and, you know, growing up with news about, you know, the race riots and you know, sort of extreme social unrest in the move for equal rights in the US. It’s been informed by those values of equality and trying in some way to make the place better – not worse. So I guess, when I checked myself and what I do and ask for my approach to things and just say is this going to be incrementally better or incrementally worse. Not for me so much but for the organisation or whatever I’m turning my mind to. Its sort of like … that’s always in my background. That might be a catholic girl thing but its … its definitely in the back of my mind all the time. Its sort of like is this going to be a decision for good or what is informing what will happen here, what's the benefit of what's going to happen here.
Jenelle: Where does the conviction that you can affect some change or you can make this better come from?
Lucy: Well, you know, I’m not sure I do have a lot of power to make change but whenever I’ve had the opportunity, I have tried to do that and to try and do that through the eyes of, I guess, through … with an open mind and, you know, an open heart and a good heart and that’s the way I’ve tried to approach it. So not to do it through a strong sort of preconceived bias. So I think … I think one of the things I try never to do is to pre-judge things. It’s always … so I think that idea of being curious and having an open mind makes you more, I guess, open minded or open hearted to listening to the views of others and I really like hearing other people’s views and perspectives who have had different experience, have different qualifications than me and hear what they have to say and see what they think because I don’t think, especially when these are important decisions you’re making, you should come with preconceived notions.
Jenelle: Very good. I wanted to turn to the topic of “cities”. Its something that you’ve had and continue to have a massive interest in and a heavy hand in. What is it that inspires and fascinates you about cities.
Lucy: You know, so as a small kid, I was fascinated. I couldn’t have said this at the time because I didn’t really know this but looking back, I was fascinated by architecture, by trees, how big the trees were, how much shade there was, what the houses looked like, what the city looked like. So I was just sort of observing this in my mind’s eye, all the time. I had a finely tuned or a deep interest in what the world around me was like in a three dimensional sense. So that meant I guess, I was very curious about how it changed and in the late 60s and 70s, it was changing an awful lot. Like the city skyline was changing by the day, sometimes by the minute when all the big tall buildings were going up in the 60s and 70s. I remember as a kid in primary school when they were building Australia Square and that was kind of like a really big deal. Now that’s not such a tall building now but it was a really big deal at the time, it was a matter of great discussion. Of course, dare I say the big, you know, the building controversary was building the Opera House and how much it was costing and whether the architect, you know, the architect was sacked, Jørn Utzon was sacked and I remember all that news. I followed that news avidly and, you know, really closely because I found it quite fascinating. I loved the idea of the Opera House, you know, sort of followed that in the news very closely because I guess I was expressing, you know, in an unspoken way, a deep level of interest in the built world around me as well as the natural world.
Jenelle: Love it. If you think across the landscape of the roles that you’ve had, you know, it could be all sorts of things, a city of Sydney Council, the Lord Mayor, the Chief Commissioner of the Greater City Commission. What stands out in your mind as a … as a change that you feel particularly proud of having had, either led or had some significant role in, and what is it about that change that you think made it successful?
Lucy: Shortly after I became the Lord Mayor, like about 30 days later, suddenly the size of the City Council doubled and the population more than doubled and we took responsibility for places like Woolloomooloo, Kings Cross, Elizabeth Bay and various other parts of Sydney and actually being involved in that … that rapid change was really interesting because suddenly we had to scale up the organisation to double things like waste removal and doing development applications, doing all the stuff that a council does but times two or three, just from one day to the next and then it happened again, sort of less expectedly. We were able to plan for that because it sort of had been in the pipeline for a long time and then like six months later, suddenly they doubled the area on us again and that took us down to Surrey Hills all the way down to Botany which was a big … a big move in terms of the coverage of the local government area and actually managing increase in size and responsibility is one of the big challenges of any organisation. I’ve seen it in the private sector and the public sector. So that was really interesting, challenging and fun doing that.
Jenelle: If I just even pick up on that last example that you just gave there about the scaleup of local government and the perimeters with which you were working with. If I think about that, there’s obviously, you know, the up-tick on resources and the roles and responsibilities but no doubt, as you broaden that kind of geographic landscape, you’ve got more and more stakeholders that you have to deal with. There would have been angst, there would have been, you know, uncertainty about what that meant for them and their roles, would they have roles, what would they be. What did you learn about managing stakeholders, communication across that group. How did you effect the kind of change that you needed to have to be able to scale up the way you needed to?
Lucy: Well, you know, the most important thing you need is … first of all you need an organisational competence and we had really good leadership and really good executive management and you wouldn’t have been able to do anything without that because, in fact, the Lord Mayor and the councillors don’t … they’re non-executive, they’re not executive leaders and of course you need to have a lot of stakeholders come on the journey with you and so what we did early on was we had large public meetings where the people could meet us, see us, talk to us. Not just me, the management team, other councillors etc and I remember there was one really big meeting in Kings Cross and that was a really good forum for speaking to people. It was quite funny. A couple of quite disruptive people. Now if you’re a councillor, you’re used to this phenomenon so its like water off a duck’s back. A lot of people would say “listen, I was at that meeting, I don’t know how you put up with those people” and I said “you know, that’s local government, that’s what you do” and there are, you know, there are some times people who aren’t happy and will probably never be happy but how I tried to treat them is respectfully and listen to what they have to say and say “well thank you very much for expressing yourself but for the following reasons I don’t agree with you” and if they’re still rude to me, you know, like you can only go so far if, you know, you can’t pitch yourself against a brick wall for so long but you have to start off from a position of respect and open mindedness and listening.
Jenelle: You said, you know, there’s only so much you can do and you treat people with respect and a little bit like water off a duck’s back. As someone who, the water doesn’t flow that easily off my back, I tend to get really upset if, you know, if there’s people, there’s a lot of angst or pushback or whatever, were you always able to kind of brush that off … tell me when it didn’t feel so great?
Lucy: Well its like public speaking. Like I was actually very nervous about public speaking and really until my mid to late 30s and the only thing that makes it less intimidating or less, you know, I guess stressful, is actually doing it and each time you do it, you cross another little river, cross another little road and each time it’s a little bit easier. So you know, obviously being quite nervous sometimes and apprehensive and then you manage it and you just keep going, you know, “one foot in front of the other” is not a bad motto.
Jenelle: Its not a bad motto at all. So I want to also turn to the other side of the equation, Lucy, where maybe there was change where you were trying to drive and for whatever reason, just couldn’t get there. What … give me an example of that. What did that feel like for you and were there some lessons from that experience?
Lucy: I think one of the things, its not so much me, but I think one of the things that I really, you know, I guess I’ve been partly responsible but not solely responsible. One of the things that really troubles me a lot now, a lot, is the cost of housing. Well in Australia but particularly I guess because I’ve been involved in Sydney and I worry about where kids and even people, you know, in their 30s today, how they will ever be able to buy a house and get a foot on the housing ladder and that really troubles me but I think we really need to get cracking and do more because one of the … one of the things that’s quite clear is that there are still huge gaps in gender equity, you know, pay gaps and female dominated work sectors or job sectors like the care economy, like nurses, childcare workers, age care workers which are female dominated are paid much less well than men like tradies and plumbers labourers. A childcare worker gets $953 a week, this is from a government website. A brickie’s labourer gets about $1,490 – say $1,500 a week. That’s a huge gap when you think of the relative responsibility, like the childcare worker is basically priming the mind of this child … of the children they look after for their future life and I’m not denigrating the work of brickie’s labourers and plumber’s labourers but I don’t think you could argue that their work is a lot more valuable than a childcare worker. So we’ve got kind of fundamental disparities in our system. Gender equity is a key objective for, I think, everyone across Australia, certainly in the policy area because if you think of unequal economic power in a household. If you have, say a woman with much less economic power and earning capacity, that woman will be in a more vulnerable position than the male who’s paid much more has the capacity to exercise a lot more coercion and control over the woman and dare I say it, you know, there’s a lot of consensus that inequality – economic inequality is a driver of domestic violence. So there are all these kind of flow on effects from the way we value people’s work and I think, you know, at the Greater Sydney Commission, we identify the significance, the economic and the social significance of health and education precincts and education and health service delivery in our plans, partly because of my experience when I was in local government, say with research institutes in the city wanting to expand. There was a lot of local pushback and I said, “listen, you know, like this building is bigger than the rest of the street but you have no idea the significance of all the work that these medical researchers and sort of scientific researchers do, the value of the work of Universities and large hospital campuses”. So there’s no doubt there are huge piece of our future both in terms of our wellbeing and our education. So you’ve got to try and recognise that in the planning system and I would really like that kind of thinking to come across to the way people conceptualise the value of labour as well and then if there’s less economic inequality between men and women, then there’ll be, you know, less domestic violence and there’ll be, I think, a better world. So we started this whole idea in my final weeks as the Greater Sydney Commissioner. We worked on it beforehand of developing something called “The women’s safety charter” because I do think that we need to look at cities through a gender lens. Unfortunately the pandemic kind of slowed that down but its really important that we actually do everything we can to make women and young people feel safe in the city as they use the city and move through the city, especially now as the CBD is kind of under, I guess, greater economic and social threat, seeing as we’re all used to working from home. I notice we’re both doing this from home. So we’ve got to make sure that people feel safe and happy to use the city. Women are the ones that are most likely to feel vulnerable and so are old people and less abled people. So we’ve got to look at how we design and plan and maintain for safety and a feeling of comfort so that we can actually get as many people into the city as we can.
Jenelle: So then, moving to a related but perhaps more recent example of you pushing for change in the gender space. You’re part of a group of twelve high profile women in Australia who recently published an open letter to Australians on safety, respect and equity. Can you tell me more about that?
Lucy: Well it was really, if you like, 2021 was a big year, gender equity. There was the march for justice and there’s this increasing realisation that we don’t have, if you like, a gender equitable society. We’ve been going backwards in the world economic forum rankings of gender equity. All the trends, if you like, going the wrong way so we think that affordable childcare is a fundamental component of gender equity because typically in a household, the lower income earner which is usually the woman, the mother, steps back from the workforce for a few years because of the marginal cost of childcare, makes childcare prohibitively expensive, so we’ve got to address that, so that the women’s career paths are not as trimmed, if you like, trimmed back by child minding responsibilities as they currently appear to be. Like the standard childcare requirements for young kids is three days a week which implies that the … one of the parents is not, you know, the women steps back and does part time work. Now there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that but there are some careers sectors where going part time for five years or seven years if they spread their kids out has actually quite a material detrimental effect on their career path and progression and that’s reflected in the grossly different levels of superannuation that women have compared to men upon retirement. So we’ve to, you know, if you’re going to give economic equity to women and men, you’ve got to address all the barriers to that and, you know, we do want to have, you know, the safety respect equity … does want a world where sexual harassment is … there is a positive duty of employers to limit or to make sure, as much as they can, that sexual harassment is deterred in the workplace. That’s really important because if sexual harassment is acceptable in the workplace and the systems don’t work to deter that and stop that, that will more likely leak into a house or a family group and everything. So a lack of safety and vulnerability to sexual harassment permeates everything and so I say, just like, you know, in workplaces, you want to have safe lighting and staircases with no trip, you know, no trip down staircases when people are running around offices and have all those sort of safety rules and regs. You know, safety from harassment and discrimination is just as important.
Jenelle: Absolutely absolutely. So if I think about some of the names that are in that group of twelve, it makes me wonder what does it feel like to be having conversations with folks like Grace Tame or Brittany Higgins about this when you and say, Wendy McCarthy, who’s also in that group have been on this planet for a lot longer or not that much longer, I don’t want to sort rude [laugh], but you’ve been flying these sorts of flags before, how do you not feel exhausted and jaded when you hear the same themes coming through from the younger ones?
Lucy: I don’t feel exhausted. I actually feel inspired by them because they have such strong clear voices and they’re speaking from direct experience in a very compelling way and they speak to everyone. You know, they certainly speak to me but they have such clarity of insight and purpose. I think it would be crazy not to listen to them and of course, you know, like Wendy was very involved … she’s about 20 years older than me but … or thereabouts, but not quite, but she was involved in the very first wave of feminism when I was at school etc but I watched her from afar as a young child when she was involved in the women’s electoral lobby etc. So she is a serious pioneer and I saw it, you know, that I was very influenced by Germaine Greer who … I read her book when I was, I think, about 13 or 14 or thereabouts. So you know, these women, sort of like the first wave of feminism and we should never forgot the Suffragettes who kind of started it all, really back in the early 20th century but you know, there’s actually a lot in common and what’s interesting is that the group of women really cross the gender divide. There are people from First Nation backgrounds, lots of diverse backgrounds in that group and, you know, but we are all concerned about the same thing which is a lack of equity, respect and safety.
Jenelle: As I think about the various worlds you traverse – politics, not for profits, corporates, you would no doubt have had quite a bit of experience with power – soft power and hard power. Any insights about effecting change and using soft versus hard power?
Lucy: Well my preference is soft power, very much so. I mean I can use hard power when required but its … I use it as a last resort and I think the transformation in the city of Sydney and the scale and the scope of the city of Sydney’s operations, that was only achieved through a high level of collaboration across the organisation, across the various streams of the organisation and the community. That was, you know, collaboration was key to that successful collaboration but with the Greater Sydney Commission, it is an intrinsically collaborative model, we use soft power and persuasion and through, you know, speaking respectfully to each other across state government agencies, including treasury, transport, premier’s department, health, education. The infrastructure delivery committee basically had every key actor in the government that is responsible for city making or service delivery in cities and that was really kind … that is such an important move to have all the government agencies talking to each other and that’s really really important because often government agencies fragment and don’t talk to each other and I think, you know, one of the best moments … you’re asking what are the best moments before. I think one of my happiest moments in terms of my public life was when the Greater Sydney Metropolis of three cities plan was delivered at exactly the same time as the infrastructure plan and the transport for New South Wales plan. Now that’s sounds like boring geekiness …
Jenelle: No it sounds like a real …
Lucy: It was a moment, I tell you it was absolutely a moment. It was done by the … by Premier Berejiklian in March 2018 and it was such an important moment. It had never happened before in Sydney’s history and that was … like that was a really big moment, to have all those big government agencies working together to resolve a plan and, you know, each plan was approved by Cabinet. So it had that sort of integrity and cohesiveness … internal cohesiveness which was really important and hadn’t really ever happened before in Sydney’s history. So that was quite a moment.
Jenelle: It’s fantastic. So moving from power, I wanted to shift to identify. We sort of have touched on this a little bit earlier before. You are clearly formidable in your own right by any measure, but you have had big stints in your life where you’ve been recognised in reference to someone else, whether its an Attorney General’s daughter or the Prime Minister’s wife. How do you … what's that like and how do you internally reconcile that for yourself?
Lucy: Well it is what it is but I, you know, its [laugh] … yeah, it is what it is and I guess I struggled with it as a young … younger person more than as an older person. You know, like I have to say, it does get a bit boring being tagged as “somebody’s daughter or somebody’s wife”, although I am, I don’t deny it. I definitely am but I wonder if male children would get the same treatment. They probably would, they probably would actually but it does get a bit tedious but, you know, you can’t fight the tape, there’s nothing much you can do with it so you might as well accept it, deal with it, don’t get angry, just move on and do what you want to do anyway and, you know, I mean I would say that now I’m only referred to as somebody’s wife. My dad retired a long time ago so somebody’s daughter has sort of dropped off the screen but I’m only referred as somebody’s wife, I would say maybe 50% of the time I’m referred to in the media. When I was … this is a funny thing, when I was in politics in the city council, I was there as an independent councillor, you know, and we had the majority called the Living City Team. There were two Sydney alliance which kind of loosely aligned with the Liberal Party or more aligned with the Liberal Party and a Labour councillor. So the only political role I’ve ever held is as a political independent. When Malcolm was PM, I kind of got a little bit kind of … I guess agitated sometimes that people would always shoot home to me that I was completely aligned with whatever the government was doing and similarly, when I was the Lord Mayor when the Labour Party was in government, the minute Malcolm expressed an interest into going into politics, representative politics, you know, sort of standing in the seat, the Labour Party panicked and actually didn’t give me the respect which I thought I deserved for being an independent person but they just said … people in the Labour said “oh you can’t possibly stand for re-election as the Lord Mayor now that Malcolm has gone into the Liberal Party” and the good thing is I don’t think anyone would get away with that these days. So I think we’ve moved on from 2003 but it really rocked me at the time because they had exposure to, you know, what I’d done, I hadn’t been politically partisan, it really annoyed me but, you know, sometimes things annoy you more than others and you’ve just got to get on with it and live with it – right.
Jenelle: [laugh] Will that mean … if I just … I mean not to extend the memory, the awful memory of that but if you think that happened to you in 2003, then September 14 2015, Malcolm gets elected. I’m sure … or was it the case that after the excitement of the high of that wore off, when did the realisation kick in of “oh my god, that now means I’m the PM’s wife” and its going to be that to add to my CV instead of expectations that are sort of …
Lucy: Oh no, that didn’t really worry. I was so happy that Malcolm was the Prime Minister. So that didn’t really worry me. I guess my tormented period in that respect was actually in 2003/2004 when, you know, when suddenly the drawbridge came down … sorry, went up. The gate closed on a political career in the city council because the Labour Party at that time didn’t trust me because my husband was like in the Liberal Party. So, you know, maybe they saw me like that, I certainly hope no woman ever experiences that again.
Jenelle: So … we’re talking about Malcolm. You met him at the ripe old age of 19, I think …
Lucy: Yes … in my dad’s chambers because I was sort of temping because his secretary was away doing, you know, sort of I guess law intern work and Malcolm was doing the interview of my dad for The Bulletin. When he was a journalist he did an interview of dad for The Bulletin. Yep.
Jenelle: So, I know that you, you know, each described each other as your most trusted advisors and greatest cheerleaders. You’ve worked in many ventures together including medical research, social and cultural institutions. Obviously the Spycatcher, much known case where you were pivotal in doing that legal research. What's the secret to being able to move what looks like really seamlessly between work and home, from business mentor to supportive spouse or not so happy spouse, whatever the case may be, because we all go through those cycles, how do you manage that fluidity and complexity and still also ensure that you have your own space?
Lucy: Look, we just celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary on Monday so it’s, I mean, it’s hard to image an alternative. So we have been each other’s allies and closest sort of confidante and counsel for many decades, for generations almost. So its kind of … its kind of like “business as usual” but it is built on a huge level of mutual respect and that’s really the basis of it and respect for each other’s abilities and experience. Yeah so … and you know, a complete understanding that we have each other’s interests at heart more than anything else.
Jenelle: That’s fantastic. So, you know, on the many things you do together is you have Turnbull & Partners, which is a family owned business that invests in early stage innovative enterprises. What excites you? Why do you do that work? What is it about that, that you invest in there, what drives you there?
Lucy: Well, we’re both really excited by technological change and the good things that can bring. Obviously we have a multiplicity of investments in the tech space, you know, I guess, pretty sort of geeky sort of stuff but its really interesting and, you know, we just love that sort of … that sense of what the future can hold in a positive sense and particularly investing in Australian innovation and know-how. When Malcolm was PM he had a very early … one of the first things he did was to pull together an innovation agenda and to, I guess, highlight the importance of building an innovation economy and I think that’s probably, if you’re asking one of the things he was proudest of, but that sort of reflected our own interest in that space over, you know, and experience in that space over 20 years and the need for there to be a lot of innovation coming out of … coming out of Australia because it’s, you know, the normal paradigm was “oh, we didn’t really do much of that. We’re a mine, we dig up coal and iron ore and export gas and that’s us, don’t worry about, you know, sort of inventing unicorn companies” and we certainly don’t agree with that. That principle is as important as, you know, resources are obviously to our economy. You know, like the future … the future will be a low carbon to zero carbon economy with a lot of smart people doing great things and that’s kind of an interesting place to play in.
Jenelle: You also play a really significant role in supporting entrepreneurs in our country. Why is that?
Lucy: Well because … because, you know, I love the way entrepreneurs take risks, they see things in a way that, you know, normal people don’t see … you know, regular people. I’m not saying that they abnormal, that most people don’t see things, they spot opportunities. They’ve got this sort of intuitive, I would say, sharpness of mind. It’s a combination of intuition and deep knowledge and I really respect combining those two things, sort of you know, books smart and streets smart with a strong sense of intuition and there’s an opportunity, there’s a gap and sort of running with it persistently. It’s just … it’s quite inspiring.
Jenelle: It is actually. It makes me think … well you and I were at a dinner together a couple of weeks ago and you were sitting at the other end of the table to where I was at but there was one point in the conversation where I was speaking to the entrepreneurs that you will remember who were sitting either side of me and it was like I was at a tennis match. My head was just flitting back and forth because they were talking about, you know, “what are doing and what do you do with the by-products of that because we could do something with this” and the other person said “yes we’re already doing that but have you been to Brazil because they’re doing this”. It was … and I was just so struck by how ignited their imaginations were.
Lucy: Oh yeah, like on fire all the time, just spotting opportunities but I think the best entrepreneurs, as I said, you know, like in government working collaboratively is the sort of like the secret source of getting things done. So is it with entrepreneurs. They have to work, you know, with their colleagues and their partners of course but actually spotting opportunities from maybe not even adjacent industries or businesses and just saying “oh we could do this together” and doing it in a completely new way. That sort of disruptive frame of mine is so … is so, you know, beautiful to watch.
Jenelle: Yeah, it really is and I was also struck … not just by those things but also just the sense of agency that they clearly felt in being able to do something about that …
Lucy: Yeah.
Jenelle: … and I was wondering, you know, I came out on a bit of a high, just going “my god, with people like that, like the world is going to be so amazing”. You know, we’ve got so much hope for the future. What do you … how do we gather that kind of mindset and infect the rest of society, you know, to be … they don’t have to entrepreneurs but perhaps more entrepreneurial.
Lucy: Well I think there’s, you know, like there’s a lot more of it around than there was ten or fifteen years ago. I think a lot of people who are entrepreneurs actually have, that I’ve heard, say this directly have given Malcolm credit for sort of changing the sort of like the perceptual landscape of how important entrepreneurial is an innovation and I think that has been really good. You’ve got … I mean the best thing to do is leading by example so if you have a whole lot of people who have done very well as entrepreneurs like the big stars, they inspire just like sport stars inspire young kids at school to become sporting heroes, if they’ve got the, you know, the athletic and ball skills. So entrepreneurs are either … kids can see and uni students can see in action inspire others and it’s a bit … it’s the same as gender equity. There’s nothing as compelling for young women than seeing older women do things that they can aspire to and that’s was actually … when I became the Lord Mayor, that was actually one of the, you know, some of the letters made me cry. These young girls who said “I’m so glad you’ve become the Lord Mayor because I’d like to be the Lord Mayor one day”. That sort of … and I think Julia Gillard has spoken of that when she was the first female Prime Minister. There is something, you know, and its actually great, not that the person who’s just got the jobs great, certainly in my case, but its actually the example you’re showing to younger people to come up through the system with those aspirations and that’s the best thing about it actually. To me, its that, you know, breaking a glass ceiling, you know, whether you’re an entrepreneurs or a woman leader of whatever you’re doing, if you can break that glass ceiling or that barrier to achievement, then other people look around and say “well if they can do it, I can do it too” which is the best possible way of getting people’s perceptions to change.
Jenelle: You were awarded an Order of Australia in 2011 for Distinguished Service to Community, Local Government and Business. What did that mean to you?
Lucy: Oh, I was kind of like shocked and amazed. When I opened the letter, I was just so “wow”. I was absolutely surprised. It meant a lot to me. It was very very, you know, I was very moved by that and you know, quite awed and shocked actually. I would say shocked and awed would be the first reaction, but you know, it was actually a lovely recognition and I’m deeply grateful for it and never expected it, to be honest with you, and so it was a surprise and a wonderful surprise. You get all sorts of surprises in life and that was a wonderful one.
Jenelle: That would have been an amazing letter to open up that day I am sure.
Lucy: Yes.
Jenelle: You were recently appointed Chair of the Opera House Trust. Now in what, I think, a beautifully book-ended story if this true what I am about to say but I heard somewhere that you were at the opening of the Opera House as a young girl, is that true?
Lucy: Yeah, I went. It was sort of my first time I ever went to something as a young teenager, I think I was about 14 in … to the opening of the Opera House because my … I had a godfather, a very dear godfather was like a grandfather to me who was a judge and he never got married so he took me as his date to the opening of the Opera House in 1973 and it was a really amazing experience. An experience sitting in the concert hall. I’ll never forget seeing the pink seats. They were the things that amazed me the most, I think. I’d been listening to Beethoven’s 9th and everything. It was just like so unbelievable. It was a really … a very important moment in Sydney’s history and certainly in my growing up kind of history because I got into an evening dress and stuff for the first time and so it was just like a magical night in Sydney and next year, next October will be the 50th anniversary of the Opera House so it will be amazing to be there as a fully grown up Chair of Trustees when I was there at the opening as a, you know, my first time dressed up for a black tie event.
Jenelle: What a beautiful beautiful book-ended story there. Now Lucy, you just seem endlessly motivated to do more and to be more. I have to ask. How do you find the capacity and the energy?
Lucy: Well, because I like what I do. So I went to a speech and one of the mantras is “do what you love and love what you do” and that’s actually been a very important mantra for me and I’ve always tried to follow it. So, you know, absolutely do what you love and love what you do. Its actually a really good lesson for life. Now not everybody has the opportunity to always do that and let’s be honest, not everybody always does what they love, like cleaning the kitchen or doing the ironing or laundry or something but, you know, as much as you possibly can, direct yourself to doing things that you love because it gives you a thrill and you think its important and valuable. So I’ve always tried to do that.
Jenelle: Fantastic.
The last three! Three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: I’m going to finish up with a really fast three. Simple questions, don’t overthink it. What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
Lucy: Well I’ve been binge watching television. I’m watching … I’m reading, you know, like all television shows and everybody’s watched them so I won’t dwell on them but I’m reading a really interesting book about modernism, about the whole modernist movement and, you know, how its fed into design etc written by a great academic, Australian academic who’s worked in the US called Terry Smith. I find that whole modernist movement very interesting. I don’t agree with everything that arose out of it. I love that and what was the other one … reading …
Jenelle: Reading, watching or listening to right now.
Lucy: Listening … I listen … I have to say I listen to the ABC just about … I mean Malcolm is a real podcast person. I do podcast … I love 99% invisible and I love bits of this American life but mostly I just love listening to the radio and sometimes I listen to podcasts on the radio but its great to listen to things as they happen. I’m just … I’m fascinated by current events and there’s been so much happening in the last two years, its hard to sort of step outside what's happening in the present.
Jenelle: That’s it. What is your super power? Now this can be something that’s additive to the world. In your case, it probably would or it could be a useless party trick?
Lucy: Oh I’ll tell you … I’ll show you my super power. It’s the grandchild fascinator.
Jenelle: What!
Lucy: This is my super power.
Jenelle: Oh okay, I’m going to have to give voice to this. Its where you curl each finger over the one preceding it [laugh].
Lucy: Yes, my grandchildren call me “Gaga” so this is what we call Gaga fingers.
Jenelle: You know what, I can do that too.
Lucy: Oh right, so you’ve got the same super power.
Jenelle: I’ve got the same.
Lucy: You’re the first one I’ve met with the same super power. See, there you go.
Jenelle: Oh god, I knew that there was something we had in common. [laugh]. All right snap. Now if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be.
Lucy: You know, do your best and put one foot ahead of the other when things are tough.
Jenelle: Oh that’s perfect. Lucy, can I say thank you so much for your time today. I’ve taken a lot out of our conversation. What I will walk away with amongst many other things is your clear and genuine and unbridled curiosity to find out more and I think you do that, always driven by your values of equality and your strong sense of social justice. I think its clear that you approach opportunities with an open mind and as you say, an open heart which means that you don’t pre-judge and you’re receptive to hearing and learning every step of the way. I love that you have such a keen awareness of the world around you, whether that’s the trees and how much shade they’re affording you or, you know, the death of Martin Luther King or whatever is happening in the world events around you. I love your ability to bridge the macro with the micro. So you might be thinking about something that is connecting nations together and you’ll be just as much thinking about well let's fix up the graffiti on the street in order to get us there. I think your learnings around exercising soft power to effect change in the strength of using respect and persuasion and collaboration to do that. Its hard not to be infected by your motivation for what the future can hold, whether that’s in cities, or in women’s equality or tech and innovation or entrepreneurism or sustainable economies, its all there for the taking and thank you for being so inspiring to others. For being an exemplar, for being someone who will show that we can break glass ceiling and, of course as you say, do what you love and love what you do and if you’re feeling, you know, nervous about it, just do it, put one foot in front of the other. So thank you so much Lucy.
Lucy: Thank you so much Jenelle.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Linda Brown
CEO and President, Torrens University Australia

Jenelle: Hi. I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 3 of the Change Happens podcast, conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today I’m joined by Linda Brown, the president and CEO of Torrens University. Now there’s a good chance you haven’t heard of Torrens University. In fact, a recent article in the Australian Financial Review said as much, saying “Torrens University is not a household name in Australia, but the American-owned institution has been quietly growing at a speed that rocket scientists might find difficult to explain”. Yep, this private for-profit university, is Australia’s fastest growing university. The story of Torrens is a fascinating one and it’s impossible to decouple the success of that from Linda Brown herself, who has that inimitable Scottish charm and charisma, coupled with fierce passion and boundless energy and a fearlessness in disrupting the status quo to drive amazing outcomes, not just of students but societies more broadly. She’s a true change maker of the very best kind. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Linda Brown. Hi Linda! Thank you for joining me today.
Linda: It’s a pleasure. Thank you.
Jenelle: Very excited for the conversation. Now, I want to start if I could just if you could help the audience understand a bit a bout you, your personal story. How would you describe your formative years?
Linda: Oh wow. So, people who are listening will have worked out – they would be trying to work out if I’m Irish or Scottish or sometimes even Canadian. So it’s a Scottish accent although now I’m a Scottish Aussie, which I’m really, really proud of.
Jenelle: The Scottish is coming loud and proud, I reckon.
Linda: I grew in a tiny little village in Scotland in Perthshire where, when I was born, genuinely I was the only child in the village. So it had maybe at that time 300, 500 people in it. It’s now an enormous village. You know it’s maybe now got 5,000 people in it. So still a very small village. So I went to the little village school and in my class in Year 7 there was 8 of us, which was really small, personalised learning. Then I kind of went through traditional schooling and got to the point where I was first in family to go to university and picked the university based on what was the furthest away from home, not what I really wanted to do. I think I applied for everything from PE teaching to science and engineering to public policy and economics, which was where I ended up, at real redbrick, you know, not a sandstone university, called Paisley Tech. So I’m very – a good Scottish term is “jammy”, you know, I always land on my feet. It’s not – I wish I could tell you I had planned this whole thing out, but I haven’t in any shape or form. When I met who’s still my husband now 35 years later we were looking for a mortgage when I left uni, not knowing what I was going to do, and Abbey National, who we went for the mortgage with offered me a job as a graduate trainee. So I worked with them. So, financial services. Then they did some work with Fidelity so I did some future stock broking and then the education bug hit really. So that was the start of the journey and the early formative years in a small village in Scotland.
Jenelle: You mentioned the education bug was where you got the first education bug. Tell me about that. What piqued your interest?
Linda: That was really interesting. So the first – I’d done my undergrad degree and kind of cobbled through that. I was never an A grade student. I just did what I had to do while I was working on the side or running a busines or doing whatever. So I did that. But then when I went to do my Masters, at that time it was my MBA, I went to Strathclyde Uni and I wanted to learn in the evening because I was working. And at that time I was working for Fidelity and I probably was running nearly a billion pounds portfolio of futures, you know, as part of my Fidelity portfolio. But interestingly the person who was teaching me economics or finance in that MBA had never worked. So here they were not contextualising it to the business world. They were talking about dry economics and Keynesian theory and all this and to be honest at that time, Jenelle, I thought I can actually do this a little bit better. And I was pregnant with Cameron, my first child, and I took myself off to do a Post Graduate Certificate of Education to become a teacher, because that was the first “Aha” moment for me about contextualising learning, you know? And the fact that it’s easier -and we find this throughout my career - it’s easier to teach a professional or somebody who’s amazing at their craft to teach than it is to teach a professional teacher about what’s going on in industry. So that’s kind of always stuck with me all the way through. And we have, you know, 70% of the academics who work for me now are “pracademics”. They work as well as teach and that’s been a really important tenet to what I believe in education.
Jenelle: I have never heard that term, “pracademics” but I’ll be using that. I really like that. Now, you’ve done a lot of things in your career. You’ve made a range of important choices about who you’re going to work with. Is there an overarching purpose or mission that has drive you or at least informed those choices that you’ve made?
Linda: I think there’s two things. I think the first blessing, and I say this all the time and I’m, you know, I’m a feminist. I’m really into female diversity. But I have to say thank you to my family and my husband because Robert worked in mining and he was – he calls himself an “industrial prostitute” so, you know, he was part of the Compaq sale to Hewlett Packard, ICL to Fujitsu, you know, Nortel. And he would go in and sort companies out and then move on. And for me never having the responsibility of having to pub bread on the table has been a considerable blessing because it meant that I had choice. And that’s all I want everybody to have. But it also meant that I could be incredibly brave. And there’s this amazing research that’s been done. It came out originally out of Exeter University and everybody talks about women and the glass ceiling but there’s this research that shows women are also involved in a glass cliff. And if you think about most of the jobs where women get promoted to, you know, significant CEO roles it’s usually where there’s masses of risk and it’s an either win or lose situation. And I’ve always been involved in those kind of situations because I was courageous and I was given the opportunity to be courageous. So for me, I could really pick and chose where I wanted to work and I think from that point of view I’m blessed.
Jenelle: I know you came from a public education background. Tell me, how did you find yourself then connected with Torrens?
Linda: Oh, for me it was one of the hardest decisions I had to make in my life. If you look through my career it’s always been about changing or disrupting educational systems or going in and fixing them once they’ve been disrupted but the ecosystem hadn’t been put in to make the change. So for me when I came to Australia I was brought into Australia by the Public Service. I was brought in by Queensland Government to make TAFE, which is technical and further education, “sexy”, because it’s not incredibly sexy in Australia and it’s very much seen as the kind of little brother to universities. If you can’t go to university you go to TAFE and for me that’s just not acceptable. They’re two different things and they’re equal, they’re just different. So I was brought in to do that. I stayed with them for five years, it was amazing. And then after that went to Swinburne because, again, there was a bit of disruption going on in the market. There was a thing called the Bradley Review which just was common sense to me where they were looking at schools, colleges and universities and trying to get better connection between the three so that people didn’t feel that 29% at that time were going back to TAFE from universities to get skills to get a job. Isn’t that crazy? They were having to do a Diploma after a degree to get a job. It was just crazy to me. So I went to Swinburne and worked with an amazing guy down there, Ian Young, who ended up being the Vice Chancellor at ANU, and we did a lot of work around maximising that duel sector advantage. And at that time that team created a thing called Swinburne Online which was a partnership with Seek with Andrew Bassat where they were actually looking at a more commercial way to put out education to people who were working that was much more at a better price point and people could travel through their education journey at their own pace. So we were involved in that and then at that time -universities are interesting things. Universities are, in Australia, are run by Vice Chancellors, a phenomenal group of people, but usually academics. And there’s this great kind of expectation that when a Vice Chancellor changes the strategy changes. So you can have a university that is maybe a working man’s university, so it’s quite practical, or you can have a university that’s a research-intensive university, and then when the new Vice Chancellor comes in they kind of pull a new strategy out of the drawer and try to change the whole purpose of the university. So for me we had a new Vice Chancellor and at that time I thought no, this isn’t now what I wanted to be involved in so I was going to leave. And at that time Seek came to me and asked me if I would run a group of colleges called “Think Education” and sell them to a company called Laureate, which was the biggest higher education provider in the world. So I did that but you don’t put somebody like me into run $80 million dollars’ worth of colleges. So when I went in I said I’m happy to do it but I knew that they were trying to get a licence to create a brand new university, the first privately funded one ever in Australia, and I said I’ll come and do it as long as I get to build a brand new university from scratch. So I really struggled with that because, for me, I believe education is a human right. I believe everybody should - like bread, water, air – education should be available for everybody. And for me I struggled with the private nature of that but my son and my daughter sat me down and they said, mum – and it was really interesting because at that time I’d applied for the Director General job in Queensland to go back into the top job in Queensland where I believed I could change the whole structure from within the public sector, you know, a bit naively. You can usually do that until you get the front of the newspaper and then they pull you in. So my daughter and my son and my now Chancellor, Jim Varghese, counselled me and said if you can do this and build a brand new university, you’re going to create the leaders of the future that will then go on and be the change makers to really drive significant change. You’ve tried to do it from within, and I always try to do it from within, even now I’m trying to agitate within the system. But from my point of view we have driven more change as being as showing people how to do it rather than talking about it or fighting against the system that already exists.
Jenelle: It’s really interesting listening to that because if I think back to the earlier question I asked about whether or not there’s been a common thread that’s driven your choices, to me listening to that it feels like you’re purpose is really figuring out where you can effect the greatest amount of change as your overarching kind of beacon for informing your choices. Does that sort of resonate for you?
Linda: I think 100% and it’s not – it’s changed for a particular impact. So for me it’s not the smart kids in and smarts kids out change. That change can happen some place else and other people are really, really good at that. For me it’s about affordability, return on investment, how does somebody who is aspiring to be educated to be honest really involved in the process that they understand that they are going to get what they want. Which might not equate on a league table for our university status but it really is, I suppose, their reward is in the induvial in the employability, in what industry gets. So, productivity and social change through economic mobility is a thing that really drives me but not for a few. It really is – I want open – I want everybody to have the opportunity at the lowest possible price and that, I suppose, is a crazy thing to say as a CEO, but I believe if we do that we open up the system and competition’s great, you know?
Jenelle: Love that! You’ve been the CEO of Torrens for – since it’s inception here. It’s become the fastest growing university in Australia. Congratulations by the way!
Linda: Thank you.
Jenelle: In your mind what’s been the reason for that success? Or reasons?
Linda: I mean for me it’s always about people, you know? So it’s always about the team and making sure that we have a team that are focussed on the outcome and really get the purpose, do you know? We’re a B-Corp. That brings with it it’s own responsibilities of balancing what we call the beautiful and the business and making sure that we create a sustainable business. I think the other thing is I think we were very clever at looking for a gap in the market. We don’t compete with the other 42 universities that are in Australia. We looked for a very distinct part of the market that we’re maybe a little bit more transactional in education. They wanted to come in, they wanted to pick the subjects they wanted to do, not the subjects that they were given. They wanted to do it 24-7, if they wanted to be creative at 2 o’clock in the morning we make that happen. So for me we were very student-centric and for us it was about employability, employability, employability. And that was really before employability became sexy in universities because that was seen as a secondary thing. Universities were there about knowledge, about wisdom, about research, they weren’t necessarily aligned to employability. So we filled that gap and I think people were crying out for that and we just – we hit it at the right time I think.
Jenelle: It’s an interesting point around become student-centric and taking that focus and power away in some ways from the teaching, the teachers or the providers. I mean that can be a very confronting thing in a landscape where that’s kind of been the model for a very, very long time. Where have you felt the rub of that? Maybe outside of your own university other players that you’re talking to, do you feel that resistance to shifting that focus to the students - giving the power, the voice, the platform to the student rather than holding that where it’s traditionally been held?
Linda: Yeah, a lot. And I think the biggest place to look at that is around content. You know, universities previously – and I have loved public universities. So, you know, this isn’t a bag public universities and I’m a private – we’re just different. We do things differently. So for me in universities you still have the academic who owns the IP for the content. When they basically do that lecture or they go into that situation, you know, it’s a very personal situation. You know, you know, you would think back to your university days and you had lecturers who were amazing and you’ll remember them forever, you had some who weren’t too hot and there seemed to be no equity in that or no check in that. We don’t do that. The content is all developed centrally so that if you’re studying in Brisbane or Adelaide or Sri Lanka or Colombia with us you’re getting the same content. Now, that doesn’t take away the power from the academic. A good academic will then contextualise that, tell stories, bring flavour and colour to that. But what that allows us to ensure is that everybody gets the same quality and they get the same information and the same assessment. So for me that’s critical if you’re trying to scale up and have a really big impact and try to keep the costs down. So that was really interesting because when we started to recruit – it was fun, I tell you! So when we started to recruit for the new university there was an incredible amount of courageousness in there and trust in there for the people who jumped on board with us at the start. You know what universities are like – you’ve got tenure, you’ve got protection, you’re unionised.
Jenelle: Oh, God yeah!
Linda: You know, it’s a very, very structured employment environment. You know how many – how big an office you get depending on what your title is. You know, it’s very, very staid in the way that -
Jenelle: That’s right. It’s disrupted everything that people hold dear!
Linda: Yeah, absolutely. So but interestingly we got incredible amount of Emeritus Professors. So that’s the highest kind of level that you can get to in your academic career. It’s watch my career all the way through, disrupting and building and disrupting and building. But they wanted to come and play. They wanted – they were frustrated with the current system and they were at a point in their career almost like what I’m saying with Robert, do you know what I mean? That I could go in and do something disruptive? They were at that point in their career where they could have fun and go and do things that they always wanted or talked about happening. So we got an incredible amount of high-end Emeritus Professors joining us as the start of this journey. We got an incredible amount of young, edgy pracademics who were in industry, they weren’t getting the talent they wanted so they wanted to do something to change that. What we didn’t get was the kind of middle. We didn’t get the career academics because for them we don’t give everybody two days for research or we don’t – you know what I mean? We look at industry connection, research and teaching and if you’re excellent at any one of these you can become a professor in our organisation. It’s not just all about research. So some people couldn’t fit into that thought process where it’s about your own accountability, not about tenure. So it was really interesting at the start attracting talent because we got all the disruptors. So can you imagine - you’re trying to create a brand new university that the regulators are happy with, that you look like every other university because there’s this real chip on your shoulder about they could come in and hurt the system, and here we are with a basket full of crazy disruptors that were amazing teachers and researchers and industry connectors? So we had to kind of balance that out and we did that through the help of our board.
Jenelle: You know, I love listening to that because it’s almost like I’ve got this visual of the fringe-dwellers, the disruptors on the edge, the, you know, the pracademics on the side, the people who are frustrated, missed the amorphous middle bit and then using words like they wanted to come play it sort of – there’s something very liberating about that and unruly and chaotic but awesome about what you’re then playing with and within the bounds, still working within the boundaries so, you know, for a period of time and then gently nudging and pushing on those. So, it’s a great visual. Actually, there’s one quote that I loved I read from a Deputy Vice Chancellor from the University of Canterbury and the question that we asked around the future of universities, the future of teaching and he said the future for universities is to both stream like Spotify and offer experiential learning like a Crowded House concert.
Linda: I love that!
Jenelle: Which sort of had quite the visual thing for me. I wondered what your take on that vision is and how do you see the future of education?
Linda: I think for me it’s about the head, the hand and the heart, you know? And it’s like the head is the knowledge and the wisdom and that’s a really important part of it and the accreditation, the proof that you’ve got that I think is still important. But for me the hand, being able to apply that. You know, our job now is not to teach content – I still want people to teach content if it’s doctors or lawyers or whatever but genuinely most people don’t look at what type of degree somebody has got now. It’s really about teaching people how to learn and how to take the information that they can access and actually take that information and apply it in a way that has purpose and impact. And some people still look at education as a time-based thing. You know, you’ve got to do so many hours to become good at X. Well that’s just rubbish, you know what I mean? So if you’re really going to be student-centric it’s really damn hard. You’ve got to be so flexible so that people can pick and chose and move up and move down and the thing I love about the Spotify idea, there’s still a position that’s required – we call them success coaches – to help people curate, do you know what I mean? Because you could choose your own journey -
Jenelle: Yes, I do. It’s overwhelming otherwise.
Linda: Yeah, you choose your own journey and you could end up with nothing that cohesively goes together to get you to your purpose. So for us we use Gallup StrengthFinders so that people could talk about their strengths and have that language that industry uses and we have a success coach for each student who doesn’t teach, they literally curate. They look at what the student wants at the end and helps them get there, you know what I mean? So we don’t say to them if you’re dreaming of being a film producer, put that dream away, do this course in film animation and then at the end of your course we will pull your dream back out of the cupboard and then we’ll help you get a job. We don’t do that. In parallel with the student all the way through we’re making sure they can earn while they learn in a film lot and get paid for it rather than doing free internships. We look at the programme and curate the programme for the so they could do psychology with a business qualification with some design qualifications so it really is personalised learning but not chaotic personalised learning that you don’t end up with something that the market values, yeah? If that makes sense?
Jenelle: It does. And actually there’s just a beautiful circling of the story there, you know, you were in a classroom of eight people growing up and you’ve had the most personalised experience and then you’ve gone to this massive world with unlimited content and you’re still working to create that kind of very intimate, personalised learning experience. I think just listening to your story I can see those people sitting tougher. It’s – I live it and I do think the idea of a success coach who curates that for each student is fantastic because it is absolutely overwhelming. I find myself just getting buried down paths of content or whatever, social media content, like it’s great stuff but you can spend hours going and, you know, navigating that and not knowing really where you’re going to end up. So I think it’s a really important role.
Linda: Yeah, it’s good. It’s working well.
Jenelle: I bet it is. I’ll bet it is. I want to turn to on a leadership front, Linda, you know when I think about, and we’re obviously still coming through COVID, what was it like for you to be leading the university during COVID given how deeply and broadly higher education was disrupted by the pandemic? Do you remember those early days of that time and the kinds of decisions that you had to make?
Linda: Yeah. And I mean to be honest it still is. I mean, technical terms it was kind of scary as hell because you knew as a new university even more, these people trusted us. They brought their career to us, which was a courageous decision, you know, to move away from traditional universities, come and work for us, brand new, no reputation, proprietary owned through at that time Laureate. You know, I understood how important a decision that was for people. So I felt a great sense of responsibility to the 2,000 staff we had. And then to the 20,000 students. You know, we had half of them were international, half of them were domestic although I believe every student is an international student so don’t come to our university if you don’t want to be in a class with 10 different nationalities, go somewhere else, you know, because we’re a global university and that’s what we believe in, is global citizenship. So for me the responsibility of that was enormous and right from the start I mean, you know, I made the decision that we would keep people working and we would keep students learning. And that was the captains call, you know? And for me that was critical because we said we will do everything we possibly can to keep you working and keep you safe. Yeah, so immediately we moved off campuses and we will keep the students learning even if they can’t get out of their own country or they can’t afford it. And then the decisions came from that. So for me it was that call that then shaped the phenomenal growth and care and wellness that was created by the community and the collaboration. The other thing that we agreed at that time was this isn’t a time just to look after ourselves. We will open everything up. We will, you know, give everybody in Australia our short courses for free. I think 120,000 people engaged with us during that time because we knew mental health was important. We worked with Beyond Blue to put a massive open online course out which was free explaining what to look for in mental health. So we did some really amazing community collaborative projects that I think really cemented our be-good ethos and really showed that we were walking the talk. But it all came down to that captain’s call which was we will protect you, we’ll keep you working and we will keep students learning and that was without a dollar from the Government. We didn’t take any of the Government money. So I’m super proud. Super proud of my team.
Jenelle: As you should be because you didn’t – obviously you didn’t just survive you thrived.
Linda: Yeah. And if you think about the environment we were in 25,000 people got paid off in higher education during that period sadly. For us we thrived because – and I’ll give you a prime example of that. You know, we were – we’d just been bought. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But I mean we were bought during COVID for just short of a billion dollars. I mean, who buys a university during COVID at the other side of the world when you can’t get there? We had 40 people bidding for us. It was phenomenal, right? And we sold it during COVID and SEI had the trust in us and our team to buy it during COVID. So for me to have a new owner and say actually we’re not going to pay people off. We’re going to protect everybody and we’re going to protect our students, they had an incredible amount of trust in us. And for me I’ll give you an example. So we also take a responsibility seriously so we had a number that we had to hit, significant number, of a contribution that we had to hit in the first year around the sale – which we exceeded by the way – and that had a 28% growth in it. We didn’t know COVID was going to happen and we were short. You know, we were getting to August and we were short. It didn’t look like we were going to hit our contribution number or EBITDA number. And remember we’re non-unionised. So we, as only non-unionised university in Australia, so we went out to staff and said look guys, there’s three or four ways we can do this. I’ve made a promise that I want to keep but you need to help me. So what was happening during COVID and I’m sure you saw it, Jenelle, in other businesses was people were saving their holidays because they didn’t want to take a holiday at home. I mean, who would want to do that? So our holiday liability was up by 40% and we thought we need to get this down because we had it accrual and it was on our balance sheet. So we went out to 2,000 staff and said we can’t force your but we’re asking you, can you take 8 days of your leave between now and the end of the year because that will help me fulfill the promise and we will protect all of our staff. Ninety-four percent of the staff did it voluntarily. That for me was like a warm and fuzzy moment, we’re doing something right.
Jenelle: You know, as I listen to you, Linda, I hear these incredible moments where people have taken a bit of a leap of faith in you and the vision. You know, whether it’s to leave the traditional universities to join and come play or whether it’s to acquire a business in a time that perhaps on paper makes absolutely no sense, or whether it’s to take leave into a different room in their house, you know, that period – you seem to be able to instil this unbelievable level of trust. Or people have this level of trust and faith in you. What can you tell me about how you’ve done that? How have you managed to earn that or even, I guess, lure people to it before you’ve been able to earn it afterwards. I’m so interested in these moments that have happened.
Linda: I think there’s two things. The first thing is the best talent I’ve got is picking phenomenal people, right? So for me, if you look at the team, they are exceptional, right? Exceptional! They’ve got a – we’ve got a common purpose but there is a diversity. I’ve probably got the most diverse team in education and I know I have because Bill Clinton came to open the university for me in Adelaide and when he did it he said to me Linda, I have never seen such a diverse group in a university ever. So that was a beautiful Aha moment for me. But I think picking the team and also getting the hell out of the way so that they can block them and they’re responsible. And to be honest the other one is being really honest when you screw up. And I have screwed up so many times it’s unbelievable. But I think one of the things that I am is honest and, you know, one of the – I was a dreadful leader seven years ago. Dreadful, Jenelle. Honestly, I went through a horrible -
Jenelle: You?
Linda: Yeah, I went through a horrible stage when I first became the CEO of the university that, you know, that wonderful female thing about they’re going to find out I’m not as smart as they think I am so therefore you think you’ve got to do everything yourself.
Jenelle: Oh, God yeah, that’s just ???
Linda: It’s awful, isn’t it? Like and I did that for like two years.
Jenelle: Yeah, Imposter syndrome.
Linda: It was horrible. And because I was so intent on what this university should look like I was down in the dirt and I was getting micromanaging and the worst mistake I ever made in my life was I sub-contracted out my people. I had this amazing HR person who came into the organisation and said I’ll deal with the people stuff, Linda, you don’t need to worry about that, you worry about the other stuff. My God it was horrendous. I think on that – what is that thing that’s on the – you can “glass door” – is it glass door it’s called where you –
Jenelle: Yes, glass door, the rating as well.
Linda: I think I was about minus four – I wasn’t but it felt like I was about minus four.
Jenelle: I think you were two-star by the way but it was still, yeah, I understand.
Linda: It was bad. It was appalling. And then I had a kind of, you know, “come to Jesus” moment where I went I have to change. If I don’t change this organisation is not going to flourish and grow. I either need to change or get out of the way. And with a lot of help, a lot of support, a lot of coaching, my team being super courageous and saying this is what drives us crazy, this is where you’re good, get out of the road, I had an epiphany really about I could actually do more good being out of the business than I could being in the business. And since then I think, you know, it’s been amazing for me and I’m – I hope it’s been amazing for my team. But I think the great thing about that is people were always courageous with me. So they would always tell me if things were working and weren’t working. And I’m the first person to admit when we get it wrong. We screw up, we move again and move fast and no blame. There’s no blame in my world, do you know what I mean, because failure is just – if you’re not failing your not trying hard enough. So for me it was really a learning I think. And I think the people who’ve been with me for, you know, there’s been people who’ve been with me for 16 years in 3 different organisations in Australia have – I mean probably I’ve driven them crazy but my God we’ve had fun. We’ve changed the world. We’ve done amazing things. They think ah, I’m fed up working for her and then they come back again. So they’re – I tend to attract kind of adrenaline junkies or people who are totally focussed on purpose and want to make an impact.
Jenelle: Yeah, I love that. You know, that no blame culture that you embody and you lead is a really liberating thing for people to work in. If you genuinely can call out failure as an opportunity for learning, a learning moment, and move forward that must just open up so many more ideas, so many more suggestions, so much more risk-taking – safe risk taking.
Linda: Yeah. And I think, I’m not being Pollyanna-ish about it, you know, make a mistake once, yep, let’s learn. Make a mistake two, yeah, maybe. Don’t do it three times though, do you know what I mean? So it’s making sure that we actually close the circle and we learn from it and then we move on. And I remember the, you know, think education and the first two weeks of being in there somebody had done something that lost us like $3 million dollars and I think they came into the room shaking going my God, and I said well just thanks for your honesty. Let’s sort it now, do you know what I mean, because at the end of the day if you don’t know you can’t sort it. It’s just crazy.
Jenelle: You know, despite your earlier comment when the new chancellor comes in and they pull out a different strategy I would say that the higher education sector isn’t one that is necessarily known for changing or changing at pace. It’s probably fair to say it’s remained largely unchanged for over a millennium. You’ve just talked then about, you know, balancing out the kind of people in your team with more traditional people on the board. So that’s probably one element of driving change. But I guess in the context of a sector that’s been quite hard to move and to shift with the times what have been the lessons that you’ve learned along the way around driving change in the sector?
Linda: I think for me the biggest thing is to really look at things from above the sector, do you know what I mean? Actually go back to the – I mean the only criticism I would have about universities is they’re very internal. You know, they measure themselves on how much research they do against each other. The measure themselves on how many students they have. You know, they’re all inputs, they’re not outputs. So for me to get above the system and actually get back to why are we here and what are we trying to create and how can we create systemic change and how can we protect the things that are important to formal education without throwing the baby out with the bath water but also in a non-threatening way? So I’ll give you an example of that. So, you know, you would have had to be sitting in the cupboard to not hear all of the press over the last five to six years of many companies now not even looking for degrees to get talent, saying that they’re – people aren’t employable when they come out of universities. The biggest threat was never other universities. The biggest threat was always enterprise training. You know, people who just decided we’ll do it ourselves, it’s much easier and we’ll invest the money once they come to company or Google or Apple. You know, these are the threats, not other universities. So for me it was getting above it and saying OK, I do believe accreditation is important because accreditation gives you a benchmark that helps people understand the potential of a person, not the end point of a person, just the potential of a person. Industry accreditation or practical application is as important. So we made our point a differentiation – you can have both. You can have a university degree that’s accredited but every single piece of curriculum that we put out now has an endorsement by a company that is the best company in that class. So, for example, Canva endorse all our design. Ovolo Hotels endorse all our hospitality programmes and customer service. IBM do, you know, cloud computing and analytics, you know? So we’re partnering all he way through with industry. We don’t write a piece of curriculum without 12 industry players sitting around the table with us. So therefore they own it and therefore it’s so super up-to-date. And if they’re willing to put their brand on it then students get both, don’t they? I call it “the edge”. They get an accredited degree but they also get endorsement from an employer and because all our students have to go to work, they don’t have a choice, so if you come and do a degree with me, even if you come and do another MBA with me, we will put you out to work, either if you’re working for EY we might put you out to charity or we might put you out to a not-for-profit. So you also get a reference from another sector or another employer. So you’re getting a bag of tricks that then makes you super employable. That’s why I have the second highest employability rate for graduate students after only 7 years in being a university. So for me that’s the difference. If you look at it, the biggest thing for me, my biggest strength, my Gallup StrengthFinder, is connections, yeah? Is how do we connect the ecosystem around education with communities, with employers, with industry, with Government, how do we create an ecosystem that one plus one plus makes 10 rather than silos. And I think that’s my biggest benefit or advantage because I see connections everywhere. Everywhere! It drives me crazy.
Jenelle: I’m absolutely a subscriber to the belief that the whole should be greater than the sum of the parts, you know, and that’s what you’re talking about there is connecting that ecosystem for it to create an amplified impact, which is a fantastic take away. I have heard you mention the Torrens “crazy gene” in the past. Tell me about the crazy gene. You say it with a bit of a cheeky glint in your eyes, tell me about that. Is it something that you recruit for? Is it something that you develop within the uni?
Linda: I think it’s both. I think you have to have it to even apply to work with us. You know, if you don’t like change do not come to us. You know, we are so agile and innovative and moving all the time. Somebody who wants to know they can rock up nine to five, do a job, go home, say they’ve done a good job probably would not survive in our culture because we’re always pushing, agitating, trying to move forward but not for agitations sake, do you know what I mean? It’s always got to be for a reason. But Hugo, head of HR, said, you know, a few years ago, we were kind of – and it was actually when we were in the sale process – what a time to let this one out! You know, we’re in the sale process, pitching away, you know, to all these amazing people who wanted to buy us – and, interesting, including some public universities wanted to buy us because that’s a different story.
Jenelle: Oh, is that right?
Linda: Oh, yeah! That’s a different story. We’re chatting away and there’s this culture, it’s a culture, it’s the team, and that’s what it is, you know. They didn’t buy content, they bought people. And people and culture is king. So for me, Hugo in the sales process said, you know, how would you describe this, you know, as a professional HR person. And he went “the crazy gene” – the only way I can describe it is the crazy gene. You know, you’ve got to have this kind of burning desire to really – high accountability in my structure. High – everybody is bonus. Everybody is bonus within the organisation. Everybody gets a share in success, yeah? So we brought that in to Torrens and everybody’s really clear what they’re accountable for. Everybody leads from their circle of influence. So, yeah, there is a crazy gene. And I’m just blessed because that crazy gene also brought about the courageous conversations that I personally needed to learn to get the hell out of the way and let them do their job really, really well and let the organisation thrive.
Jenelle: I want to just bounce back, if I could, to the conversation we had around change and where you – what your lessons were on change. One of the things that you talked about when you said, you know, you get above the system and you think about looking at it more broadly and you talked about systemic change. There are a range of structural impediments to change that exist in the system. So we can drive a mindset shift and some, you know, behavioural shifts for sure and you’re obviously doing that. But talk to me about some of the hard-coded, structural impediments to change that you’ve sort of been aware of or trying to do something about or intend to do something about because very often we can underestimate how deeply those blockages are, you know, embedded.
Linda: Yep. So I’ll give you an example of one we changed and one that we’re trying to change, yeah? So the one that we changed was really simple. There was this crazy tax for students that nobody knew about. So the student decided they wanted to go to a higher ed provider or a private university and they borrowed $40,000 – they get a government loan on that like any other public university. But they used to have to pay a 25% tax, which was called an admin tax. So if you don’t choose to go to a public -
Jenelle: That’s a hefty admin tax!
Linda: I know! So if you don’t choose to go to a public university, you choose, at that time you chose to go to Bond, Notre Dame or ourselves, the student would by $50 grand, which is appalling. And it was like an invisible tax. So we really worked with Government to remove that tax. We agitated through the free trade agreement with America and said it was non-competitive and the Government changed the legislation. So that’s an example of changing something - not just for Torrens, we changed it for the system. And there’s 5 or 6 examples of that, especially around employability measures in universities. Usually we do it quietly. We do it – we don’t – and nobody speaks for us, but the experience that we’ve got globally is we can show Government, public policy makers trends that have happened somewhere else in the world and the unintended consequence of that and we can help then do the research to try to change the policy. So that’s that side. The one that we’re agitating a little bit for now is the crazy, crazy policies around international students. They’re just mental. So you get give an amount of students that you’re allowed to have as a university. So they will tell you in Adelaide I can have 2,000 international students, in Brisbane I can have 1,000, in Sydney I can have, you know, 10,000. And it’s all based on the square footage of campuses. How mental is that, right?
Jenelle: That is ridiculous. There’s no sense.
Linda: It’s must mental. And I must admit the regulator really came to the party with us during COVID, they waived that because it just didn’t make sense because people couldn’t go to campuses. What we’ve got to do now is make sure that some of the great things that changed in the system because the agility and the flexibility was necessary stays in place as we move forward. And that’s one of my biggest fears is that I don’t want education to go back. When we started this, you know, international students were only allowed to do a certain proportion online. Yep, they had to do the rest face-to-face. I mean what does that say? Online’s a lesser quality than face-to-face? It isn’t, we’ve proven that. Again, it’s about inputs not about outputs. So for me these are the debates that we are having now. And I think the second debate, which is critical for Australia, is around the links between migration and education. We have this crazy what I would call kind of grey conversation where people have to say that they’re coming to study, they’re not allowed to say they want to come and live and they’re not allowed to say they want to come and work because that’s how -
Jenelle: Because pretend that’s not happening.
Linda: - it’s pretend. So we talk about that and that’s how they get a visa. Whereas wouldn’t it be much better if people were really transparent and said what they were trying to get and we look at an outcome and we maybe relate that to the skills that we want? So for me there’s these kind of crazy rules that were made 40 years ago that still exist – and we are seeing some flexibility in that because of COVID, so what I really want to make sure is that, moving forward, we don’t go back again to some of the crazy stuff that happened before.
Jenelle: It’s so refreshing to listen to you. You just seem to be completely unshackled from the status quo and just the ability to step back and go well that’s crazy, well that makes no sense, well we’re not doing that. So, it’s a – I can see how that is an incredible impetus for driving change. Now, it would be remiss of me, Linda, to not mention the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award. Congratulations to you. It’s been a fantastic, fantastic achievement. You’re going to be heading off to Monaco for World EOY in June. What does that recognition mean to you?
Linda: Ah, it’s – I mean it was kind of an unintended consequence of the process because as you know you don’t nominate yourself or you don’t apply and you’re searched out and then, you know, asked to apply, which in itself was just an absolute pleasure. But for me the big – a university! You know, we won the FR which was the Financial Review award 2 years ago for in the top 10 for innovation, which was unbelievable for a university. But to actually wing Entrepreneur Of The Year as a CEO of a university for me just is a wonderful, wonderful reflection on where the sector is going. You know, because if we don’t have entrepreneurship in universities we’re in trouble. You know, what are we doing? So I really – I was – that’s why I was so proud about it. It was a reflection on the team. They trusted me, they’d come with me on the journey, you know, their crazy gene had paid off and it was just beautiful. To be honest, to be up there with the other nominees – and they were incredible – and I’m like this is just amazing to be here. But I think to be the first university, which is interesting, in Australia but then when I looked at the global and went back all the years there’s not been one.
Jenelle: Nothing. No, that’s right.
Linda: So we’re super proud of that. Really proud of that. And I think it just gives you an extra – an extra “oomph” to, you know, we starting on the next part of Torrens to get it up to 50,000 students and a billion dollars in 10 countries – we’re already in 3. So for me it’s just – it was just a nice spot as we sold the company, as we did what we did during COVID, we’ve just changed Chancellor from Michael Mann to Jim Varghese is an absolute stunning man, it’s just been a great kind of recognition of the journey to date. But there’s more to come!
Jenelle: Well, that’s a perfect segue to my last question for you, which is what’s next?
Linda: Oh, world domination!
Jenelle: Muwahahaha!
Linda: No, I think, you know, we’re got this beautiful relationship now with our owners, SEI, who have Capella and Strayer. They have amazing smarts. They were so smart. You know, they have things called Workforce Edge where they have 500,000 employees on that doing employer training. They have Sofia, which doesn’t have academics in it but it’s like going to the gym, you pay $79 a month and you can do courses on line. They’ve just got amazing tech capacity for universities and I’m so looking forward to bringing that into AsiaPac. We’re looking forward to bring design because Billy Blue and MDS are global brands, we’re looking forward to bring that into America. And really just learning. You know, we’ve got – what have we got – 11,000 international students just now from 115 different countries, how do we amplify that? You know, we’ve just started our Africa strategy. We just started our South America strategy. So for me it’s how do we, you know, increase the impact that we’re having globally and really live, you know, our three pillars, which is industries, university, you know putting that student at the centre and education without borders. And we’re just starting to lean into that now.
Jenelle: Oh, my God, I – it’s such an exciting future, Linda. It’s hard not to get caught up in that listening to you. Fast three questions – I know this is going to take you I haven’t given you any kind of advanced notice on this one. But just top of your head, don’t overthink it. What are reading or watching or listening to right now?
Linda: I’m reading – and interestingly I’ve read – done some of your podcasts which were amazing. So I’m reading that The Resilience Project next book “Let’s Go” because I say him two weeks ago.
Jenelle: Hugh van Cuylenburg.
Linda: Yeah, two weeks ago I went to see him, and he’s amazing. Hugh van – and I can’t say the last name, so I’ll leave that to you.
Jenelle: Cuylenburg.
Linda: Yeah. So it’s stunning. I was with a woman who runs Olympic Dam two weeks ago and she told me she used it with all her staff at Olympic Dam. So I’m right into that at the moment.
Jenelle: I’ve read it. It’s brilliant. And what is your superpower? And I want to say I can hear that it’s picking exceptional talent, but is there any other superpower that could be additive to the world, like everything you’ve talked about, or it could be a useless party trick.
Linda: Yeah, I mean, and this will surprise a lot of people, my superpower comes back to my strength which is connections, but it’s because I’m an introvert. There you go, Jenelle. I’m an introvert.
Jenelle: OK, I would not have picked that.
Linda: Yeah, so I’m an introvert but I can take a deep breath, go into the loo, count to five, get out and get, you know, because I take – I get a lot of energy from other people and, you know, connecting things. So I think that’s probably my superpower is that I can turn it on when I need to even though it’s really difficult for me because I’m an introvert.
Jenelle: That’s really interesting. If you were going to put a quote up on a billboard what would it be?
Linda: Oh, my goodness. It’s “Talent is king”. Talent is everything, yeah? And I think it is that begin and end with people. So Talent is King.
Jenelle: Oh, thank you much. And, Linda, thank you for the conversation today. I feel absolutely vibed and really excited about the future here. I know that you described yourself as, you know, “jammy” right up the front where you seemed to land on your feet. That is no accident, you’re not jammy, this is through hard work, through clear passion, relentless dedication to the purpose. I loved the early lesson and exposure you had to the power of contextualised learning and how you have fed that through in your organisation. The head, the hand, the heart – everything you’ve spoken to talks about the connection of that. You talked about, you know, you had the opportunity to potentially make TAFE sexy. Can I just tell you, you’ve made many a thing sexy in this conversation. You’ve made change sexy, you’ve made employability sexy, you’ve made B-Corp status sexy, you’ve made failure sexy. So I think that’s inherent to what you do. You’re ability to paint a vision that people would take a leap of faith for and leave what they know and what they value to join you is a real testament to the way that you can enthuse that purpose and passion through. I think, you know, your learnings around never underestimating the power of picking the right team and then, when needed, getting the hell out of their way is something that we should all learn from. You’re a – the crazy gene, how you channel that, how you use that to unshackle yourself from the status quo and allow others to do the same with no blame and your ability to look up and out of the system and understand how to forge connections to make the whole be greater than the sum of the parts is just some of the things I’ve taken away from our conversation today. I can’t thank you enough for your time.
Linda: Thank you. It’s been a privilege. Thank you. Cheers!
End tape recording

David Thodey AO
Board Chair and active in public policy initiatives

Intro: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Session 3 of the “Change Happens” podcast, conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learnt along the way. Today I’m joined by David Thodey, who really needs no introduction but I don’t want to deny him one so let me just say he’s an incredible business leaders, focussed on innovation, technology and telecommunications, with over 40 years experience in various well known organisations. He was the former CEO of IBM Australia and New Zealand in 1999. He then became the CEO of Telstra in 2009. After he retired from Telstra in 2015, he joined the Commonwealth Science Industry and Research Organisation, the CSIRO as the chairperson. He is currently the chairperson of Tyro, Australia’s only independent banking institution and Zero, a cloud based accounting software provider. He is also a non-executive board director of Ramsay Healthcare, which is a global hospital group. Now when you listen to this, you can’t help but be struck by what an experienced thoughtful and humble leader David Thodey. We traverse a range of topics, like how he turned a maligned company into a leading customer centric organisation and we talk about painful public moments of truth in diversity and inclusiveness. We talk about innovation, we talk about identity and truth seeking and the intersection of technology and humanity. I loved this conversation. I took a lot away from it and I hope you do too. Here’s David Thodey.
Jenelle: Hey David, thank you so much for joining me today.
David: Oh its great to be here Jenelle.
Jenelle: Look I want to start by getting a little bit of background from you. I know you were born in Perth but tell me a bit about your family background and maybe, is there anything from those early years that influenced the values that you would say that you hold dear.
David: Yeah, that’s a really good question to start with. Yeah, I grew up in a really caring family. They … my parents were New Zealanders and they came across after the war so I was born in Perth as you mention and I lived here until … in Perth and then Queensland till I was sort of in my teenage years and then my father died when I was 11 and my mother took us back to New Zealand and she was an incredible person. She … now I was one of four boys and imagine raising four boys, you know, late … well it would have been early 60s and so she bundled us all up, took up back … took us to New Zealand where I went to school but she was a really big influence in my life. She was an avid reader, very active in life, loved people, both affable but, you know, discerning person and I think she had a really big influence on my life. I mean my father did as well but it’s just … you know, I was 11 or 12 when that happened. So, yeah, a real big and she constantly questioned and had a great desire for truth and integrity.
Jenelle: Fantastic. Now speaking of your background, I noticed that you hold a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and English and I’m really fascinated by that. You’re actually the second guest that I’ve had that studied anthropology and then went on to become a major player in the tech world which I really am quite interested in. So from your perspective, how do you draw the link between your background in, you know, immersing yourself in the scientific study of humanity and then going to play such a huge role in technology.
David: [laugh] that’s a very good question as well. I’m not quite sure. Actually, well I’ve got a confession to make. I was a science maths major through school. So actually …
Jenelle: Oh okay.
David: … in fact I went to University to be a doctor cos I’d done chemistry, physics, maths, applied maths through school and I was … I went off to do medicine but remember it was the early 70s Jenelle and this great opportunity to explore the world, so I felt really challenged to think, well you know, I sort of ignored that part of my life. So I went off and did psychology, English, social anthropology and then archaeology as well and then I majored in, of all things, medieval English and social anthropology. So it was quite a big turn. However I look back on that time and I think around the US, I mean I’m very grateful I had this broad arts, you know, undergrad degree because it did exercise me in ways that I had never been challenged or had to think or use that side of my brain or whatever side of the brain it is. So yeah, but I really was always a science maths major and probably my, you know, if I have natural talent, it probably leant more to that side.
Jenelle: Well its interesting that you say that because I, you know, when I spoke to the other guest who had that background, what he was saying was that he felt it forced him, at an early stage, to think about sort of more macro questions, what's happening in the world and maybe had a breakdown and problem solve in that sort of macro sense. Would you say that same, I mean that’s an interesting – mediaeval English, archaeology, psychology.
David: Absolutely. It made me think about the world, the world around me, about history, context, different cultures. It was. It was very expansive and I … I mean I struggled with it to be quite honest in effect, because my brain had been very … probably more literal than analytical rather than looking for nuances of messaging and looking for the deeper significance of things. So yeah, I’m really glad I did it and I think probably certainly has worked really well in terms of my, you know, my focus on culture and values and what drives people, what drive societies, what's important. Yeah, so very much and also by the way you mentioned technology before. I mean technology is a tool. Its not an end and technology … we need to retain our humanity in the use of this technology. So when I talk to Genevieve Bell, who’s running the AI centre down at ANU. She’s a social anthropologist worked in intel but she’s looking at the societal impacts of technology and how we adapt and use it for the greater good. So I think that its always … always sort of intrigued me and I’m really glad I did it but yes, yes its given me a bigger view of the world for sure.
Jenelle: That’s fantastic. Now returning to your career which we could get lost in here for a really really long time but if I just sort of focus on the Telstra part of the equation, I don’t think its any exaggeration to say that you truly drove transformational change at Telstra and as you know, this is a podcast about change.
David: Yes!
Jenelle: Now at the time that you went into the organisation, I expect you needed to push through a lot of organisational change fatigue, perhaps a lot of cynicism. You sort to drive client centricity. I’m not even sure if those were words that you might have used at the time but certainly we use them now. You drove innovation. You externally changed the public perception of the organisation. Now I know that there are no such thing as “silver bullets” – try as I might to look for one but when it comes to driving change, but what were some of the big rocks and maybe even some of the little rocks that were shifted in that time that you might now, in hindsight, call out as the moments of truth in driving that change.
David: Yes, well you’re right. I really wish there were silver bullets in these things because I’d change and change management, is really difficult. It has a degree of context as well and its hard work. Its not for the faint hearted and as you said, the time I went into be CEO at Telstra, I mean I’d been there for six/seven years, I’d come from IBM and actually in many ways, the way I saw Telstra and all the people was not the way the world or, you know, our customers or the general world perceived it and I continually was challenged by that and … because what I saw within Telstra was this incredibly dedicated group of capable people really driven to make a difference but the external perception was one of bureaucracy, slowness, monopolistic and not customer centric. It was “hey, here’s a product and be grateful you’ve got it” and that really wasn’t what was in there. So in some way change management and actually driving corporate change is actually about bringing out all the wonderful things that already exist and giving them focus but we needed something to rally this together because we had become desperate and we weren’t united in a common purpose or vision and that’s why the customer became so important. Yes, it is about giving good customer service and about having good products that work are absolutely important but it was also getting the orientation to being external because large complex organisations have this incredible ability to get very caught up in themselves and its more about, you know, who’s talking to who and who’s doing what and so we needed an external truth, so an externality that really drove us and then to be aligned against that. So once we really realised it and by the way, I want to be clear, that was always there. I mean, when you talk to a Telstra technician who’s been out on the road for 12 hours and doing another call on the way back home, he or she does feel customer is real important. So it was about that, but … and that changed management. Its about clear … clear about what you want to be together and getting alignment and it sounds easy but everybody will have an opinion and a view and as you rightly said that there would be a few cynics and a few people who don’t want to come on the journey. We really worked hard at that. Like we spent … it was Tracey Gavigan who was the head of HR … we ran a year’s worth of courses for every manager about what customers centricity looked like. Before we even declared it to the market and before we even talked about it. So it was really important we got alignment internally and then to talk about what it meant and what behaviours was required and also what process change, what reengineering we had to do and then back it up with investment and I can still remember, you know, going to the board because we invested, you know, billions of dollars but we also said that we were going to deliver billions of dollars. So there’s still a financial reality around it and that’s what really allowed us to do it. So its getting all those elements working together and then, I’m afraid you need real tenacity, because you make mistakes, you get it wrong but if you’re driven by something that everyone is held accountable for, it sort of rallies you together in a way that is … that is why, I think, purpose driven companies are so important because it actually gives you something that you can really work with. So you ask what were the moments of truth! Well there were moments of truth because its all words until you actually do it but I can remember quite early on in the period … my first year was pretty tough, you know, we had three profit warnings and, you know, the market wasn’t too impressive, stock went down and I can remember there was a proposal because we were a bit down on revenue, to start to charge for a paper bill. Now we wanted people to go to electronic bills for years but remember, our customer base, we had a large elderly group who still used to pay their bills at the Post Office and take it along and the proposal came up to, you know, to charge for paper bills as a way to incentivise people to go … I remember having a meeting and everybody said “yeah, we’ve got to do this, we’re off, we’re not going to meet our plan numbers and this is a way of getting it” and I can remember saying “well hang on, what are our customers going to say” and there was sort of this moment of sort of … it doesn’t sound much now but was actually that sort of moment where everyone …
Jenelle: Sure, particularly if you’re feeling the pressure of that revenue gap as well and its kind of an easy way to bridge it.
David: Yeah exactly, you know, and we all sort of driven by results etc and anyway, we made the decision not to do it because it would impact the customers and, you know, it was so important. I was really blessed to have a great team and I’m really grateful for people I work with during that period because they were, you know, they really drove it. I mean, I learnt so much from them, I enjoyed their company and we, you know, we made mistakes but we sort of were bound together. So I think its those things that really drove change and it gives an energy and a drive and we tried new things, so the innovation point. You know we pushed the limits of it which was un-Telstra like. You know, sometimes the lawyers were a little bit concerned about where we went but that was okay. They came along with us and were a really great support. So yeah.
Jenelle: You’ve used the word “mistakes” a couple of times and I was going to say, you know, in your long career, driving so much change, whether it was Telstra or elsewhere, I’m sure there have been times when you didn’t get it right. What are … you know, are there times that you can recall when you didn’t get it right. What were those examples and what was that like for you as a leader, as you think about any one or two of those examples that come to mind, what was it like to be fronting that.
David: Yeah, well it’s a good question. I mean, look we all make lots of mistakes. I … and its not a regret thing. Its just you don’t always get it right and I think there’s a need for real objectivity and a willingness to say “hey look, I didn’t have all the facts, I made a wrong judgement” but yeah, I think when I look back mostly, I didn’t listen well, you know, I sort of went in with a preconception about the answer and people told me that I didn’t really listen.
Jenelle: So what's an example of where that was brought to life for you. Like, oh geez, if I’d listened I might have avoid this one [laugh].
David: I think at time I didn’t trust my gut as well. You know, you never have all the facts. I think people who work with me say sometimes I would take a bit long to get to the final decision and I think they’re probably right. I probably should trust my gut and I tended to just wait, maybe sometimes a bit long. Yeah, sometimes you know, sometimes you don’t have all the facts but you’ve sort of got this inkling that its not right and time is of the essence. So you’ve just got to back yourself and go for it. Its okay to be wrong, you know, I mean you try not to be wrong the majority of the time but it’s okay [laugh].
Jenelle: Well its okay … its good to learn from those moments, isn’t it.
David: As long as you do learn and you do need to be reflective on it. Sometimes you can give an issue or a, you know, something a lot of thought and you don’t communicate it clearly enough and …
Jenelle: Its clear in my mind!
David: … yeah, its clear in my mind and you realise you’ve got … you’ve really got to work at that communication and you’ve got to break it down into … into a logical and considered set of messages that people can consider, especially if its not a popular decision but I meant, there’s times I’ve got ahead of the team or … and it has just landed badly and whenever … whenever you communicate and people are unable to really understand it and buy in, inevitably it doesn’t work because you need ownership to go through that and also, create an environment where people can test and come back and say “hey look, that’s really good, but what about this?” If you’re too … I won’t use the word “dictorial” but if you’re too emphatic …
Jenelle: Yes!
David: … it doesn’t leave room for people to contribute to the ultimate solution and …
Jenelle: Creating space for them.
David: … creating space for people, yeah, and I think that’s a really really important trait of good leadership and if you get it wrong, you can really … well you go around the tree a few times rather than you’re getting to where you need to be. But its not easy, you know, I mean, as we all know, it’s a bit lonely sometimes when you’re trying to work through these things but I don’t think I ever felt … like there’s times when, you know you’ve got to really back yourself and …
Jenelle: But what do you do, I mean, its not the first time I’ve heard the word “lonely” being used by very senior people. What do you … like how do you … who do you surround yourself with, how do you find like minded souls to be able to go “oh my god, oh my god … or whatever”.
David: I just sort of let it all out [laugh]. Well its always lovely to have, you know, a good home environment that sort of … sort of keeps you very sane and things but in a business sense, I think its really important that there’s a degree of vulnerability and this essence of vulnerability is our humanness, is a critical element of that and I … over time I think when I first became a CEO, I mean, you go in with a lot of expectations and what you want to do cos you’ve sort of, you know, you sort of put yourself out there but the truth is you don’t need to know everything. You don’t need to be perfect but what you need to do is create this environment which is leadership where you get the best out of a great group of people and grow together and I know it sounds all a bit sort of, you know, that’s not good but, I mean its actually really hard but its really important, you know, and you’ve got to back yourself to, you know, you’ve got to say “hey look, this is what I think” and really go for. So … but I do think that that vulnerability and teams are of leaders or any sort of team, it takes work, you know, it takes work and you’ve really got to invest in each other and in the moment. Much of that answers your question but I enjoyed answering it [laugh].
Jenelle: [laugh] I enjoyed listening to it. Now you have a really diverse career spanning over 40 years.
David: Wow, is it that long! That’s a worry!
Jenelle: [laugh] its been a while. Is there an overarching purpose or a mission that’s has guided you to decide, you know, to choose what do you take on versus the opportunities that you let go. How does that work?
David: Well I can’t say that I’ve had always sort of those shining north star about where I want to be because to me, the journey has been as important in what I do. So really when I … I’ve got to believe in what I do. If I don’t believe in it, I really, you know … I mean I believe in technology for example. I really think technology makes a difference and so that’s been easy. I really see the foundational importance of good science and research in our society. So I need to have a bigger intent and then I’ve always felt that … I’ve always done whatever I did to the best of my ability and tried to enjoy the moment and at the same time, is never leaving anything the way I found it. I’ve always wanted to mould it, do something with it and so I think that’s been my driving but yeah, the how, the values and, you know, having a positive impact on the people and things around me but it hasn’t been “I’ve been here to change the world”. I mean that’s not … but …
Jenelle: An accidental by product then [laugh].
David: Well yeah, maybe. I mean sometimes I … maybe but it is, you know, someone once said to me early in my career “you know, stop thinking about what you are going to do next and just do what you’re doing really well now and the doors will open” and I think the other part of this is that as doors open, I think I step into them. So I mean there’s lots of points in my career, I mean I lived in Japan for six years, I you know, lived in the US for a while, did a lot of work in Europe and they were really challenging decisions for me and the family but we always felt, well let's step forward. If you don’t try, you’ll never know and so I think there’s this other aspect around career choices is that “do what you’re doing really well, doors are open and then walk through them”, you know, given them a go, what can go wrong. You can always come back, you know, and … within reason. So …
Jenelle: Why aren’t you scared of failure like some of us are? Where does that come from? That you know, hey you can make a mistake …
David: Give it a go! Oh look, I hate losing for the wrong reasons. I mean like there’s times when I’ve lost and I felt “well hey, you know, good luck to that other supplier or whoever” … cos obviously they were better. I don’t know. I don’t know what that would be Jenelle. I think there’s always a new day ahead, you know, there’s always something new and it doesn’t … I think the other critical thing in life is that my work doesn’t define me. Who I am as a person defines me. Now I now that what I do at work is defined by who I am but who I am, you know, when I don’t have a tie on or you know, I’m in my shorts and tee shirt, you know, wandering down the road, you know, I don’t need to be defined by everything around. I’m defined by who I am, good or bad, and I think that is a really important thing cos I’ve seen people who get caught up in all the, you know, paraphernalia and, you know, that’s not what’s life is about I don’t think.
Jenelle: I think the two … I mean for someone who’s had such a massive career and work history identity, that you would be forgiven for wrapping that up with your identity, you know, what you do rather than who you are. So I think that’s a really wonderful thing to be able to understand your contribution but to decouple your identity as being solely reliant on it.
David: Yeah. Yeah, well thank you for saying that. I mean, I really do strongly believe that because, you know, all that other stuff is fleeting, you know, and I think therefore keeping that perspective on yourself is really important and the other part of it is every day is a new day and you have a choice of whether you live with what happened yesterday or what you do today and I choose to live to what is going to happen today, not what happened yesterday, its those sorts of things that do drive you.
Jenelle: They are fantastic takeaways. Now you have, as I’ve said, you’ve had a pretty massive career in the corporate world, then you started taking roles on government policy and the public service. What was transition like? What was it like to see and address issues from those vantage points and were there any learnings for you that came out of that, perhaps you went in with certain expectations about the kind of people, the kinds of worlds. How did that multi-lens experience change?
David: Well I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to work with the public service and on public policy. It wasn’t totally foreign to me because many of the … you know, the companies that I worked with like Telstra were very heavily regulated so I’d had very … you know, quite a lot of engagement with the political process and public policy but it was different going to work alongside and with, you know, the wonderful public service and we’re very … you know we’re very privileged and blessed to have such a strong public service, I mean all based on … of not perfect and look, I, like many people used to go to see Departments of government and I’d feel like they were, you know, slow moving, bureaucratic, risk averse, you know all the normal things that we say and yet, being … working with them and seeing the complexity of the issues they deal with and the nuancing of being able to build public policy in a political process and the role that produces, I mean I take my hat off. My respect for the public service went up enormously. So … and we need some of our best and brightest working public service because it is so important for our society. Now I’m not saying that we need to over index on, you know, I’m still a great advocate for, you know, industry, private sector, you know, I’m a sort of the social capitalist probably but you know, we need great people because these are complex issues you’re dealing with and they are … they take time to think through and they take time to implement whereas I had always been, you know, what's the problem, what are the options we’ve got, let's make a decision and move forward and I still think that’s important but in a public policy sense, you can easy make really big mistakes and you need to be very considered. So I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the public … working in the public service and on public policy and always working within the academic community because CSRO and we work with a lot of Universities, I just absolutely admire our academic community and of course, I’ve come out of industry and then I read the OECD reports that say “one of the challenges in Australia is that we’re not collaborative”. Now what they mean by “no collaborative” is we don’t get a lot of people moving from public sector to industry, industry to academia, academia into public service. So if you actually … I think they call them the triathlete now. So I do think, we as a country, we need more people who work across all three because you do see the world slightly differently and by having people who have worked across all three, I think we would get to better outcomes and a better appreciation. Many of the social issues and political, environmental issues, you know, are very challenging and we need our best and brightest there. So yeah, I’ve been really … really enjoyed my time working with those people and I hope to be able to do more of it in the future.
Jenelle: So just changing tack a little bit but staying on the theme of looking at something from another lens. You were appointed the Deputy Chair of the Federation Government’s national covid19 coordination commission, so the NSC advisory board, you know it was in 2020, it was all about supporting the government in navigating the challenges posed by the pandemic. Emotions would have been running high, economic challenges raised aplenty, health challenges raised aplenty. Massive expectations across a very broad stakeholder landscape. What was that like? How did you prioritise? I mean the word there was to coordinate but how did you do that? Where did you know how to do it at the start? Just too many people to please, too many things to do with that, how did it work?
David: I’m not sure we did very well on the coordination but anyway. Well look, firstly I do want to say I really applaud, you know, the Prime Minister and Prime Minister and Cabinet for … for actually reaching out to industry and saying “look, this is a crisis, we don’t really know all the answers, come in, help in any way you can” because really it was that simple and you know, we had a national crisis. Very early on, we really didn’t understand covid and how broad the impact would be and I think, you know, a real sense of togetherness about “hey we need everybody at the table”. Look, the way we approached it, we immediately knew there was sort of three stages here. One was this whole question about how we could respond. We were in crisis and the first six months, you know, trucks couldn’t get across borders, we couldn’t get food into some of the aboriginal communities, you know, ports were closing down and really it was more like firefighting. So you know, Paul Little, who knew the ports people and the trucking, he would just get on the phone and say “look, what’s your problem, what can we do to help?”. You know, we could talk to Allan Joyce, because we were at an industry, we just knew people. Whereas for the public service to do that, its just not their thing. Whereas for us, we could do that or you know, the Universities, you know, what was going to happen there or you know, what was going on in education. We could just connect things up. So the first three/six months was really firefighting, that’s what we did. But then very quickly, it went from crisis to how do we recover. So you know, decisions around vaccines, how to roll it out, you know, logistics etc. So how do we get people back to work and over that period, very slowly, we became one voice of many because really the system of the public service needs to kick in. So the first six months it was just all hands to the wheel, what do we need to do. Second six months it was more around working with and we were a voice of, you know, so they might have let's say Jobkeeper – we would ask our opinion on it but we didn’t make a decision. We said you know, how would this play out in small meeting business. So we were just one voice because it has to go through, you know, a whole process of Cabinet etc and then the last section was this whole sense of reform and, you know, could we use the crisis of covid into reforming parts of the industry and while we didn’t see the outcome of that but some of the advanced manufacturing work, some of the, you know, commercialisation of research initiatives, some of that sort of started there. I was only on it for a year and I think our effectiveness near the end wasn’t as impactful because really, you know, it meant really to appreciating the different roles of public service and politicians and cabinet versus industry and we couldn’t be privy to some things but we could put input. But you know, hey all credit to them, you know, whether we were good or not doesn’t really matter but the very fact that they were willing to say how can we work together, I thought was really great. Should do more of it really.
Jenelle: Any interestingly, I mean even just listening to you talk about those phases, part of the skill of this is identifying the different stages so a leadership role in crisis, a voice amongst many in recovery and an advocate for reform and you need to shift – right, so depending on whatever inputs. So that in itself is a skill to understand the order of the day to lead or respond to that order. Its an important takeaway. David, I think it would be really great to explore the topic of trust with you. I see you as a highly trusted individual across private sector and government landscapes and in fact in 2017, you were made an officer in the general division of the Order of Australia and that was ethical business leadership. So that has inherent in there, a thematic of trust. This is also now in a time where our society, I think, is becoming increasing distrustful. Its hard to escape the 24 hour news cycle, clickbait, constant social media churns, rapidly shifting consumer expectation, the rise of public sentiment which can … we’ve seen play out into a pile on culture or cancel cultures. How do you personally think about trust and particularly the intersection of technology and trust.
David: Yeah yeah, it’s a big topic this one now Jenelle.
Jenelle: [laugh]. It is, I know.
David: These big tech platforms sort of given a voice which has been so positive to individuals but also the misuse of information and, you know, even this term “fake news”. You know, fake news is a lie, you know, sometimes we, you know, we conjure things up and sort of make it sort of a new term and yet, you know, truth and trust go so closely together and a whole society is based on trust. You know, even now, I mean here I am doing a podcast with you and I trust what you’re going to do with it, you know, and if we ever get … allow this trust to be broken down, I think we’re in really serious place and I … I will go out a bit on a limb … I really … I’m really worried about this thing around trust to truth and then people say like “I know they don’t mean it this way” but they say “well my truth is this and your truth might be something different”. I mean truth by definition stands independent of who we are or my perspective. Truth is truth. Call it something else. Fine to call it a perspective. I use lots of different words but don’t use truth because truth is reality and if we don’t base ourselves on reality, we see what happens if people misrepresent lie/cheat and that just underpins everything. So in trust between people in an organisation or in society is the bedrock and one of the things, even … especially with Telstra, one of our values was trust each other to deliver. Trust each other to deliver because we’d always, you know, we’d always be “I’m okay, its that group over there, they never deliver”. It was always the blame culture rather than a default of going to trust and then holding people accountable as well and what I worry about is people are no longer accountable for what they say or do and I think that is really really important.
Jenelle: There so many hidden … I mean they’re shadowy. They’re anonymous. They …
David: Anonymous yeah and they hide, you know, and they’re not willing to be recognised for who they are and they hide behind all these things. So I think this is really really important and yeah, I know, I always get this quite wrong but is it Mark Twain who said that you know, “a lie will travel around the world twice while truth is still putting their boots on”. Is that … I’m not sure if its Mark Twain …
Jenelle: I’m not sure if its Mark Twain. I’m not sure of the quote but I like it!
David: You know, we don’t know who said it but they reality is that sometimes falsehoods or … we see it on social media, people are far more inclined to believe the … probably the unbelievable cos its sort of a bit different rather than seeking the truth because the truth is hard to get to and cos you do need to be discerning. You need to think through what's really happening and its like in business, you know, we all want to be seen in a positive light but actually I tell you as a board member or member of a team, what I look for is people who tell me the way it is and then we can get in and try to fix it but if people keep misrepresenting or putting a rosy picture on it, or misrepresenting, you can’t deal with it. So I think its really important and look, that’s what drives me and that’s why I like science and you know, science is about the discovery of the world around us. It’s about better understanding, about seeking reality, learning new things. That’s, you know, when I see the astronomers saying “David did you know that we just discovered three million new galaxies in the last three months” and you realise that a galaxy is a billion stars, I mean my mind just goes to … but the joy of that, seeking that truth of what really goes on, that’s what we should be engaged in because that improves society and a long and winding road to get to there but that’s [laugh] …
Jenelle: I know that’s a really important discussion. Now on the continued vein of important discussions, I don’t know whether I’d put this question in the D&I bucket or the personal change bucket. I suspect it could be both but in 2016, you were on a stage at a big event and you had quite a profound “ah-ha” moment on the D&I front. I wondered if you might be able to tell me about that experience.
David: Okay. Well actually I think I told the story in 2016. It goes back to 2018 on my birthday cos you can see how imprinted it is in my memory, in my psyche. I know an author called Jane Elliott who was a psychologist who wrote a book called, I think it was “Brown eyes …
Jenelle: Oh I think its a blue eyes/brown eyes experience …
David: … blue eyes/brown eyes and she came … IBM had bought her out to Australia and there was an auditorium of about three thousand people and she said “David, would you come up on stage, I just want to do a bit of an introduction”. I said oh that’s fine and I got up on stage and she was in the middle and there was a Torres Strait Island woman there as well. She said “oh David, how tall are you” and I said “I think I’m six foot one”. She said how does that make you feel? I said that’s the way I was born, you know, I don’t really think about it. She turned to the Torres Strait Islander and said “how tall are you?” “I’m five foot one”. How do you feel about that. Well actually, you know, it’s really hard, I go into a room and I can’t see everybody, sometimes I can’t look people in the eye and you know, so I find I’ve got to make compensations for that. That’s really great and then she went through about five different things about me being European, and then she said “you’re a man, David, how do you …”. I said “well you know, that’s the way I was born, you know, I do the best I can sort of thing” and then she turns to the Torres Strait Islander and says you know, “you’re a woman, how do you feel” and she said “well actually in my society its really … has constricted me. My recognition … “ and she went on and anyway I felt smaller and smaller and smaller on this stage and … because she was just … in my whole world view was determined by what I saw, not what someone else saw and I realised that my lack of awareness of other people’s views, that were very real and that I was totally insensitive and I mean it was an unconscious bias but it just made me realise in a very deep way, I can’t, you know, to be aware of someone else’s experience can ben completely different to mine and to be open and not assume too much …
Jenelle: And things that you take as a give-in are actually massive pain points for others, so …
David: Exactly exactly and in that, which is this whole question around listening more, not being … not sort of jumping in and of course it does relate to diversity and inclusion but it was far deeper than that and an appreciation of another person and an awareness of them and an ability to connect in a way and so it changed the way I turned up, not every day and in my leadership and also you take to another level of wanting to really appreciate differences. I mean the richness of having different views from around the table, different ways of looking at something, allows you to get to a far better outcome and so listening, appreciation, diversity, inclusion, I mean they all work together …
Jenelle: They do!
David: … and they can create something really quite unique that often in our very narrow view or my very narrow view of the world, you know, I become a better and wiser person by engaging in inclusive … so yeah that was an experience and then of course, the other part of the story is I did something … in my embarrassment on the stage, I touched Jane earlier and it was sort of one of those moments where … and she said “what gives you the right to touch me” and I …
Jenelle: Oh god! [laugh].
David: … [laugh] at that point I thought I should leave the stage, you know.
Jenelle: Did you just wait for a hole to swallow you up on that stage [laugh].
David: [laugh] that’s right, that’s right.
Jenelle: No, it’s a really powerful example and I’m sure there are a lot of people in the audience who would have had the same ah ha moment for themselves as they listened to you and watched that. So all of those examples that you’ve just talked about, I mean, what you said about diversity and it makes you a better leader and its better organisation, I mean, not to be dismissive of that but that is … it feels like a no brainer – right. Of course that would be case and I know that you were a founding member of the Male Champions of Change Initiative and there have been some excellent advancements. Certainly the kinds of conversations we’re having as business has evolved but I think its fair to say that we still don’t see the numbers of women in leadership at the kind of levels that we would expect or need to see or at the pace we want to be driving.
David: No.
Jenelle: Given all of that, why is that. What do you see as the biggest barriers to just fixing this?
David: Yeah yeah, I wish I had the answer. I mean one of the great things that has changed, no longer called Males Champions, its just called Champions of Change. I mean I had to stand by Liz Broderick who did it initially, was because, you know, it was about the men who were leaders stepping up to the challenge and I think that’s right. Look, the one thing that gives me hope and I mean one of the great opportunities that I’ve had is to work in Scandinavia a bit and I … and they’ve been on this journey a lot longer than we have and there’s something about the Scandinavian, you know, society but you know, there’s real … real equality there. I mean, the number of female/male, you know, whatever … it is far more balanced and it just … its just what life is, just like, you know, in my social life, I really, you know, I have friends, I don’t necessarily think about gender, I mean just recognise people for who they are, while appreciating there are differences you know, in a way, but not in terms of capability and look, I saw the journey they went through. They did have quotas by the way. They worked very hard on them and they went really hard at it cos I think there is sort of this, you need to get over the tipping point. We’re getting close, you know, we’re getting in the mid 30s but still got a long way to go. So look, I don’t have any magic answers except to just keep going, keep pushing and creating opportunities and we need over index on it and at times it feels a bit unnatural but sometimes that’s what is required, you’ve got to be a little bit irrational to get to rationality and so that’s my thinking. You know, we have so many wonderful people, we just need to give them opportunities, male/female and capability is not defined by gender. Again, I wish I had an answer but …
Jenelle: So turning to innovation. I have heard you described as the Godfather of Innovation in Australia. Don’t know if that makes you [laugh] … you’re shaking your head but you are … you are. You certainly have done an amazing job of fostering that at Telstra we’ve seen as an example. I know you have an aspiration to make Australia one of the top innovation centres in Asia and eventually the world. What do you think it would take for us to unleash that and realise our potential.
David: Well I definitely don’t think I’m the Godfather of innovation. I deeply deeply believe that innovation is so critical to any society, any business because it defines the human essence. I mean our creativity, our ability to innovate and change and redefine is what creates value. Value in relationships. Value for the environment. Value economically. You know, value across all the value chain and the one thing about innovation is that it can work at a personal level, it can work in an organisational level or it can work at a national level and a lot of people think that innovation is invention. Innovation is this constant pursuit of improvement, of doing things better and smarter, of redefining product, redefining process, doing things differently, you know, design thinking is so important. So that’s why I am such an advocate for it and its not just for the scientists and the physicians and the chemists. Its for all of us and in innovation, you create value and it keeps you challenged and going … moving forward. Also, I think it is … it is an element of cultural in innovation because its what you celebrate and, you know, we talked about failure before, but you want people to give it a go, to try new things, to push the boundaries and I think it has this really positive impact on society. Now I’ve heard innovation be related to venture capital and digital, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about you can innovate in your gardening, you can innovate in how you build, you can innovate in design. Its everything and its actually creating a culture and an environment that celebrates that and gives it a go and then supports it. Now, I do spend a lot of time, you know, in all those aspects but there is the innovation ecosystem that you define at a national level and there’s a wonderful concept called the Triple Helix that I think its mainly Switzerland, some of the Scandinavian countries, I think Belgium but its this concept of how … what we were talking about before of how we get public policy, education academia, schools, tertiary, TAFFs and industry, all intertwined, looking to create value in new and different ways and celebrating and I think that’s what the incredible opportunity is as we go forward. So that’s why I get excited and enthusiastic about it but it’s very much grounded in reality and its to do with our education system. Look at our health system in Australia. We have one of the some of the best clinicians, some of the best researchers and biotech, they’re incredibly innovative, you know, we’ve got people who are extracting new resins that are … you know, that are fixing cancer tumours. I mean that’s amazing so we need more of this. Now … and … but its at every level, in our building, in our land usage, in our you know, ability to grow great wine. That’s why I think its so important and it gets down into supply chains, manufacturing, searches yeah. So that’s why I’m a great advocate.
Jenelle: Last question for you before I go to the fast three.
David: Okay.
Jenelle: You are now applying your skills to saving the Great Barrier Reef. As if you haven’t got enough things to be doing. You’ve recently taken on the role as Chair of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. What are your views on the role of technology to advance the sustainability agenda.
David: Oh look, technology is going to be a critical critical part of any solution. I mean the reason I’m working on the reef, is that its just so tragic to see the impact of climate change on such a wonderful wonderful environmental, you know, wonder and you know, what is it, 25% of all marine life begins from reefs and we lose the reef, you know, the impact is actually far more than just tourism. You know, a lot of the work we’re doing on the reef from addressing water quality, you know, trying to eradicate crown of thorns, of creating more heat tolerant coral because we’re not going to push back water temperatures is all very strong technology driven. You know, from use of submersibles, you know, autonomous vehicles and getting to crown of thorns through to detection of outbreaks, through to the work we’re doing on, you know, genetically and through just cross pollination of being able to develop corals that are more heat tolerant, it all gets very deep. We couldn’t do it without technology and we do a lot of the work just by virtualisation of the DNA strand and looking at what can happen. So so important but yeah, for anything, whether we’re talking around renewables, through to decarbonisation, sequestration. All of that is going to require a new generation of technology and I think that we’ve got a really important role to play there. I do believe that we’ve got to manage the transition carefully, you know, being innovative and use of technology and using our wonderful scientists, you know, just great opportunity, so yeah.
Jenelle: I can see all the combination of your skills and experience coming together, so I have … I’m gratified that you’re working on that, it’s fantastic.
David: Thank you. It’s a tough one. There’s a lot of players on the reef but anyway, we’re working on it.
The last three … three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: How about we wrap it up with the fast three questions. Don’t overthink this one.
David: Okay.
Jenelle: What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
David: Okay, I’m reading a book called “Winning on purpose” by Fred Reichheld which is a really good book around how to really take a purpose driven organisation and then when I was down at ANU recently, they were celebrating their 50 years of competition, they gave me a book called “Deep time” which is a really interesting book around the concept of time and how the world has developed, I mean, I remember seeing an astronomer came and pointed to a little dot on the screen and said “this is the most incredible thing, that’s a galaxy being formed” and I said “oh that’s great, you know, that’s really good”. He said “oh you don’t get it, that’s galaxy that is being formed is ten billion light years, what you’re seeing is something that happened before earth existed”. At that point, I give up, you know.
Jenelle: Oh my god. My mind cannot wrap itself around that at all. What’s your super power. It can be something that’s relative to the world or a useless party trick.
David: I’m still looking for one [laugh]. I don’t know.
Jenelle: You’re so busy adding to the world you’ve got no useless party tricks.
David: Yeah I don’t think I’ve got any good party tricks. No, no, I’m afraid I’m a blank on that which probably says something about me, you know, anyway.
Jenelle: It says precisely nothing about you, that’s fine, you’re not superficial like I am [laugh], I’ve got lots of party tricks. If you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be?
David: Look, there’s lots of quotes in my life that I could relate to but just at the moment, you know, I would say “listen more than you could talk”. I think if we all listen to each other a bit more, we’d all be in a better place. So that’s it for today.
Jenelle: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now David, I can’t let you go without thanking you for your time today. I was very excited when you agreed to do this chat and I’ve loved the conversation. A few takeaways for me, well there’s many takeaways but some of the ones that really stand out in my mind, you know, clearly you have a conviction in technology and science and research but at no point have you ever departed from retaining humanity at the centre of that. Your points around not being afraid of vulnerability, not being afraid of mistake making. You know, I love the reminder that if you don’t try, you’d never know and I think that’s sort of really ties in with the innovation agenda as well. Walk through the door there’s always a new day, don’t be afraid of that. I love your advocacy for collaboration to drive better outcomes, for better value creation and your … whether its your educational background of just so diverse or your work background, that multiple-lens experience, industry academia, public service, private sector. I think its when you have, as you said, that kind of appreciation for context, for nuance, for skills. You are going to get that Triple Helix that you’re talking about and I love the conversation around identity and how you are defined by who you are and not what you do and keeping that perspective. It probably liberates you from, you know, some of the things that perhaps holds a lot of us back. I think your reminder to be discerning and to be truth seeking, whilst understanding your nuance and context. Don’t misrepresent or dress things up, face into the truth have been some of the takeaways and you know what, I think back to your very first comments about the influence of you Mum, you described her as affable, discerning and truth seeking and they would be exactly the words that I would use for you. So I don’t know how that makes you feel but its screams out to me that would be exactly how I would describe you, so I’m sure your Mum would be incredibly proud …
David: Oh thank you.
Jenelle: … but its been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today.
David: Oh well, thank you Jenelle, I’ve really enjoyed it too and you did it so well to summarise it. You did it really well, I could have done it in two minutes [laugh].
Jenelle: Thanks David.
David: No no, really good, thank you very much.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Dr Andrew White
Senior Fellow In Management Practice At The Said Business School, University Of Oxford

Intro: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to “Change Happens”, conversations with influential leaders on leading change and the lessons learnt along the way. This discussion was with Dr Andrew White, a senior fellow in management practice at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. Andrew is a Leadership Coach to top CEOs and he leads the Advanced Management And Leadership Programme at Oxford. His research, which is focussed on what it means to lead successfully in today’s world has been published in the Harvard Business Review. His work has also been published in the Financial Times. He’s a contributor to the European Journal of Information Systems and the Future of Business Schools. Andrew has a podcast series and LinkedIn newsletter, both called Leadership 2050. He speaks to visionary leaders with the business community who have been on the front line of positive change. Clearly this is something that Andrew and I have a shared podcast mission to understand. In his most recent research, we at EY collaborated with Andrew and the Oxford Saïd Business School to research the human factors that drive transformation success and failure and I have to say, I think that research is fascinating. There’s no question that this was a chat with a person who knows more than a thing or two about leadership and change and he had as many questions as he did answers on the very complex worlds of leadership and change. It was an absolute pleasure to be able to tap into that deep well of knowledge in this discussion. I hope you get as much out of this insightful conversation as I did. Here’s Dr Andrew White.
Jenelle: Hi Andrew, thanks so much for joining me for today’s discussion.
Andrew: Jenelle, its wonderful to be with you. I think talking about a subject we both have a real interest in and I’m really looking forward to … I’ve been going through your questions and, you know, understanding more about the podcast, so thank you.
Jenelle: Yeah, very good. Now look, I’ve very keen to dive into your research and your coaching insights but before I do that, I’d love to start just by getting to know you a little bit more. Can you start with giving me a bit of a whistle stop tour of you, your earlier years and how you found your way into research and academia.
Andrew: So the kind of headline of where I am now is I’m a faculty member at the University of Oxford in the Business School. I research leadership and transformation and that’s what we’re going to be talking about. I guess the question is “how did I get here?” and I probably haven’t gone on a kind of an orthodox path to get into an elite institution. I started life, I didn’t do well at school. I kind of was someone who worked hard but the grades just didn’t come. I was fortunate in that both my parents were teachers and so they really helped tutor me. I ended up going to a University where I had a great time but it wasn’t one of the elite Universities in the UK and I studied there and then something changed and I don’t know whether it was a physiological thing in my mind or I just went from hitting Cs to hitting As [overtalking] …
Jenelle: Andrew, somewhere in that background was dyslexia … am I right?
Andrew: Yeah, that’s right, yeah. So I was dyslexic and I think what I learned through all of that, I suppose was two things. One, I benefitted from laptops and laptops were really, you know, coming into the world and so the problems with my handwriting disappeared because we all write in the same way now, when we’re on text and that’s become a universal thing but it was changing when I was at University.
Jenelle: That’s the power of technology in there!
Andrew: Exactly exactly and also I learned to play to my strengths and my strengths, I think, are seeing patterns in things, of seeing the big picture, of asking the right questions and so … and the more and more I’ve gone through life, I think the more and more I focus on those strengths and I think somewhere in all of the things we go through when we’re in our early 20s, I had good support but I also found something I really enjoy and found something I’m good at and so yeah, it wasn’t easy but it’s kind of, for those two reasons, technology but also finding how I could use that dyslexia in a … as a strength, not as something that held me back.
Jenelle: It’s a really powerful thing. I’ve had a number of guests come through where what would normally be seen as, you know, the moments of adversity or a disability or a, you know, a tough time, they have turned those, you know, those adverse circumstances into their super powers and it sounds like you have done the same with your background.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s interesting that you put it like that. I think you’re probably right, you know. I love talking to people about complex situations and trying to understand what they are, what the big questions are, where’s the challenge, where’s the opportunity and I think particularly in the world of business, so many businesses particularly when you talk to the C suite, the CEOs, the boards, the senior people, they’re struggling with this complexity of where their organisation hits the external world and being able to see patterns in that, being able to see the system has become a really important skill that I use as both an academic doing research but also as a coach as well.
Jenelle: I think that’s a real gift and I think it’s a real gift to be able to separate complexity from complicated. So very often when people will look into complexity and they come up with really complicated ways of dealing with that and now, taking complexity and understanding complexity for what it is but making that simple or digestible or consumable or broken down to something that someone can do something with, that’s a real gift and no doubt we’ll talk about lots of complex things coming up. You started your research journey almost 25 years ago. What’s driven you to continue in the research spheres for such a long time. Did you by any chance have any personally bad experiences with change, for instance, that made you keep going down this path of research and discovery?
Andrew: Yeah, so I started researching what was called “disruptive innovation” or “disruptive technology” and people like Clay Christiansen had written “the innovators dilemma”. There was other research which was largely hidden in the academic journals but I thought was really really powerful around cognition and around how managers and leaders get stuck in todays ways of working and in a sense, the more successful they are, the harder it is to break out and I was fascinated by the human dimension of change back then but what I also observed back then is that disruptions were quite rare and you either were incredibly unlucky if you were in a large established firm and you got hit by one or you were lucky if you managed to kick off a business that really rode the wave of one that was happening and I think, if I fast forward to where we are now, I don’t know of a business or a industry that’s not in disruption, not been in disruption for quite some time or doesn’t have disruption on the very near term horizon and that human dimension has just become more and more important. I also, in my career, I stepped out of research for ten years when I was in a leadership role. So I understand the difficulties of change, the difficulties of digitisation which is hitting us in education as much as it is in every other business. So I’ve kind of done it and I’ve seen it and I’ve researched it, if that makes sense.
Jenelle: Hmm, it does make sense but why are you still so passionate about it, after all these years. Like I know that you’ve said you’ve done it and you’ve researched it but you keep going and you seem to have every bit as much passion as I imagine when you started with if not more. Why?
Andrew: So I think for a number of reasons. Firstly, I think change is as difficult as its always been and so we’re not really seeing a movement in the number of successful change programmes, that’s the first bit. So there’s a need for this amongst the business community that I work with. The second reason is, I don’t think there’s ever been, in recent history, a greater need for change and when you look at the big challenge of facing companies in terms of digitisation, in terms of climate change, in terms of diversity inclusion belonging agendas. Essentially the world technology and people, if I could put them into those three buckets, never has there been so much of a challenge and therefore the pressure that leaders are under from shareholders, from regulators, from consumers via social media, from employees – it’s difficult and therefore if we can demystify how do you really bring about transformation, then I think that’s where, you know, we as a business school, you as a consultancy, we can really serve the world and we can really serve not just the clients we’re working with but the societies and the communities and the people that they go on and impact.
Jenelle: I’m going to come back to that “demystifying” the elements of change shortly but before I do that, I’m interested in just … you have a podcast so I’m quite conscious that I’m interviewing a podcaster themselves, so no pressure there for me …
Andrew: [laugh].
Jenelle: … but your podcast is called “leadership 2050” and in the opening of your podcast, you say 2050 is a critical date. Why is that?
Andrew: So when I came back into research when I finished my period as an Associate Dean, I thought well what's going on in the world and so I started to read a lot and I started to see that there was a lot of reports around 2050 being a critical date from a science point of view. In terms of we will have either solved climate change or we won’t. What I wasn’t seeing is a great deal of research on what type of leadership do we need and what type of transformation do we need between now and then to ensure that we don’t get a catastrophic result but we get a good result and as so the podcast really is focussed on leaders who I think are making some significant practical contribution towards that agenda and they can lean toward tech, they can lean towards the people agenda, they can lead towards the climate agenda. I sometimes… I think all three are kind of interwoven and that’s really what I’m interested in and I’m not interested in people who have got ideas about that. I’m interested in leaders who are actually doing things.
Jenelle: All right then. So what happens when we get to 2050? Do you retire? Does your podcast end? Will the world be all worked out?
Andrew: [laugh], you know what, I think I don’t know but I think when I look back over history, there’ll be something else interesting to focus on [laugh].
Jenelle: [laugh], leadership 2060 [laugh].
Andrew: Yeah, something like that [laugh].
Jenelle: If you think about the last 25 years that you’ve spent studying leadership and working with those leaders who have not just talked about it, as you say, but they’ve actually done it and you’ve got some really really great names out there. What would you say have been the enduring truths about leadership, you know, the things that will always be true and required of leaders versus the newer elements that have evolved over the last decade?
Andrew: It’s a great question. Let me go onto the newer bits and then I’ll jump back, if I could take it that way.
Jenelle: Sure.
Andrew: I think on the newer bits, what I’m noticing is that if I go back 25 years, there were many cases of where companies literally had a burning fire around their feet and they still found it difficult to change. So the industry, the company was crumbing and they were still holding on to old models. I think that’s changed and in the research I’ve recently done, there are far more people seeing what's coming – ten years, five years, three years, two years – down the road and leaning into that and I use this phrase “they consciously detach from the status quo”. They get themselves into a place where they can begin to see the future and begin to see what’s happening and if I then pivot back to where things have always been, I think good leadership has always been about, you know, two things. It’s been about vision and where are we going to go and energy and motivating people and inspiring people to get there and I think they’ve been the enduring things. What's different now is this whole element of disruption and how, as a leader, you know, you’ve got to step back, see where the future is going and then help people go through that emotional journey of change which isn’t easy. We invest, many of us, so much in our jobs and if we’re told our jobs are going to fundamentally change, it can throw us into panic and anxiety. You know, we can become passive/aggressive, we can become angry. Some of us are excited and see a great opportunity but there’s a whole rainbow of human emotion that can come up and good leadership now is about leading people through that disruption and so I think there are some differences to what we’re seeing today than what we’ve needed in the past, I think, and I would put it as “the past was broadly about leading within the status quo”. Yes, profound change, big increases in performance, competitiveness and all of that but today is really about leading through the disruption and the transformation that’s needed to go through that disruption.
Jenelle: Its really interesting to think about those two paradigms because arguably you would think that if you’re operating from a burning platform, it’s almost easier or more compelling to make change happen because hey, its burning, the thing is coming down. If you are trying to lead change from a burning ambition, you’ve got to muster up more, you’ve got to build more and if we struggled with it before, when arguably the platform was easier, what’s your thoughts about our likelihood of success under this newer construct?
Andrew: If I’m honest, I’m pretty hopeful and the reason I’m hopeful is because so many things have happened, I would say in the last 12 – where are we – in the last 14 years, starting with the financial crisis, when there was a, let's called it a minor earthquake and I use the word “minor” carefully because for some people it was major but it kicked off something and I think there were some people that said “when are we going to return back to a new normal” and that’s never happened and then if you think about what we’ve gone through in the last few years, ever increasing amounts of digit change, every increasing amounts of evidence around climate change. We then had covid which kind of threw so many operating models up in the air. We then the situation in playing out with Ukraine. We’ve got other kind of shifts in the geo-politics of the world. You know, people are talking about deglobalisation as opposed to globalisation. So I think people are … if there’s a muscle that we have that is our awareness of change, its being exercised quite a bit. Therefore I think its kind of easier to make the argument, therefore that we need to change as a business, if people or if employees are observing so much change in the external world.
Jenelle: So I want to just pick up that referencing change as a “muscle”. By that I assume that means it’s a capability. Something that can be exercised and strengthened and presumably something that you can also lose strength in. Is that right and if so, how does one go about building and maintaining that change muscle.
Andrew: So I think it works as a way of describing change and all of us know that if we don’t exercise, then over time muscles can atrophy, they can weaken and if we do exercise, whether we go running or we do strength training or we do yoga, these muscles can build both … they can build resilience and they build strength and I think the same is true with change and the more an organisation does change well, the more I think it embeds that into its cultural norm and it gives it confidence and it gives people confidence that they can go through things like this and yes, it will be uncomfortable but there will be a good outcome and its not an abyss that you drop into and I think sometimes it can feel like that.
Jenelle: So since we’re on the topic of change, you along with Oxford Saïd Business School embarked on some, what I think is really interesting research in partnership with EY. What was the catalyst for that research? What did you see as the gap that needed to be looked into?
Andrew: So myself, along with Adam Canwell who’s a partner out with you in Australia, I think the two of us sat down and we both realised that the … the stats on transformation weren’t changing. The need for transformation was getting bigger and both what we were seeing coming through from our executive education clients, what you were seeing coming through from your consulting clients was that there was a need to demystify this. To understand, you know, some companies were doing it really well and other companies not. What were those companies doing that were really succeeding and we needed to really understand that and bring an intellectual research focus to understanding that, across industries, across geographies and across successful and unsuccessful projects.
Jenelle: So look, spoiler alert here and albeit, I think it’s a very position spoiler, that research found that by truly putting humans at the centre, organisations are two and a half times more likely to be successful than those who focus elsewhere. Now I’ve long lamented a fairly enduring statistic that’s sort of bene well over two decades, it says 70% of transformation programmes fail. This research showed that there would be a two and a half … or could be a two and a half time uptick on success rate, if you do put humans at the centre. Pretty compelling stuff I reckon. Could you unpack that research for us a little more? What does putting humans at the centre really involve? It sounds like a great sort of tagline but what … when you unpack that, what does it actually mean?
Andrew: So, and it is a great stat and I think it really grabs the attention – it certainly grabs my attention to understand what’s underneath that. So let me look at, first of all, the role of leaders. What we found was putting humans at the centre means as a leader you’ve got to focus on yourself first and what we found in many cases of people who led successful transformations, they had literally taken themselves and put themselves in another physical place from which to observe their organisation. So examples of this would be an entire executive team going and spending ten days in Silicon Valley to understand how the digitisation agenda would affect them. The CEO of a retail business going and spending a significant amount of time with the Ella McArthur Foundation to understand the circular economy and how that would affect their business. So you know, its about physically going somewhere, its about having the humility to recognise you don’t have the answers. Its about putting aside serious amounts of time to really go on that journey of inquiry and some of them were very honest about how that made them feel. You know, they felt like they were at the beginning of a learning process. It was out of alignment with their status in the business but they had to go through that process of human emotion and facing into that human emotion …
Jenelle: And actually your point about consciously detaching from the status quo, which you talked about earlier, it’s doing that – right?
Andrew: Yeah exactly and that’s by consciously stepping out of it, putting the time in place, going through those processes of really understanding the world and from that, creating a vision, a compelling purposeful vision around why are organisations or our function and where our part of the business exists. So I would say that’s part one and that’s very much in terms of what the leaders do with themselves. There’s then part two which is how do you lead an emotional process of transformation and I describe this as kind of the left and the right hand. Let’s think about the dominant hand is the hand that does the project management. It understands the budgeting, it understands the KPIs, it understands the time scales, the activities, the classic project management approach and somebody said this to me recently. He said “we spent months doing all of that and we completely forgot the people” and what … I think what the research is telling us is that, you know, many of us have a non-dominant hand and not many or us are ambidextrous and that’s what we’ve got to learn and that’s the human process and that’s the process of listening, of leaning into difficult emotions, of having the humility to recognise you don’t have all the answers and leading people through an emotional process of change and using technology to do some of that at scale and understanding where is the organisation and what are the KPIs we will use to assess the emotional state of the organisation and where do we need them to be by certain points in the process. Essentially, in a nutshell, that I think what it means to put the human in the heart of the transformation process.
Jenelle: Its amazing. I feel like that makes a lot of sense but I’m trying to imagine it. Like I’m trying to imagine I’m sitting with a programme manager, I’ve got a transformation, you know, that we’re leading and I can see what the project plan looks like. I’m trying to imaging what an emotional or a human journey map looks like against that. Is it something that you’ve actually seen physically done? What does it look like?
Andrew: Yeah, it’s a great … because its not a project plan. Its far more organic. To be honest, when people do it, they tend to bring graphical artists in …
Jenelle: We should qualify this further. Is there a single human journey map or emotional map because people will feel things at different points in time.
Andrew: Exactly exactly.
Jenelle: So how does that look in aggregate?
Andrew: And that’s why you’ve got that point, you’ve also got organisations will be in different points. So this is where, you know, listening as an individual leader is a capability. Listening as a group of leaders is a capability. Listening via tech is a capability and then what are the KPIs? How do we describe where our organisation is in aggregate, in different parts and what practices will we use to really move the emotional state of the organisation to be in the place we need it to be for the rational part to move forward. Almost hand in glove, if that makes sense. So I think we’re at the beginning of really trying to understand what this looks like as interventions and I think we’ll see over the next few months and years, I think a whole suite of technology is actually developed that help us codify this in the same way we’ve learnt to codify, you know, project plans and things like that.
Jenelle: So what’s surprised you about this research?
Andrew: Um, I think what surprised me most was two things. One is the degree to which leaders are leaning into this. They’re not waiting for the burning platform. They’re getting ahead of the curve. However we want to describe it. That would be number one. Number two was, I suppose, there were two things. People started to talk about leading a social movement and I thought that’s interesting language because social movements don’t really have anything to do with businesses. They affect governments but they don’t tend to come out of governments. Things like the environmental movement or black lives matter over the last few years. They don’t have strong organisations around them and yet some leaders were talking about this kind of language and I think its because they were using the skills of a leader of a social movement, which is essentially about purpose. Its about listening, its about leading people on an emotional journey where you don’t have hierarchical power. Now, they do have hierarchical power but I think what they’re doing is they’re recognising the limitations of it. That was the first thing that surprised me. The second was when I listened to how these leaders describe how they listened, I thought this sounds like therapy [laugh] and … so the advantage of being in Oxford is I can go and search and journals on social movements which are not in the business area. I can go and search the journals on psychotherapy. So I went into the journals of psychotherapy and I kind of found what is called a literature review which is a … when people look at multiple bits of research and I came up with a list of best practices around what psychotherapists do. I thought this is what those leader are doing. They’re not trained in it. They don’t know they’re doing it but essentially they’re listening to emotion. They’re playing back “I’ve heard that you’re feeling this”. They’re using processes that allow people to explore their emotion and then somewhere in all of that there, some transformation happens and those two things really interested me because it was ideas that, you know, I think historically have had nothing to do with business. They’ve been in very separate worlds and yet they’re starting to be useful frames to understand what leaders are doing.
Jenelle: I was going to ask you about that actually because I could see the risk coming from people who are maybe ill-equipped to open people up to those emotional journeys and not know what to do with that once they have surfaced those things. So maybe there’s a two-fold, one as an observation that there is a risk and how do you then build the capability and the safety, maybe psychological safety or the skills to be able to navigate that emotional journey which might be, you know, something that’s quite outside one’s normal capability set.
Andrew: I think you’re quite right to kind of highlight this as a risk and I think it suggests a couple of things. Firstly that there’s a set of leadership skills that we haven’t really trained people in. Secondly, what safeguarding do we need to put in place around those processes if we’re going to do that and you know, what support services do other … do organisations bring in to help with those types of activities and I think the other thing to remember is that organisations are not therapy groups and so one of the executives had a wonderful phrase. She said “its about pace and patience”. It is not endlessly talking about things. Its going through processes for a reason, for an output but ultimately its about the pace and its about improving the pace of the delivery, improving the pace of, you know, getting to that transform state.
Jenelle: So if we just stay on this theme or, you know, your insights from your literature review in psychotherapy and all of that, I have heard you say that when you go through disruption, it forces you to evaluate who you are and why you exist and for whom, which I think is really interesting. Its probably something that has resonated for leaders far more now, having navigated covid than what it might otherwise have done. I know that when I went, I mean I did go through a real personal crisis of confidence and identity when covid first hit. You know, it was - was I the right person to be leading, have I really had the right kind of experiences to be credibly standing in front of people saying follow me when I’m actually really not sure where the hell it is we need to go but then I did collect myself, with a reminder of, you know, I know who I’m here to serve and why I standing in place to be able to do exactly that. So I understand the “why you exist and for whom” but how should I be using the “who I am” evaluation to have greater impact and how do you sense check that along the way?
Andrew: Yeah, it’s a big question. In my experience, I don’t think we ever fully answer the question “who am I” because that’s changing as well.
Jenelle: I was wanting to cross that off my list of self fragilisation list!
Andrew: Yeah exactly because we go through change in life, you know, we rethink things, we understand different aspects of ourselves as we interact with different circumstances but what I do think where I see … as you’re describing, when you go through difficulties and covid was a great example, whether that’s in work or in our personal lives, it does raise these questions more to the surface and therefore if leaders are to take their organisations through these processes, they have to go there themselves because I think this can be a source of resilience. It can be a source of crisis but it can also be a source of resilience and often the crisis leads to the resilience, as we have a deeper sense of who we are, why we exist and what we really care about when we look at the world. So it’s about creating the space and the time for those questions and I’m currently in Oxford working with a group of 40 leaders from 30 different countries and probably 30 different industries and these are the types of questions we’re asking of them and they’re asking of themselves, alongside teachings on strategy and twenty-first century challenges and transformation which they’re going to be looking at today. In my experience, we ask them of ourselves or a crisis will come along and, you know, we’re forced to ask ourselves those questions and as I say, they can be difficult but they can be hugely resourceful when we have a sense of who we are and what we really care about when we look at the world.
Jenelle: I mean there’s a lot you kind of outlined around, you know, the environment that we find ourselves in, this constant disruption, this need to really think about the emotional journey, there’s quite a big ask on people to look at themselves, outside of themselves, all of that. Is there a new archetype of leader that you would say there needs to be or indeed, is there a single archetype, are there multiple? How do you think about that?
Andrew: That’s a great … another great question Jenelle, so thank you [laugh]. You’re really pulling a lot of stuff out of me today. I think there is. I don’t think its just one archetype. I have frequently thought this when I’ve been writing up my podcasts as LinkedIn newsletters which is also called “Leadership 2050”. I think the leaders that are really exhibiting elements of a new archetype or archetypes, they’re very purposefully driven. They know … their businesses are not there … they make money but they’re there to do so much more. They have an ability to do things which you look at and you just think “wow”. I’ll give you two examples. One is Audette Excel who I think you’ve interviewed on this podcast …
Jenelle: Yes, I’ve interviewed her as well!
Andrew: … yeah, and most of us look at the world of investment banking and develop and we think they’re oil and water, you know, the only place they really come together is at a fundraising event, when the investment bankers write big cheques for the charities [laugh] and yet Audette combined the two and its remarkable in what she’s done …
Jenelle: One serves the other which is fantastic.
Andrew: … one serves the other, yeah. So that would be one example. Another example is a company called The Plastic Bank and again, most of us look at plastic in the ocean and we look at low income coastal communities and we kind of, you know, its something that affects us but we don’t know what the answer is. David looks at it and says “no abundance, I’m going to take money off the big consumer goods companies, I’m going to pay people in those low income communities to collect that plastic”. That puts money into their household incomes, into schools, hospitals. The plastic becomes social plastic which is trademarked. It goes back into those consumer goods and its plastic with a purpose. So I mean it doesn’t get rid of plastic but it does transform a whole situation which, you know, to me, I’m looking at that thinking wow. If we had more businesses like David’s and Audette’s, the world would be in a different place. I think between those two individuals, there’s something of archetypes or an archetype and there’s plenty more that I could talk about as well who are doing things which I think are path-breaking, are different and are pivoted a lot more towards solutions and I think to your earlier point, there’s something simple about them. So they take a very complex challenge in the world that most of us look at and think “how on earth would we address this” and they come up with a really simple but deeply profound solution to address that.
Jenelle: Yeah agree. They are so really really phenomenal examples of what can be done. You know, when I think about the research that you, in conjunction with EY has done, when I think about a lot of the points that have been raised, you know, putting humans at the centre, listening to people, listening listening. It seems very obvious to me, with no you know, disrespect to either of our contributions in that space, but I guess it’s the same thing that I would say, you know, I know that I need to eat different types of foods to have a better outcome on my body, to go to the gym etc and yet, I still don’t seem to do it, at least not consistently and there’s countless of other examples of people, you know, know the impacts of smoking will still smoke anyway. What … why … in the context of change, why don’t you think its happening? I mean the Audettes and Davids are great examples but they still seem to be the exception, not the rule. What is it that is stopping us from doing this?
Andrew: I wonder and I don’t have hard and fast answers to this but a few people we’ve spoken to as we’ve talked about the research. I think particularly when I was with you in Australia, I wonder if we’re still living with a legacy of a 20th century model of working which has largely come out of the manufacturing of cars and the heavy industries of the first part of the 20th century and what we’ve done is we’ve intensified. We’ve professionalised and we’ve created organisations which are largely about predictability and order and structure and governances and all of these things which are great in themselves and that model goes through what I would call episodic change or infrequent transformation. What we’re talking about is organisations that go through or really are in a state of continual evolution and I just don’t think we were understood what the organisational framework is for that yet really and I think that’s probably where we might go in terms of the next phase of the research. How do you live in a state of evolution? You know, when I think about nature, nature doesn’t ask this question. Nature goes from spring, summer, winter, fall. You know, the trees go up, they grow their leaves, they shed their leaves. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. Its in this state of evolution. So this, you could argue, is our nature status people. So I think this is possibly the edge we’re at in terms of organisations and we need organisations that learn how to live in this continual state of change and the ones we’ve created, I don’t think are really set up for that and we know people respond to the structures in which we put them.
Jenelle: Yeah its interesting, isn’t it, because even language suggests, like if you say “I’m doing a transformation”. It feels like its got a start/middle and end point and then we’re done, we have transformed and in fact, we are transforming. Maybe that’s just the constant … the only constant state there is, the state of transforming.
Andrew: Yeah and we’re playing with language and what language really works here because even when I put … I started to use the word “evolution” I put continual evolution.
Jenelle: Yes!
Andrew: Well evolution is not … you don’t need to describe it … it is a continual thing.
Jenelle: It actually is, yeah, it’s tautology.
Andrew: So yeah, I think your language is breaking down, organisational forms are breaking down. There’s new leadership archetypes here. So we’re in the middle of something and I don’t have all the answers but its great to kind of play in the space and we need more people really bringing their experiences, their experimentation. So this is why I think people like David and Ordette are interesting because they are … they’re experimenting with stuff, that’s where we really see the language and the organisational forms crystallise, that others can then adopt.
Jenelle: So just turning to you as a person, Dr Andrew White. Thinking about you who has navigated your own moments of change and you’ve led change so you’ve, you know, stepped out of academia ten years, you went back in, you … when you think about your personal moments of change, what would be your .. the “ah ha” moments that have really stayed with you. Separate to research, what have been those moments that you’ve gone “okay this is what we’re talking about here”.
Andrew: So I think one thing I’ve learned to be much more comfortable about is not knowing. If I think back about when I went through the last big personal change which was stepping out of the leadership and back into the academic role, I didn’t even know LinkedIn had newsletters. I didn’t know I would be where I am now with four and a half thousand subscribers and a great community of people who listen every two weeks to … or read what I write. I didn’t know I’d be working with EY on a research project. You know, there’s so much which is emergent. So being in a place of not knowing, I think allows you to see what is emerging much more clearly and I think also from that, it’s easier to understand the different phases of transformation. Now what do I mean by that? There was one point when I stepped down … I went from ten committees to one. I went from a diary that was absolutely full to whole afternoons where I didn’t have anything and I was preparing a number of different projects. Now they’re all at full flight and I’m back up to a full diary but at the time …
Jenelle: I hope you enjoyed it when you had that blank diary [laugh].
Andrew: I did. Well I had … I felt guilty. I felt this … you know, what's going wrong here and then I just said “Andrew, you don’t have anything on, you have worked flat out, go for a bike ride, go for a walk, enjoy this time where these things are forming because its not going to last forever” and it hasn’t lasted forever. So … and when I would go for a walk, I would start to go into a more creative space. So I think what I personally understood is that there are phases in life we go through and its about being present to the emotion, present to the circumstances and you know, not cramming an agenda full for the sake of it and being busy for the sake of it but being tolerating not knowing, tolerating that … what the emergent might be and using that to go in deeper into who am I, what is my purpose, what do I really want to do because I think spaciousness is a really important part of that.
Jenelle: Its interesting. I was about to ask you how do you get comfortable with not knowing because that’s obviously one of the greatest sources of anxiety for people. It’s the not knowing but your language even just changed there. You said you went from “get comfortable with to be tolerant of” and maybe even that is interesting because maybe some people won’t be able to get comfortable with it but maybe you can be tolerant of it and recognise it is what it is.
Andrew: Yeah and different personalities as well.
Jenelle: It seems more accessible to … yeah I think so.
Andrew: Yeah, great call, yeah great insight.
Jenelle: So zooming out of change that happens at an individual level, like I’ve just spoken about with you or at an organisational level, looking at change that needs to happen at an industry or even a societal level, say for instance in the energy transition space. What observations would you make about what could or should be done to make that kind of macro change happen?
Andrew: One thing I’m noticing in the podcasts is that another dimension to the archetype that we spoke about is more and more of these leaders are leading systems. So they’re not just leading organisations, they’re taking a role in the system or the industry. I think we are at a point in history where there is so much opportunity to create new industries. The question is how quickly are we going to pivot to those. If you look at things like wind and solar and battery technology, its almost there or there in terms of technological functionality and the return on investment cases. So there is a process of moving capital. There’s a process of training people and there’s a huge upside in some of these things and the more we can get some of that entrepreneurial energy into the transition, I think the quicker it will go. There are numerous … I mean you could probably, you know, talk about several, I can talk about several, new businesses that we’re seeing that are really leaning into that, really understanding what those transformations look like and I invest and follow a company called “Pavegen” which generates electricity from footsteps. So they put these paving tiles into hospitals, into shopping streets, into shopping malls where there’s high footfall and then with every footstep, it generates electricity in the same way the solar on the roof is generating electricity.
Jenelle: That’s incredible!
Andrew: Now, I’m not saying that’s the answer. Its one element of it. A great example of a business that is really about the upside. Other businesses that are producing solar glass, so glass you can see through but it still generates electricity. So these are the businesses whether they’re in energy, whether they’re in food that in a sense that we see more of than we’re going to see change and any other I would say is there’s some large companies that I think are doing some super interesting things in terms of looking at their footprint in the world. One is Microsoft and its climate action plan, you know, super detailed, super interesting. They went right back to their start. They looked across the whole system of impact that they have. Not just in their own operation but in the consumers’ homes, I think. It’s a great example of a company taking its carbon footprint seriously and then the other one is Nueterra, the health and beauty company. If you really want to see … if any listeners really want to see what ESG, you know environmental, social and governance, an impact looks like, Nueterra’s plan to me, is one of the best developed in terms of detailed KPIs, detailed interventions about what that means. So yeah, I think that would be a kind of, you know, leaning into the entrepreneurial energy rather than going deeper into the angst [laugh] I think and that’s what … you know, that’s what gets people on board and that gets movement and that gets ideas, that gets money moving and that gets the products and services that the world needs.
Jenelle: I’m certainly recognising that interdependency is critical there. Now you used the words “leaning in”. I … when you think about the frequency and the nature of changes that individuals and leaders continue to navigate … as you said, its just all the time now and the nature and the magnitude of the changes that the world needs to collectively navigate. You know, maybe its too broad of a question but what would be your advice about leaning in like that? How best does one think about doing that?
Andrew: It comes back to a couple of things we’ve spoken about already. One is ask yourself the question. This is very hard to do when you’re crazy busy and it’s very hard for some of us not to be crazy busy.
Jenelle: [laugh].
Andrew: So where are the spaces that we go to really stop and to go into what I would call “a place of being” as opposed to a “place of doing” where we can really go into that reflective space. I think we can do that individually. I think its more powerful when we do it collectively and we support each other. We see ourselves more clearly. We see our teams more clearly. We see our organisations more clearly. I think its easier to get into a perspective where you can really see what is our purpose, what is our impact and what transformation do we need to make and so in many ways its about finding that space and in my experience, you either do it yourself or life has a funny habit of forcing it on you [laugh] and so I think that’s probably the starting point. As simple as that sounds, I mean all kinds of things can come from there.
Jenelle: Very good and I know that you do observe those practices for yourself, a lot of meditation and mindfulness to give yourself the space to do exactly that. So the words aren’t coming from a place of non-practicing [laugh]. I know that you live and breathe it.
Andrew: And I’m, like you, sometimes I go, you know, I know the right thing to do. Sometimes I go weeks and then I kind of check myself …
Jenelle: I know I always do the right thing Andrew, what I say I do all the time, 100% of the time [laugh].
Andrew: And then some … and then you know, life brings you back but I think its having those tools in your toolkit to know how to get back into that place of reflection.
Jenelle: That’s fantastic.
The last three … three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: So I’m going to finish with a fast three questions for you. Don’t overthink it. What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
Andrew: So what I’m reading is a fantastic book by Eckhart Tolle called “Stillness Speaks”. I go back to it over and over again, its simple and yet deeply profound and it’s probably one of my favourite books. So I kind of read it and then I leave it for a year and then I come back to it and I’m currently in a period when I’m coming back to it.
Jenelle: Yes, that’s been on my list for a long time and then I think about and then I don’t do it. I’ll think about it so I’ll reignite that on my reading list. What’s your super power? Now that can be something additive to the world or a useless party trick.
Andrew: Yeah, I’m not very good at useless party tricks [laugh].
Jenelle: A useful party trick then [laugh].
Andrew: Useful party trick [laugh], yeah, I’m not sure I’m very good at useful party tricks. I would say asking a really really good question. I think a really good question can be a wonderful act of service for another person and then help them go into a deep place of inquiry and I love good questions. I think good questions really unlock stuff and can be so powerful.
Jenelle: I couldn’t agree more with you. If you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would that be?
Andrew: Yeah. So it think it would have three elements to it. Listen to what’s said and not said. Get comfortable with not knowing and then do that to think about what you previously thought was impossible.
Jenelle: Wow, I like that a lot. Actually it makes me think about the Carol Week comment about “nothing is impossible yet” … always put the word “yet” on the end of that, it changes everything. Thank you Andrew so much for your time today and for your insights. I’ve loved the conversation. Many things I’ve taken away from it. The exercising our change muscle to build resilience and strength. The power and the need to listen as an individual, as a collective, with technology. Those are skills that we are all, I think, can improve upon and hone. You know, I’m really appreciative of your desire to and ability to demystify things, you know, you write about your superpower and seeing patterns and asking questions and leaning into the complexity. So that’s been really wonderful to see. I do think that its an important point about the ambidextrous capability that we all need to have in managing the rational and the emotional and you use the word “space” a lot and you used it in the context of creating space and time for questions. You used it in the context of creating space for being rather than doing. You used it in the context of finding space to ask questions and listen to even the things that aren’t being said. So I think that’s really important. You talked about your friend’s advice about pace and patience and I think those are two important virtues when it comes to change. You said on this discussion that you don’t have all the answers and I know that you don’t and I can see why that has spurred your research for so long but you certainly do have some important answers or clues and perhaps, even better, are the questions that you continue to raise and to challenge to all of us. I think the willingness to get comfortable with not knowing or at least be tolerant of not knowing, to be present to your own environment and be present to your emotions are things that we can all have a strong reflection on. So Andrew, thank you so much for your time.
Andrew: Jenelle, its been wonderful, thank you so much for having me.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Sir John Kirwan
Co-Founder and visionary at Groov

Intro: This episode of the Change Happens podcast covers a conversation that discusses the effects of poor mental health and suicide. If you or someone you know needs support with mental health please talk to your doctor, a mental health professional or if in Australia contact Lifeline 24 hours a day on 13 11 14. That’s 13 11 14, or at lifeline.org.au.
Jenelle: Hi I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcomes to Change Happens. Conversations with influential leaders on leading change and the lessons learned along the way. So this discussion is a little bit of a departure from our usual interview format. Let’s call it a ‘bonus episode’. It’s more of a chat really and it’s a chat between me, and the great Sir John Kirwan or JK as he is widely and affectionally known. For those who follow JK or know of JK, and I know there are many, many of you who do, you’ll agree with me he’s a dead set legend! Not just because he is one of the greatest former All Black players with a record 63 rugby union test matches to his credit. Not just because he’s been a phenomenal contributor to the wellbeing space. Not just because he has ‘Sir’ in his title having been knighted for his contribution in both those areas but also because he is an outstanding human being.
JK is the co-founder of a business called ‘Groov’. A workplace wellbeing platform and he has his own podcast called ‘Open Minded’ where he has intimate conversations about mental health with leaders from all walks of life. So when I asked him to be on my podcast, he without hesitation, said “Yes”. But also he without hesitation asked me to be on his. Obviously it would have been awkward for me to say “No” given he so generously said “Yes”, but we did think that rather than two separate interviews we could try and combine the discussion given the strong relationship between mental health and dealing with change.
So in a total stroke of marketing mastery we decided to bundle both our podcast names and call this bonus episode ‘Open Minded to Change’.
I hope you enjoy my chat with Sir John Kirwan.
John: Well hi I’ll just start this is really different today so my name is John Kirwan. I have a podcast called ‘Open Minded’ and I normally interview people around mental health and go on a journey of discovery. So today I’m sharing it with:
Jenelle: Jenelle McMaster. So hello this is different for me too. I am the Deputy CEO of EY Oceania and I also have a podcast and it’s called ‘Change Happens’ and it really is a podcast that’s all about talking to change leaders and I know you say John it’s from all walks of life. Same for me. I talk to leaders from all walks of life on how they’ve dealt with change. How they’ve led change and all the lessons that they’ve learned along the way.
John: Why do you think change is so scary?
Jenelle: I think a massive part of change scariness is the uncertainty. When you feel like things are out of your control, or you are unclear about what’s going to be happening, that causes angst. So much about people being resistant to change or dealing with change, is about how do I reduce that uncertainty? How do I close that gap?
John: How do you do that?
Jenelle: God we’re already off and away! I was going to start with the questions for you! I knew you were going to do that! I’ll answer this.. but I’m going to ask you!
John: No it’s only cause it’s really hard to do podcasts with me!
Jenelle: Now you tell me! And I agreed!
John: I just get really intrigued.
Jenelle: Ok.
John: When I’m in my groove and we’ll talk about that later.
Jenelle: Yes.
John: I’m just really curious. I’m intrigued about your life. I’m intrigued about your leadership role. I’m intrigued about mental health cause often one of the things that happened with me when I started talking about my mental health was this stereotypical response to just because I was an ‘All Black’ I should have had my shit together. Right and I often find that with leadership like yours. People think that you often are the super human person that can deal with a whole lot of different stuff when often the reality is we are just like everyone else and we are just dealing with it in different ways or we have tools in place that help us deal with that stuff. But it doesn’t mean I deal with it right?
Jenelle: No that’s right and I think that people.. either they think that we’re super human or we think that they think we are super human and that puts pressure on ourselves too and I guess if there is any that covid has taught us is when we showed our vulnerability, and you do this all day, every day JK. When we show our vulnerability actually there is a higher level of relatability. People go “Oh thank God because I’m struggling here as well.” I think a lot of it is pressure we put on ourselves to hold up a standard that actually probably people don’t expect but we think that they do.
John: I think the biggest change for me – talking about change, and the thing I’m excited about the most is – and I don’t know where it came from, right. I’ll tell you a little story. Cause I love telling little stories. So just tell me “I’m sick of your stories JK”.
Jenelle: No, I’m into it.
John: I spoke to a guy not so long ago who said “We had a company barbeque and my boss was there, and wow he seemed like a really cool guy!” “He had a couple of kids and a couple of Labradors and he was playing with his kids and running around with the dogs and being a bit of an idiot” and I went “Yep”. Because somewhere along the way people said “Don’t take your real self to work”.
Jenelle: I know. I know.
John: I don’t know when it was.
Jenelle: It was a sad day when that happened.
John: It was a sad day. Yeh because I think that.. I talk about two things. Don’t mix your humanity up with your ability. You can still be an amazing boss and an arsehole! You can still be an amazing boss and a really good person!
Jenelle: Make you go the other way!
John: You know what I mean? You can still be a boss that is struggling with anxiety and relationships, or whatever that is.
Jenelle: That’s right.
John: It’s just a human thing that we’ve got. That’s what I’m excited about cause I don’t think that is the future for leadership. The future for leadership is actually being way more authentic and bringing your real self to work.
Jenelle: I also think the future for leadership is not just this.. like the individual hero leader anymore. I don’t think that there is one person that wears a cape and saves the day. I think there is the power of the collective leaderships. The people who work together and harness that ability of the broad masses. I think that people who can tap into the diverse abilities of others. People who show their vulnerability. I think that the architype of leadership has totally changed.
John: How do you lead and deal with egos at the high level?
Jenelle: Yeh.. there is a little bit of eye ball rolling that still happens. I think it’s really instructive as well. So when there are really big egos, there is usually a reason behind it. It’s usually masking some amount of insecurity about something. It’s usually masking some lack of information about something. It’s usually a worry. I think if you can get to the driver behind that do hypotheticals. One might ask oneself and then tap on the very thing that they would never be humble enough to put out there but you can diffuse that. I think when you come up with shared language – what we both want here is this, or co-opt them into answer questions where they would normally be sitting back with their arms crossed expecting you to have the answers. How might we solve this? Why not appeal to the ego? Actually what they’re worried about is they will be cut out. So I think the psychology of it is to try to understand what’s driving that behaviour, then tap into it rather than go “You’re an arsehole!”
John: That’s great advice when I was at my worst. When I was an arrogant arsehole rugby player I was just hiding. Hiding from me. Hiding from my anxiety. Hiding from what was really out there and it was the best defence that I had cause often it is what people expected. They expected me to be..
Jenelle: They could reconcile that persona much more readily than someone who is talking about mental health issues or I’m not doing ok.
John: Yeh exactly and I think luckily it didn’t last too long but it was a pretty sad time.
Jenelle: Ok I can see you’re warming up here to asking me a whole lot of questions! Your background is so insane. I’ve got to jump in. You’ve had such a diverse career. Incredible professional athlete. Writer. Mental health advocate. You’ve started a foundation. You do many, many things. Loads and loads of interests. You’re exceptional on surfing, languages, cooking, all sorts of things. What was it that made you, that drove you so clearly towards mental health as your focus for a career once you left the sporting world?
John: Can I just hold you there. I’m blessedly average at a whole lot of stuff which is ok.
Jenelle: Ok that’s true
John: We’ll come back to that.
Jenelle: and you’re also exceptional at a number of things as well.
John: Yeh but I think it’s also important. It’s ok to be blessedly average.
Jenelle: Yep ok I occupy that space readily.
John: I’m a blessedly average surfer. I’m a blessedly average cook. I’m a blessedly, blessedly average guitar player but that is not why I do them, but I think that’s really interesting. I wanted to jump out of a window one night.
Jenelle: Tell me about that.
John: I was hiding my anxiety and my depression.
Jenelle: What was happening in your life at that time? Where were you at with your sporting career?
John: I was incredibly successful externally. I was an All Black playing for my country. Had a free car!
Jenelle: Nice! Well done you.
John: How good’s that! Back when free cars weren’t given to a lot of people.
Jenelle: By Oprah!
John: Yeh! But I was suffering from anxiety and depression. So anxiety and depression are two different illnesses. You can have anxiety and it doesn’t fall into depression but there is a lot of people that do have anxiety and then it forms into depression. I was one of those. I didn’t know what it was. My reference to mental health was ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’.
Jenelle: Oh gosh.
John: For anyone that is old enough to remember that movie. I didn’t talk to anyone because I thought I would be locked up with Jack Nicholson and the Chief, the Big American Indian Actor and that was a real fear. So I spoke to no one. I was having suicidal ruminations which was as scary as hell. I never planned my own suicide so I felt incredibly fortunate about that but one night I was in a hotel room in Buenos Aires. I still sometimes can’t go too close to a window especially buildings like this. The window was open on the 10th floor and I decided I was going to run and jump out.
Jenelle: Wow.
John: And the guy lying next to me said “JK you’ve got a good heart” and it saved my life.
Jenelle: Why did that line resonate for you? What was it about what he said? “You’ve got a good heart” that cut through for you.
John: Or the alternative was to jump out the window.
Jenelle: But it obviously mattered to you that he saw in you ‘a good heart’.
John: Yeh I mean I’ve spoken to him often. He’s also an incredible human. His name is
Michael Jones or Sir Michael Jones now. He got knighted for his services to Pasifika in New Zealand and the work that he does with youth. He is very, very religious and he said “I think God must have told me JK”, “Oh shit if God knows who I am I’m all good!” But he just must have sensed something I think and I said those words to myself from that minute for the next probably month. “JK you’ve got a good heart”. “JK you’ve got a good heart”. What I didn’t realise back then was it actually the start of cognitive behaviour therapy or rewiring your brain.
Jenelle: That’s right.
John: But what it did it got me to a stage where I needed to get help. The next day I played a test match for my country, scored two tries, it was like living in a dream. I went home and started the process by talking to my family. Going to the doctor and that’s a whole another story.
Jenelle: What did it feel like when you started to open up that narrative? You started to let people into your whatever your internal narrative at the time was. Right. About why you weren’t feeling good. What did it feel like when you started to talk about this out loud?
John: The biggest thing for me was my doctor said “JK it’s an illness, not a weakness”. Right and that changed my life. It changed my life because part of this illness is it eats away at your self-esteem. So you think you’re worthless. It eats away at your self-confidence. So even the stuff that you like rugby player at the top of my game, no confidence to do that and it takes away your enjoyment in life. Life is pretty shitty without those three things, right?
Jenelle: It really is. But I’m really interested in the relationship between success and self- confidence, and mental health. So you’re playing in sports where arguably it’s quite a clear set of success measures. You score the try. You win the game. You win the premiership. You were doing those things by objective measures. You now occupy a world where it’s not those kinds of measures. What’s your relationship with success? Have you had to evolve the way you think about success and failure? What’s the relationship between that and wellbeing?
John: I think success is one of the most dangerous words you can use. Because I think often we judge success on what other people have done. Or what our perception of it is. To tell you another story – my Dad had three triple by-passes. Nearly died a few times. But anyway my sisters rang me and I was overseas and they said “Dad is dying”. Dad had a bit of a dark sense of humour like mine. So if I laugh about shit like this, don’t worry it’s just my Dad!
Jenelle: I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do as a result of your laughing!
John: I saw the look on your face and gone should I laugh or not! No that was my Dad. He had a really dark sense of humour which I’ve inherited and so it’s really cool. Anyway I came down and I walked into the hospital room and he said “What the bloody hell are you doing here?” He said “Your sister said I’m going to die, hey!” and I said “yeh”, and he went “I’m not”, and he didn’t for another year which was really cool but I had a beautiful three days of which I had the time to talk to him properly as a Dad thinking that I might never see him again. But I asked him one question, which was really relevant at the time. The question that you asked me, that I’ll be asking you back about success. I was judging my success on other people or what I thought society thought success was, but if you take a real good look at success, it’s a real dangerous animal. Cause if you’re comparing yourself to someone else you’re already in the shit.
So I said to Dad “What’s success Dad?” He said “how many bastards want to carry you out when you die?” Wow!
Jenelle: Wow!
John: and when Dad did eventually pass I would have had 50 phone calls saying “Can I help carry Dad out”, “Is there anything I can do?” He said “It’s no use having the flashiest car in the car park of the cemetery”. Right. I was living a life based on success of what my perception was and what I thought other people would judge me on.
Jenelle: Yep.
John: Very, very dangerous. Once you give that up and once you decide.. and another really interesting thing for me is when you feel uncomfortable your values aren’t aligned with your actions. So some of the things I was doing to get success weren’t aligning.
Jenelle: Like what?
John: I’d cut your throat to win a football game.
Jenelle: God this room just got a little constrictive.
John: Yeh right. I would do anything to win on the football field and that took me to a place that I was uncomfortable with. I find at your level of management, I find so many of the same thing around success. Around what it looks like about what it is. Partners trying to compete around possibly a financial success goal or perception. So I think it’s a really interesting thing. I believe that if you want to be happy and content in your life, you need to address that first. I think covid has given us, a lot of us that moment. People are going ‘What am I doing?’ So what is success for you?
Jenelle: You know at the risk of sounding also a little bit dark humour, morbid on this whole thing, there is a lot of what you’ve said that resonates to me. As you have pointed out, lots of people in my kind of world, at my level, you’re almost conditioned to believe that success is where you are on the organisational chart. How much delegation of authority you have, all of that. That’s kind of what you’ve grown up with. That’s been the markers.
John: Business as a badge.
Jenelle: It’s a state of mind. It’s a state of importance. Yeh all of that and I think that’s probably why I have for so long struggled with imposter syndrome cause there is always going to be things I don’t know and I keep waiting for someone to go “you’re not that good”. “You’re actually not that good” and I would agree with them. I don’t know all of the things but I sound technically the best person in the room, never. Literally never spoiler alert. I keep thinking well I’m pretty good with people but how far is that going to get me? and at some point I’m going to get caught out for not knowing the technical stuff or not. That’s a pretty hard way to live cause you just keep thinking this is very precarious and I’ve done well to now.
Jenelle: Interestingly I listen to a discussion/podcast quite some time ago with a guy by the name of Peter Attia but he talked about the need to focus on the eulogy rather than the resume. So there is something very similar with what you’re talking about. Take the focus off what you do and more about who you are. What would I want people to say about me at my eulogy? Could I feel good about the kind of person that I am? And that is a much better place for me to be in because I know I’ve been raised by amazing set of parents. My family and I are really tight. I know I’ve got good values. I know I can hold myself to account on those and everything else is stuff that you do and it’s important and I care deeply about the work that I do and the people that I work with and the clients that I serve, but actually at the end of the day it’s the kind of person that I am and the integrity of that, that I’ve got to keep focusing on.
So I think the eulogy rather than resume it’s a work in progress for me JK to be honest.
John: Do you know what wealth is?
Jenelle: I don’t know. I feel like whatever I say you are going to have a better one. So you say.
John: I think it’s a really interesting question because I think society – I think capitalism has accelerated out of control. But a wise man once told me that wealth is the ability to stop. Right. I have financial goals. I want to be successful financially.
Jenelle: Yep.
John: So sometimes when people talk to me about mental health, it’s not as if you go around – like a mate of mine says “JK how many trees have you hugged today?” Mental health is not this thing that everyone’s got, lifestyle is choice. If you want to be a hippie and live in the bush good on you but part of my wellbeing is also being successful around how I want to live my life and you need money for that. But how much do you need? And when are you going to stop chasing that?
Jenelle: I think that’s a really good question. How much do you need?
John: Yep. How much do you need?
Jenelle: Yeh.
John: But also and if money is a goal of yours and you want to be the richest man in the world that’s cool but don’t moan if you’ve sacrificed. So the interesting thing about me. I was dead.
Jenelle: Sorry what?
John: I was dead.
Jenelle: Ok. When was that?
John: When I wanted to jump out of a window I was dead. Right. I had to start again. Cause whatever I was doing wasn’t right. I was so scared. I wanted myself back. I went and saw my Mum and my Mum said “You need to smell the roses”. You need to stop and smell the roses. So I had to start again.
Jenelle: How did you do that?
John: Well it was really easy actually in the end because can you control yesterday?
Jenelle: No.
John: Can you tell me what’s happening tomorrow?
Jenelle: I could have a guess but it’s going to be wrong.
John: Well you probably could but it will be associated with all the material things in our world.
Jenelle: In my diary.
John: Yeh you’re diary but actually you don’t and covid has also taught us this. So she said to me “If you can’t control yesterday, can’t change today, got no control over tomorrow, what’s the most important thing?” I said “Today”. So I just got my life back into daily pieces but then what I had to do was – I had to build these bridges (and I call them bridges) because what does success look like as a father? What does success look like as a husband? What does success look like in business? What does success look like spiritually? And I had some issues with God and we can get into that if you want but.. Then I had to build bridges across those because.. and I’ll tell you one.
My business box – I’m a professional rugby coach. I’ve got young kids. We’re living in Italy and my wife says “I’m not coming to live in Japan with you cause I want the kids to be educated here, you go.” “Oh ok”. How am I going to make sure that when my kids don’t get to 18 they think I’m an arsehole that wasn’t there. Right. So all of a sudden my business bridge extends out into my father bridge, or my father box. So now I’ve got an imbalance. So how can I work on that imbalance to make sure that my kids don’t think I’m an arsehole when they’re 18. That was a process that my wife and I had to go through and that is something that we had to explain to the kids so that I managed that imbalance.
It’s been easier for me because a couple of weeks ago I wasn’t that well. I wasn’t unwell but I was just getting some signs that I needed to slow up and it was because of one of my boxes which is my work box had overtaken my husband box, my father box, and my spirituality relax box.
Jenelle: How did you know it was getting a bit out of kilter? What was happening for you? Sometimes we just hurdle through. It happens to us. It creeps up on us. How did you know? What does it feel like to know? ‘Oh I’ve got to look at my bridges’.
John: I think boxes and bridges. My boxes and the bridges to them get out of balance. I don’t know if I told you about my sharks.
Jenelle: I’ve heard about sharks and monkeys. So talk to me about both of those.
John: Ok. When I was very unwell I went to a psychiatrist. I feel like I’m not asking you enough questions. Anyway I’ll get back to that!
Jenelle: No I’m totally cool with that! This is exactly my happy place.
John: I went to my psychiatrist and she said “JK how would you like to learn how to do
self- hypnosis?” This is the 80s. There was no lululemon back then! There was no yoga and shit back then! You did that you were a dope smoking hippie! You know what I’m saying, this was the 80s.
Jenelle: Yep.
John: But because I’d accepted my illness and I wanted to have all the tools I could to get better I agreed to it. She talked me these breathing exercises. She did this thing with my arm and in my mind she said “What would you like to do?” I said “Well during my illness I didn’t like surfing”. In my mind I put on my board shorts, run down feel the water, beautiful, paddle out, 2 to 3ft perfection, surf and she brings me out of it. Right. So I’ve done the self-hypnosis and I felt really good.
Jenelle: Yeh.
John: Cause anxiety and depression for me was often I’d wake up and get clearness in my head and they’d be like a cloud over me. That was gone. So I go home and said to my girlfriend who is now my wife “Gee I’m going to try that” “I’m going to do that at home”. So I went upstairs a bit earlier and I did exactly the same thing. Did the breathing. Did the thing with my arm and in my head. Put the board shorts on. Run down the beach. Feel the water. Paddle out. 2 to 3ft perfection. Four sharks in the water.
Jenelle: Oh.
John: Right. Shit myself and get straight out.
Jenelle: As anyone would with sharks in the water.
John: Yeh have you ever swum with sharks in the water? Not pleasant. So I didn’t actually see the sharks but I had all this fear circling me. So I go back to her and go “What the hell was that?” She said “JK they’re your sharks”. You’ve got some fears in there that you need to deal with. So my first one was a dumb shark. I left school at 15. I’ve never passed an exam in my life. Got told I was dumb by my teachers. Got told I was dumb by class mates. So I felt dumb. So every time I walked into a room I felt dumb. Do you think I’m dumb?
Jenelle: No. Hell no. It would be very awkward if I said “oh a little bit”.
John: I know that’s why I asked you cause you can’t say no! You can’t say not! But it didn’t matter and it was my shark. So whatever you saw in me (and this is really interesting when people are trying to help others) because they see all the beauty in you but you can’t see it in yourself.
Jenelle: Yep.
John: The second one I had (which you mentioned before – which I’ll come back to) was an imposter shark. I played some of (what people would think) would be the best rugby games they’d ever seen and I’d come off thinking when are they going to find out I’m just lucky. When are they going to find out I’m not good enough. When is my luck going to run out? When am I going to be dropped?
John: Then I had a guilt shark. I used to do stuff and feel guilty about it. Then I had a ‘want to be liked’ shark.
Jenelle: I’ve got hard relates on all your sharks. All the sharks are my sharks.
John: Yeh exactly. I had to deal with them one by one and make sure that they weren’t influencing the way I was and making sure that I dealt with those sharks. Got them smaller. Got the teeth out of them and got them out of the water because they were making me act in a certain way that I didn’t like. So that’s when the values weren’t aligned with my actions.
Jenelle: So tell me, if I just take one of those sharks.
John: Which one would you like?
Jenelle: Um.
John: The one that most relates to you cause then I can ask you some questions.
Jenelle: They all relate. Ok so how about imposter syndrome. That shark. What you do about that?
John: I learnt a thing called the ‘worry map’.
Jenelle: Ok.
John: So the worry map saved my life. It helped also with my want to be liked shark, and my guilt shark.
Jenelle: Ok so I picked a good shark then.
John: You picked a good shark. So the funny thing about the mind is it lies to you.
Jenelle: Yes.
John: So you need to bring it back to reality and that’s really, really hard at times. So with your imposter shark I started going back to the worry map which is ‘What can I control?’ ‘What can’t I control?’ ‘What can I do?’ and ‘What I can’t do’. So I’ll give you a scenario. I play a game of rugby. I score two tries. I get player of the day.
Jenelle: Yep.
John: Right and in my mind I’m going “Shit when is this luck going to run out”. “When is this coach going to drop me”. “What do I need to do?” The trouble is with a shark, and this is the hardest thing to detach you from, and I’m pretty sure at your level of business there is a lot of this. If you want to get an Olympic gold medal – swimming, get chased by a shark. It doesn’t matter who you are you will win.
Jenelle: Yep.
John: But the shark will catch you. So a lot of the detachment for me was that imposter syndrome drove me to be successful.
Jenelle: Drove you, yep absolutely.
John: That’s the hardest thing to let go of.
Jenelle: That’s right it’s not really in your interest.
John: Not really in my interest. So what I did is I did a worry map. What can I control? What can’t I control? So for example, can I train hard? Yes. The coach is going to drop me. Can I control that? He might not like me. No I can’t control that. What can I control? So then I’d put what I can control, what I can’t control, what I can do, what I can’t do, and then you’ve got a plan around it that your mind can settle on. So all of a sudden I’ve got a plan for my thoughts.
Jenelle: So then that uncertainty (remember I talked right at the beginning about some of this issue is around uncertainty – and what is in my control, and what is outside of my control) you’ve created the conditions to anticipate that, lower the uncertainty and bring more into your control.
John: Yeh exactly but where’s the Achilles heel in that? The Achilles heel in that is for me, now I’ve got a plan but actually what is success?
Jenelle: Yeh.
John: Ok and then we come back to that question I asked you and you had an interesting answer because it was quite related to other people. Then I need to go ‘Ok what does success look like in this environment for me?’ Some of those answers were ‘I want to be an All Black that’s there for 10 years’ but then it comes back to your worry map. How can I control that?
Jenelle: Yeh.
John: So then you start managing your thoughts and here’s another good one.. you’ve got to write this down. True or false? So when you’re talking to your imposter shark, true or false? Ask it?
Jenelle: Ok you ask yourself answering the worry map?
John: True or false?
Jenelle: It’s usually false.
John: Exactly.
Jenelle: It’s always false.
John: Any why is it false? And sometimes it’s attached to another shark.
Jenelle: Yes.
John: Ok. So they’re interrelated. I mean it sounds relatively complicated but I found it really simple. Cause I just put the sharks in separate boxes and then which ones were connected. Put it this way – might want to be liked by everyone shark.
Jenelle: Yep.
John: If I ran out on a football field and half the crowd boo me I used to worry about that.
Jenelle: Yep.
John: But why?
Jenelle: But how do you just stop worrying? You can’t just tell yourself – well don’t worry about that.
John: I actually only need five people in my life to be incredibly satisfied.
Jenelle: Ok prioritise.
John: Got to prioritise what it is. So what happens is my sharks come back. So a few weeks ago I’m going ‘JK what are you doing you dick? You’ve got a foundation. You left school when you were 15. What do you think you’re doing? You’ve got a mental health start up company with 50 people working with you. Are you kidding yourself? Is that true or false?
Jenelle: False.
John: Totally false but that’s also a warning to say “Shark’s back”.
Jenelle: Shark’s back yeh.
John: Ok so what am I doing? So then I go back and have a look at my boxes and go “Well actually JK you’ve been going too hard” and the reasons are you’ve got a job every week. You’re actually doing rugby as well on Sky Television. So you haven’t had a day off in four weeks.
Jenelle: Do you get others to point out your sharks to you? Like you’re doing that thing JK that thing it’s starting to do. Do you recruit anyone else like your wife or whatever to say?
John: No I mean my wife will know but I am so in tune with this now that I don’t let it get to that or I’ll say to her.. she might say to me “You’re too busy”. “Are you ok?” And invariably two weeks before you really get to where you should be, you go “No I’m all good”. I’m dealing with it.
Jenelle: Yeh that’s so interesting.
John: So tell me about your sharks?
Jenelle: So I share the imposter syndrome shark. I share the want to be liked.
John: Still?
Jenelle: I’m going to talk to you about what I’ve done about it. It’s getting way better.
John: Cool.
Jenelle: I also have shark that is (I don’t know how to put my shark elegantly).
John: They’re not elegant. Well they are elegant creatures this is the thing about them they are so elegant but then they bite you. When they bit you it’s not that elegant.
Jenelle: This inelegant shark is something along the lines of ‘I’ve reached my potential’.
John: Oooh.
Jenelle: Like I’m the only one that has in my family been educated. We’re migrants. I’m a daughter of Fijian Indians to came to Australia. I didn’t go to the best school. I mixed with worlds that have all had a lot of privilege. But for me I keep thinking this is it. I’ve tapped out. I’ve done brilliantly for someone in my position, this is it and I should call time.
John: Is that an inferiority shark?
Jenelle: Oh it’s probably a disbelief shark. I don’t know. That’s one that I keep thinking.
John: Do you know what your potential is?
Jenelle: Well I keep thinking it was it whatever the last thing was! That was it. I’m out. Tapping out now. There is this incredulousness about that. I don’t know maybe it’s attached with worth or my own projections of success is wrapped up with access privilege. I don’t know. There is that for me as well. If I compare I guess the imposter shark and what I’ve done on that space and I really have spent a whole lot of time on it!
John: And so you should these are really, really important things you should spend time on. So well done.
Jenelle: Well I go through a duality of feeling that it’s really important than feeling it’s incredibly indulgent. Like again go “Oh my God can you just get over yourself already and move on”. But anyway let’s say I don’t put that shark into the equation! I’ve drawn a picture up on my whiteboard at home and it’s a picture of an elephant with a rope around it’s neck and it’s the words of Carol Dweck it says ‘Don’t believe everything you think’. Now that elephant can at anytime just move forward and dislodge itself from the tree it’s tied to. The elephant is far bigger than that tiny piece of rope around it’s neck but it believes that it’s chained or it’s tied to that tree and very often I have this narrative in my head (which is all the things I’ve just said to you) so if I keep looking up ‘Don’t believe everything you think’ you have the power to change that narrative. So that’s the first thing.
The second thing is in changing that narrative, and you talked about cognitive behavioural work and cognitive therapy, the mind is incredibly powerful as a positive and a negative. Right?
John: Totally.
Jenelle: And I can see how it’s a positive for me. I can also see how it’s a negative. I’ve done work where I’ve gone ‘I have to re-train my brain’ and I had a coach here helping me with this. I have to re-train my brain, re-wire it to make better connections with what actually happens with reality. For instance, if I get asked to speak at certain events or go into a room with of all these very important directors, usually they are middle aged white men who come from all that privilege that I get scared of and I walk in, I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to be there. I’ve got nothing to contribute to that meeting. How can I say something that’s really whatever. I know people can tell me you’ll be great. Blah, blah, blah. So what I did was for a week for instance, look at my diary and look at all the things in there that were freaking me out (which nobody knows by the way). I know it though and my natural inclination is to say “I’m not going to go there.” I don’t want to go to that event. I don’t want to do this thing and I force myself to say “Yes” to all of those things. But I wrote down what was I scared of about that? Then I went back after I did the event and go what happened? Actually spoiler alert – every single one of them was really great. What was great was that I went into this meeting and I said one thing – but I heard 20 things that I didn’t know before and actually when I said one thing this one person said “I just want to go back to the point that Jenelle made”. And I felt like a legend. And then the next meeting I went to I brought 10 of those points that I heard from the day before (because I was relevant) so then I looked back on that and went “You know what it was good to say ‘yes’ because I learnt these things”. So that was cognitive rewiring.
Then the third thing I think that I’ve done, is kind of make ok to feel those feelings as well because the reality is the first time you do anything new you are an imposter. You’ve written a book right? So the first time..
John: I can’t even spell.
Jenelle: You can’t even spell? Ok. Alright. Unnecessary detail. So you wrote a book right.
John: No I didn’t.
Jenelle: You didn’t?
John: Well I can’t write. I’m on the dyslexic scale so someone wrote it for me.
Jenelle: Someone wrote it for you. Ok but you found a way. Let’s say I’m going to write a book. If I choose to write a book and I go ‘I feel like an imposter I’m not an author’ well damn straight Jenelle you’re not an author, you’ve never written before.
John: Yeh, yeh.
Jenelle: But that’s you trying something for the first time. That’s how you are going to grow. That’s actually showing me that I’m trying something new and I’m pushing myself there. There is an element of going ‘well good for you – you’re doing something new’. So those are some of the ways I’ve tried to deal with that shark.
John: That’s awesome. I keep coming back to one of our biggest problems and understanding success.
Jenelle: So speaking of success pillars and I really like this conversation about the evolution of success. The danger points about thinking about success. You’ve got your Groov business that you’re the co-founder of. Tell me about the mission and what success looks like for you with Groov?
John: We would like to reach 100 million people and save 100,000 lives.
Jenelle: Ok no biggie.
John: So with Groov I firmly believe that it is the biggest tool for the future success of business. You must be moving forward a mental health wellbeing lead. If you’re not you are not going to have a business. Right.
Jenelle: 100%.
John: I firmly believe that. I think the mental health of the world is in terrible shape. 800,000 people committed suicide last year and the government does not have the people or the mortar, or the things to help cure this. Groov is about prevention. Groov is about you being a well, mental wellbeing lead in your business cause you can influence so many people. It’s about prevention. It’s about empowering the individual. I have a daily mental health plan. I have and based on the 6 pillars which is clinically sound that keeps me well every single day. I think if we can empower your individuals but also lift you as a leader. We don’t want you to be the psychiatrist or the psychologist, we just want you to show some vulnerability. We want you to lead by example around mental wellbeing. Then I think the biggest challenge for all of us is optimising the environment. I mean do you ever go home without your inbox? Your inbox empty?
Jenelle: No. never. No it hasn’t happened once.
John: No hasn’t happened probably for 10 years right?
Jenelle: No.
John: So our worlds have changed. It’s about actually managing that imbalance which is now work/life. It’s just life. Both encroach on each. I think if we can be wellbeing leads in the workplace and take the responsibility of business to look after the mental health of our people we are going to help the nation and the world because we’ll be in the preventative space. So 1 in 5 five right now in this building are unwell.
Jenelle: Yeh.
John: That’s the stats. They say with covid it’s going to get worse. There is 4% of the population that are born with some sort of mental health issue and all the resource should be going to them. The world shouldn’t be pushing people off the cliff and I was pushed off the cliff. That’s the Groov goal and we’re growing all the time and it’s being really well received. So that’s fun. On the other side we’ve created a curriculum for primary schools that teaches this.
Jenelle: Fantastic.
John: How do you make yourself unemployed?
Jenelle: Don’t know.
John: You teach your kids so when they get to 18 in the workplace they don’t need that anymore. But we’re not teaching our kids this and so we’re not preparing them for what the world is throwing at them. We’ve created a curriculum based primary school program that is going into the schools.
Jenelle: Very good.
John: Did I answer the question?
Jenelle: Yeh you did. We’ve talked about change happening to you in your life. You’re trying to drive change here in societal attitudes about this. You’re trying to drive change in people’s behaviours and what they do to look after their mental health. I’m obviously talking in a podcast about ‘lessons on leading change’. What have you learnt about driving this kind of change? Things that are working that aren’t working.
John: I think if I could ask you a question back. If you put profitability aside. If you put where the business is at the moment aside. Could you tell me that your people are well?
Jenelle: I know or we do a lot of work on this. I’d have to say that we’re really clear that our people are our asset. We’re a professional services business who work for clients. Their cognitive capacity is our asset. The best lever we’ve got for productivity. The best lever we’ve got for profitability, all those measures is wellbeing and so we do a lot of work in that space and I’d say one of the things that is pretty fundamental to the way that we think about business is – nobody gets out of bed.. I don’t get out of bed because I’ve got $x billion sales target for the Firm or that I personally have a revenue target of this. I get out of bed because our Firm has a purpose which is really clear to build a better working world and the things that we do want to create opportunities to do that for our clients or growth opportunities for our people. So I think everything has to scaffold from that back down - that purpose and the Firm is pretty clear on that. We do a lot of work to identify. Do we have a really good handle on how everybody is at all points in time? Cause people respond to different things differently and even the same people respond to the same things differently at the end of the day, right. Do I think we’ve nailed this? Absolutely not but this is so critical for us and ironically I guess a lot of people when you talk to them, you talk to clients and they’ll say “Well we can’t get anything more out of people”, “they’re tapped out, they’re exhausted”. But actually looking after wellbeing is the thing that’s going to get more out of them. It is ‘the think about the job redesign’. Think about technology that you can use differently. Think about single tasking. That sort of work is what we want to do because this is the critical lever.
John: I think the most important thing you said for me was the ‘cognitive bandwidth of your people’.
Jenelle: Yeh.
John: The thing I’m passionate about is that we’ve never been taught actually to control that. When our parents grew up they worked 9 to 5 or 8 to 5 and when they drove home nothing followed them. They went home on the weekends and nothing followed them. How many time you do emails on a Sunday morning to catch up? Or after dinner? Or.. and that’s ok. I’m saying to people that’s cool but what this world has thrown at us is we now don’t have the techniques to switch off.
Jenelle: That’s it.
John: We don’t know what our bandwidth is because we don’t look after it. So I think the future is actually ok. Everyone is different. Some people can meditate. Others can’t. It’s about finding your pillars every single day that refresh you. You do not (and I talk about this often) remember when you were 23. You’ve just finished university. You come into your first job and it’s Christmas holidays. By the time you get to the carpark – you’re on a holiday. You don’t give a shit. By the time you drive to the beach or wherever you go, it feels like you’ve been away a week. Three weeks feels like six months right. Think about your last holiday. It took you 10 days to unwind.
Jenelle: It’s so true.
John: It took you 10 days to actually disconnect from your email and not feel guilty about it and then your holiday was over! It’s accumulative. Stress/pressure wherever it comes from. Whatever it comes from it’s accumulative. You’ve got to get rid of every single day. Those are the things that we need to teach everybody and you’re different. I don’t know if you had an Aunty Betty but I had an Aunty Betty who did knitting.
Jenelle: I had a Fijian Indian version of Aunty Betty.
John: There you go. I bet you did. But my Aunty Betty had purple rinse hair and she’d knit.
Jenelle: Oh I thought you said she had nits!
John: No, no, she’d knit.
Jenelle: She would knit ok.
John: She’d do knitting. It used to drive us nuts. I just learnt the other day that knitting is one of the most amazing things you can do for your mental health.
Jenelle: Yeh it’s making a resurgence by the way.
John: Puzzles totally. Of course it should. Puzzles right. Listening to whatever those things are in your day (and I’ve got a real solid one) we need to start to teaching our people. We need to empower the individual to have a daily mental health plan to cope with the life that they live. Right. If that’s mediating. If that’s knitting. If that’s doing a puzzle. If that’s painting. If that’s yoga whatever that is. The trouble is a lot of the Eastern (and being of Indian decent) and some of the things that are from India, from Asia are amazing.
Jenelle: Yeh.
John: But they’re not a 6 week course that you get a diploma for. So often when we look at these things it becomes (and don’t get me wrong I love people that teach this) but it’s a lifelong.
Jenelle: That’s why they call it ‘yoga practice’.
John: Yeh.
Jenelle: It’s a practice.
John: It’s a practice and getting back to what you said before and what I said – ignorance for me is when you stop growing. For me this life is never finished. When you said before that you’ve got a shark around ‘have I finished?’ No. You can write a book. You can be a singer. You can be a painter. You can be whatever. There are no rules around that but when people stop is when I start seeing ignorance and then arrogance in people often and I go ‘my biggest fear is to stop growing’. How do I keep that open minded to go ‘I need to keep growing’. Same with my wellbeing I try stuff all the time. During covid I took up the guitar.
Jenelle: Yeh.
John: For Bob the monkey and I’m shit at it but it doesn’t matter it’s about me spending half an hour playing the guitar and when I’ve finished it feels like I’ve put my brain in a washing machine. Sorry I’m raving.
Jenelle: No you’re not and look it gives me great hope that I might realise my ambition of being a back up dancer! It used to be for Janet Jackson in the 80s but maybe it’s Beyonce now I’m not sure but there is still hope for me.
John: Well Janet’s aged as well so you can ring her up and say
Jenelle: Actually I probably have a better chance now!
John: “Look how you going with back up dancers I’m available!” Some of those things that we used to think about as kids – I’ve always wanted to play the guitar but I’m not playing to get up on stage I’m playing because I think I’ve got music in me that’s never been able to get out.
Jenelle: Now I’ve got the music in me.
John: Yeh.
Jenelle: JK I reckon I could sit and talk to you for hours and actually with a glass of red wine in hand I’m up for it. We did talk about that before and hopefully we’ll get another chance to do that but I really wanted to thank you for this. I’ve come away with… firstly I have a visual in my head of this great hooking former All Black player knitting! Courtesy of
Aunty Betty! But you know like reminders about success and taking the time to redefine success for yourself. I’m thinking about boxes. I’m thinking about bridges. I’m thinking about sharks and I’m thinking about the ever present continuous opportunity for growth that we all have upon us and it really reminds me that we have agency here and we should be intentional about that growth.
John: Yeh look and I think same for me it’s been a real pleasure. I think I’m going to have to interview again because there is so much more that I want to talk to you about. I think when business models get in and you talk about change and you talk about agile and all that sort of stuff. It’s been explained wrong. So the first thing people think about is ‘Am I going to be good enough?’ ‘Are they downsizing?’ The negatives of that have taken but growth is really scary but one of the most rewarding things you can ever do and it’s like all mental health things if you don’t communicate it properly people will go to the negative because change is scary. I think there is a whole raft of things that we can do in the business world that’s going to make people a whole lot calmer and a whole lot better.
Jenelle: I agree.
John: Thank you. I’ll just leave you with what my Mum said.
Jenelle: Please.
John: My Mum passed 4 years ago. She was a beautiful lady. Really, really wise. We used to have these arguments about coffins which was really weird.
Jenelle: Gosh you really do have this thing going on in your family don’t you!
John: I know! I think it’s a Catholic thing but she was worrying about burying herself and I’m going “Mum it doesn’t matter I’ll cover you”. “No I’ve got to have this amount of money” and we used to talk about coffins, but anyway, she would have been really happy with the coffin we chose and I’m looking down on this coffin and I was thinking about how beautiful my Mum was. We had an after match function and everyone came up to me and said “Gee I loved your Mum”.
Jenelle: Oh I thought you were going to say “Gee I loved your coffin!”
John: Well they were complimentary about the coffin which Mum would have been happy about but they said “Gee we loved your Mum” and I said “I loved my Mum too”. What did you love my Mum? They said “Because she gave us time.”
Jenelle: Oh.
John: She used to stop and talk to us and it was like we’re the only people in the world. So I promised myself that I’d give more people time for my Mum.
Jenelle: Wow.
John: I just want to thank you for your time.
Jenelle: She would be enormously proud cause you do.. this is our second time catching up face-to-face but at least even in the hour or hours that we’ve spent together I feel like there is no one else in the room and actually there is a producer sitting next to us and it just feels like you give your time. I know that you do that for so many. So thank you.
John: No thank you for your time. Just for anyone who is listening to this I want to challenge you all to give someone time in the next 24 hours. Either yourself if you need it but someone else and then my Mum will be really happy. I think the world takes time away from us.
Jenelle: So true.
John: You need to get it back. I mean someone said to me the other day “Shit JK it’s July nearly”. I’m going “Yeh it’s June nearly”. “Well it was Christmas yesterday”. So if we don’t stop it ourselves it will be taken away from us and its precious. Thank you.
This episode of the Change Happens Podcast covered a conversation that discussed the effects of poor mental health and suicide. If you or someone you know needs support with mental health please talk to your doctor, a mental health professional or if in Australia contact Lifeline 24 hours a day on
13 11 14. That’s 13 11 14 or at lifeline.org.au.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Naomi Steer
Founding National Director of Australia for UNHCR

Jenelle: Hi I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 3 of The Change Happens podcast. Conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way.
Today I’m joined by Naomi Steer, a philanthropist, business woman, activist, and founding National Director for Australia for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – UNHCR. It’s an organisation that she’d led for 22 years now. The UNHCR in Australia is a not-for-profit dedicated to providing end-to-end humanitarian support to refugees and other displaced and stateless people who are supported by the global UNHCR body. There are some pretty staggering statistics around global humanitarian contribution that Naomi has clocked up in her time with UNHCR. Last year alone, Naomi and her team raised $43 million, including $11 million for the people of Afghanistan and this year even more for the Ukraine. During her tenure they’ve raised over $382 million for refugees and displaced human beings around the world.
I learnt a lot from this discussion with Naomi. I learnt that more than 100 million people are displaced around the world and less than 1% will be resettled. Now that feels heart breaking to me but yet when you listen to what Naomi and her team have been able to achieve, and when you think about people’s enormous capacity to care, it’s actually so uplifting.
She also talks a lot about shifting the needle from protecting and assisting to empowering refugees. It’s an important shift for individuals in societies and one that creates great economic and sustainable benefit the world over. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Naomi Steer.
Well hi Naomi and thank you for joining me today.
Naomi: Hi Jenelle and great to be here.
Jenelle: I want to start with helping the audience understand a bit about who you are. Can you tell me about your early years and your background?
Naomi: Well I’m a proud Parra girl. I was brought up in Parramatta and it was an incredibly diverse background.
Jenelle: Yeh it would be.
Naomi: I probably say compared to a lot of the rest of Sydney and indeed Australia at that time. It was the 1960s and Parramatta was one of the main cities that received new migrants post war. So my little school, Parramatta Public Central was ahead of its time. Incredibly diverse. We had kids from all over the world. Sometimes it felt literally getting off a boat, arriving in the classroom without any English.
Jenelle: I imagine you would have felt more like a minority perhaps in that background? Did it feel like that?
Naomi: No I certainly didn’t feel like that but for me it opened up the world.
Jenelle: Right.
Naomi: There weren’t the support services that there are now for new arrivals in Australia for migrants or refugees and I was quite a chatty little thing! Always have been. I was always putting – my job was to go and sit beside the new girl or the new boy and talk to them. Poor things! I was always really interested in where they’d come from. World outside Parramatta.
Naomi: But I also think growing up in the 60’s. I don’t want to overstate it. I was only quite young then, but it was a time of a lot of change. I remember the referendum to grant Aboriginal people the right to be counted in the census as people which is extraordinary. My father had a property up in Qld – a soldier’s settlement property and he was appalled from that experience about the treatment of Aboriginals and really came back to Sydney and spoke about that a lot. So as a very young age we were really aware about inequities and unfairness and injustice very much driven by my parents.
Jenelle: What did your parents do to have that sense of social justice and equality?
Naomi: I think they were also people who not extraordinary for the time but very outgoing. They liked new things. They weren’t afraid of difference. I think that was really important and neither myself or my two sisters ever have been which I think has been marked by some of the things I’ve done. Also a very strong sense of standing up for yourself and others even in more small ways. I remember at school sort of early feminist I’d always been taught. Three girls in our family – no boys. Girls could do anything. I was often sewing – this was in Year 3. I could only do sewing or cooking. Both of which I was hopeless with and have continued to be hopeless at my whole entire life!
Jenelle: At least you’re consistent.
Naomi: I was keen to try my hand at woodwork, but I wasn’t allowed in the class cause I was a girl. I remember running a campaign around that and being quite unsuccessful at the time! It was an early lesson in equities that persist in many areas today.
Jenelle: I guess from that background you studied and got into your first job. I think it was with the Department of Foreign Affairs? You were a diplomat – saw you work in New York and India. What was that experience like for you?
Naomi: I never expected to be a corporate lawyer. I never wanted to be but I was really interested in the wider opportunities. As you say, I joined Foreign Affairs and my first posting was to the UN New York working on the Third Committee, which is the Human Rights Committee. I remember at 25 – I was supposed to be getting married Jenelle at that time and the Department had posted me.
Jenelle: Oh gosh.
Naomi: I rang up my Mother and said “I don’t think I should take the posting”. I’m supposed to be getting married. My Mother said “What are you even saying?” “You’re crazy, go!” Which I did and happily my fiancée – now husband.
Jenelle: Oh ok.
Naomi: Still waited. Was a happy ending to that. But that was fantastic. The Third Committee deals with issues around gender and refugees which was really the first time in my career that I came to that. A lot of the human rights issues that then continued to define my work in quite different areas but I think things that I was really interested in pursuing. Then I was cross posted over to India for 3½ years. That was an amazing posting. I learnt Hindi. I found out I was the last actually trained Hindi speaker. I got called up by Foreign Affairs a couple of years ago saying “We’ve just dug out your file and we’re restarting this campaign to get somebody else to learn Hindi and we found out you were the last one to ever use it, and learn it”.
Jenelle: Wow. I had no idea. I speak Hindi but I’m not going to pull it out on this podcast by the fear of embarrassing myself!
Jenelle: Offline let’s have a conversation!
Naomi: It’s a bit rusty now Jenelle.
Jenelle: Mine too.
Naomi: So we’ll see how we go. I think a lot of work about equity is also about inclusiveness. Sometimes just politeness – going to another country and speaking language as your official representative seemed to me like really, really important. That was – I loved India and worked on a lot of things around the anti-apartheid movement at that time and again human rights issues for the government. A really fantastic formative career years.
Jenelle: Tell me about the role of a diplomat? I find it quite an unusual role. I feel like I’m not quite sure how you would get your hands around explaining what it is exactly that you do and how you measure success as a diplomat? How would you describe it?
Naomi: Well, I think at its core and its sort of changed over the years with communications but certainly your role is to be a bridge either between two countries on a bilateral basis or to represent your country in a multi-lateral basis. It’s very much my work in India was about researching political developments so that our government could understand the politics. Making important connections so that there could be those relationships and dialogues. As a fairly junior diplomat – one of my really enjoyable roles was I managed the cultural relation program between Australia and India and through that I met many Indian artists, dancers and designers and the same with sort of wonderful Australian creative people, and of course just like sports, Arts are a really great way to connect countries and to create understanding. That was very much part of my role at that time as well as travelling around the country. Meeting people. Reporting on those conversations.
You are there to represent your country and to build those bridges and to build understanding.
Jenelle: As you say ‘bridging worlds’ is something that I think is quite a gift actually to see points of commonality and to respectfully highlight points of difference and have people embrace those things. How did you find yourself with the UNHCR?
Naomi: I decided after – because of the creative work I was doing, I decided I was going to be a film maker and I took a detour which surprised a lot of people. I became a union official with the Actors Union – Actors Equity when then merged with the journalists. I ended up as The Secretary of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance. Again, when you look at it, that was actually a fantastic opportunity. Of course, it was supporting our creative people and our writers, and freedom of press in Australia. So really important policy issues around Australian content and of course looking at the livelihoods of actors and performers which is still very close to my heart.
But I’d done that for a number of years. I worked in the trade union movement. Again this theme of bridging different groups. My job particularly at the time working for Unions NSW where I ended up was working around equal pay issues and forming alliances with a very broad range of women’s organisations across the political spectrum because no matter what your political point of view or persuasion women generally really shared common values. Particularly around pay equity and issues like that. I was instrumental I guess or my role was really creating panes around those which I did.
Then this opportunity came up to set up a new organisation for the UN Refugee Agency and part of my work with the unions had been reaching out/supporting migrant workers. Making sure that their working rights were protected. I also did some work for the International Labour Organisation. That had become a new area of interest and when I saw this opportunity to start this new organisation I thought ‘yep that’s got my name on it’. I guess the combination of international background but also quite pragmatic work supporting refugees and mobilising support in Australia for refugees and asylum seekers.
Jenelle: How would you describe the mission for the UNHCR? Whether it’s the mission of the organisation or your mission within that. How would you summarise that?
Naomi: Worldwide UNHCR the UN Refugee Agency is the lead organisation whose role which is mandated by the General Assembly is to protect and assist refugees and our role as what is in effect Australia for UNHCR – the private sector partner for UNHCR in Australia is to mobilise support across all different areas and in different ways to achieve that protection and assistance. I think it’s also now the reality that refugees can spend up to 20 years as a refugee. There’s the requirement not only to support emergency assistance which it often is. I’ve been in those situations – life and death situations literally for people when they flee with nothing but because of these protracted situations now around the world, the kind of support that we provide is longer term. I would see our mission now as to empower refugees themselves towards better futures.
Jenelle: In order for you to achieve that. I think it’s a really interesting and important shift in language there that you said from ‘protecting and assisting’ through to ‘empowering’. I think that’s really interesting. What has to happen to achieve that mission? Or maybe more pointedly what has to change? Whether it’s in people, business or government in order for you to achieve that goal?
Naomi: To achieve the goal of really empowering refugees so that they can live dignified independent and resilient lives, it is really a whole of society effort. I think that’s the shift that I’ve seen over 22 years in working in this area. It’s not just the job for government which traditionally it was seen in supporting organisations like UNHCR through funding which is obviously really important through resettlement of refugees through other initiatives like that. Very much is the role now and it’s seen as the role of the private sector to also support and private sector plays a really key role increasingly. You see that both in Australia and more broadly through employment initiatives, mentoring roles, training. I think whenever I speak to refugees – the 3 things that they would say are priority.
1. Security - once you’ve achieved that it’s
2. Education – that is the stepping stone and something that you cannot takeaway. You can lose everything else but you can hold onto your education, and the third thing which is to some extent harder is to have
3. Proper livelihoods and income – so you can support your family. You can have a sustainable future.
That’s where the private sector definitely has a broader role both in countries like Australia and also in the host countries like Uganda where we do a lot of work which hosts over 1 million refugees or Pakistan or wherever. I think certainly there’s been a big shift in the conversation around this and re-energising governments to engage. Getting governments to work much more closely with business and the private sector to bring about proper solutions for long term protracted refugee situations.
Jenelle: It’s a really interesting thought when you think about ‘whole of society’ effort coming together to change. This is a podcast about change and one of the aspects of driving change is thinking about stakeholder engagement. I think that you’re talking about lots and lots of different stakeholders when you are talking about the whole of society. You’re talking about engaging corporates. You’re talking about government. You’re talking about – presumably they’ll be entrepreneurs in there. They’ll be engagement of particular subgroups, women within that picture.
Can you talk us through the various stakeholder segments that have to come together or come together in different ways and the way that you think about them, and the way that you have mobilised each of those groups individually and then maybe in its collective form?
Naomi: A great question Jenelle because I don’t think I would be talking to you if we hadn’t actually – not only mobilise but in the very early days when I started Australia for UNHCR, it literally was a start-up. It was me and a filing cabinet. So I had to call on all those networks that I’d built over a number of years and suddenly having worked as a diplomat and worked in law, and worked in the trade union movement.
Jenelle: Yeh.
Naomi: But also worked in superannuation as a Board Member and Trustee for a number of years, suddenly all those networks made sense. People were incredibly supportive of me setting up this organisation. Providing a lot of pro bono support. Women have always been really important and I’ve worked with many women’s groups and I don’t want to stereotype women at all but I do find women will come together, be very practical, prepared to take on responsibility themselves. I think there is this certainly strong feeling amongst women of a sisterhood really whether it’s in our own community or more broadly. Women were always really important in our organisation in building support for whether it be events or donor base. We have right now a fantastic initiative called ‘The Leading Women Fund’ where women sign up to support refugee women in Jordan and you connect through an app. It’s actually been really groundbreaking because while we really encourage people to connect to refugees in our community, it is much harder to connect meaningfully to people many thousands of kilometres away. This app has been away that people are able to have conversations, share experiences around family, around challenges. It’s been a real game changer in that way as women have.
Initially business itself I’d say was a bit reluctant to engage in the refugee cause and that’s going back two decades because of course ironically when Australia for UNHCR was started (and one of the reasons the UN wanted to start this organisation in Australia at that time) was Australia was seen as a very positive place around refugee policy. We just had East Timor. We led the International Forces, Peacekeeping Force in East Timor. John Howard had the safe havens for refugees and all of that changed of course when the Tampa sailed into Australian waters and rescued over 300,000 asylum seekers but was refused the right to land in Australia.
So when we started there was tremendous interest in the issue but whether business itself wanted to engage with what had become quite a highly politicised cause. Two decades – that has really changed.
Jenelle: How and why? Do you remember moments of that narrative changing for business? Let’s take that stakeholder segment. What are the moments that have stood out and you’re like they’ve moved from being interested to taking action? Or seeing that they’ve got an active hand to play here. Do you remember anything in particular?
Naomi: Look I think it’s complex. I think when you wind in both refugees or asylum seekers and also into a broader migration debate, that actually is not a good thing. I think Australia has been built very much as a country on the migrants and very valued for that. I think from one perspective I saw business as being really kind of concerned at where dialogue was going around that which was now going into migration and of course impacting on potential labour market. I think from a very pragmatic reason business became involved. But also I think one of the things, and it’s lessened time and time again, when you have personal connection it really changes your view. It’s very easy for us to really stereotype people if we don’t know who they are, or if they’re just a number. They’re just one of 100 million people displaced. Well what does that mean to me? But when you have people in your workplace who are refugees and we do have a significant refugee population in Australia, when they’re standing up and talking about the rights of refugees and ‘look at me – what I contribute’. I think that really started also changing how business saw it.
I also think there is a generational shift. I would say I’ve seen that over the last 5 years. There is a whole new generation in Australia and I see that with my children who have gone to school, brought up in a much more diverse and inclusive society.
Naomi: And that’s just their expectation. It’s not something that they even would note. They seem themselves very much as global citizens. So the workplace now I think has shifted and business also recognises that and if they’re really going to be authentic in their commitment to diversity and inclusiveness (it’s not only seeing that in their immediate workplace) but really engaging in a broader and a positive way around it – around support for refugees and asylum seekers, and better policies and just policies around that.
Jenelle: You mentioned the apps that have been brought in that have fostered some connections. You’ve talked about the power of education. I’m interested in the multitude of ways that you have been going about to achieve the mission. So you raise a lot of money and that money might go towards apps or maybe there is broader use of technology – some education. What other things do you do? Is it job placements? Tell me about the various ways in which we can make that kind of empowerment real?
Naomi: For Australia for UNHCR our mission is very much to support refugees and displaced people who are offshore. As we are talking about this there is nearly 100 million displaced people worldwide. Less than 1% of that number will ever be resettled.
Jenelle: Wow.
Naomi: I would hope Australia will increase the numbers of people in can resettle. Clearly the majority of people worldwide are going to remain in situations as refugees in countries of reception, they’re often the poorest countries like Uganda or Pakistan or Turkey or Lebanon, clearly where people are fleeing from. People move generally to the closest country and I think I’ve probably spoken to hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of refugees and their dream is generally to be able to return to home if it’s safe to do so.
Unfortunately that’s proving much more difficult in many situations. So the kind of support that we provide is supported by donations largely is what’s called humanitarian assistance. That is simply lifesaving aid – food, water, shelter. I’ve been in those situations of people fleeing across the border from South Sudan – I’ve seen what they’ve been able to bring when their village has been attacked by militia. They’ve run into the bush. They’ve made it across the river into safety, into North West Kenya. You don’t bring your cooking pots. You don’t bring anything to sleep on. You don’t have blankets, there is nothing to shelter you. That very much is an important part of what UNHCR does and the support we provide. However, as we said, because refugees now they’re not just in that situation for a couple of months or a couple of years, it’s years and years, and years.
I’ve been visiting situations where I visited the grandmother, who is an old grandma, her daughter and a child has been born over that 20 year period. So the nature of support that we also give has evolved. You talk about education, that’s really important. We’ve funded many schools. Technology has played a really important part in that. I was in one refugee camp – Nakivale which has over 100,000 refugees. It’s been around for 50 years. It had six primary schools when I visited for that population. It had no secondary schools. We built a secondary school together with the local community which was also the Ugandan community.
Jenelle: Wow.
Naomi: Lucky to be able to go back there over the years and really see the community take ownership and I think that’s an important point. It’s not a one way street. Refugees and all people are highly capable people but they need the resources to achieve what they can and that’s how very much I see our role.
Naomi: With technology I think one of my favourite projects is a computer and technology centre we built in a deep field location on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Uganda. It was in this large refugee settlement and there was nothing for the youth. So you might access primary school. You might get some kind of basic education but the refugee leaders had come to me and said “Look of course we need food, water, shelter but we also need some hope.” “We need to be connected to the world”. We ended up building this computer centre which had internet. It had an internet café. Through that project which had all sorts of issues, you could imagine building a tech centre in a remote part.
Jenelle: Yeh gosh.
Naomi: By UNHCR requirements and it had to comply with their green guidelines, so it had to be solar powered. We got these big solar panels made. Transported along what was this huge money track. We built it. Put the solar panels on, the roof collapsed!
Jenelle: No! Oh my God.
Naomi: Do it again. Anyway we worked through all of that. Had a lot of learnings out of this and it worked and once people had internet they were connected in a way that they never imagined but really practical outcomes. There is a fantastic site called ‘United Refugees’ which is effectively a Facebook for refugee community worldwide, where you can trace members of your family. So for the first time people in this remote refugee settlement could go onto this Facebook page. Say “Hello my name is John Moccondo. I separated from my family in Tanzania in 2012. My mother is this, this, this, does anyone know?” Through that so many connections were made.
Jenelle: Oh wow.
Naomi: And so many reunifications. So this simple project had actually started to give people computer skills, basic computer skills. Went on to have all these other literally life changing impacts. It was run by refugee leaders. Last time I was there they’d set up a bank. There was a refugee from Congo who’d arrived. He wanted to do some online courses. He’d put his resume in. The Refugee Chairman looked at it and said “Oh but he’s worked in a bank, we don’t have a bank here?” So instead of putting him in the pile to do the online, another online financial course, he met this gentleman. They worked out a business plan and they set up the first refugee bank in the settlement which is going great guns.
Jenelle: That is incredible. Incredible.
Naomi: I think the lesson for that is for us – you get the right project. You get the right people involved and in a way the sky’s the limit.
Jenelle: It’s a wonderful way to demonstrate that shift that you’re talking about from protection and assist through to empowerment. I think you’re tapping into the skills. Solving community problems. Empowering communities and individuals to realise potential. I think that’s fantastic. It’s really clear to me as you talk Naomi that it’s one story after another. Certainly if there has been one consistent takeaway for me with these podcasts that I’ve been doing for the last few years, that story telling is an incredibly powerful lever for driving change. We’ve had a lot of guests come in and speak about those critical stories that have been able to create moments of realisation and in some instances real movements of change.
Clearly your line of work is really focused on the stories of displaced individuals. Displaced families. Displaced societies. You’ve got thousands, and thousands of stories. Are there any that stand out in your mind as really being a catalyst for change? When you go ‘oh’. I know we’ve had lots of these things but this story, this moved the needle for us.

Naomi: Well I think one that shows absolutely the resilience of refugees and the power of women is a story I want to share around a woman called Immaculata. Immaculata was a member of a women’s craft group in Uganda that we started supporting about 7 years ago. They were a group of six women who were making craft. They’d self-taught each other and UNHCR and came to me and said “Look do you think you could work with this group to find a market?” Because that’s always the issue. There is thousands of these initiatives but where do actually get a sustainable market for the products that people are making?
So we started working with this group and we have about 80,000 or more regular donors now supporting Australia for UNHCR. That’s just here in Australia. We decided that we would give something to our donors as a thank you and we worked with this group to design a product. That went through all sorts of iterations and it ended up being a key ring. It was a learning process for both the women and myself because we used to get magnets made in China if you were a donor.
So I was having these discussions with the women who initially came up with slightly very high prices per piece. I said “look I’m going to be ordering 20,000 of these and I’m not going to hold you to the factory floor of where we get Chinese product made, but you’ve got to be competitive cause it’s coming out of my marketing budget.” They started to learn with me about business and we came up with a price point. We made these very big orders. The six women went onto train another 30 women in the group that ended up supporting a community of about 1,200 all through what was simply a key ring.
We’ve continued to work with those women, and they were super smart and that’s again what I see time and time again. People just need that kick start whether it’s a bit of investment or a market. One of the women who was Immaculata when I first met her, she was sleeping in the street. A number of the women were street urchins just selling second-hand goods in the street. They had very poor accommodation. She was actually sleeping the street with her children. But she would turn up at every meeting with me with the best outfit that she had. She was so determined to give this a go. Anyway, through the course of this she saved her money. She ended up buying a small grinding mill. She ended up employing two refugees in this small business and then as the project went on I had another meeting. I asked how Immaculata was and she stood up and she said “Now I’ve saved enough money to buy a block of land, and I’m going to be a ‘land lady’”, and everyone just burst out laughing! With pride, with whatever.
Here was a woman who three years before had been sleeping in the street now she was going to be a ‘land lady’ and that was through a very modest project but a good project. When I worked with the women I saw them about 3 months ago. I went the minute the borders opened I went back to see how they’d go. They’d had a really tough time in covid but we’re continuing our orders and looking to diversify and anyone listening to your podcast – who would want to be engaged with that? I’d really welcome that. She’s just one story of many people that I’ve met who when they’ve been able to have the opportunity and resources and support that we’ve provided have absolutely run with it.
Jenelle: Oh love that. Absolutely love that. Now you mentioned covid there Naomi. What was it like to be leading this organisation and cause through the pandemic? What did you see happening? Cause everyone had kind of their own issues to be dealing with. Their own personal health. The health of their families. Concerns about their own livelihood. What was happening on the global front when everyone was absorbed in what the pandemic meant for them and their immediate communities?

Naomi: I was actually up on the border in Ethiopia and Eritrea when the Australian Government started talking about closing it’s borders. When I’d left it had been declared a pandemic but I think as we see things now, official announcements were a bit slower than perhaps what was actually happening on the ground. My husband rang me and said “When are you coming home?” “I think they’re going to be closing the borders.” The next day we headed out to the smaller airport in Northern Ethiopia and a huge dust storm had come over from South Sudan that morning and closed the airport. The airport manager than said “It’s not going to open for another six weeks.”
Jenelle: Oh no.
Naomi: I was with a team of two others. We jumped in a mini bus with the locals and travelled another 4 hours to the next airport trying to beat the storm. Again it overtook us and then the airport manager said “If you go another six hours to Mekelle I will hold the flight if you can get there.”
Jenelle: Oh gosh.
Naomi: Sort of been quite calm at the beginning of this but by this time any pretence of patience or calmness. So we commandeered a car and spent the next six hours driving through the back roads of Ethiopia at night to make it to the airport – which we got there with 15 minutes they held the plane. As I got to Addis Ababa going down the staircase my colleague said “Time to get home Naomi”. He was an African photographer I work with a lot. “The world is closing down.”
Jenelle: Oh gosh.
Naomi: I just remembered that’s just how I felt. I got back into Australia on the Sunday. That night they closed our borders. The next morning in terms of our own preparation for how we managed it as Australia for UNHCR, my team had been doing an amazing job. I do think both for us as Australia for UNHCR and UNHCR globally, dealing with emergencies and the unpredictable situations are kind of what is our ‘bread and butter’. So in some ways we were set up quite well culturally if you like – both from a staff point of view and also assistance point of view to deal with that, because we often have to pivot from our BAU to deal with an emergency. From Australia UNHCR it’s fundraising, it’s communication, mobilising resources. From UNHCR it’s that immediate response within 72 hours.
Jenelle: Ok.
Naomi: So it’s quite an extraordinary organisation to deal with. UNHCR globally very calmly went around dealing with it. Remember they’ve dealt with pandemics of Ebola, Cholera. Communicable diseases are always a risk where you have these remote large-scale populations but also as a result, they’ve got really good protocols in place and systems in place to prevent that. So, they just went into that mode with the host governments. The big concern was that if there was an outbreak, that would decimate refugee settlements and camps. It actually didn’t happen and that’s a testament I think to the refugee communities and leaders who had to be their first line of defence and that’s really hard when you look at a sort of refugee population that Cox’s Bazar over a million Rohingya refugees - an overcrowded camp how do you socially distance. You know, you don’t have clean drinking water, or it’s not accessible, how do you wash your hands, how do you soap, but they did do it through an extraordinary discipline and you know awareness of communities. So this was really important and so a lot of the work we did around that time supporting them was getting PPE equipment in and basic stuff again, providing potable water, you know, so, and vaccinations and again often to very remote places.
So it was like an extraordinary and I think heroic operation by UNHCR and partners. You know, as I say, back in Australia, we were both fundraising for that and also grappling with our own challenge. When I arrived back from Ethiopia on the Monday, we have a lot of fundraising teams in the field. We call it face to face. We pioneered it in Australia. It’s been really important to our business model and building our sort of regular donors and one of the first decisions and it was a very hard one. I had to, you know, make a decision were we going to – you know what we’re going to do with these staff. They were casual staff. Many of them are students. But you know I took the decision to terminate them. So that was 40 people – that’s what I did on the Monday morning. We gave notice. Most I think other businesses didn’t and you know as just sort of again a testimony to the kind of staff that I have, you know, I got emails from people saying – look it’s been great working for you, I understand why you have to do this. You know, I really hope you survive, you know, as an organisation through it.
Jenelle: And how did you feel having to make that decision? Cause I mean you’re in the business of looking after people who are displaced and in some weird way there’s a displacement now that’s happening in your own organisation. How did that feel for you?
Naomi: Yeah we were very conscious and I was very conscious of the impact on individuals, not just the organisation. And so we reached out, and I reached out personally, pretty much to every one of those staff who’d been terminated to have a discussion with them and see if we could get them sort of alternative employment and you know through our network, some of which did. We also have a number of refugees who work with us who were leading the face to face campaigns in Victoria and Sydney and they of course couldn’t do their role. But we took the decision, exactly going to that, that we are a refugee led and support organisation and so we were not going to terminate them. We were going to work out no matter how possible that they could be redeployed. So that’s what we did. So we took them into other parts of the organisation and because they’re great communicators; that’s their job, so we had them working in Donor Care. We had them working in major donor philanthropic units and that went on for quite a long time, but I think for us it was really important as an organisation to demonstrate that commitment and to live that commitment and that’s what we did and I’m very proud of that.
Jenelle: Yeah very powerful. You know I’m just listening to you talk about – I mean yours is an organisation locally and globally that is built for crisis so as you say sort of kicked in with a bit of muscle memory of how do we as an organisation deal with a crisis. Obviously pandemic – we’re in a different stage of it now. We’re still in it, we still have it but we’re not in crisis mode and I can imagine that when in crisis people will respond, communities will respond, but perhaps when it goes into, we’re out of crisis mode and it’s just a – it’s another thing in the backdrop of what we’re dealing with – has that been harder to get sponsorships and donations in that period of time and what have you learned, have you got any insights about the human capacity to care. Does it run out?
Naomi: No, I don’t think it’s run out. And I don’t know whether we’re unusual, but both through this period of COVID and also previously during the GFC, our income actually grew. And I just sort of have found, you know, the generosity of people, really extraordinary. I think there’s probably a number of elements to that. We’ve never been afraid to ask and I think that’s my job. You know I do have, and probably some people listening to this would think, if Naomi Steer sends me yet another letter, you know. And I have friends who’ve been on the mailing list for years and sends sometimes quite rude messages back. And my donor care team comes in and I say don’t worry I know them. But – you know, it really is one of the fundamental things about working for a not for profit charity and in the philanthropic space you cannot be afraid to ask and we never have. But I also think during the COVID pandemic, people did really I think, appreciate for the first time in experience what it was like to be sort of isolated, cut off from other support, not to be able to see friends and family. So I do think it engendered a greater understanding and empathy.
You know our donors are extraordinary. During the fires and floods – I mean we’ve had sort of lived through you know a very difficult period here in Australia. It’s not just sort of COVID, it’s been one thing after another and of course we’re always very conscious of the impact on our donors. We went back to our donor base in postcode selected areas that have been worst affected by the fires and then the floods and we wrote to them saying that we would postpone their donations. And many people wrote back and said don’t, you know. And in one case this woman wrote me this letter saying you know my house burned down, I’m insured, I will rebuild, you know, $30 a month, if I can give that to somebody without any support I’m prepared to do that. Others, of course, said thank you so much for thinking of me. Yeah, it’s really hard at the moment. Yes I would like a payment holiday or I do need to do that. Of course we understand that.
And again, for us as an organisation, it’s not just about refugees, it’s actually being really genuine and - this is what I talk to my staff all the time about – when I send letters to donors I’ve seen those letters. I see pretty much every communication that goes out under my name because that’s really important to me. Because I’m asking people in my name to support this and I think that is paid back to us by donors, our donors, who really see that and feel that connection.
Jenelle: What have you learned about yourself as a driver of change over these last two decades?
Naomi: Oh look, the good and the bad. I’ll just talk about the good Jenelle.
Jenelle: Now I want it all, give me the juice.
Naomi: Look I think personally, and you know I think I’m probably somebody who feels quite comfortable with ambiguity and change. As I said sort of – and difference – that’s been something from early days that I’ve actually really embraced and I think in leadership and the sort of certainly and the new environments that we’re all working in, that’s really important and that’s really assisted me and that’s been great. I think also having – you know I had a vision from early days. When I was just sort of me and the filing cabinet as I say and you know what was – and no one had heard of UNHCR. It was very sort of – took us a number of years to find the business model that was going to work for us. So it was really touch and go there for a while. But I did always have this strong vision of what the organisation could be and would look like and that sort of really carried me through and also my board and other supporters.
And I think being really optimistic and again I think when we come back to COVID and I was used to dealing – am used to dealing with unpredictable situations – but I was really optimistic that we would come through that if we did the right stuff and we had the right processes in place, which we did. And I think that also sort of carried through to the rest of the organisation, you know. If your leader’s saying it’s going to be okay there’s – I mean there’s genuine in that and staff could come down and get on with the work they needed to do and be supported in. I probably, you know, and I wouldn’t say when I said this sort of not so good stuff, would probably – probably about seven years ago as an organisation, sort of came to – I wouldn’t say a crisis, but I think it happens for lots of not for profits, if not for all organisations. We’ve grown really quickly. But we were still a very small staff and a very small leadership team. And so I sort of had suddenly become the everything, you know. I was out there, you know, in the media, externally, globally, the Board, but also down in the weeds of the organisation which wasn’t good for anybody including me. And I think we were quite stressed overall as an organisation at that stage and wisely, you know, my Board at that point decided to invest in a broader leadership team and structures and processes and we brought in a change management consultant who was fantastic. And that took – that was really I think a good and very positive turning point for the organisation.
Now not all not for profits have that luxury to be honest and you’re always in this, you’re always trying to cut overheads, you want to maximise you know what you can transfer to, you know, your cause and mission. And so we’re always caught in that. But I think for every not for profit at some point if you’re going to be sustainable and long term, you have to work out how you’re actually going to have, you know, a robust management team and also robust processes. And so we put a lot of things in place and I think really set ourselves up for the future and for me I think I was you know, became a much better leader, and I – it just wasn’t about me anymore, we have a senior management group and that’s reflected back to the organisation and so, you know, we’ve become a different organisation in that process. And I’ve probably become a different kind of leader in that process too. Or a different style of leader. I think that’s one thing I’d say, Jenelle, over 22 years, we’ve never stayed the same as an organisation, nor have I in terms of how I’ve had to manage that either.
Jenelle: So if you were going to put words to the leader you have evolved to, what would be the from/to – might be putting you on the spot with this one – but if you had to describe the from term – leader was this to a leader that is now this – would you be able to put words to that?
Naomi: Well I don’t want to say too cliched, but I think it’s definitely true that I’ve moved from a very sort of hands on leader, you know, with the finger in every pie, and you know, dare I say, you know seeking to control and direct, to now somebody who is much more prepared to stand back, to delegate, to empower and I’ve really had to work at that. But I would say that’s where we are very much as an organisation and I’m really proud of that.
Jenelle: I was just going to say it sounds like a mirroring of the organisation. If you’ve moved from protection/assist to empower then you as a leader have done the same thing. So it’s really nice, mirrored evolution.
Naomi: That’s a really interesting insight. That’s a lovely insight actually. Thanks, Jenelle.
Jenelle: Its ok. Now, the places you’ve been and you’ve really outlined some incredible places, the stories you’ve heard, the experiences you’ve had, would often be incredibly heartbreaking and I imagine would take a cumulative toll on you, what do you do in a way of self care? How do you take care of yourself through this and recognise signs where you might need to do something differently for yourself?
Naomi: Well in terms of recognising signs, I am lucky that I have some really great colleagues who aren’t afraid to say – ahh Naomi I think you should just take some time out now. And I also have very honest family and a husband who – my family’s always been involved, incredibly supportive, come to every world refugee day. But you know my husband certainly is not shy about saying, you know, time to
Jenelle: We need those people in our lives though.
Naomi: Well – totally, totally. And I think it would have been sort of very difficult. In the early days, well probably around my 10-year mark, I did get really impacted cause I was out there, I was doing a lot of stories and research about sexual and gender based violence. So I was in the field interviewing women and it really did, at that time, take a bit of a toll on me, listening to their stories. And there’s so little support for refugee women in many of these situations. I was probably the person, for the first time, they’d shared some of this stuff. So I sort of felt an obligation to be there but also you know that feeling sometimes you think, well you know what can I do, how can I change. Is it just enough for me to be sort of bear witness or listen? And, after, you know, a particular time in one of the camps where this woman had told me, you know, the most horrendous story about sexual assault, rape and mutilation, in the context of war.
I flew out of Kenya and I thought I can’t do this anymore. Like this is really hard and I’m not the right person and I’m too sort of emotional about it. And suddenly I saw Mount Kenya sticking out of the clouds as I passed by and I thought, I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to climb Mount Kenya and I’m going to raise money for these women and you know off I went. Well you know came back, I was turning 50. I hadn’t done any real exercise forever. You know, I had announced this and it sort of took on a life of its own and suddenly I thought, oh my gosh I’m going to have to do it. So I joined this fantastic group called Wild Women on Top which was – no great name right. And
Jenelle: Yeah, I wouldn’t want to google that, don’t know what would come up as an image, but okay.
Naomi: But you know, it was a fantastic group of women from all ages, demographics you know, who are just interested in trekking. And so I joined up and honestly I think the first time I nearly sort of gave up because the women to me looked like amazons. I thought I was just going to go down to do a bit of – I don’t know – basic, I don’t know, kick boxing or a few push ups or something and we went on a 10km trek at night with headlights on and I sort of like – I remember coming back home almost just like sliding you know as my husband grabbed me
Jenelle: This is your self care routine. Let’s go back to my question. This is what you’re doing for self care? It sounds like absolute punishment.
Naomi: Well look why it was self care, cause it’s actually very mindful. You couldn’t think of anything else while you were doing this because you just had to think about survival right. I don’t want to fall down the mountain, or you know, the graduation for me was leading a group of women round rocks at Nelson Park at night which was like – I – for sort of – and it was great for me Jenelle because I felt sort of very confident in leading but not in a physical way, right. You know, so it was sort of good. And I loved it and it did give me a lot of confidence to go back to nature. So to me that’s really important. These days I don’t do anything as strenuous.
Jenelle: I was going to say what’s the micro – I’m sure you don’t climb Mount Kenya every time things get tough. So what’s the micro version of that mindfulness for you?
Naomi: Well, you know, it’s a bit – I would go back the other way. I go up to the Blue Mountains a lot, outside Sydney. I spend a lot of time up there, now on my veranda and watch the birds. So that’s sort of -
Jenelle: Getting back to nature and keeping it simple.
Naomi: Coming back to nature and something sort of very gentle and I love – I’ve sort of got a lovely little place up there and I you know I go up, I put the bird feed out, you know my lorikeets come and then my rosellas and then, you know, the Currawongs, and then the very naughty yellow crested galahs and you know it is so – that is, you know, very special to me. Yup, perfect way to unwind.
Jenelle: Sounds lovely. Now I’m going to ask you one last question before we move to the fast three. You’ve recently announced that you’re actually going to be departing Australia for UNHCR. Why and what’s next?
Naomi: Well it sort of goes back when I think about it a bit to what we discussed – the evolution of me and the organisation. And I, sort of - I do think you know the organisation that I have helped build is, you know, a fantastic organisation. But I’ve got a fantastic leadership team who are now you know when I look at them and I will sort of go into a meeting and they’re talking about the right issues. They’re identifying the right risks and opportunities. They’re looking at the sort of solutions. So I don’t want to say I’m really superfluous. This is the time. I’m really happy. It’s like – you know again I don’t want to sound paternalistic – but as a parent you want you’re sort of like baby or the kids to grow up and be you know be able to take care of themselves and be independent and I would say Australia for UNHCR and my fantastic leadership team with the support of the Board is really at that stage. So for me no better time – wow – you know we’re in that stage, it’s totally sustainable for me to be able to sort of really step away and sort of be proud of you know my contribution to that but really let the organisation go to its next chapter, you know, too.
Jenelle: And do you have a view of what’s next for you?
Naomi: I will always be involved I think in some ways, supporting human rights and refugees. In the immediate term I’ve been asked by the global national partner group; there are nine national partners worldwide, like Australia for UNHCR to act as an adviser to them, both, you know, individually but also as the group, to really amplify their voice and impact within UNHCR. So that’s something I’m quite excited by. We as national partners are a relatively new part of UNHCR and as I said I think there’s so much scope for sort of engagement with the private sector. Not only in terms of mobilising resources but changing the narrative, both here in Australia and globally around you know refugees and displacement. And so I’m really looking forward to that. And then I am just going to kind of take a break and see what’s next. And I’m actually really looking forward to that. But whatever I do it will be something – you know as I say about looking to bring about positive difference.
Jenelle: At the betterment of the world, I can feel it.
Naomi: I hope so. I hope so.
Jenelle: That’s fantastic.
The last three … three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: So fast three to finish up here, Naomi. Firstly what are you reading or watching or listening to right now?
Naomi: I’ve been having fun watching “Succession” and other ones. But I did want to really promote this fantastic book called the “Next Great Migration” which is the story of movement on a changing planet by this wonderful author Sonia Shah. And what she really sort of posits is, migration is sort of almost in our DNA from you know when we first started in the Rift Valley and spread out. It’s really about the sort of human and natural world’s response to a changing environment. You know, human beings adapt, move, and are mobile and so it’s really a fantastic read to put sort of the current situation in that much wider context.
Jenelle: Oh that sounds like a fantastic recommendation. Thank you for that. And what is your superpower? As you know this can be something additive to the world or a useless party trick.
Naomi: Yeah because I’m a really bad over committer, which means I’m late for everything and you know I must say my fellow Board members, unawares, super will laugh at this because I’m always late and I’m always in trouble for it. But I think my superpower is actually speeding through orange lights without being booked.
Jenelle: You’ve got to be careful saying those things out loud. Once you declare it to be something then obviously it goes the other way. So please drive safely out there.
Naomi: I drive very safely. I do. I just know when the light is going to change. That is my superpower.
Jenelle: That is absolutely a new superpower. If you were going to put up a quote on a billboard, what would it be?
Naomi: I was thinking about this one. You know we all have the opportunity to make a difference, take it.
Jenelle: I love it. Absolutely love it. Naomi thank you for your time today. As I reflect on the conversation, I actually think your – I mean I think - I know you’re making jokes about the superpower and the useless party trick and I don’t want to take away from the amber light guesswork.
Naomi: You probably should.
Jenelle: You definitely have a superpower around bridging, you know, as a diplomat you bridged worlds, as a unionist, you bridged interests, as a leader of the UNHCR in Australia you’ve bridged causes to solutions, you’ve bridged capabilities to projects, it’s just an incredible gift that you have. And listening to you we’ve sort of really looked at the levers of change. You’ve talked about the power of personal connections. Making things real for people so that they feel inspired to contribute to a cause. You’ve talked about the generational shift and the positive force that that’s been in driving change. You’ve talked about the power of storytelling and driving change and I love – you know I don’t know Immaculata and the landlady but I’d love to know her cause she sounds fantastic and she’s an embodiment of what you’ve been able to achieve. Yours is the story of empowerment. Like I said not just in your organisation but also for you and I think your gifts in embracing ambiguity, embracing change, not being afraid of difference and not being afraid to ask, has put you in great stead to have achieved the unbelievable outcomes that you have. All you know with a clear vision ahead of you, underpinned by that level of optimism in the world and our immense capacity to care. So on behalf of the world, because that’s how I roll these days, I want to thank you for the incredible, incredible work you’ve done with the organisation that you’ve lead, and I want to wish you all the very best for this next chapter in your life.
Naomi: Lovely Jenelle and I really appreciate all those lovely words and I’ve really enjoyed our conversation today.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Simon Griffiths
Co-Founder & CEO, Who Gives A Crap

Intro: “Who gives a crap” … well Simon Griffiths does and I do too actually but a little more on that in a moment. Firstly, hi I’m Jenelle McMaster and this is episode 9 of Season 3 of the Change Happens Podcast. Conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today I’m joined by Simon Griffiths, the co-founder and CEO of Who Gives a Crap, a social enterprise committed to their motto “Toilets for everyone”. Two and a half billion people across the world have no access to a toilet. This lack of sanitation in the developing world results in 2,000 children under five dying every day. Simon has made it his mission to do something about it. He’s a businessman, philanthropist and activist and his company has, to date, successfully donated more than $10 million towards its cause, to its charity partners. Simon is also well known for his work as co-founder of Shebeen, Australia’s first non-profit café and bar, known for donating 100% of its profit to seven development aid projects. He is a fascinating guy with a fascinating business, working tirelessly on things that really matter in the world. I took so much away from this discussion. He has shown that there is a different way to do capitalism. He’s shown how you can use stubbornness and antithetical thinking and polarising ideas to do amazing things and he lives humour is an incredibly powerful lever of change. There was so much in this discussion, and I absolutely loved it, I hope you do to.
Jenelle: Hi Simon, thanks for joining us today. I’d love to start, if I could, by having you help the audience understand, you know, who you are, a bit about your family, where you grew up.
Simon: So I was born in London, we moved to Australia when I was four and I grew up in Perth. Kind of a classic, you know, middle class Australian upbringing I guess, so a lot of time on the beach. We were fortunate to live quite close to the beach, which you know, having British parents, I think was kind of one of the main goals of moving to Australia. Yeah and now, you know, ended up moving over to the east coast of Australia and I spend time between here and Los Angeles working with our American team and so my day job, if you will, is running a toilet paper company called Who Gives A Crap. We sell, you know, different forest friendly toilet paper, kitchen towels, tissues, cloths and more recently some hair and body products under a new brand called “Good time”. We use half of our profits to help build toilets in different parts of the developing world and Who Gives A Crap is the name of our toilet paper company that we started about ten years ago.
Jenelle: Okay, well it is an unusual name – right. That’s a start right there. It’s certainly incredibly unique. How did you come up with it and I’m interested in whether or not the uniqueness of that name influence or impacts the way clients have perceived your business.
Simon: [laugh], I think it depends on who the client is [laugh]. I think, no I would say 100% it has but the way its influenced it depends on who the client is. So [laugh] …
Jenelle: So how did you come up with it and then tell me a bit about those different reactions.
Simon: Yeah, so I guess, you know, what … something I learned early on in my career is that the best ideas are the ones that some people love and some people hate and ideas that when you tell people them, they say “that is so simple, so perfect, I can’t believe someone hasn’t done it before” and those two things, these really amazing early signs that you’ve got something that has a high viral coefficient because people like telling other people about things that they love or things that they hate or things that are so simple that they can’t believe that no one has done them before and so the Who Gives A Crap name, you know, that came from … it was a quarter second business idea epiphany, you know, those classic kind of …
Jenelle: Quarter second … I haven’t had one of those yet, I can’t wait until it happens [laugh].
Simon: [laugh], those classic kind of moments that people talk about, that was exactly what happened but it took ten years of thinking beforehand, you know, trying to understand how I could use the skills that I developed, which are around economics and engineering and finance to solve problems that I cared about which were, you know, social mobility, particularly in developing worlds until one day walking in the bathroom and seeing a pack of toilet paper sitting there and saying “oh my god, we should sell toilet paper, use the profits to build toilets and call it Who Gives A Crap” and I called three friends and they all said “I love it, you’ve got to do it, it’s awesome, I can’t believe no one hasn’t done it before” and then as I started talking to, you know, marketing experts and people who knew a lot more about brands than we did, we got this polarising response of “I love it” or “you can’t do that, that’s not okay” and that for me was like a, you know, huge tick box of, you know, making sure that we’re on the right track and realising that this was something that was going to be special.
Jenelle: God, there is just so much in there that I want to kind of understand a bit more. First of all, on that polarising element, that’s really interesting to me because somebody who maybe has a high need to be liked or be highly resonant with everybody, which is probably impossible ideal to chase, how do you kind of deal with the nays … like how do you … doesn’t that sort of freak you out a bit that there’s a whole lot of people that go “oh hell no, that’s not going to be a thing”.
Simon: Um …
Jenelle: Where does your confidence about leaning into the polarising nature of that come from?
Simon: Yeah, like I think … I think as an entrepreneur, you have to, you know, you’re doing things that no one has ever done before, that’s kind of the definition of being an entrepreneur and innovating. I’m not super interested in kind of copying things that have been done before. That’s like less exciting for me. We’re not in it for the money [laugh], you might have figured that out already and so there’s no real benefit of copying someone because all that you’re doing if you’re copying is trying to make money and that’s sort of not what gets us out of bed in the morning. If you’re trying to do something new, it’s inevitable that you’ll be told you can’t do that and you have to work out when to use that to fuel your fire and to, you know, to prove someone wrong, that actually you can and when you have to listen and heed to that advice because it’s actually true and correct and being an entrepreneur, I think is often about learning how to walk that line and understanding when someone is giving you feedback, whether you should listen to that feedback or whether that feedback tells you that you’re on the right track even if they’re telling you not to do what you’re doing and I think that’s a really interesting part about, particularly things that … like Who Gives A Crap and the business that I worked on before this, a really interesting part of them is that a lot of people say “oh, that makes me feel slightly uncomfortable” and I think that’s a really interesting place to be, particularly when you’re talking about the sanitation problem which is slightly uncomfortable, you know. Its toilets and its icky and its gross, it diarrhea related disease. Its things that people don’t like talking about and so getting to the edge of that place where someone feels slightly uncomfortable I think is kind of a really interesting and powerful place to be.
Jenelle: So you said when to use no to fuel your fire. Do you … are there … do you have any early recollections of that, of being told no, for whatever it was. Whether you were at school or something like that where you felt that burn in you to go “well, let me show you” … any early memories.
Simon: [laugh]. I mean, you know, now we’ve got … we have a six year old boy who is a mini version of me [laugh].
Jenelle: Oh how do you feel about that [laugh].
Simon: So its bought up all of these … these kind of, you know, I don’t know if they’re memories or just these deep sort of emotions in reflection on who I was as a child and realising that, you know, he exhibits a lot of the same stubbornness as what I did as a kid and probably, you know, didn’t have done and probably still do in many places as an adult. So I think that, yeah, 100%. You know, I think when people talk about what makes kids really special, it’s often that they have this deviant streak and if you’ve got a kid who always does what they’re told and is really well behaved, that’s often kind of lesser, you know, less interesting that a kid who … who will push back and push the boundaries a bit and that’s 100% who I was as a child. Now as parents, it’s incredibly frustrating [laugh]. I have so much empathy …
Jenelle: [laugh] are you a parent sitting back going “yeah, welcome to our world”.
Simon: [laugh] yeah, they kind of laugh at us having a hard time with it and … because, you know, they see exactly what they went through 30 years earlier.
Jenelle: Did they foster that in you? Like how did you … were there lessons about the way that you were … were you encouraged to explore your stubbornness – put it that way?
Simon: Yeah, we’ve got really deep really quickly. Let me just say this isn’t somewhere I would normally go on a podcast [laugh].
Jenelle: Sorry, this is where I go, it’s my fault [laugh].
Simon: But yeah, you know, like I think they laugh as well because that’s the struggle that they had because I was a mini version of my dad and so …
Jenelle: Oh, the gift that gives on giving!
Simon: You know, so it’s this, yeah, it’s this generational déjà vu that just keeps presenting and happening that I’m sure we’re going to have if our son one day has kids, then we’ll see the same thing happen again. For me, it’s been really interesting to realise that that stuff is … there’s a lot of nature in there and maybe a little bit of nurture but it’s really deeply ingrained in who people really are and that’s I think, has been fascinating to realise that, you know, a lot of those attributes are present from birth and they can go in the wrong direction and end up taking people to places that aren’t great. For me, I was able to use it and harness it and it enabled me to get to a really good place but …
Jenelle: What’s the difference? What makes the difference to harnessing those … I mean I’m fascinated by that because you’ve used a bunch of words that typically are associated with negative things. You’ve talked the stubbornness, you’ve talked about polarising. You’ve talked about … you even used the word “deviant” in there – right, so how do you take those attributes which could and should be, maybe neutral words, but they are seem negatively, what’s been the ingredients that have made that be allowed to be channelled in a really constructive social conscious way, the way you’ve done it.
Simon: You know, I think what's really interesting about part of what got me excited about this space that we’re in today, is that we had a different view of what the world should look like and no one was building it and so we couldn’t just go out and get jobs and work for people that, you know, shared this vision of how the world should look in the future because it wasn’t … there weren’t people that were building that version of the world and so we had this, you know, this deep fire in our belly, this stubbornness to wield that world into existence, that was why ultimately led us to go and create, you know, a string of different businesses and this one being the on that took off, that has showed that there is a different way to do capitalism and that that is actually a really positive way to build businesses from a lot of the traditional business metrics as well as the social impact metrics and so I think, you know, that deviance, that stubbornness, they’re all things that have played out really positively for me. They … they’ve also got me into trouble many times before as well, especially as a kid as we’ve talked about, you know, and that would have been very hard for my parents and it was very hard for my parents [laugh] at points but you know, they are positive things. You know, there’s this … this quote, I think it’s George Bernard Shaw, “the reason a man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself, therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man”. Now let's forget that we’re just talking about men in this quote because it seems a very old quote …
Jenelle: Let’s take that as inter generic, yeah.
Simon: Yeah let's remove the gender from that quote but you know, when you think about all progress depending on the unreasonable man, that requires people who are deviant by nature, that they think about the world differently and that they’re stubborn enough to really try to bring something to life that no one has done before and so, you know, they are unreasonable qualities that I think are necessary if we’re going to progress the way that the world operates.
Jenelle: Tell me a bit about, and I love that quote by the way. Tell me about your view of how the world should be? What is that vision?
Simon: I think, you know, what I started to realise as I learned more about business was that I didn’t understand why people were obsessed with maximising profit for shareholders [laugh]. It’s a meaning … like there’s all these other things that are problematic out there in the world, people don’t need more money, that’s not going to go and solve, you know, problems. The way I viewed it in a simplistic naïve way of looking at the world when I was younger was that all that was doing was making rich people richer and the, you know, there’s diminishing returns on happiness once you have a base level of income that’s enough to get by on comfortably. It didn’t make sense to me that the rich just got richer and there were all these people that were being left behind that were finding it very difficult to get their foot onto the economic ladder to start, you know, climbing their way up and I just saw this massive piece of inequality that existed and capitalism was there just to make the rich richer when there was an opportunity to actually use capitalism to create a more positive version of the world and I believe that there were many other people that thought the same way that I did and that they just needed products that enabled them to, you know, show this latent demand that I believe truly existed in the marketplace in the economy and so creating products that gave back and were profit making but had a donation model embedded into them was, you know, what we did to try and prove out that actually the old way of doing capitalism was not the right, the best, the perfect way of capitalism and if we’re trying to, you know, truly make the world a better place, then we should do capitalism differently and those that do will be rewarded by this, what we think is quite a large amount of demand that exists in the economy in the market.
Jenelle: I want to come back what you’ve learnt around doing capitalism differently, but first I want to understand where your level of social conscious comes from. It feels really deep and really core to who you are. What … where do you think that comes from?
Simon: It’s probably … it’s from a few different places. So I was that kid at school who sold stuff to everyone at school [laugh]. You know, if there was a buck to be made, I was trying figure out how to make it and there was something in the thrill of making a buck but there was also something kind of icky and disgusting about selling things to other people that also made me feel a little bit uncomfortable with myself. So I think, you know, I loved kind of certain elements of capitalism from a, you know, an operator perspective but there were parts of it that something just deep down didn’t feel quite right. So that’s kind of a, you know, one of the earlier kind of pieces of puzzle I guess and then I think I had this other really formative experience when I went through University and got good grades, probably for the first time in my life and sort of got funnelled into the more … one of the more traditional career paths and ended up working as … first of all as an engineer and then as an investment banker in, you know, really kind of archaic corporates and for want of a better word, and the experience working in investing banking was really interested because I had … I was getting paid very very well and realised very quickly that my happiness was at an all-time low, while I was doing math work, despite having more money than I had ever had before … yeah and so for me, it was this very clear disconnect between money and happiness that made me think about what was actually truly important in the world. It was at that point that I started to say “well, if I don’t want to do these … the jobs that are held up on a pedestal to students at University, you know, these are the tier one kind of places to go and work, what is it that I want to do” and started thinking about what it was I was actually really passionate about and that was when I realised that I needed to think about some of the things that I had previously done as hobbies, like going and travelling and volunteering and doing different stuff in Southeast Asia and further afield throughout University and why that was interesting and then what part of it I could try to carry through to a potential future career. So kind of joining the dots between “here’s what I learnt at University and the skillset that I have and here’s the problems that I truly want to solve in the world”. How do I get those two worlds to collide? What's the kind of overlap and realising that we could start and run businesses in Australia that used profits to help fund projects in different parts of the developing world to improve social mobility and for me, that was this kind of beautiful moment where capitalism started to not make me feel icky for the first time and as a result it, you know, it just felt right and I knew that that was kind of what was … what I wanted to go on and explore next and try and prove was, you know, a new different better way of doing things. There’s something about the developing world that I find really fascinating because there’s innovation, there’s the scrappiness to … scrappiness as in the ability for people to get things done in ways that you never would have thought of, that is bred in that environment that we often miss in Australia and the US and other more developed parts of the world and I think I hadn’t truly unpacked what I was really interested in in that environment until spending some time thinking about it and realising that what I found really interesting was, you know, why myself or someone born in Australia or the UK would have these vastly different set of opportunities available to them than someone that was born in, you know, somewhere in Southeast Asia or somewhere else in the developing world. They might be born one side of an invisible border to someone else 100 metres away and again, the two sets of opportunities available to those individuals could be vastly vastly different, you know, North Korea and South Korea is a great example. I mean there it’s not an invisible border, it’s a very much visible border but I think the realisation that billions of people with access to adequate sanitation, there’s hundreds of millions without adult literacy, without, you know, clean water, without potentially debilitating eyesight that can easily be restored. All of those people, engineers, there’s inventors, there’s entrepreneurs, there’s musicians, there’s artists. There’s all sorts of people that exist in that part of the population, that may never ever be able to see what their true potential is because they’re just … need to stay focussed on survival and, you know, doing the best that they can and to me that massive massive untapped potential, I think, is one of the most unfortunate things about the state of the world that we currently live in and if we could somehow figure out how to tap into that, we might have many more Einsteins, Picassos, you know, brilliant brilliant thinkers, doers, out there in the world that would make the world a vastly different place and that’s I think what is truly where my passion lies.
Jenelle: It’s so interesting listening to you Simon because to me, as I listen to you, you’ve … it feels like you’ve got that really interesting combination of being highly instinctive, ie you listen to the pit of your stomach and you think “oh this feels icky, what is that about” and highly cerebral, like an engineer who’s thinking through the mechanics of a business model and how could we, you know, systemically change all that sort of stuff. It’s a really interesting blend, I think, of both sides of your brain and the way that you operate. Do you see it that way as well, that you are sort of head and heart?
Simon: Yeah, I mean I’ve always thought about it slightly different to that in that, you know, like I understand brand and marketing which for me are about emotion and the way that you react to something emotionally and the feeling that things give you but can also, you know, I understand the numbers and the metrics and love, that side of things as well. So, I guess with a permanent business lens on, that’s the way I go. I think about the left and the right sides of the brain but maybe … you know, maybe I think you’re kind of describing it in a slightly different way that perhaps, you know, is maybe more contextual from a psychology perspective but yeah.
Jenelle: Maybe! Its … just sort of thinking about that, those different elements. There’s a really interesting just the position of the irreverence and the humour of your company name and the brand, with the gravity of the cause. How does that play out in your organisational culture, people that work with you and how that sort of rings through your organisation?
Simon: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So the way that we think about culture, and it’s taken us a while to kind of codify this and realise, you know, what's the magic that’s in there but the way that we think about it now is, you know, we’re trying to optimise, for culture we’re often thinking about how we optimise for happiness because we believe a happy workforce is the most productive, the most resilient and the most helpful. I think 30/40 years ago, if you asked, you know, workplace experts how do you make people more happy, the common answer would have been “well you need to pay them more money and give them more pay increases and something to shoot for” but I think today, we actually know that that’s not true and we subscribe to Dan Pinks theory that he talks about in his book “Drive” and his Ted Talk, he talks about motivation. I think it’s a pretty good proxy for happiness. So he says that it comes from autonomy where you’re setting clear goals for people, then getting out of their way and allowing them to achieve them. Mastery where people are working on core skill sets that they truly want to master themselves and purpose where they understand how the work that they’re doing today ultimately ladders up to the greater good and so if you think about our organisation, purpose is such a deep part of our DNA which we’re very lucky. Every organisation has purpose. It’s a deeper part of our DNA than it is for a lot of organisations. So we have to think, you know, not … carefully about not what that purpose is but how we connect our team into that purpose and we do that by thinking about, you know, what are the metrics that we’re setting in the company and how do those metrics flow through to the impact that we’re trying to create, be it our social impact or our environmental impact and the, you know, the gold standard, what we’re trying to shoot for is getting to a place where every team member could say “I’m doing this task today because I know that if I get it right, it achieves this which allows the company to get to its impact that it’s trying to achieve at the end of this year or in five years, at the end of our 30 year horizon that we’re shooting for”, and that’s kind of the gold standard that we try to get to. We’re not perfect so I think we’ve gone through phases where our culture has been incredible and we’ve gone through phases where it’s taken hits because we’ve not got one or all of those things working perfectly well and culture, as you know, it’s something that’s living and its changing and it grows and it shrinks and, you know, I think of it a little bit like a sourdough culture or a kombucha culture. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a sourdough culture but if …
Jenelle: No, but I’ve had sourdough [laugh], don’t know about sourdough culture!
Simon: Yeah, if you forget to feed it, it like starts to smell funny and goes like a funky colour. If you feed it too much, that’s not good either [laugh], its very kind of delicate and I think that … you know, delicate is not the right word but culture is something that you have to constantly work on to, you know, to keep it really great and it changes and it goes through periods where it’s better, yeah and so I think that’s kind of very much true for our culture as well and when we’re going through those phases where we’re not getting it 100% right, it’s often because we’re not, you know, we’re doing something that’s making it harder for autonomy to be pervasive in the organisation or we’ve moved away from the checks and balances that we have in place to ensure that everyone’s working on mastering a core skillset that they truly want to or, you know, we’ve let the distance between our purpose and our team grow too big. You know, it’s one of those three things that we’re not getting right over time that … well we’re getting all of those things really right over time that leads to a great culture or a culture that needs a little bit of work to get it back to its true potential.
Jenelle: So, a couple of things. One, I love that you have, I guess, being clear on what you mean by happiness because I think that term is … can be quite fraught and I think it can be an ideal state that … or a state that people push to be ideal. Obviously we experience things like sadness, that’s okay, that’s a normal and natural emotion but I think is it distilled by motivation, mastering purpose is a really good way to think about that. How do you know when your culture is not quite right? You just said there, you know, it’s this thing that has to be nurtured and sometimes we don’t always get it right. How do you know?
Simon: I think it’s like any … it’s like any relationship. You know part of it is, you know, like reading the room and part of it is asking [laugh].
Jenelle: Yep.
Simon: Hey, you know, like how’s our relationship going at the moment? What do we need to work on? And so we’re all always reading the room but then we also do bi-annual, you know, twice a year culture app surveys for our team to understand what the engagement score looks like overall and then how we’re going and the buckets that we’re working on to try and improve and so we constantly have, in our case, okay ours or goals that we are setting to improve or work on different parts of our company culture, whether that’s our enablement or yeah, other parts of our culture, we’re constantly looking at those and thinking about how we can intentionally work on them and improve them over time and that’s hard. It’s a really hard thing to … it takes times, there’s no quick wins. There are some quick wins but mostly not quick wins [laugh] and so it’s, you know, something you have to really intentional and meaningful about how you approach that work. I should say we have a whole people and culture team as well. So this is what they think about day in, day out. It’s not something that just sort of happens in the background. It’s like a very large part of our organisation and culture is something that the whole company talks about, kind of like innovation. You might have an innovation team but every part of the business is responsible for innovation as well and that sort of broadly how we think about culture.
Jenelle: So zooming back out then to, you know, the way that you run your business model and the way that you are trying to change or embody the change of a different way of using capitalism. How are you going about trying to engender that more broadly than just your own organisation or is it by showing people through your organisation that there is another way?
Simon: So our company’s mission is to make sure that everyone in the world has access to a clean toilet and clean water and we want to do that by 2050, which is 28 years away from where we are today. There’s about two billion people globally that don’t have access to adequate sanitation today so this is a really crazy huge lofty goal that we’re going to try and achieve. We will not get there by ourselves. You know, we need many other organisations that are attacking the same goal but we think that we can, you know, attack part of it, we can raise awareness about it, we can also try to further innovation and new technology that will help to achieve these things and hopefully we can, you know, get all the way there in 28 years from now but I think a few years ago, we realised that if we pull that off and it is an insanely lofty goal that will be incredibly hard to achieve, so if we pull it off it will be miraculous, you know, incredible amazing outcome, very very hard to do. If we do pull that off, we’re going to be just so narrowly focussed on making it happen that we realise that there are a lot of these other kind of big social challenges, social problems that are out there in the world that we would never ever be able to touch ourselves cos we’d be so focussed on sanitation and clean water and so a few years ago, we asked ourselves if we’re truly trying to have the most impact in the world, is it right to be so narrowly focussed on, you know, sanitation and clean water and we came to the realisation that yes it is. This is a very hard goal to bring to life so we need to have this very narrow focus but we can potentially impact some of these other areas if we can show that our business model can achieve financial returns for its shareholders at scale whilst also generating social impact at scale and if we can do those two things together, then we’ll start to bring more entrepreneurs and more investors into this space that we’re in, to hopefully create many more business models like ours hopefully. Better than ours cos they’ll be able to iterate and improve on what we’ve done and think about things differently and hopefully be smarter than us, to have many more, you know, thousands of more business models that can go out and solve some of these other social problems that we have in the world. And so, we see our role in sort of almost being kind of a lighthouse for this sector, this space that we’re in, to do those two things. To show that we can generate financial returns at scale whilst also generating social impact at scale and that this business model, you know, therefore can … can work in ways that pave the way for a different way of doing capitalism and if we can get that right, then will enable many more people to come into this space.
Jenelle: And what will it take to achieve that lofty goal. Like what is the … what has to change in the world in order for 28 years time, for us to be sitting down, looking as young as we both still do [laugh] and saying “we did it”. Like what has to change?
Simon: I mean we might look younger in 28 years time …
Jenelle: True true [laugh].
Simon: … that much better [laugh]. What has to change? I don’t know if that much does have to change. I think that, you know, what our business does is that it appeals to that little part of everyone that wants to make the world a better place and I think that exists in everyone. It’s just bigger in some people than it is in others and so products like us that, you know, the total address for market is every single person in the world that today uses toilet paper or tissues or kitchen towels and that market size is growing because there’s more people that are starting to use toilet paper and kitchen towels and tissues for the first time. As we see, you know, incomes rising around the world. So what has to change? I don’t think we have to change, you know, behaviour or anything else. I think we just need to make our products available in more places to, you know, so more people can use them so that we are able to raise more awareness around what we’re doing, raise more capital for what we’re doing. Probably the one thing that does have to change is on the technology side. You know, toilets are very effective in countries that have really good plumbing. They’re not as effective in countries that don’t have great plumbing and this isn’t a plumbing problem. This is a toilets problem. We need to figure out how we can make highly effective toilets work in unplumbed environments because you’re never going to be able to plumb, you know, really dense urban slums. You’re never going to be able to plumb very difficult to reach regional areas in relatively poor parts of the world. So you know, I think the technology around toilets and sanitation has to shift [overtalking] …
Jenelle: Are you working with providers on that element or is it that the proceeds goes to organisations to work on it? Like how close to that line of technological innovation are you?
Simon: Yes, so we’ve always said, you know, we know more about toilets than 99.99% of the population but there’s still people out there that knows a hell of a lot more than we do. So let's go and find them and fund them. You know, let's be the experts on selling toilet paper that has a social mission and find other people to be the experts on implementing on how to go about solving the sanitation problem. So we partner up with organisations that are doing that work. A great example on the technology side is an organisation that we work with called Sanergy in Kenya who basically work in the urban slums of Kenya. As I said before, very difficult to plumb so they’ve built above ground sanitation solutions. Toilets essentially with canister in them that you can put lids on, remove the waste, put it onto a trolley, take it out of the slum on a trolley down the very narrow streets because you can’t drive cars through them and then load that waste up onto trucks that get taken away for offsite processing. They’re then mixed with, you know, restaurant waste and black soldier flies come and eat that waste and then the black soldier flies are essentially harvested and farmed and turned into pet stock, you know, live pet stock feed or into fertiliser that gets used to increase crop yields and so they’re able to monetise the waste stream to bring down the cost of putting more toilets into those areas and the big bet that they’re making is if they can get the costs of putting a toilet into around US$10 a head, then it becomes more cost effective for the government to go and fund toilets for everyone living in the urban slums than it does to allow the sanitation problem to exist because the public health cost of the sanitation problem is greater than US$10 a head. And so it becomes economically viable for the government to step in and provide sanitation to the eight million people living in the urban slums of Kenya but this then becomes a global and scalable solution that can be rolled out in other parts of the world as well. So the technology there is not, you know, it’s not electrons, it’s not computer chips, it’s how you supercharge, you know, harvesting of waste essentially and that’s a really exciting area that we’re seeing many companies around the world start to tackle and if we can get that right, then it will, you know, fundamentally change the way that sanitation works in lots of parts of the world.
Jenelle: Fascinating. Speaking of, you know, you being able to broaden your impact by with more people buying the product, I’ve got to talk about covid. That was a bit of a gift to a toilet paper company that precisely no one saw coming or maybe you did, I don’t know but how did all that panic buying of toilet paper impact your business.
Simon: [laugh], yeah I think it was … it was a shock for us [laughing] as well. So, you know, I think I was actually parental leave on the end of February/early March and I think I got woken up by a phone call from a, you know, a radio station at 6.30 in the morning saying “hey, can you comment on the phenomenon that we’re seeing”. I was “okay let me … let me understand [overtalking and laughter] and so you know, the story there was, I think on the first of March we did like a two times regular day of sales. On the second of March we did a five times day of sales. The third of March we did 12 times day of sales. The fourth of March we were going to do a 30 to 40 times day of sales. So more than a month of sales in a day. I think at our peak, selling 28 rolls of paper every second which I’ve got a feeling made us, you know, the largest toilet paper retailer in Australia in that moment and so we ended up having to move our store to sold out to make sure that we protected inventory for our subscribers. We want to make sure to never runout of product again and so we did that and turned on email signups. You’d be able to find out when we were back in stock. We expected a few thousand people to sign up for that wait list but ended up with more than half a million people on that waiting list which was a bit of a shock …
Jenelle: Unbelievable!
Simon: … so, you know, I think out team at that moment, the operations side of the team were tearing their hair out, freaking out about how we were going to deal with this. The marketing side of the team were, you know, their eyes were lit up realising that they’d kind of hit this … this incredible marketing pipeline for us to figure out how we could kind of work with but, you know, the team I think were also realising that it was this sign of this horrible state that the world had somehow got itself into and that if we could figure out how to solve this problem and get toilet paper to the most people possible, it would result in an amazing donation come end of financial year and so everyone, you know, started working early mornings and late nights trying to figure out how we could break the back of this problem and eventually figured out that we could repack our large 48 roll boxes into smaller packs so we had more orders that we could ship. We hired and trained 25 freelances in a week to triple our customer service capacity which removed that bottleneck and then we essentially set up an “invitation only” version of our website and invited just enough people through that store every day to take our warehouses and our careers to their maximum daily limits before the wheels would fall off and so we ran this, you know, secret online toilet paper club through our website for about eight weeks before we were able to officially come back in stock in June of 2020 and then the icing on top was getting to the end of June and making a 5.85 million dollar donation …
Jenelle: Wow!
Simon: … which, you know, we knew the 2020 donation was going to be a good one coming into February and then March to May just took it from, you know, round to two and a half million up to just way higher than what we had anticipated and so that was an amazing moment for the team to see that really direct connection between the work that they’d done to the impacts that we were then going to be able to create. What I think we hadn’t appreciated was that that wasn’t the end of the lockdown for most of our Victorian team and the several months after that were incredibly challenging so, you know, I think from a culture perspective, that was when we really had to take a step back and think creatively about what we can do to make sure we’re not pushing people to a state of burnout because, you know, people’s mental state through those months were in a challenging place and that made it very hard to make all sorts of decisions about how and when people should take time off. I know I had a lot of leave cancelled, for example, and I think what we ended up seeing through particularly August/September was that the capacity of our team just wasn’t where it previously had been because everyone was incredibly burnt out from the several months prior to that and as a result, we ended up saying in, I think September of that year, that we were going to give everyone in the company an extra week off. We said if you take one day of annual leave, we’ll give you four days of leave for free. We’re going to do it two weeks from now so you don’t have a choice to get your work done, you just have to figure out what you’re going to deprioritise and we’re going to do it over two weeks and the entire company will take one of those two weeks off with 50% off in the first week, 50% in the second week and then the other week, when you’re on, we’re going to call that a slow week and cancel all standing meetings through that week so that there’s no expectations of anyone in the team that they’re letting anyone else down by being away from their work for the work that they’re off. And so, coming back from that, I think we saw … it was a huge productivity boost. 62% of the company that we surveyed said that they experienced an increase in productivity coming back from that period, a significant increase in productivity and so now every quarter we run one of these slow weeks which we’re actually on at that moment, where we cancel all standing meetings for the week and allow people to focus on their big rocks for the quarter, to think about, you know, what they’re trying to achieve before the end of the quarter and then trying to move them forward as much as they can, in that week that we have. So it’s been a big sort of shift for us in how we think about productivity and the role that always being on and meetings can kind of create in leading to burnout as well.
Jenelle: Ah, it’s a really important … really important insight and thank you for sharing that and what great initiatives there. You know, as you were speaking, I was thinking … was there, I mean it just occurred to me right now, but I mean I think it’s fascinating that there was this panic buying on toilet paper, you know, it felt really random but I wonder, is there something about the … in crisis people realised that … like one of the worse things would be that they could not have access to something like that …
Simon: To a toilet
Jenelle: … but to a toilet or to cleanliness or to sanitation, I don’t know, maybe I’m overreaching here and was that … is there not the opportunity to equate this to, well this is how a massive part of the world lives all the time. This is exactly what we’re trying to solve.
Simon: Yeah totally. I think one of the … one of the things that we talked about in that moment was, you know, people here are freaking out about not getting access to toilet paper …
Jenelle: Yep, it’s a live reality for so many!
Simon: … yeah, for two billion people not having access to a toilet, let alone toilet paper so it was … I think we tried to encourage people to sort of have empathy for what was going on in the rest of the world at that moment in time. Be it neighbours internationally without access to toilets or in some cases in Australia as well but also, you know, our neighbours closer to home who might not … who might have run out of product and our customers had a box of 48 rolls potentially sitting in their cupboard. And so we were trying to encourage people to, you know, have that empathy and think about what they could do in those different scenarios and yeah, we talked about ‘plying it forward’ and making sure that people were giving rolls to other people. It was lovely to kind of see that, take off on social media through those couple of months as well. Especially for our subscribers who could … they could order from us still because we protected inventory to make sure that they would never run out and so they were the, you know, the only people in all of Australia, the US and the UK that were able to order toilet paper at will [laugh].
Jenelle: Now, you talk about empathy there Simon and I think of storytelling is quite a powerful way for people to be empathetic, whichever way you go, on the plight of others. For people who have heard you speak or anyone who’s visited the Who Gives A Crap website, as I have, it’s very clear to me that you are storytellers and I wonder, you know, how have … have you been intentional about that, have you honed the skills of storytelling of your business, are there moments of stories or stories that, you know, kind of stand out as those pivotal critical moments of change?
Simon: So first of all I should say that one of my co-founders is the expert at this so, you know, it’s something that we all love doing and I guess, developed more skills on over the years but it’s also something that some people really naturally have and he’s one of those people that really naturally has it. So I think from the outside looking in, sometimes you see leaders of companies and think that they’re great at everything and that’s how they’re successful but the reality is that often leaders are very good at, you know, one/two maybe three things and terrible at a lot of other things and they surround themselves with other people who can kind of … who can cover those bases and Danny’s who we bring into, you know, any situation where we’re thinking about how do we craft this story to get the most impact and we do that through everything, whether it’s, you know, internally when we’re doing our monthly “all hands” which we call our Town Halls, whether it’s annually with our annual strategies. You know, we think really carefully about the story that we weave through those strategies that everyone can see how they connect together and how they connect into the impact of the organisation. One of my favourite examples of this was when we brought investors into our business for the first time. So, you know, an investor pitch and presentation is usually a pretty stale boring presentations that’s got a lot … I mean some people get excited about it but most people would find it pretty boring …
Jenelle: Yep!
Simon: … a lot of numbers, a lot of jargon and so we really said “how do we let Who Gives A Crap brand shine through in a moment that is typically, you know, done in a very kind of square box and nothing really is allowed outside of those edges and so we put together a deck that kind of had a narrative through it of the Who Gives A Crap journey and then, if you read really carefully, you’d find jokes embedded into the footnotes. I think there was a slide that talked about how serious we were about, you know, going about what we were going to do next and then the next slide said “but not too serious” and had our top five toilet jokes that …
Jenelle: [laughing]
Simon: And then we had a dataroom, which again is, you know, an even more serious part of the investor kind of process where you essentially allow investors to go through all of your financial files and corporate files and make sure that everything is in order. We had a file of links that we put into the dataroom that when you opened it up was links, whether that was a linksys, you know, modem from the 90s or, you know, a chainlink fence. So there were all these different images of different types of links so it was kind of a visual pun joke that was great and then we had another … I think we had a board of dogrectors and how, you know, five different dogs that were the, you know, the Chief of Naps and the Chief …
Jenelle: Love it and how did these investors react?
Simon: It was amazing cos we didn’t … we wouldn’t say anything until you jump onto these calls and they’d sort of, you know, [laugh], sometimes not react and sometimes we’d just sort of break out laughing and … but I think it was … it was really amazing that they said to us “you know, we’ve been through so many datarooms and that was by far the most fun we’ve ever had in a dataroom”. And to them, it showed that if we can think about how you bring brand into an environment that brand has previously never existed in, then we can do that in parts of people’s households, in parts of people’s lives, in parts of people’s minds, where brands previously have not existing in ways that are meaningful and so it kind of just illustrated the way that we think about the opportunities to lean into places that sometimes don’t get leaned into and I think that was the most powerful part of it, was that it was kind of showing through an example of, you know, what's possible in the way that we see the world is a bit different to other people.
Jenelle: And is Danny one of the people who architected your … you know, you’re sitting on a toilet until you raise $50,000 for toilet paper [laugh]. It’s a lot of toilet contemplation time, I’ve got to say!
Simon: Yeah, no. Danny … Danny was very much behind the dataroom. He looked at it and said “this is really boring, how do we make this a bit more Who Gives A Crap. So that’s was 100% his initiative and then he sort of said “okay, let's brief it out to our creative team and see what they can come up with” and I think the Board of Dogrectors and the file of very important links, I think was what it was called, were two of the things that came out of that very serious brief that came from us but he … no, I think he would love to claim the toilet. That was actually someone else incredibly creative who worked on our very first crowd funding campaign and he said “you know, if we’re truly trying to get this viral, I don’t think we’re going to get there. We need to have something else to get people’s attention” and yeah, I remember jumping onto one of the calls, just before we were going to go on shoot the crowd funding campaign video and he said “I think what’s missing is that you need to shoot this on a toilet and pledge to not get off the toilet until you’ve presold the first $50,000 worth of product.”
Jenelle: How long … how long did you sit on that toilet for?
Simon: I mean I was prepared to sit there for a week but it ended up taking 50 hours, 50 horrible never to be repeated 50 hours of my life.
Jenelle: Oh, what was that like to finally get off that seat?
Simon: Um …
Jenelle: Numb bum!
Simon: I don’t know if you’re ever stayed awake continuously for 50 hours [laugh] but you essentially start hallucinating so the world was kind of not 100% how it should be [laughing] at the time. My bum didn’t actually hurt as much as my calves so I think …
Jenelle: Right!
Simon: … I kind of did some pretty serious nerve damage and blood flow damage and had to go and get checked out for deep vein thrombosis. Fortunately got the all clear and everything was fine but yeah, so have to be a little bit careful with my legs, you know, ten years later [laugh].
Jenelle: Geez Simon, that is really committed to the cause I must say!
Simon: But I think, in my mind when we did that, I would be able to get off the toilet and kind of sticky tape my hand, you know, gaffer tape my hand to the toilet and have a nap overnight but then we ended up being really popular in Brazil and Greece, which when you combine that with Australia and North America, we ended up with 24 hour coverage and as a result, you know, we realised that if I got off the toilet, the joke would be up and viewers would go away and so I just had to stay on there and luckily, you know, the timing of it enabled us to make it all work which was fortunate [laugh].
Jenelle: Unbelievable! So tell me Simon after all of this fascinating stuff we’ve been hearing about you, what have you learnt about yourself as a leader over all these years?
Simon: Um … what have I learnt about myself as a leader! I think the journey that you get to go on in a high growth organisation is incredibly humbling because you’re just constantly doing things that you don’t know how to do. You know, you’re out 40 to 60% as good as something as what you should really be and you’re just trying to figure out how to do it as quickly as you possibly can and so it’s an amazing journey cos you have to learn things incredibly fast which I find really exhilarating and exciting. It’s really exhausting as well and as a result, the role of how you have to lead changes the entire way through that journey very very quickly and that’s probably, you know, quite different in organisations that have a head count that’s more stable. Whereas we’re … we tend to be adding, you know, 50 to 100% of our head count in every year consistently.
Jenelle: So what ways has your leadership evolved as the head count changes?
Simon: So I think when you’re a team of one to five people, you are very much doing and so you’re leading by example and bringing people around problems and figuring out solutions to them and really kind of hands on and involved and so your leadership is often quite physical in terms of doing things and academic in terms of helping people solve problems. As you get to a bigger team, it then becomes about managing. So how do I … how do I make sure that these individuals have got … are feeling safe and supported and have got the support that they need to be able to carry out the problems, that … you know, to solve the problems that are in front of us to get us to where we need to go. As the team has grown above 100 people, I think leadership becomes more about creating a really inspiring vision that people believe in and can get behind and feel inspired to carry out their best work and so often that requires not just the building of the vision or not just often, but all the time that requires. Not just the building of the vision but constantly bringing people back to it to inspire people to, you know, get excited to solve very challenging problems and understand how the work that they’re doing is ultimately connecting into what we’re all trying to achieve together and the role that they play in that is, you know, incredibly important and powerful. I can’t comment, you know, what happens when you get above 200 people cos that’s where we’re at today but …
Jenelle: [laugh] I’ll let you know that but yeah!
Simon: … I’m sure it keeps going. Yeah, no doubt lots of books that I could read about that, that next stage of growth but that’s sort of where we’re at today and … and I think the challenge is that its … you form habits at every stage and so you’re constantly having to say “I’ve got to stop doing those things that were the right thing to do 12 months ago cos now I need to focus on this very different way of us working in order to make sure that we’re getting to where we need to go” and that’s the biggest challenge in that … in that leadership style role and that high growth environment, I think.
Jenelle: I am so conscious of how many questions I’ve asked you, especially about Who Gives A Crap and there’s a whole other life you’ve led with leading an organisation called Shebeen. You’ve worked in the … I think you’re Australia’s first fellow of the Unreasonable List Institute or the Unreasonable Institute …
Simon: Yeah.
Jenelle: … you’ve worked in NGOs in South Africa. There’s so much there to unpack and I know we’re running short on time. I’d like to, maybe just an open question about those prior experiences. Anything from there that you would call out as being fundamental to, I guess, who you are and the work that you’ve been doing that you’ve taken from there.
Simon: Fundamental to who I am! You know, I think all of those experiences are so I’m a big believer in “no regrets” and that everything you’ve done has kind of led to where you are today and so having regrets just means that if you’d done things differently, you’d probably wouldn’t be where you are right now and to appreciate where we are now, I think is the most important thing. So I think in terms of, you know, what's been really instrumental to our work, the Unreasonable Institute was probably a really stand out experience that, you know, we don’t probably talk about that much. Jahan and I were both there and we met Danny, our other co-founder while we were there. So Jahan and I were fellows and Danny was a mentor and so that’s been hugely instrumental to the success of Who Gives A Crap. I don’t know if we could have got to where we are without that but on top of that, the Unreasonable Institute was a social business incubator that promised to take, from an idea through to a … something that you go and execute on in the 10 weeks of the programme …
Jenelle: Sorry, I’m just going to ask. Was that an intentional connection to the George Bernard Shaw Unreasonable or is it coincidence?
Simon: Yeah, it was. Yes so that’s where I first became aware of the George Bernard Shaw quote which has kind of stuck with me ever since because I think it really aptly described exactly what they were trying to do with the Institute as well as the types of people that ended up, you know, spending time there and so really really instrumental for us. A lot of incredible mentors that helped us hone our skills around and knowledge around philanthropy, how supermarkets worked, how to bring CPG brands to life, that, you know, I don’t think we could have ever got to where we are without those ten weeks. So really amazing experience and then yeah, as you said, the quote I gave before was, you know, what inspired the name of the Institute, they were very much supportive of trying to foster unreasonable men and women to go out and create progress.
Jenelle: Love that. Now finally, before I get to the fast three anyway, yours is a high pun density business, as you’ve said. You have excellent metrics like PTR – poke through rates. Kind of gross but hilarious all at the same time. You claim, I think somewhere in your website I read, 1,200% more puns that any other business. So 13 years in Simon, are you seeing any slowdowns in the pun factors.
Simon: No I think … I don’t know if we’ll ever see a slowdown. I think … I think there’s an endless amount of pun density that continues being explored for many many years to come. Something that we’re excited about, you know, launching new brands which enables us to have new brand names that have new puns tied into them. So maybe that’s another way that we can exponentially increase the number of puns that we have available to us [laugh].
Jenelle: I love it. Its very “punny”. So finally three for you Simon and don’t overthink this one. Tell me, what are you reading watching or listening to right now?
Simon: So reading – I haven’t done as much as what I used to cos we’ve got young kids which seems to make reading quite challenging but I recently finally read Peter Singer’s, I think “it’s a life you can save” …
Jenelle: Okay!
Simon: … which probably should have read ten years ago when it first came out but really kind of accurately described how we think about, you know, our role in the world and that there is a base level of income that’s enough to get by on and once you have more money than that, you know, the additional happiness and utility you get from it is declining, yet there’s people all over the world that could have their eyesight restored for under a hundred dollars, that dying of diarrhoea related diseases cos they don’t have access to a toilet, that a donation to the organisations that could help solve those problems can massively change someone’s life, if not save it. And so it’s a really kind of great philosophical view of the world that I think aligns to how we think about, you know, building Who Gives A Crap and what our role in this world looks like as well.
Jenelle: What would you say your super power is? Now that can be something additive to the world or it can be a useless party trick. What’s yours?
Simon: We had to do this for work recently to try and figure out what my super power was and what we came up with was that I can see the forest and the trees. So I love the big picture but I also love getting right down into the detail and understanding the menusa of how something works and what drives them, what makes it successful and to me …
Jenelle: That’s a pretty awesome super power I have to say!
Simon: … its, you know, it’s the art and the science of it …
Jenelle: Yeah.
Simon: … kind of coming together, so yeah, love it.
Jenelle: And if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be?
Simon: I mean I think the Bernard Shaw quote that we talked about before is a beautiful one, doesn’t make much sense on a billboard probably. I’d probably … I don’t know who said this but “every dollar you spend is a vote for the future you want to live in” I think is a very powerful way to think about the world because we all spend money and that has the potential to shift the way that demand and the economy works and Who Gives A Crap is built on that belief that there was all of this demand for products that more closely align with people’s ethics and values than what was currently available and I think we’ve hopefully proved that out and hopefully paved the way for people to be able to spend many more dollars in ways that more closely align to the future they want the world to be.
Jenelle: What a powerful powerful quote. I absolutely love that. Simon, I really want to thank you for your time. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and have taken a lot of things away from it. I think it will be one, a conversation that will continue to play back in my mind. I’m grateful for you intergenerational stubbornness, grateful to your Dad to instilling it in you and I can’t wait to see what your son does with those skills and I think the ability to turn some of those attributes that we traditionally quell or quash, you know, stubbornness, polarising views, belief that there is another way to do this, is exactly what we need in this world, channel towards good of course. I think that your ability to have shown there’s a different way to do capitalism and live and breathe that is incredibly powerful. I think that your views about culture and how intentional you are around fostering and optimising a culture that’s optimised for happiness and by that, you talk about, you know, motivation and mastering a purpose and, you know, I will think of sourdough culture now when I think about our organisation. I love that you have the lofty goal that you do and I do believe that you are the lighthouse that shows that we can generate social and business outcomes at scale. I also think the fact that you use and you live the power of … I was going to say storytelling before but I think its humour and humour allows us to bring levity to a, you know, serious situations and long may you continue to think outside the bowl [laugh] and you know, here’s to an endless pun density factor for the rest of our lives. Thank you so much for everything you’re doing and the way that you think and move in the world.
Simon: Yeah, thank you, its been great to chat, really enjoyed it.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Audette Excel AO
Founder and Chair, Adara Group

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: Hi I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 2 of ‘The Change Happens’ podcast where we continue to have conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way.
Now if you haven’t listened to the podcast before, I do encourage you to go back and have a listen to Season 1. We’ve had some cracker guests and certainly today’s guest will be another case in point. Today, I’ve asked the Pioneer of the Business For Purpose Model or Debt Excel to join me to explain how this concept works and her incredible journey to getting there. A few minutes into a conversation with Audette and you can’t help but be hit by two things. She truly is a citizen of the globe and she’s a formidable person of many talents, not afraid to experience and drive change.
Audette grew up in New Zealand. Studied and worked in Law before moving to Hong Kong. Running a Bermuda Bank and sharing the Island’s stock exchange. She even signed the Bermudian $5 note while working on the Board of the Financial Regulator.
In 1998 she shifted gears, founding her own philanthropic business the Adara Group. It’s a fascinating model which consists of an investment banking advisory business as well as a not-for-profit international development business. Now what’s fascinating about this is that all of the profits generated from the investment banking side are used to fund the philanthropic development work that Adara does in Uganda and Nepal. The aim is to bridge the gap between for profit and for purpose modelled organisations. Bearing all that in mind, it makes absolute sense that Audette calls herself a ‘leftie’ who loves a deal.
Now Audette has had an unbelievably long and impressive list of awards and accolades and if I was to try and run through them, I’d guarantee you, you’ll be here all day and I’m actually keen to speak to her. So I’m going to say amongst the many, many titles she has, Audette was awarded an Order of Australia in 2013 for her service to humanity and leading philanthropist by Philanthropy Australia in 2016.
The former ‘pink haired’/’sky diving’ self-described wild child feminist/activist who fights for human rights every single day is an absolute force and I’m totally delighted to have her join me for this discussion today.
Audette, welcome.
Audette: Thank you Jenelle. I’m really delighted to be here with you. Crikey that’s quite an introduction!
Jenelle: It is indeed! I loved writing it because there is just so much to try to summarise in there.
Audette: I’m delighted to be here with you. I love the fact that you’re opening this space and discussions about change and how we lead into this new world. I’m really delighted to be a part of it. Thanks for having me on.
Jenelle: Oh so much to get into but I’m going to start the conversation with an understanding of the impact of COVID on your world. It’s hard to ignore the circumstances that we find ourselves in, and have found ourselves in over the last year - across your companies, your teams and the populations you serve.
Jenelle: Now I know you were on a plane coming home from New York. You were planning Adara’s emergency response in March last year in 2020 and in one week you decided to arrange for your workforce, across multiple countries to go to work from home.
Take me through that time. What was going through your head? I can only imagine the stream of thoughts that were happening and how did you go about getting people safe? Accessing technology? And working productively for their respective communities? Some of which would have been incredibly challenging to work through.
Audette: Yeah I mean what a time in our world that was and, still is of course and I think millions of people our mind was going at a thousand million miles an hour trying to figure all that out. I’d been in New York late February/early March, New York and Boston and it was very apparent over there that the world was going to need to close down and that COVID was going to become incredibly serious. So that long flight back from New York to Sydney I had a lot of time, whatever it takes 28 hours. For that entire flight I was really thinking the things you’re talking about. How can I keep everyone safe? How can we do the work and serve? What tools are we going to have in our toolkit to provide service cause as you know we’re health and education service deliverers in remote communities. How are we going to manage?
I had sort of mapped a plan so by the time I landed and went into the office, our poor head of IT, this wonderful, very senior guy David. I said to him “David, we’re going to go to work from home all over the world within one week”. I think he’ll forever remember that conversation. Once I’d climbed the mountain of figuring out what we needed to do, the rest was just implementation and isn’t that the case so often in life. Once you make the decision it’s all about effective implementation. That was about occupational health and safety. About getting people set up from home and in the countries we work in that’s not necessarily so easy. It was also about the global leadership team coming to grips with the fact we had to throw out the plan that we’d written for the year and start all over again – with this key question “What tools do we have in our toolkit now?”
It was a very, very intense time. I think the whole global team is very proud of how we managed it, but weirdly having 28 hours to sit on a plane on my own quietly and map my way through as the Leader of the Organisation was actually a bit of a gift looking back.
Jenelle: Yeah I can imagine it. Look I think your point is a good one the mental shift around “What is it that we’re going to do?” as opposed to the execution side of things. Both are really critical in that equation but this one in particular would have been so challenging. It’s one thing to make such a big call. As you said the world is going to close which is a really interesting sentence to wrap your head around, right? I can only imagine what David’s reactions or his face would have looked like when you landed and said that, but then implementing it. When I think about Uganda and Nepal where you do so much work, the infrastructure isn’t there. The backbone of the economy is not there, incredible remote locations. The implementation side of that is no small thing. Where do you start with that?
Audette: Yeah its massive isn’t it. There was a couple of advantages we had. The first is we’re a global organisation. We’ve learnt over the years how to work virtually with each other even though we’re also frontline service deliverers. We have teams of people who know about whether it’s Zoom, or Skype and SMS and WhatsApp and who are used to dealing with their colleagues. We run like one team even though we’re all around the world. We’ve also learnt our way into - How do you work in low resource settings? How do you make sure you’ve got enough battery backup? How do you make sure that you’ve got the key equipment you need? So we had some advantage in that.
Audette: I think to it was a testament to the quality of the Global Leadership Team in particular and the teams that flow underneath them that the seriousness of the situation was such that, it was a bit of a call to arms in a way. It wasn’t just a directive from leadership it was built from the ground up. We need to re-plan everything right now. Every single member of the organisation is involved in this process and we brought it up very fast. We have a brilliant Global Leadership Team. There were a few things that were really apparent to us – the simple and obvious stuff. We need to get PPE on the ground immediately. Luckily we do have supply chains but the speed that things were closing and the lack of access to critical lifesaving equipment. A lot of it was about prioritising. When things are really terrible sometimes our brains want to not believe. Avoidance is a great emotional coping strategy.
Jenelle: Fantastic strategy!
Audette: But not in a situation like this. Being able to work through – this really is happening. We have to analyse every single risk. What tools do we have in our toolkit? What are our assets? We’re going into lockdown all over the world. In March when Nepal locked down everywhere was locking down and here we are we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of development specialists, healthcare providers, education specialists, how can we serve people when we’re in that situation? The conversations that came out of that were riveting. For instance, we were one of the first in Nepal to get radio education on the air because our teams realised we’re in 16 schools – they’re all going to close but people are still going to be on the radio. We led the radio education work formal and informal. We were ahead of the government to get that out there and we’re very proud of that because once we sat and thought we can still do that even though we’re sitting in our own homes. We’ve got teachers, they’re in their own homes – they can get on the radio.
Health education work that we do in Uganda. We know that we can do a lot of work by SMS and messaging. It was a riveting period actually in terms of figuring out ‘Gee we can deliver service – even when we’re locked in our homes’, ‘even when the world is closing’ and for the service that has to be delivered in person we can deliver it as safely as we possibly can, if we equip our teams properly. Yeah and some of the things we’re learnt we will carry forward COVID or no COVID.
Jenelle: I was just going to say that. No doubt it’s surfaced some innovations and some learnings and some evolution of work that you’ve been doing that you would take forward.
Audette: No question. We will be better service deliverers going forward. Our teams are blown away that the radio education – let me give you a great example of this. All of a sudden we realised, all these people were tuning into radio education. Illiterate women who never had the chance to go to school are suddenly tuning into radio education. How cool is that!
Jenelle: Very cool. I feel like it’s a rhetorical question but I need to get involved.
Audette: So isn’t it out of adversity you learn, right, you rise. So there is a whole lot of stuff that we’ve done that we’ll take forward into the future and as I say there is a sort of sense of pride in the organisation. “Gee look at that, ok we’ve made mistakes, we always make mistakes and we always face our mistakes, but there is some cool stuff that we did that was going to take us forward”.
Jenelle: I love that and speaking of the word ‘learn’, what you’ve learned in this time. What did you learn about yourself in leading through these turbulent times. Also what did you learn about your team as leaders?

Audette: Yeah let me take that in reverse order. I learnt that my team around the world are even more outstanding than I ever dreamt. Oh my goodness the heroes that I get a chance to stand beside. Not only the depth of thinking and compassion, the effort, in the face of terrible fear, these extraordinary leaders throughout our work, they just stepped up. I can’t even begin to tell you how breath taking some of it was and how honoured I am to work with them. I never thought I underestimated anybody in our team but holy cow when the chips are down you know the quality of leadership. So their ability to turn on the dial. Their ability to be courageous. One thing for us sitting here in Australia (actually our US team have really been in the teeth of it too unfortunately as you know with COVID), but to be sitting here and mandating and coming up with great ideas, it’s another thing to be sitting in Uganda with people with COVID are coming into your project sites and dying. Or to be in Nepal when you’ve got kids in our most remote education sites with COVID and we don’t have any tertiary medical facilities within a day’s walk, it’s a whole other level of courage and leadership. So what did I learn? I learned that if I never understood, I thought I knew how brilliant they were now I really know.
What did I learn about myself? I learned that it’s really hard to lead from behind the line.
Jenelle: What do you mean by that?
Audette: Well I’m a leader who, I’m somebody… When the Nepal earthquake happened in 2015 the first thing I thought after ‘Oh my God is everybody alive?’ ‘Is everybody safe’, was when is the first aeroplane there? I’ve always wanted to lead beside and in front. We’re going over that hell, and I’m going first type leader. That’s not necessarily the right way to lead at all times, but that’s me. So suddenly I had to learn ‘Ok you’ve got to not only lead, you have to hold everybody from behind a screen’ and your job is to keep everybody safe and listen to every voice but you can’t do it beside them physically. You’ve got to do it from behind a screen and gee that was a challenge.
So yes I hope I’m a better leader now, but it was a big learning for me. There was plenty of times I got off my Zoom calls and I put my head on the desk and cried. Yeah I mean it was a big learning.
Jenelle: I just want to stay on that for a moment cause leading from behind it’s an interesting concept, isn’t it? What sorts competencies or traits or attributes did you have to dig deeper on, or call upon in leading from behind that you might not have had to if you were out there at the front?
Audette: Yes it’s a holding right. They really do think that’s the right way to think about it. Leading from behind is a holding. You have to listen more. I think I listened more. I was at some points very directive but I think in general you have to listen more and I had to listen more. There’s a thoughtfulness. There’s a mothering. There’s a caring and compassion when you hold a team that are facing crisis. I had to be more present. I think we’ve all become a bit more present right because we can’t be thinking next week I’m going to New York, the week after that I’m in Nepal.
Jenelle: You have to stay in this moment, right now.
Audette: You have to be right there.
Jenelle: Yeah ok that’s really interesting.
Audette: And you have to be completely available. Emotionally available, available by way of time, available by way of thinking. So yes it’s a different kind of leadership. I hope it’s added another tool in my toolkit. Hope I’m a better leader. Leadership is such a privilege right.
Jenelle: Absolutely.
Audette: For the whole world it was an enormous year.
Jenelle: I imagine in your world when I see photos of you in Uganda and Nepal as I’ve seen many of them. Touch is a big part, you’re wrapping your arms around communities.
Audette: Yes.
Jenelle: There is a whole physicality behind taking resources and seeing it land and seeing it in practice and not being able to do that must have been an incredibly difficult time and continue to be.
Audette: Yeah it’s funny isn’t it? There is a [15.24] grief when you can’t be and everybody is experiencing this in different ways. Physically wrapping your arms around the people that you love or, you care for or, your responsible for. In fact, I was just talking last night to some of our teams and saying “Just wait for the party when we’re all together in Uganda”, “Just wait for the hugging we’re going to be doing when we get back together”. Nepal is going to be the same. It’s not just me. It’s not just Adara. Not just one country. This is something our whole world is going through and we’re all facing this in different ways. Yes it will be a good day when we are together and there is going to be a lot of celebrating, laughter and hugging when we can finally do that again.
Jenelle: People the world over are waiting for borders to come down for that very thing.
Audette: Yes.
Jenelle: Now COVID has clearly done a lot to bring the topic of economic and health security right to the forefront of every conversation. Whether it’s in our households, across the dinner table, or it’s at the bus stops or, where ever you are or, across organisations, communities, whole societies. I’m just wondering whether the fact that it’s at the forefront of everyone’s conversation, has that helped elevate the cause of Adara? Or has it kind of caused care fatigue? We’ve got so much stuff to have to care about – local employment, the regeneration of our economies, the bushfires, Black Lives Matter. Is this helpful or is it a hinderance that there is another thing?
Audette: It’s such a hot topic for me and something I’m feeling really a lot of anguish and passion about. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – it tell us when you feel unsafe or insecure in your own home it’s impossible for you to think about other people’s needs. I think there has been a layer of that.
There’s not been a whole lot of information in the public domain about what’s actually happening in the developing world. I think it’s a bit of a paradox because we can see now. It couldn’t be more clearer that a stranger’s health risk is everybody’s health risk. From one person where ever this began with bats or whatever it was in Wuhan here we are with this global crisis. It shows us public health is a global issue. We know that WHO tells us that having the highest standard of health is a fundamental right, yet we also now see it. It’s completely unveiled how desperate our access to quality healthcare is. 50% of the world’s rural population, 20% lack access to institutional healthcare. We see it now.
But is there fatigue? Are people able to look outside and care for others? Yeah there is fatigue. People aren’t looking outside as much as I wish they were and I think it’s almost so overwhelming to people that in some ways people almost can’t take it in or don’t want to know. But unfortunately we’ve got to figure out how to take it in and know. We’ve got to care for the amazing, our neighbours and faraway places. Not only because that’s what compassion and values tell us, but also because we’re all connected. If they’re not well, we’re not well.
Audette: So from a purely pragmatic point of view we have to get our hands around the global health situation and the economic situation globally but I’m worried that this conversation is not in the public domain in the way that it should be. We see this with vaccine equity. The lack of access to vaccine in some of the places it’s needed the most and the stock piling of vaccines by wealthy countries. It’s a disgrace. Pushing up vaccine prices so that they’re not affordable because of the stock piling. These are issues that as a world. We have this moment where we can show greatness as a world through this crisis or, this moment could take us the other way – into smallness, into closure, into not caring. I think there are so many people who are going to make sure and fight to make sure that we do go to greatness. I think the battle is going to wage. I’m proud that Adara is going to stand on the side of trying to do our best for our neighbours in remote countries every single day. I think it’s critical to what our world becomes.
Jenelle: It’s very grateful for organisations like Adara and for people like you to keep this, to hold us all to account and show that we can continue to expand our compassion beyond our own views. I’m going to come back to that but I’d like to just turn perhaps the conversation to a bit about you.
You grew up in New Zealand with your family. You started to travel at an early age and see the world from quite early on in your life. What impacts did that start have on where you are today?
Audette: Huge I think. My Dad was this wonderful journalist so for a period of our early lives we were in Singapore during the Vietnam War times. I remember very clearly being very shocked when I went back to New Zealand to find myself in a country where everybody looked like me.
Jenelle: Oh yes cause you were the minority.
Audette: I was the little blonde haired, blue eyed kid in Asia in the 60’s. How wonderful! So my view on our world was deeply multi-cultural. Actually also in my early life I thought we were in a minority not in a bad way but I just thought that’s the way that it was. We were in Asia. I think that’s given me and set the scene for a sense of I’m part of a whole amazing global world and not everybody is like me and how wonderful that is. I’ve never understood when people talk about tolerating diversity rather than celebrating it.
Jenelle: I’m with you.
Audette: So yeah I think it’s a huge set. Growing up with different language groups around you. People who look different to you. People who think differently to you. What greater gift could you be given as a child then that?
Jenelle: Indeed. You speak about being a social activist during your time at Victoria Uni in New Zealand, having a pink streak in your hair and a placard in your hand. Yet you made the decision to step outside of your comfort zone into a top law firm and years later you described that as a pivotal moment in your career. What made you decide to make that change? And why did you see it as a pivotal time?
Audette: Yeah it was really…. I find it hilarious that people think I’m a business person who wants to give back. A business woman [22.11]. People who really know me know that’s not the truth. They know I’m an activist who decided business is going to be the way that I’m going to affect social change. I’ve had a few periods of my life. I don’t know if you’ve had these, where I’ve had these kind of blinding moments of realisation and there was a blinding moment of realisation as I was finishing my law degree when everybody I knew and me expected thought ‘Ok now I’m going to go off and do Human Rights Law and I’ll always be an activist’.
Audette: When I realised there is a whole part of the world I don’t know about, I don’t understand power and money and I need to learn it. I just had this moment of realising ‘Oh my God I need to get out of my tribe’. ‘I need to go learn power’. ‘How can I create shift if I don’t know power?’ I felt like I was the enemy going into, the spy in the enemy camp going into the business world and it was such a great experience to step outside of my tribe. It has formed a life, where my life is about engagement and it is. The tagline of Adara as you know is ‘Bridging Worlds’. I am still, and always will be an activist at heart. I believe there are millions of different ways you can create social change, this just happens to be the place that I picked for my little search in the tapestry of change.
I’m really glad I did that because it’s made for an incredibly interesting life.
Jenelle: A couple of questions in there. First of all when you say the tagline for Adara is ‘Bridging Worlds’, tell me about the worlds that you are bridging.
Audette: Oh so many worlds. We’re bridging the worlds of the most advantaged with the most disadvantaged. We are literally Wall Street to the poorest streets in the world. The places where there are no streets. That’s the business development world. Then on the ground of course we’re bridging all sorts of worlds. We’re bridging worlds of high quality facility based healthcare with people who are living in extreme poverty. We’re bridging cross-culture worlds – look at us we’re the United Nations.
Jenelle: Yep.
Audette: We’re a secular organisation. We’re working with people of faith. People of all different kinds of faith. People of no faith. People of different philosophies. We’re a tiny little example of how much fun it is and how joyous it is when you truly unite across divide. We’re anthropologists working with investment bankers. We’re accountants and lawyers working with educational specialists. We are like the weirdest cross-cultural, cross-sectoral, cross-skilled, cross-ethnicity, cross everything!
Jenelle: It’s amazing. How rich.
Audette: We really bridge worlds but I guess the most obvious and the biggest bridge is from within the business. We are advising Australia’s largest listed companies and we have got some of Australia’s most highly regarded, most senior investment bankers and corporate advisors working with us to do that. People and the work that we do at those very high levels on sometimes deals that are billions of dollars is involved in those deals, the fees that come from that are going to places where people only eat twice a day and don’t have access to the internet. So it’s a huge bridge. Oh boy it’s a beautiful bridge when you see it working.
Jenelle: Absolutely. You had the sentence with the phrase that you wanted to understand power and money and how that moves, how that works. I know after you were in law you ended up getting into capitalism, finance. You ended up running a publicly traded bank in Bermuda. I think you were not shy of 30 years of age, no less at that time. One of the youngest women to not only lead but also revive a failing bank into a profitable entity. What did you learn? First of all sort of questions about how you did that, but what did you learn about money and power through that period of time?
Audette I learnt to put aside my prejudice. I learnt to stop stereotyping. I also learnt that you can make amazing change when you move power, so a great example of that have a look at what Larry Fink has done with BlackRock.
Jenelle: Incredible.
Audette: Have a look at that amazing woman in Australia Bronwyn King with the anti-tobacco work that she does, wow.
Jenelle: Alumni of the podcast. I interviewed Bronwyn last year.
Audette: Oh is she? Oh love her. She figured it out. How do I get people to stop smoking. I move money out of investing in tobacco. I learnt that there are lots of ways to make change but a very powerful one is to move money in a different direction. In the coming up to 23 years since I started Adara, gee that’s become evident and how wonderful to watch it. It used to be people thought I was crazy. These ideas were crazy. Now it’s absolutely mainstream. ESG is no longer, environmental, social, governance overlays on investment portfolios or, what companies do, climate change as a mainstream issue, this is no longer something the crazy left are talking about. This is mainstream discussion in the biggest companies and investor groups in the world and how fantastic is that in terms of being able to make change.
Jenelle: Well it does feel like something of a tipping point and I think folks like Bronwyn, Larry Fink have been instrumental and yourself included. But when you began Adara as you say people were really, well as we know, people were really doubting this concept. People certainly doubting you from the business community. I think earlier in your career when you were travelling on a bike for a couple of years, you were approached by a senior partner in the firm you working in and said “No one is ever going to take you seriously in business again”.
Audette: Yes.
Jenelle: But you had the confidence to persist. Whilst it’s still difficult. I mean you don’t have to convince people so much of that now. You had the confidence to persist, listen to your own voice despite the naysayers. Where does that confidence come from? How did you choose to defy that and keep going and then eventually come up with a model like what you’ve come up with at Adara?
Audette: I should tell you the backstory on the guy who told me “I’d never be taken seriously again”. When I ended up running the bank and there was a little article about me in the Financial Times, so I cut it out and posted it to him!
Jenelle: I’m so glad you said that cause I always think you’d probably be above that. I would absolutely do that too!
Audette: No, not a saint. Definitely not a saint. Where did it come from? A weird mixture of things I think. First of all is total hubris. Weird mixture of arrogance and stupidity. I think every entrepreneur, especially young entrepreneurs you kind of need that. I think also I was raised by extraordinary people, both my Mum and my Dad are incredible people. We lost Dad 20 odd years ago but I’ve often thought he must have sat by my bed at night and whispered in my ear “You can do anything”. He was one of those men who just wanted to unleash his children. So the two of them together, the sort of permission to fail that they gave us. We will love you no matter what, just get out there and have a go. They threw open the doors of the cages for us and loved us as we leapt forward. Gosh that’s such a thing to give a child.
Jenelle: What a gift.
Audette: Huge gifts. I think it was a whole mixture of things. There is also sort of this slight tenacity that I’ve got as a character trait, but anyway it all came together. I’m so glad it did.
Jenelle: What about the idea of an investment business funding the philanthropic side where did that come from?
Audette: It came from a whole journey of thinking. So remember I came from an activist view point. I went into the world of big money, big power through law into banking. Thought a lot about models. I’m very interested in models of change.
Audette: When I was running the bank, all you do when you run a bank – it’s complicated but what you do is you think all day about matching assets and liabilities and how much money you make in between that.
When I began to look at the model of not-for-profits I realised ‘Oh my God it’s the worst asset/liability mismatch I’ve ever seen in my life’. Short term donor dollars/long term responsibilities to people on the ground. So I was very interested in thinking through models and I thought ‘Gee maybe there is a better mouse trap than that’. Maybe the model should be ‘A long term commitment of a business that’s devoted to making money for a not-for-profit’, so not-for-profit leaders don’t spend every day worrying about where the next donor is coming from. They can get on with the incredible complexity of service delivery.
So when I launched the business and the NGO at the same time and said “Hey we’re going to run a business and it’s going to make money and pay for this international development organisation.” “I’m going to hire bankers to make money and they’re going to hand it over to the development specialists”. I thought that was kind of obvious but everybody thought I was a money launderer.
I came out of this thinking about models. Years and years of thinking about systems, models, change. How you gage. What does the not-for-profit sector need? What could I take from my business learning to bring into that environment? And how wonderful here we are 23 years later. My gosh there has been a lot of mistakes along the way and a lot of learning. A lot of refining and evolving. Like any good entrepreneur I think I’m never satisfied with what we’re doing.
Jenelle: You said “My God there has been some mistakes along the way and learnings.” What would be some of those? I mean 23 years on, unbelievable success. But what might be a couple of standout mistakes or things that have formed a different way forward for you that you will hold dear as those lessons?
Audette: Yeah. Rushing. In the business community one of our skills if you’re at the top of your game is you’ve got to be able to make the big judgement calls quickly on the basis of available data. When you are dealing with human social service delivery, you have to think and you have to think again. You have to listen to a lot of different voices, particularly when you’re dealing with complex cultural, religious, gender and other issues that come in failed states that are living in poverty.
So biggest mistakes I made in the early days – I rushed. Trying to solve things that I didn’t fully understand. I’ve talked before about terrifying mistakes that I made and that I own – rushing incubators into hospital settings without consistent power supplies and when the power went down babies suffocating in the incubators.
Jenelle: Oh..
Audette: Really serious stuff. Mistakes that I still grieve. So rushing is a huge one. The idiotic belief that business skills translate into the not-for-profit sector, ‘Boy that’s a big one’. Having to learn there is a whole new way of thinking about this and there are people who are absolutely expert, I need to listen to. Thank God the behavioural scientists, anthropologists and development experts coming in relatively early in the piece. When you sit on the knife edge of profit and purpose as we do, you have to be really, really clear which of those trumps, profit or purpose. There are two times when you can get yourself into real trouble there. When there is too much money or, when there is not enough money.

Audette: You need to make sure that the people who come with you on the journey understand the purpose will always triumph over the profit.
So alignment, culture and teams and people who are with you. Oh my goodness I’ve learnt a lot about that. Now I look at our shining teams all over the world and think ‘Yeah we finally got all that right’. The right people are with us on this journey. The right people are attracted to us on this journey.
There is an integrity at the heart of it and a culture that shines and I’m just so proud of that.
I mean on and on I could go. Not being properly prepared. The horrible moment in the early days when the same week Ebola hits one of our projects in Uganda the same time as the Maoists take over another project in Nepal and I’ve got people from everywhere ringing saying “What do we do?” And I’m realising ‘Holy cow I don’t have a disaster recovery plan’. ‘I don’t have emergency evac’. ‘I don’t know what to do’. ‘We don’t have the right insurance’.
Jenelle: Oh wow.
Audette: Risk mitigations. Structure. Strategy. Planning. You name it. We’ve fallen down those holes. There is a whole lot of learning there and I love that one of the things that we do at Adara freely is talk about mistakes. Try to help others. Try to take years off other people’s learning times. For us that’s scale. Share your knowledge, including all the honest mistakes that you’ve made. But yeah there has been a lot of them.
Jenelle: How did you go about choosing, or why did you choose Uganda and Nepal as the two countries that you would focus on?
Audette: Our work is much wider than Uganda and Nepal now. We run across.. I mean they’re the two countries where we have Centres of Excellence and we deliver service.
Jenelle: I see.
Audette: We run service delivery and we run knowledge sharing. Our knowledge sharing, for instance, our work with pre-term/low birth weight babies which all exhibits and Centres of Excellence in Uganda but that work we’re on a global stage with that work.
But in terms of Uganda and Nepal – why did we end up there in terms of delivering service? First of all I wanted to work in places of lowest quality indicators. There is a scary amount of them. I wanted to work in places that are land locked. It was sort of a ‘go big or go home’ strategy. Find the toughest places, go there. I always had a real bug, a bee in my bonnet about ‘go remote’. No one serves remote. Governments don’t serve remote, NGOs don’t serve remote. It’s wrong. It’s a human rights affairs.
Jenelle: So you went for the toughest? The toughest conditions.
Audette: I wanted to go tough. I had two personal connections. I trekked in Nepal like all good Westerners in the 80’s. Loved the country. Met all my screens. Thought people were astonishing. Knew that there was extraordinary levels of need and I had a very weird connection to Uganda. When I was running the bank I used to go across with all those famous people to Davos. It was quite a lurk of the job being a young woman running a bank. In a coffee shop in Davos I met the First Lady of Uganda and we formed a friendship. This was years before Adara. We wrote to each other in the old fashioned way before the internet and I said “One day I’m going to come and do something for you and your country”, “I’m going to come and help”, and she said “If you ever come to Uganda I will open every door for you, I will make sure you’re safe”.
Audette: So literally years later I drove up to Government House in Kampala and buzzed the buzzer, “Remember me.” I figured if you want to work in a country it helps to know the people who are in charge.
Jenelle: It really does.
Audette: So weird personal connection as well as this screen.
Jenelle: Oh and I think I told you weirdly personal connection. The two countries that have most profoundly impacted me in my life has been Uganda and Nepal having spent time working in both of those countries. It’s just bizarre. So there is something in the stars, it’s meant…
Audette: How magical. How beautiful those people are. How wonderful that doing that great work with all those amazing communities. It’s now touching the lives of people in so many different communities. So people come into Uganda, learn about the cue from us and take it into other countries. How wonderful is that?
Jenelle: It’s wonderful.
Audette: But yeah we love both countries.
Jenelle: Audette, I know we’ve talked about the change that you have been doing but if you were to articulate in a sentence the change that you are seeking to make happen in the world, what is that?
Audette: That’s a good question. Not seeking to make it happen. I’m seeking to be a part of making it happen because I recognise we’re only one stitch in a huge tapestry of change. The change I think we need to see in the world is around equity. We need to see social justice. We need every little girl in this world to wake up and have the same opportunity as every little boy. We need every child in this world to wake up and have the same opportunity no matter where they’re born. I believe profoundly that everyone has the right to essential service delivery no matter where they live. That’s the change that I want to see in the world. It’s not too much to ask for fairness right? If you want a beautiful read. If I was on a desert island and I had to take a book, I would take the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’.
Jenelle: Ok.
Audette: That’s the change that we need to see in the world. We need the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to apply to all.
Jenelle: You’ve said “We’re only one stitch in the tapestry of change”, what strikes me is that, and even your examples of ‘rushing’, you seeing that you felt that you were rushing to solve some things. It seems that you’ve taken a step back, you’ve been doing things like working with business and bridging worlds. Tell me about your views on how you drive change at the system level?
Audette: That’s a really good question and something that interests me greatly. I’ve always been really interested in activity and action, not talking and policy. But as I’m getting older and now we’re a couple of decades in I’m realising ‘Ok it’s time to start thinking about systems change’ because that’s what will really turn the dial. Systems change is not only and it was not in my view unfortunately ‘politics’ or is rarely politics and policy – it can be.
Systems change is actually changing the discourse in the way that people view their roles and responsibilities in the world. I think systems change is happening around the way that business views its responsibilities in the world for instance.
Audette: I think systems change is happening around a universal understanding across all elements of our society and economy but climate change is a next essential threat. I think we need to get systems change happening around rights and marginalised people that everybody is entitled to the same set of rights.
How do I think about that? How do you begin to play into that, or be a piece of that? One way to do is to get into the world of policy. Another way to do it is to lead by example. I believe sometimes you can inspire people to systems change. So you could show people what’s truly possible.
I had the great honour of interviewing Muhammad Yunus a few years ago. He said to me “The way to make systems change is to do one thing brilliantly and have people copy you” and I thought “yeah that’s right”. That is sort of what Adara is trying to do in a little way. We’re trying to do that.
It’s also about being a voice right? I’m trying to figure out what our voice should be, and what my voice should be. Being a voice, sitting on the board of big companies, having the business credentials. Being a voice for change. At the moments and with people of influence and companies of influence, and systems of influence. I think there is a whole lot of different ways to achieve that but certainly from our perspective at Adara the expertise we’ve got, for instance, in new born health, or remote education, we’re now moving to a level where we can say “Ok can we start to be involved in systems change?” Through the knowledge sharing piece. Through the influence piece. Through the voice piece? And we are kind of finding our way through, but yeah I’m thinking about that much more. And I actually think we’re living in a world now where if you never saw it before, boy do you see it now.
Do we need systems change? Yes. We cannot continue with the way that this planet is, and the way we’ve been operating the planet. We’ve got to make systems change.
Jenelle: So Audette no doubt you’ve got countless stories and moments that you have in the back of your mind but is there any particular moment or particular story that you think about? When you think about having made a change happen and Adara making a difference in communities. What’s one or two stories that you might be able to share with us?
Audette: ooh yeah I’d love to be able to tell you some good stories and it’s funny to me that this is a life that people sometimes think has involved sacrifice but of course when you do this kind of work and you’re connected to communities like this, you know that actually it’s the opposite of that. It’s a life full of joy.
I can give you one example of that. One thing we’re pretty well known for in our work in Nepal, our remote community development work – is working with kids who have been taken out of the child trafficking trade. We do a huge amount of work in child protection now and it involves thousands of kids, but there are 136 kids who are incredibly particularly dear to my heart and they’ve sort of started us on this journey. They’re a bunch of kids that we pulled out of basements now nearly 14 years go. The littlest ones were three and have been in our lives all that time. They’re part of the Adara family. They’re health educators. They’re engineers. They’re teachers. I mean they’ve gone on to do amazing things. Connected to their own community and their own families of origin.
But I had a wonderful moment. There is one kid in particular who went off when he graduated school, he went to Dubai which was very scary for us because a lot of Nepali people go to the Emirates and are treated very badly.

Audette: Anyway off he went and like nervous parents we worried about him and we followed him on Facebook and fussed. He started off working in Dubai basically peeling vegetables and I think it was at ‘Thank God it Friday’s’. Then he ended up as sous chef and then out of the blue I got this email from him saying “Aunty Audette, I have got a job in Australia. I was picked from 200 applicants and I’m coming to work at a very expensive restaurant in Sydney.” Amazing. So I sent him a note saying “Get into my office the minute you arrive, I want to see you!” Anyway he’s gone on to become a really serious chef. He ended up out at Wolgan at the Emirates Hotel out there.
Jenelle: Oh yeah.
Audette: But when he first came, the first year he was here, it was Mr Wong’s he came to. He told me in a very embarrassed fashion he said “Aunty Audette I have to tell you, you probably won’t be able to afford to eat at the restaurant I’m working at”, which is so wonderful!
I had this wonderful moment. He volunteered for us as well as working full time. He came and worked a day for us in the Adara office. I had this one moment where I was running down the stairs and his name was [44.43] and he was running up the stairs into work for Adara. That was like “Hi, hi”, how are you, how are you?” And as he ran past me, as I ran down the stairs, and I thought ‘Oh my God it’s all worth it’.
Jenelle: Oh that’s quite a symbolic almost like a sliding doors moment as you pass each other that way when you think about him being pulled out of a situation when he was a child.
Audette: It was. Right and there he was having an amazing life. At the highest levels of his profession. There he is. You know the Jewish community has this amazing, beautiful saying which is ‘If you save a life, you save the world’. I believe that to be a profound truth. So there’s one life, right, that made it all worth it for me and there is so many, many more. I mean there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, but it was just that moment where it was crystal clear to me. ‘Oh it’s all worth it’.
Jenelle: There must be times and I’m sure there have been hundreds where thousands over the years, where it just feels like maybe you aren’t getting the kind of traction and change you want to. I wonder how you keep going? There must be rage about the inequality that you drives you, which inevitably would give way to disappointment when things aren’t getting done. How do you not let frustration, fatigue, defeat, anger, injustice, all of that. How do you not let that take over you? How do you keep going?
Audette: Yeah. First of all I am enraged. I am enraged about inequity. I’m angry every day on behalf of the poor but I have learnt that speaking of anger or rage it’s not helpful. People just shut down on you. Better to turn that to channel that into action.
Do I feel defeated? Cause I do. When I’m on project sites. Last year I cried a lot last year. However, what I also feel is ‘Oh thank goodness I’m doing this’. How would I look at myself in the mirror everyday if I wasn’t getting up every day and trying?’ It’s also about taking your wins, right? Celebrating with the victory. When I’m in Uganda I always go through this ‘Oh I’m so inadequate, it’s so useless’. I always go through that. But what I do in Uganda is I get up in the morning. First thing in the morning, last thing at night. I go to the NICU, known as ICU. And it’s beautiful. The dawn is coming up and there is all these tiny little babies in there who are a huge number of them are going to grow up and have beautiful lives who wouldn’t be alive if we didn’t do this work. At the moment the census is we’re taking nearly 60 a day in there at the moment. And I walk around in there and I go there before I go to sleep and I think ‘Ok it may not be enough but it’s good work’ and thank goodness I’m doing it.
Jenelle: Thank goodness you are.
Audette: So that’s how I do it but I’m the same as every other human being in the planet. I get filled with anguish and despair. Filled with doubt and insecurity and then I get up and do it again the next day.
Jenelle: Now I know that you were awarded the Order of Australia back in 2013, sometime ago. That would have been something of a highlight amongst those moments of rage. What impact did that have?
Audette: I was totally astonished by that because I’m not Australian. I’m a Kiwi. So it was an incredible honour to be honoured by Australia get an AO. I was nominated as it turned out by a wonderful man who lives next door to my Mum and Dad in a little town called Mollymook. His name is Ron. This wonderful man in Mollymook did all this work and I got the AO and unfortunately he died before it was awarded to me. But he knew that I got it and he was very proud of that fact that he’d got it. I quietly call it ‘Ron’s medal’. It was a gift to me. Yeah it’s a huge honour. It’s a badge of credibility. It’s like being in the Masons! That little button that they give you to wear. I think sometimes when you’re a woman, this happens to me less now that I’m older but you are generally underestimated. It’s kind of nice to have a little sign to people of ‘Ok this woman has been honoured by the country’.
Jenelle: You’re doing alright.
Audette: Yep it’s a very nice thing and I’m very grateful for it. I was appalled by some of the stuff that’s happened around the awards recently but I feel very honoured to have it.
Jenelle: Well done to Ron and well done to you.
Audette: And I wear it with real pride, and good on Ron.
Jenelle: Good on Ron!
The last three: three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: The first question is. What are you reading, watching or listening to right now? I have made a note of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a recommended read.
Audette: I don’t read that to relax at night!
Jenelle: Assuming you’re not reading it right now! What are you reading, watching, or listening to?
Audette: If I did want to read another incredibly important document by the way on my desert island, I’d be reading ‘The Statement from the Heart’. If any Australian hasn’t read that, they should. It’s the most beautiful moving document.
What am I reading right now? I’m an escapist. I love novels. I read a lot of trash as well as some good novels. I always read the Booker prize. I try the lot to read the long list as well as the short list. But right at the minute I’ve just finished a brilliant
Louis de Bernières book. I don’t know if you know his books?
Jenelle: I don’t.
Audette: It’s called the Autumn of the Ace. Oh it’s wonderful.
Jenelle: Ok.
Audette: I also just finished another wonderful booked called ‘The Shadow King’ which was shortlisted which I absolutely loved. I’m an escapist reader. I can also be found reading – I love a good spy story.
Jenelle: Very good.
Audette: Those are the kind of things that I read.
Jenelle: Excellent. Well I’m going to compile this at the end of the year for our audience of the recommended reads or watches from our guests. So that’s really helpful.
What is your superpower? I feel ridiculous asking this. You’ve just spent 45 minutes telling me all about your superpowers! But let’s go with something that maybe is even a useless party trick. Any other superpowers up your sleeve?
Audette: Oh bloody hell I don’t think I’ve got the useless party tricks. I think if I had a more serious superpower, cause that’s a very [50.57] title, right? I think people don’t understand about me. Some people don’t understand that if you try to tell me no, you will encourage me enormously. I’ve been like that since I was two I think. My mother would tell me I’ve been like that since I was zero! So I think a really useful superpower, put downs, disrespect and being under estimated has super charged my life.
Jenelle: It’s your fuel.
Audette: It’s my fuel. It’s always been one of my fuels. I don’t know if that’s a superpower or not.
Jenelle: Yes I think it is.
Audette: Just never bloody tell me no! That’s probably the superpower!
Jenelle: I love it! And if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard. It might be something that you’ve said. It might be something that stays with you that you’ve heard someone else say. What would that quote be?
Audette: I think at the moment and there are a lot of them obviously. But at the moment I would probably put up ‘We are all connected’. That to me is the message that we need to take out of what’s going on in our world right now.
Jenelle: We’re living and breathing it aren’t we? As you say a bat in Wuhan has impacted us all. So for better or worse we are all connected.
Audette: Exactly.
Jenelle: I’d love for it to be better.
Audette: Yeah well it’s got to be better. We’re going to make it that way, right? I’m huge Leonard Cohen fan. I don’t know if you like Leonard Cohen? I’m a worshipper and one of his great songs is the Anthem and there is a line in it or a chorus and it goes something like this “Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, , there is a crack in everything that’s how the light gets in”. And to me that’s the answer, right? Forget your perfect offering. We can’t be standing back waiting for the world to be perfect. We just have to figure out where’s the crack? Where’s the light? Go there and as long as we are doing that we are going to make a better world.
Jenelle: Oh I love that. I do love that. Thank you so much for your time today. I think this is a conversation that people will need to listen to a couple of times over. I feel like I need to probably play this back and I’ll continue to take things away from it.

Jenelle: Certainly, some of the things that stay with me right now is the courage to forget what you planned and the discipline to remember what you know and what you can do with that. I guess the learning around what it takes to lead from behind that you need to call more on listening, caring and compassion.
I think the power of bridging worlds. It’s only when we bridge worlds that we find the level of common understanding. We can park our prejudices that we might have around the other worlds. Whether it’s hubris, or arrogant, or stupidity, or an unbelievable sense of compassion or an understanding of driving systems change or debt you have been moving mountains and have made such an impact on this world.
I love clearly your humility in talking and your honesty in sharing mistakes. The power of learning from those mistakes and the only way we learn is if we exercise humility and we create psychologically safe conditions for people to share and reflect on their learnings and we’re curious.
I want to say thank you to your parents for encouraging and unleashing their children on the world because we are so much the better for it. I love the power in not taking no for an answer and may we remember the words of Leonard Cohen and we go for the light.
Thank you so much Audette.
Audette: An absolute delight to talk to you. Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
End tape recording

Gabrielle Dolan
Speaker, Author, Founder of Jargon Free Fridays

Garth Callender
Managing Director, Trebuchet Pivot

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Hi. I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 2 of the Change Happens podcast, where we continue to have conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons that they’ve learned along the way. Now if you haven’t listened to the podcast before I encourage you to go back and have a listen to Season 1. I’m not going to lie we’ve had some cracker guests in last year’s line up so please do take the time to go back and have a listen, and today I’m joined by Garth Callender.
Now Garth has seen and done many things all of which we’ll get into, but you may recognise his name from his time in the army. Specifically Garth was Australia’s first serious casualty of the Iraq war. He recovered to complete more tours of duty back to Iraq and Afghanistan and he wrote an award winning book about his experience called ‘After the Blast – an Australian Officer in Iraq and Afghanistan’. Over the course of his career with the army he has received numerous commendations and service medals and since leaving the military in a full time capacity, Garth has headed onto carve out a highly successful civilian career gaining executive and board experience in a range of sectors, applying the lessons and training from his incredible background to his own business and helping other businesses. Garth is also the Chairman of the Bravery Trust an organisation offering financial support for injured veterans and their families.
All in all Garth’s military and business background gives him credibility and insights that are not commonly found in corporate Australia. I’m looking forward to learning how Garth’s many experiences in leadership and managing risk and crisis in the military and on the battlefield translates to a non-military world. Hi Garth, welcome.
Garth: Thanks Jenelle. Thanks for the introduction!
Jenelle: It’s quite some intro! Tell me how are you?
Garth: I’m well. Doing really well.
Jenelle: I was really looking forward to opening this new year’s set of questions with a non-COVID related question but of course that’s not where we find ourselves unfortunately. So I’m going to start there perhaps just with a broad observational question. With you having spent so much time previously in physical war zones and having to react really quickly to surprise situations that can escalate out of control if they’re not handled well. How have you found yourself and others you’ve been dealing with, dealing with the pandemic right from that initial crisis through to the stage that we’re in today?
Garth: I think there is so much in that. I could probably answer it in 10 different ways. The one that really sticks in my head right now is the way the role of company directors has been redefined. Gone are the days of directorships being that golden handshake and a thank you for a long and lustrous executive career, here have a board role. Definitely that time has gone but I think the thinking definitely in the past has been decision making at board level has been a slower process. You’ve got the week/week and a half to review board papers. You’ve got 8 board meetings a year and you’re involved when you need to be. Whereas now decisions need to be made at the board level really quickly and board directors need to be really intimately involved with what’s happening in the organisation when it’s times like we are now. When there is multiple risks emerging at once often decisions are outside the CEO’s delegation, no longer do board directors have the luxury of saying “Yeah ok I’ll get back to you in a week once I’ve had a pause”, “Once I’ve assessed the situation”, “Once I’ve had time to reflect and educate”, that’s no longer the case. Decisions need to be made in a few hours.
Garth: It’s something I’ve definitely seen with clients and with some of the boards that I sit on. I’ve had to have a few hard talks with directors. You’ve got skin in the game again, you need to be involved.
Jenelle: Let’s start with your military life. You joined when you were 18 and after a few years you completed your leadership training to become an officer in the Australian Army at the RMC in Duntroon. I believe that was in 2001.
Garth: That’s right.
Jenelle: 9/11 happened at that point in time. Talk about an interesting time to emerge as a trained officer. To what extent did the timing of that impact the way you served in the military?
Garth: It was the defining point in modern generation but definitely a defining point of my career as well. I joined the army as a solider in the mid 90’s and we hadn’t done very much since the Vietnam War. Yeah we had a few smaller deployments to Somalia, Rwanda and East Timor. East Timor wasn’t that small but it wasn’t the other side of the world and it wasn’t such a extreme environment. It’s not something which I’d had considered and to be honest I wouldn’t say I didn’t take my career seriously but I was a pretty, happy go lucky person and perhaps didn’t understand the world I was entering into with the military. We were in our last 6 months, the last few months of the course at Duntroon. I distinctly remember that morning somebody came barrelling into my room at 5.30am saying “Hey America is under attack, quick have a look at the TV”. This is going to change and shape my career and it absolutely did.
Jenelle: Everything got real in that moment I’m sure.
Garth: Absolutely yeah.
Jenelle: So in 2004 you deployed to Baghdad in Iraq. Can you paint a picture for me of what it was like there? And what your role was?
Garth: Yeah so the environment, firstly we arrived in the peak of summer, so extremely hot 40 degree days. It’s a city on the Tigris River. Quite a flat city and just stiflingly hot. In 2004 in particular – capital city, it functioned like a capital city. It was 7 million people all trying to get on with their lives. Kids were going to school. There was peak hour traffic in the mornings and afternoons. People would still dine out in restaurants in the a la carte restaurants of Baghdad but the backdrop to all that was a civil war really.
The Sunni minority who had been in power under Hussein were actively vying to destabilise the government to regain power. The vast Shia majority had been repressed under Hussein that was trying to do the opposite. There had been the de-Ba'athification process. So the removal of anyone from government or the military who had been associated with the Ba’ath party which had completely destabilised the country. All the heads of government departments. All the heads of military police, emergency services had been removed. It was people almost making it up as they went along, who had been forced into those roles.
It also meant that all those people had been removed, often military people who had some serious experience from their Iran/Iraq war and even the invasion of Iraq or the first Gulf war, were now out of jobs and were actively working to destabilise the government often through violence. Of course what you also get when there is a breakdown in law and order is a rising of the criminal element. So there was a lot of crime and really grisly crime too. A lot of murders, kidnapping, ransom, all those sorts of things going on. We saw tens, if not hundreds of incidents a day in the city alone, let alone greater Baghdad.
Jenelle: Wow talk about things feeling real. Tell me what happened on the 25th October?
Garth: Yeah well I guess I probably needed to better answer your first question. Which was what was I doing there? Firstly I was part of a larger 110 person team that protected the Australian Embassy itself, protected them in their accommodation and my role was running the seven armoured vehicles which would transport them around the greater Baghdad area so they could carry out their diplomatic functions. I had seven of Australian light armoured vehicles which I broke up into 3 patrols and we’d have them out on the street all day, every day moving Embassy staff around.
On the 25th October we’d been there a couple of months and that morning I took one of the patrols. I think it was the second task of the day. We were driving out of our compound up into the CBD. We were going to do a few tasks there then head out to the international airport which was about 15km out to the west. We got about 600m out of the front of our compound and there was car parked on the side of the road, which was obviously from sometime the night before an insurgent had parked it had been full of explosives and an improvised explosive device with a trigger mechanism (most likely remote control) and as my vehicle drove past they detonated that bomb. I was standing up in the turret on the righthand side and the car with the bomb in it was on the righthand side. We were probably about 5 metres away from it when it went off. To be honest I was quite badly injured from it. I had second degree burns to my face and neck and had fragmentation wounds and a pretty serious concussion as well.
Jenelle: Were you immediately taken out of the country?
Garth: It was a longer process. I had some awesome soldiers with me who did an incredible job. We’d done a lot of practice back in Australia before we got to Iraq. “We hadn’t practiced specifically, what would happen, you know, if the boss got blown up one morning, but we had practiced enough so they knew the drills”. They could make the decisions they needed to make quickly and effectively.
The end result was I was treated and in hospital within about 15 minutes. From one side it’s that decision making ability that they had which saved my life really.
Jenelle: And some muscle memory in what to do I guess through all that training.
Garth: oh completely. Yeah absolutely. Even to the point where we’d rehearsed that drive into the Coalition Hospital which was an awkward route and it was quite a difficult route to remember how to go. We’d done it a few times to the point where the guys knew how to get through the checkpoints that they needed to and get me to hospital on time. Then I had a bit of fragmentation nick my prodded artery and I had a quite a large hematomas inside of my neck and the doctors were, or my medic in particular was worried it was going to cut off the blood supply to my brain. I don’t think I’m downplaying it when I say it really could of ended up a lot worse for me.
Jenelle: I don’t think you are downplaying it all. What was life like for you for the next couple of years after that very serious injury?
Garth: Yeah I was extremely lucky in the fact that it didn’t cause any long term injuries. I’ve got a few quirks from it. You don’t get that close to a bomb going off and air moving it thousands of metres per second without getting a few quirks but I didn’t have anything which was going to prevent me continuing on with my military career which I was very grateful for. I was in my mid 20’s and saw a long military career ahead of me.
Garth: I was really relieved about that and one of the great things I was able to do then was get involved in a lot of the training of guys who were going to man follow on teams to do the same job we’ve done. Give them briefs on what they could expect over there. Talk to them about the reality of the insurgent threat of the improvised explosive device threat and helped develop training scenarios so they could be tested and they could again streamline that decision making process, get their drills under control. So if the same thing or something similar happened to them they could react just as effectively.
Jenelle: I can understand maintaining your involvement in the military. Certainly running training programs back at the safety of your local barracks but you went back into war zones, several times and that was despite your near death experience, despite your mum making the Chief of Army promise that you wouldn’t go back into combat. You returned and like I said returned to war zones including Afghanistan again. What was that pull for you? Why?
Garth: Quite simply I saw myself being the right person for the job. About 18 months later I went back to the same organisation in Baghdad. I’d gone up a rank, so I was a Captain and I was second in command of the combat team. Second in command of the 110 people. My title was Officer. I guess it’s more Head of Operations maybe. I would do the day-to-day running of the organisation. That included organising all the training before they went. In my mind there was no better person to be in that role than me. I’d been in the environment. I knew intimately the insurgent threat. I knew the job they needed to do and I knew how they had to best prepare to make sure that they were ready for anything they’d face over there.
Jenelle: So interested in that comment about seeing yourself as the right person for the job. Particularly in an environment which is so deeply trained. You can train people in those processes and the systems etc. If you knew you could train others to do that what was it about you specifically then that made you the right person?
Garth: I guess at the end of the day there can be a disconnect between what’s happening thousands of kilometres away in the Middle East and what you’re training for in Australia. I guess that’s the lead up piece. I knew what they were going to be doing over there. I knew instantly. I’d been in there, I’d done it. Whereas somebody else coming into the role hadn’t done that.
Jenelle: A lived experience.
Garth: Yeah and I also brought with me a view of risk which I use this to this day, is understanding what real risk is. Yeah you categorise risk whatever it is. Operational risk, reputational risk, compliance risk, whatever it is but at the end of the day real risk they all come back to people. The result of any of those risks playing out might be is it’s going to impact on human beings. I knew that intimately from a flesh and blood sense. That level of thinking was somewhat unique in my cohort of officers that could have gone into that role. From a deployment perspective, I mean I’m quite a naturally relaxed person anyway, but I think because I’d seen the extremes I went with quite a level head over there as well. I think I was a bit of a calming influence for the team as well. For the guy being blown up and he is back there for one but also because I knew when it was time to take things seriously and I knew when it was time we could relax a bit.
Jenelle: They sound like such actualised words Garth. What did it feel like to go through that and then to head back in? Were you scared? Were you angry about the fact that the boss had been blown up? Was this something to level up and show people? Tell me about what your emotions were and how you kept those in check and in a very ordered operation that you were then leading?

Garth: I say I’m a pretty relaxed guy and all those sorts of things but there was one incident over there where I’d realised I’d taken it too far and I made a mistake. That was in the first maybe week I was there. We were doing a handover with the outgoing team and we’d done a combined patrol. Half of the vehicles were manned with the guys leaving, half of them with my guys coming in. They call them nursery patrol, breaking in the new team. I said “Well it’s been 18 months since I’ve seen the environment with me being involved in” so I actually crewed one of the vehicles in the same vehicle crew position that I was in when I was injured and as it turned out we travelled the exact same route that we travelled on that day. When we went past the place where the bomb went off I actually got really nervous and was probably not effective in my role and realised I’d taken it a step too far. I pushed myself to say “Nah I’m good to the point where I wasn’t good.” That was an interesting realisation for me to say “ok”.
Jenelle: What did you do when you had that realisation?
Garth: The effect on me was I froze up. I had this thought going “What if – strange coincidences happen all the time, what if right now a bomb is about to go off next to my vehicle exactly the same way it went off in 2004?” So, I was no help to anyone. I guess at the end of the day what I did post that was I said, “I’m not over here in this role”, “I don’t need to group command vehicles”. I ended up doing it a couple more times during that trip but I made sure ... like I said I’d gone up in rank, I’d gone up a level of responsibility, I needed to embrace the role that I was doing not the role I’d done 18 months previously. Whilst the idea of getting back out on the streets of Baghdad is cool that wasn’t the job I was there to do. I rolled it back and embraced the role which is nowhere near as glamourous which is sitting in a command post coordinating the movement of my guys around greater Baghdad, which is what I did for about six months in that role.
Jenelle: You then went onto another deployment in 2009 back to Afghanistan. At that stage you were a father I think to the first of your 3 young daughters. You deployed leading a Weapons Intelligence Team where you were helicoptered to the blast zones in the aftermath of attacks. You were working to understand more about those IEDs, the improvised explosive devices and identifying the insurgent bomb makers that were responsible. Now when I read about that Garth I thought of the surfer, Mick Fanning, who you may recall had the shark attack. I think it was late last year that he released the documentary ‘Save the Shark’ cause he wanted to face into his fears, understand sharks more as part of his healing process. But I would say most people, many people if not most, who face traumatic situations typically work to ensure they’re not in those situations again. But there are people like Mick Fanning who chose to lean right into it and really understand the shark or, you who has chosen to really understand IEDs, understand the insurgent bomb makers, understand everything about how those come about.
Garth: Definitely
Jenelle: So you choose to put yourself squarely back in that situation. I’m keen to understand what you put that down to? What’s the difference between those who lean into it, and those who go “Ok well I’ve learnt and I won’t be there again?”
Garth: I think a lot of is that mentality of they talk about first responders and when an incidence occurs there are those that run away from the gun shots and there are those that run towards it. There is a bit of that thinking in there. The Mick Fanning analogy I think “Yep absolutely”. I definitely didn’t start a program to say be ‘insurgent bomb makers’! In fact kind of the opposite. Not to get too grisly about it. It was definitely I had a drive to understand insurgent bomb makers and to minimise the threat of improvised explosive devices and being injured in 2004 and going back in 2006 and seeing the aftermath of some of these horrific bomb blasts where like any war zone the greatest impact was on civilians. The greatest casualties were civilians.
Garth: Yeah, I came back and made a nuisance of myself to all the right people until they posted me to what’s called the ‘Counter IED Taskforce’ which has just finished in the last few months. It’s just wound up after 14 years. They posted me there and I got really interested in how we could train our military to best protect themselves. What equipment we needed to best protect ourselves and also I got really interested in the intelligence piece. Understanding the supply chains, the bomb makers, even the mentality and often how and why they were being utilised and of course that then led into an opportunity to deploy into a tactical role – recovering the evidence from bomb sites, reverse engineering it, getting smart about – firstly where the bomb was set off, what it was targeting and then understanding and linking it back to insurgent cells and how they operated their supply chain. Again it seemed like a natural progression to me. I had this deep seeded interested and not to sound flippant but it was a fascination in bombs and insurgent bombmakers. Particularly Afghanistan – it was really interesting because these bombmakers whilst they were often illiterate grew up in a province but they were obviously highly intelligent.
Jenelle: Intelligent. Absolutely and resourceful.
Garth: Yeah would create these diabolical devices out of household items. So we needed to come up with some ways of firstly, educating our own forces about the weapons being used against them but then also to provide that broader intelligence.
Jenelle: You know it’s interesting as I listen to your answer to that question what I hear in that is a whole heap of curiosity. I hear a desire for sense making - making sense of what’s happened. Empathy for civilians who are being impacted by actions by people on their own side and a continuous learning, continuous improvement loop. It’s an interesting set of attributes actually I think that does drive some of that behaviour to lean back into it.
Garth: Yeah and going back to 2004. One of the things that hit me the hardest was coming back to Australia and then a few months later when the boys finished their rotation they came back with images that they’d taken. There were images of the bloke sitting on his front doorstep with the bomb creator from that blast – almost at this feet and his house had basically been ruined. At the end of the day here’s a guy who had lived through the Iran/Iraq war, lived through a repressive dictator, had seen foreign militaries come into his city and then had a countryman let off a bomb at his doorstep. That blast had killed at least 3 people, 2 of which who were young children who would wave at us every time we go past. I’d be very surprised if that chap didn’t know those children. I don’t think you can help feeling empathy for the civilians caught up in these horrible attacks.
Jenelle: What made you write the book ‘After the Blast’? Tell me a bit about what that process was like for you? What you learnt about yourself in writing that book?
Garth: I had a lot of people say to me “Oh it must have been very disheartening” “Oh it was a process for you to download and all of that sort of stuff but actually it came about from me just writing journals. I didn’t write one in 2004. When I went back in 2006 the boss of the combat team said to me “Mate I write a journal you should think about it”. I started doing that just scribbling down notes every night, cause’ I was back we were only a few hundred metres from where I’d been in 2004 I was able to reflect on some of the things in 2004. I did that again in Afghanistan and over the next few years I had to turn that into something which was legible. I wanted my daughters to have something to see what I’d done in the military. A friend of mine, James Brown, who ended up being the President of NSW for a couple of years, he was writing a book on the current ideas around Anzac Day. He wanted some evidence of ID blasts and the immediacy at being lucky or unlucky and things like that and we were having a chat about it. I said, “Hey I’ve got these journals, there are a few bits in here which I think might fit for what you want”. “Feel free to quote me on any of these”.
Garth: Which he did. He wrote some lovely stuff in his acknowledgement from that and then I had his publisher call me up out of the blue and say, “Hey can I read your journal?” That’s where it came about. I don’t know if I ever had plans for that to turn into a book but I think it’s been a very positive experience for a lot of people actually.
Jenelle: You gave a great deal of recognition to your wife Crystal for all that she went through during your military days. Tell me about the impact of this kind of thing on partners and families and for you specifically and the role that she played in supporting you.
Garth: Yeah. I have so much to say about Crystal. She was so amazing. She wasn’t happy with my ... and I did things all the wrong way in going back both to Iraq and going to Afghanistan later. Once she had time to process it she was so supportive but it took such a toll on her as it does with so many military partners. They don’t sign up to be what is in essence a single parent which is the reality, they’re on their own. When I was in Afghanistan Crystal was there on her own for 9 months.
I’ll just tell you a really quick story, which just happened recently, cause’ I still do a bit of work with the military. I was lucky enough to get a quick trip down to Sydney in December and I was dealing with an organisation down there. I was driving out to one of the training areas with one of the Regimental Sergeant Majors and we just stopped for a quick coffee and my phone had connected to Bluetooth and I ducked in to buy the coffee. I thought I’ll just give Crystal a quick call. I rang her and of course the Bluetooth kicked off in the car. She couldn’t hear me so this guy answered the phone. What Crystal saw was my phone number turn up on her phone with me calling. She said “hello” and this guy say “It’s the Regimental Sergeant Major here”. It hasn’t happened for years I should think (not that Crystal has let me know) but it just took her back to 2006 where she would just be dreading the phone ringing.
Jenelle: It feels like PTSD stuff for spouse and partner.
Garth: I think I was naïve to that at the time. Absolutely there was part of that in there. Definitely during that deployment it just asked so much for her and don’t think I really acknowledged what she went through. “Whatever, I’m going to a war zone, you’ll be alright”.
Jenelle: Yeah.
Garth: Whereas no she was at home just trying to live her life worried that phone was going to ring and there be another messaged that I’d been injured or worse.
Jenelle: Wow.
Garth: That’s the reality for a lot of military spouses that can never be downplayed. It’s pretty tough.
Jenelle: I think I told you when we first met or spoke, Garth, that I have a military background. Was a Reserve with the Australian Army and a psychologist and when soldiers and officers would come back from their deployments, one of the biggest challenges was the transition back into the family life and just knowing one’s place back in the family because really it’s the partner that stayed at home that has had to carry the share of raising the family, making all the decisions, making sense of the person being overseas. All of the small and the big decisions and huge impact to the family when that person returns. Huge impact to the military person trying to figure out their way and their role back in their family and to do that multiple times over has an enormous set of impacts for all parties.

Garth: It’s not just the deployments as well. The nature of military service is you’re away a lot. When I left the military one of the reasons that was hanging over my head was the fact that I had and my eldest Eva who was 5 years old, I moved her 5 times for one but also I’d been away for years of her life. Crystal was operating as a single parent basically for years in that 5 year period where I’d been either deployed overseas, off training somewhere around Australia. The last one I did was 4 months in Shoal Water Bay. It can be really tough.
Jenelle: Certainly my own experience I would say life does change pretty fundamentally when you become a parent. How did it change for you going back into a war zone as a parent?
Garth: I guess it changes your view from macro to micro. You’re in the military to do good stuff to save lives. Afghanistan plugged me into a province which had wide spread violence. We were there to try and reduce that violence.
I’d say the difference between macro and micro level, suddenly when you have a family it goes from that broad picture about how you can help the world down to “hey I’ve got this little tiny human being and my focus is changing to more to looking after this little person” as opposed to “what I can do for a whole group of people”. Actually this is my priority right here in front of me.
That first bomb site I went to in Afghanistan had been (and I had Eva) and was just about to understand that Crystal was pregnant again with our second child, Zoe. Yeah I was a father and the first bomb site we went to a family. A Hilux had hit a bomb on a dirt road. It had taken the front of the car but amazingly nobody was seriously injured. I think there was a few broken ribs but I remember doing the post blast at that site and after watching this father and mother take their 5 children, (who’d all been jammed in this Hilux and somehow survived injury) take them and start walking to a 2 or 3 hour to the North where their village was. Going through the bomb site and it’s full of children’s toys and lollies and things like that, my stomach was turning over and over again. It was because thinking “wow” putting myself in the perspective of that young father saying “What a horrible situation those people have themselves in”. They really struggle to protect their family just from the simple things like driving on a road back to their village. It just so happened they didn’t come from the local village. This bomb blast occurred just outside a village. All the locals in that village knew the bomb was there but because they were from a different village they didn’t. Actually once we got to and had a decent look at the bomb site there were all these car tracks going around the site. Everyone had been driving around it.
So yeah absolutely so my excitement for deploying to overseas operations had definitely diminished at that stage. I wasn’t excited about the adventure of going overseas like I had been Iraq. Now it was just like “Well hey this is an incredible job where I have the opportunity to feedback”. The end result of that job was we had that privilege of knowing that we had saved multiple lives over that deployment and ongoing deployment. It was a unique and really privileged position to be in. My thinking had changed from that macro view of what I can do to protect large groups of population to “I really need to be focussed on my priorities which is my family and my children”.
Jenelle: Was it that desire to be with family and the multiple disruptions to the family that ultimately made you decide to leave the army and make that career change?
Garth: There were a lot of things that came to a head once and to be honest I look at the statistics now of when people generally leave. For my rank and my age I’m sitting smack bang in the middle of the bell curve for when people leave. So it was about right. Nearly 20 years’ service up my sleeve.
Garth: I guess for me absolutely family. I had a bit of pressure to go back over to Afghanistan which got Crystal and me talking about what I was going to do in the longer term. She said to me, something she had never said before which was “Oh I think it’s time you consider moving onto another job.”
That became really clear and made the decision very easy.
Jenelle: It’s not a small transition to make after almost 20 years of military life. It’s really all you’ve known as you started when you were 18. So huge change. How did you train yourself to reset to an entirely new ball game? How challenging was that transition period for you – move into a corporate world?
Garth: Look maybe it’s that I took the perspective that I am restarting professionally and I’ve got so much to learn. That’s one of those things I do. I don’t think I will ever stop learning and I’ll never become a Master of anything rather I’ll just be a student. That might be part of it.
Jenelle: Right that gives yourself all sorts of permission really to explore, to ask the questions, to manage expectations and to go from know it all, to learn it all.
Garth: Yep.
Jenelle: So Garth this podcast as you know is all about change. How people respond to it. How they seek to drive it. What we’ve talked about where change has happened to you but now the capacity that you’re in, is there a change that you are seeking to drive? Whether it’s in your work or in your life generally? If you were to distil a change that you are seeking to drive, what would that be?
Garth: Yeah and I get quite passionate about this. What I’m really seeking to do is change the way Australian business leaders make decisions during times of ambiguity and friction. So in times of those multiple risks emerging, they hadn’t anticipated and hadn’t necessarily prepared for that exact eventuality and really I think a lot of that will in the process of doing it that will make them transformational leaders. Make them better leaders and most importantly, protect their organisation and their people.
Jenelle: It’s a huge and really worthwhile change ambition. I can’t think of a better time do be driving to that sort of thing then in the COVID crisis that we’ve been talking about. In fact, as you were saying earlier on the words when you were painting the picture of Baghdad in 2004, you used words like “This was a destabilised country where people were making it up as they went along” and as you were saying that I was thinking this is what we’re finding ourselves in now. We’re in a destabilised country. We’re in a destabilised world and so many of us are making it up as we go along. Feels like the exact environment!
Garth: Yeah look that’s exactly right and I used to have a commanding officer who used to tell us that as a calvary officer it was our role which has thrived in an environment of chaos and friction. I like that. I don’t think I’m naturally comfortable in chaos and friction but I’ve developed resilience and I’ve developed processes around how you can do that. That’s what gets me interested.
Jenelle: With that sort of context in mind you then established your own consulting agency and it’s called Trebuchet Pivot. I can’t move on without asking you why you called it that? Then from there which I’m sure is the obvious question for everyone - what sort of work do you do within Trebuchet Pivot?

Garth: Trebuchet is an old medieval siege weapon. If you Google it you will see the images of it. It looks a bit like a catapult but on one side it uses a very heavy counterweight. On the other side there is a long arm with a sling and it’s designed to hurl boulders or diseased cow carcasses or whatever into the castle or over the wall. I like the analogy of using that downward pressure and force to create enough to create an upward positive trajectory. But there is another reason behind it as well and that was because in Afghanistan the insurgent bomb makers were all listed and rather than using their real names they got given objective names. Those objectives were all medieval weapons. So you’d have objective pike, objective sword, objective dagger and objective trebuchet. An objective trebuchet was a guy who moved out to the East of Tarin Kowt about 3 or 4 km. He couldn’t read and write but obviously was very intelligent and very cunning and would develop bombs with anti-handling switches in them. Designed to target people trying to disarm them. At the end of the day objective trebuchet was this really sneaky adversary over my time.
Jenelle: He was your arch-rival?
Garth: Yeah well I actually felt that I knew him personally. Cause I’d seen all the other intelligence reporting about him. I knew how many brothers he had. I knew where he travelled. I knew who he’d been meeting. I’d even been to sites where he’d set up bombs and I met soldiers who had seen him face-to-face across the corn fields. Yeah absolutely. When you are starting a business so many people spend too much time worrying about a business name. I did exactly that! That was the result!
Jenelle: Well it’s going to keep you going if you think about the symbolism of the instrument but also the embodiment of it in this person that you’ve studied deeply whilst he was on the other side of it. Clearly you were deeply respectful of kinds of skills and attributes and sort to really understand it. Again, making sense of it.
Garth: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Jenelle: What sort of work is it that you do then at Trebuchet Pivot?
Garth: I’ll tell you the history of it which was I came back from Afghanistan and then spent a couple of years at the combat training centre. Running Commanders leadership teams through exercises. The final exercise before they deploy. Basically putting them through every conceivable scenario they might face before they went over to Iraq or Afghanistan. I had the privilege of seeing all these great Commanders come through and their Command teams, the equivalent of C suite executive team. I saw ones who were great at making decisions and I saw ones that needed work on how they were going to make decisions. I was able to help them with that. The end result for me was that the ones that were good at decision making were the ones that involved their whole team and the ones that had a process.
It took me about 5 years since leaving that organisation, leaving the regular army to think about how I can take all that thinking and turn it into something useful for Australian Business Leadership as a whole. The process of being able to understand the environment you’re working in. Understand the facts that you have in front of you. Make assumptions about what they mean. Something we’ve used so much during COVID has been helping people through scenario planning. Understanding what is most likely going to occur but also understand what is the worst case.
That’s a very military intelligence process. It’s most likely and most dangerous. Understanding both of those two things and to prepare for both it’s likely going to get you over the mark. Then setting strategic objectives. Understanding where you need to get to.

Garth: What the end state of what you need to occur and doing all that before you actually try and come up with any sort of action plan. Understanding where the insight is – where you need to get to and then going and thinking What do we need to do internally to start achieving that? What do we need to do externally? How do we tie in our stakeholders? What do we need to be saying to people? Who do we need to be talking to? Then I guess finally, how are going to continue to plan to solve the problem we’re facing? That’s really a very high level snapshot of what we do. I like to think of it as a dynamic risk management process rather than anything else. Just being able to make decisions quickly and effectively and comprehensively.
Jenelle: I mean they are a fantastic set of pointers for us to remember involving the team. Having a process. Understanding the data and facts. Doing a scenario planning. Understanding the end state through your strategic objectives. Figuring out how you continuously build that in. If I’ve summarised that correctly.
Garth: That sounds pretty good!
Jenelle: It does actually! Now just changing tact slightly. You’re the Chairman of the Bravery Trust and that’s a Trust that supports veterans and their families who’ve suffered as a result of their service and they’re facing financial hardship. What made you get involved with that?
Garth: Bravery Trust is just a great organisation. I was am Ambassador for the Trust for a capital of years before I came on as a Director. Really for me it comes down to the fact that going back again to 2004, there were about 25 Australian soldiers involved in that incident. Of those one of the blokes Matt Millhouse passed away a few years ago from an illness linked to the bomb blast. I’ve had a couple of guys who have been hospitalised off and on over the years and have never properly processed or moved on from that incident. A couple more guys that have good days and bad days but that incident is part of their life. But also looking at the other 20 guys who, yes it’s part of their lives but they’ve moved on from it. Often I think a lot of them have grown from it and continue to have amazing careers. There is range of public servants. There are some guys who have gone into the Federal Police doing some awesome counter terrorism type work. Some guys who have stayed in the army, have reached quite high ranks now. Just a great bunch of guys.
Bravery Trust I really like cause not only do they show case and embrace those 20 guys that have gone onto do great things but they’re there to be the safety net for the other guys. Not only that we’re working to be, not a safety net, but more of a springboard so we can catch them when their world falls apart for them. We catch them so they’ve got a roof over their heads. They’ve got food on their tables. So there families are supported. We’re also working to make sure that they don’t get back into that situation as well. That’s really why I love Bravery Trust and the work that they do and we’re supporting about 650 veterans and their families annually.
Jenelle: Wow.
The last three: three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: What are you reading? Watching or listening to right now?
Garth: Reading – I have three on the go. One is Loonshots by Safi Bahcall.
Jenelle: Yes.

Garth: Awesome view at commercialisation, innovation. How new inventions sometimes fall flat or take forever to get done. It’s a really interesting view on it. Awesome. The Sympathizer – Thanh Nguyen. It’s a fiction based from mid 70’s Vietnam and US. I’m just on the last few pages now and I’m probably going to finish it straight after this podcast!
Jenelle: Ok I’ll try not to hold you up!
Garth: Then the last pieces. I’ve been doing my own writing. I’ve been reading over that. Again I don’t know if it’s going to see the light of day but it’s from the past 12 months. Some of the stuff we’ve talked about today but also putting stories behind things which I think business leaders would find interesting.
Jenelle: You know what just listening to you I will form at the end of this season a recommended reading list based on the recommendations of our guests. I’d love to be able to put whatever this is that you’re writing now as one of those books. Here it is, unfolding. No pressure! But I’d like that to make the list.
Garth: Ok yeah. Well the working title is ‘Insurgent Leadership’. So we’ll see how we go.
Jenelle: Ok. I can see Trebuchet making a little bit of an appearance here!
Garth: Yep!
Jenelle: Second question what is your super power? By that I mean it can be something that’s hugely additive to the world or it could be one of those useless party tricks. What’s your super power?
Garth: It’s a useless party trick! To be honest it’s fading over the years! I grew up being very flexible and I used to be able to leap into the splits.
Jenelle: Oh my gosh!
Garth: Yeah until a few years ago when I did it for the last time. Something went snap!
Jenelle: I hope it was your clothes and not anything else! Ok that’s great!
Garth: Yep.
Jenelle: And final question if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be?
Garth I think it comes down to the fact that I’ve been involved in some really serious, really harrowing incidents where life couldn’t be more serious. When that’s not occurring I also feel like life should be enjoyed. My quote would be something like “There is a time and a place to be serious the rest of the time should be enjoyed.”
Jenelle: Very good.
Garth: How does that sound?
Jenelle: That sounds pretty good to me. I’m good with that. Garth, listen, thank you so much for the conversation today. Really enjoyed it.
Garth My pleasure.
Jenelle: I need to thank you for 20 years of service and continuing. I know you’re a reservist now. You’re continuing advice to those of us that are in the non-military world and your support to the veterans and their families. I have taken away (as I always do from these calls) a lot of great insights. Few that really come to mind for me. You and your learning mindset being a constant student and the ability to turn experience into insight. I think you have a bold change ambition and one that we, the world over needs help with. When we think about business leaders making decisions during times of risk and crisis, finding comfort in chaos and friction, which is underwritten I guess by strong process.
Garth: Yeah.
Jenelle: I think it’s a great callout to remind us those at senior levels of organisations not to make decisions in isolation and certainly to tap into the cognitive diversity of their teams. I love that you have really shown us what a deep understanding of what risk looks like, an appreciation of its impact on people and using that to drive risk cultures, to understand risk tolerances, to understand risk thresholds. One I’ve really loved as well in listening to you is your willingness and drive to lean into adversity to call upon your curiosity, your empathy and your desire to make sense of the world and fuel that to drive a whole lot of new ways, new processes and new insights. So huge contribution for all of us and massive thank you for your time Garth.
Garth: Oh no. Thank you that’s a really lovely wrap up. Thank you.
The Change Happens podcast. From EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Adam Jacobs
Co-founder, Hatch

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change. The good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season Two of the Change Happens podcast where we continue to have conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today I’m joined by Adam Jacobs, co-founder of the Iconic. A company that shouldn’t need too much intro and he’s also the co-founder of Hatch, an online employment platform that connects young people to meaningful work by looking at underlying transferable strengths rather than what's on the CV and the purpose of Hatch is to design the future of work and if you’ve met Adam before, or listened to him before, you’ll know that that intention is not a marketing slogan. It’s absolutely what he will do. Adam started his career in strategy consulting before establishing Australia’s number one online fashion retailer, the Iconic, in 2011. A company that fundamentally disrupted the massive “bricks and mortar” incumbent retail players. He’s interested in how technology is changing societies and aims to build global tech companies that positively influence the future. Key to Adam’s success is his emphasis on customer experience and the power of purpose led teams. In 2014 Adam was awarded the Young Executive of the Year and runner-up for Managing Director of the Year by the CEO magazines annual awards. I’m excited to chat with Adam, not least because he’s right here in the room with me. I haven’t had a face to face interview happening since February last year, so forgive me if there’s a little too much excitement in my voice but I’m excited because I know this is going to be an awesome chat, no pressure Adam. Adam has a big brain, huge heart and he is the embodiment of what this podcast is all about, making change happen. Adam, welcome.
Adam: Hell, what an introduction. I’m going to play that back to my Mum, she’s going to be so proud.
Jenelle: [laugh], well she should be.
Adam: Thanks for having me, its great to be here.
Jenelle: Oh I love having you in here, thank you. Now when I was thinking about this interview, I was going back and forth in my mind about how and where to start. The ordered sequential part of me wanted to kind of start at the beginning, you know, the “what did you want to be when you grow up” kind of question. The current context part of me wanted to sort of dive into the impact of covid on your business but the fashion lover in me wanted to dive into all things The Iconic [laugh]. So my plan is to absolutely cover all of those things, that’s how I calmed myself down about it but I’m just going to start with a bridging question of the current to the past and that’s this “how is it that the head of a tech company, or two tech companies, is a student of philosophy and a major proponent of studies and humanities”.
Adam: Yeah well I’m really glad you asked that question. Its something I’m really passionate about. You know I think if we think about the world we live in today, there is just huge amounts of rapid change happening around us. You know, there’s change in the way we access products and services, the way the economy is structured, there’s change in the guys to what's important in our lives, in our societies and that rate of change is somewhat unprecedented, you know compared to 100 years ago or 500 years ago and so really what it means is there’s an opportunity to think from first principles about how the world is structured and how it might be improved, amongst all that change and that’s kind of what philosophy is. You know, philosophy is the exercise or breaking things down to its component parts and asking some really tough questions and navigating your way through it and so you know, from my experience, studying philosophy and the humanities was almost the most valuable bedrock I could have had into eventually becoming an entrepreneur. You know, it gave me the toolkit to look at the world with a critical eye, to assume that the status quo wasn’t there for a reason, to ask confronting questions and not be afraid to ask them and to reimagine how things could be put together.
Jenelle: Love it and I … you know, we all explore the lack of fear of questioning the rules and not being afraid of the unknown, throughout the conversation no doubt. I want to talk to you about both of your businesses but I want to start with The Iconic. Talk me through the early days when you were starting out, where were you, what did it look and feel like at that time.
Adam: So it was really an accident, to be honest. Like people love romantic start-up stories of, you know, I was toiling away in a garage for years and finally my grand vision came to life and that’s just not at all what happened in my journey in founding The Iconic. I was living in Copenhagen, I transferred to the Danish office of BCG. So I started with BCG in Sydney and then transferred to Europe and was approached by a European venture capitalist who was investing into e-commerce models in Europe. Most noticeably Zalando which is Europe’s largest online fashion retailer and basically said “look, you know, our VC’s been thinking about Australia, the market there seems really ripe for online fashion, would you think about leading BCG, dropping the MBA you’re about to do in the States and instead going and founding this company with, you know, one or two other BCG colleagues.”
Jenelle: And you’d just got into Copenhagen, like what was the timing …
Adam: I was only there literally two or three months I think when I was approached and I said no. You know, I said it sounds amazing and really fun but I’ve just got here, you know, I had literally packed up my whole life in Australia, I sold all my stuff, I moved out of my apartment, I told my girlfriend we were breaking up …
Jenelle: So “awkies” to come back [laugh].
Adam: [laugh], it was a little bit awkward and had just been admitted to a couple of MBA programmes in the States and that was my plan for the following year and so, you know, life had a plan and I didn’t really want to deviate from it and this VC, they were like … they were really persistent and over a month, they’d call me every few days and in their very German direct ways, say “come on, how about now, how about now”. You know, eventually after thinking about it further, I thought to myself, this is a pretty unique opportunity to start with the backing of a VC that is proven in e-commerce and has capital and to build a company with some people I trust because I was discussing it with some colleagues from BCG and I, you know, wandered the canals of Copenhagen and made pros and cons lists and talked to all the people in my life because that’s how I tend to make decisions, I’m very analytical and in the end none of that helped and so then I just thought to my stomach as who what would I be more excited to do when I woke up in the morning and felt you know what, I would like to build a business. Like I had always played around in creating and building things, businesses or clubs, you know, societies and saw it as a unique opportunity and so, took the plunge and I think the first thing I learnt from that was there really is no blueprint to starting a company. You know, people sort of hold in mind this Steve Jobs inspired archetypical story of how companies … how great start-ups come about and the reality is, not just from looking at my own story, but a lot of friends, close friends, who have been successful entrepreneurs, everybody comes from a different background, a different path. You know, there’s no blueprint. I think, you know, to the second part of the question, what we got right. I sort of moved back from Copenhagen and started The Iconic very quickly. We put an initial team together quite quickly and got the website up. What we got right was probably two things. One was the timing. Like 2011, it seems an age ago now but it was the perfect time to be disruptive in e-commerce in Australia. No one was doing anything interesting. There was just a lot of negative views towards e-comm. So we got the timing right and we just didn’t listen to the status quo. We basically gave ourselves the permission to do something different and to bring forth this model that was based on customer experience rather than on yield. Like mostly retailers at the time were thinking of e-commerce as clearance channels. How do we take stock that’s not moving, put it online, get as many dollars for it as we can, bargain basement and we sort of put that to the side and said “no no no, that’s not what we think e-commerce is going to be in the future, we think its going to be a superior shopping experience and we’re going to bring that to life.”
Jenelle: How do you knock down those belief systems. How did you convince people. How did you tell the story in a way that the best brands would come onto your platform, that you would go “okay, this isn’t about clearing stock, this is about attracting the right labels.” Was there a tipping point. Was there some … how did you do it?
Adam: I think there … I think there were three tactics that worked really well for us. The first one and the most by far, the most important one was we did a really good job of painting the vision and telling the story. We would sit down with a brand that was really important to us, like Nike or Adidas or you know, Levis, and we’d say to them, “look, we know that in Australia, e-commerce is not a big share of your revenue but lets look at America and let’s look at Europe and lets take those markets as a crystal ball as to where Australia is going to be, you know, not even five years, probably two to three years from now. We’re creating that future and do you want to be a part of it because if you don’t want to be a part of it, you may well be left behind”. That last bit we may not vocalise, that’s sort of the implicit message or you know, you better jump on this ship or … but that… you know it wasn’t too hard to paint that story, just by looking at more mature markets, that really were about five years ahead of Australia and what was going on in those markets. That was really effective. The other two things that we did that were quite effective was we started with the most aspirational brands. Mostly boutique designer brands. So like an Ellery or a Sascinbide and once we had them on the website, then it gave a little bit more credibility for the next tier to come down and then the next tier and so we had this sort of trickle down effect of brand acquisition by starting at the most aspirational ones.
Jenelle: And were they hard to convince.
Adam: Yeah they were hard but if we went after local brands that had only one or two people that needed to be convinced, rather than a global brand where it was quite a stakeholder complex environment, then we could get them across the line and we do deals with them. We’d make it attractive to them because we knew the value of getting them on first. That was pretty effective. The third thing we did in our first year was above the line advertising and everybody thought we were crazy in doing TV ads …
Jenelle: What does that mean.
Adam: Yeah, so its … non digital advertising. So you know, for us it was …
Jenelle: Non digital advertising for a digital business.
Adam: Exactly. Mostly broadcast channels. So for us it was TV, radio, billboards, buses, street furniture and no Australian e-commerce company to that point had done any above the line marketing because, as you said, if you’re a digital company you advertise in digital channels and the reason was really simple was … which was that Australia as a customer base hadn’t yet become comfortable shopping online. Australians didn’t put their trust into websites and so we had to send a signal of our credibility, that we were here, that we were real, that we were tangible and quite simply, if you see it on TV, then it must be true.
Jenelle: [laugh], but what you did was create a bridge between the two worlds. So if the world was operating in an analogue way and you wanted to get them to digital, you had to find the bridge between the two so you communicating on the way.
Adam: Exactly yeah yeah, so I often use the term “the familiarity bridge” and that’s what we did, yeah I agree.
Jenelle: Now the purpose of The Iconic as stated on the website, because I checked it out, is “liberation. It’s a big word. Liberation, we create seamless and inspiring experiences. How did you arrive at that and what's the story behind the liberation purpose.
Adam: I think … I think a company’s purpose is one of those things where it comes from the culture primarily. Where I see purpose is, become a little bit trite or superficial is that they’re trying to meet the convenient or a strategic goal. Where I see them to be authentic and powerful is where they start with the core belief system of the people at the centre of the company and so in the first couple of years of building The Iconic, just through who the founding team was and who the first, you know, 20 to 50 employees were, what we found was we very quickly built a culture that believes in disruption, that believed in rejecting the status quo and in thinking big and in reimagining what online retail and fashion could look like in the future for Australia and that is a form of liberation. Its like casting aside the structures that take hold of you today and saying “look, just because they’re there don’t mean that they’re there for a good reason, you know, they don’t have to have been put there by someone who is smarter or with more authority than us”, like we have that intelligence. We have the same capabilities to build the future as anyone else. So that was a very tangible cultural aspect that you could feel every day in The Iconic’s office and so I think it was mirrored to the outside in the way that we bought the brand to life in going after really bold initiatives early on like three hour delivery when no one else could even do like one week delivery, you know, in 2012. Even in bringing out a mobile app experience three years before most of our competitors. Those forms of initiatives sent a signal to Australians, you know what, we can be leaders, like we don’t have to just be behind the eight ball or like what's going on in Europe and America. Like we can liberate ourselves from the status quo and reimagine and take control of our own destiny. That’s where I really came from.
Jenelle: It feels to me that it works on a macro and a micro level when you talk about liberation because I can see the liberation in the way in which you approach the business and the psyche and the mindset and challenging the status quo but I also think its on a micro level so your customers who are coming into the website and liberating themselves from kind of the fashion norms that might have … like it’s such a broad range of items and you know, was that an intent as well.
Adam: Definitely yeah. Yeah those two things definitely fuse together and the moment that I would witness time and time again where I most saw the macro brand message and the micro shopping experience come together was when often in the first couple of years, at the end of the day if I was coming back from the warehouse, I spent a lot of time in our warehouse which is a big part of The Iconic’s operation, now called the fulfilment centre, it’s much more tech … tech driven than it used to be. I would grab a couple of parcels and I’d deliver them myself to the doorstep of customers because I would just want to ask them how was your experience, what was good, what was bad, what could we improve and you know, what really made a difference was when I grabbed a three hour delivery parcel and I would deliver it to the customer within three hours and the joy on their face of just like receiving … like it was almost like unbelief, like the unbelief of receiving something that they ordered, like barely two hours before on the doorstep, made our brand seem limitless in their mind, made them feel limitless as a result and then that was laid onto the product they were buying and so the dress, the jeans, the shoes, the jacket – whatever it was – was imbued with this feeling of like boldness and limitlessness and that’s really the moment. Like the delivery experience plus the product like coming together in the delivery moment, that’s when it all came to life.
Jenelle: I love that and look, I get excited when packages arrive, no matter how long it takes to get to my door but if its within a click or two and then its there, absolutely. What did you learn about yourself as a leader. I have no doubt that it has evolved over time but perhaps at that point in time, what was your style of leadership. What did you learn about yourself in that role.
Adam: Yeah. Do you know the moment I started seeing myself as a leader, I was in the HR office, I think it was the only team in the company that had an enclosed office for good reason, it was a wild couple of first years [laugh] and the … I was in there and there was a member of the HR team, Kikki, who I worked really closely with the whole time, she was at The Iconic and she … she said to me, like you know, like Adam, you’re really the leader of The Iconic and you know, I know the other guys have moved on now but like that’s, I mean that’s always been your role and we’ve always looked at you in that regard and I was really taken aback. It almost required someone else to like play it back to me as a mirror to become aware and I asked why and her answer, which I think is consistent with how I now sort of come to see my own leadership style is I focus a lot on how you can bring a large group of people together around a singular goal, in a very authentic way, in a way that that goal means something to them and means something to the company and unites them as a group of people but then I also focus, deep down in the detail, on the mechanics of how it all works. You know, I was a very busy builder of the company. I wasn’t sort of trying to yeah, just hand things off to other people. I was really like, hands and elbows, you know, in the detail and I loved that but I think that mix of being in the trenches plus having the … painting the clear vision of what we’re all here for and constantly reminding everyone of that and bringing them back to it were hallmarks … or are hallmarks of my leadership style.
Jenelle: So what happens then when you move out of start-up phase and you’re into scale up or hyper scaling the business and perhaps you’re not as hands-on – you can’t be as hands-on as you … you’re not on the tools they way that you might have ben before. Were there other attributes that you kind of had to develop in your leadership arsenal, you know, when your preference point wasn’t as available to you maybe.
Adam: Yeah yeah. You know its funny. I was reflecting on this last week. I had dinner with a really close friend who’s the CEO of Wiser, which is a publicly listed FinTech company and he was actually my housemate during this time, we were living together. You know, I was only late 20s/early 30s when hypergrowth was happening for The Iconic. We went from 50 people to 500 within three years I think.
Jenelle: Wow.
Adam: Maybe a little bit faster and so she had a front row seat to all of this and we were sort of reflecting on this together …
Jenelle: That you were a joy to live with [laugh].
Adam: … yeah, he just never saw me [laugh] and you know it’s funny, I actually think in the development of someone’s leadership career, I skipped a step and the step I skipped was like being a good manager. Like I went from a really strong individual contributor to really strong, like team leader which was probably where I was at BCG and then being a manager of – lets say 10/20 people, I kind of skipped and then went to being a leader of like a multi-100 person organisation and I’m actually more comfortable I think, in that zone. You know, the bit about getting my hands dirty is probably me as an individual contributor or team leader figuring out really tough problems that are really core and critical to the company’s success but then where I like to go next after that is thinking about all design, thinking about who’s the right talent in the right roles, thinking about what's support infrastructure do you put around them to be really successful, thinking about mid-term strategy and connecting the dots to make sure its really clear how everyone contributes to it. Those things are actually more comfortable for me.
Jenelle: Okay. I think it was around 2016, maybe 2017 when you decided to step out of your operational role or your full time operational role of The Iconic. I know that you still play an advisory role to The Iconic. Tell me about how you made that decision, why you made that decision, especially since the business seemed to be going from strength to strength. So there’s a way that you could have kept righting, why step off then and how did you reach that conclusion.
Adam: So there was a forcing function actually which is really helpful cos I’m not sure I would have thought about it for maybe a couple of years later. The Iconic is wholly owned by a parent investment portfolio and that investment portfolio owns several similar e-commerce businesses around the world and was intending to list on the stock exchange in Europe about two or three years from the time we’re talking about, late 2016. It was a conversation with me as to, you know, “we’re thinking about listing the parent vehicle several years down the track, so we want to talk about the next five years and want to talk about what your plan is”. Patrick was in a CEO role and I was in a MD role and we were really building the business together. Patrick was then moving into the CEO role of the parent investment portfolio and so the question was put to me “what do you want to do. Do you want to now assume the CEO role similarly yourself and if so, lets talk about a long time horizon here because, you know, we want to shore up the team over the public listing” which is an obviously very natural question and it sort of caused me to think about what did I want to do and you know, what did I want the next five or ten years of my career to look like. I felt extraordinarily lucky to have had the experience at that age, of building a … at that point, 800 person technology company …
Jenelle: So you would have been about, what 33/32.
Adam: I was 34 at the time. You know, back to your initial question about my philosophy roots, I’d always thought about systems of society in different ways to influence them and rather than being in one area, being retail for multiple decades, I thought what a great opportunity to take this experience and to attack a different system of society that I really cared about. You know, thinking about the five year horizon was the forcing function that helped me decide, you know what, I think I want to build something new.
Jenelle: Attack a new system of society … love it. So let’s now bridge then now to the next business and I know that there was a process to get there. So at the risk of being corny, how did you hatch the idea of Hatch.
Adam: It was a process [laugh]. It was about a two year timeframe from working full time in The Iconic to full time on Hatch and no longer operational in The Iconic. The process was interesting. So I first identified my co-founder which is an old friend. Chaz was one of the original co-founders of Zip and had built a number of businesses himself and we’d always talked about building a business together that was more impact driven and then we started brainstorming but really it came together when we took time out, of like day to day life and we went trekking in the Himalayas for a month. It sounds totally clique …
Jenelle: It was either going to be that or an ashram in India [laugh].
Adam: … [laugh] every time I share this story I get like really embarrassed of just looking like that …
Jenelle: No its fantastic.
Adam: … clique on a piece of paper but we did a three week trek around this mountain called Manaslu which is the 8th highest mountain in the world, its quite close to the border of Tibet, on the Nepal side and it was just the most, you know, incredible experience and we asked ourselves one question at the start of this trek and that question was “what do we want society to look like 100 years from now” and its funny because before … before we started the trek, like a good management … ex management consultant, I had a very structural plan for how we were going to use those three weeks to end up with a business idea that we then wanted to pursue, you know, first three days of this, next three days that and a wise person in Silicon Valley where I was just before I flew to Kathmandu said to me “hey you’ve got to forget all that structure and you’ve just got to start with a simple question of like what do you want the future to look like and to see where it goes”. So for the first week, we didn’t even really talk about that question directly. We just shared life experiences with each other, like what did we learn from the last few jobs we had, from our relationships, from our travels, you know, what were the formative experiences that shaped our belief systems and then we started getting like a really good understanding of shared values and beliefs and then the second week we started just naturally talking about what we thought was broken that needs to be fixed and how we might have an influence on it and there was this moment, I want to say …
Jenelle: I doubt there was a long list of things though!
Adam: … there were a few things, yeah yeah. So we talked a lot about news and information, I think that’s still a problem that needs to be solved. Still one I think about a lot. We talked a lot about the education system which is quite close to Hatch so we kind of come up against it quite regularly. We talked a lot about the health system and particularly health data. What else! We talked a bit about food and how you can help people afford good quality meals that otherwise might be eating quite poorly today and we did explore a number of these models to a certain extent.
Jenelle: It feels like you worked through the sustainable development goals, all 17 of them [laugh]
Adam: … [laugh] and the time we spent in Silicon Valley was actually playing out some of these things and meeting companies in the space and seeing what was going on but you know, about two and a half weeks into the trek in the Himalayas, there was this moment … we had all these ideas that we were talking about … there was this moment where I basically grabbed Chaz by the shoulders and like kind of held him close to the edge of the cliff … not too dangerous but enough that he was sort of caught off guard and said “you know, if you had to decide right now, like which idea do you want to do”. He said “hatch” and I said “me too” and that was the moment that we decided.
Jenelle: And Hatch being the focus on the student experience. Was that the express intent of it, of Hatch at the time. Tell me how you articulated what Hatch was then.
Adam: Sure yeah. Its about how people find work that’s a good fit for them and really like, our grand vision of the change we want to have on a 50 year scale is to change how employment marketplaces operate and I don’t think employment marketplaces have changed since the Industrial Era fundamentally, in terms of their fundamental dynamics. You know the way that someone finds themselves or like how someone finds themselves in a job today is still mostly based on their family and socio-economic education background and what set of opportunities their background presents and governs for them and that’s just not … that’s not how our economy or our society works anymore. Like we’re not in the Industrial Era. You don’t have to sort of stick to one track of work. There’s opportunity to move into all sorts of different new types of work that might be a better fit for you compared to where your family may have been before you.
Jenelle: Why did that matter to you.
Adam: Yeah, look I mean the answer to this question, we might be getting a little bit deep now but hey, that’s what your questions are for Jenelle. So I’m quite interested in the idea of identity and meaning. Yeah, this is going to be my cynical view. We walk around life a lot of time on autopilot. You know, we’re sort of doing the things that we think we ought to be doing, whether that be the job that we are in, whether that be the people we spend time, the places we go, the things we say. I think a lot of the time, its on autopilot and I think if we really think about where a sense of someone’s identity comes from and where meaning is genuinely derived from, its less about how we, like how we consume things around us, like what we buy and how much money we make and what social status we have and who we are in the eyes of people that we want to impress. It’s less about those things. Its actually more about what we contribute back. Like what is it that we fundamentally care about that we want to identify with and that we want to make a contribution towards and those things don’t have to be big, it could be small. It could just be your family. That’s the thing that you care most about more than anything else and you want to make really great contribution towards it. It could be anything. It could be a cause you care about, it could be a job, it could be a relationship and so I’m really interested in how you help people identify those things. Like where does meaning come from so that you can actually turn off autopilot and move away from just doing the things you feel like you ought to be doing and move towards doing the things that bring you genuine joy and make you feel alive and genuine meaning and I think if we can help more people achieve that, what will actually happen at a macro level, is a more values led society. Like I said a group of people and communities who are living life according to their values and making really great choices in alignment to them. That’s actually what I care about, most fundamentally.
Jenelle: You’re right, that was very deep.
Adam: [laugh].
Jenelle: And what is it about students, you know, you sort of focussed on that target group at the time. What is it that they represent specifically in this next generation and to business.
Adam: Yeah yeah … well look, the question that we’re trying … trying to work on at Hatch, is this question we all ask ourselves all the way through life which is “what should I be doing for work”. Like am I doing the right thing right now. Is this what I should be doing. What else is out there. What might be a good fit for me and ultimately we want to help people answer that question by connecting them to opportunities that are really good fit for them in ways that break down some of the structural barriers that exist around them today. Maybe they didn’t have the right education path on paper. Maybe they came from a different professional background. Maybe they’re a woman in a world that’s very male dominated. Like we want to break down those barriers so that anyone can access an opportunity that is a good fit for them. I guess our thinking is that those barriers are most sensitive at the start of someone’s career. Its almost like a sliding doors effect. Like the first few steps you take, you know, your first one or two jobs probably are not the same as the job you’re going to be in in fifteen years from now, but they are putting you on a path that leads somewhere and so we feel that by having an impact on your starting point, we’re maximising almost like in a compound fashion, the impact on your whole career arc. So that’s why we started with students. We also feel that it’s just this, you know, very anxious time of life. Like we can all relate to when we were young and starting out and trying to figure out, like what's the right first move …
Jenelle: Absolutely!
Adam: … you know, how do I not make a mistake. I don’t know what's, you know, what's out there and what's good for me and so it’s a very human problem that still exists today that we think, you know, its possible to do a better job in helping young people navigate employment marketplaces.
Jenelle: Yes its interesting, I mean the number of times I’ve said or my colleagues have said and we’re, you know, not at the early end of the career spectrum by any stretch of the imagination but we will still say “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up”. You know, the question comes up all the time.
Adam: Yeah, which is natural. Like the way I think about careers is they’re pursuits. They’re not … they’re not static. They’re not in states. Its not like you find your dream job and then you’re done forever. Like every experience you have you learn more about yourself and that leads you to shifting your goalposts on what might be the right thing next and then you pursue that thing until its no longer relevant and then you pursue the next thing. We want to help people navigate that relationship in the starting point of their career.
Jenelle: The other thing that I find super interesting about the business model that you have there is when we talk about what people need in this world, that we find ourselves in now and relevance with the amount of changes going on, we talk about a capability around learning agility and I’ve often wondered, you know, can you teach someone learning agility, they’re either about to do that or they’re not, I’m not sure. Can you teach people curiosity. I’m not sure, like if you think about the definition of learning agility, which is sort of the ability to be in a novel situation, you don’t know the answers to it but you are able to draw on the right lessons from the past to be able to apply in a completely new situation and I think about your business and you’re putting people in new situations all the time. Underlying that model seems to be a learning agility capability build.
Adam: Yeah, I think I instinctively learnt the importance of learning agility through my time in consulting, to be honest, in professional services because it’s a world where you’re thrown into different domains and you have to become an expert in those domains quite quickly. Seeing that first hand, doing it myself, seeing other people who are high performers and how quickly they upskilled or they learnt a totally new area. It was influential to me but I think in terms of the theme of how important is learning agility and can you teach it or can you not, I think this might be over simplifying things, but I think …
Jenelle: It works for me! Go!
Adam: Okay … so when we think about who’s good for what job, I think there are, broadly speaking, two schools of thought. One school of thought is you can rank someone on a scale of very intelligent and capable to not. Like some people are just intrinsically better than others. The other school of thought is it’s about fit. Like, not one person is intrinsically better than another person, its just that people are suited to different environments. Traditionally the world of work has sort of adopted the first school of thought and the best example of that is an IQ assessment.
Jenelle: Yes.
Adam: An IQ assessment treats people in a very narrow definition of intelligence and tries to stack rank them within that one narrow float and a lot of hiring to date has actually adopted that school of thought. Okay, we’ve got a lot of people playing, lets just see who’s smarter than others and that’s how we’ll play it. I think our world view is more aligned to the second which is … its about fit. You know, its not about intrinsic intelligence. It’s about fit and so learning agility shows up when you put someone in an environment that unlocks them, you know, maybe a particular person might not be really suited to an analytical environment and it freaks them out and it shuts them down and it doesn’t give them the permission to play and so a manager might look and them and say “well they’ve got no learning agility because they haven’t taken the initiative to go and learn how to do sequel queries or you know, whatever the thing might be but if you put the same person in a totally different environment maybe its more creative, maybe its more abstract, maybe its working with people then all of a sudden, they come alive, they feel more permission to play, they have more intrinsic motivation, they have more drive and then the same manager might look at them and say “oh wow, that’s a high performer with learning agility” and I saw that first hand at The Iconic when there were a couple of key people who I shifted from one team to another. There’s this one guy who I’m thinking of who worked in a very operational role, didn’t suit him at all. He struggled. We moved him into an analytical role, he very quickly became probably the highest performer in the company and had this huge outsized impact on the company’s top level strategy within a couple of months, like simply jump by putting him in the right environment and I think that’s something we need to think about. You know, when we think about the future of work that these environments are shifting quickly. You know, what an accounting firm, what a … I don’t know, what a resource company used to look like 20 years ago doesn’t look remotely the same anymore and we have to think a little bit about who fits where.
Jenelle: Okay. So we’ve talked about Hatch and where you were … the initial intention of Hatch. Now, think about The Iconic. The risk of distilling it down in a real simplistic way. You had a vision, came down to flawless execution, done at pace.
Adam: It certainly wasn’t flawless but [laugh and overtalking]
Jenelle: But that’s what you want … you were aspiring to do flawless execution done quickly, right. You had to move fast. With Hatch, you had a vision, you started to follow a cycle of voting testing, you build an MVP (minimum viable product) but then a totally different kind of disruptor came along, it wasn’t like other incumbent players or anything, it was called a global pandemic, it was called covid19. What happened then. What was that experience. What did you do.
Adam: Yeah. So it was definitely a big moment for Hatch. You know, we’re still the really young company. Like early March last year, we’d been running beta for about two years. We were just about the launch the product publicly. The product was a marketplace to place the University students into teams on a contingent basis and make it really easy for a lot of employers to use it and, you know, we had just doubled the team in preparation for launching publicly and then covid struck and so we sort of sat … we sat down and we thought to ourselves “okay, like how … you know, we’re a start-up on a runway, like how do we handle this, no one is going to be hiring interns and graduates this year, people are going to be trying to save their dollars and they will be very cautious. We shouldn’t be launching the business, you know, what do we do and …
Jenelle: Must have been a scary time, right.
Adam: Yeah.
Jenelle: Were you scared?
Adam: It was scary. I think, like Chaz and I, we had … I think our approach to those kinds of moments is like we can figure it out and probably more optimistic than pessimistic which isn’t always good. They say pessimistic founders are the long lasting ones because you’re more paranoid, I’ve lasted so far but you know, the typical wisdom in the moment of a crisis for a start-up is cut half your team, cut all of your costs and bunker down. You know, that’s the … that’s what most people advise. I was really lucky that the day that we decided to shut down the office, I had a coffee catchup with one of our advisors, Alison Deans, and she’s just phenomenal, really smart tech leader and she said to me “you know what, there’s really only one thing you need to do, you need to call up ten of your closest customers and just understand what’s going on for them and where you can help”. So the next day I did that. I called ten of our customers and by the fifth call, it became really clear where there was going to be a big problem for our customers and what we could do about it and the problem was labour dislocation and so you know, we had in our hands this technology that matches people to jobs, not necessarily based on their CV but based on genuine fit which is their underlying strengths and skills. So we said, “okay its pretty clear what we need to do here. We need to spin up a totally new product to help rapidly redeploy thousands of people from covid impacted industries into new areas of work” and these aren’t students, these are pilots that have been flying planes for 20 years, they’re hotel managers, they’re travel agents and everyone in-between. Like you know, I wasn’t sure if … it was a big bet. It was like “should we really do this” and so I basically wrote a short article, I put it up on LinkedIn and I said “if a thousand say they need this within the next 48 hours, we’ll do it and we’ll build it within a week”.
Jenelle: Did you think “I have no idea whether we can do it in a week” or were you convinced you could.
Adam: I was pretty convinced … I probably could have done a better job of consulting with our team. I definitely had a couple of confronting conversations the next day but you know, I wanted to act swift. Like I think in those moments, you’ve got to act decisively and I think if I did it again, I would have consulted a few people earlier but I probably still would have come to the same position.
Jenelle: So you posted your LinkedIn article.
Adam: Yeah, thousands of people said “please build this”. Five days later, we had it live and you know, the initial version was very hacky, you know, it was mostly …
Jenelle: Very “hatchy” [laugh].
Adam: … very hatchy, yeah, it was a landing page with, you know, the product was kind of behind the scenes but then, as more and more companies use it to redeploy workers, we then made the product more and more mature over the coming months, made it more and more automated and ultimately redeployed thousands of people into jobs that otherwise wouldn’t have found a job that quickly and had mortgages and had families and you know, had anxiety over being stood down. This was before JobKeeper was implemented so …
Jenelle: I remember seeing a hashtag, I think you had “step up …
Adam: Yeah, step up for sit down.
Jenelle: Yeah.
Adam: Exactly and I mean the stories are incredible, you know and the thing that I loved about it was hearing from the workers that we redeployed of “I didn’t think I could do something totally unrelated to my career but I can, you know, I’ve been a retail worker for the past ten years, I’m not working in logistics or I’m working in customers operations, you know, there’s commonalities in terms of the transferrable strengths but it’s a different industry, it’s a different job, it’s a different everything, it feels really different and I’m loving it and I’m good at it”, you know. Those stories are incredible.
Jenelle: So its another case study really. Like you’ve sort of gone in for another case study around the student experience, now you’ve got a case study around dislocated workers but all under … all on the same premise of matching transferrable skills to opportunities.
Adam: Exactly, exactly right. The other thing that it did for me personally was I think it made me realise that I’d been holding onto, like some sacred cows of our business model too tightly …
Jenelle: Like what?
Adam: … well for example, the business model before we launched that covid initiative was a contingent workforce model and I was really attached to scaling out the contingent workforce model because there’s some benefits in the feedback loop we get of in-role performance data that helps our matching algorithm that’s gets faster and faster and I was really attached to that but the reality is its much … its harder and slower to scale out a contingency workforce model because there’s just more stakeholders that need to be involved in the approval process. It’s a more complex thing to onboard into an organisation and by letting go of that model, Hatch started scaling a lot faster and so I think I realised, possibly because its an impact and mission led journey for me with Hatch, that I was a little bit too personally close to some of the elements of it that actually we needed to be somewhat looser with in terms of experimenting and finding what worked and that was really important lesson that basically led us to post-covid, well not really post-covid but you know, I guess six months later, iterating our core business model out of students and into young professionals and not focussing on contingent workforce but focussing on a employment marketplace that intelligently matches the two sides together.
Jenelle: Its interesting listening to you talk about you confronting your own sacred cows on this because at a macro level, you do that with everybody else, right. You challenge the status quo, you’re like “hang on, why wouldn’t you challenge that thinking” and its … I don’t know, for me, its quite nice to see that you still have it within yourself as well. Like even with people who are built that way to challenge your thinking, the fact that you’ve got some … you had some fixed things of your own that you had to face is quite interesting.
Adam: Yeah.
Jenelle: I don’t know if you know the book called “Future Shock”. Alvin Toffler wrote it in 1971. A book I reckon which is way ahead of its time but in that he wrote “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn” and so I’m interested in what you might have learnt with your experience at The Iconic, that you had to kind of unlearn and relearn as you set up the second business at Hatch.
Adam: Yeah yeah I mean I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. You know, there’s this stat that I love to quote that in the 1980s the half life of a professional skill was like 35 years and today its about 5 years and falling and you know, so this old idea of we learn about your tricks at University or some other education experience, that bag of tricks lasts us for 40 years and then we retire is just not true anymore and there’s a scary implication of we need to constantly be learning. You can’t sort of sit on your laurels but there’s also an optimistic implication of this chance for reinvention all the way through our life. We don’t have to stick to the thing we’re doing right now. We can discover new horizons. So yeah, I think, I mean your comment before about, like you know, I’m very willing to challenge the macro of sacred cows but I still hold them internally I think [laugh] is astute Jenelle and [laugh] and there have been things I’ve learnt at The Iconic that I just assumed translated into Hatch that I have had to unlearn. Some of them are tactical or technological. So an example of that would be the “go to market” model. So The Iconic’s “go to market” model is really based on digital marketing. You know, it’s a B2C growth model where you build a really great inventory that you can market through a series of search careers on Google and ads retargeting social ads, display ads and that’s what brings in your traffic. A lot of The Iconic’s traffic comes off search, you know, Google search and that’s how you go to market and so I think my assumption with Hatch was “oh I don’t want to build a sales team, who needs a sales team, like that feels like a lot … that feels old world and like traditional and conventional, like we’re going to do this digital” and it just … it didn’t make sense for the model, because you know, it’s a brand new model. Back to the point about familiarity bridges, it’s a model that no one is familiar and simply by slapping a digital ad in front of you isn’t therefore going to convince you of it, whereas you’ve been shopping Nike shoes for years and years so its pretty clear what we’re selling when we put an ad for Nike shoes in front of you. With Hatch, there’s a level of education that’s required, there’s a level of trust that needs to be built and also the relationship we have with the customer is much more of a high touch relationship where we help them try Hatch, onboard it, get the best out of it. So that was a big thing I had to unlearn was this bias, almost this dogma towards “I’m only going to do things in a new digital way as opposed to embracing some old school tactics that actually work really well like sales outreach”. Yeah, I mean that’s probably the biggest example that comes to mind.
Jenelle: So, I’ve got so many questions that I want to ask and I’m so conscious of time so I’m going to be selective on these. One of the things I find really striking about you is that you … I think you’re incredibly humble, I think you’re constantly curious but I also feel you have to have some serious confidence and swagger about you to think that you can revolutionise the e-commerce, you know, business in Australia, that you can take on the big end of town, that you can rethink the future of work and I’m trying to reconcile this sort of humility with this hutzpah and I’m … where does that come from.
Adam: Its not a very incisive question. You know, I think I probably see the two things, like humility and hutzpah as two sides of the same coin.
Jenelle: Okay.
Adam: I think if you assume that you have the right answer off the bat and that you know how the world should work immediately, then what you’ll often find is that you’re wrong because you’re not listening to new information, new data and that you very quickly become frustrated and cornered. I think if you maintain a level of humanity of “I have a hypothesis but I don’t know if I’m right or wrong and my process, you know, the process is listening to people, listening to feedback, experimenting, seeing what's works, like I know my process is going to get me there” then you can be confident that if something doesn’t work, its okay, like you’ll learn from it and then you’ll move onto the next attempt. So its funny in some ways, if I just thought of become introspective. I think my confidence comes from this deep seated belief that, like I don’t need to have the right answer all the time, like in fact it would be almost dogmatic or like arrogant of me to think that I do. What I actually need to do is just put things out there and see what works and learns from them and bring together a really smart group of people with different backgrounds, different perspectives to holistically solve a problem.
Jenelle: And I come back to that word “liberation” again. There’s something very liberating about not feeling like you have to have the answers and feeling very comfortable and confident with the questions and the elements of bringing together the right talent to solve the biggest problems and problems that matter.
Adam: Yeah, I think … I think it is liberating in the sense that I don’t feel that my success or my failure is tied to the success of this move in front of me that I’m making right now. You know, if this thing, you know, whether it be, whatever it is, a product feature we’re putting out or an idea we’re testing, if it doesn’t work that’s fine, like I don’t take it personally.
Jenelle: Why not!
Adam: Because I’m comfortable that its success or failure is separate to mine. That its not tied to me individually. That its just an idea and we see if it works and we learn from it and that’s just, I don’t know, the way I operate. I think though if we’re really going to get on the “therapy couch” [laugh], I think what is limiting for me is that I and I think a lot of entrepreneurs have this, I have a very high bar for myself on what I expect to achieve in my life. Like I take this idealistic eye to the world and I see all the problems and I take responsibility for solving a bunch of them and if I don’t solve them, then I feel like a failure basically. In the end, you know, if I don’t …
Jenelle: How do you manage that because they’re not small problems that you decide to take on so … and I don’t imagine that you, I mean, we still have world hunger and stuff so when you fall short of reaching that aspiration, what do you … how do you take care of yourself. What happens for you?
Adam: Yeah and don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I think, you know, I individually need to go out and solve world hunger and … that would be a special form of delusion [laugh]. I’m more trying to sort of share my psyche around where my drive comes from which is a drive to … to not just participate in a world that’s not changing but to be a influence on a world that’s improving. But you’re right. Like invariably, I can only, you know do so much in my life and there’s always going to be a sense of “I could have done more” and what that gap looks like. I don’t think it’s a healthy thing. You know, like its funny. Someone asked me, like four years ago, Adam like, you’ve got so much energy and drive, like where does your motivation come from and I thought of it like, the question took me off guard and I thought it was a strange question, I was like “well isn’t everyone motivated” …
Jenelle: I still have it on my list of questions, so I’ll just [laugh].
Adam: [laugh] and then I started doing a bit of therapy, like three years ago and honestly I think everybody should.
Jenelle: Yeah I agree.
Adam: … its like, you know we all go the gym and like, try and stay healthy with our bodies. You know therapy is just the most useful thing I’ve done in the last three years, both personally and professionally I reckon. I can’t overstate its value and there were all these blind spots I had about myself and my back story and, you know, like my behaviours I’d inherited and my drivers that I just wasn’t really aware of that I’ve become more aware of and like one of them is that I’m not, you know, you know, we should all feel like we are enough, right now. Like I don’t feel like I’m enough. Like I feel like I’m not enough until I achieve these things that I want to achieve in my life and I think that’s a really unhealthy state to be in and somehow I need to deal with that and reconcile it.
Jenelle: It’s the strength overuse is your Achilles heel, you know, your drive to think that you’re not enough is what makes you do amazing things in the world but you have to be kind to yourself and you know, as your therapist over this last hour, you are enough Adam, you are plenty enough [laugh].
Adam: [laugh].
Jenelle: Now lets just step back off the therapy couch for a minute. You know when I think about back in the Hatch days when you had to go about convincing people of where Australia was going to be in five years time and you had to set that vision of you know, this is what’s happening. We’re a decade on now from then, it was 2011 then and we had that sort of vision. Now its 2021, if you needed to convince us of where Australia is going to be in five years, what would you say.
Adam: Oh that is such a great … such a great question. You know, I think there’s … there is silver lining coming out of covid. You know there’s that famous, I think it was a Winston Churchill quote of “don’t waste a good crisis” and I think there … what for us has been a lot of pain and a lot difficulty through covid, I think it will ultimately act as a catalyst for some things that need to change about our economy and I think ultimately business leaders, like you know, like corporate CEOs are the ones that will find themselves driven by a fresh set of incentives in how they think about what success is and so just to point to a couple of tangible things. I think so far we’ve had lip service towards sustainability. You know its been a little bit “we should do it because it looks good in an annual report and it’s good for attracting talent and you know, its what everyone else is doing”. I think coming out of covid, there’s actually going to be some more substance and gravity behind the urgency and the need for a more sustainable world and I can break down a number of ways. There’s environmental sustainability. There’s mental health. There’s the attention economy. I think there’s a much more awareness now over how much time is spent on social media …
Jenelle: Going back to your news and information piece eh …
Adam: Absolutely but you know, what does a sustainable society look like has become a little bit in focus for us now, diversity inclusion, like finally in Australia we’re starting to move from lip service into genuine agitation in that space. So I think that’s probably, you know, if we look forward five years, the organisations that are going to be successful, the communities that are going to be successful, the governments that are going to be successful are the ones that actually embrace a sustainable future in a wholehearted authentic way rather than lip service. I think that’s a really big one. I think the other thing that we will see five years from now, just coming back to the point on education, is that a lot less weight will be put on traditional formats of education and there’ll be a lot more acceptance of alternative formats, bootcamps, online courses, different ways to learn and I think that will lead to a lot more mobility and fluidity in how people can navigate their careers and how they can start again and try new things and chase different opportunities. I think that will be a really big change, you know, five years from now and then the last thing I would say is that, you know, whether we like it or not we are hurtling towards a digital economy. You know, if we thought we were there now, there’s a lot more to go and so, you know, five years from now, the majority of organisations will look like, how technology companies look today in terms of what skills they have, they ways the go to market, the way that the collaborate, they way they ideate and create new products and services and so I think that is a macro change that no one will escape and you sort of need to get on or you’re going to get left behind.
Jenelle: There’s a bit of a virtuous loop here because I think technology has a massive role to play, digital organisations and tech companies in the achievement of educational reforms, sustainability so maybe there’s an accelerant in there with all those things converging.
Adam: Yeah, I agree.
The last three … three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: Adam, I know I can talk to you all day long but I’m going to finish up this conversation with a fast three, more on the light hearted end of the conversation.
Adam: I think we need it [laugh].
Jenelle: [laugh], tell me what are you reading, watching or listening to right now.
Adam: What am I reading, watching or … let’s see …
Jenelle: Or listening to.
Adam: … yeah …
Jenelle: Probably working your way through My Change Happens Podcasts, is that what you were going to say.
Adam: That’s exactly what I was going to say [laugh]. I just started reading a book, actually my Mum gave me for Christmas, a Paulo Coelho book called “Hippie” which sort of like describes his own life but he turns it into like a fictional story a little bit and it just talks about like wanderlust and travel and the importance of it and I don’t know why, maybe because we haven’t been able to travel. Its such an important activity that gets you outside your bubble.
Jenelle: What is your superpower. It can be something that’s additive to the world or it can be a useless party trick.
Adam: [laugh], I’ll give you one of each.
Jenelle: Okay.
Adam: [laugh] so additive to the world, I think I’m good at connecting the micro and the macro, like I can see a macro opportunity but then what needs to happen at the micro to pull it off. Party trick – I used to be a radio host when I was younger …
Jenelle: Well well!
Adam: That’s a trick that I hope to bring back at some point.
Jenelle: I’d like to … I’m looking forward to seeing how you infuse that into your next gig or even within Hatch and if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be.
Adam: I think it would be the Steve Jobs sentiment that I love and I don’t know the exact quote so I’m paraphrasing but the sentiment is “the world is built by people no smarter than you and I”. Like we can be part of the future, we can create it, we don’t have to wait for someone who has more imagined authority or power to do it for us.
Jenelle: Wow, that … and I can tell that’s absolutely driven the way that you’ve operated. Thank you so much for your time today, I loved having you here with me in the room. So many things, I’ve got scribbles all over my paper as you can see but you know, your philosopher roots are permeated through everything you’ve said and done. I love the way you look at the world with a critical eye. I love the way that you challenge the status quo, I love the way you’re willing to ask the big questions that will lead up to a better society, kinder humans that take care of each other. The importance of painting the vision and telling the story. The familiarity bridge is something that I wrote down because, you know, I interviewed Elizabeth Broderick and one of the things that she said was “one of the big levers for driving change is to create the bridges of understanding between two worlds and when you create those bridges, you can make change happen”. I think that’s kind of what you’ve done as well, with bringing people along on the journey. The exploration of identity and meaning and where we draw meaning from. Your proximity to your clients and understanding what matters and what was going to make the difference for them. A clear recognition of paradigms that need to shift in our societies and our business models and I guess the challenge we need to come out of autopilot and really be conscious and thoughtful and intentional around what we are doing. I certainly feel like rising to the challenge. Thanks for leading the way. You are enough, you are plenty enough Adam, thanks so much for your time.
Adam: Thanks Jenelle, really appreciate it.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Donna Hay
Founder & Director, Donna Hay

Intro: Change happens how we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change. The good, the bad, and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season Two of the Change Happens podcast where we continue to conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lesson learned along the way. Today I’ve asked world renowned food creator and publisher Donna Hay to join us to share with us her change journey as a ground breaker in the food publishing and beyond. Donna Hay is Australia’s leading food editor and a best selling cookbook author. Throughout her career, she has released a staggering 29 award winning cookbooks, each featuring her style driven approach to cooking and minimalist aesthetic. Ever the high achiever, she even put out a book in October 2020 during Covid called “Every day fresh meals in minutes”. From books to TV, with her series screening in over 17 countries, not to mention her own tableware and kitchenware ranges and supermarket best selling home baking product lines, Donna has well and truly cemented her name as Australia’s first lady of cooking. Now when Donna and I first spoke a few weeks ago, she said “oh I worry when speaking to business” and I asked her why she said that and she said “oh you all have a playbook, I don’t have a playbook, I’m always throwing the rules out the window”. Now not only did that make me want to interview her more, it also made me chuckle a bit because if there’s one thing I’m constantly saying in my own organisation is that we need to constantly think about how we reinvent, how we challenge the norms, stay curious, find new ways to looking at and solving things. So you know, I reckon we have plenty here to talk about and learn from Donna. So Donna, welcome.
Donna: Thanks Jenelle.
Jenelle: [laugh] I don’t know whether that made you feel a bit squeamish with the playbook comment but it did … that was the reaction I had. That’s all the more reason to chat.
Donna: Oh goodness. I don’t know the amount of times people have asked me what my one year, three year and five year plan is and I’ve just looked at them blankly … boy oh boy.
Jenelle: I’m feeling quite relieved that that’s not one of my questions [laugh] but where I do want to start is probably just in the context that we have all been finding ourselves in over the past year and that’s, you know, in Covid. Certainly Covid lockdowns have seen greater numbers of people, particularly families, take an interest in cooking at home. How has Covid changed your world and what sorts of things have you done in response to the circumstances that you found yourself in.
Donna: Wow! Lets go with the big question first because everything changed. My entire world changed. It was crazy. I mean we had the diehard DH fans really connecting with us and then we had this other group of people that we like to call now “the zero to sour dough tribe” who …
Jenelle: That’s definitely got its prospect of a next book title I reckon, from zero to sour dough.
Donna: [laugh] I think it does. So the zero to sour doughs finding themselves at home, not ordering uber eats, not going out for takeaway, they just really really embraced cooking for the first time and for me in my business, that was the silver lining, the golden opportunity to support this new tribe but they had taken an entire step out of the game and that’s the zero to sour dough was just incredible. They just left behind all the basics and they were just doing stuff that they wanted to tackle and you know, tackling huge recipes for the first time with limited skill base. We did a couple of things. I did of course do some corporate zoom cooking classes which were … some of them were really small and really intimate and it was the first time I’d been seriously connected with people in their kitchens and you know that’s quite an experience. For someone who runs a brand that does big series network stuff with everything from wardrobe to hair and makeup to a director telling you not to speak this way or make that mannerism or you know, highly polished, highly clipped series to going live. Here it is.
Jenelle: Yeah, what was that like to find yourself … I mean there’s an unbelievable level of intimacy that comes from being kind of right inside people’s kitchens, in their homes. What did that feel like for you.
Donna: Ultimately it was a little scary, I had to get over myself pretty quickly. I didn’t, you know, I bought a makeup mirror online and zhooshing myself up as best I could and I was just worried about people’s expectations I guess, coming from highly scripted world but I do have a good sense of humour and I’m quick witted so I just thought well if all fails, just make a joke of it. I guess I wasn’t ready for the emotional connection that was little kids holding frypans of food up to their dad’s laptops and it was pretty … it was pretty rough going for me. I had to leave the zoom screen with more than a few times, you know, parents in tears, like thank you so much and my goodness we’ve been, you know, been tearing our hair out with what to do and stay occupied, this has been amazing and it was really … it was full on. I was wasn’t ready for it, to be honest.
Jenelle: It makes me … it makes me think about shows like MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules and often, you know, the judge would ask the question of the contestant, you know, what does food mean to you and they inevitably … I know they changed the music in the background but they also … people inevitably end up crying and I always was like, “why are people crying when they’re talking about food” but it clearly … it’s a massive emotional connection between food and family and what do you put that down to. Why is there such a strong visceral and emotional connection. Like you’ve … I can hear it in your voice when you think about children holding up their frypan to camera. What is it about food that brings that about.
Donna: Well I kind of didn’t dig deep into this myself until a girl stopped me in the Woolworths carpark and she was in tears. We’re in the height of Covid and when you look at it, food is connected to so many family memories and she stopped me to tell me that they had been making this cake and it was her son’s christening and they’d made it on so many occasions she rattled off and so many different recipes of mine and it was really connected to their family history and their occasions, whether it was christening or weddings and so I, as a person, was deeply [laugh] you know, ingrained in their family history which is extremely humbling and is not something that I’ve really considered before Covid stopped me in my tracks and made me think about my business in that way.
Jenelle: What about that, do you think you will take forward. Is there anything you will take forward or is it circumstance or is it now that’s fundamentally shifted the gears with which I now look at my business and operate it.
Donna: No its definitely shifted the business. Its kind of was the wake up call I needed firstly, to be able to just jump on and do those zooms and get over my highly scripted self. Of what I’d been taught was the right thing to do on camera. So that’s been great and something I’ll definitely take forward. Its so much more fun and its more challenging for me and more entertaining definitely and then, just having those people and knowing how connected you are in their lives, understanding what … I know this sounds really MasterChef but what journey you can take them on and where … you know, what you can add to their lives, whether it’s a touch of wellness or you know, which I’m really into and making sure that recipes are well rounded. Sure, there’s room for treats anytime but what are we eating Monday to Friday, you know, how can I make your lives better, where are we going with this. We’ve had a, you know, we’re all a bit post traumatic, so how can we comfort everybody, make them well and weave all those things in together, whether it’s the environment and all sorts of things that foods impact on our worlds.
Jenelle: Such an interesting set of experiences and I think, you know, we’ve just mentioned MasterChef and other programmes like that even prior to Covid but certainly exacerbated by Covid. What I really felt was what we saw was a real elevation of that culinary world. You brought that “back of house” to the “front of house”, you know, its demystified a lot of things, you know, you talked about people wanting to go straight to the sour dough. Myself using words like “oh well maybe I’ll just make a croquembouche”. Okay I’ve never ever thought that I could make a croquembouche but certainly seem to simultaneously make things accessible and aspirational at the same time, you know. So you wanted to push harder and harder on that. What have … what does that mean for someone like you who has been doing the cooking at home mantra for decades now, its all kind of come to the fore, circumstances have made this be something that we all really want. Does that now mean kind of this next … another wave of, I don’t know, a renewal to what you do. Is there … are you sort of like “yes, this is what I’ve been banging on for years about” or is it like “okay, this now another step change”.
Donna: I mean, it’s a bit of both. I mean having that whole new tribe come over that any other time I would never had had the opportunity to just grab this whole new group of people but I think the overarching thing of being a recipe writer and an editor for home cooks is the rules applies. We’re still out of time and we still don’t love shopping. You know, the same rules apply but as you said, the MasterChef effect of “but I want to cook restaurant food at home but I’ll only give you 20 minutes of my time”. You know, [laugh] and there’s one of me, not ten staff. You know they’re all the rules that I have to play by and it does get harder and harder as people’s expectations rise. So yeah, I think its going to be an interesting year for me, a tough year as people’s expectations continue to grow but you know, one I’m always happy to take on. I guess people want their food to look exactly like it does in the pictures that I create as well. You know, they’re not happy, no I can’t tell you how many text messages I get now that I have people who are still working from home or have found a new love of cooking. I cook this of yours, doesn’t look exactly like the picture, tastes really yum. Yeah and I’m like, “you know what, that’s kind of … good on you, not really the point” but yeah, really obsessed with making it look like the picture.
Jenelle: You talked about, you know, expectations lifting, there are still rules that are kind of binding what we can do. This is a podcast about change, whether its how you’ve dealt with changes that happened to you or whether you’re driving the change itself. Is there something that you are seeking to change in broader society when it comes to food or cooking or lifestyle.
Donna: Yes, well I am the lover of change and as the leader of my little gang, I have to remind myself that not everyone loves change as fast as I do and general society even less so. So my thing that I practice at home is really more of a wellness attitude towards food, that encompasses everything from the environment to what kind of nutrients can I add together to make sure that your dinner is actually doing good for you as well because without getting on another tangent, food can be our medicine so having a balanced diet and understanding what that is. I don’t sprig on about it but in the background I really really try and have balanced recipes that are actually doing good for people and combining things that work together like vitamin A works really well with … I’m really going to bore you now …
Jenelle: Oh no, educate me [laugh].
Donna: … [laugh] there’s just certain groups of foods that work better together as far as vitamin absorption and things like that and in a society where we are too quick to go for a synthetic version of vitamins and minerals. You know, cooking fresh food, a really simple recipe is really where I’m heading and where my passion lies. How we can translate that over environmental issues and all sorts of things, we are, you know, food is touching all sorts of things in the community.
Jenelle: When you think about changes in the industry, whether its indigenous food, balanced nutritious meals, sustainable foods, farm to plate, vegan etc, how ready do you think, we as consumers are to embrace that kind of … those kind of changes.
Donna: Well there’s been a lot of people embrace meat free Monday and vegan [13.22] or whatever those kind of months that people are doing but [laugh] and you know, and the farm to plate tells a really good story. It gives people a really great appreciation of where their food comes but I still think we’ve got a really long way to go and until we have people in power that take climate change seriously, it does impact food and what we eat, yeah, we’re kind of totally behind the eight ball but we need some big changes. Until I can push through what I do well, so I’m kind of … I feel like I’m just in a holding pattern, like a 747 in the sky, just holding, holding till something else changes and when I travel … I used to travel overseas, you can just see countries like Germany that are just so far ahead of us as far as understanding what the food we eat, the impact it makes on our bodies and our planet. So yeah, we’re a little bit behind the eight ball. I do feel like I’m in a holding pattern until attitudes change but its an exciting change and one that can be super delicious and really easy to add into your lifestyle.
Jenelle: Where does your … you said you loved change, where does that love of change come from.
Donna: I think it comes from my creative background, I’m from publishing. You know as soon as you develop a recipe, its done, you photograph it and you’ve got to move on. So it teaches you from a really young age to change. You’re only as good as your last magazine cover. You’re only as good as last months sales. Its … you get use to change really quickly.
Jenelle: Now talking about moments of opportunity and huge change all rolled up into one, there was a point in your life when you got an offer to work for Martha Stewart and at the same time you got an offer to launch your own magazine, The Donna Hay Magazine. Tell me about that moment, you know, I can imagine feeling like quite the sliding doors moment in hindsight, how did you make that decision, what did you weigh up, how did you land the way that you did.
Donna: There was two … only two really big factors that I kind of considered. One was the ability to do my job properly in New York and how easy it is to do my job in Sydney because of our fresh produce and our availability and the beautiful life here. Its just, you know, our produce is second to none. I really feel like I’m cheating when I’m doing my job here in Australia rather than overseas and then I just went back to the reason why I had given up all of my previous magazine gigs, my freelance job at Murray Claire, at Murray Claire lifestyle. Why I had kind of pulled up stumps and why I was looking for a new thing and that was that I wanted to be really autonomous. I really wanted to own it so I just thought that stepping into Martha’s world, as much as I loved and admired her and was totally in awe of her, it wasn’t really on my game plan.
Jenelle: I’m interested in that, you know, I’ve heard you describe yourself growing up as shy. Given that, I’m wondering why you then choose to set up your business with your name and face as the brand. So at the forefront of the brand rather than calling it something else and maybe not being as synonymous with it. Was that a conscious decision and what have been the pros and cons of going with that path.
Donna: [laugh] oh if I tell you the real story.
Jenelle: You have to tell me the real story.
Donna: Oh it’s so bad.
Jenelle: No no no, we love that stuff.
Donna: It just goes to where my creative brain switches to. So I was given seven and a half weeks to get a magazine … a new staff together, a magazine off to deadline, off to print. Seven and a half weeks is nothing. So I had some mock-ups and it was called Seasons by Donna Hay. Tiny tiny by Donna Hay and I had my head down. I had a lot to prove. There was another magazine launching at exactly the same time in Australia which was Delicious, like a week apart from me and I was just concentrating on what I do best. You know, developing the mag that I always wanted and I remember going to a meeting showing the cover mock-ups and then there being some discussions of it being called Donna Hay and I said “I really don’t have time to sit here and argue this point” …
Jenelle: [laugh] okay.
Donna: … I don’t have a magazine yet and I am so close to print and I don’t think it should be called Donna Hay, I think its ridiculous. Now like people know you, they love you, it will be fine and I guess in my naivety, I was so obsessed with having the most amazing magazine, I just left the meeting and didn’t think more of it until I was coming home in a particularly stinky cab after the mag had launched and I saw a poster in a bus stop and I just thought “what have you done” and I was absolutely devastated. I thought who calls the magazine after themselves. Like who are … oh my god, I was so deeply embarrassed, I was devastated, I was in tears. I just couldn’t believe it. It was beautiful on the inside but why had I let that slip through. Why did I not consider that.
Jenelle: Okay. So an accidental thing, but then it kept going and then it spun off into TV series etc.
Donna: It kept going.
Jenelle: So was there any time, you’re like “okay now that I’ve got a bit more time than seven and a half weeks to think this through, maybe I’ll change it” or you were like “oh this happens to be …
Donna: I had the luxury of hiding behind the brand name for quite a few years, quite a few years which was great and then there came a point in the business where it wasn’t growing as fast as I loved and so yeah, then I jumped into TV land and then it became a little bit more about me rather than what I do. So that is a huge shift.
Jenelle: And what was that like. Tell me about it when it became about you, coming back especially to that point where maybe your natural inclination is towards shyness and the other side of things. Was that … what was that experience like.
Donna: Horrifying. I remember just being … I didn’t know I smiled through my whole first series. I think I was just so shy and worried and self-conscious. It was hard, even to this day though, someone will stop me and even grab my arm while I’m doing my supermarket shopping and I jump back looking like they are going to steal my handbag, like some sort of weirdo because I just forget. I really forget.
Jenelle: How do you switch between Donna Hay the brand and Donna Hay the mum and the person in the supermarket and you’re just hanging out with your friends and being a dag.
Donna: [laugh] really awkwardly [laugh]. I don’t know. I don’t think there … I think I am still the one person. I just do it really awkwardly. I’m not … I don’t know, it’s weird.
Jenelle: Does your family have to call you up at times and go “oh Mum, no no, that’s for the TV show, not for us”. Like do you feel them calling you out.
Donna: No, not really. I remember when they were younger and we would be, like you know, in a shopping centre and they’d start fighting and I’d just give them the look [laugh].
Jenelle: I’ve perfected one of those myself, my kids will tell you.
Donna: Yeah, look if you don’t have the death stare, then you know, you’re got to have that in your mother arsenal, don’t you.
Jenelle: Absolutely. There are many people who can cook beautifully and possibly style quite well. How did you work out how to be distinctive, like what did you think or know that you had that would set you apart.
Donna: I didn’t at the beginning. I didn’t know I had a style. I was looking for one. I wasn’t … at one point, I wasn’t … I was going to give up. I actually thought “wow, I really want to do this as my career, I wanted this to be my everyday job but I’m just sadly not good at it” and can I tell you my story about going to Paris!
Jenelle: Yes you can.
Donna: Okay. So I thought “wow, this is it, I’m really not good at this gig and I’m going to have to find something else to do and I have other skill. I’ve learnt nothing else, I’m going to end up being a receptionist in a doctor’s surgery”. I don’t know why I picked that to fixate on but that’s where I thought I was going. So at 24 I packed up and I went on my little European vacation which I had a gap year, hadn’t done anything. Feeling a bit dejected, I thought well I had better make the most of it. I’ll try and cut this story short but it’s a bit long winded and I spent my money having nice lunches. I was on my own, I always wanted to go with a friend who pulled out at the last minute. In hindsight, what a great thing. I didn’t have to consider anybody else’s travel wishes so I’d spend my money on lunch and then after I discovered some neighbourhoods in Paris, I would buy a crepe with lemon and sugar and I was buying it from the same guy first two nights and then I went to another guy and he folded the crepe a different way. The first guy had folded it in the typical fan triangle type way and then the next guy, he rolled it and put it in a cone and it was sticking up like bunny ears. So then I had this epiphany when I went to the third crepe guy who folded it into a square by folding the round corners in and it just opened up … something just clicked in my brain, like hugely clicked that there’s more than one way and food styling in those days had a very prescriptive way about it. You just followed suit, you did shake/rock the boat at all. There was no …
Jenelle: No playbook.
Donna: … no, no playbook. So that was my playbook. There was more than one way to fold a crepe and I just got so excited and my eyes opened up to all sorts of things and I just saw the world in a whole new creative way so I scampered home after my trip and started my career. The white on white thing that you were asking about just came from me being in a restaurant and doing a photoshoot … an advertising shoot for Crown Lager which was very ritzy beer back in the day.
Jenelle: Oh yeah fancy.
Donna: Yeah, if you drank a Crownie, you’d know you’d made it. So I was doing this big advertising for Crown Lager and I was thinking “why does this look so beautiful, its just a white tablecloth and a big white restaurant plate”. You can’t smell the food, no one can interact, it’s a picture and then it just occurred to me that actually the white on white set’s like a canvas and then our beautiful produce that we have here just bounces out so why would I be trying to stuff in all these napkins rings and napery and everything else when what I’ve got in front on me is really what I want to sell, then it started.
Jenelle: There’s something very brave, I think, about doing that, you know, if I translate it to my world in consulting in people who are, you know, listening who are users of consultants are probably, you know, laughed at themselves when I say this but often we can fall into the trap of putting lots and lots and lots and lots of words on slides and images and nice coloured templates and chevrons and boxes, not to dismiss any of those things that we do. They’re incredibly important Donna but you know, sometimes when you have to strip back those words and those chevrons and all of that and just speak to the very very simple message that we need to get across. That can be incredibly hard. Its harder to do that than it is to put more things on a page, more food on a plate. There’s vulnerability that comes with stripping out all the other noise and as they say in MasterChef “heroing the food”. Did you find that. Do you feel that you’ve had to be more vulnerable in the way … it opens up vulnerability because the spotlight is actually on the food.
Donna: Absolutely and it’s the same when you write a recipe for home cooks. There … people are expecting something they ate at a restaurant. Its not going to be that way. I can try my hardest to get it close with the eight or ten ingredients that you’re expecting me to put on the page but its not going to be that and that kind of makes my job harder than ever but you have to choose … its like a powerpoint presentation you’re talking about. Choose what you’re putting on the page carefully because everything has to work its socks off. So those combinations are really important. So yeah, its really raised the bar. I can write a recipe with twenty/thirty/forty ingredients no problem, just keep adding in those layers of flavours. You know when you’re in a commercial kitchen, you can just grab a little ladle of some bilje or whatever you’ve got simmering but it’s a home kitchen and we’re working with supermarket stock and all sorts of things, its tricky. So it does make … it does make the rules tighter and it does make you choose your weapons more wisely.
Jenelle: I’m sure it does. I heard you on an interview once with Whipper from a radio programme …
Donna: Oh goodness, this is nervous as well [laugh].
Jenelle: But amongst the hundred questions that he asked, one of them was “what motivated … and you were answering really fast, bang bang bang bang bang. It almost felt like you don’t have time to think, this is your gut reaction, maybe you did have but it came across as gut reaction. One of the questions he asked was “what motivates you more than anything else” and you said without skipping a beat “fear of failure”. I wanted to understand that more. Why is that and for someone who continues to take the path less travelled as you do, I’m sure failure and setbacks isn’t something that you’ve managed to avoid all these years. So tell me about a time when you have failed, what happened and has that now lessened your fear of failure moving forward.
Donna: I always try and pull the negative into the position. So fear of failure has been my motivator as well as still the fear that motivates me in … you know what I mean.
Jenelle: You don’t get catatonic about it, you use it to push you from it.
Donna: Yeah you’ve got to use it as a driver and for me, I don’t find it a negative. I find it as a positive, fear of failure. I just have turned it around. For some people its crippling and its negative. For me it’s a positive force. I’ve failed a lot of times. I try and fail small and quickly [laugh].
Jenelle: Tell me about one of those times that stands out in your mind.
Donna: Well in magazine world, you can think you’ve got a really great cover and it just doesn’t sell and you know the internals are fantastic. So that’s pretty … all that hard work in such a short …
Jenelle: What happens … I’m not going to say a dud magazine but what happens when your magazine …
Donna: You just have a dud cover usually.
Jenelle: Dud cover … it hasn’t quite sold, people have missed out on seeing the beauty of what's inside and the magnificence of the inside. How do you process that. What do you … what happens for you.
Donna: I just bank it in as a “don’t do that again” and get on with it. I mean you can … in the magazine world, you can take a safe win for the next month to pull your figures up which is always a wise move to do but yeah, as you try and reinvent and stand out on that limb and balance without falling, that’s just what you have to set your mind to do. Its not always going to work and I think if you go into it knowing that you are going to have some failures, that’s kind of where your heads got to be at and I always say to myself at the end of the year, “okay, if I didn’t make you know, how many failures did I have this year because if I haven’t made failures, it means that I’ve been too comfortable, I’m just doing the same thing again”. So for me, failure is positive and its means that I have my business on track.
Jenelle: I’m just thinking about your areas for failure where failure being a driver for you. In 2011 you were appointed by Tourism Australia as the Creative Director for Oprah Winfrey’s welcome to Sydney party for her and her 300 audience. You know, many of us remember that time. That moment has your name attached to it, just like your books, magazines, your TV shows, its your name and reputation every time. I cannot imagine the level of stress that that would have put on you at that time and the team working for you. What was it like.
Donna: Man, if there was ever a time fail [laugh] …
Jenelle: It feels like the stakes are pretty high.
Donna: They were really high and I was doing what I love to do, getting out of my comfort zone which sometimes foot trips me. Other times pays off. It was absolutely amazing. I did so many things I never had the opportunity to do or probably ever do again. I’ve been … it was incredible. I had lots to build from scratch. I was down near Lady Maguire’s chair, so we built everything. It was hot, it was raining, it was doing that Sydney thing where it was just unpredictable. I was asked to choreograph fireworks which I mean that’s laughable.
Jenelle: Not sure that pyrotechnics was in your bag at the time … your trick bag at the time.
Donna: It wasn’t in my bag [laugh]. It wasn’t in my bag. I did go back to Oprah’s style sheet, pulled out all the colours that she loved and that became my pyrotechnics playbook and that’s all I could do. I knew the colours she didn’t like so I took those out of the fireworks. There was just crazy things happening, minute by minute crazy things, had a really great team of event guys supporting me and yeah, I’d never worked so hard in my life. I’d never had so little sleep.
Jenelle: What did you learn about yourself and managing a team in high stress environments.
Donna: I learnt that I’m really calm under pressure, under extreme pressure I’m really calm and I’m quiet. So instead of yelling all over the site for help for moving chandeliers, getting you know, 25 chandeliers in a clear roof marque, it was more effective for me to put my hand up and when one of the boys was free, they would come to me and know that I needed their help and we rang a really really smooth site, just by laughing and working effectively. I just think I found my management style that I’m not loud, I laugh loudly and that’s fine, but I’m quite a quiet leader and I lead by example and I think that’s really powerful when you’re out in the elements and you’re working your butt off, that the whole team is with you because they can see how hard you work and how hard, like how much you want it to be perfect and there was this really amazing sense of Australian pride with me as well, with all the team. They really … they knew, you know, we have international media there watching us build the whole party and the three sets that made the party, yeah it was a pretty amazing yet humbling experience, was incredible.
Jenelle: I can’t even imagine.
Donna: Absolutely incredible.
Jenelle: Well congratulations to you. I know I’m saying this ten years later [laugh] for what it’s worth.
Donna: It feels like yesterday [laugh]
Jenelle: I bet it does. Now, amazing successes like that, also plenty of success in your Donna Hay magazine, which you know, huge trajectory in your career. How did you make the decision to stop publishing after seventeen years. Very often, you know, we can overstay our place or other things come up and we leave a bit early. How did you make that decision, what drove the timing and what did you factor in.
Donna: Oh lots of things came into play. I mean you’re right. I wanted to go out on a high. I always knew that I didn’t want to run the business into the ground and there was quite a few things, as a licence magazine, there was a lot of things out of my control, the advertising teams, the marketing teams, they all became just one pool so we’d lost our identity within the magazine work, in the marketing and the advertising sphere and I only could … was left with controlling the editorial which you know, I’m good at and I can do and my subscriptions were an all time high. My digital subscriptions were rocketing. We had great global footprint but there was just a few things that were really concerning and you know, as more and more soft drink fridges and confectionary goes onto the checkouts at supermarkets, there’s less magazines, there’s less spacings for me to even say “hey I’m here, why don’t you buy me”. There’s no news agents, you know, news agents are shutting at the rate of knots, so where are they going to find this beautiful magazine that I’m putting out. So I just thought “well 100 is a really great round number, probably before I run into the ground, time to go and do something else”.
Jenelle: So from there then, you made that, you know, move into digital content. How has that, well I guess it was happening in parallel but then you fully embraced it. How was that journey of content creation evolved for you.
Donna: Its been really exciting. I run a much smaller team. I’m much more hands on which I prefer. I can dip, you know, deeper into the creativity. I guess it satisfies more parts of my brain now being in a smaller team. You know, I can work with clients and work out their needs, whether its just pure “we need to sell more or we have a branding problem”. So I guess it kinds of … kind of ticking the boxes for me. Yes I can be creative and I can take a beautiful picture of whatever you’re trying to seel but how are we really going to motivate people into this and motivating people into action through food or through lifestyle is super exciting and it’s a challenge for me to work with clients, to make sure that I can get those runs on the board. So I guess in a smaller business, it’s just … I can be more flexible and back to what I love doing, you know, I’m back to crepe folding in a way, sort of, not really! I haven’t folded a crepe in a while but it’s kind of …
Jenelle: The metaphorical crepe!
Donna: … yes [laugh], just where I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be running a big team anymore. I didn’t want to be so far away from the creative and the things that I love and the things that make me happy.
Jenelle: So you talk about motivating people. You certainly inspire a new generation of chefs and food editors around the world. What's your piece of advice for the forth coming generations.
Donna: Wow, I don’t know. I look at my teenage sons …
Jenelle: They’re all leaning in right now, at this moment.
Donna: … great! I don’t know. I look at my teenage son and he’s so … I don’t know if its his age but he’s fearless and he’s full of hope and I feel like they’re off to a really good start. They’re … they want to change the world and I love that about him. He thinks that its going to be easy to change the world which I also love his naivety, but [laugh], his youth. I think they’re … I look at the youth of today and I feel excited. I feel a positive energy. I love their attitude. I love how they’ve grown up on social media and some of them just don’t give a damn, you know, they’re just … I just love that spirit about them.
Jenelle: So you want them to channel their hope and their belief that they can make a change.
Donna: Absolutely. I want them to keep believing that they can make a change because they can and if they keep believing, they will and that’s what I believed. I believed I could have my own magazine and I did, you know, I’ve always said “be careful what you wish for” because you know, dreams do come true and I just think that that hope of the younger generation and that attitude, that sassy attitude, I just love it. I mean it does drive me crazy on Instagram but I just … on the other hand, I kind of love it as well, I embrace it. I love their brass openness. I love their kind of positive can-do and will-do.
Jenelle: I feel unbounded, like we get … as you get older, we get so cynical and tired and all of these obstacles that we see, nothing but obstacles, you know but they don’t have that. So holding onto that is exactly what we need.
Donna: Yeah yeah its great, its great. I’m fostering it in my house, to a certain degree [laugh].
Jenelle: Me too. What's the one thing you wish you knew now or when you first started out, when you were that age, that you now know that perhaps you didn’t know then.
Donna: I just wish that I would have backed myself a bit earlier and worried less.
Jenelle: Okay, you definitely seem to have done okay in backing yourself.
Donna: I have tortured myself and I think that’s what I envy about the young girls that I meet today, just how sassy they are and I just wish that I had even just a little cupful of that. When I was younger, I just doubted myself and you know, I guessed like the swimming duck, what's happening on the inside and what's happening on the outside are two different things.
Jenelle: I understand.
Donna: Yeah, but I just … yeah worry less, really worry a lot less.
The last three … three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: What are you reading, watching or listening to right now.
Donna: I’ll make a list. I am watching “drive to survive”.
Jenelle: I didn’t even know about that, what is that.
Donna: Oh my goodness, I am not into formula one actually. I wish they wouldn’t burn all that fuel but the way that those drivers can lock in and work in that team, that is amazing. There’s just something going on in those heads that is just unlike anyone else. It just … it really inspires me.
Jenelle: Wow, did not see that coming. Okay!
Donna: I know, neither did I. One of my friends in my DIP club put me onto it and yes, I don’t have a book club, we have a DIP club because you can eat DIP …
Jenelle: Oh eat dip, I thought you were going to take a dip.
Donna: … and solve the world’s problems. No, we don’t pretend we’ve got time to read a book always so we get together as really good friends with no filter and we eat dip and we solve our problems and we have a really good laugh.
Jenelle: Sounds magnificent, love it. What is your super power, that can be something that is hugely additive to the world or it could be a useless party trick.
Donna: Oh gosh, if only I had … I don’t have useless party tricks because I’m always the one in the kitchen making everyone food.
Jenelle: Okay.
Donna: I think my super power is seeing the next creative thing coming.
Jenelle: Well that’s a pretty good power that you’ve put to good use. Now if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be.
Donna: Oh my goodness, that’s a big one.
Jenelle: Do you know what I would say for …
Donna: What would you say …
Jenelle: No, I wont tell you … no I feel like …
Donna: This one has really caught me off guard.
Jenelle: I’ve written it down in my notes here that I reckon, just listening to you, if I was going to put your quote up … this is not what is meant to happen, by the way when I interview a guest. Its meant to be your quote but my quote for you would be “there’s more than one way to fold a crepe”.
Donna: That is perfect, why didn’t I think of that because … see I always think of the pictures first, the words second so the words things always trip me. There is more than one way to fold a crepe, yeah absolute right and thank you for helping me out.
Jenelle: You’re quite welcome. Now I have to ask, just because, what is your favourite recipe.
Donna: Oh goodness. I don’t know if I have one. I have recipes in time that mark certain occasions. There was a recipe in the first ever issue of my career. It was a … and it was cutting edge at the time. I thought I was so clever. It was a lime and balsamic grilled chicken breast and I can’t tell you, around the world, how many people commented on that recipe. It was just weird.
Jenelle: When would that have been. I mean that would have been way ahead of its time, balsamic - back in the day.
Donna: When was the first issue of my … I think they just told me, I don’t know, lets not even go there. A long time ago, a long long time ago, 25 years ago maybe but it was just this weird thing that kept popping up in my career. Didn’t matter if I was in London or where I was, people would go “oh my goodness, I made this amazing recipe of yours” and I got to the stage where I was saying … in my head, I was going “please don’t tell me it’s the lime balsamic chicken”, there it was!
Jenelle: [laugh] wow fantastic. Donna, I’ve really appreciated your time today. Whether people are diehard DH fans or your new tribes of zero to sour dough kind of people, I’m sure plenty who are listening have got so much out of the conversation. For me, I really like hearing, you know, the vulnerability that you’ve really leaned into with Covid and in fact, I think there’s a heap of vulnerability that you embrace in the way that you operate, whether its using your name as the brand, whether you call it accidental or not, I think that’s a massive thing to do and to own for decades on end, the way you have embraced white on white to really expose the quality of your food. I think the fact that you use fear as a driver for reinvention, constant reinvention is an amazing thing. I think you have a super power that lies in your … maybe its your inability to do things like everybody else and find where the power lies in that. So if you cant set napkins and you can’t, you know, work the table rings, what can you do instead and that is where the gift and the white space and the opportunity lies. I think you, you know, sound very much like somebody who leads quietly and laughs loudly and I think your advice about worrying less and channelling hope and optimism and sassiness to make change happen is something that we can all remember. Thank you so much for your time Donna.
Donna: Thanks Jenelle.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Dr Margaret Beavis
Director, Quit Nukes, Nuclear Weapon Free Finance

Mike Conway
CEO & Founder, XVenture

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: Hi. I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 2 of the Change Happens podcast, conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today I’m joined by the wonderful and fascinating emotional intelligence, resilience and leadership expert Mike Conway. He’s the founder and CEO of XVenture, a unique learning, leadership and media group. He was the former Managing Director for the Wiggles where he worked for 10 years helping build them into one of the world’s most recognisable entertainment brands. Mike has worked as a TV director, business leader, clinician and mental coach to elite sports stars, senior executives and entertainers. In 2016 he was appointed as Emotional Intelligence Resilience and Leadership Advisor to Australian professional soccer club, Sydney FC. And in the next two years the team broke every record in soccer in Australia. In 2017 he was named Australian CEO of the Year for AsiaPac Insider magazine. Mike also has a passionate to social justice programmes. Over his 20 year career he’s worked with and supported a number of charities and not-for-profits globally, including Adara Development, Steve Waugh Foundation, UNICEF, OzHarvest and the Australian Children’s Music Foundation. And as you can see, there’s a huge amount of diversity to what Mike has turned his mind and his skills to. So with all of that waiting to be explored I reckon we crack on with the interview. Mike, welcome.
Mike: Thank you Jenelle. I feel like when I listen to that I’m probably about 120 years old, you know? There’s that -
Jenelle: You should be by my calculations!
Mike: Or maybe I just did like a month in each one and that was probably enough. That was really lovely. It’s really lovely. And who would have thought, who would have thought when you listened to that and the list of things that I’ve been involved with?
Jenelle: Oh, exactly. Who would have thought? So, let’s start there. When someone has had as diverse a career as you have it’s always hard, you know, for me to know where to start with these interviews. But I might start if I could with some broad brush strokes on your career. Can you paint a high-level picture of your career and what lead you to work towards energising individuals, teams and organisations?
Mike: Yeah, Janelle, I think that socialisation is such an important part of life. And, you know, when you get older you don’t actually – you start to realise I should say, when you’re young you don’t think about it – my socialisation was in a family environment in Manchester where I had parents who seemed to spend most of their time in the caring environment. So teaching, educating, supporting, giving. And that becomes part of your ethical code, your moral code. So that really translated into the things that I did. It just became a natural course really. So from, you know, going to do health studies at Sheffield to then working with disabled kids in France to then moving into the National Heath Service to work on health planning, which is kind of fascinating given what’s been going on in the world in the last couple of years. And then moving into this amazing company and organisation that you’re a leader of, Jenelle, EY where all the focus of my work, or most of it, was about how do I actually help people in delivering care more effective, more efficient, which was in the health service. So came over to Australia to help move the kid’s hospital from Camperdown to Westmead. But if you look at that, and then even then you translate that to how do you go from there to the Wiggles, you know, well the Wiggles were still very similar. It was about learning and development and the growth of a human being to be the best they could be. Which is they’re now moving into XVenture which is all about the big kids. Helping big kids do the same thing. So that’s the length and breadth of it. It’s about working with people and being able to sit and look from the stands, or looking very close or even from a distance saying “Wow, haven’t they done well” and feeling good about that. That’s where I feel that my position is.
Jenelle: Wow. Actually I was just going to ask you, is there an overarching purpose or mission or change agenda that drives you and guides the choices you make and I can see the threat about that moral and ethical code and the learning and development and growth of a human being. Would you distil that into that’s your change agenda? Or is that what drives you?
Mike: It is. You know what drives me is – and it sounds so trite and as I’m saying it I’m going “Oh my goodness”, you know, I know that you like dance so that’s something but you know or music, but, you know, make the world a better place. And it sounds so trite that actually I didn’t create those words, lyrics of a song, but if I can actually contribute something – because if you get to sort of my age, you know, and I’m a few years ahead of you, Jenelle, you start to realise how quick it’s going. And so what are you going to do tomorrow? Well I feel it’s not – for me it’s not about finance. It’s not about monetary gain. I’m very, very happy and I’m very content and I’ve got a roof over my head so Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is well and truly stable there. My self-actualisation is about can I contribute to someone and then hear that they’ve done really well and they’re growing and developing and living a happy life. That’s it really. You know making the world a better place is all very cool and nice and it’s a feel good thing, and possibly feels a bit cheesy. But then in doing so there’s this extra dimension that I’ve realised and a pattern which says yeah, but isn’t it cool to actually find solutions to things that people say can’t be done or can’t be achieved. And that’s when I really get excited and particularly when you do it with lots of different people – with groups of people and we together say well, look at we’ve just done.
Jenelle:I’m fascinated by that because I could get, you know, there are as many – more people that would say well, that’s a bit of a turn off. Cannot be done. Like I’m not going to exhaust myself and that. What is it about that, what is it about your background that has made that be an attractive thing to you?
Mike: My mum was a primary school teacher and a music teacher. Her response quite often to me when I was a little one was “no” which is actually from an emotional intelligent, emotionally agile viewpoint is actually the opposite of – you learn, you know, from psychology and from the things you’ve learned as well, actually if you tell a kid not to walk across the road then what they’re going to do is try and walk across the word. But I quite often said no and I think it was probably because she had three little kids in three years and I was probably a little bit more troublesome. So the no was something which really spurred me to do the opposite quite often. So she wanted me, for example, to play the piano and I said no I’m going to play the guitar. And it became a pattern. And I wasn’t being rude or mean or aggressive or angry but that’s – I think that’s one of the elements of it. It’s a bit like the Wiggles. You know, people would say what four guys in Star Trek uniforms going to America to break it, how’s that going to happen? That’s enough, we’re all spurred on and we worked really hard to make it happen. And it’s not because, you know, I’m trying to prove anything I don’t think. It’s just because it’s there, it has to be done.
Jenelle: I can hear some amazing successes. I might imagine that there are times where, you know, you’ve been lured by the no and actually you haven’t been able to achieve whatever it was. Is there anything like that that comes to mind? What happens to you then when the no has sort of played out as a can’t do?
Mike: You know I’m a human being, you know, and we experience disappointment. But what I’ve learned, I think, is that the disappointment is fuelled by reflection. But now I look at it and say a mistake made. So what do I learn from the mistake? And there are definitely plenty of no’s that have gone on. I can remember putting a proposal in when I was at EY, right? And I was so excited, so excited about this proposal because it was actually related to the Olympic Games. Who would have thought that I’m actually working with the Olympic teams at the moment? But I didn’t expect that. There’s another surprise. But at the time I wanted to work on the Olympic stadium project and I just put my heart and soul into this thing, because I wanted to. Even though I’ve got a health background and it sort of different fit but cost benefit analysis did and option appraisal of stadiums, but we didn’t win it. It was really disappointing.
Jenelle: I’m familiar with that dynamic.
Mike: Have you had experience?
Jenelle: Yes I have.
Mike: Yeah, and it’s really, really – and it becomes part of, well, not good enough, what did I do wrong? But the reality was I wasn’t ready for it actually. And so that happens sometimes too – that reality of actually it wasn’t your turn. It wasn’t your time. But you’ve got to know that too. And now I go back and I look at it and I think oh my goodness, what was I thinking? I wasn’t ready for it. So there are definitely no’s but I think that I’m better now being able to understand why. Why things didn’t go to plan. Last couple of years it’s probably the same. I mean I don’t know about your world but, you know, my world has changed dramatically. And the plans that we had in place literally fell on – they just literally fell, fell over. Everything. You know, my business died. And you’re not allowed to say that. You know, that’s the other thing. You know in years gone by, I mean you’ve worked in business for many years, the first point of call when you meet someone and they say “How’s business?”, “Ah, it’s great, we’re doing so well”. And I kind of changed tack last year by saying actually it’s really, really tragic. And that’s a learning moment, because I wouldn’t have said that before. I wish I said that several times before and been honest about that, but I’m now honest about it and I feel OK about that too.
Jenelle: Ten years with the Wiggles, Mike, almost all of that as the Managing Director. Tell me about what that was like, that period of time – the challenges, the opportunities?
Mike: Well firstly it wasn’t my idea and I didn’t create it. The uniqueness of it is a lesson for all of us. And you hear more about this now that if you can make your work your passion and vice versa you’ve got a reasonable chance. The guys that built this, Anthony Field and Greg Page and Murray Cook with Jeff Fatt their friends, were passionate about music, that was one thing. And they were already very talented at that. Some of them had had a really interesting career as musicians. But they’d also then moved into learning about early childhood education and became passionate about that. So they put those two things together and realised how music can affect young people, children particularly, in relation to education. So it was a first. And they did a lot hard yards before I arrived. But I had become friends with them before I was appointed to help them run that business. So they have quite a reasonable foundation in as much as Australia, they’d already started to understand and learn how to put a concert on. They’d been really good at that. They’d delivered success into some of the big arenas. They were already on the ABC. They’ve done those things. Probably what they’d not done, they’d not monetised it effectively and they’d not actually built it into a global brand. But all the elements were there, OK? So what it was like is, I arrived again in this environment where they said, look, all we want to do is create, that’s all we want to do. If you can figure out the rest that would be great. So along with my partner in crime, Paul Field, who was there looking after the operationals of it, making sure the videos were completed on time and music on time, I was given absolutely free reign to make sure the books were balanced, and I could figure out how to take this thing called the Wiggles, which was emerging into a brand, globally. That’s basically what I was given. So anything from theme parks to how do I get it on TV in America, how do I deepen the relationship with groups – I mean major corporations like Disney, Warner Brothers. How do we expose more and more people to it when the Wiggles are not available? Biggest challenge for the Wiggles is that they’re not always there. You know, the risk with people is they can only be one place at one time, so how do we actually change that? So that’s essentially what we did. But the experience of actually taking on America from scratch was just one of the most exciting things we’d experienced.
Jenelle: Extraordinary.
Mike: It was extraordinary. But being true to who you are all the way through – and there was no plan of saying by, there was no debt, whatever we make we make, so the energy and drive to actually be a success and to experience the joy of it all was part of that. But here was a story, right, that actually provides you with some indication of the depth of the people and the, you know, the attitude. And I’d only just arrived, we’d set up the first American tour we’d done. And we were going to go to Washington, we were going to go to Miami and we were going to go to New York and then do some small shows there. No one would back us and we went on TV. So we said, look, let’s book some small halls. We’re talking about church halls here, Jenelle, right?
Jenelle: Right!
Mike: And we’ll do that. But what we were asked to do is do you want to come to Macey’s Day parade and just come on the parade. That was it. So we went yep, let’s go. And just before this happened, of course, something – and it’s 20 years ago – 911 happens just before all this happens. And the world changed dramatically. I mean people forget now but the rugby league team wouldn’t go to England because it was too risky. Big heavy rock bands wouldn’t, you know, they wouldn’t fly, they were cancelling tours. And we had this kind of moment together where we talked about trust and belief and optimism and hope and felt it wasn’t about business here, that our raison d’être was actually offering hope for young people and for their families. So we decided to go to New York, much against quite a lot of people’s advice, and go and do this tour. And that’s what we did. It wasn’t really cost effective but we went to do it and the brand took off. It just took off. We became the heroes of New York. We were given – we were actually given the keys to New York.
Jenelle: Incredible.
Mike: And given the keys to New York then. And it just went on and on and on.
Jenelle: Look, as a mother of two kids, neither of whom are good sleepers when they were little, I will forever be grateful to the Wiggles for getting me through, you know, some extremely long days. And you’d be, you know, I know I’d be hard pressed to find a parent of young kids who isn’t going to break into song if you say the words “mashed potato” or “big red car”. And I was going to ask, you know, what do you think was the secret – I mean it was incredible this transfixed position my kids would be in or the, you know, true joy that they would have. What was the secret sauce? Was it that offering of hope? What was it that was so captivating? And is there anything about that that you have taken forward into other businesses?
Mike: Well, so there’s two things, right? So the answer is yes, I have I think. But I think it will actually have happened beforehand because the team that we had are very optimistic and we also – I think that we found like-mindedness about the back against the wall. So when the chips are down and people are going this is never going to work, we loved that. We actually loved that. And that’s what drove us to a certain degree. You know, the success storey – and, again, I put enormous credence into the work they did, they were so good at what they did. And of course it was a business too. We enjoyed it but underneath it was a very, very responsible business. We had to, to survive and just keep moving forward and keep going. Look, it’s going to be 10 years next year since I left but it still feels like yesterday because the principles are exactly the same. Here’s the thing, right? They loved what they were doing and I did too. Love – absolutely loved what they were doing, believed in what they were doing because ultimately they understood that you can learn through having fun. That’s what you do and that’s their credence. And then you commit, you know, and then you do that through music. And they’re really good musicians so that is their constant.
Jenelle: That concept of, you know, learning through having fun is something that I can see that you’ve obviously carried through into your next stint with XVenture.
Mike: Yeah.
Jenelle: Tell me how – what it is and how it came about?
Mike: I was only thinking about this about a week ago and I started to connect the dots. We became ambassadors for UNICEF. But I thought UNICEF had this big charity piece called, it was about football. What we do is they bring a whole range of corporates together, the corporates would pay and they’d have a huge big kick-around, five a side, and they would generate money for UNICEF. And they approached me and said, listen, is there anything else you can think about? I’d already been doing some work with the A league trying to bring a charity base into the A league and trying to help them and then also bring in celebrities into the A league. So I’d all that. So I thought why don’t we do a curtain-raiser or a group of CEOs can play a group of celebrities at this end of this UNICEF competition. I started that. And anyway, one morning we started doing this thing and all these sort of corporate people and executives all turned up and they were all in their kind of civvies, or what have you, and turned up. And then within the space of about 10 minutes, 15 minutes they’re all wearing their corporate colours. Absolutely proudly wearing their corporate colours. And they absolutely loved it. And I started thinking why is it that we’re – little kids are allowed to have fun but big kids want to have fun too. They love it too. How about I actually create something for the big kids. And that’s where it started. So essentially what I did was I started creating a TV show around taking major corporates out to a major challenge, out in Cairns, and that’s where XVenture started. And it was just an idea, and people said “that’s ridiculous, you’ll never be able to do it”. And I went oh OK, there we go again. So we brought 16 corporates -
Jenelle: Music to your ears as we know!
Mike: Oh, that’s so funny. It is, it is. And so we went, right, that’s it. And so we took 16 corporates up, 8 episodes, took them to Cairns, I built all these challenges. I’ve got a behavioural science social-science background, so building challenges and experiences is fine. Built the rules and what have you and it was a real success. Chanel 10 took it, put it on 1HD, Sky Business took it and so on, and it was a revelation to me. And I thought I love this. I want to actually create experiential learning opportunities for the big kids. And that’s what I’ve been doing for 8, 9 years now.
Jenelle: I would soon say, I mean, COVID has tested us all. No doubt, I mean you’re in the game of, you know, personal resilience and agility, yours would have been tested over the last 18 months. I know that you were doing a heap of experiential work requires you to be on set, overseas all of that. I also know in that time you did sort of move into a different stream, XVenture Mind Games. Tell me about that time with your business and, you know, how and why you launched the Mind Games programme and what is it?
Mike: Personally COVID has provided me and my little team an opportunity which would never have happened. And that’s the truth of the matter. Here’s a funny thing. You know, here was a situation where COVID happened and everything that I was doing, literally everything, was face-to-face. And also we’d invested a significant money into something we thought was very exciting. So I’d been playing around with a virtual reality concepts - and people, as soon as they say that, they think of, you know, the glasses and we’re looking through glasses.
Jenelle: Yes exactly went my mind.
Mike: Exactly! But that’s what – we were doing some of that but not all that. And I was using it because I thought it could be a really good medium for engaging let’s say just two people on a conversation about what do they see. So if you’ve got two pairs of glasses, two people and they’re looking through the lens, and they’re having a conversation about what they see. And that’s particularly useful in a space say like a professional football team where there are people from different cultures, different backgrounds, different language and some of them are introverts, some are extroverts and they don’t know each other very well. So this is a way of starting to gain confidence in conversation because in team sport communication is the most fundamental thing. You know, if you look at great teams rather than good teams, what I’m working on is how do we actually improve their communication skills? So that’s what we were doing. So we’re building these ideas and getting them to use glasses and do some virtual reality and we were using event cinemas for delivering these things and it was really exciting, it was very cool and the responses from some big corporations is this is really different and we’re getting great outcomes for our people from it. And the COVID happened. Boom! No movie theatres. Can you share glasses? Of course not. And so this huge investment that we’d made just sat is a cupboard, or a big room I should say. Thousands of dollars’ worth. I’m thinking what am I going to do now? You know, Socceroos no longer travelling. All put on ice. Tokyo Olympics fallen over, not happening. Major groups that we were working with said we can’t have you in on-site. Work that I was doing at Wollongong University along with Tottenham Hotspur where I’m a technical director here in Australia for them, no, there was no students coming in. I just started to wonder, well, how do I do experiential through a computer screen? Can I do it? Is there a way of dealing with it? And I came up with this idea of actually taking virtual reality and building virtual worlds that we could go into, and we could communicate in, yet we’re actually way, way away from those worlds. So, you know, you’re Jenelle wherever you are and I’m here, but you could have someone in India, in the UK and America and somewhere in Oceania and New Zealand, and they could be in teams that would like to be together but they can’t, but they’re actually going into a virtual world and they’re finding things out in that world. So we built challenges in virtual worlds. So we started building virtual worlds. And we started trialling it. We trialled it with the Tottenham Hotspur students at University of Wollongong, which was the first one we did. And then we started tapping some of our friends and colleagues on the shoulder and saying, look, we’re doing this, are you interested? And thank you to my old firm who I’m so connected with, EY, were one of the first major groups who said globally we wish to try this. And that’s what happened. So they were trialling it within their people space and they said this is really interesting. People were saying at the end of it, oh my God, I’m really enjoying this. And the learning, the speed of learning and the recall on what you were learning was so significant. So we started with that and then we started building challenges. And then we were then taking 360 degree cameras out on the streets and building them real time. And it’s gone from there to we’ve got cameras out with a major corporation around the world right now actually filming their offices and then turning that into things like on-boarding solutions for the growth of their new teams and putting tests in into learning management systems so that you can verify their understanding. And then now it’s being used for students as well. So, it wasn’t planned.
Jenelle: Mmm. But you know as I listen to you, I mean I was a participant in one of those XVenture games and it was fantastic and I saw the learning and I experienced it myself. So, wonderful experience. But as I listen to you I sort of smile to myself because there’s layers of, I don’t know whether it’s serendipity or irony in here, but, you know, as the world was shutting its borders and becoming – moving from physical to virtual, you were building a business in a virtual world. So you were creating new virtual worlds as we were trying to adjust to the one that we were cast into. And your business, you know, a method is around you know talking about resilience and agility and you’re facing your own business, you know, potentially just going God knows where at the time, and your own agility to go “Oh, what about if I explore this new capability and you know virtual reality” so you’re demonstrating the very thing that you’re’ teaching and you’re recreating the very thing that we’re lamenting but in a fun way. It’s quite an interesting sort of set of circumstances and situations.
Mike: Jenelle, thank you. You know – but it’s interesting. A bit like back to the Wiggles and back to what, you know, what makes you tick as well. That it was just the perfect storm for me really. And it wasn’t a storm. You know I saw here and said OK, and the more and more I got into it, I mean here I am. You know, I shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be being called an ed-tech, for God’s sake, you know! But people are saying oh you’re an ed-tech. I’ve said, “Oh, am I? OK, fair enough”. But, you know, here I am engaging and going into artificial intelligence, you know, and speech activation and so on. And I’m really loving the learning from it. It’s not beyond any of us. And so one of the things that, you know, we probably should explore is we have a habit – and you’ve got to, to a certain degree. You’re, you know, your big organisation, you find people with skillsets that are going to help a client but the real skillset is our human, our self, our human self that – like what’s my box? I don’t actually know any more. And it’s not – and that’s also a challenge because people say, “So what are you called?” because people like boxes, right, don’t they?
Jenelle: Yes.
Mike: But that’s a tricky one.
Jenelle: It was hard to do your intro for that reason!
Mike: I know, I’m sorry. But I’m trying to be smart Alec either.
Jenelle: No, I know!
Mike: But it’s just that, you know, it goes from one step to another naturally. It doesn’t – it isn’t meant to be – I know there’s a great market, it’s called on-boarding. On-boarding costs $4,000 approximately for every corporate to do per person. And it’s a nightmare. OK, I’m going to go for that market. That’s not what I do. I just go that’s not passionate to me. My passion is I wonder what the solution is to on-boarding, that could be really fun. How can I actually then take a virtual reality solution and make it interesting and different. I wonder if I can actually use electronic signatures and build that into a virtual world and then put it in a festival environment where people just want to do it, pre-boarding so that when they arrive on the company they’re actually already on-boarded and they can hit the ground running and they’re so excited. Now that sounds interesting and that’s where I tend to go.
Jenelle: I want to move to your connection with sport. You’ve, you know, mentioned quite a number of teams that you’ve had prolific background working with so many sporting clubs and athletes. You know, and we’ve been talking about the kind of change that happens, you know, when it’s thrust upon you, like a global pandemic, and you’re sort of forced to sort of have to think about what you’re going to do. Close shop, do something else. I’m interested when you work with elite athletes and some of the most successful sporting teams in the world, how do you help them recognise, you know, that they might need to change even when they’re at the top of their games? So things have been working – there isn’t that kind of burning platform but maybe they don’t adopt some of the mental practices that they could or should and, you know, you’ve got more of a case to prove almost for the change. How does that work?
Mike: I actually think it’s getting easier for me because of track record. So, you know, in the early days of me – I mean when I remember walking through the doors of Sydney FC, even though some of the people knew me, and it was almost like OK, so what are you going to tell us? Not another dude that’s going to turn up here, right, what’s he going to do? You know, it’s almost like prove it. But now through track record and success actually some of the methods that I’ve been using are actually becoming obvious. So that’s helpful. So, you know, I don’t have to start from scratch each time. But also the great thing about elite athletes – and, Jenelle, I’m being absolutely straight as a die here, I’m going to put you in there and I’m going to put EY there. In your world you’re elite athletes and that’s how you have to behave, OK?
Jenelle: I’ve never described myself as in a ??? [29.14], I need the audience to know that.
Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, mate, I’m saying that, you know, it’s about attitude of mind, OK? So I mean about the attitude of mind of being an elite athlete, that you’ve got to be so focussed on what the goal is to be the very best you can be. That’s what I mean by it. And that’s what definitely all those people who go to Tokyo are. Sure, they’re going to experience of that. I went to an Olympic games but I’ve worked with, you know, cycling, rugby union in this last 12 months, people who have gone cycling, rugby union the sevens a gold medallist. Hockey, canoeing, soccer – the Olyroos, there’s a lot of them and they’ve all got that in common. So therefore if you take that to the logical conclusion, now if you’re at that level they’re always looking for the extra percenter – 1%, 2%. So the debate is about how to get a 1%, 2%, that’s what it is. So when I’m speaking – so today when I get off this podcast I’ll be speaking to athletes in Tokyo, that’s my next job. And the conversation is going to be about – it’s a conversation of people who know each other, so it’s not a surprise. So I’ll be talking to people already very successful. How was the day? What happened today? What did you notice? What did you notice about the performance on the training field? But the stretch is not generally about, you know, come on we can do it! It’s about, OK, so how are you getting your rest? So that’s what I mean by you and your team and your colleagues. Because if you’re walking through the door or on your first Zoom at 8 o’clock and you’ve had a shocking sleep then you’re not going to be on your name. And so my job is to make sure that those are the 1% too, 2%. That’s what it is. And elite athletes typically are absolutely committed to understand that.
Jenelle: Mm. And actually as you say that I did see an article – I think it was the Financial Review – not so long ago when you were asked the question of what are the two common questions for both elite athletes and executives and I think you said “How do I maximise energy and how do I find a solution to the phone addition?”. Do you remember saying that?
Mike: Yeah I do now actually.
Jenelle: Really?
Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Invariably when someone’s saying “I’m struggling” or “I’m just not feeling myself” I start with rest. I start with that. I go way, way away from the field of play. So your field of play will be with a client or with your board or whatever. I’ll go the opposite direction. And the good thing about that is it’s a safe environment. It’s not about dictating the outcomes of your performance in a boardroom or, you know, judging you on that. And so it becomes really easy and you can see solutions. You can find solutions and you can see improvements really quickly. Two of the boys that I work with in the last three years have both won the Golden Boot in their respective leagues in the world and the focus of attention was on rest and sleep. And the second was actually on phones. And then the rest start to follow. So they turn up at training they’re feeling a lot better. And it’s the same for the Tokyo medallists that there will be and the people who are in Tokyo as well. And then if you’re looking at a team sport then it’s about, OK, what’s your relationship like? Talk to me about the relationship with your friends and your colleagues, let’s get into that. And it’s really very – it’s just at a human level it’s not complex. It’s not sophisticated. It’s not anything to do with the technique of actually how much you juggle a ball or how hard you hit the ball or how good you are analysing, you know, spreadsheets or how clever you are actually understanding, you know, the technology in a major information system. It’s nothing to do with that because that, in actual fact, is not the extra percenters.
Jenelle: I’m interested in understanding, you know, you’re observed resilience in lots of different contexts. What are the characteristics you would say are the hallmarks of resilience? And is there – do you have any example of where you’ve been able to consciously work with people to build that resilience? How do you do that?
Mike: I think there’s several things about resilience because there’s a beautiful – and pardon me that it sort of sounds like a masculine comment, but it’s not – but no man is an island, you know, John Donne it’s a beautiful statement which exists and it’s part of my persona. We’re not an island. So for people who’ve got high levels of resilience, they’re not an island. And that means that they’re actually very, very accepting of their own frailties and they’re comfortable at sharing those frailties and their mistake. And they’re comfortable about sharing what they might perceive as failures, which is a great strength in itself.
Jenelle: Vulnerability, mm.
Mike: Vulnerability. And so that’s one thing I notice significantly. Which means that they put their hand up and they ask for support and help., that’s what. So, I’m going to give you one which is sensitive but it’s powerful. And he’s an amazing young man. We’ve got a young guy who plays for the Socceroos called Awer Mabil. He’s from a refuge family, came over from Africa, landed in Adelaide, very difficult circumstances and has come through the ranks of playing football – or soccer – and ended up from Adelaide over the Denmark and he’s played for the Socceroos. I was just very privileged to be there for his first Socceroo camp when we played over in Kuwait three years ago with a friend of his who was similar background, Thomas Deng. It was incredible. It was a very, very important moment for Australian football, actually these two African boys who’d made their debut. It changed the face of football for us. And it also showed what can you do. And if you hear their story, it’s unbelievable. But here’s the big one. So we played in the Asia championship, Asia Cup. We got through to the quarter final and we’re playing in the dessert in Al Ain in the Emirates. We did everything we possibly could to win with a weaker team than we would want and we just couldn’t make it. We lost one nil. So that was it. We’re out. And you go back to the hotel and everyone then is fighting to try and get planes back out and it’s quite a strange experience because you’ve been together for a month and then suddenly everyone’s disappearing. And I got a call on my phone in my room, because I was trying to organise flights, from the football manager, said can you come to a room quickly, I need your help. I said yeah, yeah, what is it? So I went down the corridor and there was all hell broke loose. And essentially what had happened was Awer was in a room and he’d heard the worst news ever and his sister had been killed in a car crash in Adelaide, just after the game. And it was one of the most distraught – and that, look, Jenelle, I’ve not been trained to deal with that. I mean I’m – I’ve got clinical training, I’ve worked in hospitals, I’ve been a manager, I’ve been a Managing Director, I’m father of four kids, but I’ve never been trained to deal with that. And I had the doctor and myself and Graham Arnold, the coach, trying to support Awer with his mum who’s just flown over to Africa to see her sister, her family’s all over the place trying to deal with this thing. And it was horrific actually. But we got through it together, OK, that night. And from there on in it was all about togetherness and dealing with this step at a time. Not knowing exactly what the goals are because you can’t – you don’t know exactly what it is. You can’t say it’s all going to be fine, because it isn’t. And he went through it step by step. Awer has been playing in the World Cup qualifiers that have got us through to the next round just a few weeks ago. We touch base regularly. He’s been playing well in Denmark. He played against Liverpool in the European Champions League. He’s an unbelievable young man and when you talk to him he’s so positive about why he’s here and he sees it as a calling for him to be even better. It’s mind blowing actually. So, to me, if you can get through that, and if Mandela can get through 27 years in a prison cell then I can get through stuff. So I have all those benchmarks as well which help me through, and I would encourage you to have one.
Jenelle: What an incredible set of benchmarks.
Mike: Yeah, and I encourage to have benchmarks and, you know, friends and family of yours to have benchmarks of people. There are people actually – it’s not that they’re worse off but they’ve been able to get through it so I’m going to do that too. I can do it. And it’s going to be tough but I’ll do it.
Jenelle: If I was to ask you for, you know, one tip or one piece of advice to leave the audience with, you know, if you think about in the question of how do modern-day leaders, you know, develop their emotional intelligence, how can they better connect with people, what’s the advice that you would give?
Mike: This is a hard one, right? Well that’s a very hard question. I knew that, you know, as soon as I get a one question answer I mean, oh my God, where am I going with this? So I’m meandering a bit, so apologies. I think that the – if you want to be back to the word that keeps popping up these day, “authentic”, I think you’ve got to be really true and sit down with someone and say tell me what you see. Tell me what you see. Just be honest about what you see. I want you to tell me. And, you know, we do, you know, in organisation corporation you do 360s and what have you and people are frightened about saying something about someone. But if you really want to be really good at something I think you need to ask the question to someone you trust. And be comfortable about saying, listen, I want you to tell me warts and all what you see. What do you think I can improve? What are the good piece about what I do. And I don’t mean to be brutal but I want you to be honest with me. And then you take that on board. Now, if you find the right person they can also be a true mentor for you. It may not be a managing director or CEO or what have you. It doesn’t have to be. One of my best mates in the world is a chippie. He’s a carpenter. And he is so honest with me about who I am. It’s just brilliant. And I love his company and there’s never an issue between us because he’s just so honest with me. And one of the best mentors I’ve ever had.
Jenelle: Oh, love it.
The Last Three – three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: Mike, this has been a very rich discussion. I’m going to finish up with a fast three questions. I know I didn’t give you these questions at all.
Mike: Oh no! Oh my God!
Jenelle: But I just wanted to throw you – no, it’s OK. So, first question. What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
Mike: Right, OK. Well I’m reading two books. There’s actually one – where’s it gone? Oh, it’s here. Let me just grab it because it’s such a – because I’m struggling with it, that’s the reason why I’m grabbing it. I have a habit of opening two or three books because when I struggle I close and go, oh, I’ll go to something else and make it easier, right?
Jenelle: Me too.
Mike: Yeah, good. Well we’re very like-minded, right? So, but the one that I’m reading I’ve got Attenborough by my bedside and I tip into it and I’ve been trying to read a paragraph a night, but I do my half a paragraph. Sorry about that, not very good. But this is a book that I’ve had, and it’s really – like, it’s only got 120 – 130-odd pages, really small book, traditional looking, and it’s by a guy called Paul Nurse, who’s a Nobel Prize winner, and it’s called “What is Life: Understand Biology in Five Steps”. So it sounds like it’s simple.
Jenelle: Oh, look at the stellar book of what is life in ??? bits [40.41]
Mike: That’s the problem! It sounds simple but Bill Bryson “A nearly perfect guide to the wonder and complexity of existence”. Let me tell you, I keep having to go over this more than reading an Eckhart Tolle book and going what is he saying? What’s that mean? So this has been sitting here on my desk for weeks and I’ve gone through and I’m only on page 18 and I’m going well I’m on to the gene. I’m going OK, let me go back again. So that’s one that I’m using and I’m committed to completing this this year. OK.
Jenelle: Alright, well we must compare notes when you’ve finished that. The second question, what is your superpower? Now this can be something that’s highly additive to the world or it could be a useless party trick. Your choice!
Mike: Ha! I’m not going to sing it but I can actually – I’m not going to do it now – but I can actually sing “How Much is that Doggy in the Window?” backwards.
Jenelle: Oh, really?!
Mike: Yeah, yeah, I can. I did it as a party trick when I was – because someone said you’ve got to do a party trick when I was about 11. So I went OK and I’ve kept it and I can still remember it from now. Because what - I’m a musician, right, but I can play music, you know, I’ve been doing that for years in big musical events, but that’s my little, tiny party trick that very few people know, but now you know and others.
Jenelle: I know it. And you know what? If we ever come out of lockdown or we ever have a physical Christmas party, you’re getting an invite and I want to hear that.
Mike: That’s fine.
Jenelle: And final question, if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard what would that quote be? Can be yours, it could be someone else’s.
Mike: Oh.
Jenelle: Just something that you sort of live by.
Mike: I’ll tell you one that I use a lot and then I – we laugh, my team laugh because they hear the Socceroos saying it a lot. And I started it four or five years ago. And it’s real simple but it’s “No stone unturned”. No stone unturned, you know? So if we’re gong to do something let’s get to the point where we can’t go any further. That’s it. And I haven’t got there yet. So, no stone unturned.
Jenelle: Oh, I love that. Mike, I can’t thank you enough for your time today. Really enjoyed the conversation. And lots to take away from this. You know, when I was sort of really looking into your background and thinking about, you know, the intro and your experience I was like I kept thinking how does this person have such diversity of experiences?. But I realised it’s because of you. It’s because of the way that you view and embrace opportunities. You see them as challenging and fun and just – it speaks to possibility. You have the ability to see connections that, you know, between interest and capabilities and environments and motivations, and that’s why these experiences open up to you. I want to thank you for the reminder that big kids like to have fun too. And I think it’s something we should remember and the power of experiential learning which gives that. I love your such genuine curiosity and when you can turn perfect storms into perfect opportunities. I love your fascination with solutions. And, you know, above all I probably love the fact of you being so brave that you lean into taking on the toughest of solutions. That you lean into the no and you turn that into the what if and you seek out those possibilities. I love the bravery in asking the question tell me what you see. I love the bravery in putting your hand up asking for help knowing that no-one is an island. So, so much in there, Mike, I really can’t thank you enough for your time. It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
Mike: Jenelle, it’s been so kind of you to spend this time with me. And you probed me and you’ve challenged me in the way you’ve done that but is so beautifully and I thank you so much.
The Change Happens podcast. From EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

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Josephine Sukkar AM
Chairman, Australian Sports Commission

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change. The good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Hi, my name is Jenelle McMaster and you’re listening to Season 2 of the Change Happens podcast. Conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learnt along the way. Today I’m joined by Josephine Sukkar, a member of the Order of Australia who recently became the first female Chairperson of the Australian Sports Commission. She’s also the co-founder and principal of construction company, Buildcorp, which she established with her husband, Tony, three decades ago. In 2019, Josephine was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s 50 most influential women in Australian sport for her leadership positions at the Australian Women’s Rugby and Australian Rugby Foundation. Josephine serves on several private/public/government and not-for-profit boards including Growth Point Properties Australia, Opera Australia, Centenary Institute of Medical Research and Melbourne University Infrastructure Advisory Board. She’s also an active member of Chief Executive Women. Now with so many areas to cover, let’s just jump into it. Hi Josephine and thanks for coming onto the podcast.
Josephine: It’s a real pleasure Jenelle.
Jenelle: At the risk of asking a magician to reveal their secrets, Josephine, how does someone start out pursuing a career in medical research and then end up co-founding one of Australia’s most successful construction companies and also becoming Chairperson of the Australian Sports Commission.
Josephine: Look I think I might be one of those products of what we now know is a stem education. I feel like I probably have some transferable skills that I didn’t recognise then that I’ve brought into different parts of my life. It has help structure the way I think. I am quite analytical in the way I approach issues and a bit technical but for me, I think I’m a product of a stem education.
Jenelle: If I think about the timeframes, that’s over 30 years ago, that was carving out a space that most weren’t in, most women weren’t in at that stage, even more so than today which is still a struggle.
Josephine: Yeah and I do serve on the board of Medical Research Institute at the moment, Turner Institute and we do struggle to keep women researchers but more broadly, that talent pool within Australia, it’s not something we’ve quite got our head around yet in this country.
Jenelle: So if I think about the major chunks or aspects in your working life, whether it’s been an exec in the building game or a serious philanthropist or the area of sports, is there a common purpose that you have, Josephine, that sits above all of that and that you’ve applied to all those worlds.
Josephine: Yes. I am the product of a very good public school education. My father was a public servant and Mum was a stay at home mum. I saw them work really hard with, not an awful lot of money but we never wanted for anything but I was extremely grateful for the opportunities that came my way when I entered construction and, you know, found myself or even today, in a home that I would have never been inside of when I was growing up and opportunities that I never saw. We sent our children to private schools. We remain very grateful. My husband and I have been married for 35 years and I am just perpetually grateful and cannot believe our good fortune that we have ended up in this country with amazing opportunities for your family if you work hard and that drives a genuine desire to kind of share that opportunity and understand what we can do to help release and open that for other people and even though we might be born in Australia, not everybody has had the same opportunities, the same upbringing. If you’ve never seen parents get up and go to work every day, if you, you know, if you’re … the cycle that you happen to be in and we see cycles of sort of intergenerational disadvantage, if you’ve been fortunate enough to skip that, what can you do to make a bit of a difference there and once you’ve been exposed to opportunities and ways you can help or you’ve heard or seen things that you can unhear or unsee, it’s a bit difficult to step back when we have to do something and that’s driven what my husband and I have both tried to do.
Jenelle: Well let’s talk about what your husband and you have both tried to do. Let’s talk about Buildcorp. As you say, you’ve been together 35 years, the company has been founded well over 30 years. What led you both to start your own company together.
Josephine: When I met Tony, he was a couple of years out of a, they called it a Bachelor of Building degree in those days, I think it’s the construction management degree today and he had … he was the first builder employed by Civil and Civic. I understand up until Tony they were all civil engineers and he was at Civil and Civic [00.04.57] and I was at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research completing an honours degree there and we met and I finished my degree and I was on three months holiday and they needed somebody onsite to help with accounts and I took a job there onsite for three months and that, you know, have remained in construction from, gosh that was 1985, how many years ago, I’m scared to do the numbers [laugh].
Jenelle: It’s a lot.
Josephine: A lot, yeah. So look I found an industry that I really enjoyed. I studied while I was there actually, I did a post graduate diploma in education because I enjoyed studying and I thought that might be a handy thing to do if you’ve got children but it was while we were there that we said, we understood the industry, it was fast moving, we’re quite fast moving, Tony and I. The energy of the industry was fun, the people were great. It was very highly unionised at the time. The Builders Labourers Federation were still active and running around. I was there when they locked up Norm Gallagher and they deregistered the BLF and then the BWI. It was exciting and energy and like Wow and we did decide, a young couple, that one day we would really love to have our own construction company and I said to Tony “you could build the thing, I could, you know, help in the back office” and I just liked the energy of construction. I didn’t think I would. I’d never been exposed to it. I didn’t … and I ended up finding myself on sites, I think I was on about three or four sites in my time, I really enjoyed it.
Jenelle: What were some of the memorable first lessons that you learnt in those early days of Buildcorp.
Josephine: Well Tony came home [laugh] without a job one day. He had moved from Civil and Civic to go to Van Corporation and was project managing a very large commercial development in [00.06.50] and … the Verband Corporation and [00.6.53] were placed into receivership and the job was half finished. We had one day set up a construction company but not in the middle of a downturn, it was 1990, and I was seven months pregnant with our first child. So the timing just wasn’t what we planned but interestingly, in our heads, we had sort of taken ourselves there that one day we would and we had a conversation and Tony said “look I reckon I could probably take this over and run this” because he was half way through the job, there were typical floor cycles. I knew I was in no position to help him with anything there but there were a couple of really good men who were on the project with him, three or two. It ended up becoming two and we brought them into a partnership with us and they had a small shareholding, which over the years we eventually bought out and that was the beginning of Buildcorp. So that was Tony having to run with that because of just the nature of the stage of life we were at and more, we weren’t prepared, its that whole thing about luck – right. When preparation meets opportunity, we were probably mentally prepared. Tony was technically prepared. The opportunity was there but there was, you know, kind of lots of other things that weren’t ideal. Interest rate saving and half a percent and economic downturn, partner not with you through that but so … but a little bit of courage that comes, more often with youth and inexperience, would we do the same thing again today, we would probably think a bit harder cos we know [overtalking] …
Jenelle: The naivety, there’s something about that, isn’t there [laugh] at the time.
Josephine: Yeah, we were really prepared, had a focus on excellence. Tony and that particular project had been awarded an Australian Quality Award. Tony was a student of Total Quality Management and [00.08.35] and we both sort of bought into this whole principle of quality and he ended up becoming a judge for the Australian Quality Awards so quality was in his hardwiring in delivering quality projects in an industry when you have non-replicable projects. So you’re not in a production line where we need to make sure we get the tolerances of this, I don’t know, this ball bearing right for this industry and yet they write … every single construction project is totally different and how do you apply principles to a very different, you know, job every single time you do it. So there was a, you know, a hardwiring for excellence. We were really young and aspirational and very hard working. I worked three jobs. Tony worked two right up until we had, you know, had … about to have a family. So by the time we’d landed there, we had our little bubba, a house which we paid off, we’d, you know, set ourselves up financially, we were just hard working and its, you know, hard to go wrong when you’re that hard working in a country like Australia and we tried to work smart at the same time.
Jenelle: I’ve always had a bit of funny reaction or an unclear reaction to the word “luck” but I really love your definition of “its when preparation meets opportunity”. I think you summed that up beautifully. I have to say …
Josephine: I don’t think that’s mine. I think its something I’ve heard [overtalking] …
Jenelle: Take all the credit. Now I have to say, regardless of how loving our relationships are and I love my husband dearly but the idea of living and working with them might not be something that all of us jump at the thought of [laugh]. Did that initially cause you some hesitation. How was the dynamic of the working relationship between you and Tony changed and progressed over multiple decades.
Josephine: I think its that old, and we talk about it [00.10.14] sport, you know, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together and when you start there and we both had common goals, because we set them together – right and we set goals as a couple and as a family. Not here are my goals, here are his goals and let’s move along and when you start there, as a family we one day wanted to have a family, we wanted to live in a house like this, we would love to one day be able to afford to educate our kids this way, to have an overseas trip every now and then. So we sat down and set goals together and when you do that together and you’re on the same page, you don’t get in the way of those goals by, you know, your behaviours. You make sure that whatever you do, you moderate to ensure that it doesn’t interfere with being what ultimately, you know, bring satisfaction at the end of the working life and we worked pretty hard to set those goals and I remember we used to listen to a speaker by the name Brian Tracey and he was a Canadian thought leader, I suppose, and back in the days of, you know, audio cassettes – tapes [overtalking] …
Jenelle: I like to say I don’t know what you’re talking about but I still have a stack!
Josephine: Yeah Tony has a car, his car at the moment still has a cassette deck in it …
Jenelle: Oh wow [laugh].
Josephine: … what if we get rid of that car, how are we going to play our cassettes. We used to listen to this fellow every time we were in the car together and he spoke about goal setting and leadership and because we were very young, trying to learn how to lead a business and … but one of the really great things. Sit down and write a business plan and sit down and write a life plan and keep in mind that the business is there to serve your life goals, not the other way around. You know, you work hard to have a better quality of life but don’t work so hard you forget about quality of life and so we did and we used to every sort of five years, blue sky, you know, put that away and if you don’t regret it in five years time I bet you come back to it in ten years time and you’ve probably achieved them just by the action of writing them down. So we made that a habit and interestingly, exactly what he said transpired.
Jenelle: Really!
Josephine: We had come to move house and pulled out that list and go “look at that, it sort of happened” so that there’s apparently something in the action of writing a business plan, writing a life plan, writing that gets your subconscious moving into making those goals realisable but we set them together. I think that sort of keeps you focused on the end goal and end game and we do that now because as transferred in our business, we set our business plans together with our leaders, told us that you need to bring your people along a journey with you if you are aligned and set those goals together.
Jenelle: I see a trending hashtag after this chat, #couplegoals [laugh]. Now the environment for women in construction has got to a change quite dramatically over the years since you began in 85. But I know that in previous interviews I’ve heard you on, you’ve mentioned that you never really saw that as a disadvantage for you. Can you say more about, you know, how you approached your career as a woman in construction.
Josephine: Well I think its back to where did we want to be as a couple, you know, and we knew where we wanted to be and work was the, I guess, the enabler to get us to where that needed to be and so I … in construction at the time and now, is paying a lot more than medical research which I loved and for us, it was going to allow us to achieve those goals that we really did want to get ourselves into a position where, which would be so hard for young couples today, every time I say this I think about, you know, my own adult children but we were able to pay our house off. We worked seven days a week and most nights and I was driven to do that. I wanted to be able to stay at home with my children, which I did for 16 years but I didn’t want to not be in control. I’m clearly a bit “A type” and lack of control would have been not being able to provide them with what we needed to as parents. I just wanted to be able to relax and enjoy that particular time in their and my life and I was able to do that. So when the, you know, the unthinkable happened, with Tony coming home without a job at the wrong time, at least I didn’t have to worry about [00.14.02]. It brought me security and surety and being in construction at that time and yet there weren’t a lot of women, I wasn’t there to look around and go “where are all the women”. I was there to do a job but I never saw and it never came to me, you know, terrible behaviours and I still don’t see a lot of that now in construction, although I know a lot of people have different experiences. Now why didn’t I see that? Well I was the only woman there so it would have had to happen to me but also I didn’t see any other women on site. So … but people were … look, in all of my career I have to say, I was dragged up and put onto boards and put onto, you know, into roles by men because men were in positions of power but it was men who mentored me and called me up and every now and then when I couldn’t see in myself what they could see, they’d hold a mirror up and say “now why would you say” [laugh]. So you know, I have to be … to me I’m particularly grateful to the men and women who have done that for me and it’s been [00.14.57] in my career.
Jenelle: Buildcorp has certainly survived several economic downturns, very difficult twists and turns along the way but as you say, long tenured employees, employer of choice. What is it that’s made your organisation so resilient, is it that mutually respectful environment. Are there other things that you’ve put in place that you think, is it your Lebanese heritage, is there other things there that you think, this is what has made us be able to be so resilient in the face of so many different circumstances.
Josephine: I think our people are clear on what the business stands for and what we stand for and who we are and some of them are a business thing, some are actions. The consequences when our leaders are making decisions on behalf of the business, they are very clear on the values of the organisation and always begin their decision making … when an issue comes up to you to solve, that’s a problem that your people can’t solve and that means its never going to be black and white and so what do you need to bring to your thinking when you look to resolve an issue or a decision and so long as they’re underpinned by, you know, a solid set of values, you know, with integrity, with, you know, fair play but … and we’ve got our own corporate code of conduct, our own set of values that we genuinely lead by and our people see us do it and you can’t say “these are our values” and we’re pretty much, most of the time, always lead by those, just at the time … except if we happen to be working for that client or except if we happen to be doing that then, you know, let it slide. We do that. Now Tony and I are very visible to the whole organisation and as you say, we work together. Their organisation has never seen us engaged disrespectfully with each other, ever. Even our children will tell you that. You know, of course we disagree on things. We’re never disrespectful and we always … and they watch us negotiate our way to an outcome that always ends up in a better result and we share that. So our leaders know how to make decisions in our absence and they know the way to come to those decisions and I think that clarity for them can be really liberating and we give our people a lot of authority at Buildcorp which is a bit scary to do when you’re at a sector that has such low margins but we’ve attracted people with aligned values.
Jenelle: Fantastic. Want to acknowledge, obviously we are in a time of, you know, covid. How has … I know construction was deemed an essential service which is great but I do wonder how it affected your business and was there anything that happened during covid that you want to build into your forever way of operating even when the pandemic is long behind us.
Josephine: We do an annual employee opinion survey. Our hardest state of course was the Victorians. So we have about 40 staff in Victoria and they’re an amazing team. Brisbane and Sydney, yes we all took the financial and economic hit. None of us had the emotional hit that Victoria had, even though they were still working on reduced numbers on sites, it was really hard for them. Now we fully expected when we did our employee opinion survey, which we never change the timing of, whether we’ve just delivered a terrible budget or a great budget or the economy is terrible, the economy is great, this would be a bad or a good time to do it. We just never change the times. So in the middle of covid, we fully expected the results of an employee opinion survey coming back to Buildcorp would produce terrible results out of Victoria and the contrary happened. They really solidified their relationship and they bunkered down as a team and they generally understood that if they wanted to move through as well, they would go much further if they did it together. So they began their regular amazing communications. Tony and I had communications go out every single day to our staff, every single day to everybody but to see Victoria not just come through their journey unscathed, to come through and actually rise. You should have seen our net promoter score, it was off the dial. You know, continuing to learn from what each of us are doing more broadly, the pride in that team because they … probably our least seasoned leaders in that team, we have a joint management team in Victoria and they do a fantastic job of leading their people and just the pride.
Jenelle: I want to turn to the philanthropic streak in you which is a huge one. You … it’s not … you have the Buildcorp Foundation and as I said in the opening of this podcast, you also have Opera Australia, the Australian Museum, the Infrastructure Advisory Boards and the University Football Club Foundation … you’ve worked in some very eclectic and very diverse groups in these roles. What are some of the lessons you’ve learnt in collective decision making.
Josephine: I would say the Buildcorp Foundation has probably been a result of a cumulative learnings, I suppose, that I’ve had in each of those organisations including Buildcorp, including some of the boards I’m on. One of the organisations I was a director of years ago, it was a publicly listed company, they’re saw and learnt how different trusts and foundations were structured and some that did things really well. We had an amazing sector in property, that I know a very generous and want to give and don’t quite know how and we made decisions to set up a Buildcorp Foundation to sort of harness all of that energy within our sector and try and make a difference, in our case for things that matter to people at Buildcorp. So we asked our staff what, if we were to get behind a cause, what do you think it would likely to be if it were Buildcorp and mental health, you know, has continually been the one so we just went its just going to stay mental health and over the last six or seven years there have been, you know, site BBQs where the teams raise, you know, 10/20/$30,000 and we talk about mental health and teams being safe. We have a very big event at our home, Tony and I, that raised, you know, 6/7/$800,000 profit in a night. The Foundation has no operating costs but we’ve learnt how to bring the community together. So LifeLine received around a million dollars from the Foundation in the last few years but the partnership piece has been an important one for us which was “how can we partner with government to ensure that we have better mental health outcomes for Australians” and so I approached the Department of Education a few years ago and said “if we came to you with a million dollars, how would you use it to achieve that for children”. So we began on a journey of partnering with government to help their achieve their social and economic outcomes and we ran this project, The Pilot. I wanted to understand along the lines of if you partner with us and you match us in our own million dollars, we’ll increase our contribution to 1.2 million. They said fine, they came along the journey, 2.4 million dollars and I’m very grateful to the then Minister of Education, Rob Stokes, who was totally supportive of that and The Pilot has finished. The idea was to get to 100,000 primary school children and we got to I think 150,000 they got to and over 10,000 primary teachers and the results of the impact of those where we benchmarked the schools before we arrived and the school communities and what happened after has shown that this is a really important and powerful tool. We equip young people with tools to move forward into the world and manage anxiety and, you know, keep them psychologically safe in a world that feels a bit unstable and sometimes unsafe. To me, I’ve learnt how to bring communities together, be it government, [00.22.16] community, for a particular event at our home, the big fundraiser that we have, its fully underwritten by sponsors, their sponsors, our subcontractors but they’re also clients. They also just friends, you know, people who we build for, consultants who we work for to subcontractors who say “you know, we always wanted to give but we just don’t know how to, you do the heavy thinking for us” but what we try and do is ensure we achieve reach to a scale and impact. That project has now wrapped up. One quarter of New South Wales primary schools are now trained in the Smiling Minds programme and that’s big for me because the New South Wales Department of Education is the second largest Department of Education in the world, second only to New York City …
Jenelle: Wow!
Josephine: … yeah, it’s just the way we’re structured here. So to me, I know when we say a quarter of one state, that’s a quarter of a big state, that’s a lot of Australian kids. So our goal is now to wrap up the other 75% if we can and walk hand in hand with government. So I’ve had a lovely conversation with the Department of Education and we’re ready to go again.
Jenelle: Fantastic. Some really great insights there around partnering, partnerships, bringing communities together, thinking about reach and impact. You’ve been driving, I mean, that’s an example. You’ve got many examples of driving impact for a meaningful change. Are there any other kind of key levers or insights that you’ve kind of picked up along your journey here that you would share around what it takes to drive change.
Josephine: Mmm … Tony and I have tried to do this a little bit with rugby union. So when I met Tony, he was playing rugby union and he was very passionate about the game and we were about 15 years into the match when we understood the landscape for women who were playing rugby. I didn’t even know that women played rugby but we’d been sponsoring Sydney University Rugby Club for years and when we saw a … the lack of opportunities for women compared to men and even though we were a small sponsor, when you look next to other national/multinational corporate sponsors in rugby union, we realised that we were able to, with a very small amount of support, begin to start to make a small and increasingly material change to the landscape for women in a sport and in this case, it was rugby union and I think my lessons were probably apply there which is how to be brave in asking for change in a sporting sector that has been traditionally very male dominated on its boards and more broadly and what Tony and I had done, we were in a club system in rugby, we were able to amplify into the National Rugby Team, well we’re the major sponsors of the Wallaroos (womens 15 a side team). There’s a competition now for women, the Buildcorp SuperW, which sits alongside super rugby so it’s the womens equivalent of super rugby but not sort of sitting back and going “this amount of money won’t make a difference”. I would like to encourage everybody to know if you have the genuine we are one and right intention and your why is sound and fair, it is fair and its honest and you can help a governing enable that to happen because often the reason governing bodies will decide that there are a lack of pathways for women in a particular sport will be money. So we will sit down and have conversations with rugby and say “what are the issues, how much will this much money solve”, you know, and begin to try and help them deal with some of their bottleneck because if you just come in with a stick and go “where are your women, why aren’t you there, you’re all a pack of [00.25.58]”, you know, that is really unhelpful. Genuinely sitting down to help understand, genuinely understand what the issues are so we can genuinely make a difference and the one thing that I’m really proud of with Tony is we stand shoulder to shoulder and we’re a private company – right, and we invest about a million dollars in rugby a year and that is our own money – right. Its not the shareholders money, its ours. So I hope the community, when we advocate, understand that we’re not just there on the sideline lobbing grenades. We’re in there trying to understand how to change the landscape and bring our advocacy, our money, you know, our time, our volunteering time to impact and grow wherever we are.
Jenelle: You’ve talked in the past about being a strong advocate for the role that sport can play in building an organisation’s success. Can you tell me a little bit more about that. In what ways do you see that.
Josephine: If you are an organisation that has people working in teams and I’d say that’s most organisations. There are transferable skills that you learn. Tony has been a huge advocate for this over the years and I’ve literally seen it with him in the way that he applies himself and approaches a team within Buildcorp. He brings everything he learnt on the rugby field. Rugby union, I should say, where again for all, we need every shape and size. We need the little half back that can’t be bigger than this. We need a really tall second rower so they can jump high in lineouts. We need a big strong, you know, squat front rower. So rugby sees itself as everyone having a role that’s different to everybody else’s role and that collectively as a team. So everybody is very clear on their role and respectful of the fact that everybody has a different role to play that they’re all equally important but also if you lead a high performing sports team. You are leading a group of very sort of diverse personalities within the team and also external to that, the coach, sponsors if you’re, you know, a larger club, the president. The goal is almost the same. In a high performing team, their goal is to win a grand final in a way that people will respect the way they’ve done it. They were honest, they didn’t cheat. Sponsors will want to come back again and align themselves with it and a construction company, if you’re the leader of a team on a construction site, again you have a group of very diverse stakeholders on your teams and how … what behavioural competencies do you have. What emotional, what do you bring to be able to convince all of those people that this is where we are heading, this is the direction we’re going in, we need to deliver this project on budget safely to a high level of quality on time in a way that a client will give us a project again. So if you see they’re sort of the same type of skills, just applied to different areas.
Jenelle: Absolutely. Now very excitingly for our country, I believe, you’ve taken the seat at the head of the table at Chairperson for the Australian Sports Commission. Notably, the first female in the role in its 37 year history. Josephine, I cannot image that you had a huge amount of spare time on your hands …
Josephine: [laugh].
Jenelle: … this is probably not a job for the fainthearted, given how highly politicised sports funding in particular is. What attracted you to this role. Why did you say yes, tell me about that.
Josephine: I was approached for the role. I had been chairing for the Prime Minister, Maurice Paine, the sports diplomacy advisory council for her within DEFAT and I was really enjoying that and when I was first approached I said no, thank you, I’m happy doing this but they came back again for another conversation and said “we’re really like you to consider this role” and like any decision Tony and I have made, we sat down together and had a conversation about it and Tony actually said to me “you know, we’ve never been that couple on the sideline telling people the things that are wrong but we have been frustrated and expressed our frustration” and I certainly did to the Minister of Sports, Richard Colbeck at the time. I said I don’t understand why you use our taxpayer money to enable sports that are poorly governed, that are poorly run, that are not aligning community expectations around which is participation of women. I don’t understand why sports are allowed to develop pathways for just one gender whereas if you and I did that in Corporate Australia, we’d be in front of the [00.30.16] so I don’t understand why there aren’t consequences for that and I’d been asking these questions more broadly and Tony said to me “here’s your chance to actually try and make a difference”. Now if I look at our performance from 2000, our Olympic tally, medal tally has gone down. I felt the sector was a bit fractured, but I didn’t really know that, that was my observation and I suppose Olympic medals are a bit of an outcome of, you know … well lets put it in reverse. 2000 went really well, Sydney, the 2000 Olympic Games. There was an outcome of having a [00.30.49] in place which was established in 1981 and a genuine focus and it all coming together to deliver that. I feel like we have slipped a little bit and I look at each of the individual sports and everyone is working so hard but we’ve forgotten … how to work hard together. There’s a little bit of friction and tension between there. I historically like to work to bring people together and facilitate that and how do we do this together because frankly, the enemy is on the outside, you know, its across the ditch, its up in the Northern Hemisphere, its everyone other than Australia so we’ve got to figure out how we can bring ourselves together and what structures are the best structures to do that within because we do have this likely – fingers crossed, an Olympic Games in Southeast Queensland in 2032 and here is our opportunity for us to focus on the participation of ten and eleven year olds who go, 2032 will be well and truly old enough to be able to think about participating if that’s their desire or their ability in an Olympic Game but more broadly, how do we prosecute the case for Federation funding and investment and the value that sport has, no just in the Australian psyche but in its post covid recovery. Its health benefits, its mental health benefits, what are the halo effects that sports bring. So we know that we’re a country where sport is such a huge part of our psyche and I genuinely believe that sport, it can be part of the solution. So with that backdrop, then yes I am busy. We made a few changes at Buildcorp and our son, who’s been in the business for seven years, set up into some of my operational roles. I’m still there but left. I’ve pulled back from a couple of boards and making time for this because there are a lot of people who have been working really hard within sport who deserve to be working within structures that work for them. The government have been really committed to work with me on this and I believe that. I believe the Federation government on this and with that, if we all want to, you know, look towards 2032 and point ourselves in the right direction. I thought this was an exciting time to be on the bus. So I jumped on the bus.
Jenelle: I’m very glad you have jumped on that bus. Now its that exciting time but it can also … I mean it would also be overwhelming time. You’ve got the backdrop of covid19 which has thrown the funding and operations of Australia’s sporting federation into, you know, disarray. We’ve … you’ve got the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. You’ve got a bid for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games. Lots and lots of things to focus on. How and where do you start.
Josephine: Oh with the leaders. So I’ve made it my business to confess the first three months of my time in the role with the organisation, within the Australian Sports Commission and with the presidents of the 100 national sporting organisations to first of all, hear from them as the leaders of their sector as to how do you … what’s your perspective, what do you feel, engaging with the Commonwealth Games Association, The Australian Olympic Committee. So there’s lots of stakeholders within the landscape and its understanding for me, where are we working well together, where are we getting in each other’s way and where’s the duplication and more importantly, where are the gaps and what should we be looking to do for those.
Jenelle: And so, as you said Josephine, as a sports is such a fundamental part of the Australian psyche and Australian life, the suspension of sports during covid was one of the more visible and some would say more difficult limitations that Aussies have had to deal with and continue to deal with. Not just for the entertainment side but at that health and social benefits. How do you see this playing out (pardon the pun) particularly amongst youth and is there stuff that we really need to be uber conscious of given the times that we are sort of navigating at the moment.
Josephine: What I understand from sports is that we had pre-covid 3.1 million volunteers participating in Australian sport. They’re coming back a bit slower. Participation rates are coming back a bit slower. You know, Mum and Dad who were … got their Saturday mornings back when they were in lockdown for covid. Some of them are going “you know, its been really nice having Saturday mornings back”. So you know, we need to re-prosecute the case for what are the other things your child might benefit from if they were to continue to participate in sports. We also need to prosecute a case for people who don’t think sport is … for whom its not important. You know, I am on the Board of Opera Australia and there are people who think there have been insufficient investment in the arts and we’re too heavy in sport but I think we need to do our job well enough within sport that anybody regardless of whether they’re sportspeople or not look to an application of federation funding to a sport or sports more broadly and go “okay I get it, I understand why that’s important”. So I think for us, within sport, we’ve got to really redefine and reimagine for those Australians who aren’t necessarily on the journey with us, what the benefits are.
Jenelle: Josephine, you have such a big platform for driving change in all the various spheres that you operate in. We have an opportunity now to define a new Australia as we come ahead of covid, how do you see Australia looking and how would you want us to be reimagining the future.
Josephine: Well I think if we start to look at the immediate impact we saw at around not being able to access PPE, for example, and having a mirror held up to … well we can’t manufacture things here very much anymore and we extend that back to and interrogate a bit further and go well manufacturing requires blue collar work, requires a participation in TAFE, requires schools to think about directing students into technical and TAFE type courses, how have we elevated those courses to attract blue collar workers into the sector. So when I looked at what happened when the border shut, of course we had a labour shortage in construction, of course we do because we’re (1) not only are we not training enough people in that, there is a lack of appetite for parents and schools to students in any school year 10 go straight to TAFE the way I did. Now I went to [00.37.05] High School. At [00.37.08] High School at Year 10, there were 200 of us. In Year 11 there was 70 of use. So that’s 130 people enter the workforce or went to, you know, began to be upskilled at TAFE. Today I reckon those 200 in Year 10 probably all continue onto Year 12 and when I think about what we learnt then. We learnt to read Chooser, we learnt skills that … I struggle to see how that would help somebody who really wanted to be an auto electrician or a hairdresser. Now we all understand the value of education but these days and I think it was when one of the [00.37.40] guys came out and said “yeah, what's the point of University these days, pretty much everything you need to learn, you could learn on YouTube”. He might have a point so I think somewhere within our public discussion within Australia, repositioning and revaluing our technical skills which you are not going to learn off YouTube, which you do need to be … so how do we reelevate that. We’ve got so many people with degrees who are not using them and we think about how we talk about education in this country and not allow parents or students to use language like “I only went onto Year 10”. That was never how we spoke about this when I was at school. I can remember looking at my girlfriends on the station as I was heading off in my jeans to University and they looked glamorous and gorgeous heading off to their jobs in the city, you know, EAs, receptionists, whatever they were doing, [00.38.27] and we were all equally valued. Something has happened in our public discretion that has landed us where we are. So a manufacturing nation or a country that can do more than dig stuff out of the ground and, you know, sell that is going to need to reimagine how we can value to that stuff we dig out of the ground ourselves here and what are the technical skills we need there. So to me, a reimagining looks at that, in the future. I do know, I was speaking to a dairy farmer a few months ago who told me that he can’t get people to milk his cows so he has to bring them in and apparently the best people to help in milking cows is German backpackers because they arrive on time, they’re really clean and they’re efficient. I guess none of us would be surprised at that but you know, do we totally want to lose our food bowl. Do we totally want to … so if we then can’t grow and produce our own food, our own milk, well then what and if borders close and what if the geo-political major of the law means that of a sudden we can’t feed our population, then what. So I think all Australians need to lean into this a bit and go “oh, what do we want to look like, what are the risks that now face … that we’ve seen, genuine risks that have and could amplify and face a country like ours and how can we look after ourselves”.
Jenelle: Such an important discourse to be engaging in.
The last three: three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: I’m now going to finish up Josephine on a really fast light-hearted three questions. So what are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
Josephine: I actually just reread a book that I give to everybody who I see who’s not entirely sure how to move to the next level of their career and it’s by Viktor Frankl and its “Man’s Search For Meaning” and that is around controlling our own responses to whatever is happening in the world around us that we can’t control and being in control, when you’re like me, you’re A Type, you want to be in control. You can control the way you respond to things and Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psycho analyst who ended up in Auschwitz and lost his whole family but said “you know, while I can’t control what’s happening around me, I can control the way I choose to respond”. So that’s one I’m back into and I’m enjoying.
Jenelle: Wonderful. What is your super power. It can be something that’s highly additive to the world or a useless party trick, I value both of those.
Josephine: Oh sometimes I think it’s positive that I have no boundaries so I do pick up the phone to people I have no business picking up the phone to, like a minister or … I have this really great idea, what do you reckon, come on a journey with me [laugh].
Jenelle: Love it. If you were going to put up a quote on a billboard, what would it say?
Josephine: It would be my late father’s advice to people who took on a lot. “One day at a time”.
Jenelle: So good. Such good advice. Josephine, thank you very much for your time today. I’ve really enjoyed the discussion so much that I’ve taken away from the conversation. It is your hard work ethic, your clear life of gratitude for what you’ve had and your desire to continually give back and share the opportunities with others is really evident. I can’t help but be struck the number of times that you’ve talked about Tony in this conversation with such pride. You’ve woven him in every one of your life stories and that journey together is so clear and natural, that partnership and teaming. You know, you said the words, the quote “if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together” and I think, you know, I joked about the #couplegoals with you too, but that sense of teaming, whether it’s with Tony, whether its with your own organisation, whether its with government, whether with communities and sports is so clear and that is why you go so far because you go together. The clarify on what you stand for, what your business stands for and the clarity of goals guiding your decision making is really clear and you know, for someone who’s asking us all to be brave in asking for change, I have to say that its clear you’ve never been on the sidelines, that’s you’ve always put yourself on the field and you are brave in asking for change. So thank you for being that role model and long may we learn from you.
Josephine: Its very kind of you Jenelle, thank you very much. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Jenelle: Me too. Thanks Josephine.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Lisa Paul AO PSM
Chair, Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE)

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change. The good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 2 of the Change Happens podcast where we continue to have conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learnt along the way. Now today I’m joined by Lisa Paul who is so many things. She’s a company director of a number of listed and private companies and not for profit organisations. She’s the Chair of headspace. She was a secretary or a Chief Executive equivalent in the Australian Federal Government from 2004 to 2016. She’s served under five prime ministers and nine cabinet ministers. She held national responsibility for many of our nation’s most important areas: education, vocational training, youth transitions, research, science, employment, job creation, workforce and workplace relations, social security payments. Now in 2003, she was awarded a public service medal for leading the Australian Government’s domestic response to the Bali bombings. In 2011, Lisa was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to public sector leadership and she received the Australian Chartered Accountants Federal Government Leader of the Year award. Adding to the award list: 2015, she was recognised in the Knowledge 100 Australian Thought Leaders and Lisa, fairly recently, stepped out of the role of Coordinator for BizRebuild, which is a business led initiative developed by the Business Council of Australia to provide practical and on-the-ground assistance to small and local businesses that were left devastated by the bush fires. So many things to explore here, so let’s jump into it. Lisa, how are you?
Lisa: I’m really great Jenelle, thank you so much and thank you for this invitation, so kind.
Jenelle: I’m delighted that you can join me for this chat. Now, where to start … you’re no stranger to managing crises. I’ve listed several in there. Certainly no stranger to being in unexpected situations which we will get into during the course of this conversation but how has the last past 18 months been for you during the pandemic.
Lisa: Do you know what. I love the pandemic lifestyle as long as I don’t get the pandemic [laugh].
Jenelle: Okay.
Lisa: Its actually changed our lives. I realised I hadn’t really been home for 35 years and suddenly I was at home and its fantastic. Not travelling. Its absolutely brilliant. The Zoom lifestyle – I love it, I’m there.
Jenelle: You’re into it, you’re here for it.
Lisa: I’m so there I’m so there. So I’m actually starting to finish things and spend mor time doing things like with my hands, not just with my head and very life changing.
Jenelle: I might actually just start with and I’m trying to understand what is it that drives you. There’s just so much that’s been going on and, you know, call it purpose or call it change of gender. What is it that you are seeking to achieve or drive.
Lisa: It’s a great question. I think I’d say what I stand for, if that’s a way of putting it, would be firstly and always helping people reach their full potential. I think that’s something that’s kind of driven me ever since I was a child. My Mum and Dad gave me an amazing role modelling on helping people who need help to reach their full potential. They were both educators. Everything I do actually is about helping people reach their full potential, whether its through great schooling or through getting unemployed people jobs or through offering great childcare or through trying to get homeless people housed and now of course, chairing headspace the national youth mental health foundation. That’s all about helping young people mentally healthy. So yeah, and then I reckon the second one, I think I’d say helping the people I work with have the best day at work they could have every day. So it’s the leadership …
Jenelle: Oh that’s so nice.
Lisa: … yeah, I just, you know, really care about that because people spend more time at work than anywhere else, don’t they and if as a leader, particularly when I was a CEO, if I can help give people the best experience they could have every day, well you know, how awesome is that.
Jenelle: Pretty damn awesome I’ve got to say. You mentioned that your parents were both educators. Is it a coincidence that you ended up as the most senior public servant in education and training or was that by design.
Lisa: [laugh], well I wish I could say it was by design but I think my entire career was an accident [laugh]. It was definitely a complete coincidence but it was pretty exciting cos clearly Mum and Dad saw education as their vocation and their value set and mine is about social justice, as I say, you know, helping people reach their potential and so when I was made Secretary or CEO of the Education Department in Federal Government, I rang them up, you know, very proud obviously and said “I think I’ve finally joined the family business” [laugh].
Jenelle: [laugh], love it. You’re a big advocate for the role of vocational education and creating a resilient workforce. You often speak about the importance of the collaborated tertiary sector which offers students, you know, continuous experience between vocational education and training and higher education. Have you helped make that change and what do we need to do to make that change happen.
Lisa: I would love to see vocational education be higher status. As we speak Jenelle, we’re having our roof ripped off our house to try to find a leak and I was talking to the roofers this morning and they say we’re just not getting the apprentices through any more. Skills shortages in this country are more likely to be in occupations that require a vocational qualification than occupations that target University qualification and so I personally have got this dream for a start-up where you just go onto a platform and even do some psychometrics to work out what you really care about and what you’re really good and what you’re interested in and then the platform would actually throw up every single choice, maybe international even, of what's available to learn that thing. So would be accredited, some would unaccredited, some would be in the vocational sphere, some would be in the University sphere, whatever and then what if you could then choose on the basis of whatever was important to you, is it near me or can I do it online and then enrol all on the same platform. So if anyone wants to join me [laugh].
Jenelle: Oh my gosh, just listening to this, there is someone I need to introduce you to. Its … I interviewed him recently, Adam Jacobs. He’s the co-founder of the Iconic but also he has co-founded Hatch, which is an online platform which matches the underlying skills and passions and attitudes of students with meaningful work experiences. I think I need to get you two to meet each other. It is complete alignment of interest here, so let me just say this podcast can make change happen.
Lisa: [laugh].
Jenelle: [laugh].
Lisa: I’m loving that, I’m loving that. I’d love to meet with him and that would be awesome.
Jenelle: That’s my “to-do” after this discussion. Now you said that your public service career, in fact your entire career was an accidental one. Tell me, lets take a step back. How did you end up in public service.
Lisa: So when I … so I grew up in Adelaide. Well actually I’m American by birth, I’m a migrant but I grew up in Adelaide and my parents, both being kind of American educators. You know, how America kids go to college and they always go away from home. So I think they thought, they thought [00.07.34] is a chance, you know, for Lisa to go away [laugh]. They strongly recommended the ANU, then after I finished my degree … look my mates were just applying to join the public service and in those days when there was much more public service employment to be had, I guess, we’d all trip off to a high school, sit at desks and do an exam to enter the pubic service. So we’re all [00.07.56] from Campbell High School in Canberra and the chap next to me fell asleep and I thought “I’m in with a chance” [laugh]. I got in as a graduate. Rather than choose, you know, prime minister and cabinet or foreign affairs or whatever, I choose to go to what is now the ACT Government and actually work in the housing commission and the first thing I did, I was out at the Long Stake event park where people live in the caravan park long term who otherwise would face homelessness and I was reviewing an audit that had been done and that was like on day two and I was hooked. I was just hooked because I could see the difference you could make.
Jenelle: And so the portfolio that’s you then moved through from, you know, housing, social housing. Where to after that.
Lisa: I’ve basically worked in every single human services department of the Federal Government as well as working for the ACT Government in the same domain: health, aged care, family and community services, social security and then of course education, employment, workplace relations, science. I’ve think I’ve negotiated every commonwealth state agreement there is to be had in the human services side of the house except for health [laugh]. Yeah but its been … it was marvellous. It was fantastic.
Jenelle: Incredibly important portfolios. Not an easy thing to be navigating – right. There’s a whole lot of complexity and stakeholders and red tape. What did you learn about driving change across those respective portfolios. Were there some common themes to getting successful outcomes.
Lisa: Absolutely. So, in particular in terms of organisational change. You know, in the private sector if you’re going to plan for some M&A activity, you know, you’ve got a project plan, you’ve got money dedicated to it, you bring in your advisors, blah blah blah. In the public sector, I reckon we do M&A type activity, what would be called machinery of government change like every six months. Its completely unfunded. You can’t predict it. You have to effect it literally overnight with no planning and off we go. We’re actually really good at it [laugh]. I think the most challenging leadership role I had was in 2007, a change of government to the Labour Government from the Howard Government where I didn’t know what I would end up running, if anything, and ended up running a mega department under Julia Gillard as Deputy Prime Minister that brought together two whole departments and a large part of a third. I think it’s the largest complete merger in public sector history as far as I could work out because when I went …
Jenelle: Is that right?
Lisa: … cos it was two complete departments and as I say, and a large part of a third. It cost us $80m just to do remuneration and IT alignment alone and completely unfunded and indeed, government took a dividend on the grounds that, you know, there would be a confidence of scale and so its hard. Its really hard and it had to be, you know, had to be completely seamless to all of our stakeholders and to government of course, our number one stakeholder. I actually went out and sought a leadership role model who had been through a similar sized merger in the … in a public sector and the only one I could find was a CEO in New Zealand and he said to me “it would take five years for the culture to settle” and that’s absolutely true, it was very interesting and at the end of five years, the place was abolished with incoming government [laugh] and it demerged into about five directions.
Jenelle: Just on that, like you led a complex merger, five years and then a demerger probably equally as complex in some ways, happened in 2013. As I understand it, you maintained top quartile staff engagement over that period of time. How! What were you doing there to make that work, it’s a very complex landscape.
Lisa: Yes it is. So the mega department, which was education, employment, workplace relations had about six and a half thousand people that administered $46 billion a year and was located across 52 locations internationally because we had international education. So how did I do it? Well it wasn’t just me of course but for a massive change like that merger, I would always take a very very full on internal communications approach. I believe strongly that anyone in an organisation needs to hear things in multiple ways out from the centre and needs to have multiple avenues to be heard and I also remember reading a piece of organisational literature once that said people need to heard something four times to hear it and six times to believe it [laugh] …
Jenelle: [laugh].
Lisa: … and so you know, it’s a bit of “well lets just say this again” principle as well but in that instance I had a dedicated task force of people just on that merger. I had formal communications approach that … where we all had our own roles, you know, there was me doing the state of the nation thing and getting out and meeting the people I didn’t know before but then in terms of anyone in the organisation being able to be heard, you know, not only did we have frequently asked questions, not only do we have newsletters, not only did we have all sorts of other things, but we also had, for example, an anonymous phone line where if someone really had an anxiety, they could ring this number and their voice would be recorded and only I would hear it.
Jenelle: It’s a safe zone you’ve created then.
Lisa: Yeah that’s exactly right. So everyone knew they had a way of being heard. I also have always used approaches like lots and lots of stuff, surveys of course, but also tools like manager one removed. So because your own manager, you know, has a conflict of interest in terms of wanting to keep you probably, then having a formal relationship with your manager one removed means you’ve got someone built in who will be less conflicted about letting you go, letting you be developed and so on. I’ve always used 360 degree feedback. I just think there are many many metrics for trying to get a high floor of leadership and I also, in the day that we had performance pay availability, it would be the equivalent of a short term incentive in the private sector. I would rate my senior executive cohort and C-suite people 50% on business outcomes and 50% on leadership and I am absolutely positive that that approach raised the floor calibre of leadership across the organisation.
Jenelle: I love the … the quote around “four times to hear it, six times to believe it”.
Lisa: [laugh].
Jenelle: When you’re thinking about that complex merger, what did you want people to believe.
Lisa: I wanted them to understand the “why” because its really interesting. In the private sector, if you think of M&A activity in private sector, the “why” will be completely clear, you know, it’s a commercial “why” always. In the public sector, why has this department been created, why does the government want this type of structure, the “why” is much more ambiguous and so the CEO must be able to explain why are we now doing this, because people are frightened of changes, you know. So there’s got to be a good rationale for it. Not only the “why” of change but what's in it for them, you know, what's the advantage of this change for them.
Jenelle: And back to that sort of point around the repetition of a message.
Lisa: Oh sure.
Jenelle: I did notice that no matter what portfolio you moved into, you’ve had a real repeat opening and I’m sure its not because you couldn’t think of another one, you sort of started with indigenous businesses, everyone’s business in the department of and then insert whatever department you are in. Why is that a statement that you opened with every time you spoke at a public event.
Lisa: Thanks for that question because it really means a lot to me and I care deeply about it. In all of the portfolios that I have run, getting the business right for aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples means the business probably is right. In my view, we try to get the business right for aboriginal and Torres Islander people, for good business reasons. Not just for kind of social justice reasons because it’s, you know, there are issues there which are at the crux of our identity as Australians but for business reasons as well in government and so I would start and I also believe that a CEO should stand for one thing. Everyone knew that I stood for indigenous people and therefore I would start every speech with the phrase “indigenous business is everyone’s business in the department of education etc. What that meant in practice was every area of the department would need to think through “how can we advance the outcomes for aboriginals Torres Island people”. So international education could look for scholarships for aboriginal Australians to go and study overseas. Science could look at the realms between, say traditional medicine and western medicine and so on. That wasn’t of course the only thing I did in this regard. I also believed when a CEO stands for something, you have to … and you’re trying to change things for the better, you have to do multiple things all at once, all of the time and so you know, we didn’t just have that opening line of every speech but we also had … I had an indigenous leader who was always the most senior aboriginal person in the department who worked directly to me, in that role, we had a reconciliation action plan. We were quite ahead of most on this. We had really clear recruitment and retention strategies. We had a network for our aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people. We did a co-mentoring approach where C-suite people would mentor an aboriginal staff member but they would mentor us in return. You know, I’m very proud to say I never have had the title “aboriginal affairs” in the name of my department and yet, at various points, we’ve had to 6% employment of aboriginal people in the department.
Jenelle: Fantastic. Clearly, I mean your passion for and commitment to the portfolios that you ran and the outcomes that you were seeking to drive for citizens, students etc, is really clear but as I said in the opening, you worked under five prime ministers and nine cabinet ministers so I would imagine that that would have introduced a whole lot of stop/start/restart/rebuild which possibly gets in the way of getting the outcomes that you were seeking. Tell me how you weathered that and, I guess, some of the challenges and opportunities maybe, that that level of constant change brought.
Lisa: Yeah see I don’t think of it as weathering, being weathered, you know. I think of it as … I don’t think of it as a challenge. I think of it as an honour and people would say to me “doesn’t it drive you crazy if a new government comes in and they change programmes and walk away from certain things” and I would always say “absolutely not, they’re elected and I am not” and I have an enormous regard for people who put themselves forward for election time and time again and every cabinet minister I’ve worked for and indeed prime minister, has got themselves into politics because they wanted to make a difference. Yes they come from different value sets. They come with different approaches to that question. They come with different personal philosophies because of, you know, which is how they express that through their politics but they come to want to make a difference. So I just am full of respect. Yes we’d have to change things and do things differently but that’s the point. They’ve been elected so off you go and do that and on a personal level, I’m very proud to have been trusted by both sides of politics, still am probably and that was kind of my thing, you know, my own brand I guess is genuinely working as a professional for the government of the day and making sure that I build trust. Trust is everything in that very close relationship between a secretary and a minister and that the department can be trusted and, you know, will serve a minister well and all of those ministers were loyal to me and my department and I will say that, what … one of the, you know, like in private sector, what's the worse thing you can do, lose shareholder value etc [laugh]. In government it’s, you know, leaking [laugh]. Leaking would be a very bad thing in my department. Never had any … because it means people are unhappy. Never had any leaks, ever, not ever in the 12 years.
Jenelle: Speaking on a personal level, I guess you were first out secretary since the federation as I understand it. What was it like coming out for you. Did you feel it changed things, whether positively or negatively.
Lisa: Well because I’d come out a long time before being made a secretary but was never really in people’s faces about it and never really have been. I think there may be things that were harder at the various points. I can’t really pinpoint that but there probably were. I’m very very grateful for having been appointment secretary because I think, you know, that it would have been potentially a barrier. Of course it shouldn’t be but you know, it could have been. I think … I think without a doubt, what its done isn’t so much for me but its made it easier for people that came after me. So I know when I finished, for example, had a farewell, a couple of the other secretaries, again lesbian secretaries, said you know, “thanks, its made a difference”. It did make a difference and I know I also heard that because I was “out” it made it easier for gay/lesbian and other people inside the department. You know, they’d made it a safe place for them, they felt. So clearly without kind of actively role modelling it, you know, I wasn’t the champion of the pride network etc, that fell to one of my deputies. Nonetheless, the word gets out, you know…
Jenelle: Absolutely.
Lisa: … and gets out in a good way, so yah … yah me, you know [laugh]. I didn’t really intend it to be like that but hey, you know.
Jenelle: Yah you indeed Lisa, on many many levels. So look, changing course a little bit here but you know, within this period of time, for many Australians the announcement of the Bali bombings was a day we can all remember. Actually I find it staggering it was almost 19 years ago, I think to be honest.
Lisa: Yeah yeah.
Jenelle: What was that day like for you. What do you remember around hearing about it then.
Lisa: So the Bali bombings happened on Saturday the 12th of October 2002 near midnight and so we woke up to the news on Sunday the 13th of October which happens to be my Mum’s birthday. So it was a funny feeling because other than 911 which had happened the year before, that level of terrorism hadn’t … well it just hadn’t happened that close to home and we know now, more Australians were killed or injured than any other nationality in the Bali bombings and because of the position I held at the time which was a Deputy Secretary in the Department of Family Community Services, I knew that we would probably be involved in some way and so we were. That Department traditionally, in that particular position, traditionally takes a role with coordinating with the, kind of, family support in a domestic crisis. So they … that position would be switched on in that regard for say bush fires or the Port Arthur shootings. What had never happened before was something which was both international and domestic. So for international crises like 911, [00.24.09] things that might involve Australians, department of foreign affairs and trade would take the key running. In this one we had both of … for the first time ever, so we had to … we had to do what I called and what I’ve called for the bush fires work I did last year “making it up as we go along” …
Jenelle: [laugh], I’m really familiar with that technique [laugh].
Lisa: Yeah yeah, it’s a very technical technique and that’s pretty well what we were doing so a wonderful man at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was kind of … chaired the international hub which had many spokes and I chaired the domestic hub, if you like, and it had many spokes and so it was kind of like a Venn diagram, it was an intersecting set. So he would chair/liaise with the police, the intelligence agencies, the people who were helping the people up in Bali, the consular people obviously and their department, the people doing positive victim identification and I should say trigger warning on the conversation we are having now and I did … I chaired the domestic side so I had every department that would help support the affected families, whether they … we were trying to get them travelling to Bali. We were trying to get them travelling to Perth to the burns unit to support their loved one and just giving them information. That’s what I had. So I had agencies like Immigration and Centrelink and then I had some overlapping agencies as well and the way … because I thought “well, you know, these things are … they’re crises, they’re intense, they’re incredibly sad” but you don’t want to blunder. I actually use, in a leadership sense, I used a brainstorming technique and got as many of the agencies I could ever think of that might be relevant to help support the families together and we literally brainstormed an issues register which we then stuck to and that issues register went from “how do we get people to Bali today” through to “how do we deal with the potential rise of anti Moslem sentiment in Australia” and you know, it worked a treat actually and certainly a lot of lessons were learned but the 88 people who died and their families, of course, will never recover from it.
Jenelle: No, that’s right. It’s, I mean, I understand that you, you know, you don’t want to blunder and you would have been moving forward professionally with the things that you needed to do but there’s no denying the horror of what happened and you would have seen first hand the impact on families etc. How did you take care of yourself. What kind of toll did it have on you personally and how did you look after yourself through that period of time.
Lisa: Hmm … really good question. You do need professional debriefing. So you need critical incident stress debriefing. I’m a big fan of that. Of course all of our first responders like the police, ambos etc always … always do this nowadays and we did this in many ways and then Emergency Management Australia who do … who are experts in dealing with these things also did a professional debriefing where we all came together and talked about what would have worked better at, you know, what we hadn’t anticipated and so that was a really good thing too but I’m all for, you know, I’m all for anything you can do to look after yourselves professionally is very very important.
Jenelle: You said that, you know, obviously through this process, a lot of lessons that you learned, what were maybe several that really stand out for you that you have ensured that you took forward with you, say whether its been in the bush fire response or anything else since then, the must-have sort of lessons from that period of time.
Lisa: I think it helped me become … see I wasn’t a CEO when I was doing this and I think it helped me become as a CEO, what I call a culturist, not a structuralist. In other words, you can have the worse structure in the world but if you’ve got a great culture, you’ll get great things done. You can have the best structure in the world and if you’ve got a really really poor quality culture in the place, you’re just not going to get the outcomes and in this instance, with Bali, there was no structure really but my goodness, there was goodwill. Of course, there was and so how do you bottle that. How do you bottle the goodwill that comes from everyone in a crisis where they just want to help and some of the ways are rewarding that sort of behaviour for example. So in hierarchies and in any company, you know, we always talk about how do you work across siloes, how do you get jobs done that actually cross structural divides whether it’s a multi-disciplinary approach in medicine through to working across divisions in a company through to working across departments in government. How do you work across siloes and I think we learned a lot of lessons about how you work effectively across siloes and it comes to being really clear about roles, being clear about the culture you want, understanding the strengths of people in the team and then actually rewarding that behaviour, rewarding collaborative behaviour, not just getting the business outcomes.
Jenelle: Now you have been quoted as saying “change is always a scary thing”. You have said it often on this call as well. So to leave a successful career in the public service, particularly you know, the kind of change of you are effecting, the recognition you’re getting was a massive step, well I imagine it would have been a massive step, it feels like one to me. What led you to change directions, how did you know it was the right time. How did you manage that adjustment.
Lisa: Look, I could have … I could have stayed doing it, you know, which is marvellous. I could have done it for 15 years or 20 years but I got to a point where, and I guess any CEO, you know, a board would be looking at any CEO after 12 years, wouldn’t they and thinking. I got to a point where I just wanted to learn new things. You know, 12 years of being a CEO in Federal Government, every day is different. Every day is unpredictable. Every day is an honour and a privilege but by that stage I kind of knew how to do it. You know, how to approach a change of government. How to approach supporting a minister and so on and I got to a point where I just thought I just want to learn new things and then I started to get nibbles, realised that what I wanted to do was a portfolio career, not another executive career and almost immediately, like as soon as I announced I was leaving, I was getting … I was starting to get offers for boards and so on which is, you know, which is marvellous and yeah.
Jenelle: What's it been like to have a portfolio career? What skills do you … have you kind of called upon to be successful in it and maybe even developed since then.
Lisa: Well I love it actually because [laugh] …
Jenelle: I knew you were going to say that.
Lisa: [laugh].
Jenelle: The enthusiasm knows no bounds.
Lisa: [laugh] but a bit like you folk in professional services land. When you’re running a portfolio career, you learn so much because you see so many different companies and organisations and so on and I love that and that’s really what I was looking forward to and what I gained. The skills I’ve drawn on from my previous life seemed to be strategic skills and that’s the feedback I get, that former secretaries kind of bring this sense of strategic perspective and of course, I’ve brought “how does government actually work” because its … its arcane and a little bit mystifying unless you’ve actually been inside and then what I’ve learned, of course, is the commercial skills. So the three companies, two listed ones, one unlisted, that I’ve sat on the boards of have all sold successfully and, you know, that’s been a marvellous process to go through and I’m not chairing a not-for-profit and that’s, you know, that’s a different world again being a chair and having that relationship with the CEO [00.32.25].
Jenelle: Love it. Now lets move to BizRebuild. Can you tell me a bit about that. What it is and how it came to be that you had the role that you had in it.
Lisa: Love to. So, in January 2020 at the height of the terrible terrible summer bush fires, the Business Council of Australia which as you know represents Australia’s largest employer company, set up a not-for-profit … two not-for-profit initiatives to help communities recover from the bush files. One I’m on the Board of and that’s called the Australian Volunteers Support Trust and it is a tax deductible trust fund of up to $25m to support long term the needs of children of volunteers who have died in the line of volunteering. The second initiative was called the Community Rebuilding Initiative, now called BizRebuild and it was a much more kind of immediate approach to response and recovery. Its chaired by Sir Peter Cosgrove and I was asked to be the executive coordinator of it. I guess because of the Bali experience and, you know, just the range and experience. So I actually did take an executive role for 2020 and it was absolutely fantastic and the beautiful thing about what we were doing which was for the first time ever, a national focal point to link the deep generosity of BCA member companies with the needs of fire affected businesses in particular and fire affected communities and the way we went about it was also great because I decided we will have no red tape.
Jenelle: I like that.
Lisa: So we would basically just go into a community and ask them “well what do you need” and try to deliver it. So we were delivering, for example, you know we might think of them as small $500 or $2,000 vouchers for people to either seek local advice to get their business back on track or to retool themselves if they’d lost their tools of trade. So we, you know, we didn’t have any application forms. We did have a grant rounds. We didn’t require submissions. Nobody had to fill in a form. We just went and worked with people. We’ve done big projects and small projects.
Jenelle: Tell me about some of those, whether it was in, you know, Kangaroo Island or Mogo. Tell me about that.
Lisa: Well first of all, put it this way. So I get the job. Once again I’m thinking “oh my god, I’m making this up as I go along” [laugh].
Jenelle: Yep, don’t go to the playbook!
Lisa: What's the best way of finding out what the needs are because it was such a massive impact. You know, you couldn’t possibly … it wasn’t just one community. You couldn’t possibly know. Twelve million hectares were burnt and that’s before you get to the impact on every single business burnt or unburnt in their peak period during the summer suddenly not having any revenue. So I figured the only thing we could do was to get out there, which of course is the most powerful anyway. So we hop out into the South Coast and one of the first communities we visited was Mogo which is ten minutes south on Batemans Bay on the Princes Highway in New South Wales. Quite a small village but about 25% of businesses had been burnt to the ground and many other … many other houses and so on as well. Very deeply scarred community. We sat down with community leaders and I call out Richard Adams, the head of the local chamber who was just extraordinary. His own place had burnt and faced great tragedy in his life but he was organising everybody and we sat down with him and at one stage said “look, would it help you guys to get back to trading if we were to set up a temporary mall for you, in effect”. They said “sure”. So ATCO is a member of the VCA. They deliver demountables as their business. We had … we hired a trucking company so we paid for haulage and craneage and so on and on, I think, the 15th of Feb, 13 trucks rolled into Mogo, each with a demountable on their back to much fanfare and by the end of the afternoon, basically there was a building that these traders, about 8 traders, could start to work from and so we then paid through the trust fund, through the very generous donations to the fund, for a big deck and the stairs and so on and in fact, we helped the stair company from Batemans Bay that had burnt down altogether. With Bunnings, had developed nine sets of … full sets of carpentry tools with 24 hours through our work to this stair company. So they built the stairs in Mogo at cost, you know, it’s a very very virtuous thing goes on and so all these traders, many of whom quite frankly, still have empty sites now, more than a year on, just because of the time that insurance and all that sort of thing takes, clearing site. They were trading by March 2020 which is absolutely incredible so just a couple of weeks after the fire and that’s the sort of stuff we … we just love to do, just get in there and help people. The other thing we found was lots of local … you know all the festivals that happen. So for example, the Narooma Oyster Festival or, you know, every community has got their own festival. It turns out those festivals are usually sponsored by local small businesses and every small business in all of these fire affected communities had lost their summer trading. Some of them had lost … that means they had lost between … usually between 30% and 90% of annual take.
Jenelle: Gosh!
Lisa: And of course they may have lost their stock as well but anyway, they’d lost their main revenue and so they couldn’t support these local festivals and so on which are actually big revenue raisers for communities and so we stepped in for some of those too.
Jenelle: And there’s quite a large indigenous community in Mogo, am I right?
Lisa: Yes absolutely Jenelle and the local Mogo, local aboriginal land council building from which they sold beautiful art and run a whole lot of training courses for the employment o young aboriginal people was completely burnt to the ground. Even though it was a brick building - dreadful, so actually a BizRebuild has also set them up with a whole new, one again demountable structure, really really nice space so they’re up and going again, being able to sell their art and run their programmes. We’re very proud of that too.
Jenelle: Its amazing Lisa and I … certainly one of the themes that’s come through loud and clear with many of the guests that I’ve spoken to over the course of these podcast series is the power of story-telling and story-telling to effect change. It has been an incredibly powerful lever. No doubt stories like those have really helped shift community sentiment, perhaps its helped shift business and government perspectives on what needs to happen. Is that something that you have consciously sought to use to drive change.
Lisa: Absolutely, absolutely. In my former public sector career, stories are incredibly powerful because it’s how politicians work. Politicians represent at least … usually MPs, also senators though, represent people. They represent a constituency and so they actually literally think of their world and, you know, a gross generalisation but they really really do care about the stories of everyone in their electorate or constituency. So stories to me have always been powerful and I’ll tell you one that really made a difference to how we approach this ready build. So we’re in Mogo and there’s a lady and her husband and she won’t mind me naming her, she’s a hero, Lorena Granados and her husband. So Mogo is on the Princes Highway, so its busy and the last town not to be bypassed, I think, and she was trading in front of her completely burnt out home and business on the edge of the Princes Highway in the gravel under a borrowed – one of those beach shelter things. She and her husband run a leather works business. So we wander over and they’re selling handbags which had been donated because, of course, their stock had been burnt and there she is, doing what she does, doing what she does. Her story was they stay, she showed me a video of the fire approaching and they had been told to leave and we’re not and having to escape and then coming back and finding complete devastation of their lives and livelihood and there she was, trading from the side of the road and not only did she tell me that whole story but she told me how, you know, they didn’t have any devices or access to anything and to fill in forms for assistance, they had to go to the recovery centre, so that’s Beaut but then the recovery centre, they couldn’t print things so they were told they had to go to the library. It was too much. It was just too much and it was that single story that got me absolutely obsesses with having no red tape in the way we approached things and so we didn’t … one of the traders who is still trading out of the temporary mall that we supported.
Jenelle: It really speaks to the power of actually just speaking to the people directly around what they need rather than sitting separately and devising some great …
Lisa: That’s right.
Jenelle: … architecturally brilliant plans that have no relationship with what’s actually needed on the ground. Its sounds so proximal. Sometimes smaller moves are just the ones that people need. They make all the difference.
Lisa: I still can’t work out why people don’t just ask. What do you need? Too often the people with the money or whatever will come in and say “this is what I think you need, here’s the solution, I’m offering this [00.42.08] programmes”. Well, no. Is that what’s actually necessary? The other thing I would say here is anyone who has been through a crisis like a natural disaster like a bush fire or whatever, really really need to tell their stories. Really need to tell their stories and so some of our earlier meetings, we never ever got to potential solutions. We just were listening to stories but even now, more than a year on, if I say … if I tell anyone really from a fire affected area what I was doing last year, then I will hear their story and so I just encourage anyone who meets anyone who has faced a traumatic event, just to ask, just to ask and just to listen in a really genuine way with whatever time it might take.
The last three … three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
Lisa: [laugh], I’ve just taken on sharing a review for the Minister of Education into initial teaching education and I’m reading up on initial teaching education [laugh]. I could just be reading a trashy magazine but no, right now I’m reading [00.43.13].
Jenelle: Fair enough. Now tell me, what is your super power. Now that could be something that’s additive to the world and we’ve heard lots of those things today or a useless party trick.
Lisa: I was trying to think of a useless party trick but I’m actually going to say being able to see another person’s point of view and that can be to my detriment.
Jenelle: I think it is your super power.
Lisa: I don’t know, it just seems to be a thing.
Jenelle: And if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be.
Lisa: “Be bold, be kind”.
Jenelle: I love that, I absolutely love that. Lisa, thank you for your time today and you know, if you … we started the conversation with, you know, why are you here on this planet or what are you seeking to drive and you said “helping people reach their full potential, helping people have the best day they can ever have every single day”. I feel like I get that. I really get that in listening to you. There’s a theme that has come through so strongly in speaking to you and that is your commitment to giving people a voice and I heard that in lots of different ways, whether that’s giving people direct channels to you or putting in managers one removed or 360 feedback or creating the psychological safety to allow people to admit a mistake or escalate a problem or giving people a voice in telling their story or giving people a voice in answering the question of what do you need. I saw that play out in every single example that you gave in heroing culture over structure, every day of the week and allowing the conditions to create and harness and bottle goodwill is nothing short of amazing and whether you know it or not, you use this word “marvellous” many times in our conversation. I was smiling to myself because that’s a word I don’t hear that often but I think, Lisa Paul, you are marvellous and thank you so much.
Lisa: You’re very very kind and it has been an absolute delight, thanks for the opportunity to help.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Jessica Morrison
Gold Medallist in the Women's Four Rowing, 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change. The good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to the Change Happens podcast, conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lesson learnt along the way. Today I’m joined by Australian rower and two time Olympian, Jessica Morrison, who represented Australia at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and won gold in the women’s coxless four event. Jess also happens to work at EY so she balances her sport with work commitments in EY’s People Advisory Services practice where she helps businesses integrate the people agenda within their business strategy and design. Now in this episode, we’re going to learn so much more about Jess’ story, what it’s like to be an elite athlete and what the lessons are in there for us. Now, of course, being a dual Olympian is something that most of us can’t lay claim to but dealing with changing conditions, managing pressures, finding the right balance, being told we can’t do something are definitely experiences most of us have had plenty of exposure to. So I’m looking forward to exploring this and much more with Jess. Jess, welcome.
Jessica: Thank you so much for having me.
Jenelle: I’m very excited to have you here now. A huge congratulations on your recent accomplishments at the games.
Jessica: Thank you. It was an amazing experience and obviously thrilled to actually get there in the end after much speculation whether it was going to happen or not but, you know, I felt like we used the extra year of training to our advantage and, you know, stoked to come away with a win.
Jenelle: Oh it’s fantastic. Now before we get into more discussion about Tokyo, lets go way back to the beginning. Keen to hear more about your upbringing and how it is that you found yourself in an elite sport.
Jessica: Yeah, I am the eldest of four and I grew up in Melbourne and I’ve got very active parents who always encourage us to do sport growing up and competitive young siblings and, you know, I started off trying a bunch of different sports in school and I was quite the fond skier and we used to live at Falls Creek every winter. So I would do home school for the term with my siblings up there and we’d do race club and, you know, I was probably the worse of my siblings because I started a little bit later on but, you know, all three of them represented Australia at a junior level which was great …
Jenelle: Being the worse [laugh], out of a bunch of siblings who are competing for Australia. It feels like you are probably not too shabby.
Jessica: Well yeah, I think I’m definitely sort of maybe I shine in the water or on the water but like on the snow, that sort of the claim to fame but … so I guess just having exposure at a young age to competitive sport and the opportunity to try a whole lot of different things growing up and, you know, I chose swimming and I decided to take on pretty seriously and sort of narrow my focus in on that in high school and, you know, I never wanted to be a rower. I … swimming was my dream and it always clashed with the rowing programme at school because they trained at the same times and so, you know, doubled in rowing a little bit at maybe year 8 but I opted out and decided to continue on with swimming and pursued that, you know, after school when I took a scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra and moved up there and did uni at ANU and really wanted to sort of make it in swimming and a couple of years into it, I got injured and had a shoulder reconstruction and, you know, my swimming career was basically over and I met Kim Brennan at the time who also lived in Canberra and trained at the AIS and she suggested I try rowing. You know, I was pretty upset with, you know, not being able to train properly with swimming. I was, you know, rehabbing away, had a dodgy shoulder and she said “you know, you’ve got the right determination, you’ve got the right build, you’d be great at it, like come on down to the shed and I’ll introduce you to my coach” and you know, off I went and, you know, you could say the rest is history but that was sort of at the end of 2013 and I tried that and I made my first Olympic team two and half years later. So, I guess …
Jenelle: Oh Jess, I’m going to have to stop you. That story. I mean you’re telling the story like just a bouncing ball, this is naturally what will happen after one thing after another. That is not a normal story for the rest of us. We don’t move from high levels of skiing to national swimming to then suddenly going “nah, okay I’ll go to rowing” and then win medals from there. So I want to take a step back for a minute. What was it like for you in 2013 when you had that injury. You know, you made your choice, you know, oh to have the options that you did. You’re obviously an amazing athlete but you made your choice and you said I’m going to be a swimmer, you had that injury and you realised you wouldn’t be able to swim. What was that like, that realisation.
Jessica: I think, like I’d always sort of told myself, like you’re only good at swimming, you’ve tried everything, you know, your whole … all your capabilities in sport is directed at swimming. That’s what you have trained to do. So I had it in my head that like, if I didn’t make it in swimming, I’d be sort of worthless as an athlete and so to be injured and, you know, that was pretty devastating and sometimes you can’t help that when it happens, which is always really frustrating but, you know, as a result of being injured and sort of unable to rehab, you know, in a really quick period of time, I lost my scholarship at the AIS and, you know, sitting in a room with, you know, high performance directors, sort of essentially saying I wasn’t good enough or they didn’t think that I was good enough to make the Commonwealth Games team in 2014 and, you know, as a result the Olympic Games wasn’t looking good so unfortunately we’re going to give your place to somebody else and that was completely heart breaking for me, you know. I felt like my dreams were just shattered and, you know, nobody believed in me and I was willing to do whatever it took at the time to become fit enough so that, you know, when my shoulder came good, I could sort of jump back into the pool seamlessly but, you know, setbacks happen to everybody and I just never expected it to happen to me and, you know, I was completely shattered and it took me years to recover from that. Like, I just …
Jenelle: I’ll bet!
Jessica: … so …
Jenelle: And how long … I mean how long exactly. So, you mentioned that … I mean these are big words Jess. You know, I felt worthless, not good enough, nobody believes in me. They are huge huge issues to overcome. How long was it between sort of facing that kind of event and those feelings to then, and we’re going to talk about Kim in a moment but meeting Kim and making that decision. You know, you’re going from the top of your chosen sport in swimming to possibly the bottom in rowing and trying to figure that out. How long was that period of time when you made that decision and what was that like to sort of take the leap and go “yeah, I’ll start again”.
Jessica: Yeah, it was … I think the idea that somebody was like, you know, chose rowing and you could be at the next Olympic Games and I was like “sure, sign me up” but you know, what the process involved to get there, I didn’t quite understand how patient you really needed to be in accepting the fact that you needed to be, you know, start from ground up and, you know, I thought that I had sort of moved laterally over and just be at the same level I was rowing. So initially the idea sounded great but the reality was really tough and those are the times that doubt crept in, when I was, you know, getting beaten by school kids at regattas, you know, training so hard and I broke my rib and hurt my back a couple of months into it and, you know, that just made the process go even longer. So, you know, those are the times where you really think “oh maybe I’ll just go back to swimming, the window is still open there and how long is this rowing going to take for me to get to an adequate level where I’ll feel satisfied”. So, you know, it probably took, you know, at least two years. Like even at the Olympic Games in Rio, I was fairly new to the sport and I still never really felt like, you know, I mastered it or I was actually, you know, able to be the world’s best which is what I’ve always wanted to be. So it’s like, even after I had successfully transferred and sort of made an Olympic team, even then I still didn’t feel like I truly, like belong in the sport, like I was so new to it and, you know, when I started swimming I was, you know, eight years old and that’s been my home and my family for such a long period of time so you know, it took years and I eventually got there but it’s such a weird transition to make. Like you know, when you’re sort of at your low 20s, when you know, a lot of my friends had their life set up for them and they’re on really sure paths to whatever it was that they were wanting to be successful in and here I was still trying to figure out what sport I’m good at.
Jenelle: It’s incredible. Now, tell me about … more about Kim when she came into your life and what it was that, you know, how did she convince you to make that leap.
Jessica: I first met Kim at the end of 2012, once she had got back from the London Olympic Games. I’d always … I knew her from back in the day when I was in school and I think, you know, our sports captain at school and she presented at like a girls sport Victoria dinner and I was like “wow, you’re my idol, I want to be like you” and then here I was all those years later at the AIS and we were at the Altitude House, just on a week of training up in there and she was there and I was there and Scott Brennan was also there and it was just the three of us and that’s when I first met her. You know, she had just got back from the games and was training for her second or third Olympic cycle and I think that sort of where we really got to know each other on a personal level and so, you know, from time to time I’d see her, you know, at the dining hall or in the gym or just passing by, you know, on campus and, you know when I was injured in 2013, you know, she’d see me sort of walk around pretty upset and, you know, not long after I had that meeting where I’d lost my scholarship, I ran into her again and, you know, told her the news and she kind of was my saviour in a way. Like she was like, oh you know, your sporting career is not over. Like why don’t you try rowing. Like you know, welcomed me with open arms into that community and that family and …
Jenelle: It really speaks to the power of mentoring and you know, being taken under someone’s wing and feeling that someone has your best interests at heart, right!
Jessica: Yeah I think, just recognising a few key attributes that I had. Like you know, just willing to sort of go above and beyond, you know, when I met her in the Altitude House in the year prior to that, my coach hadn’t asked me to go there. I’d asked myself if I can do a week in that Altitude House and just get the training benefits of it and I think she admired that. That I sort of just went out on my own and wanted to sort of just go that extra few yards.

Jenelle: That extra mile. Well just … I mean, just on that, actually I’m really struck by this ability, for people to be so excellent at so many things. Kim Brennan, she also suffered an injury. She changed to rowing from hurdling and then became a 16 time national champion, 2 time world champion, 3 time Olympian, Olympic gold medallist herself. She was a qualified lawyer, now a partner in tech consulting at EY. Like that story as well is just unbelievable. You and Kim are the kind of people that make the rest of us ask ourselves “bloody hell, what are we doing with our lives [laugh]”. Now I can either conclude that rowing is a very easy sport to win medals in, looking at you two, or you two are modern day miracles but picking up on your point there she saw some attributes. Perhaps there’s some underlying attributes and disciplines that you both have that make your success transferrable in different contexts. There’s an expression. You master that discipline, you master them all. What would you say to that. Is that what you think and what are those underlying attributes and disciplines, do you think.
Jessica: Yeah, I think, you know, when you do say, draw the parallels between me and Kim and I’m like “oh god, am I just following my whole life in the footsteps of Kim”, like off to rowing and off to EY …
Jenelle: There could be worse things than that [laugh].
Jessica: … and then who knows what’s next but I think like, you know, Kim trains so hard and I aspired to be like her for so long and, you know, I have a huge amount of respect for her and I have a lot of respect for someone and they come and give you advice, I generally tend to follow it and so felt like what she said to me and her belief in me really meant a lot. Personally I kind of set no limits for myself. I think, you know, when I think about the key attributes to be successful in lots of different areas, like I just feel like the sky is the limit and I’ve always sort of had this deep sense of, you know, am I good enough, when will I be good enough. Like was that performance good enough. Like nothing is ever good enough, you know.
Jenelle: That must be exhausting though Jess to carry that.
Jessica: It is exhausting but it’s kind of what pushes me to keep striving for more. Like you know, I think like when will I ever be satisfied. Like when I cross the finish line in the gold medal position at the Olympics, I was like, immediately like “oh god, we didn’t win by enough” or you know …
Jenelle: Really! Is that what you thought. Oh my god, take the win!
Jessica: [laugh] and then I was like “well, we could have done xyz in the middle of the race, maybe that would have like got us in front a little bit more. I’m just like so immediately critical of myself and my performances and you know, sometimes it’s a bad thing. I have to sort of … coaches always say, you know, “take a step back Jess and just, you know” …
Jenelle: Yeah how do you manage that. I mean I can see how you use it to drive you which is phenomenal but I can imagine there must be those tipping points where it goes the other way. What do you do then when you … when it overtakes you and you feel a bit more crushed by the “am I good enough” questions.
Jessica: I’m not sure. I think … I think, you know, sometimes I’m striving to win all the time, to be the best that I can be and that’s a great feeling when that happens but when I don’t win, you know, the magnitude of that loss is maybe greater. So it’s a weird like psychology at play there when you’re so hard on yourself, you know, you want to be the best, you want to win by a lot, you’re never sure when you’re going to be satisfied and then when you do achieve something that’s pretty good, yeah you feel great but the magnitude of that is maybe not as great as the loss when I don’t win. So it’s trying to stay out of that domain, I guess, and I’m not sure if it’s deep rooted from, you know, my transition from swimming and being told I wasn’t good enough. Like am I on this mission to just be good enough at something. Like when will I be good enough. I think maybe there’s a link there and I’m not sure when I’ll sort of truly feel satisfied with what I do but, you know, I keep striving and I keep going out and experimenting and taking on lots of different challenges.
Jenelle: It’s such an important thing, you know, I’ve always thought that anyone’s strength overused can become their achilles heel. You know you’re clearly a massive driver and that is your strength, that is your, you know, super power that allows you to move forward but so important. At least you’re aware of the implications … the shadows of that attribute and how that can cast on yourself and others. So maybe we’re all works in progress Jess so definitely one to keep working on and hoping that you take care of yourself and are kind to yourself. You’re an incredible athlete and human. So if I say nothing else on this podcast, I really want you to know I think you’re an amazing individual. So please do know that you are plenty good enough my friend.
Jessica: Thanks Jenelle.
Jenelle: Counselling session over [laugh] but I’d like to, you know, just recognising that, you know, we’ve talked about this transition from swimming to rowing. The other remarkable thing about that is it’s … you’ve transitioned from a solo sport of swimming where it really is all down to you, something that you have full control over and we’ve talked about, you know, how much of a driver you are. So you can fully control how you perform in the pool. Then you moved over to a team sport of rowing where obviously there’s at least one other if not three others that you’re working with and depending on. What was that transition like and what did you learn about yourself in relation to teaming.
Jessica: Great question. I reflect on this a lot I think. It took me a while to really understand, like the importance of team and what that meant. Like I was always such a … like a self-motivated, self-driven person. I always tended to do the individual sports in school, you know, skiing, athletics, swimming. I never really did any team sports and I really liked to have complete control of the outcome of a race, for a result and so when I moved over to rowing, you know, the biggest challenge, you know, I’m a bit of an introvert, like you’ve got to talk a lot in the boat. Like somebody has to call, like whatever boat you’re in, you’ve got to learn to work with people, you’ve got to communicate in a way that narrows everybody’s focus to one thing and keep everybody’s head in the boat and so just sort of learning to communicate with people was the first challenge and then learning how to use people to get the best out of your boat, sort of the second challenge and how to motivate people, like what's the competitive edge. I think how you measure a good rower is often how adaptable you are and how well you work with people and, you know, that’s a huge work in practice. Like it’s not something that, you know, you could just get that overnight or you can just rock up to a training session and you’ve got to earn people’s trust and you’ve got to demonstrate an ability to really understand people. So you know, my journey with rowing, I started off in the women’s eight at Rio. You know, I was sort of 12½% of that boat and so, you know, I had a small impact on the outcome of that boat and, you know, that was a weird transition to go literally from swimming one event to hopping into a boat where I’m one out of nine including the coxswain and, you know, really wanted to make sure that I could feel like I contributed and finding out how you contribute in a team situation is hard to navigate as well. So as I sort of matured over the years and became sort of more of an integral player of the team and physically got better and technically got better, I was able to sort of really uncover those things that, you know, really matter in working in the team and I think, like you’ve got to make sure everybody feels like an equal and then you’ve got to make sure everybody feels heard. So when we go out for a rowing session, if you’re in an eight or a pair or a four, doesn’t matter what it is, you stop, you know, when we turn around or whenever we do stop which is, you know, it is often and you ask “what did you think of that piece or what can we do better” like making sure you ask the people, give them a chance to feel heard to contribute to problem solving because you’re constantly problem solving in rowing. You’re figuring out, you know, if the platform is off or if the boat is not quite straight, like you know, trying to figure out what we have got to do technically to fix that and everybody has a different perspective.
Jenelle: It’s fascinating. Jess, you’re talking about so many big things around communication, around trust, around getting the best out of others, around problem solving. Did you just figure this out as you went along or did you actually do some, you know, teamwork leadership training. How did that just evolve. Did it just evolve or did you go through some formal training on it as well.
Jessica: There’s definitely not a rulebook for like, you know, how to be a good rower or how to be a good teammate. You kind of have to figure it out, like you know, on the job. I am sort of like, as I said before, a bit of an introvert, you know, not as outspoken as some of my other teammates but I do consider myself a bit of a hard worker and I sort of lead by example and my time at the National Training Centre, I was awarded, you know, a leadership award in recognition for, you know, my leadership contribution to the group and then you know, one day my coach said “Jess, you know, that award meant something, you know, you’re a leader whether you see it or not, what you say matters, speak up more, you know. So after sessions, speak up more in the boat, you know”. So I started to do that a little bit more …
Jenelle: You found your voice, it’s amazing.
Jessica: Yeah I got a bit of confidence, people did start listening to what I had to say. It just kind of took off from there but gave … a bit of a nudge from my coach and a bit of recognition from the wider group sort of gave me the confidence to sort of, to use my voice and to help other people.
Jenelle: Let’s turn to Rio. You were, if I understand it correctly, advised that you were going to be included in the Olympics in Rio only a fortnight before you were to race. What was that like. It feels like that must a bit of a scurry [laugh] and what was that like compared to the period of time of Tokyo. So the two totally different circumstances. One’s much shorter, there’s uncertainty in there, training would have been different. Tell me about Rio first and what it was like to find out that you were going to be in.
Jessica: Exactly, they’re two totally different Olympic experiences and compared to the normal Olympic games, both of them are fairly unconventional with disrupted training times before. So when I was selected into the women’s eight in 2016, the boat hadn’t yet qualified for the Olympics so a couple of months after I was selected into the boat we were afforded the opportunity to go to final qualification regatta. We needed to come top two, then we placed third so we missed out by one spot, another devastating moment in my career and I was like “oh god, maybe the Olympics just isn’t for me, you know”. So everyone parted ways and went home. We didn’t row together because all the girls were from different parts of the country and then sort of in the background while all this is happening, the world anti-doping agency is sort of looking into primarily Russia. Some of those people were in rowing and some of the girls were sort of getting their hopes up that maybe the Russians would be withdrawn and I was like “god, that is never going to happen”. Like all of a sudden, sort of started bubbling away more and I think a lot of the athletics team got withdrawn so I was like “oh wow, this is really real”. Like we were all sort of called into a conference call with our CEO. This was about three weeks before the opening ceremony and he kind of basically said “you know girls, Russia has been withdrawn and because we placed third at FQR we’re now the next eligible place for the Olympics, is this something you would want to do” and of course we all said yes and then he’s like …
Jenelle: No thank you, I’m busy [laugh].
Jessica: … right, well pack your bags”. You’re off to Rio and I was in the kitchen with my parents, just had dinner and I was like on the call and I turned to them and gave them the thumbs up and I was like “I’m going to the Olympic Games”. Like one of the girls was in Dubai and all of us were everywhere and we were like “right, okay everyone get on a flight, come to Melbourne, we’re going to have our three week campaign in Melbourne and just see what we can do”. So a fantastic opportunity, I guess. You know, a big stance on, you know, clean sport and so it was great to go but obviously we weren’t given the same preparation that our competitors were given and you know, we sort of set out and maybe thought we could make the final and that would be a good result. So compare that with the Tokyo Olympic games, much more time in the sport, you know, I’m way more experienced and I was out to win a gold medal, not just be a competitor which I was in Rio. The Tokyo games comes along and again, didn’t you know, see that it would be delayed, another curve ball thrown at us. You know, in March of 2020, we had just done our national selections. I was selected into the pair and literally two weeks later, an announcement came out that the Olympics were postponed a year and …
Jenelle: What was that like?
Jessica: Well it was a tough pill to swallow because it was like, you go from being at a real high, like I’ve just been selected on the team. I’m really fit and it’s like, oh now we’re shifting the goalposts a whole year, stay motivated, stay fit and we’re going to do a whole another round of selections and by the way, we’re going into lockdown for probably six months. So you guys have to leave and go home and train out of your garage. It was like a lot to process in a really short period of time. I think the biggest challenge at the time was flipping that setback into opportunity and realising I’m not going to dwell on the fact that the games are next year, but I’m going to get excited about the opportunity, that I can get a lot better in a years’ time, how much gains can I make, I can present at an Olympic games a lot better next year than I would this year. So …
Jenelle: Well it seems like you did turn that into an opportunity but what … I mean how challenging was that to turn that back into an opportunity. How challenging was it to work, to train out of your garage and not with others.
Jessica: I think everybody handled it differently. I was lucky that, you know, I was working at EY at the time on a part time basis so I had something to fall back to. So it was like, okay now rowing is not going to be the major focus for a period of time. I want to throw myself into work. So I immediately had something to shift my focus to, to feel like I could do a good job and add value. Some of the other girls sort of postponed uni or you know, weren’t even doing uni or working so you know, to sort of be left with your thoughts for 24 hours a day was potentially a bit more challenging but I think, you know, still trying to stay really tight as a team is really important. You know, our coaches did a really good job of still keeping it really big picture, set goals for us that are sort of short term and okay what are we going to do this month, what are we going to do next month, sort of really bite sized things just to focus on rather than just think about “oh the extra year the entire time” but for me, just having something to fall back on to immediately really helped with that.
Jenelle: But Jess you talked about your coaches working with you and the team trying to keep you all connected and working together during lockdown. I feel a high level of relatability to that and people listening will certainly feel a relatability with that given our lockdown and the challenge in teams feeling connected and engaged and motivated whilst separated for such a long period of time. How did your coaches help. How did you and your teams maintain that connection whilst in lockdown.
Jessica: Yeah, I think like why our team is so successful is because like we’ve got a very strong culture. We’ve got a culture that, you know, we’re hugely grateful for what we have and we’re very big picture focussed and the coaches try to sort of keep that going, keep the momentum going, like we had a group chat that we were typing in every day and posting our, like fun photos, just trying to make it fun but stay connected. We did sessions over Zoom. Still very much big picture focus even when we were apart and we tried as best as we could to sort of do sessions over Zoom but you know, lots of reminders of what we’re doing this for and, you know, why we are here and everything like that. So I think, like in any kind of uncertainty or murky waters is just the ability to sort of hold the wheel if you are kind of like steering a ship and not overcorrect and the coaches did a great job at kind of holding the wheel and keeping us on track, keeping our heads in the game and daily reminders of what we are doing this for, why we’re doing it was really important.
Jenelle: Oh it’s fantastic and Jess, you know, I’m reflecting on this, you know, the setbacks and the, you know, will we/won’t we, yes we have/no we won’t and I think about, many of us, you know, we look at the Olympics finals, we see those medal winning moments but there’s so many stages of achievements and milestones along the way, whether accepted into a national training facility, getting sponsors, making the Olympic team, getting onto a flight, getting off a flight, stepping onto the Olympic village, yet you come across as a very measured person. How do you manage those ups and downs and the highs and lows. Do you allow yourself to feel those things or do you stay as steady as you present, at least to me right now through that.
Jessica: I think because I’ve experienced like what I felt like with my real low and you know, my swimming career ending, I never want to feel a huge magnitude of a high or a low and so I do tend to stay quite steady and when I do win a race, it’s like oh that’s great but then I’m … maybe my critiquing immediately is a way of trying not let the high get too high and then, you know, the reverse for the low. Just trying to keep the magnitudes as small as possible. I think that’s just the way that I like to live my life. I think many years ago one of the athletes on our team, Josh Dunkley-Smith who I look up to a lot, gave some advice to me that sort of stuck with me and he said “if you’re not happy before the medal, you won’t be happy after the medal” and that, you know, it’s something that we all strive towards as elite athletes. Yes we want to go to the games and, you know, the ultimate success is an Olympic gold medal but it certainly doesn’t change who you are, it doesn’t change the rest of your life and if you’re not happy beforehand, you’re not going to be happy afterwards necessarily. So I’ve always sort of thought in the back of my mind, like I’m just going live my life, I’m going to challenge myself in ways and I’m going to try to be the best that I’m going to be and, you know, if I do all that right, then the gold medal will take care of itself but it’s certainly not something that I’m going to feel like if I attain this one thing, it’s going to be life changing and make me a happy person.
Jenelle: You’re not attaching your happiness and all your identity to that. I think that’s a great piece of advice. I think it’s too precarious to tether your happiness to something that’s as tenacious as getting a gold medal.
Jessica: Yeah, definitely. So I think just try to be or I at least try to be as flat lined as possible and, you know, maybe that’s inappropriate for times that you do well and you want to be … celebrate a lot but it’s just, I guess, it’s just the way I am and …
Jenelle: What about that you’ve got three others that were celebrating that gold with you in that … with that boat. Were all of them as tempered as you are. Were they lifting you up because you’ve got a few more people who are willing to just ride that big high.
Jessica: Yeah, we all had different reactions. I think, so Annabelle and myself who are stern pair of the four, we also were competing in the pairs so we were racing two events and the typhoon at the time, sort of reshuffled the days of racing. So you know, the semi-final of the pair which was supposed to happen the day before our four final actually got changed to two hours after the four final. So as soon as I crossed the line, it was like yes, job 1 done. Now I’ve got to think of my race in two hours time, that’s a semi-final. So I think that’s kind of what didn’t allow me to feel that high as being too high. Rosie who sat behind me, she was, you know, crying. She just had that wave of emotion. She was ecstatic and really emotional and Lucy, you know, celebrating, hands in the air, just you know, and I turned around and I was like “did we win”. I didn’t even know if we had won. Then I was like “oh great, we won, that’s great”. Okay, you know, celebrate for five minutes and then off to my next thing. So everyone kind of … we all have very different personalities and as a result, you know, have different reactions to things. So I think, you know, we’re all very respectful of how we operate and I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded if I wasn’t, you know, hands in the air and crying and over the moon like they were.
Jenelle: Hey Jess, do you have the gold medal near you.
Jessica: I do.
Jenelle: If you don’t mind, can you just hold that in your hands and tell me, looking at that gold medal …
Jessica: Yeah, I’m holding it now.
Jenelle: … and all that’s gone into that. What does it feel like.
Jessica: [laugh] oh, it feels great, honestly and it’s just like it’s a medal for so many people, not just a medal for me. Like, you know, I wish I sort of had the chance to say that but, you know, when you are standing on the dais and you have this and you’re looking into an empty crowd, like it’s the time that you think about, oh everyone that has helped you get there and you know, some of the proudest moments over the past months has been reaching out to the people that have been so impactful in my life and letting them know “oh yeah, you made a huge impact on me and that’s, you know, that helped me to achieve the gold medal”. You know, whether it’s a sports teacher or, you know, a swimmer coach when I was 15 or something like that. So the medal is so heavy and maybe that’s symbolic like of the fact that there are so many people that this is for, not just me.
Jenelle: Oh so good. Well rest assured. As you know, we were all watching you and [laugh] lots of great photos of the firm stopping to watch you race, it was amazing. Now speaking of the firm, another big change in your life was your decision to join EY. I imagine that would have been quite a foreign world. I mean it’s a different … like I’ve grown up in consulting but you know, I can recognise it’s a whole different language in it’s own world into itself. Tell me about what that change was like for you.
Jessica: That was a pretty big change, you know, for someone who had spent all of their life, like wearing athletic gear and then, you know, taking up a job to go into an office and wear business attire. I was like “I don’t even own any of that”.
Jenelle: [laugh], don’t need to anymore [laugh], we’re all at home.
Jessica: Exactly. That was the first kind of challenge and I remember when I accepted the job at EY, my mum organised a professional stylist appointment at David Jones and I went in there and just went and bought some work clothes because, you know, I owned nothing. So that was the first sort of foreign world sort of insight and then, you know, going into the offices and just feeling like you have to be this polished person, that’s you know, wearing really nice clothes and having your makeup on and your hair done really nicely, like I never wear makeup so that was another weird thing and being like this professional and I didn’t really know who I was as a professional. You know, I’ve got the credentials, I had just done a Bachelor of Economics and I’ve done an MBA and I pursued consulting because typically that’s the best avenue out of an MBA and the best skillset that I had but then again, I was just like I’ve never been here, I don’t know who I am as a professional. Like where do I, you know, can I joke about things that I, you know, normally joke about with people or, you know, is it not appropriate. So I think that was a bit of a shift, you know and I didn’t even know what a calendar invite was [laugh]. So I was just kind of just learning the way and I think I definitely sent some wrong calendar invites, mucked up the time zones and …
Jenelle: We’ve all done that Jess, in or out of the boat. I swear we’ve all done it [laugh].
Jessica: It’s just feeling like you really in your comfort zone which was sport for me, you know, I know how to do well at that and then how do I do well in the business work. Like, you know, I’ve got the brains for it, but like, I don’t know how to talk to people, I don’t know how to write an email, I don’t know how to wear proper clothes. Like you know, that was … that was my memory of the transition to EY [laugh].
Jenelle: What do you think … were you surprised by any things that translated really easily from your sporting world across to the business world. Were you like “yes, now that I’ve got the clothes on and you know, figured up how to set up a calendar invite”, actually there’s a lot of other stuff that I already have that’s highly transferrable. What would they be.
Jessica: I think, what I was talking to you before about teamwork and how to work in a team and ensuring people feel like equals and feel like they’re heard. I felt like I was able to handle myself quite well in team meetings and although I found client meetings, at first pretty scary, just the ability to sit back and make sure, you know, you hear the person talking and make sure they feel heard and understood and then start talking. It’s just like a very simple skill like that, that I felt like I was really comfortable with. You know, obviously, you know, any tasks that I was given by a senior manager or a manager, it was a real transfer of trust, like they were trusting that I was going to do this, you know, and turn it over at the time that they … that we’d agreed and that was a very familiar thing for me. It’s like being asked to do a training session or something and sit on these what's for the ergo and it’s like “yep, I’ll do that, that’s what my role is and you can trust me to do that”. So I feel like any time like a task was given to me, I really knew what that meant and it meant like that transfer of trust because if I could deliver that on time and to a high quality, then that was really what it was about with feeling like I could comfortably navigate my way around the office and do good work. So I think those are the kinds of things that I felt initially that, you know, my experience in sport helps me with EY.
Jenelle: It’s fantastic and certainly one of the observations that I know in the past Kim has made of you is that you have a relentless quest to learn, even when no one is watching. What would you say to that. Would you agree that in however you have applied that, in the business world as well.
Jessica: Well I’m … yeah I’m definitely always keen to learn, as I am always keen to strive for more and try to be a better person and contribute more knowledge. You know, I had some spare time on my hands last year and I was like, you know, what will I do. I’ll do a company’s directors course. It looks like on LinkedIn, lots of people have done this, maybe it will help me one day and you know, my Dad previously recommended me doing that one day and I was like, just do it and I learn about being a board director, obviously a fair way of being one of those people but that’s just an example of something that I was happily able to sign up to.
Jenelle: Wow!
Jessica: I was so close to doing the same to do a Pilates course just because I am interested in anatomy and I wanted to just learn about the human body a bit more. Totally not, you know, relevant to EY and I didn’t really need that for sport but, you know, I was definitely considering doing something like that. I think, you know, I think of my brain as like a sponge and I just want to absorb as much as I can and sometimes I’m like “oh we’re not here for that long on earth, like you know, I want to learn as much as I can” and I think that’s just … I’m just definitely really hungry for knowledge and always just trying to see what I can do with what I know and how much more of an impact I can make with you, more things I can bring to the table.
Jenelle: Wow, that’s amazing. How do you … have you … I mean last I checked we all still have 24 hours in a day to work with. How do you manage all of those athletic responsibilities, along side your professional responsibilities and you can whack in an AICD course, when you’ve got … you know, all of these things. You know, how do you manage time and energy probably.
Jessica: I think I learnt how to manage time well when I was in school. I did IB which is the International Baccalaureate diploma and, you know, it required a lot more work than BCE and I really wanted to do it and I remember my, you know, the head of IB at the time said “you know, Jess you want to do this over three years, instead of two years because you’re trying to manage your sporting commitments and you know, not sure if you will be able to complete this to the standard that [00.38.57] girls sort of achieve” and I was like, “no I can do it, thank you but no thanks”. I think just the structure of school just taught me how to translate that structure into my life after school. So I was like training, you know, wake up at 4.30 every morning, mum would take me to the pool, do a training session and then the bus would pick me up and take me to school. I’d work all day and then take the bus back to training and I’d come home and eat and study and go to bed and you know, doing that when I was really young just taught me the habit of like how to use every hour of your day and allocate it to something, whether it’s sport or, you know, academics and I guess I just continued on with that practice after school and it’s no different when I was working in EY. I would just, you know, train in the morning, set very clear boundaries about when you’re on or off for work and I guess just using the momentum of having a lot on your plate kind of helps me be really efficient and do a good job at things … if that makes sense.
Jenelle: That’s unbelievable! It does … well yes. I am thinking through my own diary [00.40.05], there’s a bit of time in there. What’s downtime for you look like, tell me you have some.
Jessica: Honestly I love a Sunday. I just sit on the couch at home with my sister and we watch Keeping up with the Kardashians. Like I do love some trash TV, some reality TV.
Jenelle: Me too.
Jessica: That’s the ultimate downtime but otherwise I do love to be in the outdoors a lot. Hiking, you know, I love being up in the snow skiing, I kind of love being off my phone. I’m not really on social media so I don’t find I get dragged into that hole too often of scrolling [laugh].
Jenelle: That’s going to save you a lot of time.
Jessica: But yeah, I do love just lounging on the couch and watching some reality TV and if I’m not doing that then being outside is equally amazing.
The last three. Three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: Tell me, what are you reading, watching or listening to right now. Perhaps it’s the Kardashians but tell me, what's on your reading, watch or listening list.
Jessica: I’m reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan. He’s one of my favourite journalists and it’s kind of an old book, it’s maybe 15 years old and I guess it’s kind of about the intersection between learning about food we’re eating, where the food has come from and the impact that it has on the planet. So it’s really cool. I’m watching season 5 of money heist on Netflix, that’s definitely my favourite show …
Jenelle: And the top of your list.
Jessica: … and what do I listen to, I’m listening to a podcast called …
Jenelle: Change Happens!
Jessica: … Park Predators [laugh]. It’s probably like a little bit scary given that I’ve just been to a whole bunch of national parks but it’s about, you know, crime and you know, all of the crime that’s happened over the years in national parks.
Jenelle: I do have a real penchant for true crime podcasts as well actually. What is your super power. I feel like we’ve been talking for a long time about your super powers but this could be something that’s additive to the work Jess or a useless party trick.
Jessica: Oh, super power!
Jenelle: I think we’ve observed it in action, you can turn your hand to any sport and achieve goals.
Jessica: I can made sourdough bread and I have my own sourdough starter that lives in the fridge and I’m pretty competent in making bread. So I don’t know if you’d really do that at a party but that’s something …
Jenelle: You do in lockdown so it works, it works, I’ll take that. Now, if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be.
Jessica: Gee, I always loved this quote. “If the grass seems greener, it’s probably astroturf”.
Jenelle: [laugh]
Jessica: [laugh], I don’t know where I got that.
Jenelle: Love it, we’ll take that one. Jess I can’t thank you enough for your time. I know you’re actually … we didn’t mention the fact that you’re still in the US, slowly making your way back home but I wish you all the very best. I want to thank you for sharing with us so many insights. You know, it’s really … your hunger for knowledge and your desire to have greater impacts in and on the world – unbelievable. Your determination is unquestionable. The other thing I hear in your story Jess is your humility. You know, you can be determined but having the humility to start over, you know, when you’ve faced a setback and you start at the bottom and work your way back up. The humility to move from being the single solo person in a pool who can win to being part of nine in a boat and realising that you’re one twelfth of the equation but willing to do that. The power of role modelling and mentoring and your own quiet leadership where you lead by example. I’ve learned about the transferability of your teamwork skills and how you flip setbacks into opportunities. So much to take away from the chat and a massive thank you for your time.
Jessica: Oh thank you so much Jenelle. It was a pleasure talking to you and I think just to sum up, it’s kind of like for me, it’s not necessarily about what you achieve, it’s sort of how you are remembered and you know, bringing that back to humility and it’s not something that I’m very conscious of but someone once said that to me and it’s always been sort of like how you carry yourself and how you treat people and what you say and you know, it leaves a huge mark on the world, potentially greater than what you sort of achieve, you know, medal wise.
Jenelle: It’s so important, we’ll absolutely take that one away with us as well. Thank you so much Jess.
Jessica: Thanks Jenelle.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Mundanara Bayles AFHEA MAICD
Co-Founder, BlackCard

Listeners are warned that this podcast includes references to suicide and the names of some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have deceased. If you or someone you know seeks mental health advice or help please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Suicide Call back service on
1300 659 467.
Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: Hi. I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to the Change Happens podcast. Conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today I’m joined by Mundanara Bayles the Co-Founder of BlackCard a 100% Aboriginal owned and operated Cultural Awareness Training Business and Consultancy. Focused on embedding cultural capability in corporations using Aboriginal wisdom and knowledge. She has over 18 years of experience working for Indigenous and non-Indigenous organisations and is a respected and well established business woman in Australia. Now, having said that, Mundanara prefers introducing herself by who she is rather than by her work. She can do that best herself. So let’s get into it.
Hi Mundanara, welcome to the podcast!
Mundanara: hi Jenelle and thank you very much for the invitation.
Jenelle: Pleasure. I’d like to start if I could by inviting you to do the Acknowledgement of Country.
Mundanara: Where I am today I’m on the Land of the Kabi Kabi and Gubbi Gubbi people on the Sunshine Coast. I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners here. I’d like to also acknowledge their elders, past and present and extend my acknowledgement of traditional owners from wherever you are joining us to listen to this amazing conversation, and really quickly Jenelle in terms of that acknowledgement – that was short and sweet.
The Acknowledgement of Country however is a tradition that dates back tens of thousands of years in this country. It’s a diplomatic tradition. So a very important diplomatic protocol that has been practiced by Aboriginal people’s in this country, now known as Australia since the first sunrise you could say. So for non-Indigenous people the Acknowledgement of Country has got nothing to do with being politically correct. Political correctness came in yesterday as far as we’re concerned in terms of how long our people have lived in this country. See the Acknowledgement as an invitation for you to become part of the oldest living culture in world history and that’s what I love to share with people. You hear the Acknowledgement, you see it and you read it but I don’t think many people understand the ‘why’, and I hope after listening to today’s podcast that you feel more confident in carrying out that very important protocol.
Jenelle: Thank you so much for that Mundanara. I think that gives us pause to understand the ‘why’. On that note I wanted to acknowledge that I’m recording the podcast from the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and so I too would like to pay my respects to their elders past and present.
Thank you so much for that intro Mundanara. I’d like to start if I could by now helping the audience understand who you are. As I said I can give a bit of a short brief but I’d love for you to bring life into who you are and a little bit about your background.
Mundanara: I am a Biri-Gubba Gangulu women from my father’s side. Now the Biri-Gubba people are from North Queensland and the Gangulu people are from Central Queensland. I am a Wonnarua Bundjalung woman through my mother’s side. The Wonnarua people are from the Hunter Valley outside of Newcastle and the Bundjalung people come from around Byron Bay/Ballina.
So in terms of where I group up. I grew up on Gadigal country Jenelle.
Jenelle: There you go.
Mundanara: So literally I go back to Redfern right not just Sydney. I grew up in Redfern. I’m from the block. Most people in Sydney know where the block is. I literally go back five generations to Redfern. My ancestor Sarah Waters in the 1840’s died in Redfern in Holden Street at 106 years old. She was in the newspaper of the time so she must have been well known by a lot of the earlier, white fellows or non-Indigenous people or settlers, whoever these people were in the 1840’s that were in Redfern must have known who my Great, Great, Great, Great Granny was because she made it into the newspaper. I can actually say that I come from a long line a strong Aboriginal women but we’re not Gadigal people that’s really important even though I can prove my connection to Redfern that goes back five generations, we’re not traditional owners. We have a historical association with the Redfern area and with the Aboriginal community there in Redfern.
I grew up in Redfern with 8 sisters. I don’t have any brothers. My mother and father met in Sydney part of during the black civil rights movement if you want to call it that cause it was pretty similar to the US in terms in the 1960’s with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Those people inspired my family to actually get out on the streets and protest. This is where our protest movement started in Redfern.
So I come from a politically active family. My father – and we’ll talk about him a bit later – my inspiration and why I do what I do. My Dad brought us to Qld in the 1990’s back to his country. I’ve been in Brisbane for 25 years. I met my husband, a Kiwi born Fijian. A beautiful man that I’ve been very lucky to share the last 13 years of my life with. We’ve got 5 children who are very proud Aboriginal Kiwi Fijian kids growing up now on the Sunshine Coast on Kabi Kabi country and like literally Jenelle I talk about this all the time – even though I’ve been in Qld most of my life, Redfern will always be my home.
I lost my mother when I was 18. My mum had a heart attack at 45 and she literally died on the block in Redfern and as an Aboriginal woman her life expectancy 20 years ago was 55. So I was lucky to have my Mum for the first 18 years of my life but the connection I have with my Dad. My Dad passed 4 years ago. He was quite chuffed to reach 62 when he passed and we took his ashes back to his river, the Dawson River on Gangulu country. My 4 year old son, he was the littlest at the time, he literally said to his Dad, my husband who is Kiwi Fijian. He said “Dad are you going to come back to the Dawson River with us when you die?” And this is a 4 year old that already had a concept of life after death. And the moment my husband said (and I was listening), my husband said “Well if Mum is coming back to the Dawson River I’m coming with you’s”. And it was in that moment that I made a decision that I was going to go back to my Dad’s river but with my NSW jersey on!
That’s a lot about me Jenelle.

Jenelle: There is a lot to unpack in that. Actually really interesting. I mean there is a real sadness I feel about you feeling privileged to have had your Mum around for the first 18 years of your life. It really speaks to the life expectancy. It’s something that a lot of us non-Indigenous folks would take for granted. The fact that you think about that and relish that “Well I got to have her for 18 years”, really speaks to a stark difference.
I’m also interested in your son’s comment about life after death because for me it also speaks to cultural identity. I’m interested in understanding what cultural identity means for you personally and for your children intergenerationally. Now you mentioned you grew up with 8 sisters in Redfern. You inherited traits of Wonnarua Bundjalung people on your Mum’s side. You’re a Gubba Gangulu people on your father’s side. Married to a Kiwi born Fijian and you have 5 children.
Now for me I’m an Australian born Fijian Indian and I’m married to a Kiwi born Scottish man and we have 2 children. We always get a bit stumped when people say “What do you identify as?” “What do your children identify as?” “What’s your ethnicity?”
I’m fascinated in your views on cultural identity.
Mundanara: You know what Jenelle. I did a live video for the first time in my life the other day on Instagram because I walked out of a Rabbitohs game. I’m a diehard South Sydney Rabbitohs girl. Born and raised on the block.
Jenelle: I won’t hold that against you! But ok!
Mundanara: That’s the only team you’re allowed to follow other than the Redfern All Blacks. So I walk out of the Rabbitohs game with my 4 year old little Tiger Lilly and my son [39.28] my eldest. I met my husband had the two older kids, we had 3 together.
I walk out of the game about 10 minutes early and I just bought the latest merchandise from Clothing the GAPS – kind of changing the narrative. They are amazing with their merchandise in starting these conversations through fashion right. Couldn’t be more proud to chuck on my ‘Always Was, Always Will Be’ long sleeved t and my trackies.
Anyhow walk out of the game and these two older white Australian men kind of started to abuse me and I kept walking. They were quite intoxicated. They wasn’t happy about my red, black and yellow t-shirt that had ‘Always was’ on the front in big capital letters and my son asked me if were they talking to Tiger Lilly. I said “No they wasn’t talking to her, they were talking to me”. He said “What were they saying to you?” I said “Don’t worry [38.31]” and I kept walking. He said “Mum, were they swearing at you?” I said “No they wasn’t swearing they just were really unhappy reading my t-shirt”.
And Jenelle his response absolutely broke my heart. He said “Mum you embarrass me when you wear this stuff”. “It’s embarrassing”. Why did she even buy it? Not only are we supporting an Indigenous business where 100% of their profits go to health programs across Victoria. Any how I said to my son “You know what let’s go onto Instagram and let’s talk to people about how this t-shirt makes you feel.” So we had a conversation on Instagram about it but I talk about this every day for a living through Black Card training and I know that my children are not as proud as I am about being Aboriginal because of the neighbourhood that we live in.
So identity to me is even more important that I’m growing up my children in a very white neighbourhood. A very white neighbourhood. Identity to me growing up – I was at the first protest in my mother’s belly. At the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane I was in my mother’s belly then.
Mundanara: So I was kind of born for this life that I live now. I’ve got this fire in my belly that comes from not just my Mum but my Dad as well. Growing up in Brisbane since I was 11 amongst a very big multi-cultural community and most of the time a very accepting community. Then we moved here 9 months ago and it changed really quickly in terms of when I leave my front door here I have to think about what I’m wearing. So if I’ve got Aboriginal earrings from Haus of Dizzy or the Koorie Circle, I take them off. If I’ve got a t-shirt on that I’ve been wearing that may say ‘Always Was, Always Will Be’, or ‘Not the Date to Celebrate’, I literally get dressed before I go and pick my kids up because I know how it makes them feel because they are I think the only Indigenous family at their school. The only Black kids at their school.
So yeah identity to me is a conversation every single day. I sometimes think that for my children’s sake not to be too loud and proud about being Aboriginal in this neighbourhood but at the same time people need to get used to us. You know what I mean?
Jenelle: Yeah I do.
Mundanara: They need to get used to an Aboriginal family living in Mount Coolum. We’re not going anywhere and I need my children to grow up and feel proud of their identity and that to me is probably now what I’m focused on. Every single day is to make sure that my children hopefully by the time they reach their teenager years are more confident in their cultural identity because I can tell you now Jenelle – and you probably have some similar experiences growing up in this country. I hated, hated my name Mundanara. At least you got an English/Anglo Saxon name.
Jenelle: That was by design. My parents knew that if I had an Indian name back when, I won’t date myself but there’s multiple, multiple decades in there, and they said “You won’t survive in this country”. By brother was born 8 years after me and his name was Raj. So my parents recognised that the country had moved on and could accept a name more readily than they could when I was born.
But I do think with your children and you, you were born with that passion clearly and that role modelling but for what it’s worth I think that it’s a passion that I have learned for the longest time when I was young. I didn’t like the difference. I worked hard to make sure I blended in, just like your children are wanting to do. Not wanting to stand out. Don’t want to be embarrassed. But I guess they will find their voice Mundanara particularly with your role modelling and your nurturing of the safety around that. But I’m sure the passion will come.
Mundanara: Yeah.
Jenelle: I want to talk about Black Card. You’ve mentioned it. Now that’s the company you co-founded with Dr Lilla Watson. That was all about spreading awareness and preventing the future of Aboriginal generations from suffering. Tell us about the principles behind Black Card?
Mundanara: In terms of the word ‘suffering’. You know what I would say cause I’ve got this strength based approach with everything that I do Jenelle. So what I would say “Is to spread awareness to arm our young people with cultural knowledge so that they can succeed in this society that was never set up for us to participate in.”
So to arm our young people with cultural knowledge and also to educate the wider community about the oldest, continuous surviving culture in world history. Basically when you think about how long we’ve been in this country, we are the earliest example of a human government then there anywhere else in the world.

Mundanara: Over 250 different countries in this Island Continent now known as Australia, that spoke just under 1,000 different languages. So we’re all different people and there is this myth that indigenous people are one people and we’re not even the same as the other recognised group – the Torres Strait Islander people are Melanesian. In Aboriginal society male and female complimented each other. One would never dominate the other. So it’s all about balance. It’s got nothing to do with equality.
So these are key features of Aboriginal society that we are now I guess educating the masses in this country. But we set up this organisation to educate people in this country about the tens of thousands of years of knowledge that comes directly from this land. That’s what Aboriginal Terms of Reference refers to. Western ideologists which is our Parliament, our Government, our laws, our educations, those institutions are all based on Western ideologies. They have come from somewhere outside of this country that has now been imposed on us as Aboriginal people.
That’s what we want to share with people. The Aboriginal world which is very different to the Western world and how Aboriginal people are navigating or walking in two worlds and most people are walking in one.
But you know how do we push these two worlds closer together? Because one is not better than the other. They’re both equal and if we are to thrive in this country we first need to arm our young people with cultural knowledge so that they can succeed in this Western world but on their terms of reference Jenelle. That’s what is important to me. That we don’t have to leave or feel the need to leave our cultural identity at home when we turn up to the workforce, when we turn up to work. That we can bring our full self to work. That our Aboriginality adds value to who we are and what we bring to the workplace. I hope one day that I can be confident that my children proudly identify as belonging to the oldest living culture in the world and to be proud of that.
Jenelle: What does it feel like Mundanara to walk in two worlds? What’s that like?
Mundanara: It’s exhausting. It’s challenging. Sometimes you feel overwhelmed that people don’t understand why you go to so many funerals. Why so many people are committing suicide. The fact that Aboriginal youth, literally the highest in the world to commit suicide. One Aboriginal kid every week commits suicide. I’ve buried 8 children in the last 10 years at the Murri School here in Brisbane. A school I graduated from that I’ve now been a Board of Director for the last 7 years. I’ve buried 8 children to suicide from one school. Not in the Kimberley’s. Not in the remote communities. In Brisbane.
To explain that to your Manager in an organisation, to explain why there is constant sorry business. Why there is constant grief and loss and therefore trauma, my people are dying so young. My mother at 45. Her sister at 30. Her brother committed suicide at 45. So most people on my mother’s side, most people have not celebrated their 50th birthday. Most have died before 45. The median age for an Aboriginal man and an Aboriginal community in Wilcannia in NSW in terms of life expectancy is 39. We know this. We grow up in this but when we go the workforce or into the workplace, this is all new information for a lot of our colleagues and for a lot of non-Indigenous Australians. It’s not their experience.
Jenelle: It’s not their experience and it’s so hard. You talk about that ‘sorry’ business and I feel it as well at work and you’re like “I know that person was already off for somebody, how many people can there be in their family?” “How many people?” and that is the reality isn’t it?

Mundanara: Constant. If we understood the impacts of colonialism. The impacts of past Government policies that literally in placed the 1970’s. The last recorded Aboriginal child that was taken from a hospital in Darwin was in 1980.
One of my staff, Mike Mike Salbro, he was forcibly removed. He was stolen from Cherbourg in 1979. Jenelle, he was fostered by a Swedish couple where he then grew up in Sweden from the age of four and for the first 20 years of his life he thought he was an African man living in Sweden. No idea that he was an Aboriginal man from Cherbourg.
This has led to the trauma and when we go back on my mother’s side, five generations of women were forcibly removed. I am the first generation Jenelle. I am the first generation that wasn’t taken from my family. I had the privilege of growing up with my own Aboriginal mother and Aboriginal father. I had the privilege of growing up with my own siblings. I had the privilege of growing up in an Aboriginal community and socialising amongst Aboriginal people and family. A lot of Aboriginal people can’t say the same.
My mother didn’t know her country. My Nan didn’t know her country and the impacts of that have come down the generations. Have come down the lines and there is a lot of research on trauma and they refer to it as Intergenerational Trauma. That trauma is actually in the DNA. Right it’s in the DNA of a child, an unborn child. So my father’s trauma, the fact that his Grandfather, my Great Grandfather Sam Watson, he was literally taken away in the middle of the night. White pastoralists from North Queensland used to go around in the middle of the night and steal these Aboriginal boys from their families and throw them back into, he described as a ‘Horse and cart’. They were thrown in the back of a horse and cart and my Great Grandfather Sam never saw his Mum again.
That’s what we need to acknowledge in this country. We need to acknowledge the history of this country. The history that is in people’s living memory. It’s not that long ago. People seem to think Jenelle that “Oh look get over it happened 200 years ago”, “Well it’s not my fault”.

How are we going to achieve reconciliation without any truth?

Truth telling is integral for reconciliation in my opinion.
I’m part of the 3% of the population – I talk about this every day. The 3% of the population trying to do the heavy lifting – to bring about positive change.
Jenelle: Let me just stay on that for a moment. Obviously this is a podcast all about change.
As you just said then you’re part of the 3% of the population that we are talking about here. Driving change for the rest – the 97%.
How do you go about doing that? It seems like a mammoth (and obviously it is) – it’s been happening for generation after generation.
With so much change to be driven, where do you start?
Mundanara: I constantly have no voice as you can hear today.
Jenelle: I like that husky voice but I guess it’s probably a bit worn out.

Mundanara: It’s worn out. Definitely worn out. I cancelled everything. I had a game last night to go to Patty Mills, representing Australia in the basketball at the Olympics. His Dad lives around the corner from me, his Mum and Dad. They said “come and watch Patty”, I said “Uncle I don’t want to be rude but I need to save my voice for work on Monday”. So on the weekends I try not to do too much because I know that I am preserving my voice for the work that I do.
It’s exhausting Jenelle to constantly talk about.. It’s not about history. I’m bringing my own life experience to the workshop. When I deliver Black Card training, I’m bringing my life experience. My family’s experience to that session. So it’s triggering. It’s traumatic. I feel traumatised nearly every workshop after it I have a cry literally. I can’t help the tears. Sometimes I cry in the workshop. I can’t hold back the emotion. Sometimes I feel that emotion just takes over me.
I think that to be able to create change the only way we can do it is if we can actually come from that human level. Human to human. Not from a text book. Not from just reading PowerPoints and statistics. But we need to bring and draw from our own experiences and to be able to share that with people. It’s take a toll on us, it does. I’m being honest here.
Jenelle: Yeah I can hear that.
Mundanara: That’s why we’re creating the change. That’s why Black Card is having the success that we’re having. If you want to call it success, the fact that we’re rolling out our training to some of the biggest corporations in this country. I wouldn’t say it’s success but I would say we’re having a positive impact.
Jenelle: It’s certainly getting noticed at some of the highest levels, that’s for sure.
Mundanara: Yeah and I think Jenelle that it’s up to the 97% of the population. Now you know what you know. Now that we’ve shared with you what you didn’t learn at school.

What are you going to do?
How are you going to support us in creating this change?
What conversations are you going to have with your family?
What conversations are you going to have with your children?

I feel that people need to see this as their own personal responsibility. If you live in this country and you call this place home, then you are entitled to know the true history of this country.
And it’s not the Aboriginal history Jenelle. I’m sick and tired of people referring to the invasion of this country. The slaughtering of our women and children. The massacres. I lived down the road from Murdering Creek. 20 minutes from my house is Murdering Creek. There are 17 Murdering Creeks in Australia. There is Massacre Waterfalls in NSW. Black Shoot Creek at Burleigh Heads at the back of the Gold Coast. Slaughter Falls at Mount Coo-tha in Brisbane. You only have to go to Google right to found out Australia’s violent history.
But to meet an Aboriginal person such as myself and to hear these stories, in some instances first-hand stories, well that to me I would say changes people, and it changes people, I hope, for the better.
Jenelle: Mundanara you mentioned at little earlier that the Torres Strait Islanders are a different group to the Aboriginals with a different story. I want to talk for a moment about the importance of understanding and recognising diversity within Indigenous communities and not making the assumption of one humungous group.
Jenelle: Ours is a nation made of up many Aboriginal countries where there are different customs. Different languages and as you said different lived experiences. So when you share your own life experience it’s different to that of others.
Is that something that is front of mind for you? When I think about all the work you are doing with Black Card. How do you strike the balance of being a voice for many whilst also respecting those distinctive experiences of different communities?
Mundanara: That’s a really good question Jenelle because we are made up over 250 different countries. I use the comparison with Europe. There is about 49 different countries across Europe and here in this country now known as Australia, there is over 250 different countries and I always say that I’m not a representation of nearly a million different people from over 250 different countries. I’m one person and I’m definitely on a mission to try and create change within my life time and do the best that I can so that my kids have a little bit easier. Then their kids have it a little bit easier.
I would say that it’s really important to understand that we are all different. That you don’t put us into the box as one people – “Oh there Indigenous – their First Nations”. “She’s Aboriginal”. We’re all very different people. Not all of us have had the privilege of growing up with our Aboriginal families, therefore a lot of Aboriginal people have been disconnected from their Aboriginal culture. I guess there is a lot of those people that have now found their Aboriginal families and some have been able to integrate back into their communities and be part of those Aboriginal communities. Some have struggled. So there is a lot of Aboriginal people that have had very different experiences.
So yeah I feel that at Black Card I’ve got an opportunity to at least explain and educate people about a lot of the basics. A lot of the foundational knowledge. About some of the key differences like you said – the other Indigenous group, other Torres Strait Islander people.
We’re all different. We have to be mindful that we don’t ask people to speak on behalf of an entire population or race of people. I can only talk to you from my own experience. I draw from my Aunt Lilla Watson. My Aunt Lilla was the first Aboriginal lecturer or probably one of the first because there could have been other Aboriginal people employed at UQ back in those days but they didn’t publicly identify.
Jenelle, that’s important even – just to touch on that for a moment. The fact that in 2021 there is still a lot of Aboriginal people that are working in organisations like at EY and all different organisations that don’t publicly identify.
Jenelle: Oh absolutely.
Mundanara: That don’t tick the box when it comes to the census. My Nan used to talk about not ticking the box and she actually said this to me Jenelle, she said “If you tick the box you don’t know whether or not your children will be taken from you.”
That happened to my Nan. When she is was free – and I’m talking about free from being a domestic. Being sent out to work from the age of 10. At about 21 years of age my Nan was free – which means the government was not controlling every aspect of her life as an Aboriginal woman.
I found out later in life (cause she told me), that how she was able to live freely, she assumed the identity of an Indian woman, Jenelle. My Nan identified as Indian to survive. To keep her children. To be able to work. To marry the love of her life – my Grandfather who I never got to meet, an Irishman.
Mundanara: She had to do what she could to survive. So she outsmarted authorities but at what cost?
She disconnected and cut all ties to her family – to her Aboriginal community in Redfern. Mentioning the word Aboriginal was like a dirty word to my Nan. You never spoke about it and when you did you found yourself in a very heated argument with her.
So yeah I think things are slowly changing because I now embrace my name. Mundanara used to make me feel very uncomfortable and I would say even ashamed at times to be Aboriginal around my friends at school. Now that I’m in my 30’s I’ve become much more confident in my own identity and Black Card definitely has been a big part of my own journey – to embrace my own Aboriginality.
15 years ago Jenelle I would still say that I would prefer to be called ‘Mara’ and I would introduce myself as Mara.
Jenelle: Wow. Mundanara is such a beautiful name. I can really relate to it. My middle name is an Indian name – Sangeetha. Oh my God I’d never tell anyone that. It was just Jenelle! That was all there was to it. But now with time, experience and understanding we embrace these things. I think that is our power. That is our strength. Our strength is in the diversity and those life experiences that we have.
I want to talk about story telling. I’ve been doing a lot of these podcasts now and certainly I’ve spoken to many, many Change Leaders across all sorts of.. big Corporate CEOs, entrepreneurs and they all speak to storytelling as being a powerful lever of change. Clearly storytelling is inherent in Indigenous communities. It is a natural way of teaching and communicating across multiple generations since 60,000 years ago.
Can you share with me how you’ve been able to integrate storytelling into the work that you educate non-Indigenous people to understand why we need to change.
Mundanara: Definitely. We are the oldest storytellers on the planet. I can definitely say that. That is a strength isn’t it? To be able to tell stories. I come from a long line of storytellers as well so it’s in my blood through my Grandmother Maureen.
But storytelling is an important feature of Aboriginal culture. In all of our languages Jenelle, there is no word for ‘why’? So just imagine a whole society bringing up young people and they’re not encouraged to ask ‘why questions’.
So from a very young age you’re observing everything. You develop these very keen skills or powers of observation. You’re watching. You’re looking. You’re learning. You’re listening before you talk. Before you speak.
So in terms of growing up in this Aboriginal society, when you do ask a ‘why’ question today, especially with older Aboriginal people, you’ll probably get a story. That story leads to understanding, and that’s much more important from our perspective.
In Aboriginal child rearing practices, we are teaching our children how to think versus what to think. We’re growing up independent thinking, autonomous beings versus an individual. The Western world is a highly individualistic society. The Aboriginal world is a group based society.
When I think about it, Aboriginal people have got this great understanding of what it means to be human.
Mundanara: We literally – if you think about psychology – well psychology is our forte. We’ve been here for so long we figured things out a very long time ago. How to have a stable, efficient society that would last you tens of thousands of years without the need for armies. Without the need for prisons. Without the need for police and we never invaded our neighbours in our whole history of living in this country.
For me, sharing my story, who I am, where I come from, where I grew up and then sharing parts of my family background, my ancestry and stuff like that, we can connect with each other on a much deeper level. When I make those connections on that level, then I start to feel that I’m achieving what my people have set out to achieve.
It’s building relationships with each other so we can understand each other and hopefully with that common understanding of who we are, as Aboriginal people, what our experience has been for us in this country, I hope would give more Australians respect us and respect what we’ve been through and respect how we’ve been able to live in this country for as long as we’ve been. I want all Australians to fill proud that they live in a country and they can be part of the oldest living culture in world history. Why can’t we all celebrate that together?
Jenelle: Look I’m with you and actually as you were speaking Mundanara and thinking about yep the oldest living community. I’m in the business of change leadership and one of the words perhaps that comes up most frequently is ‘resilient’. Resilience is the attribute – you know we talk about vulnerability resilience, surely the oldest living community in the world knows a thing or two about resilience. What do you think it is? Speak to me about the resilience in the Aboriginal community.
Mundanara: Well you can go back to the fact that we lived through two ice ages and to be able to adapt to the environment through those times of change. The fact that we survived colonialism. We survived the simulation policy. We survived the stolen generation, the forceable removals. Then there is a motto – we have survived. But before that we used the term that we thrived and we have thrived over the 140,000 years of living in this country. It wasn’t about surviving. We knew the land so well that it gave life to us and it kept us alive at the same time.
So this kind of resilience comes from I would say over tens of thousands of years of living in this country and adapting to all of the different change that our people have seen over many, many generations.
The resilience that I talk about comes from the fact that my mother raised 8 daughters without ever knowing what it was like to be loved. She had never experienced love. She had never been held tight and hugged or cuddled and told that she was loved. My Nan never experienced love. She had never experienced what it was like to be held by her mother. So when I think about the fact that I was raised by these strong women who loved us unconditional despite the fact that they weren’t shown love. I draw from their resilience. I draw from their strength and what they went through for us to have the opportunities and to live the life that I live today.
I would say it’s emotional resilience Jenelle that we need to kind of grow or develop within our children because emotional resilience is about how do we bounce back from every single funeral that we go to. How do we bounce back from every death in custody. How do we bounce back from every child that has been forcibly removed from our families today but it requires a whole lot of emotional resilience because at the end of the day, I’ve got 5 children that rely on me. To put food on the table and I’ve got to keep on developing my own emotional resilience to support my children because like I said at times I get so overwhelmed with the situation.
Mundanara: The position that we’re in as Aboriginal people today. It’s overwhelming. If I think about and dwell on it too much Jenelle I literally feel that I can’t even get out of bed some mornings. So you’ve just got to draw strength from somewhere and to keep thinking about my Mum and my Nan. My old people and my ancestors and what they had to go through and we’ve got nothing really to complain about when I think about their experience.
Jenelle: Mundanara it is overwhelming. There’s so much in there to be done and as you said it can be really triggering to talk about this with such heart and really allowing yourself to go there as you do each and every day. I know you have focused on a couple of areas specifically, Raise the Age and Free the Flag, how and why did you decide to focus your efforts on those two initiatives?
Mundanara: The fact that I can’t have an Aboriginal flag on my staff uniform without paying a non-Aboriginal person a licence fee. That to me does not sit well with me because if every Australian had to do the same, in terms of pay a non-Australian, someone in another country, had to pay for the right to use their flag, then….
Jenelle: There’s something very wrong about that.
Mundanara: Mate, yes exactly. The fact that the Aboriginal flag is the only flag in the world that’s privately owned by an individual, because Thomas Harold sold the licence, the copyright to the flag, and not just to any individual Jenelle, but a corrupt individual. And this is why I’m on this mission as well. To start these conversations that we need to have with the broader community because you have the voice.
There’s power within the 97% of you to help us get our flag back. That’s why I’m passionate about the flag, because I want to wear my flag, in its natural form, I don’t want have to mutate the flag to be able to get away with copyright laws, so Free the Flag’s really important to me. Because the flag, you know when the 1982 Commonwealth Games, Jenelle, when my Mum and my Dad were protesting then. It was against the law in the state of Queensland to have an Aboriginal flag. Did you know you could go to prison over the flag?
Jenelle: No.
Mundanara: So they’ve stopped us for a long time from publicly being proud of our Aboriginality with that flag. So the flag means a lot to me.
In terms of raising the age, the fact that Australia is one of four countries in the world that lock up children from the age of 10, despite the United Nations, despite International Standards which is 14, the Northern Territory government recently voted against raising the age of holding a child criminally responsible. So for me that’s important. Because I’ve got two little boys. One’s nine and one’s 11. And the thought that they could be sitting in a Youth Detention Centre, I’m not going to lie, it does keep me awake at night.
Some nights I keep thinking about the fact that a lot of families have got their babies in these Detention Centres and Dr Tracy Westerman, one of the leading Indigenous Psychologists in this country, she’s got the Westerman Institute in WA. She has also been a big supporter of raising the age. But she’s got all the scientific evidence to back up that a child at 10 does not know, in terms of fully understanding the consequences of their actions. At 10, compared to 14. Definitely passionate to have as many Australians sign those e-petitions and campaigns and support us.

Jenelle: Fantastic. Mundanara, lots of stuff to do here, no question about it, you’ve been working in this space much of your life as have your father and broader family members, what’s some of the positive changes that you’ve seen and that you’re proud of?
Mundanara: Wow, where do I start? There has been a lot of positive change. And that’s why at The BlackCard, it’s so important that we start from a strength based approach. That we draw from our strengths and not our weaknesses, because we’re not all victims. We all don’t need help. And I think sometimes the government, it’s kind of like they’ve put us under this one big giant umbrella and called it Close The Gap. And we’re all these victims and we all need help. And that’s not the case at all. The fact that I’m at University. I’m studying my MBA at Monash Uni. That’s the first MBA in Indigenous Leadership in the world. To me that says a lot about progress in our universities.
Jenelle: Yep.
Mundanara: The fact that I do guest lectures and I can now invoice people for my time. I used to do it for free, in the last 10 years that I’ve been a part of BlackCard, that people are actually asking me “what do you charge?”, “what’s your rate?”, “we have a budget”.
Jenelle: And they value that knowledge and education and cultural capability training.
Mundanara: Thank you, thank you. That more and more Australians are valuing our knowledge. Because our knowledge is not just “how do you interact and engage with Aboriginal people” at BlackCard. We’re educating you about cultural capability. That’s a skillset. To be able to engage and interact with the other 300 different nationalities that live in this country today.
So, to me, there’s been a lot of change because more organisations have got reconciliation action plans, RAP. So they’re committed to reconciliation. And that RAP holds that organisation accountable. So I like that accountability aspect of a RAP, but a RAP’s not for every organisation, and I know that.
Lastly, I just want to say really quickly that the fact more and more Australians are acknowledging traditional owners, it just fills my heart with a lot of joy. Like I literally, every time I hear an acknowledgement, this smile lights up my face and I just go, isn’t it amazing. Because the acknowledgement of traditional owners is unique to this country. They don’t do it in Canada, they don’t do it in America with the native Americans over there, it’s unique to Australia.
So to me, the more and more that we have non-Indigenous Australians participating in our culture, that’s progress, that we’re heading in the right direction Jenelle.
Jenelle: Fantastic. Now I’m going to start to wrap this up here. So I’d like to ask you Mundanara, if I could, for one tip or piece of advice for the business community who are all listening to this. So when it comes to better supporting Indigenous matters, what’s one piece of advice you’d give them?
Mundanara: I think to really learn and educate yourself about the foundational knowledge of Aboriginal society. The fact that we’re a group-based society, a non-competitive society and a non-ego based society. If you can understand some of those core principles that we refer to as Aboriginal Terms of Reference, that to me would put you in good stead for engaging with Aboriginal people, Aboriginal colleagues, Aboriginal businesses and Aboriginal communities.
Mundanara: To see us as people first and foremost. To be able to build a relationship with us based on who you are, and not get down to business straight away. The agenda’s there but that should be second, that to me probably is the biggest piece of advice. Build relationships. Because once you invest in that relationship, business will take care of itself.
Jenelle: Fantastic.
The Last Three – three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: I’m going to finish if I can with a Fast Three. A bit more on a light hearted note, although it depends on your answers.
I’ll start with, what are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
Mundanara: What am I watching? Survivor!
Jenelle: Me too.
Mundanara: And the reason that I’m watching Survivor is Endemol Shine Productions is one of our clients that we’ve been rolling our training to and I was one of their Indigenous advisors for the set of Survivor. So there you go.
Jenelle: Oh wow, fantastic. Ok, what is your super power? Now that can be something that’s additive to the world or a useless party trick.
Mundanara: I would say that I’m known as the Queen of relationships.
Jenelle: Ok well I can vouch for that too. And if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be?
Mundanara: What kind of honourable ancestor will you be to our future generations?
Jenelle: I absolutely love that. And on that note Mundanara, I’m going to thank you for your time today. I’ve learned a lot about not assuming. So don’t assume that Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders are one homogenous group. We have over 250 countries in Australia alone. Don’t assume that we know everyone’s story or that one person speaks on behalf of all. The lived experiences are wide and varied.
Don’t assume that if it happened in the past, let’s just put it behind us and move on. There is intergenerational trauma. We need to start with truth telling. It saddens me that you use words like privilege, the privilege of growing up with your siblings and with your parents. Or the privilege of having your Mum until you’re 18 or the privilege of not being taken away. To me that’s a right and I desperately hope that that right is afforded to all as we move to make change happen. And in order to create change that we need to connect at the human level and listen to stories. We have so much to learn from our Aboriginal communities. Unparalleled resilience is the oldest living communities.
You’ve taught us so much on this call, on this discussion Mundanara, you’ve shown us that we need to seek to understand, that we need to build relationships. And when we genuinely build that understanding and those relationships, the rest will follow.
Thank you for the challenge of asking us, now that we know what are we going to do to create change and I invite everyone to think about that and to take action. I know that I certainly will.
Thanks so much for your time today Mundanara.
Mundanara: Oh Jenelle, I would say it’s a privilege to be able to speak to people like yourself in the position that you hold as well at EY. I just want to say thank you for reaching out to me so that we can get these stories out there and get people to really see themselves as part of change in this country, so thank you.
The Change Happens podcast. From EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Hugh van Cuylenburg
Founding Director/Facilitator, The Resilience Project

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: Hi. I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to the Change Happens podcast, conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today I’m joined by Hugh van Cuylenburg, a mental heal advocate and co-founder of The Resilience Project, a programme that teaches positive mental health strategies that has to date impacted more than 1,000 schools and a million Australians. He’s been a keynote speaker for more than 500 corporates and has worked with national rugby league clubs, AFL clubs, State cricket teams and Netball Australia. He also individual mentors athletes across a range of codes and has developed comprehensive programmes for many workplaces. An educator for more than 17 years, Hugh practices gratitude, empathy and mindfulness – or GEM – to create a happy, fulfilling experience. He’s also an author of The Resilience Project and a co-host of a podcast “The Imperfects”. In the digital age, and clearly also in this time of lockdowns and home schooling, cognitive overload, loneliness, boredom are real threats to the mental health of children, youth, employees and, quite frankly, everyone around. Now, with that context in mind, we will explore what insights Hugh has into managing and leading through these times, particularly with an emphasis on mental health. Hugh, welcome!
Hugh: That’s close to the best introduction I’ve ever had. That is very, very thorough and you’ve got my name right, which most people don’t get!
Jenelle: Yes! Well I might just end this here on that high. We’re done!
Hugh: Yeah, thanks for having me. That was great. Thanks Jenelle.
Jenelle: At the risk of starting with what is always – well, not always, but these particular times, quite a loaded question. I will start with how are you? Given you’re in Melbourne and I’m in Sydney and we’re both in lockdown again, you more so than me, but still how are you?
Hugh: It’s a very, very interesting question because I think the caveat I’ll put on that my sone woke up at one in the morning with croup last night.
Jenelle: Oh no!
Hugh: For anyone who’s had a child with croup before it’s -
Jenelle: I have.
Hugh: - oh, you’ve been through it, have you?
Jenelle: I have, yep.
Hugh: Ah, you actually think they’re dying – like it is -
Jenelle: It’s really scary and confronting.
Hugh: He gets it about probably twice a year and he’s four so I was falling asleep at 10:30 and I heard him do this cough, because he’s been unwell, and I went oh no, that’s really croupy. So I just lay there just waiting for it. So I lay there and I lay there, sure enough 1am it started. So I went and grabbed it and it was quite bad and we went downstairs on the couch. We’re trying to watch Fireman Sam to calm him down. But, anyway, the caveat I’m putting on this chat is that I didn’t get back to sleep until quarter to five in the morning and then my daughter was up at 6:30. So the answer to your question is I feel so exhausted but generally speaking and considering we’re in lockdown in Melbourne for the fifth time, I’m feeling remarkably good.
Jenelle: I am incredibly grateful for you time. And also it’s interesting too when you think about that stuff is always hard and those early years in particular are super difficult but now I can’t imagine the additional load of questioning you’ve got to go through. Like, he’s got a cough, could that be something else? Do I need to go to a hospital? What’s the implications? Will we have a COVID test? You know, now there’s even more layers of questions and implications and even language that we apply to our thoughts and decision trees around these things.
Hugh: Totally. And I – he’s a – I’ve spoken about this a little bit before, I won’t go into details too much, but he’s an anxious kid. He’s four and he’s very – he’s really anxious and he’s finding the world very confusing at the moment as I think a lot of us are. But, you know, when I compare him to his friends who are the same age he’s finding it particularly challenging. It’s - trying to explain the world to young kids at the moment I’m fining it really frightening because, you know, you watch the news right now and it’s terrifying. Like if you spend too much time watching the news, which you should be doing -
Jenelle: Yeah, I try not to actually because of that – the – it’s – it gets you down.
Hugh: Anyway, I’m sounding very dramatic! I’m just very tired. That’s the answer for your question.
Jenelle: No, you are tired. No that’s OK. And actually it sort of poses a question for me in itself when I think about the space that you work in and, you know, you’re teaching other people about happiness and resilience, all of which we’ll get into, but you on a personal note as someone who is in Melbourne, you know, facing what have arguably been the harshest, you know, lockdown restrictions in the world, you’ve got young kids, the situation like what you’ve just talked about, what have you learned about yourself in managing resilience? And maybe has it evolved the narrative that you’ve had in your teachings or your insights around it as you’ve been navigating such tough conditions in the space where you’re advising others?
Hugh: Yeah, it’s a fantastic question because I was discussing this only yesterday afternoon with my psychologist but I think it’s an important conversation for me to put out there because we don’t talk about this enough, but I have felt enormous pressure and I think people in corporate world feel this pressure to be OK all the time. Like, to be seen to be totally on top of everything and the irony there is that we’re not a lot of the time. And the irony of that is that pretending that you’re OK and not being honest with how you’re travelling often leads you to being even more not OK. So with my psychologist yesterday she said, first question, she said how do I find you today? How are you going? And I said, do you know what? I’m going amazingly well. And then I talked her through the last couple of months of my life – I haven’t chatted to her for a while, and it involved saying to the CEO of The Resilience Project, a bit over a month ago saying to him mate, I’m not OK at the moment. I’m really battling with work life balance, with burnout professionally, with – and I’m feeling pressure that I have to be OK because I’m the resilience guy. So, if I’m not OK does that mean that, you know, I’m just a fraud and then chatting to my – saying to my wife, she said to me are you OK? What’s going on? Usually I’d go “I’m fine, why, what’s wrong?” and get a little bit shitty at that question, but I said no, I don’t think I am OK at the moment. I’m so burned out at work and I meant to recover at home but I actually home more difficult than work at the moment because there’s a one-and-a-half year old who doesn’t sleep, there’s a four-and-a-half year old who’s having a lot of issues and I don’t know when I – I can’t recover anywhere. I’m exhausted emotionally, I’m exhausted mentally and I sit here now a month later and I am in such a good place right now. And my psychologies said you’re OK now because you told people that you weren’t OK a month ago. She said if you’d kept pretending that you’re OK I can’t even begin to imagine what state you’d be in right now.
Jenelle: How did it feel for you when you said those words to – out loud to your wife and to your psychologist? How did it feel at the time?
Hugh: I love both of them dearly, in very different ways obviously!
Jenelle: I hope so! Got awkward really quickly.
Hugh: Ben, our CEO, I’ve known him for a long time and I – The Resilience Project is – I mean I get a lot of credit for it ??? [7:20] present it, but it’s successful in most part because of him. He’s an extraordinary individual. But he went straight to operation mode. He was like, OK, so we need to shift this, we need to move this, we need to cancel that. We can’t cancel that we’ll get a – and I was, at the time I felt like oh gosh. But then I went home and told Penny and she said OK, so I need to do this, I need to fix that, I need to do this, I need to – and neither of them really sat in that emotion with me. I think it was a bit confronting to have me saying I’m not OK because I’ve never said that before. And they were both so desperate to help that they went straight to OK let’s problem solve. And funnily enough we interviewed Dr Billy Garvey, a paediatrician, on our podcast last week and he was talking about how you deal with a child who’s got a problem. And he said the first thing you do is you sit in the emotion with them and you validate it. Then you identify that as an opportunity. Then you give them some space and then later you problem solve. And I was listening thinking that’s not just kids, that’s us as adults as well.
Jenelle: Yeah. So you validate.
Hugh: Yeah, so you validate. You say I can see you’re feeling this and I understand why you’d feel like that, that makes sense to me. And then in your head you think here’s an opportunity for us to grow our relationship or for us to grow this situation or this team or whatever you’re going through. And then you give a little bit of space, you don’t try and problem solve straight away. And then you come back to it, you know, a day or two later and you say, OK, how can we – what can we do here? And it’s funny Dr Billy Garvey, this paediatrician, said as parents we just want our kids lives to be easier so what we do is we – our kid will say I didn’t get picked in the soccer team and we say, that’s OK, that means you can play football. You love football, that’d be good. But I experienced that firsthand with this – with my wife who funnily did it the other way. You know, the next day she said, oh, I totally understand why you feel like that. That must be – you know, you’ve been doing this for 10 years nonstop. You haven’t taken a breath in 10 years. And then the CEO, Ben, I chatted to him 2 days after that, he said to me, mate, I’m really worried about you. I get why you feel like that. So the both of them did it sort of in reverse. And it was funny having lived it I was like, yeah – I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a go at either of them, they’re 2 of the most special people in my life, but both of them went solve the problem first. So to answer your question how did I feel, I felt much better the second time we chatted when they’d just validated how I was feeling. That’s all I needed. That’s what I really needed and the problem solving part, yeah, that was going to be part of it, but I didn’t need it straight away. I just needed to be validated for the way I was feeling. Because I felt really vulnerable when I told them I wasn’t going OK. And when you’re feeling – when you let someone know you’re not going OK, I don’t want to sound like I’m being dramatic. I think most of us at the moment are not really – I mean, if you’re in Sydney or Melbourne right now, there are very few people who could honestly say, yeah, I’m totally fine, life’s great, I think. Maybe it’s not as hard for you but – I saw Betoota Advocate did a post the other day saying – it made me laugh a lot – it said, in inverted commas, it said “I’m actually finding this lockdown pretty great” said man living in Bondi with view of the ocean. I think for those of us who are not sitting in an apartment in Bondi with a view of the ocean I think life is tough. And I think we’ve got to be more honest about that because – because of that this is what happens when you say you’re not OK. You have this – when you actually say it out loud, this is what happened to me anyway, and I think what the research says, the research says you have this new humility about you. Like, you’re really humble in that I don’t have the answers and then you have this curiosity takeover which is, OK, what do I need to do here so I can start to get better or feel better? And you come at that with a very humble approach. Like, I don’t have the answers. I mean my psychologist said to me yesterday, she said I know you feel pressure to be OK as the resilience guy but she said this is the most resilient I’ve ever seen you in two years. You are showing up today living and breathing resilience because you’ve said you’re not OK and you’re trying – you’re curious as to what you can do to get better. She said that’s more resilient than putting on a performance around gratitude, empathy and mindfulness in my opinion, which I though was really nice.
Jenelle: I think that’s right. You know, and I think one of the challenges that I’m seeing - personally experience as well as I’ve seen in others – is this feeling like you almost don’t have permission to say you’re not OK because you will always be able to point to people who have it worse than you. We can point to countries that have it worse than us. We can say, you know, yes, I live in Bondi and I have a great view therefore I shouldn’t complain or I live in Sydney and I’ve had - this is my second lockdown, you’ve had five, but actually I’m still experiencing some hard times or loss relative to my set of experiences. And even just feeling that permission - because I think that’s part of the problem as well, feeling like how ungrateful do I sound if I say something out loud. You know, I am surrounded by others. So I think permission to say you’re not OK regardless of your circumstances – obviously we can always, when we speak to the opportunity and the problem solving, we’ll be able to point to those other things, or look at what I do have etc. But I think that first place of being OK, taking the pressure off and saying look, actually I’m not OK today and maybe I’ll be OK tomorrow. But I think that is an important thing. And it makes me also think, I don’t know, I shouldn’t share the story but when you were talking, Hugh, I was thinking about the 90s movie White Men Can’t Jump, you know? And, I’ve already said that, but the scene where the girlfriend was like I’m really thirsty and Woody Harrelson goes oh, I’ll get you some water. And she’s like no, I need you to identify with my thirst. And he’s like – but if you’re thirsty I’ll get you some water. And she’s like not hearing me, I want you to feel my thirst. He’s like why would I feel – but it stays in my mind. It’s a silly example but sometimes you want people to acknowledge that you do feel thirsty and it’s OK and I’m sure we can get some water in a moment but right now it’s important!
Hugh: I remember going to see that movie at Westfield Shopping Town in Doncaster when I was in Grade 6. It was a bit of an eye-opener that move to me at age 12, but I remember that scene so clearly. Even as a 12 year old I kind of at a very basic level of understood like people need to be validated.
Jenelle: There you go! Now, let’s bring it back to you know your profession, Hugh. I wonder if you can start by giving us an overview of the journey to date, really, and, you know, a potted history of how you found yourself doing what you’re doing and, you know, what lead you to devote your career helping people find happiness and resilience?
Hugh: So I’m in the process right now of writing my second book and it’s been really interesting because I’m trying to put this stuff forward in a new way because I felt like a lot of people have heard me speak before and I don’t want them to feel like they’re getting, you know, I want them to hear something new. It’s just great timing you’ve asked that question because I’m – what I used to say when I answered that question was in 2008 I went to India and I volunteered there and I met this group of kids who were sleeping on a dirt floor and no running water, no electricity, they were so happy and I wanted to understand what they did to be happy because my sister was struggling with a mental illness and I wanted to help her. That’s what the first book said but I – the more and more I think about it, the more and more I unravel it with my psychologist – and by the way, I talk about my psychologist a lot and I do that deliberately. I’ve never had a mental illness in my life, I’m so lucky. And because of that I never saw a psychologist because I thought that’s what people who have a mental illness. It’s for all of us. Like, a counsellor, a therapist, someone you can chat to about your life, it just is absolutely life changing. So I’m just putting it out there to everyone listening, but I’m unravelling this with my psychologist at the moment. And the more I think about it I realise that it started with my sister’s mental illness when she was 14 years old and her diagnosis of anorexia. But I remember coming home from the hospital with my family after visiting my sister I just remember this figure of my dad just sort of hunched over the kitchen sink doing the dishes and he was in tears. And it was like – I was 17, it’s the second time I’d seen him cry in my life and I remember thinking, gosh, we’re not a happy family and we have been for a long time but we’re not anymore. And I desperately wanted to know what I could do to help mum and dad feel happy again and my little brother Josh but I just had no idea. I had no idea what to do but I wanted to know – I just – I was fascinated on the question what is it that makes people happy and I, for me, felt like I could tell them really funny stories and recount ridiculous things from my day to make them laugh over the dinner table and I often tried to do that to distract them from the fact my sister wasn’t eating. So, I think at a young age I learned the art of storytelling in a desperate attempt to try and distract mum and dad from their misery. But then professionally I went into teaching and was very focussed on pastoral care because of my sister’s journey I guess. But, yeah, it wasn’t until I was living in the right in the thick of the Himalayas that I discovered this community who practice gratitude, empathy and mindfulness every single day. And I remember thinking, gosh, like why don’t do this properly in Australia and came back to Melbourne and then put together a school programme, basically, which was very, well, it wasn’t very popular for 3 of 4 years and now it’s in – I think it’s– we’ve got 300,000 kids around the country practicing this stuff every single day. Which is really exciting for us but it’s also exciting for these school communities that have a framework that I guess teaches kids things they can do every single day to help them to feel happier, to improve their mental health and to cope better in a challenging time. So, gratitude, very simply being the ability to pay attention to what you’ve got, not worry about what you don’t have because we really kind of struggle with that in Australia. And I am stereotyping here but I see it a lot – I do a lot of work in corporate organisations and I feel like the more privileged we are or the more busy we are or even the wealthier we are the more we struggle with the concept of gratitude, which is just – we just find it so hard. Gratitude is when you pay attention to what you’ve got, not worry about what you don’t have and we struggle with that. Like, yeah, this “if and then” model of happiness – if I buy this then I’ll feel happy.
Jenelle: Yes.
Hugh: If I buy this house, if I buy this car, if I get this promotion then I’ll feel happy. None of that stuff works. It’ll work momentarily for a little bit but then, you know, everyone listening to this will have had a promotion at some point that you definitely wanted. How long does that make you happy for, you know? Is it like six months or a year until you see a better job and you think I need that job and then you don’t -
Jenelle: It’s incredible how short-lived it is, isn’t it? But then your just -
Hugh: I reckon I’m being very generous saying 6 months to a year I think. You know, for a lot of people I remember this is back in like – when was this? Probably about well 11 years ago I got a job and I was like, oh this is it, I’ve made it, I’m so happy here. And I think it was 3 months later someone who had a similar job to me got a promotion to something else and I remember thinking I need to get what that person’s got, then I’ll feel happy. How have they gotten to that and not me? And I became very miserable because I was so focussed on someone else. Like it was someone else getting a promotion. It could have been -
Jenelle: It’s all so many conditionals don’t we?
Hugh: Yep, totally. We have so many conditions on our happiness. So, that’s the gratitude piece that they do so well. Empathy, everyone knows that’s when you feel what someone else feels and we’ve got to get better at that if want this world to heal right now. And in mindfulness it’s a complicated one but if I could simplify it for this chat I’d say it’s just the ability to be wherever you are and just to be aware of what’s happening as it’s happening in your mind, around you, all that kind of stuff. And that’s what those people did so very well and that’s what I put into our programmes. So that’s a long answer to your question, sorry Jenelle, but that’s kind of -
Jenelle: Oh well I think that’s quite – I think that it’s quite pithy, actually, because it’s – there’s a lot in there. I actually wanted to stay on empathy for a moment. How do you teach empathy?
Hugh: Well, the really exciting thing for me. So, Melbourne University did a 3 year evaluation of our programme because I just wanted to know is what we’re doing actually having an impact at all and, if not, what are we doing wrong? And interestingly enough they measured the impact of the three in the schools and they found that with over 4,000 kids we couldn’t measure a change in empathy levels because their empathy levels were so high before we even started. Like before we went into the school the empathy levels amongst the kids were so high we couldn’t track any changes. Like they all peaked at – like they all knew what it was, they all reported to practice it all the time, they reported to think about it all the time, which is really, really nice. So that was an interesting finding but the way we hope to continue teaching it is a little bit different to the way everyone else does it. One of the main ways we do it is we teach emotional literacy, which is the ability to label the emotion you’re experiencing as you’re experiencing it. Because a lot of empathy is about looking at someone else and going how does that person feel right now? But if we can’t identify our own emotion, like if we can’t work out how we’re feeling at any moment, like a lot of people can’t, especially men, we’ve got no chance of identifying someone else’s emotion. So from a young age it’s about getting a child to say right now I feel this emotion and then the next step is this is why. And there’s some beautiful resources out there, whether they’re just looking at emoji charts – and it’s getting kids to look at them and say I think today I feel this. Or right now I feel this and oh, OK, so why do you feel that? And -
Jenelle: That’s a really powerful thing to be teaching in young kids, emotional literacy actually. I’m doing work with my team at the moment at adult level. We’re calling it subject-object ??? [20:06] you know when you are experiencing something and then you stop and you pause and you look back on that and go how was I, how did I show up in that, what was I feeling, what was happening to me? That’s a really advanced – or actually it’s quite hard for us as adults, so it’s an amazing thing – maybe it’s easier for kids, getting them to name it earlier, which is fantastic.
Hugh: I think so, yeah. I did a lot of work in a juvenile detention – I’d go in there and work with these boys individually and I was woefully underqualified at the time but I still found myself in this position where I would sit and chat with these boys and there was a huge fight at one of their facilities and I had to go in there and – when it all calmed down – I wouldn’t be much good in the heat of it, but I chatted to one of the boys after. I said how do you feel – how are you feeling and he said shit. And I said, no, no, no, I want to know what emotion you’re feeling and he said yeah, shit. And I said no that’s not emotion, I need to know the emotion. And he said oh, I don’t know, I just feel shit. And I said OK -
Jenelle: Really shit.
Hugh: yeah, yeah, that’s it! And I said why do you feel shit and he said I don’t know, I just do. Then I held up these cards and I flipped through these cards with the faces on them and I said when you see the face that you’re feeling right now point to it. And he finally saw this emoji and it had like the tears emoji like looking really sad and he said that one. And on the back it said lonely. I said oh, it says here you feel lonely, is that how you’re feeling? He said yeah, and I said go on, say it. And he said I feel lonely. And said why? He told me in an instant. He said I feel lonely because mum and dad don’t come to visit. I feel lonely because my mates from school don’t visit me anymore and I don’t have any friends here. So what he’d done was, because he could tell me the emotion, he could identify – he was able to identify the problem and then we cold problem solve it together. So that’s a big one for us as adults as well. Like when we’re not feeling good we often just go – we don’t articulate it out loud but we just sort say to ourselves, geez I feel shit at the moment. But maybe it’s a better thing to go I feel hurt, I feel jealous or I feel lonely or I feel whatever it is and then work out why do I feel like that. And then when you work that out go, OK, well what am I going to do about this now? And I think that is, yeah, to me that’s a really healthy way to approach things. And it’s a lot of us don’t do that because we’re too proud or too busy.
Jenelle: And also I think the times have changed. So if I think about emojis and short-form text, you know, everything’s shorter and shorter and shorter, you just do a sad face or you do an angry face or your head’s blown off emoji or you write LOL, you know that sort of thing.
Hugh: Yeah, yeah.
Jenelle: We’ve now taken shortcuts to expressing emotions and I think that gives us an out from having to sit in it and name it and then go in to interrogating well why do I feel that way? Because to say – just to put a, you know, a sad face or a thumbs down rather than I feel alone, which his a much more powerful word which invites a conversation around let’s talk about that why. Really different, isn’t it?
Hugh: Yeah, it is. And I like that. I think one of the things we have to get better at unfortunately is adapting to technology and I wish a lot of it could go away, social media especially. But knowing it’s here to stay I think a helpful thing to do to people, and I love you brought that up, is to say next time you use – someone says “How are you going?” or you write something and then you use an emoji actually go well what’s the emotion attached to this face and actually say it to yourself. Like I, I’m going to go into my phone right now, and you know how when you go to use an emoji it tells you your recent one, I already know what it will be. Yeah, it’s the hand, you know the hand on the face one? Like, you’re just like that.
Jenelle: Yeah, face-palm.
Hugh: Yeah that. Like I’m such an idiot like that’s been my most -
Jenelle: Yeah. It’s been a face palms [23:31]
Hugh: Yes, yeah, totally. I sort of feel like that’s an emoji we should all be using a little bit more as far as it’s a very vulnerable, like, humble – I’m going off the topic here but I really like that one. I love that as far as, like, I don’t have all the answers, I’m a bit of an idiot, what do you think? It’s really powerful to be – to me that’s like, you know, it’s very humble, I’m interested, not interesting. I want to be interested rather than interesting right now. I think that’s a nice place for all of us to start.
Jenelle: I love that, be interested rather than interesting. And actually one of the other parts to avoiding narrating how you feel, I think, is using your calendar as the proxy for how you feel. So we answer with I’m busy, how are you, flat out, yeah me too, flat chat. That’s not how you are. That’s a state of business for your calendar.
Hugh: Yeah. Yeah we got to stop saying that I totally agree. It’s not an answer to how are you going?
Jenelle: Philosophically I’m interested in understanding how good or realistic it is to pursue happiness all the time? I used to live in the US a number of years. I was always surrounded by ads in the subways and on billboards that were constantly, you know, suggesting anti-depressants for unhappiness. Or, you know, “Feeling sad? Try this”, you know? It always struck me that trying to numb sadness rather than allow yourself to feel those things could itself be problematic. And sadness is a legitimate part of the spectrum of emotions that we, you know, as humans feel. And we never question being happy or excited when it occurs but we always question and try to avoid sadness or feeling flat or down when it occurs. So, just philosophically this pursuit of happiness, how do you temper that I guess on a spectrum of emotions that we -
Hugh: Well the reason you see the reverse is because it’s become this huge business. Certainly people will sell a lot of products saying you do this you’ll be happy. But it’s completely unrealistic and untenable to say that you should be aiming to be happy. It’s just not the case. We’re not all happy all the time and life is full of ups and downs and negative emotions are good for – like the healthiest ratio of positive to negative emotion is three to one. Like we’re meant to have one negative emotion for every three positive emotions because that – it keeps us grounded so we’re not flying around in the wind aimlessly. Like it’s when you feel lonely that is a sign that you need to – that’s your body giving you – or your brain giving you a sign you need to go and make a connection. Like you need to connect. Unfortunately so many of us will grab our phone when we feel lonely and get lost in Instagram. But we – loneliness is a sign we should be connecting. Or, you know, you feel bored, that’s a negative emotion but it’s a good one because it inspires you to be creative, like creative to kill the boredom. Again, so many of us now will just gravitate to our phones when we feel that boredom but we should be creative in that moment. Or put it this way, when I’m asked what I want for my kids, you know, the answer is not I want them to be happy, which it used to be when they were very young. My answer now is I hope that they know what they can do when their struggling to pick themselves back up again.
Jenelle: Mm, that’s really powerful. I want to move on to your connection with sport. You’re involved with so many sporting clubs and so many athletes which, you know, makes sense. Resilience is at the heart of becoming a better athlete or team. Can you share a story or an anecdote of your work that you can point to that has made a real difference to a player or a club. Something that sort of stands out in your mind and go yeah, that’s what it looks like?
Hugh: Of all the clubs that I’ve worked with, and it has been a lot, I felt the club I’ve had the biggest impact with is actually Port Adelaide Football Club in AFL. And funnily enough it wasn’t doing the gratitude, empathy and mindfulness stuff, it was giving those players and those coaches an opportunity to get up and talk about what their life is really like. Like, when you take their armour off and you stop pretending that everything’s great and you actually be real and show up from a place of true, like, this is my story, this is how I’m going right now. On a pre-season camp there was an opportunity for players, it wasn’t compulsory, but if you feel comfortable talk about your journey or how you’re going right now. And some of the stories that came out, really stuff that the players had worked so hard at keeping locked away so no-one could see. We’re talking about things like people showing their depression or parents relationship breaking down, or maybe it’s a – I mean Travis Boak is probably an athlete I’ve had a lot to do with ongoing. He plays his 300th game on Friday. He spoke about the impact of his dad passing away when he was 16 years old and the impact it’s had on him as a person, as a footballer – the good stuff but also the stuff he struggles with because of it. And it was so connecting for the group to hear a perfect – I mean Travis Boak is the most perfect looking person I’ve ever seen. He’s got – you look at him and go -
Jenelle: I can hear a real man-crush happening here!
Hugh: When I’m – I’m not making this up – I get distracted by his beauty. When he’s talking I find myself getting very distracted with what he looks like, just going there’s no more beautiful man on the planet! Anyway, I mean I don’t take any of the credit for his development. Like he has done all the hard work on this stuff and he’s sought out some great mentors and some great people to have conversations with. He’s had some, you know, he has fully embraced the concept of being open and being vulnerable and talking about who he really is and showing up from a place of true authenticity. Like, this is me, not this is who I think the world wants me to be or this is what I should look like as an AFL footballer. It’s just like this is – I’m imperfect, I’m full of struggle but I’m very worthy is kind of the way he shows up every day. Yeah, he’s a great one. But just that club, like, when I first started presenting there I thought, you know I’ve done every NRL club, most of the AFL clubs and I turned up to Port Adelaide, did my first presentation, and if I’m being honest I thought oh, they didn’t like that at all, that didn’t go too well. And then they said no, no, this is just very new for us, the stuff you spoke about. It just – we’re all on board but you didn’t get the usual response because it’s very foreign what you’re doing I suppose. And then did a year with them and they said what’s next? And I said well let’s look at opening the boys up a bit more. I think they need to be a bit more honest with who they are and who they want to be and, you know, owning their story, all that kind of stuff. And they – and so people shared their story in a very safe environment and the impact it’s had on the group, I think from my point of view, from an outsider, is it’s been quite profound. And just when you hear them interviewed after games now they don’t talk about how well they played they just talk about the connection they have as a group, how much they love each other. Them and the Melbourne Storm. But, yeah, the answer is Port Adelaide and Travis Boak.
Jenelle: Very good. I’m just sort of thinking you use the word club and when I’ve asked you about teams and clubs etc., and I can see how these techniques are fantastic and powerful working in those kinds of groups. How do people find that kind of strength and resilience in times when they’re alone?
Hugh: Do you mean like physically alone as far as like -
Jenelle: Yeah. Well, people who aren’t in clubs, coming out of a teaming situation and you’re at home and you’re trying to be more resilient. What do you say to those people who are listening and saying, OK, well great, but I live by myself and I’ve been isolated, what do I do?
Hugh: Everyone I reckon is lucky enough to have one, maybe two, people in their life that they know they can just be honest with how they’re going and talk to someone about it. Identify who that person is or who those people are and don’t – you don’t need to say to them hey, can I chat to you about something I’m going through, something difficult. Just – if you’re in lockdown, say let’s have a wine over Zoom or a coffee over Zoom or a phone call or go for a walk or whatever it is. You know, often people as when you first catch up with them, like – and you need to warm up I think a lot of the time, but someone goes hi mate, how are you going? You can’t go struggling, I’m really in a bad place. But when the conversation gets going, you know, say something like how are things at work or what’s going on at work. Then once you’ve warmed up then you can say I’m really battling with this project, in fact I’m actually battling with XY and Z, whatever it is. So you sort of allow yourself to warm up into the conversation and then you’ve chosen that person for a reason, and just watch what happens. Like it’s – it is so connecting. It is so connecting when you own your story. I mean the only thing I’d say is for everyone who’s interested in this stuff, Ben Crowe who is my mentor and he’s mentoring Ash Barty -
Jenelle: Ash Barty, yeah, yeah.
Hugh: Yeah. And how on earth he’s ended up as my mentor I’ll never understand but he does a lot of space here. He’s got an app called MojoCrowe and he has this formula or this process you can go through where you can work through this stuff yourself so you can really understand your story first before you blurt it out to someone else if you want to get a bit more -
Jenelle: That’s really powerful. He’d doing some work with us as well and he speaks about FOOPO as well – fear of other people’s opinions. That’s been powerful too.
Hugh: Yeah. He’s a beautiful presenter.
Jenelle: Well, Hugh, as you know, this is a podcast about change. It’s all about dealing with change and driving change. Based on your life experiences and your business mission and the work you’ve been doing, what are the lessons that you’ve learned when it comes to managing change and also leading it?
Hugh: Well the first thing I’ve learned is that people are very – I mean I’m not saying anything new here, everyone knows this, but I think people are very resistant to change. As a leader navigating change is all about being vulnerable on the whole process yourself. Like explaining your hesitations and your fears towards it but then human beings love stories. Like we just love stories. We’re captivated by stories. I’ve realised the podcasts that I listen to, the books that I read, they’re natural storytellers. Telling a story rather than saying here’s a process of change we’re going through. I mean that’s all I do when I do my presentations. What I’m suggesting is a pretty big change for a lot of people but I don’t say I think we need to go through a change personally and emotionally. I just tell a whole lot of stories. I tell stories, I tell stories and by the end of it I think people go oh, he’s suggesting I make some changes in my life. But I do feel like we need to get better at telling stories in order to drive change as opposed to saying we’re about to go through a big change, we’re about to go through a big structural change and a big process of change and this might be scary and this might be hard, but instead like here’s this story and here’s some things we’re going to do off the back of it. I think we can frame these things a little bit better and stories, as far as I’m concerned, is the way to go.
Jenelle: I agree. Now changing tack for a moment to your podcast, The Imperfects, and I know that you’ve team up with comedy Ryan Shelton in that. Tell us about the podcast? Why did you do it? Why do you have it in place? Who’s it for? And what are some of the challenges and delights on focussing on imperfections?
Hugh: Yeah. I could talk about this for a long time. For a long time people kept saying to me why don’t you have a podcast and I just felt like I knew it made sense but I didn’t really have a new idea to bring to the wellbeing space. I felt like a lot of people were – there was already some great stuff, wellbeing podcasts happening but I for a long time have been a very big fan of Ryan Shelton. He’s, as far as my humour and my wife’s humour as well, like he’s the person we both – in fact on one of our first dates we talked about how much we loved Ryan Shelton. I didn’t know him at that point when I first met my wife. But fast-forward a year, my wife and I had been together for a year and I was in a café in Collingwood in Melbourne and I saw Ryan. I just wanted to tell him how happy his stuff makes me and how -
Jenelle: Ah, he would love that!
Hugh: Yeah, well I stupidly I went and sat right next to him and I was sitting next to him in a café just pretending I was working and I was like oh, hey just to – I just, sorry I didn’t see you there, but I just want to let you know that when I need to feel happy I watch your videos, and, yeah, I don’t want to annoy you but I just wanted to let you know that. And that’s all it was about. And he’s such a friendly, lovely person he said oh, what do you do? And I said well, I wouldn’t usually answer your question because I feel like it’s boring but I just I go and speak at schools about happiness and I need to feel happy before I do those talks and I watch your stuff. That makes me feel happy before I go to a school if I’m not feeling good. And he said oh, that’s really amazing. And sort of followed each other on social media after that. I mean I actually put up a photo on Instagram of me and him when we first met and I said, oh, I’d love to take a photo so I can show my wife. That was a lie! I just wanted to have a photo with him. Like, I felt like it was too weird to say that to him. But a lovely photo together and then I didn’t hear from him – obviously, why would I? Then four years later, three years later I get a message on Instagram. It just said hey mate, could we please catch up, I couldn’t believe it. I was like -
Jenelle: Oh, did you do a little happy dance when you got that?
Hugh: Yeah, or more than that. I was like – I couldn’t believe it! And then we caught up and he just said oh I’m just going through a few things right now, and he struggling with a few things around professionally - like he wanted to have his own TV show, he wanted to be voted the funniest man in Australia and he thought if I do that, if I get that, then I’ll be happy. And we talked a lot about how that’s not where joy comes from and he’s realised that and he talks about jealousy he was feeling for his best mate, Hamish Blake, and how he actually couldn’t watch Hamish Blake’s stuff, his best mate since they were like 15 because it made him jealous and feel unhappy, and I remember saying to him you need to tell Hamish this. And he said oh, I don’t know about that. I said you need to tell him. You need to tell Hamish – he also said I sort of felt like the only reasons I get opportunities to do stuff is because I’m Hamish Blake’s best mate. And then the only reason I got to work on his shows is because he just feels sorry for me. And he’d told himself these really unfair stories. And I went home after that catch-up, and he was quite emotional, and he told me - I went home and thought, gosh, that was so good for me to hear that. Like for someone like Ryan Shelton struggles with that stuff and I thought actually – yeah I remember thinking to myself I wish everyone heard that conversation. And then I thought well that’s an idea for a podcast. What if we talk to people who are outwardly extremely happy, successful people. Like you look at their life and go I wish my life was like theirs. Just to learn that everyone struggles with stuff. And I told Ryan that and said would you like to do it with me? He said oh, I’ll help produce it, but I’m not going to be on it. And I said why not? He said I’m not qualified. And I said no, but it needs you to make it accessible. You’ll be really funny, people will listen for the humour but they’ll get good lessons in it as well. It took me literally six months to convince him that it was a good idea. And then when he said yeah, I’m in, well lets do an episode next week, and he said no, no, no we need to be a bit more – and I learned from him a lot about professionalism. It took us another year of planning until we then actually did our first episode with Missy Higgins. Like, literally a year later when we were – when he was totally happy that yep, this is the, you know. Well I mean to round the story out with Ryan he eventually caught up with Hamish.
Jenelle: We should round it out because I absolutely love Hamish and I know how this story ends, so do round out how that story finished.
Hugh: Yeah. Well he caught up with Hamish and said to him, he told him. He said I have felt very jealous about your success. I’ve felt like I haven’t been able to enjoy it properly and I’m worried the only reason that you ever had me on the show is because you feel sorry for me and that the only opportunities I get in life are because I’m friends with you, and that’s been really hard for me to sort of – and Hamish, I don’t know the details of what Hamish said but I know that whatever Hamish said made him realise that whenever he works with him it’s because he’s so unbelievably talented that he wants him to be a part of it because he knows it makes his stuff funnier. And that the reason he gets opportunities in life is because he’s naturally extremely funny and people who have him on their shows or give him opportunities, their shows mean a lot. They wouldn’t do it just because they feel sorry for someone. And straight away Ryan was like of course that’s true. Like of course that’s – like, why have I told myself this story for 15 years? And so, yeah, I remember getting a lovely message from Hamish, I think it was Christmas Eve a few years ago, just saying mate what a Christmas present. You’ve helped me and Ryan take our relationship to the next level. And it was just a lovely way to round it out, you know, these people who have -
Jenelle: Beautiful, beautiful story. Oh, love that. Look, and I know, you know, humour is an important part of the way that you talk to kids about mental health. You know I know that you – a lot of, you know, what you do you’ve got them laughing way before you even start speaking about mental health, or naming that. You know, I know you’ve told us the story about how the Ryan thing came about but I wonder whether there was subconsciously there a recognition of the role that humour – or maybe more consciously than that because you said he brings you joy – that recognising Ryan’s element of humour in such a serious topic of mental health and resilience?
Hugh: Ah, humour’s everything – like I grew up in sporting clubs and your currency in sporting clubs is story telling and humour. And I spend the first 15 minutes – or maybe not 15 minutes, I spend the first 5 minutes of every student presentation making the kids laugh because it’s the most powerful form of engagement as far as I’m concerned. The best public speakers in the world, you know I – people say to me oh you should look at – you should watch this TED talk, watch this TED talk. No, don’t watch TED talks, watch comedians. Watch really good comedians. They are the best communicators of a message because when they, you know, you listen to a TED talk you get to the end of it you’re like yeah, I’m ready, what’s the next thing I’m going to watch? Even the best TED talks in the world I’m ready for them to finish by the time that it gets, you know. Comedians, good comedians, you’re shattered when they finish. I’ve seen Billy Connolly – I mean Billy Connolly is my hero in everything that I do. I adore Billy Connolly. I think he is the benchmark of – I mean if anyone wants to learn about engagement or public speaking if you Google “Billy Connolly old lady on a bus” he tells a story that goes for 10, I think it’s about 10 or 12 minutes. He gets side-tracked as he does many times throughout but there’s no better way of communicating something to people than making them laugh and doing it through a story. And I think Billy Connolly is the best at that. But you know I just even as I’m thinking right now I’m just having a realisation, which I’ll talk to my psychologist about, we – mum and dad were obsessed with Billy Connolly growing up and they would – we had all these video cassettes and we’d often watch him and I would – we’d all be on the couch and I’d often be watching mum and dad watching him. I’d be watching how much they laughed at Billy Connolly and I remember thinking right now mum and dad are very happy. And I just think now like I actually learned about story telling also for the power of it, this power of humour, from Billy Connolly. And I mean I was in – I finished a show in Hobart last week, and this is a nice way of rounding this out, but a guy came up to me afterwards. He would be in his 50s, maybe 60s, and he said oh this won’t mean anything to you at all but I felt like I was watching a young Billy Connolly on stage tonight. And I said mate, you actually – I think not in that he thought I was extremely funny, just in that I’d go from one story to the next and I forget to finish the story, then I go back to another one. And that to me was like you have no idea how much that means because I think Billy Connolly was a huge influence on the way I communicate. I’m not saying I’m as funny as Billy. That would be ridiculous claim, but I – I’m clearly not, but I learned the power of humour and story telling through him. And that’s – if you listen to our pod, which I know you do, but if other people listen to our podcast I tell stories, Ryan’s very funny. And that’s kind of, I guess, how the podcast works and hopefully gives people some – it’s accessible and people are able to have some breakthrough moments in their own lives.
Jenelle: I think when I reflect on how you started this conversation and you talked about, you know, your family and you said there was sadness in your family and you thought, yeah, can I make them laugh to distract them, it’s obviously something that you sort of embodied right – and understood intuitively. Words came later to narrate it. Like now even as you’re sort of getting stronger – or sort of evolving the narrative around how or why, but clearly it’s something that you’ve understood right from an early age in your family experience of how do I bring humour and story to this? So the words have come later but I think the intuition was there from the get go. And I do listen to your podcasts and The Imperfects, you have the vulnerabilitea house episodes, which is a play on the “tea” part of vulnerability, grab yourself a cup of vulnerabilitea, which has been really interesting. There are some really confronting questions. Maybe a quick one to finish this is what has surprised you in, you know, one of those episodes around vulnerability? You’ve obviously understood the power of vulnerability but has there been any surprises in doing those interspersed episodes?
Hugh: My little brother, Josh, who started off – he’s on the podcast now with a microphone, he started off as you know just as our producer in the background and he kept having really insightful contributions throughout. And then we said we should give him a microphone just in case he’s – and then he then had to do – well, he didn’t have to, he said I’ll do an episode of Vulnerabilitea. And we said you don’t have to and he said no, no, I want to talk about it. And so he told this story that I’d never heard about before about how he stopped writing song lyrics when he was 22 because someone found his book that he used to jot notes in they all took the piss out of it and he was – he stopped writing at that very moment. And I didn’t know everyone could do vulnerability but what my brother did was he just told a story from his life that was a very vulnerable story and it was incredible. I mean it inspired Missy Higgins of all people to reach out to us to say I want to do this again, I had a similar experience. And it’s just so – it’s so connecting and anyone can do it, I’ve found. To me that was my favourite episode we’ve ever done. That’s what’s surprising, right, is that anyone can do it really.
Jenelle: One of the takeaways for me was, I mean you were half finishing his sentences saying I can tell all your stories, I know all your stories, and then he told the story and you were like, whoa, I didn’t know that, or I didn’t know it had that impact on you. And the take away for me was we should never be so familiar with people that we feel like we already know their stories. Back to your great point earlier around be interested over interesting. To me that’s where you start to learn and unpack this. So I thought, you know, I just wanted to share that with you as someone that was listening to you. I was like wow even his brother was surprised and you guys are obviously incredibly close. And to me it made me think oh my God, what else have I not asked my brother or sister and have I assumed away so much because we’ve grown up together our whole lives, you know?
Hugh: Yeah. Well my brother and I are like – he’s my best friend and I thought we couldn’t get much closer but this podcast sharing his experiences like when I was in the thick of like really struggling, it was about a month ago, and said I’m not going too well, just to bring it back to the start of our chat, he didn’t know that. And I told him in that chat and he has just been so attentive to me the last couple of months and he’s one of the big reasons I’m feeling much better. So, yeah, it’s incredible the power of vulnerability, it really is.
The Last Three – three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: Hugh, I always finish with The Fast Three and one of Fast Three is if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be?
Hugh: It’s at the end of a movie – I’ve now blanked on the movie name as well – Jojo Rabbit is the movie, and the quote is “Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. No feeling is final” and I think remember that right now. No feeling is final. That’s it.
Jenelle: What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
Hugh: I am reading Becky Lucas’ book. Betty Lucas’ book is called “Acknowledgements”. I’m actually reading it for the second time it’s so good. Very good comedian, gifted comedian but I don’t where the – it’s just come out. I don’t know where you find her book as in a book shop because it’s actually an unbelievably good self-help book. She would never say that’s what it is but it is. It’s also a very good – a great memoire to date, I guess. But I’ve learned so much from her book, it’s really been really nice. So, listening to my favourite podcast is one that I’m not even going to recommend because I think most people won’t be interested in it, but it’s called Shoe Geeks, because I love running and it’s all about the shoes that people wear when they’re running and it’s – I don’t think it’s got a huge audience because it’s very niche, but that’s what I’m listening to. What am I watching? I’ve just finished watching it for the second time, it’s Love on the Spectrum.
Jenelle: Oh, I love that. I love that too.
Hugh: Probably the best TV show I’ve watched in my life.
Jenelle: I just love – that brings me joy. Now, finally, what is your superpower? And this can be something that’s additive to the world or an absolutely useless party trick.
Hugh: My superpower is when someone is what do you think the time is and I haven’t looked within an hour I can almost always do it within a minute, I’m so good at it. If I wake up and I just the second I wake up I go I reckon it’s 10 past 7 it usually is.
Jenelle: If that’s the case then I’d best wrap up this call because you would be very aware that we are at time. Thank you for giving me the heads up about that. I really, really have enjoyed the conversation, Hugh. I always say that there’s lots of take aways and people take away different things from different conversations but for me I have really – it’s been super helpful to be reminded of permission to say I’m not OK and the importance of validating it when people do do that before we try to rush to solutions. I loved the reminders about gem [47:32] and gratitude, empathy, mindfulness, paying attention to what we’ve got not what we don’t have. I loved the conversation about emotional literacy and being able to name your emotions. And curiosity, you know, being interested over being interesting. And I think, you know, the power of owning your story, the power of leaning into story telling for driving change and the power of humour in driving change as well. It’s been a wonderful conversation, Hugh. Thank you so much for your time.
Hugh: Jenelle, it’s an absolute pleasure and congratulations on all the stuff you’re doing and all the work you’re doing. I think it’s incredibly impressive.
Jenelle: Ah, thanks Hugh.
The Change Happens podcast. From EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
End tape recording

Sally Capp
Lord Mayor of Melbourne, City of Melbourne

Holly Ransom
Founder and CEO, Emergent

All of us want the opportunity to earn a living.
All of us want the opportunity to feel fulfilled.
All of us want the opportunity to belong and be included.
All of us want the opportunity to be able to realise our dreams

There are certain conditions then that we need to create in the world to make sure all of those things become possible.
Jenelle: You’ve traversed so many things. You’re working in sporting arenas. CEO of your own organisation. You co-founded the energy disrupters forum in Kalgoorlie back in 2019. I feel like there is a question to be asked in how you find the time but that’s not the question I’m going to ask you. Instead I’m interested in understanding how you’ve made the choices about where you’ll put your time and energy.
Holly: Awesome question. I want to stress as well I have only learnt how to get this right for myself through getting it wrong. I think again I would probably argue it’s not a destination it’s a journey in the sense that I’m still continually refining it because we always face choice points in life. I feel like I’m recalibrating around some at the moment again because there is new opportunities that are coming forward and you are starting to think through ‘Ok what is the criteria of this moment in this point in time. I mean that I’ve probably given a little bit of an indication to my answer.
I think one of the most powerful things that I’ve learnt and I credit Layne Beachley a great mentor of mine for really teaching me this idea and really holding my feet to the fire on it as well – is the power and importance of your choice criteria. Or you filter criteria. So just like you wouldn’t want to make coffee with an old filter in the machine or you wouldn’t want to drink water from a jug that had a very old filter in it.
Holly: That idea of making sure that you’re updating what it is that are your criteria for deciding. As life evolves, as your circumstances change, as your priorities shift, whatever it is that’s the catalyst. Making sure that you’re continually agile with what they look like.
Like the decisions I make now are fundamentally different to what I made 3 years ago, 5 years ago and so on and they’ll be completely different again.
Jenelle: Based on changed criteria?
Holly: Totally and also by of virtue of progressing more time, more opportunity, more experience we naturally get the opportunity to make different choices.
So the thing I always say to people is know what matters to you in terms of how you want to navigate opportunities. For example, there are some criteria that are just basic entry tickets to the game.

One is to say yes to something it has to be aligned with my purpose. I have to believe that it’s making a contribution to what I care about most in my ‘why’.
The second thing it has to be values aligned. So I have to like the way whether it’s an organisation. Whether it’s individuals. The way they go about their business. The way they conduct themselves. What they stand for. I get approached all the time by companies and organisations that I have a complete ethical disagreement with and I won’t ever work for them. Despite how much they might want to dangle things in front of you to try and get you to do so. So that’s really important to me particularly in this day and age, trust and reputation are everything. So it’s really important that you safeguard what matters to you most and so for that for me is a second one.
The third thing is I’ve got to enjoy the people. Life is too short to be working on things they aren’t purposeful and to be working with people that you don’t enjoy working with. So I’m always interested in working with people who stretch me. Who have a good sense of humour. Who and said already values alignments but who are going to bring out the best in me and who are really good at what they do. I’m getting to learn and benefit from the incredible capability they’re bringing to bear on a project.

So for me there some of the criteria that have never changed in terms of those three. Then once we’ve got entry ticket into the game then you’re thinking about other things. Have I got the capacity on my plate to fully say yes to this for example. Or if I added this in I’m just going to be stretched too thin to be able to have an impact on all the other things I want to do.
Jenelle: Speaking of some of the choices that you’ve made. In 2015 at the age of 25 you decided to go out on your own. You were in corporate roles before that and you started a company called Emergent. What made you decide to do that? What was the filter criteria back then that you had for yourself? What did you learn about yourself as a leader in those early years perhaps?
Holly: It takes me back. It’s incredible to think how long ago that is now to. It was terrifying at the time. I remember people thought I was ludicrous.
Leaving a really good role with a very stable trajectory in front of me. To step out and do something that I had no idea if it was going to work or not. But I think the thing I remember quite vividly talking to one of my best friends from my early working career, Christine. She said “This is the right time in your life to go for Plan A”.
Holly: Her comment was really around “Don’t make your Plan B, your Plan A”. As in if you need to different points of your life, if it doesn’t work anything like that you can find a way of making a Plan B work.
I don’t mean that disrespectfully to any of the organisations I was working with or talking to at the time. I mean that more in the sense of what lit me up and what felt really purpose aligned.
Also I think I just had this want to take the risk. To see if I could do it. I worked in really structured environments where the cadence of the organisation – once you learnt that you knew how things operated. There was just this piece around the whole blank page that came with having to go out on your own that was terrifying but also really exhilarating and I think for me at that time I didn’t have kids. I didn’t have a mortgage. It was that perfect moment in my life to go “Why not?” Why don’t I give myself a year and see if I can do this and if I can’t I know it’s not for me or I know that I’ve got to go and do something else and no dramas. If that’s what happens, that’s what happens.
But yeh I look back 6 years now and I go “Wow that’s been a hell of a ride”. I think the thing that was really interesting and probably the biggest learning curb for me about stepping out into doing that was I didn’t help myself with how I started in the sense that I had really high bars for the sorts of results that I wanted to see myself hit. I think I was almost paralysed by not really knowing how to go about it but feeling the weight of expectations. The sort of goal setting that I would have been quite comfortable doing in a world where I knew how to operate but here I needed to take the pressure off. The best thing I ever did was say to myself “Year 1 all I want you to do is find a way to make the money you would have made if you had stayed in the role you were in”. By the end of the year have a solid business plan what you are going to do moving forward. That was the best thing I ever did cause it completely took the pressure off.
Jenelle: You were breaking it down into small bites again.
Holly: Totally and it allowed me to not know. It allowed me to go and ask for help cause I didn’t have to know. I had 12 months to get that sorted out. It’s one of the things that I see paralyse a lot of executives and leaders I worked with who are in companies who’ve been doing things a certain way for a really long time and who are now on major transformation and change journeys. I speak from an experience. It’s flipping terrifying being a beginner when you’re really used to kicking it, or knocking it out of the park or whatever you want to call it every day of the week in your whip house.
So we’ve got to make it easier for ourselves and for others to be a beginner. We’ve got to make it ok to say I don’t know and it is absolutely ok to say I know don’t. We need people who are comfortable asking questions and in fact the best leaders are the ones who ask the best questions and who then can go on a journey of developing a process that arrives at the best answer.
So that’s a big swap that I think we’ve got to make in the way that we are looking at the world at the moment.
Jenelle: It’s such a necessity. I think anyone who is claiming to have the answers in today’s world where there is so much complexity and dynamism and change and interdependency, I think we are probably calling BS on it anyway. Questions are absolutely at the forefront of us seeking truth and making sense of the world.
Speaking of terrifying choices – there are so many.
Holly: Where are we going here!
Jenelle: I want to pick up on your book. You took on the challenge of writing a book about leadership which arguably is one of the most crowded spaces on the business and management book shelves. What motivated you to write your book? What did you think that you could bring to that? That sounds like a loaded question. I know you brought it. What was the gap that you saw and said “Yeh you know what I’m going to be writing about this.”
Holly: You mentioned that I’d spent the last 2 years doing my Masters at Harvard and a lot of my focus in that study was on public leadership and spending time learning at one of the world’s best institutions and obviously doing a lot of reading and a lot of looking through the leadership library. I was quite astounded by how lacking in diversity leadership literature was. It was overwhelmingly white male politicians, elite sport coaches, navy seals. That type of profile. There was a real lack of generational and cultural diversity. There was a real lack of gender diversity. People leading across different sectors and leading in different ways. Different size organisations – movements not just large companies, non-profits, you name it, so for me there was a real want to disrupt the narrative.
I’m a big believer that’s part of where the change begins. It’s allowing new thought processes to happen. If more of us can read things and go “Oh wow that’s what leadership can be”. “Oh wow that’s what a leader can look like”. Then more of us are going to challenge ourselves to go “Hey well maybe I can do that”. “Or maybe I’m not too different from the sort of person that can make an impact on that issue.”
So that was a big motivation, was going I want to change that up. There are 60 case studies in the book. They’re equal gender split. All manner of sexual orientation, cultural diversity, 42 different sectors. Leaders in their 20’s. Leaders in the 80’s, and I’m really proud of that diversity that I’m bringing to the conversation. I think it’s enormously important in this day and age. It was a really great opportunity for me to consolidate 10 years’ worth of leadership research to reach out to some incredible leaders that I’d always wanted the opportunity to interview for this purpose as well as ones that I historically interviewed. Pull all of that together into a book that I hope can make people wherever they are and help them start. Whether it’s aiming that little bit higher. Whether it’s moving that little bit faster. Whether it’s driving change that little bit deeper or standing exactly where they are, as exactly all that they are and owning that.
Jenelle: Well I have to say Holly that I have read the book and for those who haven’t it’s called ‘The Leadership Edge’. It is a fantastic book. One that I would highly recommend. Very rich with insights. Massive congratulations to you. It really is a masterful contributor to the leadership management bookshelves I would say.
One of the questions you ask in your book is “What is the most valuable piece of feedback you’ve ever received?” and “How have you fed it forward?”
So I want to turn that question on you. What’s been yours?
Holly: So many bits of feedback. It was both the combination of feedback and self-reflection, what was the most profound change I’ve made in the way that I interact with people and what prompted that.
I think it was an observation certainly some had made of me in my early 20’s. I was really not great at being vulnerable. I was really not great at opening up and sharing candidly and being real about what was challenging, what was hard, what was going on, it wasn’t what I grew up with.
Holly: It’s always funny the standards we put on ourselves that we never extend to others. Like I never would have not wanted others to share that sort of stuff with me but when it came to me personally I had this view that was weak or that wasn’t what you were meant to do. That took a lot of unlearning. A couple of people who said to me “you got to let me in”. “You’ve got to show me a bit more of you” and people said it more directly than that too. It takes sometimes a couple of times of hearing that and I think also it takes sometimes learning that the hard way. It’s a pretty hard way to live not being vulnerable because when you have to give off .. we have to try and live in a way where you don’t allow yourself to express emotion or suggest anything is getting to you. It’s pretty dam unsustainable.
So I think the biggest feat forward for me was doing the work to change that and it started with the people I was closest to and trusted most in terms of offering more of myself, letting people in, reframing actively vulnerability as a strength not a weakness. All those sorts of things. I think probably that’s probably been the most profound change for me.
Jenelle: I have no doubt about that and I guess perhaps in one of the rawest displays of vulnerability I know that you’ve spoken publicly about having had a period in your life where you struggled with depression. I’m thinking about that in the context of the pandemic where so many have struggled with their mental health. Many refer to it as the shadow pandemic. Can you talk us through some of the strategies that you use to manage your mental health?
Holly: For me when I look back at that period - I’m very fortunate as challenging as that period was all those years ago, I did the work at the time to really re-make foundations and I’ve been very fortunate (and I know this is not everyone’s experience of mental health) and I’m always very mindful when I talk about mental health to be clear that everyone’s experience is different. So please take this with a grain of salt and think about it in your own context, but for me one of the things that was clear when I hit the wall and got diagnosed with depression was I was really living in an unsustainable way.
Part of that was being completely invulnerable and not letting people in. That is not a way to live. Part of it was managing time and not managing energy. Seeing 24 hours as a challenge for how many things I could fit in versus this idea that actually I need to be alive to my own energy levels and what activity deserves that energy and having balance and mindfulness and all those sorts of things.
At the time, I can’t recommend to people highly enough – getting good help. Getting people that you trust around you to help you through that period is absolutely critical and I’m indebted to the people who helped me in that period of time.
I think the second thing is, in the moment that you’re in it, there is a need to be selfish and by that I mean you only have to tell the people that you believe can help you get better and that was a big thing for me. There was some people that I loved that I didn’t bring into that tent because I knew them asking or them being worried wasn’t going to help me get better. I think you have to be really mindful of who supports you. Then you learn to be really ruthless with your energy and your decision making. One of the mantras I developed at that time is I’ve got to be strong enough to walk away from people and things that no longer serve me. That was in part from a reflection that when I hit the wall there were a lot of people that I expected to be there that weren’t. There were a lot of people that I clearly… a lot of opportunities sorry that I worked myself into the ground for that certainly weren’t worth what that cost me, and that’s my fault I’m not putting that on anyone else. It took that for me to create that awareness of actually to the point of what we talked about earlier, I’ve got to develop a new set of filter criteria, cause otherwise I’m going to end up here again.
Holly: So working on, firstly getting yourself well. That’s the most important thing whether you’ve got to take some time for you. Whether you’ve got to find ways of inserting more joy into your life. Doing more of the things you love or a combination of both. Whatever works for you that’s really important. Then I think it is resetting filter criteria and making new choices for yourself and starting small if that’s what feels more comfortable or some people make whole self-changes cause that’s what’s needed. Only you will know what’s right.
Then I think for me the most profound change and I write about it in the book at length was learning to manage energy not time. When I think about what’s allowed me to sustain a really good mental health state from that point forward, it’s knowing myself better. I think we’re really good at masking stuff whether that’s drinking 5 coffees to get through a day. Whether that’s a few glasses of wine at night to calm the head down. There are ways of pushing through if we want to. So what I’ve tried is to become really good at is tapping into just myself and listening to myself and going “Ok in a day I know when my natural energy peaks are – like when I’m high energy” “What activity deserves my high energy periods of the day?”. It’s not my email.
It’s not the people who don’t give value back to me in the way that I give them value.
The thing I found really encouraging about the research – this work that is coming out now around micro habits, cause I think one of the great barriers often to how mental health is people go ‘Yeh great but I can’t find 20 minutes to mediate’, ‘or I can’t go to yoga for 1 hour’ and for some people I know that’s very real. I’m not making light of how challenging this is to juggle some of people’s realities. The thing is encouraging for me about the micro habit stuff though is it can be as simple as 10 deep breaths.
Jenelle: That’s it.
Holly: It can be simple as getting up and squatting in between your Zoom meeting or going for a 3 minute walk around the block and you can start to see the physiology benefit. Be as simple as writing a gratitude note every day cause we cannot have negative thoughts coexisting with gratitude. So think about those really simple things that you can insert as circuit breakers. Start there if nothing else and then think about those foundational anchor habits that you can build that really help you be your best you.
Jenelle: What a great set of practical things to consider for health support, I love that.
The Last Three – three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: I’m going to finish with the Fast Three that I always finish all of my interviews on. So really quick, sort of gut responses to these questions. What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
Holly: Jane McGonigal’s book on Gaming that’s the one I’m reading at the moment.
Jenelle: Very good. What’s your super power? There seems to be many but this can be something that’s hugely additive to the world or a useless party trick.
Holly: I actually need more useless party tricks. I can kind of still juggle but not all that well. I would say my super power is questioning.
Jenelle: Yes it is. If you were going to put a quote up on a billboard what would it be?
Holly: One that’s on the background of the computer that I’ve had forever. It’s sad actually! The devasting part of writing my book was finding out that this isn’t actually attributed to the person I’ve always attributed to!
Jenelle: Oh awkward.
Holly: So that’s sad! But the quote is “Never doubt that a group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” So it’s attributed to Margaret Mead. Apparently that cannot be verified but I’m not sure who I’m meant to attribute to in her absence. So that would be my quote.
Jenelle: Oh you can claim it if you like! Holly, listen there has been so much. If I thought doing your intro was a challenge and doing a wrap up of this conversation is probably of equal levels for me. No doubt lots of people will take away many, many different things but for me what’s really stood out is the power of looking at role models far beyond the traditional leaders that we probably looked at. The broader architypes of leaders and the role that we all have to play in leadership. The power of collective leadership and the story of teams.
I love you breaking down change. Break it down to small bites. Make it fun. Learn from others. I think your message around evoking the ‘Why’ of others is so important, as is the point that we have more that unites us then what separates us.
You have had a wonderful way of shining a light on what it is that’s common amongst us all and then driving that to action. I’ve loved understanding about making choices being a skill. Being clear on the criteria you make for your choices before you go and make those choices and safe guarding what matters to you.
You know if your purpose is to give people the tools to be the change then you are most certainly doing that on an every day basis and you made the comment about your grandmother, being the point the world was so lucky. She made me people feel like the world is so lucky to be doing what everyone else is doing but I would say on behalf of the world that we’re so lucky that you’re doing what you’re doing and thank you for your incredible leadership and the game changing stuff that you do out there every day.
Holly: Thank you so much for having me Jenelle and that means enormous amounts. So thank you for your very generous words.
The Change Happens podcast. From EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
End tape recording

Christine Nixon AO QPM
Former Chief Commissioner, Victoria Police

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: Hi. My name is Jenelle McMaster and welcome to the Change Happens podcast. Conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today I’m joined by the first woman to be appointed as Chief Commissioner in any Australian state police force, former Victorian Police Commissioner, Christine Nixon. During her tenure with the police force, Christine focused on increasing female representation in police services, and she ushered in a revolution in structure of policing as an occupation for women. As a result, Christine has been recognised for an outstanding contribution to policing in Australia, and was awarded an Order of Australia earlier this year. She’s a champion of social justice and is vocal about the rights of women and minority groups. Christine actively rights on policing issues and has been a lead investigator on several Australian research council grants. She has sat on boards, she has a charity, she’s co-authored two books, she’s a lecturer and a change agent. As you might expect though, given the field that Christine lead in, and the time in which she lead, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing and Christine has had to face many a challenge often very publicly. So clearly there’s a lot here to explore and I’m keen to get into it so let’s just jump right on in.
Hi Christine, thanks for joining me today.
Christine: Nice to talk with you, thanks.
Jenelle: I want to start, if I can, with just helping the audience understand, I know it’s some time back, but your early days as a child and adolescent, and what influenced you to join the police?
Christine: So, long time back, grew up in the ‘60s in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, a great part of the World I have to say. I suppose when I got to the point of thinking about what I wanted to do when I grew up, so to speak, at the end of high school, I didn’t really like the choices. In those days for women going to University for me was not an option, for a range of reasons including cost but I didn’t want to be a secretary, nor a teacher so, my father was a police officer so I though why not. And I said to him one day I’m going to join the police and he said well you can’t. And I went, ok. Being 18/19, father says you can’t do anything, then you probably kind of go ‘why not?’ So that was really the start of it. I’m not I was absolutely driven to think about joining but it became, as I talked to different people, it seemed to me to be something that I really wanted to do.
So that was in October ’72, I actually entered a class in the NSW Police Academy. One of two women out of about 80 in the class and joining what was then 130 women out of 8,000 men in the NSW Police.
Jenelle: Wow that’s pretty staggering stats. I do love the idea of your Dad saying well you can’t as being some kind of motivation for you and I suspect that those words echoing over the course of your life stayed true as a motivator no doubt. As you say, one of only two women in that batch of 80 that you joined in NSW, what were some moments that stand out in your mind in those early policing days?

Christine: I think it was interesting time because it was the ‘70s and so it didn’t really dawn on me to start with about what was possible. For me it was good pay actually for women, good conditions and I really hadn’t explored what was the opportunities. But I suppose one of the significance pieces for me was, so I went along to get along. Which is I think what a lot of people do to start with, you keep your head down, I was pretty fit so none of the training was a problem but of course the choices of where you went after you finished training were, for women, very limited.
So I suppose I went and did school lecturing, which was kind of interesting and then we worked sometimes undercover because I was young and 20, long blonde hair and we used to occasionally work undercover without any training of course to do any of that but there you go.
So the turning point for me though, a friend of mine became pregnant and I said to her, “So we don’t have Maternity Leave, what are you going to do?” And she said “Oh well I don’t think we’ll ever get it, so I’m just going to go.” And I said no actually we should really think about this and advocate. In the end what happened is she did decide to go. But for me it started to really form a view about what needed to change around women. I became the kind of head of the Women in Police branch of the Police Association and I was 21. I had to then figure out, you know you get a role like that you then have to figure out what are you going to do and what needs to be done to change for, not just issues around Maternity Leave but lots of other things.
Jenelle: Let’s stay on that. President of the Women’s Branch of that Police Association as you said, how did you figure out what you had to do and how you were going to get on and doing it?
Christine: Interesting is because I was a bit shocked that I even got elected. I mean not only the fact that she kind of talked me into it and said well, you know you’ve got nothing to lose and I think that was the case. She said you’re the lowest of the low, actually her words.
Jenelle: Oh wow, motivating words.
Christine: Which basically was they couldn’t do anything to me.
Jenelle: Right.
Christine: That’s a very powerful way to think, I believe. So what happened was I went and asked the women. A model that I have followed much of my life. I went and asked the people involved. The younger ones, the older ones. Some of the older ones weren’t so keen about looking to change, but certainly the others were. And all they were really looking for an opportunity to talk about what needed to be done and so that was a whole range of things. Obviously Maternity Leave but it was more about lifting up [6:14] that only had certain numbers of women, where you could go, that we should be getting equal training. And so it really started, I think a role. And the other thing of course was outside in the bigger world. The world in the ‘70s was changing for women. And so we kind of partnered with people in Government, outside as well as the Police Association eventually helped us but management started to see within the NSW Police that it was time for change. It’s an interesting model, asking people what do they want and then you start to really get focused on what needs to be done.
Jenelle: Were there any moments maybe in that time when you were with the Police Association that were like “oh I did make change happen”. That served as something of the fire in the belly that you could do that. Is there anything in particular?
Christine: Oh yes, absolutely. The point when we got quotas lifted, when we did actually get Maternity Leave. They’re all the kind of things and of course we got women to be able to work in Operational Policing and actually I was one of them. Hadn’t quite necessarily planned that it would be me but, you know, you have to jump in yourself and put your money where your mouth is somewhat. And so I think, that was that time so I did see that change. It doesn’t all work perfectly but, and as my career progressed over time, I started to see that you could bring about change. And I think you do have to take the successes as you get them and they often spur you on to try for more change.
Jenelle: Speaking of successes then, you were appointed as the Assistant Commissioner the NSW Police Force and then you rose to the ranks, of course, to the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, I’m sure you’ve been defying the odds for that gig in all manner of guises. Whether it’s being a women or whether it’s being from out of state, how did that come about? They are big moves Christine, how did it happen?
Christine: In many cases I often say to people there’s all that experience and ups and downs that occur before you get a sort of prominent role like that. But certainly for me I progressed in the Police and studied and gone overseas, worked a bit with the London Metropolitan Police and then eventually came back. Had a few ups and downs with the Government Administers but eventually I learned about how to manage people and then took on a prominent role in reform in Human Resources in NSW and then had a run-in with the Commissioner at the time and so it went. Eventually I get a call in January 2001 from my father, then one who’d said there was no future really and I shouldn’t join, he quite dramatically changed I think by that stage and he said there’s a job for you and I hadn’t even thought about it. I was happily the Regional Commander in the South Coast of NSW, we had a farm in Cobargo on the South Coast and an apartment in Wollongong and it was just a really lovely life with about 1,00 police that I worked with. He said to me “Look I think this is your job, the Government’s changed, they’re looking for someone different, it could be you”. And I went “Oh I don’t think so”. So anyway, he eventually, along with my husband, encouraged me to apply and that’s what I did. I dragged out an old application that I had, back sometime before when I though about applying for the NSW Police and I put the application in and got invited to be a part of the process.
When I think about it now, and really, Victoria had nothing to lose, in some ways, with me. If it worked out, that would be great as they saw it and if it didn’t it’s just like, ‘oh well we gave it a try’, and tried and true method.
Jenelle: At that time, the institution really was in the spotlight for a whole range, like a series of scandals. Police shootings, extreme cases of sex discriminations, raids. Surely that would have given you pause for consideration about whether or not to take on a role like that?
Christine: I wish I could tell you that it did! It was more, really I went into it thinking it was never going to happen.
Jenelle: Oh, ok.
Christine: I obviously though did what I would always encourage people to do. I did the work. In terms of understanding the organisation I went back, searching through, I got people to send me library materials and some of those enquiries that had occurred. I didn’t really know many people in Victoria. I tracked one women down who has Victorian and she was in Cambodia at the time, and managed to have a chat with her and she was there with a Magistrate and so, I kind of followed that up but I was paying attention to what it was like. Perhaps more I got down the track of the application process and so I think it didn’t really daunt me.
I know policing really well and grew up in it really. Both in a family and then otherwise. So I knew that wasn’t ever going to be a problem. And I had so many different sorts of challenges in NSW, I went gosh, you know, I can do this. And of course only when you are then appointed you think “oh my gosh what have I got myself into?” When it’s announced and you then know this is reality. And you are going to take this role on. It dawned on me once it was announced really.
Jenelle: It’s interesting, you almost gloss over and maybe it’s my read on it but you’ve said words like ‘I’ve had a few ups and downs with Governments and Ministers, I had a run-in with the Commissioner’, like these are just bullet points in the day but they’re big things Christine. What was it about you know, navigating those ups and downs and having a run-in with the Commissioner, what did you take from those things and build into the way that you then operated moving forward?
Christine: This sort of view I said earlier which was really ‘so what have I got to lose’ was part of it. And the other thing I think you have to have is the confidence in your own capacities and abilities. So the two things I think probably, I’m not over confident in that sense but you’ve kind of been through ups and downs and you’ve had different things and you’ve seen a way to go forward. The worst case for me for all of this for different times I had run-ins was so worst case I’m just going to get another job. As I got more senior I could also tell them they needed to pay me out of the contract that they wanted to terminate. So I think that senses of it, and that sense has actually often allowed me to kind of do things and be able to progress. I think you also have to know it’s never a straight line. There’s always diversions. You might take a step back, bit like chess maybe, you’ve got to look how the game’s played and then you might have to take a step back. So when I was in Wollongong in that role in the South Coast, that was really being put off to the side and I had friend who said “You’re cooling your jets for a while down there”. And that’s what I was doing. So I think you realise, it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t upset about changes that happened but I’ve often been able to find the ‘ok, so now what am I going to do with this, how am I going to handle it?’ And I think that’s been a lesson that I’ve learned over time. Maybe your ego’s damaged, your whatever it might be, you’ve got to go ‘ok, how am I going to figure this out, where do I go next?’
Jenelle: That’s amazing. When you took on the Police Commissioner role, did you, was there any sort of change that you at the outset set out to achieve whilst you were in that role?
Christine: It’s kind of interesting, I remember pretty much the first contact and it was just a really minor one but it has significant implications. So what happened was I was going to be sworn in, and this is before I arrived. I got a call from the Deputy Commissioner and he said to me “Christine the Government wants to have a big occasion for you to be sworn in as Police Commissioner”. And I said “Oh really, ok”. And he said “You don’t seem very happy about that”. “No I’m not”. And he said “Well we have a way of swearing people in and it doesn’t involve the Government having this occasion.” And I said “Oh right”. I said “So what are you telling me?” He said “Well I don’t think you should do it”. I said “Well thanks for your advice”. But you might tell them yes, I’m very happy to do that. And I even thought about it, I mean it was just a straight up reaction like that because I thought it was important.
What I was looking for was I wasn’t going to be owned either by the Victorian Police or the Victorian Government. And it seemed to me what I needed to do was directly have access to the community. For them to hear what I thought was important in policing and so we did in fact have this event. But it allowed me to write a speech about what I thought was important to talk about who I was. To make the point “yeah I’m a woman and I’m not going to change. This is who I am”. And that was the point. And also to say, “I can’t do this job on my own”. I’m going to need all the people in Victoria Police, all of the community and the Government to support us, we want to focus on these things that are important.
But that of course laid a foundation that, and I said I am going to go to the members and the community and ask them what they want from us. And so that really started for me a process of wanting to go out. Or signal should I say. That I was going to go out and I was going to ask as many people as I could in Victoria Police what they thought but also then connect with many of the community groups within Victoria to understand what they were looking for from the Police.
Jenelle: And in creating that direct channel to the community, and making yourself accessible in that way, was there anything that you heard from the community that maybe surprised you or you factored into the way forward that you might not have otherwise had you stuck to the way it had previously been done?
Christine: Look I think lots of things actually. If you also think about the time, recently we had the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Well that was within the first few months of me being in the role in Victoria Police. So there was circumstances happening outside, there were community groups that approached me, lots of different groups of people. Gay and lesbian community, various ethnic backgrounds, Aboriginal communities. Some of it I was aware of but some I didn’t really know what that relationship had been with the Police. And if you talk as that as the outside, then inside of course was a lot of people who were very unhappy about the way Victoria Police had operated, its layers and layers of management, its not listening to the people who are doing the job about how things could be done more efficiently. So I suppose what I was trying to do was listen to the Government about what they wanted, listen to the community about putting that as part of a plan for the future and then listening to the members about what was it we needed to get on with and fix quickly. And that really became the agenda for me over the then, well it was a 5 year plan we had but obviously over the shorter term as well.
Jenelle: Well that’s fantastic and actually you talk about the diversity side of the equation and in 2002 you defied critics not only by allowing Police Officers to march in uniform but also becoming the first Chief Commissioner to join the Gay and Lesbian Pride March in Melbourne, pretty historic moment, what impact did that have for you and for the community, positive and negative? What was the feedback and reaction?
Christine: Really interesting. You sometimes do things when you don’t really think through the implications of it. But it did quickly, I agreed after having had a meeting with the gay and lesbian Police and professional support staff that they should march and in uniform and they just asked me would I lead the march. And I of course relatively quickly said yes. And partly that’s coming out of NSW so NSW Police had been involved in the Gay Pride March for years and I’d been a great supporter of them and very much encouraging that to occur and so in some ways I was coming of that base. So I didn’t think a lot about it until it became a prominent kind of issue. And then I had to really think about why and I’m being advised by my media people that it’s wrong by the Government who’s said we want to tell you shouldn’t be doing it. I mean they didn’t ever tell me I couldn’t do something but they really wanted to encourage me and then of course, you know, family in some cases. And then I got 800 emails from an email system we had just introduced in Victoria Police at my kind of pushing and their requesting. And then it was in the media and, you know, ‘don’t bring your Sydney ways to Melbourne’. It became, I went oh I’m not in Sydney any more. So the plusses were way outweighed the negatives. And yes there were people who were not happy with me in Victoria Police. But I figured a long time ago that leadership is not about popularity. I wasn’t looking to be the most popular person in Victoria Police. Because I figured that was never going to be a way to do things.
Sometimes have to make the decision that not everyone is going to agree with you. But what I think many people did agree with that I said that I’m standing up for people who are doing a good job and they need me to do that for them. To stand up for them. And that was both the police officers and professional staff but it was also the broader gay and lesbian community. And the relationship between the police and the gay and lesbian community has been atrocious. And I knew a lot of that history from the ‘70s and ‘80s. And so it seemed to me this was an opportunity now. Not only the march was just really a small symbol, the more important piece was to put liaison officers in place to figure out how we could do better. To attract people to join the Police who were gay and lesbian, transexual, bisexual backgrounds, you know, all of that so they would seeing policing as something they felt comfortable to be part of.
I suppose the one comment which really struck it for me, was I was at an old people’s home for an afternoon tea and a lady came up, she was Jewish, and she said you know “I want to say something about that march”. And I thought “woops I’m in trouble now”. And she said “No you’re not”. She said “You marched and I knew that I could continue to live in this place”. She said “I’m a holocaust survivor and I knew you would stand up for us”.
Jenelle: Oh wow.
Christine: You can’t ever really underestimate sometimes. And you know people got past that. In some ways it carried on a bit more with people who then suggested well the reason I was supporting those communities was because I clearly was a lesbian and I’m not sure what they think my husband was doing but in some cases they said it was a front. And it’s a shame when people sort of go to that sort of level to then say, I said it doesn’t matter what I am.
Jenelle: Even if you were.
Christine: It doesn’t matter. So that was a significant event. But one of I think many smaller and bigger wins that really were trying to change the culture in Victoria Police.
Jenelle: What surprised you when you took on the Police Commissioner role? On the upside and the downside – what surprised you?
Christine: So what surprised me was how willing people were to tell me what’s wrong with the organisation. That was great because and they didn’t seem to see me as someone who would harm them for it or there would be retribution or anything which I think is great.
So they probably saw me as an outsider. I didn’t have any vested interests so they could tell me what those issues were bigger and smaller ones. The other part which didn’t really surprise me but it was a like some of the silliness that goes on in organisations and just silly things that stop good people trying to do a decent job and I’ve more and more watched some of the systems we force people to live within and you just have to say “Did we really do that?” That was often my line. My other line was “Can we just do this?”. Were the two things and I’ve kind of continued that sort of behaviour.
I suppose those two things were not just resonance in Victoria Police they’re kind of parts of many organisations to wonder about how we manage to create such amazing barriers to people trying to do a decent job.

Jenelle: Absolutely. I’m reflecting on your comment when you were in the earlier stages of your policing career and your friend made the comment about ‘you’re the lowest of lows - you’ve got nothing to lose’. Arguably now you’re the ‘highest of high’ and you still manage to use that as a reason to do things so I think you can make a narrative to really support you for driving change regardless of where you sit, but what did you come to learn about power? Maybe how to get it? How do you use it? What did you learn?
Christine: It’s really a very interesting issue and it’s often been – even the idea of power is often been seen as ‘we really can’t talk about that’ cause it’s kind of bad. It will be misused. So there is that sort of a way but I’ve seen it, especially if you think about people wanting to be appointed to different roles or applying for more senior jobs on the basis but you’re being ambitious. I then thought to myself – what I was trying to do and I remember a friend said this once “I’m ambitious for change”. “I’m ambitious for the capacity to bring about change in an organisation or a team or maybe bigger in a community.”
I think to do that though you have to access power. That power comes with a role sometimes. It can come with that positional power at your gill. So it can come simply force of an idea. People will try and take that power away in both settings really. I think you have to think about then how do you get your power back and what’s it like to own your own power. Which is the piece I think is a great space that allows you to be generous. It allows you to support people. It allows you to say ‘No we can’t do that or ‘No we’re not doing that’. I think there is those things that I have been more recently thinking about that is important for people to recognise we do have power and often people try and take it off you actually and disempower you. That’s a sad place.
Jenelle: Well I might use that as a Segway to turning to the Black Saturday bushfires – occurred in 2009. Sadly 173 lives were lost. But it was also a time when you personally faced criticism for what was described at that time as ‘hands off leadership’. You also had to front a Royal Commission. Can you tell me about that time?
Christine: I can and I’m happy to talk about it. I have talked about and thought about it quite a lot as you could imagine.
Jenelle: Yeah.
Christine: One of the things that I’ve been able to do with distance is really think about the time that it occurred. I gave notice to leave Victoria Police in November 2008. I’d been there through incredibly difficult, challenging but also terrific times. But you also know that when you put a lot of effort into developing other people you need to get out of the way and let them continue on. So it seemed to me it was the proper time.
The mistake I think I made at that stage, I gave notice to leave Victoria Police. Told the Government and they were all there and then was going to finish a month later which would have finished me at Christmas time and the Government said “Could you please stay till we appoint a successor” or get close to doing that. I said “Yes”. In a sense is what I call it is there an idea that you leave before you leave. So I’d already started in a sense to turn my head to thinking about the future. What happened of course is then the fires occurred in February so at that stage even that January I was working but I was really travelling the state. Part of the Police tradition is to say goodbye to people and to finish up – just get a sense of where things were up to.
Cause that’s pretty much where it was. I had been the day before the fires I’d been in Mildura talking to them about the arrangements. I knew there was lots of work going on – emergency services and the Deputy Commissioner and a range of other people.
So we get to that day of course and there are a lots of things happening and I was there when I realised it was becoming serious. It’s different in some ways to be somewhat isolated control centre and not really been aware of what’s actually going on around you. So in some ways I guess I misjudged what the responsibility people saw I should have taken. I think there is a series of those things kind of closer to it. Then of course the whole thing after the fires happened – which was very rapid. There were 1,000 fires that day in Victoria and they were being dealt with at various levels by local committees, local communities, local offices as well as regional commanders – they were all handling. It’s a local decentralised model in the make but I was obviously in the centre and for a period of time left the Operations Centre and went home and worse according to many people I went to a pub.
We had also sold our apartment and were leaving the following week and so all of that came together I guess to underpin the problem.

Finally of course I get asked to lead the Bush Fire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority by the Prime Minister and the Premier which again I think is probably the first time a woman has ever done that. So I’m still trying to finish up with Victoria Police so then for the next 14 months I lead the Authority in terms of trying to recover and work with those communities. Then of course we get advised the Royal Commission wants to meet me and talk. That was a surprise because they said absolutely nothing to me before that.
So I guess the question you’re really getting at is What’s the impact? Well, certainly that publicly when I was called before the Commission it was a shock. I was given a short time to prepare a statement because where is this going? Then it started to dawn on me where it was going – pretty much only when I was in the witness box did I start to realise that this was about me. That this was going to be an attack on me as to why I hadn’t been where I should have been. Why I had or hadn’t done other things that day and all of a sudden (probably too late) that’s what happened.
Jenelle: How were you through that period of time?
Christine: Well I do know that you just have to front up so I did. Came out after the Royal Commission – went out the front door, people said “Oh look you can go out the back”, I said “you can’t go out the back, I’m going out the front”.
Christine: So there was lots of media and people calling for me to be stood down as the Head of the Recovery Agency and it really was a whirlwind in some ways, but I did eventually try and take control back and suggest that I was not going to stand down. I had a job to do and would continue doing it. Eventually the Commission released a report some months later suggesting that I should have done better pretty much but you know it was quite damaging to me and what I saw as my leadership. But once you’re in that maelstrom which others have probably been in as well, it’s really hard to find your way out of it and eventually I did some months later I guess.
Jenelle: What was it? Was it just time that helped you find your way out of that? Or was it turning your attention to more recovery efforts? Was it another role? What was it that helped you?
Christine: I think the recovery helped because I knew what I was doing. I mean there was some people in the recovery communities that some of the people in the communities who said “Oh no you should stand down”. But what really got me a bit more focused on what I described is “You have to get over yourself sometimes” is a family who [31.45] took a big public function down in Federation Square and said to media and everybody else “We all make mistakes and maybe Christine has made a mistakes, and she said “perhaps my husband and I have made mistakes” but in this case we just have to get on with it. We want her to stay we want her to help.” The woman making that statement had lost two kids in the fires. I figured to myself she has lost her kids, she has lost other family and friends and what I’ve lost is a reputation so I need to get over it and I need to able to be here supporting those people in the recovery of their communities – 109 committees across Victoria and lead the Authority to a point where my job was done and then someone else could take it over for the next phase. So that helped. I think writing about it afterwards helped. Mind you it might have started the controversy again in some ways but at least I got to put out my view of what had happened and the various players that had caused this to be brought to the fore.
Jenelle: You know it’s very powerful. Time is a powerful healer but also shifting perspective and being clear on purpose all of which you had around you is really powerful. Those Black Saturday bushfires were well over a decade ago and yet there is high resonance of that with so much of what we have seen and are experiencing today around the public expectation of leadership during a crisis. The role of media and shaping a narrative. I’m sure there is all sorts of things that are ringing “I’ve seen this sort of thing before”. What are some of the lessons that you carry with you from that time about leading through crisis and uncertainty that you think are important for us to remember given the times that we find ourselves in now?
Christine: Look I think there is a couple of lessons. One is that crisis doesn’t speak for itself. Part of that is what I learnt is someone needs to be quickly interpreting, understanding and being the face of that crisis is one piece of it. Sometimes people find themselves in that role that they hadn’t quite imagined before but having watched Premiers and others now who stepped up and into those roles – I think that’s an important piece of dealing with a crisis is communications.
Christine: I think the second one is about power of communities to be involved. I think the pandemic has not called on the way communities should have been involved. Local mayors, local politicians, community leaders. I think we made some mistakes by not bringing in – we’ve kind of gone at the national level and I understand that and mistakes but I think we should have really been building the level within communities, particularly those who are disadvantaged or communications issues. So I think communities are important and we should be hearing them and helping them far more I found in recovery and responding to disasters.
One of the things we did with our bushfires. We established 33 community recovery committees. So I think that’s another piece of it. Another lesson I’d say is someone is going to get blamed and that’s just standard. You’re hearing it now really about Premiers – Gladys was on point that the NSW Premier was the saviour of Australia and people not so sure anymore. Same with Daniel Andrews and so it goes.
I think you need to know whatever level you’re at that people will look for a scapegoat sometimes. They’ll look for someone to blame for what did or didn’t work. Very few people get away who have led any of these sorts of circumstances with their reputations intact or their jobs in some cases. I often say use all the resources and all the people you can to find help. People often limit who can be involved but I’ve had quite a lot of experience in emergency management and just asking people – in our case banks, IT companies, consulting companies, you name it, everybody came in and helped just because we asked them. I think also encouraging people to ask. Then keep score. What was achieved so that there is the capacity for people to go “Yep things are improving and changing”.

Jenelle: Yeah that’s an important one because we can lose sight of that when it just feels so relentless and I do think it’s important to stop and recognise what advances are being made. I want to pick up on that point that you were talking about that it’s really hard to come out of these things unscathed. I looked at your website Christine and you had the very accurate words on there which said “Christine has experienced the best and worst of human behaviour. She’s been highly praised and highly criticised but never ignored”. I looked at those words and I was like “What is that like?” What’s it like to be seen as the best. Be seen as the worst. Going from being praised to being vilified and how do you look after yourself through all of that?
Christine: I probably should have added that actually into the comments you just asked me about when there has been a crisis or a disaster cause I think that’s the really important piece that often gets neglected – the bit about your own self and trying to find ways to make sure you do look after yourself. I think what happens though is you just end up running on adrenaline and of course many people who have been involved in a major crisis – there is a model that shows that you’re up and surviving and your part of the group that is surviving and all of a sudden there starts to be a dramatic decline and there is blaming and anger and for some people can be daily really when they might come out of it. I think you do have to look after yourself in it. You’ve got to have a bit of perspective. People around you who are also supporting and keeping your feet on the ground. That’s an important piece of the learnings I had.
I remember going to one group to talk and actually I couldn’t talk. My voice had gone all together and that’s pretty much because I hadn’t had a day off in for five months so my system in the end just shut down. That actually happens to a lots of people. I remember watching when Daniel Andrews fell and there is a sense that said he now needed to take his time and recover. I’m glad he took that time that was needed to recover.
Christine: I think you do have to look after yourself. You have to look after those people around you. We have really good peer support officers in Victoria Police and then we have more of them in the Recovery Authority but you’ve also got to take time for some fun and to lighten up occasionally and try and get a bit of perspective on things. That’s been something I talk a lot about. Some people said but I’m not necessarily I’m good at.
Jenelle: Fantastic! Now as I said in the preamble. Christine you were recently awarded the Order of Australia. Congratulations for that. For your service to policing, women in policing, tertiary education. What did that recognition mean to you?
Christine: Well it was a bit of a surprise. People had talked about looking to nominate me years and years ago and I didn’t think any more about it. Well clearly that bit about the much criticised kind of a bit might well have outweighed perhaps the positive things that I’ve tried to do. But it seems like in this case that’s not been the case. So I found it quite fascinating. I haven’t been to the ceremony to get the award or anything yet but it seemed a nice recognition. Perhaps my family and lots of people around me have said “Well it’s about time”. But for me you put it on behind your name and you think “Oh my gosh look at that!”. It seems to make a difference to some people in terms of the way they see it and see it is as a significant recognition within our Australian community and so do I. So I appreciate it but was really quite surprised.
Jenelle: That’s fantastic and I’m glad to see after all that criticism there is some sort of recognition as well for your outstanding work. Now final question before I move to a more light hearted fast 3 questions. What’s one tip or piece of advice that you might have for women aspiring to take up leadership roles?
Christine: That they can do it.
Jenelle: They can do it.
Christine: Don’t let anybody suggest to you otherwise. You don’t just kind of fix and change and pretend you are anybody else. There are very, very, very many capable women in senior roles with enormous capacity to be able to step up and to make the changes we need in our communities. I would just encourage women to do that.
The Last Three – three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: Final Fast Three for you. What are you reading? Or watching or listening to right now?
Christine: Because we can’t travel anymore and because it was my favourite city I’m reading Jan Morris’s ‘Venice’. I loved my time in Venice a couple of years ago. I’m also reading a thing called ‘The Boys Club’ you won’t be surprised at!
Jenelle: No I’m not surprised.
Christine: Which is about AFL but it’s a very interesting exposé maybe I don’t know what you call it and I’m having a bit of a fun watching Blindspot. I kind of lose it because I come and go on it but it’s quite an interesting story – crime, terrorism. The other one is Virgin River which is this lovely community somewhere in Canada I guess. They’re my current go-to things when I need to do something a bit different.
Jenelle: Very good. What’s your superpower? Now it can be something additive to the world or a completely useless party trick!
Christine: I have to say and I’ve been using it quite a lot lately. I’m very calm.
Jenelle: You’re very calm. Ok well that is a superpower.
Christine: I’m very calm and I try to instil calmness around me and in terms of the people I’m working with, “It’s ok we’ll get there”.
Jenelle: Oh my God we need plenty of that! Particularly in these times. Now if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard what would it be?
Christine: I kind of alluded to this before but I’m not sure whose it is. Again, it is that “To those who much have given, much is expected.” Hopefully people might wonder about thinking through that quote. We are so privileged in many cases and I’m grateful for much of my privilege. I think in the sense of using what you have to the greater good of our community would be part of that.
Jenelle: I think that’s right. For where this opportunity there is also obligation to use that well. Thank you so much Christine for your time. Really enjoyed the conversation and the many, many pearls of wisdom you’ve shared with us. I loved your conversation around you listen to people – find out from those in the know. People in the community. People in the workplace who understand and I love maybe the extremely simple challenge. Did we really do that? Can we just do this? I think there is something that is so refreshing about that. I think whether you have been in the lowest of low positions or the highest of high, you’ve taken from that what you can to drive change consistently.

You have shared wisdom around how to use power and how to use power generously as you clearly have done for the disadvantaged and for local people and communities, minority groups. As a person of so many firsts you have truly been a pioneer and a brave role model. Maybe not always got it right but so powerful for you to share so unruly and honestly those moments. Maybe a moment of misjudgement that has taken a toll on you but you’ve been able to take and move forward and use constructively and we can all learn from that. I think there is no one of us that could claim that we’ve always totally got it right, but my God you’ve got some resilience about you and have clearly been able to front up and you’ve been able to as you say ‘Get over yourself’ where you’ve needed to and absolutely led the charge on what needs to be done. So I wanted to say thank you for what work you’ve done and thank you for sharing your time and insights with me today.
Christine: Thank you Jenelle you’ve been wonderful. Great conversation. Thank you for taking the time to hear the story and to help me unpack it a bit which has been terrific. Thank you for that.
The Change Happens podcast. From EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Naomi Simson
Entrepreneur, Founder RedBalloon, Co-Founder Big Red Group

Intro: Change happens – how we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: This podcast series – Change Happens – is a conversation with senior business leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. When we set out to create a podcast about how we cope and deal and work through change we didn’t expect it to be amid the biggest worldwide change in modern history – COVID 19. In this new world of self isolation, many businesses, particularly, in experience and travel space have had their businesses shut down overnight with the COVID 19 crisis. Others have been able to pivot into new ways of working. So with that context in mind, today I’ve asked founder of Red Balloon and co founder of Big Red Group and Shark in the Shark Tank, TV series, Naomi Simpson, to join me to share her insights into leading courageously during these unique and challenging times. Naomi pioneered the concept of experiential gifting in Australia almost two decades ago. She’s an avid blogger, strong advocate of entrepreneurship, passionate about gifting experiences and during her Red Balloon days, preferred the title of Chief Experience Officer to CEO. Naomi firmly believes that passion, persistence, positivity and purpose foster business success. I’m looking forward to exploring how Naomi and Big Red Group are managing this current COVID 19 crisis and we will absolutely get to that. But first, Naomi, welcome.
Naomi: Thank you, thank you for having me Jenelle.
Jenelle: Pleasure. Who are you and what do you do?
Naomi: Who am I? I’m a – you know I guess if I look at my career, I’m a person who has been bringing people together. And whether that’s the fact that as part of Red Balloon we created a marketplace for literally thousands of small businesses and we connected them into corporate customers and brought them customers or even whether it’s me as a speaker or an author, my job has always been about just bringing people together and shared experience, whatever that experience is.
Jenelle: And how are you at this moment in time?
Naomi: I’m frazzled, confused, worried, anxious, but also tremendously proud of our team and our community and how we are coming together as one. And it’s hard for a person who has always brought people together to know that actually we cannot do this on our own – we have to come together. We have to be a community and we’re all in this together and there’s no out, you know. We have to just face forward.
Jenelle: Yeah, it’s an incredibly challenging time for anyone who’s in the experience and travel industries. Your business is quite unique – you support over 1,800 individual businesses. How have you been dealing with it personally and with your own teams and also with those broader partners of Red Balloon?
Naomi: Yeah, so if you think about tourism and the big players in tourism, we sit at the small business end with activity suppliers who international travellers love to visit and so forth but so do locals. So whether it’s a chocolate walking tour or a didgeridoo lesson. You know the point is that it’s very accessible and that’s what we do is put it all together in a marketplace and make sure it’s quality assured and that it’s accessible. So look I would argue that when this first happened and we watched it on the 11th of March at about midday, there must have been an announcement or something because consumers’ sentiment shifted immediately and we watched it on our website. And we literally just said – where’s everybody gone? Like what’s happened.
Jenelle: Naomi, so what was it on the 11th of March specifically?
Naomi: Well, didn’t really understand it till afterwards. I think that was the moment that the World Health Organisation announced a pandemic and instantly we saw a reaction in terms of traffic to our websites. And we’ve watched it ever since. So that first week was just a state of confusion, denial, it’ll be okay, how can this be happening and really not understanding. And then watching what was going on, particularly with the airlines, was very challenging. And then the next week we kind of said, well who are we in this? Are we going to be passengers or are we going to be participants? And we as a leadership team then set about creating a strategy of our defence position as well as our offence position. Now very hard to be marketing and promoting experiences when people can’t leave home.
Jenelle: That’s right.
Naomi: Yeah, it’s kind of impossible. But
Jenelle: Well especially when you use the word accessibility. If accessible is key to your business and suddenly access has been the one thing that’s been truly cut off, that really is
Naomi: You know I’m a believer in following what is right for our community and so whilst I might be upset and angry and disappointed that 20 years of my life seemed to disappear before my eyes, it’s actually not the case. In the sense that we know in GFC, for instance, that people did still go on activities and experiences and we know we will get to the other side of this and people will really be looking forward to doing things with family, friends and colleagues. So this is a matter of what can we work on in the longer term, strategically, that our balance sheet allows for whilst also looking at short term consumer and customer sentiment with our corporate clients. So this is a balancing act between the right now and the build for the future, so we’re ultimately going to be stronger.
Jenelle: It’s really clear that you’ve leaned right into the environment that we’re in. You know after that sort of first few days or week of – oh my god what’s happening – as you’ve said yourself you’ve kind of really sort of figured out well how do we – do we become passengers, do we become participants? And you’ve really quickly revised your plan, which I can only imagine was already being revised after the bushfires. So you’ve had to revise again and come up with a new communication package, a new set of experiences. How have you been able to so quickly decide to become, you know, an active player in that and what about others who might not have been able to move so quickly - still taking time to adjust. How do you work in with that environment?
Naomi: Well, I guess the first thing is that we as a marketplace were going through a tech transformation anyway. And I have seen that meme going around – who’s driving tech transformation, CEO, CTO or COVID 19? COVID 19 really got us to get – you know get on with it. And so one of the things is that we are physically all working from home like everybody else is and we were able to do that. But our experience suppliers couldn’t do that. They can’t accept customers. So one of the things we did was, first of all, knowing that we are supporting businesses everywhere in Australia was, how can we support them, pivot to having a new revenue stream. And we’ve been working really hard to invent and create the Experiences at Home range. And literally every day we’re publishing about 10 new experiences in that category. The page will be merchandise __ - so that we have virtual experiences and things that you just can’t get anywhere else. Like learning to do magic, or hula hoop lessons or other things. And we have some really fun ones coming down the line. But they’re virtual and you literally could be anywhere. But we did go back first of all to our supply base who’ve been working with – you know some of these people I’ve been working with for 20 years, helping them grow their business. Balloon Aloft up in the Hunter Valley – when we started together they had 1 balloon and had 700 passengers. Last year, together, there was – we had 19 balloons and 23,000 passengers which has a material impact on community. But right now what experience could Balloon Aloft deliver? And that’s been our challenge – is how can we create virtual experiences but also maybe product based experiences that get delivered, such as high tea at home for mum on Mother’s Day and could we get that throughout Australia where you deliver all of those things.
So there’s the, at home delivery - we are going to deliver experience to your home, which might be a gin tasting, an olive oil tasting or something like that. We’re pizza making and that might come with a video or something special to make, You know, so it’s not – it has to be more than a delivery service. It has to be something truly experiential – it has to meet with our brand requirements but also virtual experiences that we can get exclusively. So that was the first thing.
Jenelle: And how do you feel that customers and employee behaviours and expectations are changing? What would you say are the – some of the characteristics that you’ve seen change?
Naomi: How are we changing as a leadership team. We have chosen to be incredibly transparent with our team. Like literally showing them the bridge. Like what is going to be required in terms of savings. What is going to be required in terms of revenue. What’s that pivot point, how is that going to look. And every week we have a complete company town hall. David our group CEO is – are sending messages out every single day. We have a whole rhythm. But it took us some real time to get there. We are in the trenches with them. And I’ve taken an operational role which I haven’t had for a very long time and I’m heading up the – a seven person team in terms of our work that we do with our corporate clients. And so it’s all hands on. And I think that our team have really appreciated that and also that whilst everybody else in the tourism industry – or many were forced to do stand downs, we’re really, really resisting it. So that we can push through and build for the future, beyond, because we know, we know that we will be very busy on the other side and when people go out. So transparency, authenticity. Also that sense of relatedness. Like we’re as scared as everybody else. We are fearful, we are worried, but we also are coaching people around us to only – only work on the things you can control. Don’t worry about the things you can’t control.
Jenelle: I was going to ask you – what do you think the defining characteristics of a courageous leader are? You’ve talked about transparency, authenticity, relatedness. Are there other things as well that you would see as being really critical characteristics for a courageous leader?
Naomi: There’s times for a wartime CEO. And right now our people I think are having comfort in the fact that we have created a six week plan. It’s – you know it’s for us our next key period is around Mother’s Day and so – and that’s in minute detail and actually really gives people confidence that they know their role in that. Where they belong and how to create connections. So it’s probably a far tighter plan than as a leadership team we would ever usually just define. Usually we, you know, it goes off to the teams – this is what we’re expecting as a leadership group and then it kind of comes back. But we’ve been a little more prescriptive and actually what that has done for the teams – they know what success looks like and they know their role in it. And so I think there is a different style right now than we would usually have in terms of the workplace and people are really leading into it.
Cause they go – right, my job is to launch this by the 17th of April. That’s like one thing that I have to get done and I did my piece in the overall puzzle. So whilst it might seem complex, everybody knows what their role is. And that has – and it’s – I promise you – A. wasn’t easy and B. it’s taken this long to get there and I think this is the first week. So we’ve been in this now for 3 weeks, this is the first week that I think the whole business has got a real cascade. The other thing is, how do you give transparency when people can’t see each other, apart from visually. And the other thing that we’ve done is, created dashboard with intention data.
Jenelle: What’s dashboard with intention?
Naomi: Yeah. So intention data is, what are we looking at. So one of them would be traffic to our websites. One would be increased phone calls, one would be increased leads coming into our sales force systems and so forth. And also what people are searching on. So we begin to look at the intention data and what that will help us do is understand and map the change in consumer sentiment, so that we don’t go out too early - if consumer sentiment really isn’t about what we’re talking about right now. So we’re really looking at what that intention piece is. Job Keepers was critically important to consumer sentiment. And I know every retailer has said the same thing.
Jenelle: I love those points and you know it really resonates Naomi when you’re talking about the wartime leader and maybe sort of the six week rolling plan, anchoring milestone to milestone, and Mother’s Day is your next foreseeable milestone. I think the beauty of that and some of these actions that we are doing now and I can totally relate to it for us at EY as well, is in a time of complete uncertainty creating some amount of certainty – with this fit we know – and then giving people clarity on their role in it – allows them to feel some sense of control, where everything else may well feel out of control. So I certainly feel like that’s something that in ordinary circumstances, you know, there might be a bit of rebellion against that but for right now it’s a welcome relief when you can provide that kind of clarity and meaning for people and say – yup I can do that, I can do something with that.
Naomi: I completely agree. And one other tool that we’re using is we’re surveying people weekly because we are really worried about our people being at home for whatever – whether they can’t get work done because – you know – they’ve got kids who are crawling all over them or people who might be feeling isolated. So you know we rolled out a new EAP service and we’ve done a – and obviously our recognition platform is really important too cause we’re asking people for miracles and we have to notice that contribution and make sure everybody in the business can see that and that is where the Ready.com platform has been so incredibly powerful for us. Cause we can’t – we just can’t see it in the same sort of way so we have to be very intentional about how we’re connecting in.
Jenelle: You know you’ve talked about – use the word shared experience you know, a bit, and that an experience is the cornerstone of your business, and the need for people to connect more through shared experience. Now this world that we find ourselves right now is nothing like any standard shared experience we might know. It’s certainly not one where we can come together in any kind of physical way. What are some of the positives that you’re experiencing or seeing as we share this unprecedented moment in history?
Naomi: I think what is exciting for people is they see possibility in new ways of living. I mean, especially, after the summer from hell. Such a frustration about who we were as a people, our climate, our politics, our whatever. But there was this kind of angst and I don’t know aggression and so much of social media – it kind of dictates that ethos. And what we’ve seen is kindness out of this and we’ve seen kindness in a way that we haven’t probably experience before. And you know I saw something, a little piece where the bush – the firefighter was handing the baton to the health worker – your turn now. I think this will bring us together, no matter what our heritage, our background, where we come from, we’re in this together and we are Australians. If we are in this land and on this land, we are the custodians of this land in the sense of, you know, we are all here now and it is our job to look after it. So I’m very hopeful that out of this people will say – actually I don’t need to consume what I was consuming before. I don’t need to transport myself the way I used to transport myself. These are the things that are now important to me, my family, my friends, my values, and so perhaps this is a trigger that will change who we are and how we support each other as communities. So good will come of this, it always does. When we overcome and we work together to achieve something, that sense of accomplishment and pride will come through. Yeah, I’m incredibly proud of the fact that even though the fact that our economy is – who knows what it’s going to be but we have protected our people. Not everybody, but gosh we are far better off than so many other countries around the world. So you know we can be grateful for that.
Jenelle: Absolutely. So you know you talked about your blogs and like I said you’re an active – very active blogger and you recently posted on one of your blogs the three tips on mental health for business owners and leaders as we navigate this time of Corona Virus. The three things you said were: there’s no point blaming anyone, it is unhealthy, we are in it and together we will get out of it; number two was look at the components of emotional resilience; and three, try to have a laugh, humour helps, life will go on. Can you take us a bit more through your thinking around those three points?
Naomi: Yes, look my personal motto has always been - if it’s meant to be it’s up to me. And it’s actually served me really well because you know if we sit in a world of blame or we shouldn’t have, it couldn’t have or they’re not doing a good enough job, whatever, you can’t control that and you cannot ever control somebody else’s behaviour, their thoughts, their actions, their words. It just is. But what you can control is yourself. And you can control the elements of your own life. So I’ve found that, as a younger person, I was always bothered about other people weren’t working as hard as me. But then when I realised it was my choice to work this hard, it was my choice, and then I got a certain freedom about it. And so you know I will look to what can I control and what can’t I control. And when I feel a sense of upset for myself it’s usually that I am worried about what other people are doing, not what I’m doing. So that to me just gives us a framework of freedom of being able to say – well I can’t influence anything that’s on that news and I can’t unsee it either, so I’m going to choose to turn it off and work on things I can control, which might be connecting to family and friends or just going a different way. So that’s why I say that. Don’t blame anybody, don’t blame what you see on the TV, turn it off, do something else.
Naomi: The second one is just that framework around emotional resilience and the first element of that is just about safety. To be emotionally resilient, you know, you actually need to be safe and what does safety mean – it might be physical, emotional or financial, and obviously that’s taken a real battering now. So if we think about as a framework, what would it take for you to feel safe, then that’s a really important element. And get some help around that too. Cause actually some things you can’t fix yourself, so who else could help you? The second thing is about, do I belong and what do I belong to? And this is a really hard one when so many workers have been stood down, how do they stay connected and belonging to something bigger than themselves? And it’s a real question that I have for employers of how do they make their people feel that they are belonging and are important and when they’re not definitely seeing them every day and maybe not even communicating. So that belonging place is really important to us and also that the work that we do, do is valuable and important. So you know with our team, understanding that if you do this job that means these suppliers in Far North Queensland or Western Australia are going to get customers and that’s important to our community. So connecting the dots for people that their work matters. A lot of business owners under incredible pressure, whether it be financial pressure – and some businesses are obviously in growth but those who are in massive growth are also under pressure. So I’m just asking people to be kind to each other. We’re all just humans and we’re all doing the best we can. And the last one is – it is okay to have a laugh. I think now that we’ve been
Jenelle: There’s a lot of memes to help us along with that.
Naomi: I know and they’re absolutely – and I’m - you know I’m really good at circulating them because we’re in this for a long time. You know it might be 3 months, we may have been home for 3 weeks, you know Australians have always had a great sense of humour. So it just is. We can’t fix it but we can play our part so we may as well laugh along the way.
Jenelle: It helps bring levity to a very, very tough situation, for sure.
Naomi: It really does. And it’s okay to have fun in business too. You know it really is, because if it’s all too serious then we’re not nurturing the people around us emotionally either.
Jenelle: I just want to, you know, pick up on a point - you were talking about how you have really – I mean I know you keep saying it’s been – you were slow to move but actually you have moved fast in reframing your products when you think about experiences at home. You’ve been fast to re imagine your business model. Done that a couple of times over now. So you’ve a real history of really successful, disruptive thinking in business and we’re in a time where the world is really craving order and safety and calm and control as we’ve just talked about. But a lot of the solutions that we really need now when it comes to health or social welfare or the economy, does need that out of the box, quite disruptive thinking to get the kind of breakthroughs that we need. I’m wondering whether you’ve got any thoughts around how we strike the right balance between those two things?
Naomi: Yeah, it is a balance and we are very much coaching ourselves that is this an investment we’re making just to try and bridge a gap or is this actually a better way to do this long term. Any step – any investment that you’re making – is it for the longer term and does it – for us particularly does it align to our brand. But one thing that I think our team has just really embraced is minimal viable product. And so, you know, we have kind of got to a point in our business where everything had to be perfect, and right now we’re kind of going, well why don’t we ship it and see what our customers tell us and then we can you know finish it off around the edges. You know so we’re putting a lot of experiences on our website under the Home Range – At Home Range – and some of them may or may not sell and well if they don’t sell we’ll just unpublish them but if we don’t try them. Whereas often we used to be like – ahhh, no that doesn’t belong, we won’t do that. So I think there is very much a yes let’s give it a crack attitude.
Jenelle: Yeah, I really – I mean I’m quite sure like everyone else we recognise that this whole thing is going to create a new – some kind of new normal for us. What do you think is likely or possible would change in the world permanently once we get through this? You know business, government, community, what are some of those more permanent changes that you think? There’s a new world that we’ve seen that we will keep with us moving forward.
Naomi: Well, ironically, I was hosting a trip to Silicone Valley for business leaders and it was entitled “The Future of Work” and we had to push it out until October because obviously we couldn’t go. Oops the future of work happened. Like on the 11th of March – it just happened. And so I think that the way we work – what’s important to us - will really change and I think people will begin to make choices about their life rather than being necessarily – I’ve always done it that way. So I think that what we choose is important in our lives, we’ll adjust and change. So I don’t think everything will go back to the same but I think we’ll be a better place for it.
Jenelle: And if you think about your career, what are some of the changes that you’ve initiated and influenced that you’re most proud of?
Naomi: I guess I’m known as Mrs Small Business. And I don’t mind. In fact I think it’s really great to have an advocate on behalf of small business because – but if you think about what a small business is made up of, it’s, you know, it’s 97% of all registered businesses are small and so it’s everything from the local shop to franchises and so forth. So I think it’s just important – and it’s not – so what I’m saying is it’s not a homogenous group and there’s businesses that are entrepreneurial, there’s start ups, there’s growth businesses, there’s franchises. Not a homogenous voice but I think I’m very good at living in the world of what it is like of the key elements to do with small businesses which always will come back to customer, cash flow and being paid. So I get that and I get it really loud and clear. The other thing is that there is this kind of romantic notion about being an entrepreneur and this life I promise you, isn’t for everybody. That is, the unknown that you navigate and clearly we’re in a completely unknown now. For that reason I’ve been asked to be on certain boards. You know University Melbourne, UTS, I support there, because so many of their undergraduates do want to have their own businesses. I’m happy to be that role model for people but also to speak it how it is because it’s not – not everybody’s on Facebook or Google – in fact it’s highly unlikely and you know so few uni courses - let’s be really real about what this journey should be like.
Jenelle: And look I think you know it’s so fair for you to use the word role model. You’re definitely looked up to by so many businesses, large and small, as a role model and you’ve established a really strong leadership skill set. Can you tell me about the skills that you know you’ve been able to transfer into the various settings that you’ve been in and you know universities and philanthropic space in television, in your own business, what have you taken across and what are some of the skills that maybe you’ve had to change or adapt to suit the conditions and the roles that you’re in – you’ve been in?
Naomi: One of the things that I learned is just one man’s opinion. And what I mean by that is it’s okay for everybody to have an opinion, but it doesn’t mean it’s The Truth, it’s their truth.
Jenelle: Oh that’s a Shark Tank point – I’ve heard you say that.
Naomi: I know and so therefore I’m always looking for proof points. I’m looking for how do we validate this proof point and I do that – it’s like having a healthy scepticism because as a – I’m always a sales woman, I always will be. I’m just always positive and can see the benefits so therefore it’s really important for me to have a healthy scepticism or to challenge. Cause I think that’s why they’ve put me in the room, is to just challenge the thinking. The other thing is I always sit in the customer’s shoes. Like 100% sit in the customer’s shoes and even if it’s something I’ve written, like a blog post, I go who is going to read this and why would they give up their five or ten minutes to read it? What value am I delivering them and how do I want them left?
And I have been writing a bit in the last week or two about who do you trust. When, you know, the internet is full of everybody who’s got an opinion but on what basis, on what authority are they saying that. And it’s – I’m fascinated by people who say – oh and now you can pivot. I’m like it’s really easy to say that, ain’t so easy to do it. So let’s look to people who’ve either done it or the models and the research that sits behind such a statement and don’t pivot for the sake of it because you can put yourself in a spin and not actually pivot.
Jenelle: So I’m going to ask you now to look into your crystal ball. So if you’d just reach under your desk and grab that out for me. What do you think in 5 years’ time, you know, we’re going through the biggest crisis of our lives here. Lots of change going on, in 5 years’ time what are your predictions for society and business?
Naomi: I’m looking to the good life. And I think that we will be far clearer as a society of what the good life is. We’ve had a consultant called Paul Connell help us with this work because we were finding that we just weren’t getting to it and we wanted to really look at what is our path to being – serving an experience every second but sustainably. And so we needed somebody from the outside to come in and just say – well what do you really mean like that. And so I think five years from now is we will as a community understand what the good life is and how that includes people and that is one thing that just keeps me going and why I’m so A) committed to experiences; but B) how we are moving as a society towards that, and what that means. Cause I am passionate about the wellbeing of small businesses. I’m passionate about mental health and the reason is, is because we will get this notion of who are we, what do we stand for, and we believe in the good life. But the good life has to be inclusive and sustainable for many, many generations and our species.
Jenelle: I absolutely love that.
Voiceover The last three, three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: So finally Naomi, three fast questions, more of a light-hearted nature. So quick three. What’s a misconception that most people have about you?
Naomi: That my favourite colour’s red.
Jenelle: I think you foster that one.
Naomi: No, it’s yellow.
Jenelle: Ok. What’s one guilty pleasure and I do need this to be PG?
Naomi: Whiskey – single malt whiskey collection.
Jenelle: Ok and I know you are absolutely exceptional at so many things, but what’s one thing that you’re hopeless at?
Naomi: Oh hopeless – I thought you were going to ask me about my painting. Cause I really covet that I will give all of this up and be an artist one day.
Jenelle: Oh so you’re good at that too, that’s annoying. No, I need something that’s hopeless – you’re hopeless at.
Naomi: What am I hopeless – oh look given that I’m a writer, I’m a really bad speller.
Jenelle: Thank god for spell check hey.
Naomi: And because I think so quickly I just – it’s like I can’t keep up with it. So I’m ashamed sometimes at the emails that I’ve written. Cause when I’ve read them back I’m going – actually doesn’t make any sense. Cause my words tumble over each other and I’m quite ashamed of that actually. Yeah.
Jenelle: Well you seem to do alright. So Naomi massive thank you from our show – should I call you Mrs Small Business. Massive thank you. Some key takeaways from me is you know listening to you, I think you have real clarity on recognising what you can and can’t control and focusing your efforts in the areas where you can control. I love the recognition that different times call for different leaders and wartime leadership is such as we find ourselves in now requires maybe some of those much more granular planning, giving people a sense of clarity and control over the small milestones ahead and there’s no question I’ve come away feeling unbelievably optimistic and as you know as you point out, you see the possibility in everywhere. And I too have a vision for the good life that you speak about. I too think that this is around the balancing act of the short and long term and I have a desire to be a participant and not a passenger in this. So massive thank you, it’s been a real pleasure.
Naomi: No my pleasure, thanks for having me, Jenelle.
Voiceover The change Happens Podcast from EY a conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Jono Nicholas
Managing Director and Founder, The Wellbeing Outfit

Dr Kirstin Ferguson
Company director, author and leadership expert

Intro: Change happens how we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight in to how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad, and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and I am the Managing Partner of Markets at EY Oceania. I’ve spent my whole career fixated on people. Why do they do what they do, how do they respond to change, what experiences led them to respond to change the way they do and how do they help others through change. The reality is that change happens and it’s how we deal with it that makes the difference. This podcast is a conversation with senior business leaders on leading through change and the lessons they’ve learnt along the way. Today’s conversation is with Kirstin Ferguson. Hi Kirstin, welcome.
Kirstin: Hi, how are you?
Jenelle: Not too bad. Who are you and what do you do Kirstin.
Kirstin: Yeah it’s a funny question to ask how you are at the current time but I am a company director, so I sit on a range of different boards, I’m deputy chair of the ABC and I sit on two ASX listed boards and a large private company board and then as well as that, I’ve sort of been living and breathing leadership my whole career, whether as CEO myself or I did a PhD in the field and I love, you know, speaking and writing about leadership, particularly in times of crisis so it’s interesting that obviously I’m having cause to think about that a lot at the moment as well.
Jenelle: Absolutely you do and its no accident that we’ve got you on the podcast today, but lets get some background on Kirstin and get to know a little bit better. So I assume that’s all been cut in.
Ben: Yeah, cool.
Jenelle: Many of us are familiar with the VUCA acronym – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous and never before in our generation have we been in such a VUCA environment. Governments around the world are running containment strategies while business and the community are flung into a situation in fear that in some cases, in many cases, borders on outright panic and in this podcast, I’ve asked Kirsten to join me, due to her amazing ability to give perspective on the most complex situations. Kirstin, you and I discussed doing a podcast together late last year and we talked about, you know, discussing your insights into leading in a crisis and your lessons with change but I think its fair to say that neither of us expected to be having that conversation in the context that we now find ourselves.
Kirstin: No [laugh], I think if we’d created that for this podcast, yeah. No I think we were interested in, you know, looking at diversity and inclusion and how we can all lead through challenging times but here we are really experiencing something you know, no one has ever lived through before and particularly no one has ever led through before.
Jenelle: Correct, correct. Now that said, you have had a fascinating and evolving career. So you joined the Air Force while completing your first degree and you not only graduated as the most senior female cadet at the academy but you also became Dux of the Royal Australian Air Force Class that you were in. Yu then shifted into law and of course if that wasn’t enough, you then completed a PhD in safety leadership and safety governance for board members and senior executives. To me it feels unbelievably relevant right now, all of that background in this time of global pandemic. So given a lifetime of the experience that you’ve have, what are the things that, you know, are really resonating with you as you think back for those twenty years worth of study and experience. What's really standing out for you as resonating.
Kirstin: Yeah, look its impossible not to be observing, not only what's going on in the world around and how leaders are responding indifferent ways but also being self-aware of how you are responding yourself and I’ve always been a real advocate for believing that, you know, leaders can have the intellect to lead and I think most do, simply by, you know, having been in the room wherever they are making decisions but having the emotional intelligence to actually lead well is something that’s rarer and its been interesting to observe, you know, over the last few weeks, you can really tell an emotionally intelligent leader who’s able to balance, you know, the nuance of sharing information with an ability to be fearlessly transparent and almost courageous in how they build trust and how they calm people with information rather than perhaps traditional ways of calming people by keeping the details to themselves and so that’s something that I’ve found really interesting and its continuing to evolve as leaders themselves are learning what’s working and what's not.
Jenelle: And that whole striking the balance of fearless transparency with no wanting to create panic and alarm. How do you … how do we get that balance right.
Kirstin: Yeah well its almost, you know, counter intuitive because I think in a traditional sense we’re taught to keep everyone calm, you know, you don’t tell the kids everything that is going on, you make sure you give them information that they need and when. Whereas in this particular crisis, the entire community is experiencing at themselves, whether through going to the supermarket and seeing there isn’t enough food on the shelves at the current time, whether that’s rational or not, that is something they are directly experiencing or they might know someone who’s in quarantine or who’s got the virus themselves. So telling people not to panic is absolutely counterproductive. It causes panic and I think we saw that a bit at the beginning, through just a natural tendency to want to calm people down and as the situation has evolved, I think we are seeing more courage from our leaders and I’m not talking about any particular leader or whether government or business or community leaders, but just trusting the people that you lead. If you truly trust that they can handle what you have to share, whatever that information is, I think it sets you on a much better path and generally speaking, people will trust what you have to say when you treat them that way and in turn, you will be trusted more. So to me, a lot of what we’re seeing, the panic buying, the real, you know, genuine sense of concern which is quite well grounded, is because of a lack of trust and its impossible for that trust to be repaired overnight. Its impossible for a leader to say “look I know I got things wrong last year and you don’t trust me anymore, but I actually need you to trust me now”. That won’t work until I think they’ve built trust through being transparent and frankly authentic and emotionally intelligent with those that they are leading.
Jenelle: I think the other thing that sort of helps with building trust is the fact we all can see things are evolving so rapidly so even if you said something that was different before, it was based on the information that you had at the time, I think the people are seeing, you know, hour by hour, day by day, the situation is changing so the information needs to change. I think there’s a higher level of acceptance of moving information than we would typically have.
Kirstin: Absolutely and you know some of the leaders I’ve heard have actually said “I’m telling you this now but I’m most likely to tell you it will be different, you know, in a few hours. That’s the kind of transparency I think that’s helpful because we know that to be the case, so I’d rather that you just told us that that’s going to be the case and we can accept that and I think people are also accepting of mistakes where there’s trust as a foundation and so the more leaders can say “look we thought this was the best thing to do but we’ve now learnt this and this is what we’re doing to repair it” and frankly this applies in any situation. The more trust is built but it takes courage for leaders to be able to believe that that is the case and to actually lead in that way and for many, its unnatural but I think in times like this, it’s absolutely essential.
Jenelle: And is there anything that’s surprised you as you look around at global leaders and business leaders, what are the things that are surprising you at this time.
Kirstin: Oh, I am surprised, and I think again it’s just observing from afar, some leaders and again it doesn’t matter where they’re from, but that inability to move quickly in their mind as well as in actions so you can observe some … whether it was sporting decisions or just different decisions to cancel things and the Olympics is an interesting example that they still haven’t yet said that that will be postponed or cancelled even though most people observing can see that that’s, you know, 99.9% likely outcome and what that shows and what's the surprise is there’s … your brain’s almost slow to catch up to the speed of decision making that needs to happen and some leaders are excellent at it and they can see that I would normally, you know, move through the stages of change with many of any decisions, I’d get everyone prepared and then I’d get buy-in [9.18] and then we’d talk through this. None of that applies in the current situation. There is just no time and so you need leaders who are able and willing to make a decision that then and there seems almost incomprehensible that, you know, something now might not happen yet it absolutely has to happen and so I’m interested in watching those leaders that can move really nimbly and agilely as a leader. We talk about it, their words, we’ve said a lot but you know, this is what all of those leadership sort of discussions have been about. You actually need to do it now and for some, it’s quite challenging.
Jenelle: I mean you’re right. There are so much of the way that we need to be responding right now that is counter intuitive to the stuff that we sort of talk about in textbooks, you know, the level of consultation and governance and decision making, you know, how much information you share, don’t spread panic etc. So there’s a lot of that and I think when we think about the different paces with which organisations are responding and bodies are responding, there is some element … you know I’m a person who helps organisations manage change and inevitably in some organisations there will some parts of that where you’ll hear a response of “this too shall pass, you know. Let’s not buy into all of this, this too shall pass” and I think we can see a lit bit of that mentality, at least in past weeks, where people … really it was a bit too much to get their heads around and I think now there’s much more of a recognition that this isn’t passing and we have to lean right in.
Kirstin: Yeah and so it just takes people different amounts of time to get there but a leader’s role right now is to be really self-aware, that if they’re one of those people that takes time, they need to really shift gears because more so than ever, the people they lead are watching everything they say and do, the speed with which they do it, their inability to perhaps check in on their people. I was asked a question last week in a webinar. There was a woman who was listening, she was 32 weeks pregnant, she was still being required to come into work because of the company’s work from home policy hadn’t changed at that point and she was feeling unsafe and she didn’t know how to broach that and would she be showing, you know, a lack of loyalty to the company by not coming in. That question, not only is it so tragic for that woman that she should actually have to ask but it reflects a culture that the leaders of that organisation, which I have no idea what it was, but they’re not thinking quickly enough, they’re not already thinking that some of their people are actually a new way of working and I would hope that whatever business that was has now moved quickly and that that person is now at home but it just shows you must be ahead of the curve. You should … as leaders we need to already thinking of that before you have someone at home, you know, suffering in that way or struggling with how to work.
Jenelle: It’s a striking example and I think you know, not that’s its far too easy to be declaring any kind of upside on anything here but certainly if there’s one thing that I think will come out of this is, you know, things that we’ve been talking about for a very long time, the need to work in much more agile ways, the need to think flexibly about work and work design, the need to think about digital businesses, how to lead virtually. If ever there was a platform, an impetus for making that happen, it’s absolutely now.
Kirstin: Oh I couldn’t agree more and I frankly hope we never go back to the way we were. You know, I’m someone who has travelled every week, you know, for years on end to meetings and I’ve done so happily and willingly, yet I’m now still attending all my board meetings, they’re much more efficient because we’re all dialling in, finishing and then going on to something else and there isn’t all that lost time and I think that the businesses that are able to adapt to this immediately, again not in six months but tomorrow, will really come through this even more strongly and I’m with you, I don’t think the way we work will ever return to how it was and its been exposed as being, you know, not ideal and especially when we’ve got the technology available to do things differently.
Jenelle: I think it really has highlighted 20th century structures and processes and systems that are in place for 21st century needs and beyond so it certainly is something that is going to force everybody to rethink how they work and those who moved ahead with this are faring far better. I know that we’ve certainly found, you know, incredible unity in working remotely and you know, we’re creating memes of our screens with various homes with some sort of facial position and expression that ordinarily you’d be cringing at but now you just laugh and go “these are the times we find ourselves in”.
Kirstin: Absolutely and I’m actually connecting, you know all the people who we have coffee and things, well I’ve actually got more time to do that now ironically and we’re doing by Zoom or wherever and I’ve to say, the connection is just the same as in we’re sitting there listening to each other talking. I’m a real believer in authenticity so we’re doing so in our tee-shirts or whatever you wear at home and the work isn’t suffering. Obviously, you know, productivity over the entire world at the moment is not where it would normally be but in terms of being focussed and you know, achieving things that we’re setting out to achieve right now, the technology allows us to do that. Not for all roles though and I think that’s important to remember and I know we’ll talk a bit later about you know, how some of my boards are dealing with it but not all roles can do this but for those who can, its working very well.
Jenelle: That’s exactly right and I think, you know, for those that can, this is also framed in a situation of shared crisis so no one is spared of this, we’re all in this together, clients, providers, partners etc, so there is something … that can be incredibly unifying about do we keep this all afloat and all going and that we’re doubling down on.
Kirstin: Agree, agree.
Jenelle: Kirstin, you wrote, I mean you’re a prolific writer and user of social media. You wrote a recent LinkedIn article and you’re quoting a US admiral. He said “you must never confuse faith that you’ll prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be”. What was it about that quote that resonates so strongly for you.
Kirstin: Well, look I love that quote. The story is there was this guy called Admiral Jim Stockdale and he was the most senior US prisoner of war in the famous Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War and in his sort of memoirs he would write about how he was trying to keep his men, that were in the Hanoi Hilton as prisoners of war, motivated by not believing, you know, we’re going to be released by Christmas or anything like that but by accepting that they could be there for a very long time but believing that they will endure, that they will survive and Jim Collins in his … obviously very famous leadership book “Good to Great” really bought that to the fore and he called it the Stockdale paradox and I have always led, I hope, believing in this which is that you retain the faith that you are going to prevail. So you have a real sureness of succeed, but you actually have to balance that at exactly the same time with confronting the brutal facts of your current situation and I think that is exactly what every leader needs to be doing right now and it doesn’t matter if you’re leading and ASX company or if you’re just leading a team of three people or if you’re just leading your family, we all need to accept that the brutal facts right now, the world is absolutely in the midst of a major health crisis, many lives are going to be lost and the way we work and operate and socialise may never by the same again. So they’re the brutal facts but I also believe you have to equally communicate authentically and genuinely that we will succeed, we will get through this. We will come out the other side and its that period in the middle where we’re balancing those two factors, which we will be remembered for, as leaders. It is how you act right now that is the legacy you’re going to leave as you lead and I guess that’s the quote that really resonates for me. It did particularly at the time that I wrote that piece because I think there was from some leaders, just wanting to focus on the success. You know, we’ll come through this, everything is going to be okay and I think that’s selling people. We also need to really confront the brutal facts and I am noticing many more leaders are definitely doing that at the moment.
Jenelle: Yeah, it’s a really powerful quote and its an incredibly important message. You know, you’re quoting an admiral, obviously the defence force is something that’s very strong part of your psyche or background. I know you’re grandparents, your parents, your father was certainly in the military, you joined the same. What are some key leadership lessons you took away from your time in the military that you think, you know, there’s a time and place where a more directive style of leadership is required. Is that some of the takeaways that you have from your time in the military or are there other things.
Kirstin: Yeah there’s a range and I think one of the misconceptions is that military leadership is all command and control because its actually not. There is a time and a place obviously for command and control leadership but its very much more around building and earning the respect of the people you lead and trusting them with your life and so that comes back to a lot of what we were talking about before. I remember even as a young cadet being, you know, taught about World War I history and being told that if you were a young lieutenant or something going over the trenches and your men didn’t trust you, the last thing you wanted was to go over the top as they said and you look behind and your men have not followed you into battle and they won’t if they don’t trust you and so I think this whole idea about being a leader that earns respects and builds trust is what I bought from the military and this idea of being, you know, self-aware, being very conscious that everything you do, think feel and say, is being observed by those that you lead and even more so when they’re frightening. I think, you know, the military really reinforces that for you. The other thing I think that you learn is a military leader is about change and rapid change and being in a scenario that’s you know, one thing one moment and then suddenly its not that at all and I think being able to have that agility of thinking is something that we were certainly taught and has stayed with me and being able to shift, you know, the speed with which you need to deliver something because a life might depend on it is something that I think in more traditional business environments were perhaps not taught. We might scenario plan for it but the reality is it rarely happens that there’s a decision that needs … a critical decision, you know a business ending decisions, that has to be made, you know, in less than 24 hours. That’s quite unheard of whereas they’re quite common in the military. So I think there’s a few things that come out of that experience that have really stood by me well for the last 30 years, or I certainly hope so.
Jenelle: It sounds like and I mean this genuinely is a time where we are asking our families, our teams, our organisations to follow us into battle, where lives really are depending on the decisions that we make. So whilst we tend to separate the kind of criticality of that sort of situation and decision making for civilians to, you know, defence personnel in wartime situations, this is very much a shared reality for us all right now.
Kirstin: Absolutely yeah.
Jenelle: Kirstin, one of the many things that you’ve done in your career, when you were in the military you had a second duty which I find fascinating, when you’re in RAF as a base burials officer, which is a role I’ve never heard of. I’ll get you to explain what that was but it strikes me there would have been some incredibly relevant insights from that role that you would have learnt about emotional intelligence around organisational response to grief, around leading through a time of loss and as you reflect on that time and I know you know, your experiences led you ultimately to the Pentagon to deliver a set of recommendations to Sir Peter Cosgrove and Sir Angus Houston who, I think they were the chiefs of the Defence Force and the Air Force respectively. What was, I mean I think you had 37 recommendations that came out at that particular time. What are some of those lessons that we might be able to learn from or that would be relevant for us in our organisational sense now.
Kirstin: Look and how that duty came about is rather humorous because I was a young 21 year old that was posted … my very first posting from the defence force academy was to RAF base Amberley and I was what's called an Administration Officer so like a personnel or HR officer and I was sent to a squadron but as well as your main role, you took on secondary duties and it might be running the base football club or whatever it was, you know, all these sort of different part time jobs. Anyway, I turn up on day one and my very first job because no one wanted it was “here you are, you’re the base burials officer and someone has died and you need to get in the car and go with the chaplain and go and see his parents”.
Jenelle: You definitely drew the short straw on that one.
Kirstin: I did, I did. So here I am, I’ve never been to a funeral in my life and I find myself on my very first day as an officer in the Air Force, you know, in the living room of a parent who’s lost their son and I mean, it was a pretty confronting experience and I remember just sitting there very quietly just thinking “oh my god, I haven’t been trained for this” and …
Jenelle: I don’t think anyone is.
Kirstin: … no I wasn’t and you know, I really watched the chaplain and I’m not particularly … well I’m not religious at all but I just watched their empathy and how they helped this particular family and the military does an amazing job of funerals. They’re very good, sadly in the funeral business, in terms of highly respectful events where you know, the full military honours and guns salute. Its quite a lot of pageantry to it so my job would then be I had to organise all of that and work with the families and I ended up organising about fifteen different funerals over a couple of years, often very young, generally men who might have lost their lives in a range of tragic different ways and okay, what it taught me and what I’ve then never let go of is the importance leaders have in critical moments. So you know, that first case is not a good example of my leadership but I learnt very quickly the weight with which everything I said carried for a family. The importance of every decision that I made, the need to demonstrate emotional intelligence, not just turn up and say here’s the funeral, this is what time and you know, this is what you need to do. That was the least important of my roles at that particular period, it was much more about being present, helping his fellow Air Force mates who you know, who have lost someone, helping them work it through. So I ended up then winning a Churchill fellowship to write about those experiences and to recommend so the Military … how the military can do a better job of supporting the loved ones of those who are left behind because too often we do a really good job in those initial weeks of the funeral and then everyone goes back to their normal lives and the military, at that time, had had a lot of well-known cases of widows and other family members, you know, very distressed and sort of feeling forgotten and I had lost close friends through the last [26.43] crash and I watched their widows sort of follow that same path and so it was an incredibly humbling experience. I ended up interviewing about fifty bereaved families. Those who had suicided, those who had lost their lives through all different means, workplace accidents, and it cannot help but as a leader remind you of the importance of empathy and self-awareness and just being a leader who really listens and isn’t just focussed on an outcome and I, you know again, I hope that has stayed with me and I think for many leaders who are now leading through this particular crisis, sadly there are going to be cases where you may lose people who are in your teams or organisations or they might most certainly lose loved ones and the role you have is to support them through this in a way that goes well beyond making sure they’ve got leave, you know, to attend a funeral, bereavement leave. Its truly listening and hearing them and supporting them and being ahead of asking them what they might need. I think that’s something that’s going to be a new experience for many.
Jenelle: Absolutely and what an incredible foundation to be building your whole leadership experiences on. I mean I wouldn’t wish it on anyone but it sounds incredibly informative. Just turning to your role away from the military, obviously been in some incredible leadership positions, in [28.22] situations over the course of your career. One of the many roles you hold is on the deputy chair of the ABC, the national’s emergency broadcaster. I can’t imagine how the vibe is at the ABC having to have the incredible demands and responses expected around the clock. Coming off the bushfires, straight into the virus. As a leader in that business and sitting on the board there and working with management, what are some of the things you have in place and what measures and ethics does ABC have in place for situations like this to protect staff and to protect … and to honour the kind of expectations and the reliance of the nation during this time.
Kirstin: Yeah I think the ABC, you know, is absolutely recognised as the go to source of trusted news or I would hope that it is. That’s certainly everyone’s goal at the ABC and I think when there are moments of crisis like this or the bushfires which everyone at the ABC worked incredibly hard through, it is very clear and understood, the responsibility to make sure that everything that’s being broadcast and shared is factual and correct and I think everyone at the ABC understands that responsibility and how immense it is and you know, I’ve got nothing but admiration for the context in which they’re all having to work under, you know, extreme conditions and they’ve just done so on the back of the bushfires which was already you know, an incredible period of time with the number of emergency broadcasts that we did. Yet, this is exactly what the ABC is able to do and is set up to do and you know, I’m just so proud of everything that they’re achieving and the way that they’re conducting themselves and carrying the load in providing us all with information that we need to make such critical decisions, while themselves, you know, they’re all parents or many parents themselves or having to make family decisions and work through those issues on a personal level as well.
Jenelle: I think, I mean its an incredible demand and incredible responsibility but even in our own organisation, as we’ve sort of been supporting around bushfires and virus, I feel like you can see the buoyance that people have when they know that they are truly living and breathing their purpose, to really do something that is aligned, in our case, building a better working world. In your case at the ABC, is to provide the nation with the most up to date news and information but it does take its toll. Whilst there is something very galvanising and energising about being able to do that, we mustn’t forget the toll that it does take on individuals and have measures in place to support people through that.
Kirstin: Absolutely and that applies in every organisation, it really … whatever your purpose is I think, there’s so many businesses that are struggling now to know what their purpose is, I mean with the number of business closures that are happening or if the way you deliver your services, you know, is now compromised, what do you then and I think for so many this will be a real period, almost an extrastenual [31/48} sort of period of reflection on what do we do, how can we do it better or can we even do it at all.
Jenelle: And you know, you sit on a range of boards Kirstin, public/private sector, industry, manufacturing. You’ve been with the sporting bodies. What are you seeing across those boards, are you seeing differences. What are some of the common themes and points of difference.
Kirstin: Yeah look I think it is important to remember that every business, particularly, will have a different response. There is definitely commonality in terms of who can be at home, how can we support them, how can we make sure they’ve got all the infrastructure they need, you know, the really practical things, have they got a printer, whatever it might be that they need to do their job but then once you sort of get beyond that, it becomes very particular and you know, some of the boards I’m on, ones in the manufacturing industry and they can only … so a lot of the workers, about 75%, cos to do their job they actually need to be in the environment, at work, and so that requires a whole new creative way of thinking and planning for how we support them, how we can make sure they’re safe at work in terms of the virus and so I’m finding that the common threads of every one of my boards is concern for our people and that is first and foremost and then after that, concern for keeping the business operating through such an uncertain period because that in turn, obviously is caring for the jobs about people and beyond that, it’s just very specific to each business but I haven’t experienced anyone who isn’t utterly committed to helping see everyone through this and getting through the other side as best we can but acknowledging it’s a pretty hairy ride and as you said, the VUCA environment, I mean it is as uncertain as it gets and I think we’ll all do very well in terms of resilience training after this and in terms of any scenario planning. You know, I’ve laughed with a few people so much for all those risk matrices, I don’t recall any of them actually having this on it.
Jenelle: Pandemic was number one on the risk register.
Kirstin: [laugh], no so you know, we’ve got quite a foundation to start from after all of this in terms of how we handle things but …
Jenelle: No, it definitely does flush out the weak points in processes and systems and risk registers and all that sort of stuff, doesn’t it.
Kirstin: It does, yeah.
Jenelle: Speaking of hairy rides, that’s one way to describe the situation. I guess the psychology of what we’re going through is very much, you know, the seven stages of grieving, shock and denial, pain and fear, anger, depression, resentment, then we have that upward turn but that fourth stage which will begin to occur around anger, I’m expecting that to kick in on a global scale, pretty much anything could happen. What are your thoughts when you think about it, you know, you used to be a CEO of a psychology organisation, what are your thoughts around the psychology of that and how we prepare for it.
Kirstin: Yeah look you are so right and I think in any one day at the moment, I’m sort of cycling through some of those …
Jenelle: All seven stages!
Kirstin: Yeah, anger and resentment isn’t a natural one for me though and you know, it’s harder I think for people when there’s no one to aim your anger at. I think you’re right. In time people are going to feel angry at being restricted or you know, feeling locked up but it would be interesting to know in the Italian experience whether that’s actually come up at all or whether there’s … its bigger than that. You know, whether people understand but I think you’re spot on. What we can do as leaders is just talk about. You know, I’d be upfront. If you’re got a small team, make sure you’re checking in both one on one but also as a group. I think you know, some really sane ways of staying in touch would be … I had drinks organised, you know, with a group that I would normally catch up with and we did in on a Friday afternoon, just like we would normally but we did it virtually and everyone, it was BYO drink obviously and nibbles but it was incredibly powerful for just keeping in touch and checking in with people on how they’re doing. Mental health I think is going to be a major issue particularly if this drags on so those stages are just ones that as leaders, we need to be ahead of. Again, be really self-aware of what stage you’re at, so if you’re in shock and denials, this is … I spoke about this earlier, you need to move on out of that pretty quickly because everyone needs you to be able to sort of acting as quickly as you can. So just be aware of where you’re at yourself and then go and check in with everyone else on how they’re doing and find really creative ways to keep morale high which is difficult but absolutely necessary.
Jenelle: I’m with you on the virtual catchups. I did virtual drinks with folks on Friday night. It was … you know, there was some real novelty to that as well and I said creating funny memes. We’ve been doing a wine online and dine online. We’ve been doing that as well. We’ve had coffee meetings with clients, literally the clients and you will pick up a coffee and connect that way so there’s no need to slow down our meetings and our work and I think more people have been getting some light relief from a number of you know, jokes and things online which I think does help gives a bit of levity in times that is so incredibly taxing.
Kirstin: It does.
Jenelle: So I’m looking forward to seeing some very very creative ideas coming our way.
Kirstin: Yeah and it also keeps people occupied so you know, what we don’t want is everybody just at home with no sort of where to focus their energies. So I think for leaders, the more you can schedule those in, the better.
Jenelle: Okay, with such a scary time, sort of looking ahead, five years time, what do you think we’ll be saying about Covid-19, what are your predications for society and business over these next few years. Are you looking into your crystal ball.
Kirstin: [laugh], at the moment I can’t even tell you, six weeks from now.
Jenelle: Exactly.
Kirstin: Look my hope then in five years time is that absolutely we’ve come through this and we have a vaccine and we are back to our new “new normal”, post the virus. I hope we never forget what this period has been like. I hope that people who are leading, the people they led look back on them with a really fierce respect for how they helped their teams get through this crisis. I really hope that there’s more empathy for our leaders and I mean that about government as well, government and community, everyone I believe is doing their best. Now whether that means they’re the right person to be in the role doesn’t matter. Its just they are doing as best they can and having some empathy for that. I hope we see more of, having some lenience when things aren’t done perfectly is a good way for us to operate in the future and I also think that the way we work will forever change and I hope I can continue … my panic buy was a puppy, a puppy last week …
Jenelle: I saw that.
Kirstin: … forget the toilet paper …
Jenelle: Absolutely gorgeous.
Kirstin: … I went and bought the tiniest little cutest puppy and he came to his first board meeting today and I sincerely hope he was perfect, very well behaved but you know, I hope in five years time, he will be a dog but it might be that I attend some of my board meetings or many of the board meetings, along with all the other directors and we are doing it virtually and you know, we’re meeting in person less because we’re developing the ways to connect and have that rapport that is so important but we’re finding different ways to do that. So look, I think the world will be completely different in five years but I don’t think we should be scared of that.
Jenelle: No I agree with you. Now I’m just finishing up on a slightly lighter note. You know, when I’ve done these podcasts with others, I typically start the interview with a fast three set of questions, more to get to know the lighter side of you but like we missed that whole piece in the beginning just because we launched into the situation that we’re in, but if I was to hit you up with a fast three. First one. What is a misconception that most people have about you.
Kirstin: That I live in [cuts out here]
Ben: That just cut out, that answer.
Kirstin: … one point and they reported that I was in Sydney and I’m not in Sydney, I did grow up in Sydney …
Ben: Can you guys hear me.
Kirstin: Yes.
Ben: Sorry, that answer cut out from the very beginning. So I got the question, what is the misconception but your answer flicked out.
Kirsten: Okay, that’s weird. All right, should we just ask that again.
Ben: Yeah, go for it.
Jenelle: Okay, so first question. What is a misconception that most people have about you.
Kirstin: Well, that I live in Sydney. I don’t live in Sydney.
Jenelle: I certainly thought that.
Kirstin: I know, everyone seems to think that. I do do a lot of work in Sydney and I grew up in Sydney so I went to Skeggs Darlinghurst but I haven’t lived in Sydney since I was 17 and I live on the Sunshine Coast so that’s a misconception that many people have.
Jenelle: The beautiful Sunshine Coast. Actually I saw a post of you the other day and someone was commenting on the screenshot background that you had behind you and you’re like “that’s literally my front yard”.
Kirstin: They say “oh you must have a theme on your Zoom thing” because it was the beach and I was like “well no, its my front yard” so anyway I’m very lucky to live here. I love Sydney, it’s certainly where I grew up but I don’t live there.
Jenelle: And what is one guilty pleasure, I will ask you to keep it PG.
Kirstin: Oh my goodness, well this is embarrassing so I’m just going to share it, cos you know, we’re at end of days and all of that.
Jenelle: We are.
Kirstin: I love … I love watching really crappy reality TV shows.
Jenelle: Oh my god, no judgement, same thing [laugh].
Kirstin: [laugh] and I must admit, for a while I’ve stopped watching but I was watching MAFS, Married at First Sight and …
Jenelle: I can’t say I stopped watching it sadly.
Kirstin: … well I must admit in the last few weeks I’ve been watching [42.25] but I haven’t been watching it but I also watch Love is Blind on Netflix and it’s a really interesting concept. We could do a whole podcast on that so my guilty pleasure, is yeah, pretty crappy reality TV.
Jenelle: Well I saw your writeup on Love is Blind on your LinkedIn leading content newsletter which is just a quick shout out for that. I think its fantastic. I know you’re changing the focus of it but for those who follow you or who don’t, it’s really well worth following your LinkedIn, your leading content.
Kirstin: Oh thank you. Actually that’s a great reminder just for me to mention. Yeah please find it, cos its now got … I think I’m up to almost 4,000 subscribers and while it has been on fun stuff of podcasts and books and TV shows to watch. Yeah for the moment, it seems more important for me to write about these issues so please subscribe and I’m taking lots of questions from people as well so if anyone listening has questions, please send them through.
Jenelle: I’m sure they are listening and they will send them through and finally what's one and I can’t … I mean you are amazing in every way possibly or almost every … there’s got to be something that you’re hopeless at Kirstin, what is it.
Kirstin: Oh god, the list is endless and my husband is also working from home. I’m so glad he can’t hear this question cos he would offer you about ten things. I’m pretty hopeless at maths, there you go, that’s a true admission.
Jenelle: Maths! I thought you said mass.
Kirstin: Maths, no maths, I definitely have … like I need a calculator and I need to sit there and really think it through and when some people I know, who I am in awe of, can look at a balance sheet and you know, in a second can tell you the whole story about an organisation. I’m competent but I have not got that skill, you know, that’s something that I’ll sit and understand. It will take me a bit longer so that’s not my natural.
Jenelle: Fair enough. Well thank you for feeling safe enough to share that with us.
Kirstin: I know, I might regret that [laugh].
Jenelle: We won’t hold that against you, I promise. Thank you so much Kirstin for sharing your insights. You know, time that I think most of us are really struggling to get our heads around. There’s been so much that I’ve taken away from our conversation. A few of the things that really really resonated for me was the need to retain the faith, we will prevail but be prepared to face into the real facts. The need for us to communicate authentically and genuinely. As you said, that the importance of how we lead now is what we will look back on as our legacy. This is a critical moment and kind of regardless. As leaders regardless of how we are feeling, we need to be digging deep and leading our organisations through this … this is our critical time and I think the other one that I would say is just awareness of our own response and how we’re dealing with this and the need for us to shift gears. So thank you so much for your time today and no doubt, we’ll be seeing plenty more from you online as you share your views and perspectives and all the best to you as you continue to lead through this as well.
Kirstin: Thank you and stay well.
Jenelle: Thanks Kirsten.
Ben: Thank you.
Kirstin: Can we just re-record what am I hopeless at. I don’t want to do that one, that was ridiculous. That’s the truth. Just so everyone knows, that is the deadest truth but I really don’t need to say that publicly so I’ll be kicked off all my boards. So can we just do another one.
Jenelle: Well it’s funny cos I was going to go “same, I’m really struggling with same”.
Ben: I am too, I’m so bad at maths.
Kirstin: I know, so everyone will get it, but then I thought I’d better not say that out loud, so can we do a different one.
Ben: Sure and is there … while we do that is there anything else that we feel we missed or that we want to do more on. Are you there Emma.
Emma: Yes, I’m back.
Ben: My only thought was I know we wanted to avoid certain things about from the ABC, it did feel like there wasn’t a lot around the ABC.
Kirstin: I loved that.
Ben: I know.
Kirstin: I thought it was perfect [laugh].
Ben: Maybe something along the lines of how is the ABC set up to take us through the next phases of this and what …
Emma: Or just more on social media as well, I was wondering … just the role of social media.
Kirstin: If you wanted to ask me about the ABC, the best way I think you should ask it is, look you have lead through a really public crisis, what do you sort of learn as a leader, leading through that and we didn’t cover that sort of stuff about bit sized chunks and you know, getting advice from smaller numbers of people. So I could answer that …
Ben: That would be great.
Emma: So can I link it specifically to the ABC, you’ve led through a public crisis at the ABC.
Kirstin: I mean that’s public but look, it’s a very well-known that you were asked by the Prime Minister overnight, to step up and become acting chair in the midst of a very public crisis. I know you can’t talk to us about that however what did you learn as a leader. That kind of question I can answer.
Emma: Okay.
Kirstin: You know what I mean.
Emma: Yep.
Ben: So let’s do the “what you’re hopeless at” and then go into that.
Kirstin: Oh shit, what am I going to say. I’ve got literally …
Emma: Well apparently you’ve got massive [47.37] on the phone [laughter].
Ben: And is there … I mean, you kind of covered it within the way you spoke about business but maybe just a nice how are you personally coping or dealing with the current situation.
Kirstin: Yeah that’s a good one.
Emma: Yeah.
Ben: Cool.
Kirstin: and I just thought of my hopeless one and it’s a bit …
Jenelle: Oh I’m just so attentive to detail and
Kirstin: No, no …
Ben: I’m too organised.
Jenelle: I just care too much.
Kirstin: Yeah that kind of thing.
Jenelle: I’m doing all the interviews with people like that, partner interviews.
Kirstin: Yeah no no, I’ll be going … I’ll do an honest but it will be humorous.
Ben: All right I’m turning myself down. Emma if you can turn your mike back off and …
Jenelle: I’ll create pauses between each one of those things.
Ben: Sure sure. All right, you’re ready to go.
Jenelle: Okay so final of the fast three questions. What is one thing and I know you might struggle with this because you’re amazing at everything but what's one thing that you’re hopeless at.
Kirstin: Oh Jenelle, there are so many different things that I could answer. All right one thing that is top of mind right now, is that here I am at home, so the foreseeable future, and I keep thinking “right, now is the time to get healthy and fit and eat well and I could, you know, find a way to exercise” and I’m not … so I’m hopeless at that. I keep making cakes. I think I’m doing panic baking, foods that we would never normally eat, I am now eating. So right now, I’m absolutely hopeless at looking after my health and fitness.
Jenelle: Okay, you’re going to have to work hard at that. I keep telling myself every year that summer bodies are made in winter but I keep remembering that in summer, so …
Kirstin: I know, I know.
Jenelle: Time to be disciplined.
Kirstin: Well anyway, so I’m pretty hopeless at that.
Jenelle: Well I’m attracted to the baking but maybe some healthy recipes.
Kirstin: Thanks.
Jenelle: So just focussing on ABC, quite a public tumultuous situation that you faced there. We know that you were asked by the Prime Minister at the time to overnight, assume the role of acting chair. So clearly you’ve led through quite a public crisis then and I know you can’t talk about the specifics of that, but I’m interested in what you learnt as a leader through that time, leading in that crisis.
Kirstin: Yeah and so this is sort of … I guess now eighteen months on, what I reflect on having led through that, I think it was breaking the crisis into bite sized chunks and a bit of that applies now. When there’s so much information coming at you and so many new fires to put out, or new issues to deal with, it can feel utterly overwhelming as a leader and I think, you know, some of my military experience came through as well in that you were taught to, you know, what's important right now and even though those other things are really important, I can’t deal with them in this next hour or three, I’ll park them until the afternoon. Actually having the discipline to do that was something that I was fortunate came a little laterally I hope and I think for the current period, its helping as well. Then the other one was about taking advice and getting you know, in the current crisis, is thinking about your trusted sources of where you’re getting information. So in a crisis, there is no shortage of people who want to tell you how you should do you job or how things should happen and I’m sure every leader is feeling that right now. It can be so noisy that its hard to think and ultimately the buck stops with you as the leader and I, you know, I think what I learnt and have learnt since is having actually fewer people giving advice rather than more is helpful and really knowing who you can trust and taking that advice when you need it or you might go to different people at different times for different advice and during this coronavirus crisis, it’s really knowing which sources you can trust for your information, when you’re making decisions. As you we said early, can impact people’s lives.
Jenelle: Absolutely. So we all know that you know, you’re going to be called upon heavily, there have been lots of expectations of you as a … as a senior leader, as a public spokesperson, but how are you taking care of yourself through this. How are you personally coping through this situation Kirstin.
Kirstin: Yeah that’s a really good question and I think its good for leaders to talk about what's going on. You know my initial thoughts when I realised I was going to be working from home for the foreseeable future. I remember thinking “oh that’s fantastic, I like working from home and I travel so much, that will be a nice break.” That didn’t last all that long before the reality then kicks in of actually the world is really suffering and I’m … you know, there’s been periods when I’m really quite sad about what's going on and the thought of what's to come but they don’t last too long because we talked about the Stockdale paradox, you know, and they’re the brutal facts. It is a pretty bad situation for many many people but I know we’ll get through this and so my self-care, other than buying a puppy last week, which was totally unexpected but absolutely glorious, has been to really think about, well what do I want to get from this period at home. So how do I want to conduct myself as a leader, as a mother, you know as a wife, as part of the community and then how do I want to prepare for the other side. So is there something different I want to be doing or is there opportunities that you know, I just have never had time to even think about doing but now I’ve got some time so how should I do those and that’s helping me mentally sort of stay focussed on going through to the other side and some of the those opportunities I think are exciting and so that gives me an area of focus. Certainly working has helped a lot so the fact that we’ve still got board meetings, they’re all happening far more regularly than they would anyway and staying in touch with people but I think overall my advice to anyone is to be really self-aware of what's going on for you and to really be listening to yourself and hearing whether you’re in a place that helpful right now or other people or whether in fact, you’re struggling and there’s nothing wrong with that but just be really mindful about the impact that that will have on others.
Jenelle: I think that’s incredibly important. I certainly know one of the things that I fall into working from home is the inability to draw the line between home and work, because you roll out of bed and you start working and then keep working, keep working, never probably step away from the computer. So trying to force some discipline that sort of suggests that this is the start of the day, this is where I’ll take my break, this is where … even if they come in different ways, going for a walk or getting some food, because I know what I’m like when I’m working from home, I just don’t see the boundaries. So I think that kind of awareness of the traps that you might fall into and then having systems and processes in place to allow yourself to maintain that balance is so important.
Kirstin: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more and everyone’s situation will be completely different. So I think we’re sort of captured it all about really listening to yourself and knowing what's going on for you.
Jenelle: Spot on.
Ben: Nice, thank you. Everyone happy with everything that’s been put in.
Emma: Yeah, that was really good.
Jenelle: Yeah thank you Kirstin.
Ben: the only … my only point from an outsider and I’ll just bring it up to just get your reactions on it, just to see … cos I might be coming from a different point of view but the only thing I would flag is, and only coming from an out of context possibility, so if someone’s listening half way through or someone takes a grab out of this which is likely, is just the … and I get the humour around it but the laughing around the burials bit at the beginning, kind of went on a little bit and I’m the last person, you know, not probably my stand-up comedy career …
Kirstin: No no, I had that thought as well.
Jenelle: Sorry, Ben, what was that.
Ben: Just around the burials bit, it was a natural conversation because you both know each other. It’s completely natural and like I support and admire humour to dumb it down but it could be …
Kirstin: This is aware, the fact that I turned up on day one and [overtalking]
Ben: Yeah, so what I might do is I’ll just take a little bit out of that. I’ll still allow the story to sit there.
Kirstin: No, please do.
Ben: But I’ll just take a bit of that kind of, between the two of you, cos you both know each other and you both worked in the military, there’s a common kind of ground there to laugh at but yeah.
Kirstin: Well I think I’d prefer it if you took out that whole sort of setup of you know, what the secondary duty is and all of that and just say that on my first day, you know, as an officer in the air force, I found myself …I think from then on, it’s okay.
Ben: And I think where there’s context, it makes sense, so it’s here I found myself in, you know, a situation I was completely unprepared for but … I’ll just …
Jenelle: Just cut out my question then and then maybe it’s the first sentence …
Kirstin: Yeah it was the te-ta-te you and I had about going “they saw you coming” or “you’re a sucker” or …
Jenelle: You drew the short straw.
Ben: Yeah you took it to a really nice place where you talked about being incredibly humbled in you know, the fact that you later on had to deal with a whole bunch of burials. So you took it … I’ll just get there quicker, if that makes sense.
Kirstin: That would be … thank you for saying that, I really appreciate it. The rest of it … I don’t think I said anything that will in any way
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Adam Dent
CEO of NSW Trustee and Guardian

Intro: Change happens how we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight in to how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad, and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle McMaster: Hi my name is Jenelle McMaster and I am the managing partner of Markets at EY Oceania. I’ve spent my whole career fixated on people – why do they do what they do? How do they respond to change? And has that response over time evolved as a result of the experiences that they have had because the reality is change happens and it is how we deal with it that makes the difference. What if your life was marked by a series of disasters, one of two you of which you indivertibly created yourself. Imagine what lessons around people, change, resilience and decision making that would surface? Well that has been the case for today’s guest, Adam Dent. Today we will here Adam share with us his story about resignations, resilience and rebounding; and the many lessons on leadership that he has had along the way. Adam, welcome
Adam Dent: Good morning
Jenelle McMaster: Who are you?
Adam Dent: I have been spending most of my life trying to work that out. I am a country boy who escaped the city. I moved to Melbourne for university and sort of grew up if you will in Melbourne. I am now in Sydney via a short stop in Wollongong so I guess I am passionate about making the world a better place and always probably the toughest way to do that but that is the intent.
Jenelle McMaster: Definitely keen to hear more about that. But what is it that you actually do?
Adam Dent: So, my day job I am the Chief Executive Officer of a government agency called the NSW Trustee and Guardian. And on the side, I am a Director of a not-for-profit called Start Out Australia which is a mental health initiative.
Jenelle McMaster: OK so in a sentence, if I was going to push you to keep it to a sentence what does the NSW Trustee and Guardian do?
Adam Dent: We are a state government agency that is the independent and impartial executor administrator attorney and trustee. And we also provide financial management and guardianship for those people who have a disability that affects their capacity to make decisions. So we manage an awful lot of money for people who can’t look after it themselves.
Jenelle McMaster: Sounds like the most vulnerable of the community?
Adam Dent: Absolutely. Either the most bereaved if it is a deceased estate or the most vulnerable if someone has a decision-making disability.
Jenelle McMaster: OK so before we get into it let’s get to know you a little bit better. We typically start this podcast with a few warm up questions, so what is a misconception about you that most people have?
Adam Dent: Mostly my age. People assume I am older than I actually am.
Jenelle McMaster: I would love to say the same for myself but that goes the other way actually
Adam Dent: 29 with a few years of experience, right?
Jenelle McMaster: exactly. What about guilty pleasure? Let’s keep it PG rated, what’s yours?
Adam Dent: Gnocchi soprano at my local Italian and its not even on the menu – I make them make it for me.
Jenelle McMaster: OK. Well we are not all fabulous at everything, so what is one thing that you hope and say no matter how much you try I just can’t nail it?
Adam Dent: Skiing
Jenelle McMaster: OK.
Adam Dent: Sport in generally but definitely skiing.
Jenelle McMaster: OK. I feel like I can visualise you out on the slopes
Adam Dent: Don’t! It’s not pretty
Jenelle McMaster: So how would you describe yourself?
Adam Dent: I’m terrible on Tinder but on LinkedIn I would say
Jenelle McMaster: I am going to leave the Tinder profile alone although I really desperately want to get into it
Adam Dent: A change leader, a crisis manager, and I think really at heart I’m a humanitarian, so I am super committed to social justice but really in a really pragmatic and applied kind of way. So, I like to work within systems to change things, rather than to agitate. And my friends tell me I am a nice guy who is generous with my time and I am very caring about others – I will leave it up to you if you believe them or not
Jenelle McMaster: I am not going to dispute that, I think you are a lovely person. I am interested in that humanitarian social justice piece, where does that come from? Is that something from childhood? Where do you think that came from?
Adam Dent: No, I think that sort of developed a lot over time. As a kid I wanted to be a lawyer and then eventually I decided I wanted to be a school teacher. But somewhere along the way, I just growing up in the country I saw as a kid and didn’t necessarily understand it, but I saw a lot of things that just didn’t seem right. I grew up at a time where a lot of the electricity industry in Victoria was privatised, and that had a huge impact on employment in the town I grew up in; and I think my grandfather was a huge mentor to me and he just always had this sense of service and social justice and I guess I must have developed it from there but it sort of grew over time.
Jenelle McMaster: OK. And how you have talked about a number of different desired professions whether it was a lawyer or teacher and you think about where you are today, how or why and why do you think that path changed?
Adam Dent: I am a really big believer in following your passion and opportunity and I think you know in first year uni I struggled financially quite significantly; my family had offered to pay for my residential colleges and my uni degree and in hindsight I realised that they were probably never going to be able to so I took a job – it was the first job I could find and one thing just kept leading to another and I started developing interests that I didn’t know I had at the time. And I guess along the way a mentor had also said to me something that I never really forgot which was: never ever put a name or a job title on something because you never really know what is going to happen. And the idea is to follow your passion, and for me then it turns out my career has been a series of disasters. Some of which I have orchestrated myself. Somewhat unintentionally but I think it’s passion and opportunity and just a little bit of luck along the way.
Jenelle McMaster: OK so let’s get into that crisis piece a bit here. You definitely we look over your history someone who is drawn to a crisis, why is that?
Adam Dent: I’m really calm when things go wrong. I don’t know how that happened to be but in crisis humanity is sort of it bares all if you will; you see the best and you see the worst of society and I think in my mind it is always when where you can really make a difference one way or another. And I guess crisis is also a small industry so once you have started working in it there is not a lot of people around so you get opportunities relatively readily but for me it is really that moment where you are in an environment where everything has gone wrong and you really do generally see the most challenged things in society but you also see this amazing inspiration of people rising up at times when they were least expected to do so. So, for me that is just fertile ground to do really good important work and its not hard to get quite passionate when you are in that environment.
Jenelle McMaster: Now this podcast is called Change Happens not Crisis happen they are obviously different things, the latter has a much more negative or detrimental overtone to it, so what is your attitude to change, is it similar to what the way it is in crisis or do you have a different view about change and are you drawn it?
Adam Dent: I am drawn to it because I think in some ways, in many ways they are really the same thing. They’re different sides of the same coin. For me crisis has often been that thing that happens when you don’t have control and changes the version of it that you do have control but broadly speaking the lessons are almost always the same; when you are going through a crisis or when you are going through a change program there are normally four things that go wrong: something goes wrong with leadership or the absence of thereof during a crisis – that is always fairly common in change that doesn’t go well; the ability to adapt when things don’t go to plan – that is a pretty important lesson in both crisis and in change; often change is driven with a lack of real genuine intelligence about its impact – crisis has the same flavour almost every single time. And I think in recent history we have seen quite a lot of that play out across Australia and the final thing is there is an issue around resource allocation so when you are changing something significant corporately, someone will always let you know there is the thing you didn’t know about that took more resources than they ever told you about – the same thing plays out in crisis. So, for me they are very similar and in all of my roles in organisations that do with that crisis context, my job is actually largely still been about changing the way the organisation looks and focuses and works. And at the back of every crisis there is always a process of change where you learn from what went wrong. If you look across Australia over the last number of months there have been lots of lessons to be learned about how we have handled crisis both from a leadership point of view, from a planning point of view so they really are the same contexts so if you are a good change manager you probably do well in a crisis and I think vice versa.
Jenelle McMaster: So I mean, whilst I am sort of joking around your whole life has been a series of disasters but obviously there are steadier states when you are in an organisation and their may not be some external change factor, there may not be some external crisis to deal with, in those times do you manufacture a reason for change, do you want to keep an organisation continually moving?
Adam Dent: I am drawn to continuous improvement and looking at the environment and when you haven’t got an external crisis it gives you the opportunity I think to be more forward thinking and to look at well what does the next five, ten years look like for this organisation or agency and so manufacturing sounds almost like you are creating a bit of crisis and I do get bored that is probably fair, but it is I think important that we do have those moments where you are free of challenge, it gives you the opportunity to say well where could we be taking things and while things are calm that is probably the best environment to do this; so it’s a nice time for change you can do it a bit more carefully, you can be a bit more gentle around the process than when it is driven externally. So, I do tend to find myself looking for opportunity when there isn’t a crisis, absolutely, but that is probably the better time to do it really.
Jenelle McMaster: Fantastic. I am going to turn to the NSW Trustee and Guardian portfolio that you have now. It’s quite a unique profile. You have described it to me in the past with various descriptions including provider of last resort, you have talked about you have deceased clients, you have stakeholders who are alive and can be quite difficult whilst the people that you are fighting for are not alive; you would see all sort of dynamics – you have talked to me about in the past inheritance impatience and all sort of – it’s a pretty unique and incredible profile that you look after and perhaps not always the easiest or the most rewarding I would imagine, why are you attracted to it and what do you get out of that personally?
Adam Dent: Why am I attracted to it? It’s very importing work. I think that concept we have talked about being a provider of last resort that literally means there is nobody else, there is nobody else in a vulnerable person’s life or for whatever reason be a family conflict, or a range of other things; somebody independent and impartial has to be involved in order to sort this out in the best interest of the subject person whether it be the deceased in a will or the vulnerable person we are looking after. And I think for me it is that social justice piece that for these people there is nobody else who can protect their interests and look after them. So that is actually enormously rewarding. You are right that it doesn’t feel like there is a lot of rewards some days. Its pretty tricky stuff. You see again some of the worst of humanity in these processes, but it really is about there is somebody who without this intervention would be far worse off and so irrespective of anyone’s perspective of all of that this is just such important work and I often remind my staff that they are not in processing invoices or vouching in an estate or whatever internal language that choose to use they are making a human life better for their intervention today. And often it is hard to remember that when you are sort of getting the barrage of content that comes through, but it really is for me its humanitarian work but it’s the last stop if we fail there really isn’t a safety net after us.
Jenelle McMaster: I accept as you have said that there is some real challenges in this portfolio, I’m sure that there are a number of grey areas that you personally and the organisation as to navigate, would you share with us some of those challenging stories or situations where you have had to navigate that grey?
Adam Dent: That often comes so a lot of our work is dealt with during conflict within families, where there is a disagreement about how what mum would have really wanted to do with the money or what the best interest of the person we are looking after is; so there is often a moral dilemma that evolves out of some of these things and whether that be where we are settling a law suit and the instinct is to fight because you really want to do the right thing but you know that would end up costing so much that is not really in the best interest of somebody; or it’s the making the decision for someone who can’t communicate what their will really is, what their preferences are and then you get caught up I suppose almost in the emotions. So we had a gentleman who was estranged from his daughter, his daughter was very unwell in another country and needed money if we were to give that money he would run out of money far sooner and get sub-optical care in his older years and so do you help the sick daughter or do you look after his long term interests and legislatively my job is to look after his long term interests but emotionally you think a father would probably want to support their daughter so what is the right decision and then so right becomes one of a moral question or one of a legal question – now I am only allowed to make a legal decision but it doesn’t mean you don’t grapple with the moral and some of those decisions you sort of get to a point where you just have to force yourself to make them because they are so tricky that you can probably prosecute it for a really long time and then ultimately it has to be done I mean there is a last choice. So I think for me I still also stress about really simple decisions sometimes too that we get to make so there is the grey area, the really difficult moral ones but sometimes it is as much as I get the opportunity at a particular point to decide whether we continue to manage somebody’s affairs and there is only one point where I get to do that without it having to go back to a court or tribunal which is very difficult for somebody who is under our care because they are there for a reason. So, I really get caught quite up in that decision because its about someone’s human rights at that point and in effect what we do can be seen as a restriction of someone’s human rights, its protective but it’s a restriction. So, making what seems like a simple decision to click approve, to continue managing someone’s finances for them is actually quite ???(34:30)
Jenelle McMaster: That has far reaching implications doesn’t it?
Adam Dent: Huge consequences for that individual, for their family and so for me I take those really really quite seriously. The guardians who work in my organisation have to make end of life decisions sometimes. They will be woken up at 2:00am in the morning by a doctor saying do we turn the machine off? And as the legal guardian they are the ones who have to make that call. Now our work is meant to be done dispassionately and impartially but you can’t be dispassionate about making a decision like that so even the routine things we do I think take a bit of a toll in thinking about it so that grey becomes very broad and this often arguably the right answer somebody in that person’s family won’t think that was the right answer and you just have to wear that even your best decisions are often going to be considered bad decision by others so you have to do it in the full knowledge that you are doing your level best to act in someone’s best interest, that is pretty tricky.
Jenelle McMaster: It is tricky, and I think when you use the word dispassionate it almost suggests not caring but I can hear very clearly is an extreme level of empathy which no doubt would take a toll on you personally, as a leader in the organisation?
Adam Dent: It does, and I think we need to we are very good at starting to look at how we care about each other in the process as well. We spend an enormous amount of empathy and energy looking after our clients and it has taken me being me have come into the organisation said hang on a minute what about the humans who are making these decisions, how do we support each other appropriately, what do we need to put in place, clinical supervision doesn’t sound like something that would normally happen in a government agency that is for social workers and psychologists but for us even our non-social work staff do need that because they are making really tricky decisions.
Jenelle McMaster: What do you do for you?
Adam Dent: I knew you would ask something that wasn’t in the script
Jenelle McMaster: LOL there is no script here Adam
Adam Dent: I surround myself with very very good people. I think in all of this its about really trying to maintain a positive outlook and remind yourself that this is important. And for me that is about having people around who understand, having people who know that whether it be a change process, a crisis process, or just having had to make a really difficult decision at work, having someone who can kind of look at you and remind you that you’re human too is really helpful because you sort of get into this process of just feeling like the bad guy and having someone sort of put their hand on your shoulder and say “no that was difficult, that was awful, but it is what you have to do and its probably better that you did it than somebody who didn’t care”. I think that reassurance makes it all worthwhile.
Jenelle McMaster: I think that is absolutely right and just picking up on that your words “the bad guy” you know the word trust is inherent in your portfolio NSW Trustee and Guardian and yet we have seen plenty of press out there particularly in more recent times, the kind of press that strikes emotional cords with readers, allegations of misuse of authority, somebody dying in squalor, overcharging fees, you know when you talked about the grappling with the moral and the legal side of things we are in an environment of over examined times, we are in an environment where “can we” gives way to “should we” much more than it ever has before. How do you navigate and lead through that environment of declining trust of increasing of grey of what is, what is right?
Adam Dent: I think those sorts of moments you refer to those the news stories, they really are the worst of days. Of all of the things that could keep me awake at night they are the definitely the things that hit the hardest because there is no winning in the court of a current affairs programs and twitter and the like; And there is almost nothing you can do to fight some of that and the stories the way they are painted, they are awful, and every time one of them pops up my heart sinks thinking how could we possibly have done that, how could we possibly have done any of that and you have this moment of god if any of this is true how am I going to sleep again, so it becomes very very difficult so the first reaction for me is to just immediately dig in to the facts and get to the bottom of it and I get I don’t rely on a three line briefing from someone; I get quite involved in understanding it myself. Now invariably its never anything like it seems, it is never quite the story that hit the press, the facts are never necessarily legally correct but the emotions are and what you are reading is generally horrible but there is no winning in trying to deny that and say “oh but you got that all wrong” so for me it’s a case of let’s get to the bottom of this because I actually can’t say what I want to; there are all sort of legal reasons why I am not allowed to talk these matters that doesn’t necessarily stop somebody on twitter or on a tv programme so the biggest thing to remember there are real people involved in this and its not just the subject matter so the person who is the subject of that story they have obviously had a time that hasn’t been the best but there is also my staff they have been involved in this and they know that file, as soon as you see the news story you know its one that you are involved in so one of the first things I do is actually write to my staff and reassure them that I believe in them and I believe in what we are trying to do but if we have something to learn from this if there has been a mistake we have made we’ll show compassion for our customers and for our own people and work through it. Where we should apologise some of the news stories that have been in more recent times have been my apology where something has come up and obviously sometimes that is the bit that gets into the newspaper not the bit where I have actually corrected the laywer but that’s how this stuff works and you know that is coming and I make sure that we get things right where we need to because no-one is perfect and just the very nature of the things we have to do are always tricky; the potential to do something that someone disagrees with is very real in our world. Now I can’t come out swimming and I wouldn’t anyway but because of trustee disclosure, privacy and the fact that a number of our clients are protected by law so therefore their identity can’t be revealed; I can’t really say much ever so I am the guy who says there was no comment and where I can retry to follow up and provide as many facts as we can so to be sure we have said what is reasonable the big job then becomes internally – how do I make sure my people know that we are doing the best job we can, we fixed what needs to be fixed and we know what we have learnt from it and that my staff are reminded that they are good people trying to do good work and some days not everyone is going to agree with us.
Jenelle McMaster: And I guess coming back to your clarity of purpose about why the organisation exists would be critical in this communication, just a reminder of how everyone’s role, their activities, are a key contribution to their ultimate purpose
Adam Dent: that is right. We are protecting, promoting and supporting the rights, dignities, choices and wishes of some of the most vulnerable people in NSW and that necessarily means it isn’t going to be easy and we are going to have really though days so I think they are the worst of days there is no denying that, they are the days I wake up, I read the news and just think this is really going to be a difficult week because its difficult for us, its difficult for our people and its obviously difficult for the customer who is the subject of the story.
Jenelle McMaster: So, speaking of difficult days and tough days, you seem to have had plenty of them in your life
Adam Dent: I am good at them
Jenelle McMaster: As the commissioner of the SES you oversaw a whole lot of tough days, you oversaw the response to the Hunter Valley Super Storm which I think was the largest response to a storm event
Adam Dent: at the time it was yes
Jenelle McMaster: The history of the agency. You had 7 years with the Australian Red Cross in Victoria where you were providing humanitarian assistance during the Black Saturday bush fire of 2009 and the Victorian Floods in 2010,2011 so you have seen crisis after crisis, you have seen people have to deal, pick themselves up, deal with grief, deal with loss, what did you learn aobut people more generally and how they deal with those kind of changes and crisis?
Adam Dent: It almost always takes longer than you think in those environments. You think that people who have been through something like a Black Saturday or more the recent fires and floods in Australia in your mind you can sort of say right we need to rebuild, we need to do this, we need to replace infrastructure, the human side always takes longer than people think because there is a new normal for people and during crisis people are de-bond from each other so relationships break down, people see the world through a different lense, they then re-bond sometimes with the wrong people in the wrong environment through that crisis period to get through and so there is an element of how do you bring some sort of normality back when nothing is normal anymore so that is really tricky. Some people become stronger and that is what is really interesting that you see people really do rise out of those challenges
Jenelle McMaster: It can be a sort of rallying or war cry, look at the bushfires now of Australia and the world gathering around
Adam Dent: And some of the incredible pop volunteer organisations have done so much now came out of Black Saturday where some people stepped up and decided they were going to do something differently and just went and did some incredibly things in their communities and they have continued to do those. Some people take a really long time and some people just never recover and I think that is the biggest thing is remembering its literally a person by person conversation as you go through this kind of crisis no-one has a story that is similar to anybody else’s and so in the aftermath of Black Saturday just in the few months my team had 5000 conversations with individual people and while there were themes the reality was for every body it was an individual journey; and I think in crisis and in change generally everyone will have their own version of how it impacts them and what that means and its really critical that we take a very human focus on it
Jenelle McMaster: How do you do that at scale?
Adam Dent: That is always tricky and its in my mind its about having that intent about saying do not attempt to apply one answer to everybody and using the network I have been very fortunate in volunteer organisations there are enormous numbers of people, corporately you haven’t always got those sort of numbers so you need to build the cohesion of the willing if you will, you find the right influencers, whether they be in crisis, the people in communities, the republicans, the hairdressers, the people who are incredibly well connected and you attempt to work through people like that to understand the sentiment and then to drive messaging – its no different in an organisation the informal leaders across an organisation are critical elements to change so its about identifying really quickly who those people are and how to use them
Jenelle McMaster: Often there isn’t a one to one relationship between influence and hierarchy
Adam Dent: Absolutely
Jenelle McMaster: That’s something have learnt over time
Adam Dent: My word
Jenelle McMaster: And so Adam through those series of crisis that you have worked through, what did you learn about yourself?
Adam Dent: that is always a tricky one to reflect on because you tend to or I tend to have these inclinations towards what does this mean for everybody else and I think that was probably one of the key lessons which is just how readily I distance myself from that and focus so much on what it means for somebody else – is this person going to be OK, did we fix the right things for that community and then there is that moment about sort of four weeks later where you collapse in a heap a little bit and I think the biggest thing I learned is how easy it is to forget yourself in that moment; you are operating on such a rush of adrenalin and you feel this sort of sense of obligation that its very easy to lose sight of yourself and I tend to do that and that became really really critical for me. There was a moment with a colleague, I remember at Red Cross back in the day where I walked past her, she was just sitting outside the female toilets on the floor in tears and we just knew that was her moment and it sounds like a weird thing to say but we all learned that we had our moment and it was her turn today because mine was probably going to come tomorrow. So, I learned we sort of accepted too much of that stress and I was just too OK that I was going to have that moment where I just needed to lock myself in a hotel for a couple of hours and fall apart then pick myself back up. So, I am probably very good at making sure everyone else gets looked after and less good at looking after myself.

Jenelle McMaster: So that is the old analogy “who takes care of the carers” – the analogy is about oxygen masks and who puts those on for (??? 22:29)
Adam Dent: All of the above and its classically one of the first things that you will forget because you are so busy worrying and there is so much to be concerned about so I did get into a pattern of after those big events making sure I went and got some help and it sounds like a weird thing to say but I came out to my organisation and said I’m going to start seeing a psychologist for a couple of weeks to debrief and talk about all of these things. And that triggered a whole range of other people to say hang on a minute I’m probably not as OK as I thought so for me it felt a bit brave but it was mostly about signalling that none of us are probably that OK after this; we probably need to talk and maybe not to each other for a little while and I think that was really really useful.
Jenelle McMaster: It makes me think back to a long long time ago I used to be a psychologist who worked in prisons and we used to have mental health days that were stacked up and I almost wore it as a badge of honour that I never took those mental health days and if there is one thing I look back on over time now with experience under the belt is that that’s not a badge of honour at all actually – I done myself a great disservice, I sent a wrong message and I am very very cautious to make sure that I take leave ahead of time and look after myself through these kinds of situations
Adam Dent: And you are not making your best decisions when you are in that situation.
Jenelle McMaster: Exactly
Adam Dent: And it was anyone else you would be looking; I sent that many staff home for working too long and not taking enough of a break and one of them bravely turned around and said so when are you going home. And it was that moment when you have to swallow your pride a little bit and realise
Jenelle McMaster: People watch that
Adam Dent: Maybe I am not in great shape
Adam Dent: They take that as a queue and permission for themselves to take leave so it’s the difference between having something that is there in policy format yes yes yes you can take these leaves versus something that is lived and breathed and supported by the organisation
Adam Dent: So, I make sure I go home not long after 5:00pm most days now – no one needs to know how much work I might do when I get home but its about being the one to work off the floor so that everyone else feels comfortable doing so
Jenelle McMaster: OK. If we just turn to decision making clearly in those times of crisis you don’t have all the information to hand; its evolving but you can also get conflicting information, how would you describe your decision making skills and do they change when you are in a state of crisis?
Adam Dent: to an extent in the sense that in a crisis you have to be prepared to act in the abstract. You have to try and piece together what things mean without all of the meaning being there and without the time to assemble that meeting so you have to work with what you have got, make the decision, back yourself in in the full knowledge that you are probably going to learn things later where you will have to change your decision and make a new and better decision when the information becomes clearer. So, I think there is a humility in crisis decision making. That sounds a little counter intuitive when you see people in uniforms with ropes and things on their shoulders and all the rest of it that you wouldn’t imagine the incredible amount of humility it takes to stand there and make those calls because you pretty much know you are going to have to unmake that call. In a non-crisis situation, you have more time to think it through; equally I think you still should have the humility to say as more information comes to light I might need to change my decision and be prepared to do that.
Jenelle McMaster: So, someone we saw I mean are ready faced people condrer up in their minds when they think about exactly what you have talked about there was Anna Bligh during the Queensland floods; certainly, it seemed really evident that communicating effectively during a crisis is a critical skill, what is your philosophy and approach around communications?
Jenelle McMaster: There is probably two elements to it and I definitely won’t call them my philosophy because I am bound to have read them somewhere and then thought they were mine own incredible thinking
Jenelle McMaster: Finally honed
Adam Dent: Yes, my finally honed piece of academic work. Juliane in September 11 as of mayor of New Year City took an approach that I thought was brilliant. It was “I will tell you what I do know, I will tell you what I don’t know, I will tell you what I will do; and I will tell you what I need to do” and I always add “and then I will tell you when you hear from me next” because managing expectations becomes really critical.
Jenelle McMaster: that’s a great framework
Adam Dent: So, it’s a really quite simple and honest framework around this is what is going on and I think one of the things that is really important is be able to say this is what I don’t know. Being brave enough to say I don’t have all of the answers is really really critical. Because people want to see leaders who are stronger than them in that moment in crisis, but they also need you to be human and if you don’t show that humanity people won’t trust you. Now the simpler version of that for me is tell it all, tell it early and tell it yourself. The leaders who struggle in crisis are the ones that hide things because they are not sure about them; they are the ones who wait because they are not sure they have enough information to talk about it or they are the ones who stand behind somebody else. So, tell it all, tell it early and tell it yourself – its hard to get it wrong and Anna Bligh did an exceptional job of that during Queensland; Jacinta Adern is another really brilliant example of the same thing; Shane Fitzsimons in NSW during the bush fires did the same thing. These are people you trust because you know they are telling you everything they know even though it isn’t everything you need to hear.
Jenelle McMaster: I think that is right. I think people can pick it a mile away when its not there. They might not be able to put their finger on what it is when they are seeing it but when they don’t see it
Adam Dent: ??? 17:29
Jenelle McMaster: Yeah that is right. We are surrounded by a series of disasters at the moment – Coronavirus, bushfires and floods; lots of people in leadership roles leading those things its an interesting time to see different styles of leadership through those crises. Do you see people being defined by the way they lead through moments of crisis?
Adam Dent: Absolutely. And for me there were moments in my career where it really did define my style and people saw me in a particular light and then I felt the need to sort of maintain some of that, but I think very much particularly in a 24/7 new cycle that we live in now people are absolutely defined. The most inspiring things I have seen though are the member of communities who step up during crisis and show leadership that you didn’t know was there. And that has been quite inspiring so there are people who now have strong leadership roles in local communities who would have never been noticed. But absolutely when we talked about Anna Bligh who showed such incredible leadership during those Queensland floods and there are moments when we then say this isn’t about politics anymore Jacinta Adern after the issue in Christchurch you think these are moments when you see them as humans, you see them as strong, you see them as willing and that absolutely defines them and without obviously no none needs anyone named but there are those who have not done some of things and people have made judgements about their character. So there is quite a bit of pressure I think in those moments to understand what sort of shadow the crisis will cast but as much for you as an individual as it will for community.
Jenelle McMaster: Now Adam not all crisis that you have dealt with have been external – this is that uncomfortable chuckle that is going to happen. We know that there is at least one of those crisis that was of your own doing, can you talk us through that particular one?
Adam Dent: There was a time I was the youngest ever appointed Commissioner in an emergency service in Australia at the time I had been appointed the Commissioner of the State Emergencies Service. It was an incredible honour and overwhelming responsibility to take on and as you said I saw the organisation through some really really times and come Christmas at the end of a really long year I had a quiet drink with a colleague, walked myself home and got in the car to go and get something for dinner and drove through an RBT and discovered I had a little bit more wine than I thought and that of course being in that role that means you don’t just get to slip through the RBT without anyone noticing; I can’t imagine how it ever got to the media but it did and of course on the day of the hearing in court there were cameras out the front and there I was I was the Commissioner who had been drink driving and for me that was a really tricky situation because I was also in charge of the people who went and rescued people out of car accidents and we had been through a period in the organisation at that time of significant change and I was holding volunteers and staff to account for a range of things that historically had happened and the standards of behaviour I put in place were quite strong. So, in my mind, I had to be held to the same level of behavioural accountability that everyone else had. So, I was in a bit of a moral quandary. How do I kick somebody out for bad behaviour yet have been in the media for having committed bad behaviour myself so I decided the only option was to resign- the mister of the day was kind to me and had assured me I had his support – I think he came out and said “I am going to have to call you an idiot in the news but I don’t think you do a bad job and you probably shouldn’t have to resign” but ultimately we go to a point of view where I had to resign and he felt compelled to accept it because in my mind I was compromised in terms of what I was trying to achieve from a behaviour point of view with the people in that organisation. And so it became a question of integrity for me, ultimately, which was if I really believed in everything I had been sprouting for 12 months I had to go. And I wrote the email and its that thing in Microsoft Outlook where it tells you how many recipients there are and it said this will be received by 10,000 plus people, are you sure,
Jenelle McMaster: There definitely are you sure pop ups
Adam Dent: And if you want to know what crisis feels like when it rattles all the way through your bones hitting send that afternoon, letting my people know that a. I had done the wrong thing I told it all, I told it early (I hadn’t decided that I was resigning at that point), the email came from me but then 48 hours later the second email to them was to tell them I was leaving
Jenelle McMaster: So, the period of time between the incident and you resigning was only 48 hours?
Adam Dent: 48 hours – news story 1, news story 2 and then by news story 3 it was Dent resigns so
Jenelle McMaster: What was the reaction of those 10,000 people got that message and then the rest of the country did so what was the reaction?
Adam Dent: Obviously, there were a hand full of people who were disappointed and they should have been – I don’t think drink driving is an acceptable thing to do so there were people who wrote to me and said you are an idiot and I wrote back and said I agree. I also got an overwhelming number of messages from people it was over 100 messages saying you shouldn’t have to go for that but for the grace of God go I, all of those really kind words – people who had believed that what I had done was brave to own up and to resign in that way so that was all very heart warming. It didn’t change the fact that it had to happen in my mind but it was nice to know that there were people who at least validated what I was trying to do as a leader of that organisation was the right thing at the time for the organisation
Jenelle McMaster: So how did you what did you do from there? You are out of a job now?
Adam Dent: So, well the first couple of months were not great for my health – there were a lot of chicken wings at the pub by the beach at Wollongong for a couple of months there
Jenelle McMaster: Somewhere the gnocchi kicked in as well
Adam Dent: I hadn’t learned about the gnocchi then – that was when I moved from Wollongong to Sydney so let’s hope I don’t end up out of work again because things will really get out of hand. I spent a lot of time as I said before maintaining a positive outlook “this too will pass” somebody had said to me people had done far worse things and done ultimately better in their careers so it was really about keeping perspective that this at the time was the worst thing that had ever happened to me personally from a career point of view. But it would pass so with good people around me and then it was about taking ownership and then making some decision actions and it wasn’t about them being permanent and being the right thing but it was about doing something. I think when you are in that situation personally the worst thing you can do is get into some sort of inertia and not do anything. So, after a couple of weeks, I sort of licking my wounds it was about I am going to get on with something, I’m going to do something; I applied for another job it was awful but I got another job and that sort of kept sort of me moving and it made me realise that things were going to turn out OK. The other thing I would say is there is that element of taking care of yourself and not stopping doing the things I enjoyed. Now it turns out I probably enjoyed chicken wings a little bit more than I used have so I found about 15 kilos, but I think it’s really important it really is about perspective and then for me I just use that as an opportunity to better understand myself. Ultimately, this was awful but it was a matter of integrity and I felt good about myself so that validated I had to make decisions to the rest of my career that supported my integrity; and you start to get a little laundry list of what made you feel good at the time.
Jenelle McMaster: Important lessons and clearly a real demonstration on your resilience through that time as well.
Adam Dent: It was very much a Winston Churchill sort of “never give in” set of moments that had to keep playing and there were moments where it definitely felt like it was going to be difficult but just thinking that never give in
Jenelle McMaster: To the chicken wings and to the
Adam Dent: Absolutely to the world around you but I did give in to chicken wings. I had to eventually build back some courage there and send them off into the sunset
Jenelle McMaster: Important lessons. OK you mentioned you are the director of Start Out Australia, what is that and what role do you play?
Adam Dent: So, Start Out Australia is essentially a suicide prevention and mental health initiative targeted at LGBTI people or people of diverse sex sexuality and gender in rural and regional Australia. We know that in Australia the suicide rate is too high generally but one of the largest impacted group is between 16-44 although not exclusively. It is disproportionally in men and it is disproportionally as a result of challenges or issues with sexuality. So, we wanted to do something about that. A young gay person is 5 times more likely to make an attempt on their life than their straight peers and somebody who maybe transgender or is dealing with gender dysmorphia is 14 more times more likely to make an attempt on their life and that is pretty heart breaking to think about that just because there is not enough supportive people in their life these people are taking their lives; and often younger than they should. So, the stats are pretty soul destroying and we wanted to do something about that and so Start Out provides online access to mentors and role models for people who are struggling so that they can work through that tricky stuff.
Jenelle McMaster: And why is the cause that is so that you are so passionate about?

Adam Dent: Growing up as a gay man in country Victoria wasn’t easy and now it’s obviously getting easier as the world sort of matures on these things, but I was in a country town, I was the proverbial only gay in the village in my mind at the time. Now I later learned that wasn’t true and I learned that some of the kids at school were also a bit different who got sick and disappeared didn’t get sick it was suicide and we didn’t talk about it back then, we weren’t brave enough. So, for me I was personally impacted by the mental health challenges in my younger years around that. But then the time came where a very good friend of mind made a number of attempts on his life as a result of the same things and a group of us sat down and thought we are smart people, we should be able to do something about this. this isn’t good enough so we rallied some people together and ultimately ended up with Start Out being formed.
Jenelle McMaster: Amazing. And I know that that’s not a part of you that you kind of keep separate to you as a leader in business, you have been quite vocal about LGBTQI communities in the workplace, was that something that you struggled with to bring into your work life?
Adam Dent: Absolutely. And I always say to people you don’t come out once you come out every single day of your life. You come out when you start a new job, you come out when someone new starts at your new job so it is this constant sort of process and I made the decision earlier in my career that I would no longer care and I would either not work for organisations where I knew it would be difficult or I would just have to go in bravely. I have to say that the emergency services is a pretty confronting industry to walk into as a young gay person, its actually no way near as bad as it seems externally, it’s far more welcoming and inclusive these days than perhaps it might have been. But I have made a conscious decision to either not care or to join organisations that absolutely have the right approach.
Jenelle McMaster: And certainly, I guess this is one of those examples where being at the top of the hierarchy is really helpful if you are setting the tone for inclusion and inclusion of all it sends a pretty powerful message down the organisation as well

Adam Dent: Absolutely. And you get to have bit of fun like deciding we are going to put rainbow stickers all over our trucks in Mardi Gras now and ???? (06:14)
Jenelle McMaster: I saw that a few years ago
Adam Dent: But was interesting about that is I think when you are at the top of an organisation you gain a whole set of obligations around these things that you might still be nervous about it yourself but when I rainbowed wrapped that truck and it drove up Mardi Gras in Sydney there are a few looks of should you have done that to a piece of State Government infrastructure and I decided I didn’t care. But a young volunteer came up to me and said I was too terrified to come out as transgender but today Commissioner you have made that ok with me and after I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye and realised there were people who struggled so much more than me who still need someone to show them the way it was the most powerful thing I have seen; its one of those if you can then you should; I have the ability to influence this in organisations, you should support people who are of a diverse background, you should make sure your board has 50% woman, all of those things there is no good compelling reason not to do those things and if you are in a position where you can influence it I think you are obliged to
Jenelle McMaster: Here here. ok so Adam with change happening so quickly around us, what are your predictions for society and business over the next five years?
Adam Dent: I think we are going to all have to do more with less. I think in my mind is what I see vulnerability is becoming more significant, the gap is widening, the types of clients I see in my organisation we used to deal with people who had significant ranges of age-related disabilities so dementia and that was what was impacting their capacity. We are now seeing far younger people with significant psychiatric and drug and alcohol issues so all of that is I think indicative that within society the gap isn’t being closed for those who are facing the biggest challenges
Jenelle McMaster: In fact, I think it’s going the other way
Adam Dent: absolutely, I was trying to be a bit subtle it’s getting really worse and its quite horrible some of the things that we are seeing. So that worries me because it means the demand on services both in business generally to do more from a corporate social responsibility point of view but on government its just putting more and more pressure on something that has less and less resources. And then the other side is we just have to keep changing the way work. When I was briefly in the consulting game, we talked about the future of work, well its not the future of work anymore its contemporary work
Jenelle McMaster: It’s here and now
Adam Dent: But most people haven’t caught up yet so we can talk about it being here and now but it takes a long time for the corporate machine or for government or for institutions to move and so we are playing I think for the next five years are really significant game of catch up. I think you indicated early on in societies’ expectations of change – what they see as right reasonable and what we should be doing now is not necessarily what all businesses are ready for so; and the other thing I think will get more difficult over the next five years is trusting in corporations and institutions generally. I think the inability of some organisations to grabble with climate and what that means for people and what that means for their business is there; politics the circus that I think politics can become is really quite a challenge; the Royal Commission’s that are running at the moment that are just exposing the absolute worst in both industry, our institutions, and potentially government. I think will make a quantum shift in what the community expects us all to do and managing that expectations is going to be incredibly incredibly tricky
Jenelle McMaster: I also I’d say though on more optimistic side of that is rising to expectation is the opportunity so if businesses and if government are falling short then the reality is the ground swirl of sentiment is not going to let that be the case, right?
Adam Dent: Absolutely and the leaders and organisations who do step up and do make that change and I think we have seen over the last couple of years some business leaders stepping out against the grain and making really big statements on these sort of issues of the day - that has really worked because that is what society wants to see and people know and to vote just on price; you know people want to buy into organisations or buy from organisations that do the right thing. People don’t want to work for organisations that do the wrong thing now. So, I think there is enormous opportunity to gain from doing the right thing – its kind of a complete win win really
Jenelle McMaster: well it is. I think historically we have tended to think we need to sacrifice one for the other; there is many many examples across every sphere you can think of that doing well and doing good can coexist and actually they support each other
Adam Dent: and I said to somebody recently, what if we did all of this stuff to change the world and it turned out we didn’t need to do as much of it, the world would still be a better place. If we didn’t any of it we are all in a lot of trouble. So, there is no real disadvantage to doing the right thing
Jenelle McMaster: That is fantastic, total agree with you. And then for you personally Adam, what do you see yourself doing over the next five years and beyond?
Adam Dent: Well I think I will be public servant, or at least I hope so. I continue to serve at the pleasure of the crown. I think for me it is finding ways to stay balanced in all of this because there is so much rapid change and I think I don’t want to slow down in any of that but that is going to mean as an individual I need to do enormous amount of work on that. But five years is a long time in business, so I think the best change to predict is just that change will happen itself. I don’t think I really want to label where I will be because I have never ended up anywhere I thought I would its all been a game of chance based on purpose and passions – we will see
Jenelle McMaster: And guided by your ultimate desire to serve the human and seek social justice so
Adam Dent: Hopefully I will still be making a difference in a good way in five years
Jenelle McMaster: Wonderful. Well Adam I wanted to thank you so much for joining me today. I am sure anyone who is listening to this podcast would agree this has been incredibly telling, you have been very open, incredibly candid and I think it is sharing the kinds of vulnerable moments that you have that make us all realise that we can make mistakes, we can learn from those mistakes, and its what we do with those lessons that will define the kinds of leaders and humans that we are
Adam Dent: Thank you
Jenelle McMaster: I think there has been a whole lot of takeaways for me in this conversation amongst those have been that change can be experienced in a really individual way, so I think we really need to recognise individual journeys that people have when they experience change. I have taken away that humility and courage is critical in communications and keeping humanity at the centre of your leadership is also a critical part of that and that even when the worst things happen, they will get better the sun will rise and we just need to keep going.
Adam Dent: Absolutely
Adam Dent: Thank you so much for you time
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Cathy O'Connor
CEO of NOVA Entertainment

John Brogden
CEO of Landcom & Chairman of Lifeline Australia

Intro: This episode of the Change Happens podcast covers a discussion on the affects of mental illness and suicide. If you or someone you know needs support or help with mental health or suicide please talk to a GP, a health professional or if in Australia contact Lifeline 24 hours a day on 13 11 14. That’s 13 11 14 or at Lifeline www.lifeline.org.au – that is lifeline www.lifeline.org.au
Change happens – how we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change – the good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not change happens.
Jenelle McMaster: Hi, my name is Jenelle McMaster and I am the managing partner of Markets at EY Oceania. This podcast series Change Happens is a conversation with senior business leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. When we set out creating a podcast about how we cope, deal and work through change we didn’t expect it to be amid the biggest world-wide change in modern history COVID-19. During COVID-19, isolation is something that all of us are facing in one form or another as people undergo personal crisis and adjust to the new reality of life in lockdown, including personal and economic implications. There is the grim reality of a likely increase in mental health needs and a very real threat of an increase in the number of suicides. Our guest today is John Brogden, CEO of Landcom, focusing on providing social and economic benefits to the people of New South Wales, and also a chairman of Lifeline Australia, a national charity providing all Australians experiencing a personal crisis with access to 24-hour crisis support. John has walked a very public journey of success, failure and redemption – from being the youngest ever leader of a major political party in Australia at 33 to a very public suicide attempt which marked the end of his political career to a clear recognition of success as a chairman and CEO, John has truly embodied the highs and lows of a very public life. Welcome to Change Happens, how are you going during this time, you know, think about all the things that are happening now, it’s got to be an extraordinary time to be the chair of an organisation like Lifeline.

John Brogden: Well I guess my life divided into three categories at the moment: family would be the first one. My wife Lucy and I have three children 16, 14 and 12 and we are all in the house almost fulltime so that is a change and I know lots of people are wondering when they are going to strangle their children but from our perspective with a bit of tension from time to time it’s actually been a lovely time to spend this close time with our children. Of course, the other role is the Chief Executive Officer of Landcom. We are a land developer in New South Wales. We are a New South Wales government state owned corporation and for us we are 180 staff, thankfully we had tested just the week before the move to working from home. Our emergency system, our crisis team and that worked well so we have been relatively calm and simple in transferring our staff to working from home and we have been surveying our staff regularly and they are very positive about the systems and how they are working and interacting with other staff, so that is a very good start to this what could be a six month period; and then Lifeline is probably the most interesting and intellectually challenging area of work at the moment. Our volunteers, we have two and half thousand volunteers on the phones across the country and paid staff as well. Our model is that they go into the office and do their work so of course most of our staff over 70 and more well particularly volunteers over 70 have just stopped coming in. We have had some pressure on our volunteers as a consequence of that but the flip side of the coin is that we are finding because people are at home, because they have more time, we have actually seen an increase in volunteer hours and we have also put more paid staff on. So, at Lifeline, we are receiving the greatest number of calls in our 57-year history.

Jenelle McMaster: That is a bit of a Segway into next question I was going to ask you around that demand because the background to this podcast and you being a guest on this podcast was - it came about actually after I attended the launch of your Bushfire 1-3 Helpline at Lifeline which was in mid-February and I remember at that event you talked about the devastation on communities with the fires, the demands on mental health workers, the need for establishing that 24 by 7 healthline, and that at time we really saw the country coming together around that; certainly none of us in the room that day would have predicted that a month later much of the world would find itself in lockdown the way it has – so what I was actually wondering about this surge in demand, like it was already high around the bushfires, what are you seeing now with the pandemic and what that has meant for the nature of support that is being called up for Lifeline?

John Brogden: So Lifeline usually receives 2.5 thousand calls a day; now just to reflect on that they are from Australians in crisis and at high risk of suicide – about 30% of those are suicidal calls and 10-15 in numbers not percentage 10-15 of those calls every day our crisis support up makes an assessment that the person on the other end of the line is at such high risk of suicide that we keep them on the line and tag the line to the police and ambulance who send a police car and ambulance to where that person is, so that’s our day to day if you like. What we have seen from December 2019 with the bush fires is an increase of 300-400 a day let’s say 2900 a day and we are now reaching numbers as high as 3200 a day during the coronavirus pandemic. So, we have seen a massive increase year on year an extraordinary increase March to March, April to April if you like. Thankfully we have been able to not only answer those calls but increase our call answer rate because of more paid services and more volunteers but the overwhelmingly majority of people talking to us are talking about corona in one way or another and talking about the stress and pressure that it is putting on them.
Jenelle McMaster: It feels like a bit of a double edge sward as I listen to those staggering numbers. On the one hand, I feel incredibly gratified that people do reach out and lean on the support of an organisation like Lifeline. On the other hand, I feel terribly saddened by this increased need, how do you view that? I mean what is the critical success factors I guess of Lifeline, do you see that as a positive thing that it has gone up or a negative thing?
John Brogden: I like to say I would like to be the chairman of an organisation I can shut down one day because we don’t need it anymore; and wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t need Lifeline but we have needed Lifeline since we started in 1963 and our demand has only grown year on year. Yes, you are right it is a double edged sword – it’s fantastic people are reaching out, people shouldn’t suffer in silence but they shouldn’t feel that their problem is too big or too small to talk to somebody about but at the same time it does demonstrate the levels of stress. What we are finding probably at two themes: the first thing is whilst it is important for us to socially distance at the moment and to self isolate and to lock ourselves down, whilst that is good for our physical health it is not good at all for many people’s mental health. So if you already have a very small social circle maybe not many people in your family, you live alone, and you are already suspectable to loneliness this would exasperate that situation if you can’t leave your home or you can’t leave it very often – you may obviously be worried about your health and other sorts of things so we have seen an increase in loneliness and the second thing we have seen is an increase in anxiety and it’s not just from people who are already anxious, who already have clinical anxiety, it’s also from people who have never had an issue before in their life and what I have noticed with my friends and family in the like is people who usually sail through tough times and you would never think would be affected by a tough situation – many of those people have found this incredibly stressful, they are worried about their health, their families health, they are worried about you know yes there is money to keep people going but it may not be as much as you used to earn, your mortgage is under stress, on and on the list goes, there is only one salary in the house now where it used to be two whatever it might be; so people are becoming quite anxious and we are seeing a lot of that anxiety come through. The other thing is and we are talking in April at the beginning of all of this so we are a month in if this does last six months or longer then we think the longer this lasts the more calls we will get because the worse this will become. I mean the novelty is well and truly over but as we move into winter, and as we move into the days are shorter, I think we will find people finding more stress and pressure come upon them.
Jenelle McMaster: I mean look I think what you have outlined is very real and certainly very disheartening but I think we’ve got to face and so some of those realities that may be upon us and I guess I am interested in that comment that you made around the increase in anxiety and it is brand new for some and they would have never had these feelings before and I know John when you have talked about your own history with mental health and mental illness that you have said one of the saving graces that you have had is your heightened sense of self awareness, that strong sense of self awareness and I am wondering particularly for those who this is a new space for them, what you learnt in developing self-awareness that others might be able to be hyper attuned to?
John Brogden: Well, if you had asked me John are you self-aware about 20 years ago before I had a suicidal attempt I would have said to you what is all that Buddhist bullshit you are talking about; for me I would have thought what do you mean self-awareness, I don’t understand what that is and of course I am in control of myself and of course I am under control would probably have been mine interpretation of what she was saying but for me it took a suicide attempt and it took many years of understanding my mental health to come to terms with my self-awareness and for me it means any number of things. In particular, with dealing with my depression, I have depression and I have suicidal ideation that means I have clinical depression, probably a mild to medium form of it and I have suicidal ideation which means if things go badly for me I run a high risk of catastrophising those things and then thinking very quickly about suicide as a way of dealing with the situation I am in – so that is what I live with every day. So, I have learnt to do a number of things. I have learnt not to go into situations that I find too stressful that includes family situations, personal situations, not to talk to people I know who will make me distressed or upset and that was hard because we are taught from a young age to be nice to people, to socialise, most of us are taught you have got to do that, you have to go to this person’s party, you got to go to this event, you got to go to this person’s home and it becomes very much engrained with us; and of course we have also got to be nice to people so I find that the best way for me to deal with stressful situations is to not engage with them – literally not to do them anymore. And we are very used to doing things because we think we have to, that is the culture and the familial arrangements I grew up in and I have had to learn not to do those things. I also manage my stress better with more sleep, with exercise and they are very important to me. I happen to also be on medication. I am on a mood stabiliser and an antidepressant. I take medication every day of my life and I have done for the last 14 years or so and lastly, I see a psychiatrist on a regular basis. So, there are a number of things that make me self-aware – I am self-aware enough to know that if I go to a certain environment it will make me too stressed and too distressed. That took a long time and I had a relapse of my mental health, mental illness should I say just a couple of years ago when I had to effectively go back into hospital for a week or two so I know the other thing I have to do is not get too busy; not say yes to too many things, so learning to say no was very important for me.
Jenelle McMaster: I think what I am hearing in that John is what you have done is given yourself a lot of permission, permission to say no to things, permission to not engage in those things that you have identified maybe triggers for you and the other part of what I am hearing in there as well is that I know that you are being quite a public advocate for not allowing shame to creep in, so I guess de-shaming isn’t a word but I am going to use it right now – de-shaming and giving yourself permission in order to help yourself survive and thrive it seems to be paramount in the
John Brogden: I’m very very much of the view that you don’t ask for mental illness, you don’t go looking for it, it usually visits upon you and in most cases it will visit upon you through circumstances over which you had no control, particularly in areas like childhood. And you should not be ashamed to have a mental illness. There is no shame in having mental illness and I talk about it openly and I must say I find it interestingly not mentally draining but quite physically draining to tell my story in great detail but I think it’s important because we hear a lot about people with bipolar syndrome, we hear a lot of people on high profile sporting figures and the like who have depression but we don’t hear from a lot of people who talk about the journey I have walked which is right down into suicide and coming out the other end. So, I thank God every day that I did not complete my suicide. The things we hear we mostly hear that somebody has taken their own life and that is the end of the story and we mourn that but what people need to understand is that there is light, you can come through this, and there are people who love you and there are systems that will help you to get you through this very difficult time; so we need to hear more talk about people who get to that darkest point of their life which is suicide and how they are able to bring themselves back out the other end. And that was a hard journey for me, I’m not trying to make it sound easy, but it is important that people hear that journey. It’s also very important and this is particularly in a business setting, I think the last stand for bad attitudes towards mental illness are in the workplace and you think of it you think of your own workplace where people have a physical illness well you know we let them take a month’s off, we support them through their cancer, we bring them back to work, we know what to do without blinking; sure we have a HR manual that tells us what to do but we don’t even have to open that up because we want to help that person get through their cancer whatever their physical illness may be. Mental illness - it takes we still have a negative view, we still have a ignorant view to be honest and we still worry a lot about whether that person could ever come back to the workplace and do the job they used to do. So, I think one of the best things along with all of the wellbeing programs that many people are adopting is for somebody senior in a workplace to talk about their mental health, to talk about how they may have had mental illness and how they have come through the other side because that affectively says to people in that organisation if he or she, a senior partner, a manager, or general manger in this organisation or the CEO can have a mental illness and live with it and work here that means I can work here and that means I have nothing to embarrassed or ashamed about.
Jenelle McMaster: That’s great and that is small thanks to people like yourselves who have been so publicly a strong advocate for raising awareness and telling difficult, sharing personal experiences like yours. Are there also other things that employers and leaders can do particularly now which is a really new environment we find ourselves in where people might not even be identifying that they have an issue; employers might not be aware of it because it’s never been one before, so I guess what I am trying to understand is as well is what leaders can do now in a changed environment where some of the cases might not be the ones that were apparent to them and there are some hypervigilant that is going to required in this environment, what is your advice to leaders now with these new conditions we are facing?
John Brogden: Indeed, many people are no longer able to just wonder down the hallway and see how someone is going because everybody is working from home. It really is a case of staying in touch with your people and training your managers to understand what some of the triggers are – so for instance, if you look at something like depression – depression is something of a sustained change in behaviour over a full week or longer period so if somebody goes from – we all have bad days – so sometimes you get in late, you have a bad day, your boss gives you a grilling and you know you sort of fall back into your usual pattern but as a manager if you are noticing a significant shift in somebodies behaviour that is a real sign that something is changing – you need to be more vigilant now than before because you don’t have that many people aren’t having that physical interaction; and obviously people will be under different sorts of pressure. I mean four people around a kitchen table, two working and two doing schoolwork you know there is only so long that is fun and that becomes very stressful
Jenelle McMaster: That’s right, the novelty wears off pretty quickly!
John Brogden: Very quickly. So, I think it is hypervigilance. I think it is looking for changes in behaviour, and frankly I think it’s asking this is a time where every manager should be asking their reports “how are you going?”, and the next step “is everything ok?”, “how are you finding the workload?”, “is everything alright at home?”. Now some people will find those hard questions to ask, the personal questions because it is just not in their nature to ask them but it is about as you said hypervigilance and it’s about going the extra mile to ask people how they are going and drill down and ask those questions. Many will obviously feel uncomfortable and won’t see the truth, it could be some cultural barriers to that as well, but others will let you know and then you are in a position where you can help.
Jenelle McMaster: So, John this podcast you might have noticed is called Change Happens so it is a podcast around change rather than crisis, you know we have talked a lot about mental health crisis, bush fire crisis, pandemic crisis, they are obviously related crisis and change but the latter well crisis certainly has a more negative and detrimental overtone to it – maybe if I bring us back up to a change topic, what is your attitude and approach to change and maybe if you could share some of the lessons that you have learnt in dealing with and leading through change that you have picked up over the course of your work and life situations?
John Brogden: Well its bloody hard, trust me. To be honest I have had more bad experiences trying to make change that good experiences. The older I get the wiser I get, the more mistakes I make I think I get better at it but and having you know been a politician you would think I get this but we used to have an old rule in politics “ the minute you are sick of saying it, is the minute the public are hearing it for the first time”. So you cannot communicate enough, you cannot communicate enough, it’s not possible to communicate enough and you have to resist – what often happens is people come to you and say “look we have already said that three times, why are you saying that again?”, and the answer is because about a third of that group weren’t listening. So, we need you know they have something happening at home or they have a deadline they need to meet or they have got to pick up their kids from school – they are not listening, you have to keep on banging away at those messages; And you also have got to create the reason you need something, and hopefully therefore the change makes sense and I think you have to be honest and the hardest part about honesty is if particularly if you are doing a restructure that may involve people losing their jobs or having significant changes to their roles which can be very distressing for people particularly if they are very set in their ways, and they are at a point in their lives where they want to be left alone to do their job and they don’t live to work, they work to live – you know it’s a very different arrangement. So, I think you really have to be able to tie it all together – they are my lessons with change and I guess the other great lesson is some people move on very quickly so a week after you have made the change some people have just literally changed gears and they are fine but a lot of people find it quite traumatic and you have to be very empathetic and sympathetic to that. Now it can’t last forever, you can’t have somebody a year later still moping around that they are not happy, but you do have to keep working through the change. Change can be unifying times.
Jenelle McMaster: And that is the reason why people will say the phrase “don’t waste a crisis” because if there is something that I have seen, that is happening right now, as unfortunate as the situation is there is massive amounts of change in areas that we did not think that it was possible – If you think about consultants who rely on travel as a key part of the way that we work, you think about the boundaries that have evaporated between unions and governments and employees, you think about all sorts of things that people would never able to drive before but because of the crisis they are all being changed. I think this is an opportunity for us to reflect on what is happening now in this crisis, how we are responding to change and what does that mean about the way we change moving forward so our approach to change moving forward that we can capture
John Brogden: We had a very informal flexible working policy in my organisation. We formalised it last year, people thought isn’t flexibility all about flexibility wise, is there a policy about flexibility, so it was interesting! We did have to put it
Jenelle McMaster: That’s very ironic
John Brogden: Yes, it’s very ironic but we had a lot of and they were older people who just didn’t like the fact that people weren’t at their desk every day. Now those people have no choice and I am teleconferences and video conferences several times a day and they have switched seamlessly.
Jenelle McMaster: Amazing
John Brogden: The one thing as good as video and all the ad conference is the one thing, I think we have to work out how we replace in this world is the chat you have bumping into someone in the hallway
Jenelle McMaster: The incidentals
John Brogden: It’s gone
Jenelle McMaster: that’s right
John Brogden: One of the real rules of leadership that I believe in is being present – is being seen. Being there. And that may only be 10 minutes out of an eight or nine hours you are in the office but it’s a 10 very valuable minutes. How do you that?
Jenelle McMaster: That visibly accessibility, isn’t it?
John Brogden: Correct. How do I do that in this environment? You know do I just ring staff out of the blue and say, “how is it all going?” – you know maybe I do but we need to work out how to do that. I think the real thing we need in change and I think this is part of leadership as well is its good to have a bit of humour along the way.
Jenelle McMaster: Well I do think there is no shortage of means that are going around and have been for the last couple of months that people – I do think it brings levity to a situation that it can be incredibly tough and I think there is something about laughing about shared experiences, shared adversity does make a situation infinitely better. So John, in you role as CEO of Landcom since you mentioned it, obviously affordable housing and urban planning is very much at the core of why Landcome exists and if you think about the loss of housing through fires, the displacement that has been caused and now we have got the financial pressures in housing, in home loans, in renting, tell me how that is affecting Landcom, your role as CEO and the kinds of conversations that you’re having around how Landcom can support in this environment?
John Brogden: Well I am 51 and I have lived in Sydney all my life and the thing I am least proud about Sydney is we are the second most expensive place in the world to buy a home behind Hong Kong or I think its Vancouver depending on which time and which poll you are looking at. So, that is extraordinary, that means we are an inextensible city to so many people as a consequence. So we need more affordable housing in Sydney. So, there is and in Australia, there are two things you can have proper designated affordable housing or housing can be more affordable through any number of things. During that same period, I mentioned over the last 40-50 years we have also changed radically in the way we live. I mean the people I am thinking of I always like to try and provide people with a picture in their mind of who we need to look after – we need to look after people who work in retail, who don’t earn high incomes. We need to look after people who work in restaurants, who often don’t get high incomes particularly if they are casual workers and part time. We need to look after the people who push trollies in hospitals and push mops in hospitals. They need places to live and what’s happening now by in large is one of three things: they are living an hour and half or two hours from where they work, that is one way, so three and four hours that they travelling; they are paying an enormous amount of their income on private rent much more than they should; or lastly they are renting over crowded houses. And this is not well known I think in our major cities. You can rent half a room in major cities in Australia in a three-bedroom apartment for an enormous amount of money; I mean there is no quality of life in any of that. So, one of the many areas we see a growing disparity in wealth in Australia is in people’s housing situation and we are very passionate about looking at the capacity to do more affordable housing. It is extraordinary isn’t it when you think that a city like Sydney is more expensive to live in than places like New York which had billionaires to boot
Jenelle McMaster: Absolutely
John Brogden: And London and other places
Jenelle McMaster: it sounds unfathomable to me
John Brogden: it is and its not too late to try and turn it but I tell you what it is a major issue and how does it manifest itself? Well, how are you going to employ people to pore coffees in the middle of the CBD if they’ve got to travel 3 hours every day to do that job. So, there is an enormous amount of work going on in planning. Other countries get it right – a lot of it is mandated to be honest – if you got to a city like London there is a lot of mandated affordable housing in big developments, so they do mandate it. Maybe that is part of the challenge we have to embrace here to make sure people have somewhere decent to live. But at the moment we have too many people who are just never going to get off the treadmill of high rent, or crowded living, or massive commutes every day and that is not good for people’s longer-term mental health.
Jenelle McMaster: Do you think again sort of this whole not wanting to waste a crisis, I guess do you think that there maybe changes that might impact urban planning and housing in the longer term that will come about as a result of what we find ourselves in now?
John Brogden: Possibly possibly. I think
Jenelle McMaster: Maybe that is me projecting some wishful thinking
John Brogden: No, its interesting – we develop property and mostly we develop land and sell that to people as a generalisation of what we do. So we are obviously working out what our future looks like during and post this pandemic but the one thing we are coming to realise through all of the international economic organisations that are making commentary right at the moment is we are heavily likely to head into a recession and come out the other of this – that will rebalance the country enormously and put more housing stress yet again on people. When this all ends, there won’t be a switch that flicks, everybody won’t go the next day back to the job they had six months ago it just won’t happen in a way. So, people will lose their houses during a recession, people will lose their jobs, they will lose their houses so the pressure to do affordability will increase not just because the pandemic but of the recession that will follow.
Jenelle McMaster: John, so none of us know what is going to happen in the future. I think none of us really know what is going to happen tomorrow, so the stage is a game. With your experience as a leader in many platforms dealing with the unexpected, what sort of predictions do you have for society and business for the next five years?
John Brogden: Well, the first thing I confidently predict there will be a number of people confidently predicting the future over the next six months.
Jenelle McMaster: Fair enough
John Brogden: I think there will be an industry in people saying, “things will never be the same”, “things will never be the same”. So, look I think you are right I mean you would be a brave person to guess what it is going to look like. I just think things are going to be tougher where we are going to have a reality check. They make movies about what we are living about at the moment
Jenelle McMaster: Correct
John Brogden: I mean the extraordinary runs have zombies and the like but put that aside, they make horror movies about pandemics – wiping out cities, wiping out populations and all that sort of stuff. Australia is probably one of the world leaders right now in how we are dealing with the finances and the health issues related to this pandemic. I think future proofing and flexibility will be really important so will this see people change their spending habits, you know we have a whole economy that needs people to spend to grow, will people say no “I’m saving more money now”. If this happens again, I need to have tens of thousands of dollars in the bank to get through it because the government won’t be able to pay my wage next time. So, I think people will be more cautious and people will save more money and the economy will not grow in the way it has grown in the past. I think the other thing is there will be a massive debate about more manufacturing gin Australia, and I think we will see different forms of economic growth and a greater level of caution particularly individual caution – businesses may not be as cautious but people will be very cautious into their future.
Jenelle McMaster: Thank you John. I absolutely agree.
Jenelle McMaster: The last three – three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle McMaster: So last three for you – what is a misconception that most people have about you?
John Brogden: Wow. That I am a liberal as opposed to a progressive liberal.
Jenelle McMaster: OK
John Brogden: People will just put me in a box as a liberal rather than a progressive liberal
Jenelle McMaster: OK, there you go. People are going to hear it here first, maybe. One guilty pleasure, do you like to keep it PG please?
John Brogden: Chocolate
Jenelle McMaster: And what is one thing that you’re absolutely hopeless at?
John Brogden: Wow, cricket.
Jenelle McMaster: Cricket, ok well I can share that with you.
John Brogden: Shocking
Jenelle McMaster: I don’t have an interest in it, so it doesn’t bother me too much but I’m sorry that you do
John Brogden: Maybe that’s why I was never successful in politics. That I wasn’t able to be a cricket person.
Jenelle McMaster: Well, look thanks for your time John. I really appreciate how candid you are. I think anyone listening to this podcast would agree that you have been incredibly candid, incredibly passionate, that you have talked about massive changes to the way we live, to the way work and a few take away for me is there is a difference between mental health and physical health but we should be treating them with as much if not more awareness and importance particularly in the times that we find ourselves in now. I have taken away the criticality of self awareness in this and the role that we as individuals have in being aware of our own triggers and circumstances that may not be good for us as individuals. And then thirdly the role of leaders here to stay hyper vigilant and to stay engaged with people particularly when we move into remote working situations where ease of walking down the corridor as you say might not be as available to us as it might have been in the past, so look for changes in behaviour, ask the questions and go the extra mile. So, they have been some of my key takeaways John and I really want to thank you for your time and your openness with me today.
John Brogden: That’s so nice and thank you for the opportunity
The Change Happens podcast from EY – a conversation on leading through Change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
This episode of the Change Happens podcast covered a discussion on the effects of mental illness and suicide. If you or someone you know needs support or help with mental health or suicide, please talk to a GP, a health professional or if in Australia contact Lifeline 24 hours a day, on 13 11 14. That’s 13 11 14. Or at www.lifeline.org.au that’s www.lifeline.org.au

END OF TAPE RECORDING

Shannon Fentiman MP
Minister for Employment, Small Business & Training & Skills

Whether that’s been from listening and really listening to what people need and are seeking
Building a coalition of support
The power of collectivism – working together. We certainly can’t do these things alone
The power of communication, and
Also asking for help

Great lessons there for us. Thank you so much Shannon.
Shannon: Thanks Jenelle.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Dave Donaghy
CEO, Melbourne Storm

Intro: Change happens – how we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: This podcast series – Change Happens – is a conversation with senior business leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. When we set out to create a podcast about how we cope, deal and work through change we certainly didn’t expect it to be amid the biggest worldwide change in modern history – COVID 19. But with that context in mind, I asked Dave Donaghy, CEO of National Rugby League Club, Melbourne Storm to join me, to give his unique insights into how the sporting community has been affected by COVID 19, whether that’s the financial stresses, the fan and sponsor pressures or how to ensure the wellbeing of players and in this conversation I explore with Dave how he’s undertaken change in his own career which has moved from journalism, right through to being appointed into the Melbourne Storm CEO role as the youngest ever CEO of a club in the NRL’s history. We talk about what Dave and the club more broadly have done to foster a positive and distinctive team culture at Melbourne Storm and how that’s translated into some serious success for the club, in its relatively short term within the NRL. And after interviewing Dave, I have to say, it’s hard not to be struck by Dave’s humility and surprisingly understated manner. It certainly doesn’t line up to the stereotypes that many of us might hold when it comes to people of Dave’s level, Dave’s industry and his achievements. And in fact if it wasn’t for me calling out those achievements, you may have found yourself at points, scratching your head, wondering if I was speaking with the same person that I’m talking about. But that’s Dave to a tee. He’s a listener and a humble family man. Actually, you will hear the odd kid or two in the background here. He’s a man who lets his ears, his values and his achievements do much of his talking for him. It’s genuine and it’s endearing and I hope that like I did you take away some helpful insights from this discussion. Hi Dave, and welcome to the Change Happens Podcast.
Dave: Great to be here with you.
Jenelle: Ok I’m going to start with four words that seem to carry a very different weight at this time and that’s how are you doing?
Dave: Thanks for asking. I think no different from all of us. It’s – I don’t think any of us have been through a Corona Virus before so I think we’re all certainly adapting. No personally trying to be as agile as I can, whether that’s in life or in work and the work pressures are relatively manageable, the home school pressures, the life pressures are probably the ones that I think all of us are juggling at this stage.
Jenelle: They certainly are challenging and I know you’ve got everyone at home with you, today. So well let’s just see how we go. But starting with COVID and life on the work front. What’s been the impact that you’ve seen to the sporting community and indeed to Melbourne Storm of the restrictions that have come about from COVID 19.
Dave: I think the initial jolt to start with Jenelle, was the first shock certainly that the landscape in the short to medium term won’t look anything like what it has previously and whether it’s the financial impact, whether it’s the emotional or psychological impact, you know, be significant for our industries. I think Rugby League particularly is probably as well placed as any to do its best to get through there but evolve and adapt for the wider sporting industry, I think there’s going to be a significant impact. You know there may be sports that don’t come through the other side. If they do it’s going to look significantly different and I think you know very much you know as sports clubs, the whole industry, are going to learn to live within their means and not chase others down a rabbit hole or pursue an arm’s race. I think that’s certainly something that would be readjusted through this period.
Jenelle: For sure. Now Dave I’ve got to believe that during this time managing and maintaining player motivation and engagement must be calling upon some pretty unique and creative approaches. How have you gone about doing that at the club over the last couple of months.
Dave: At Storm we’re fortunate to have some exceptional leaders. You know the head coach Craig Bellamy has been in the job for 18 years. Frank Ponissi is our General Manager of Football. They’re supported by you know really high quality – not just people in their roles but people in general. They’re great people with great values and morals. You know the guys re great people with great values and morals. You know the guys are set some tasks. The football program really thought that through, strategised and you know executed it really well. Our players were given individual programs. There was a real focus on connections. You know the guys are effectively on top of each other for you know 10 months of the year and you know during this period there’s a real absence of that physical or you know connection whether it’s in the locker room, in the gym or on the field. So really there was a focus on that, you know, and also a focus on players’ partners and families and supported by a psychologist and welfare experts or wellbeing experts. We focus on the holistic part for our players, not just the physical part of it while they’re away but also encouraging them to go on a bit of a journey of self exploration, learn some resilience skills. Learn how to cope by themselves and not have the full resources of football program around them all the time and you know that also extended to staff.
So you know the coaches are involved in professional development. You know they created the Wisdom Wednesday. So they brought in expert coaches from all around the world who spoke to them and told them their story and you know certainly encouraged them or they encouraged each other to learn all the way through. So you know I think for six months whilst we weren’t together, they certainly didn’t waste that time.
Jenelle: Wisdom Wednesday. Love that. Now you talked about connection Dave, and it’s not just connections with the players and staff. The club obviously has an extensive fan base and I know for me living with my sport obsessed husband and son, sports is a massive source of emotional connection. So how have you kept that fan base motivated and connected to the team during this time?
Dave: We spoke about that right at the outset that whilst we’re never going to be more disconnected from our fan base, there’s never been a greater time to actually connect or be closely connected, as close as possible, to our fan base, our audience. You know we’ve got 25,000 members. Our social audiences are the largest of any professional sports team in Victoria. So more than any of the AFL clubs and for us we felt there was an opportunity there to use our players, our club, digital staff members, to really, whether it’s by video or our social content, to provide insights and get our fan base knowing our people a bit more and also you know continuing that connectivity between the club and our members and our fans. And you know certainly the numbers have been quite extraordinary. On our first training week back once training was allowed, you know it was – the media coverage and the social media commentary around that was 10 times preliminary final week. It’s certainly – I think that’s a reflection of the appetite of people wanting to connect and consume. But also the fact that our Rugby League and the NRL you know certainly at that point is the only you know sport that’s back training in Australia, and potentially the world. Very few sports leagues around the world that are back up and running. And you know as ambitious as the marker was of May 28, you know the numbers are demonstrating there’s a real thirst from an audience to get back to some level of normality and that includes Rugby League.
Jenelle: You know in talking about some level of normality, it’s redefined the scope of what normal is. League missing out on home games revenue, this would cause enormous financial hardship for the Storm and for all clubs. Add to that a loss of sponsorship dollars, the pressure of delivering return commitments to sponsors. Is this a time for real innovation? Is it an opportunity to pivot and change your approach there?
Dave: Yeah. Innovation’s a really good word, Jenelle. I know our coach, he bangs on about it quite a bit around you know innovation being the buzz word and what that actually means. And there’s absolutely a place for it. I think innovation within your means is really important. But innovation not for innovation’s sake. I think at this point, certainly for us, it’s been a priority to focus on getting back to the bare bones. Getting back to basics. You know what’s the absolute requirement – the key requirements we need to ensure that we’ve got the product – or the program back on track – and we can put a really competitive team out there for May 28. And also that you know we keep our fans and members engaged on the way through. You know we’re one of the most covered supporter base in the country. We want them to have absolute confidence that the club’s doing everything it can to firstly look after the health and safety of our players and staff, but also you know the wider – play our role with the wider community. So that’s been really important.
Jenelle: In the meantime there’s been lots of media challenges off the field. The CEO resigning from the NRL, broadcasters’ rights in doubt, had some controversies Dave with players not adhering to social distancing. So with all of that and in that landscape of you know trust and the ask of fans, how do you keep the club, so staff and players focused on the bigger picture when there’s just that much uncertainty surrounding them and their careers?
Dave: Certainly the challenge was really around that 6 week period. I think our league, you know it’s certainly with the ARLC Chairman, Peter V’landys, you know was the – there was risk reward around May 28 as a date. There was plenty of commentary around it being ambitious. Peter’s very data driven and you know it was certainly running on trends around the virus trends at that point when he pushed the game to put a marker in the ground. I think that provided players and staff particularly with a level of confidence and certainty. Prior to that point there wasn’t and when you don’t have a date to work towards you know that becomes very challenging. I remember right at the outset, we informed our staff that you know we were going to close the office from the health and safety perspective. You know we had plenty you know staff that were taking public transport at that point. Didn’t feel comfortable with that at that stage and particularly given that the infection rates – but we put a date on it. Just to provide people with some certainty and some understanding that – yes we’ll continue to review it, but there is a date here. That hopefully will give people a marker if you like to condition themselves to get used to effectively a new normal. For our players and staff it was really important, that May 28 date. I think you know, I know there’s been plenty of commentary down in Melbourne from some of our AFL counterparts around having that – I suppose the envy around having a date set. You know we weren’t immune to it.
You know we had an incident of a player transgressing the social distancing rules, but you know that was done whilst the player was away from the club. At the end of the day we’ve got a – you know most of our staff members if we think of it are aged between 20 and 30. They’re still evolving as people, as young men. You know we’ve got a netball team so they’re still evolving as young women and you know people are still learning and that doesn’t excuse behaviours, but certainly for many people who have kids and can see you know when you’re dealing with young people, you know you give them a kick up the bum but you also give them a cuddle on the way through and you know tell them that they’ll be judged on their behaviours moving forward not the behaviours that they’ve demonstrated. Provided they’re demonstrating that they learned from what’s happened. That’s all we can ask from them. Albeit you know that point that that player was hit with a pretty heavy sanction so it certainly was an interesting period, Jenelle, that you know we had the challenge ourselves with maintaining connection and ensuring that players were adhering to rules and understanding the rules. And rugby league with controversy is like a moth to a flame. You know we – there were two instances in that 6 week period where there was players transgressing the social distancing rules. You know, believe it or not, there were 6 or 7 from another pretty major sporting organisation which I won’t go into. You know you wouldn’t know that. Because it doesn’t attract the same type of controversy. Whether that’s purely on the basis that our game’s based out of Sydney and it’s a different psyche to a game that may be based out of Melbourne, I’m not sure. But you know when you’ve got two instances and then you’ve got a whole range of instances at another sport, you’re only thinking that you know rugby league players are the only ones that transgresses. For me it’s a real interesting insight into our sport.
Jenelle: Certainly something that attracts a lot of attention. You know disproportionate or otherwise, it’s out there, it’s certainly in the public eye. I think that speaks to the level of emotional connection that people feel.
Dave: It doesn’t make it right you know. But for me it’s just a real interesting reflection of our game and probably an extra layer of complexity that you know when you’re in roles like mine, around how you have to or what you have to focus on or manage.
Jenelle: Dave, you mentioned the netball team, Sunshine Coast Lightning, which Melbourne Storm has a majority ownership of. Tell me a bit about that. It’s clearly such an important relationship there, brings diversity to the club. How are you finding that diversity playing out in a time like COVID 19? Is that diversity bringing different ideas on how to navigate through? Is one club influencing the other?
Dave: Yes certainly. Look I think there’s a whole range of lessons that both can learn from each other at different points. Lightning’s been great for us and you know certainly great for the Sunshine Coast region. For Storm it certainly entrenched - we’ve got a long standing relationship with Queensland. We’ve had quite a few great Queensland players. You know we’ve got a huge supporter base up there and you know for us it’s certainly entrenched us in that region. They are a remarkable organisation. I’m in awe of the work they do. Danielle Smith our CEO up there, she does a great job. We learn as much from them as what hopefully they do from us. I think just the fact that we’ve got a larger revenue base you know we can probably share a few learnings from our greater resources through so they don’t have to – you know they can - hopefully don’t have to replicate the same work and that hopefully in the long term will be a benefit for them. But that experience for us, the diversity
Jenelle: What would you say Dave are the defining characteristics of a courageous leader during these kinds of disruptive times?
Dave: Great question. Certainly from what I see at the moment is you know really bringing people on the journey. You know it depends on your style I guess. If you’re a real – you know if you’ve got a dictatorial leadership style you know that’s probably
Jenelle: What’s your style? How would you describe your style?
Dave: Evolving. You know I suppose for me I’m you know, I’m still 37, I’m still learning. I don’t profess to knowing everything. I feel like I’m doing an NBA on the run. Yeah, I’ve had great mentors on the way through. I’ve known you know people that are still involved with a football club whether they’re board members or shareholders. You know guys like Gerry Ryan have been a friend and mentor of mine for a long time. You know Bart Campbell has been our Chairman for a long time. We were transitioning into a new Chairman, Matthew Tripp. These guys are exceptional leaders. For me I’m still evolving. I try to you know provide direction. Sometimes I certainly pull myself up for getting too far into the day to day. But to understand people and understand challenges that we might face and then you know strategise and work your way through.
Jenelle: Well your humility on that front is certainly very clear. But the reality is Dave, you’ve imbibed a culture at Storm that is absolutely envied across NRL and other sporting codes. It’s led to widely __ on field success. You’re not afraid to break the mould, you’re not afraid to try new initiatives and I know some of those initiatives have included – and you’ve talked about it – appointing that full time wellbeing staff member to work with players. Clearly got a zero tolerance towards racism. You’ve placed – and you’ve just talked about it earlier as well – placing emphasis on players maintaining their training, education, to prepare them for life after sport. I know you’ve ramped it up even more during this Corona Virus period, but that’s certainly been a – one of the things that you’ve had in the club anyway. Tell me about the philosophy you have there? Why are you pushing so hard on those kinds of initiatives?
Dave: Well look just from a Storm and our culture – I was fortunate enough to inherit a pretty good operation. So you know I came back to NRL and Melbourne Storm seven years in a strategy role. You know 18 months later I was appointed CEO. So coming up 5 years now actually. So it’s – time flies when you’re having fun.
Jenelle: Never a dull moment that’s for sure.
Dave: I suppose if you break it down you think what is a footy club? Ultimately you’re greatest asset are your people. And you need to overinvest in your people. You need to get good people around you. You need to challenge yourself that you know – I’ve never played NRL. You know I played rugby league as a kid but you know certainly never played NRL. So, yeah, you want to get the best people around you. You want to surround yourself with great leaders. As I said you know I’ve got – I feel like – I’m genuine in this – I feel like I’ve got the best coach, the best captain, the best team at footy, the best CFO, the best Chief Commercial and you know the best marketers, the best doctors. The list goes on to drive the club to a new level. And I think for – in my role it doesn’t matter who you are and no one’s bigger than a football club, and you’re only a custodian in a point of time. Then you’ve got a period of time where, hopefully, you can make a real difference for us to our football club and to others to their businesses and you know certainly, you know at the end of that you can reflect back and say – I did a pretty good job there. So I feel like the journey’s still – still a bit left in me here. And I know that last cycle of the CEO’s not particularly long. I just feel like at Melbourne Storm there’s just so much upside. You’re a one team town. Yes there’s a lot of competition in sport. You know it’s a city of four and a half, five million people. They’re sports made and you know there’s a huge membership base in the AFL. We’ve seen our membership grow from 15 to 25,000 over you know this sort of 3 or 4 year period and I just feel like there’s a hell of a lot more that we can achieve. Whether that’s to continue that on field success or to grow our balance sheet off the field.
Jenelle: Dave, I’ve heard that all new players who join the club ask to bring their steel capped boots in and they’re sent to spend two weeks labouring on building sites. Now I know that tradition preceded you joining the club but it’s something that you’ve kept in place, what’s all that about?
Dave: Yeah it’s been in place since Craig came down from the Broncos where he was assistant coach in about 2003. So you know effectively the players when they arrive at Storm and again doesn’t matter if they’re an 18 year old kid straight out of school or if they’re a 25 year old Queensland and Australian representative, you know they’ve got to bring their boots and they go out to a work site for two weeks and you know there’s a few reasons for it. One is it gives them a level of understanding of the work ethic of Craig and our football program which is – it’s exceptional. I think it’s something that I’m consistently in awe of. It also hopefully sends a message that they should be pretty grateful for the role that they’re in or the opportunity that’s afforded right now in terms of being a professional footballer and how quickly that can be taken away from them. And that’s not meant to be disparaging to people who you know do wear steel cap boots to work. Far from it. It’s – the third thing there is actually you know all of our players come from interstate or overseas – the overwhelming majority of them. And you know by getting on the tools and getting out into some worksites. You know we know that some of our players have actually developed you know life long friendships with the people they’ve been on with worksites. You know meet some Melbournians and integrate into the community. It’s a bit of a tradition that continues to exist. You know wellbeing staff, where we over invest. You know they drive that program, Frank Ponissi our GM, he’s fundamentally important to that. You know those traditions I think that – they’re pretty special for this place and you know certainly everyone you know buys into being a part it – a bit of a rite of passage.
Jenelle: I love that early instilling of a sense of appreciation, gratitude, that community connectedness, it’s fantastic. So you know at the risk of embarrassing you, you are said to have a Midas touch with Storm. You have steadied the ship during that salary cap scandal in 2010. You increased club’s membership. You talked about you know 15,000 to 25,000, growing average match crowds to 18,000. When you think about what we’ve just talked about there or that investment in wellbeing, talking about investment in learning, talking about the steel cap boot tradition you’ve got there and these kinds of club membership focus etc, how do all of those off field measures lead to on field success?
Dave: It’s a great question. I think sometimes in sport you can be too singularly focused. Make no mistake we want to win the premiership each and every year. That’s something that motivates us. But you know it’s really tough to do. You know it’s – there’s 16 teams that have the same objective and you know they talk about it being a game of inches, it absolutely is. You know you need everything going your way to get the result. You know I suppose in my time in this role, you know we’ve been to three grand finals, we’ve one won. You know you’d have loved to have one them all but it’s really hard to do. You know and the guys do their best to do so but you know it is a challenge. So for us you know there’s more than just winning premierships. It’s about connecting with our community. It’s about playing a role with growing grass roots rugby league in Victoria, an emerging State. It’s about you know building infrastructure and facility and how we can I suppose overlap – we’re in a great community within that. We’ve got our you know the NRL Victoria staff are based out of our office. So we’ve got 10 or 11 Melbourne officers that go out and spread the news of rugby league. In schools, in clubs, a whole range of community programs. You know we’ve got partnerships with Dardi Munwurro, with the State Government that sit on the crime prevention taskforce.
Jenelle: Why do you sit on the crime prevention taskforce out of interest?
Dave: I was approached by the Premier down here to you know join that group – the Crime Prevention Minister, Ben Carroll down here – he’s become a good friend and I suppose for us down here – the big Pacifica and New Zealand population and you know for many sports that part of the community isn’t interested in many other sports. So for us to - you know – if we’ve got great athletes and role models, we’ve got six different countries represented which marks our playing group. We’ve got players from Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand. We can connect with kids who may be at risk and hopefully provide them with a – I suppose a bit of a shining light around an alternative path that can be followed for kids that are at risk.
Jenelle: I want to take a little bit of a trip down memory lane for you really. You were a small town Gladstone boy, turned journalist, who then moves into sports administration. Then goes on to become the youngest ever CEO of an NRL club at Melbourne Storm. There’s got to be a lot of stories of change there. Clearly this is a podcast called Change Happens, what are the moments that stand out for your from a change perspective and why are they the ones that are most prominent in your mind?
Dave: I’ll just start from being a kid from Gladstone. So one of the things you struggle from when you’re a kid from the country is talking about yourself. So you know – and stepping outside of your comfort zone, Jenelle. So this is probably one of those things which you know you don’t feel particularly comfortable about. I always remember looking back and seeing kids that we would play footy against and they were living in Brisbane or on the Gold Coast and you know you think you’ve got movie parks and the beaches and everything. Gladstone where I grew up was such a great place for sport. It had so many sporting facilities that were afforded to us as young people. It was a great opportunity in life. You know I probably had, right from the start, you know I made a decision to leave Gladstone and you know ended up in Brisbane going to University and trying to play a bit of footy. Probably could have stayed and taken a trade apprenticeship, as a lot of my mates did. Went out and ventured out and I moved to Brisbane and lived by myself when I was 17, which was an experience in itself. Don’t ask me about the first time I tried to cook a steak. No, the fire alarm got a workout. There’s been a few things along the way – whether it’s leaving Brisbane to start with and going to North Queensland for a small period, to getting out of journalism in total. I started out with Australian Associated Press as a general news reporter – ended up in sport. The first time I actually went to Melbourne was when I moved there for work. I’d never even – hadn’t even visited there and all of a sudden I was moving there for work. So I was – certainly haven’t been afraid to take a few risks. Been all part of the adventure. You know it’s a big old wide world out there and if you shield yourself away from it, you know often, you’re probably robbing yourself of some opportunities.
Jenelle: So yours is a clear story of adapting with the various environments that you’ve been in, the various roles that you’ve been in. Can you tell me about the skills that you’ve been able to transfer? So what are the kind of common skills that you’ve taken with you across those various landscapes and what are the ones that you’ve had to change or adapt to suit new roles?
Dave: I think if I was criticised earlier as a CEO as I didn’t talk enough – I probably didn’t fit the mould. You know I used my ears and I listened a bit more. I like to think I try to do that. You know people might not think now that I do that as much but that’s definitely – it may just take me a little bit longer to process what they’re saying. And that’s okay. That’s just I think continuing to evolve. Along the way you’re going to learn different things from different people and you’ll take – I think you’ll pick up traits that can help you improve. Cause you want to constantly improve. Like footy – if you’re standing still and you’re not evolving, adapting with the environment, I think certainly this period of time is going to you know show people up around that or hopefully lead them to a point where they have to do that. They have to evolve. I’ve tried to regardless of what role that I’ve had – I’ve tried to be myself. I might not be polished, might not be private school educated, but you know I certainly try to be authentic, to be genuine and to, you know, to be open and hopefully warm to people and I think if you’re doing that, it’s a pretty good start to hopefully to hold you in good stead and build some strong relationships which you know we all need as we go through life.
Jenelle: And would you say that they are the biggest lessons that you’ve learned along this way that you know staying true to yourself, being authentic, but continuing to adapt is the key? Was that how you would summarise your lessons or are there others you’ve picked up?
Dave: That’s a pretty good summary. Look, there’s got to be a level of joy with what you’re doing. You know if you’re not enjoying it, you know it makes it pretty tough. Ultimately, people talk work life balance and at the end of the day it’s life balance. You know work’s such a big part of all of our lives now and how you’re juggling that. This certainly brings it home. This period of time when you’re spending probably a little bit more time at home. You know that life balance is really important.
Jenelle: You’ve said one of my favourite, favourite words, joy. I don’t hear that word enough and it is one of those words that just makes me smile when I say it so I think it’s such an important thing.
The last three – three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: We’ve had all the heavy questions. I’m going to finish up with a light, fast, three questions. A bit more of a light hearted nature. Tell me, what’s a misconception that most people have about you?
Dave: Gees you’re going to have other people this Jenelle. I mentioned before around the hearing, or listening, as opposed to speaking as much. You know I like to – I do like to listen, I do like to learn. Probably in my youth.
Jenelle: People think you’re younger than what you are?
Dave: People think the opposite. They think I’m a hell of a lot older.
Jenelle: What’s one guilty pleasure? And I’m going to ask you to keep it PG rated for me please.
Dave: Guilty pleasure – hot chips.
Jenelle: Oh mine too, with gravy?
Dave: Well actually that’s probably you know talk about before people’s – you know what they think of me and what’s the reality is that I think people think I – I try to keep fit so people - I think they think I’m a fitness freak and like to eat healthy. I would have the worst diet going. I love a hot chip. You know I’m certainly not eating salmon and salad every night. You know I think I had a big homemade meat lovers pizza last night. So yeah – I have the opposite effect – if I don’t have enough carbs I lose a whole heap of weight. So maybe it’s just the luck of the draw.
Jenelle: What’s the one thing that you’re hopeless at?
Dave: I’m hopeless at time.
Jenelle: Managing time?
Dave: Yeah. Yeah, I think I was two minutes late for this podcast. I blame technology. And that was partly that. And awareness of time or whether it’s an awareness of the time expectations you’re putting on others. So setting people a task and saying I want this done in three hours and it’s going to take them three months. I’m evolving.
Jenelle: So it would seem. So Dave, listen thank you so much for your time today. Some really great takeaways. What I’ve heard loud and clear is the power of connection and how much you’ve been driving the redefining of what that looks like in a COVID world. You know whether it’s taking out the physicality of connections and redefining it for player to player, or from club to family or fans to players. You’ve talked about your greatest assets being your people and the importance of surrounding yourself with the best people and investing in them and taking them on the journey. And you’ve also talked about having a holistic view of what success means. You know it’s more than winning on a field. As you say there’s winning off the field and certainly the latter is a critical ingredient for the former. So with that I want to thank you Dave for being so candid. Thank you for your humility and clear representation of how you’ve continued to evolve over your career. Wish you all the best personally and of course all the very best for the season.
Dave: Thanks Jenelle, thanks so much for having me on.
The Change Happens podcast, from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Jono Nicholas - Part II
Managing Director and Founder, The Wellbeing Outfit

While the content and conversation is still highly relevant, this episode of the Change Happens podcast was recorded to Australia going into lockdown as part of the Australian Government response to the coronavirus pandemic. Please bear this in mind in regards to the current context of events while listening. And to hear more from Jono Nicholas and his insights into working through life during COVID-19, go back to episode 2 of the Change Happens podcast.

Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Janelle: Hi. My name is Janelle McMaster and I’m the Managing Partner of Markets at EY Oceania. I’ve spent my whole career fixated on people. Why do they do what they do? How do they respond to change? What experiences led them to respond to change the way that the do? And how do they help others through change? The reality is that change happens and it’s how we deal with it that makes the difference. This podcast is a conversation with senior business leaders on leading through change and the lessons that they’ve learned along the way. Well today’s conversation is with Jono Nicholas. Jono!
Jono: Hello.
Janelle: Hello. Who are you and what do you do?
Jono: So I’m most importantly a husband and a dad of three boys and I run a specialist consultancy business in mental health and wellbeing called the Wellbeing Outfit and in a previous life I spent 22 years at ReachOut.
Janelle: And how would you describe yourself?
Jono: Optimistic. I am fascinated with human beings and why they do what they do. And I also would say someone who’s just trying to live the lessons that I share with other people around wellbeing and how can I do that the best I can.
Janelle: OK. So you’re being your authentic self all day every day.
Jono: And failing at it regularly! I think that’s the big part of doing this work is you have really good insight into how to be well because of the work that I get to do and you therefore realise how hard it is to implement on a daily basis.
Janelle: Tell us a little bit about your experience with change? What stands out in your mind as some of the more critical moments of change in your life?
Jono: One of the most seminal moments in my life, I grew up in New Castle north of Sydney, which as people know New Castle, BHP pulled out of there roughly about 30 years ago, but it’s still identifies as a steel town. And it’s, you know, a great insight for me that change is as much about the story you tell yourself and New Castle tells itself the story that it’s a steel town when really it’s a medical, university, white-collar town. When that happened there were was a raft of suicides and sadly for me my friend, when I was 14, suicided. And it changed my life but in a way that’s different than what most people think, which is I realised I was actually just really good at sitting in the mess with people. I realised I liked spending time with people around that and I was good at it. People like talking to me and sharing things and I liked the journey out of that mess. So I made a decision at 14 that I would work in mental health and suicide prevention. And I feel really blessed that, you know, most people spend most of their life trying to work out what they’re going to do and where they’re going, and to have that realisation at 14 was really fortunate. And then when I was finishing my Honours degree in suicide prevention I got introduced to the founder of ReachOut, Jack Heath, and he had this idea of reducing suicide by using the internet in 1997. As you said, when we started, or he started ReachOut there was 37,000 Australian’s on the internet. No one had any idea what they were doing and we went on, you know, for me went on this amazing journey to really build a new model of psychology. So that was for me, you know, each of those moments were about recognising something I think. Recognising that there’s something important and you’ve got to pursue it without having really any idea as to what that would look like. And just the confidence to go with it.
Janelle: And some incredibly powerful moments there and I want to come back to a few things that you’ve said, but perhaps I’ll start with the interaction with Jack and this business. As you say, you know, there’s a lot of really progressive stuff in what you’re talking about. You know, the first online medical service in the world. 1997/1998 you’re part of creating what would arguably have been, you know, one of the original digital businesses before that was even a term. You know, if you pushed that further I know you’ve described it as the first digital charity. You know, you spoke up and said why don’t we let the voice of our customers really help design this? And if I think about your customer group we’re talking about youths and potentially youths with significant mental illness playing a role in the design of this first of firsts, online digital business. And some of those things around co-design and digital is mainstream today, 23 years later, but definitely way ahead of it back then. What was it like to be part of all of that at that time?
Jono: The big thing for me was I was young and so one of the joys of being young is you have nothing to change. You just get to experience. So for me it felt more like a journey and experiencing it. I think either it’s been a blessing or a curse but I’m not famous for my humility. And so that kind of confidence to say well why are we doing it this way, to challenge authority, and to do that in a context of –
Janelle: Naïve bravado?
Jono: - exactly! To do that in the context of a small business in a start-up where you have that opportunity. Often I think when I spend time now with people in really large organisations they feel as if their voice is constrained and challenging authority is harder for them. But for me that was really relatively easy. And it became really operationalised. We did really simple things like everyone had to move desks once every six months so that you got used to change in our organisation. So you had security of where you sat but you had to move. We used to – I probably changed the structure of my leadership team every six months, again so that we could tap into new ideas that people didn’t feel – so this idea of feeling secure but not settled was a big part of it.
Janelle: Yeah, sure. And actually it really – you fostered sort of self-disruption every step of the way, right? So rather than waiting for it to happen to you, what does it look like if we disrupt ourselves?
Jono: Yeah. And, look, part of that is a personal drive. I get bored really easily. I don’t think there was any kind of great kind of humility in it but it – but I think for us it was always in the service of the mission. And that was the other part which is that we existed to help all young people be happy and well and that one of the things that makes change in the business model easy is if you say you can always change the business model as long as it’s always in service to the mission. And when I see organisations fail it’s because they’re protecting their business model above the mission and that – what we found was that always led to challenging but not conflicted conversations. And I really like that. You know, I like that.
Janelle: I do too.
Jono: Actually our job is to serve and help all young people be happy and well. Is this the best and highest way that we can do that? If not, what would we be prepared to change? And some of those things it means that you double down on things that are important. We always believed that the best way to do that was to involve the people who used our service. So those things never changed but it meant that we were willing to look at different ways to deliver ReachOut.
Janelle: I think about your world and I think about the fact that you’ve had, in the time when you were at ReachOut, four different Ministers for mental health in five years under four different Prime Ministers from two different governments and then I think about the fact well each one of those Ministers would change their staff, it would take at least six months for the incumbent staff to get, you know, momentum happening and build up their corporate knowledge. Surely that’s got to slow down the pace of change in the mental health space and for a not-for-profit organisation like ReachOut I’d imagine that each incoming Minister will then have more uncertainty, need more briefings, need to be convinced again, maybe they would divert their resources. So in some ways you’re sort of having to start again over and over with these players. Was that the case? Or how do you keep momentum going in your own organisation when that kind of landscape is constantly turning over? You’re constantly having to prove the value proposition and was there any ways that you could kind of insulate yourself from that kind of external set back or anchoring?
Jono: The only way, if I answer the last part of that first, the only way we could insulate ourselves was keep tightening up the story. How do you make what you do as simple and clear as possible and not divert from that core story? And if people didn’t understand, see that as the fault of the story not the fault of the person for not understanding. But to your point, I think one of the things that we experience in mental health which is fundamentally trying to convince government to redistribute it’s health dollars differently. Every time I think there is a change of leadership in government what happens is government goes back, and probably most big organisations, go back and to BAU, because BAU is safe. You’re not going to get in trouble for opening another cancer centre despite being, you know, having more than probably we need in Australia. You know, investing in a digital mental health service, that’s a pretty risky proposition for a new Minister and so that’s where we saw some real challenges I think in mental health, to get through some of that change. Ultimately you have to have optimism that if you do what you do really well people will realise it. And every year we saw that story come to life. So I was always really optimistic about it.
Janelle: Do you think, Jono, that one of the reasons that diverting of capital to mental health hasn’t happened is because there isn’t an exact science on how to fix it? You know, that it’s a bit more grey on what it’s going to take?
Jono: I think that’s argument given but the evidence doesn’t hold up.
Janelle: OK.
Jono: So if you look at other areas where we’ve addressed issues and made remarkable advancements within a generation, I look to issues like breast cancer, that had the same stigma, for example. It’s about body parts, it’s about identity, it’s about all these things that people traditionally didn’t talk about. It was between a woman and a doctor, you didn’t necessarily even tell your partner. To having the Day 3 of the cricket in Sydney be dedicated to the issue it takes capital to be spent in places that involve risk. So if I look at HIV AIDS, why did we address it? It wasn’t because we knew the answers at the beginning, we didn’t even know how it was transmitted originally. It was because we had enough capital to go down enough rabbit holes that the answers emerged really quickly.
Janelle: Exploratory kind of.
Jono: Exploratory science. Taking really radical social solutions like needle exchanges in Australia was a real pioneer of needle exchanges, that we launched great organisations like the AIDS councils and ran really controversial marketing and engagement campaigns in the community to stop transmission. So when we look at some of those experiments and what’s happened in mental health is we’re actually too worried about the dollars.
Janelle: But what was the tipping point there that we haven’t reached here?
Jono: Well, two things I would say that happened about those other issues. Firstly that we see those other issues happening to innocent people and we see mental health largely as a moral failing, so that it’s a failing of you. And then the second thing with mental health is we haven’t had a social infrastructure and a medical infrastructure to advance it. So if you look at something like NH and MRC funding, mental health funding is massively underweight relative to the size of the problem, which means that we don’t have enough scientists, who don’t get enough money, who don’t get enough – who don’t create enough science, who don’t create enough money. So what we see in some of these issues that the pre-existing infrastructure reinforces quick answers around something like COVID-19 will probably address relatively quickly, but something like mental health we see as difficult. What happened in HIV community as well is that it had a great community response, predominantly the male gay community in the first instance were very politically active to make sure it stayed on the political agenda and as a result, you know, you got quite significant movement in the community to address it far quicker. And we to date we’ve probably had a little bit of that with mental health but no enough.
Janelle: Not enough. I want to turn the questioning a bit more to you personally. You started off by saying that you realised when you were 14 and you lost your friend who was 14 that you had a gift to sit in the pain, sit in the mess. For 20 years with ReachOut I imagine there would have been a hell of a lot of pain and a hell of a lot of mess. How do you take care of you in that situation? Who looks after you? What have you learned about how to look after yourself when you sit in all that pain?
Jono: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I think the first thing for me is I learned that as I went. I don’t think I was that good at protecting myself and there was one instance when I spent a lot of time working in Southeast Asia and saw some things that – some behaviours that I can only describe as evil, particularly related to kids and had a trauma response when I came back to Australia. I blacked out for probably a few minutes and I can’t – I have no memory of what happened between these two destinations. And it was a really great lesson for me that everybody has their breaking point, and despite being really good at sitting in the pain there’s only so much pain someone can sit in. So for me that was one of those lessons. I think I’ve always been really good and very, very conscious to keep talking to people. I think one of the things that I learn, and this was a gift that my wife gave me when she almost broke up with me shortly after meeting me, was that you get very used to being inside your own head because you don’t talk to a lot of people about confidential things. And what that can look like and genuinely appear is to be shut off. So I think one of the other gifts I had of having a wonderful, long term relationship is just the need to keep coming out of your shell and talking to people. For me they were, you know, some of the really big lessons of being on the edge of getting it really wrong. I think the other part was with the young people I directly helped who were suicidal was that same kind of lack of humility and confidence that I had when I was young which is, do you know what? If it comes to a battle of the egos your desire to die will be outstripped my desire to help you live and I’m going to win. And what I realise is when people are really suicidal they need that energy. They need some -
Janelle: Yeah, they’ll feed off of your confidence and optimism.
Jono: Exactly. They need that and you have to be willing to kind of go those places. And that means that you have to kind of also be open to the fact that sometimes you’d lose that battle, but thankfully I never did. So that was a good one for me which is – and, again, if I look at how that’s applied into broader lessons of my life, which is it’s the same thing with running an organisation. What’s the thing that’s going to hold you back is that I think for many leaders it’s better to lose small than win big.
Janelle: How do you instil that kind of awareness of the impact to the wellbeing of yourself and certainly you’ve worked with Lifeline for a long time as well? How do you make sure that systemically that is fostered throughout the organisation?
Jono: So the first thing was I made sure that all compulsory notifications. So when someone is suicidal you can override their consent to get out emergency services. So it’s the ultimate in a breach of trust and something that people in our world take very, very seriously. So when that happened I made sure that I was the only person structurally in the organisation who could do that. And the reason why I did that wasn’t that I didn’t have faith in my team, it was that if the decision was wrong then I wanted it to be on me and that the CEO was institutionally the most protected, and that was very different than someone on the frontline at, you know, a younger person maybe at the start of their career saying I just made this clinical judgement and got wrong. So that was the first thing we did. And then what we did is we managed it like any other risk. We made sure that there were escalation policies, that every quarter our audit and risk committee looked at it as our number one risk. We recorded instances, we did quality reviews and so that institutional discipline was really important. And I think, you know I look at that now in the work that I do spending with organisations trying to put in place mental health infrastructure for their people, what I find really surprising is that they don’t often take that same level of discipline. If you operate a business in the cognitive economy you are monetising people’s brains and the performance of those people’s brains is like your supply chain management, and if you have a system for managing your supply chain then you need a system for managing your people’s wellbeing and you should look at it through that lens. And that was sort of what we did at ReachOut and it worked really well.
Janelle: And it sounds like you created the conditions for psychological safety and I think, you know, we struggle with that in organisations particularly when we’re asking people to take risks, be bold, to innovate. Maybe not all of things come through and what are the conditions that we create around that to make that safe.
Jono: Exactly. How do you create those environments systemically? So really practically what we did to deliver on that was once a quarter we would have an all staff meeting that went all afternoon. We’d always present the financials for the quarter to the staff at the same time the Board received it, which was something our Board had to agree to do. And my argument for them was if you see the money going up I want it to be transparent, but if the money goes down I want it to be transparent. And so part of that psychological safety was transparency.
Janelle: You said, Jono, that you’re most important role is that of husband and father. You’ve got three boys – and are they 6, 9 and 11?
Jono: Yep.
Janelle: So what kind of influence has your work had on the way that you parent? And I guess conversely what has been a parent influenced what you do at work?
Jono: What always keeps me motivated around this space is I have three boys and, as we spoke about earlier, the leading cause of death for young people, particularly young men in this country, is suicide. So there’s a real kind of personal drive for me that comes from my work about understanding the reality that it’s not likely to be, you know, a drug overdose or it’s not likely to be a car accident that kills my kids, it’s likely to be suicide. And that is incredibly confronting but means that you – and my wife and I have always talked about mental health with our kids from a really young age. The other part is that we’ve also always been really pragmatic about it. You know, I’ve got anxiety that sits in my family. On my wife’s family her grandfather had quite significant bipolar and we know it a significant amount of it is genetic and so with each of our boys we effectively do a running mental health analysis.
Janelle: What does that look like?
Jono: Well we know, for example, our oldest boy has always been anxious. He’s bitten his nails since he was two, and so when he was seven, you know, we had a reward system for him to feel good enough about himself to not bite his nails. You know, with our youngest boy he’s a really gentle soul and I’m really conscious on because he’s not sporty, unlike his brothers, that he’s got to find his own space and identity, which can be really hard for the youngest. So I think for us mental health and good mental health it’s just part of the way which we approach it. We still fail all the time and yell and scream at the kids and do all the things that parents do, but I think the one thing I keep coming back to and I learned from that work is that ultimately if your kids know that you have their back, then the kind of ups and downs of life you can work your way through – because that was the big lesson for me with almost all the young people that I worked with is they were not sure that adults had their back. And it’s a great one for leadership. It’s like do you people know that you’ve got their back, and if they are unsure then you’ve got some work to do as a leader. I think the other thing in terms of what have my kids taught me, which is your legacy in life will very rarely be the work that you do. You can delegate almost any task at work – try delegating a date with your partner!
Janelle: I have! It didn’t work out so well.
Jono: It didn’t work out, right? So you go try delegating someone to, you know, someone to go with your kids to the awards night and see how that goes for you.
Janelle: Yeah, so true.
Jono: And so what people I think get trapped into at work is thinking that their legacy will be the work that the do when in fact, you know, almost anyone in a job within two years of them leaving most people will have forgotten who they were. That isn’t true for your family. So I think, you know, I always say for people yes your work is really, really important but if you manage your work life well in relation to the things that you can’t delegate, which is your family and your personal life, then you tend to get that balance more right. So that would be the big lesson I learned form having kids because I’m incredibly passionate about the work that we do. I decided on this space when I was 14 and so therefore – and there’s a lot of ego in working in a charity and a lot of people who pump up your ego and tell you that you’re more important that you are. So that whole thing about actually I love ReachOut but there’s another CEO and they’re going to do a great job and it’s an easy thing to leave.
Janelle: Great segue to my next question which was, you know, clearly ReachOut is fundamentally aligned to your personal purpose and to your mission, so how did you make that decision to leave?
Jono: Yeah, I got a great piece of advice when I started as CEO. I went and spoke to – again, one of the great benefits of running a charity is you get access to some of the best business minds in the world who just give you their time and they often buy your lunch at the same time, it’s pretty cool!
Janelle: Whilst pumping your tyres?
Jono: While pumping your tyres and telling you you’re an amazing human being! But one of them said that you should decide on your exit criteria at the start of your job because most CEOs stay too long because there’s another challenge or another reason they feel needed. And really they’re afraid. They’re afraid of what’s next. And so for me I really took that on board. Every year I would say have those criteria been met and as soon as they were met, and it took me almost 10 years, then I was out.
Janelle: Jono, tell me about the Wellbeing Outfit?
Jono: So I started the Wellbeing Outfit after I stepped down as CEO from ReachOut and essentially is a specialised consultancy business in mental health and wellbeing. We work with organisations. So if I think about the first part of my career was all about public service and about helping young people. This really for me is about the other part which is we spend, you know, at least 50% of our time at work. So if I could help people have better mental health at work then it was sort of for me a really nice rounding out of that experience.
Janelle: So, what, it’s two years now in this space?
Jono: Two years.
Janelle: So, what have been some of the themes and observations that you’d have consulting to us big corporates in the mental health space?
Jono: Yeah, I think the big thing that I’ve seen is that the leadership of organisations, and it’s a self-selecting sample, very few people talk to me unless they care about their teams mental health, but the leaders of organisations recognise that it’s a really significant issue and that very few are working their way through it in a disciplined way. What I’ve seen in organisations is that they tend to be very initiative led - so we’ve got EAP, surely that’s enough? Or we did an RUOK breakfast, I hope it works, rather than being strategy lead – where’s our business trying go? In my view, as I said, if you operate in the cognitive economy, whether you’re a consulting firm, a law firm or a charity, then what happens with your people’s brains is the value of your business and therefore investing in a very systematic way into the mental health and wellbeing of your people I would argue is just a good business competitive strategy. And I think that’s probably the big part that I’ve seen leaders start shifting around, which is if we see it through the lens of we care about our people you end up with a welfare strategy. If you see it through the lens of we want to be the best organisation we can and built into our business model are the brains of our people, then you see it through the lens of a business strategy and you invest differently. And that’s, I think, the big light bulb moment that I’m hoping to help a lot of leaders through.
Janelle: I think that’s exactly the path we went down with diversity and inclusiveness. So, you know, if you see it as, you know, just the right – the nice thing to do to have equal representation in men and women, for instance, versus this is competitive advantage to be able to tap into a full talent pool, to match the customer profiles, to think more broadly, it’s a very, very different imperative and it gets very different actions and very different outcomes when you think like that.
Jono: Absolutely. I’m seeing organisations move through the first phase of this of oh, well, we kind of hope that we’ve done enough but we hope that it will go away, to organisations now really looking at, you know, leadership culture and work design. I think the most confronting thing that I see for organisations is the work design and business model.
Janelle: Oh, how so?
Jono: Organisations I think that will thrive through the next phase are willing to say that business model that got them here may not be the business model that will get them through the next stage. But that means the leaders of those businesses that have benefited most from that business model need to unwind their thinking. And if I go back right to the beginning I think that’s why a lot of organisations would benefit to your point around diversity from having outsiders, having people who didn’t win from that strategy in the leadership space because they are the ones that will point out that there’s a different way. And then those leaders have to be brave enough to challenge the business model and that’s hard. That requires some really deep, hard work at a leadership level.
Janelle: Well you’ve lived it 20 years ago, 20 plus years ago, when you were that kind of disruptor, so really what you’re saying is businesses need to really recognise that what got us here probably won’t get us there and have the courage and the security to be able to listen to disruptors, ask the advice of disruptors and adapt.
Jono: Absolutely.
Janelle: So, what gives you the most hope about the world today?
Jono: Actually the thing that most people find pessimistic about I actually think that the outsiders are winner at the moment. I think that’s coming out in really dysfunctional ways in leaders like Trump, leaders like Putin and others, are galvanizing a group of people who were really disadvantaged through the economic changes of the last 20-30 years and they’re having a voice. So the same big group of people that the outsiders that voted in Obama, if you look at it through the insiders/outsiders, this is just a different group of outsiders and we don’t like what they’ve got to say. So I think if the world’s going to change that it needs to be confronted with some of these realities and then those people who have benefited have the humility to say, look, what are they trying to talk to us about? And if we do that really well and we galvanize those communities back together the healing will take place. I think the concern that I have at the moment, which is we need to learn curiosity again, and we need to judge people less and be curious more. If we decide that we know what they think before they even say anything then the next period of change will actually be really, really hard. But if we do it well then it will work.
Janelle: We can move mountains.
Jono: Yeah.
The last three – three fast question on change to finish the podcast
Janelle: Well let’s start with a popular misconception that a lot of people have about you?
Jono: That I’m an extrovert.
Janelle: Oh, I would have thought that myself actually.
Jono: Yeah. So that would be, given my whole working life is about spending time with people, whenever I have an opportunity I chose to run away from other human beings.
Janelle: OK, good to know. I’ll let you out of here on time! And what’s one guilty pleasure? And I do like to keep it PG rate please.
Jono: I love playing video games.
Janelle: OK. Any in particular?
Jono: Actually one of the – for someone who did psychology really violent, bad video games. I’m currently playing God of War, which involves just bad…
Janelle: OK, that’s disturbing. I’ll try to work out what my guilty pleasure of watching Married at First Sight every nigh is all about, for another time. And what about one thing that you’re hopeless at?
Jono: Anything that you would pay an Airtasker to do. I am the worst handyman.
Janelle: Quite useless. Jono, I want to thank you for your time today.
Jono: Thank you.
Janelle: Thank you for being so open, so candid. I’ve personally taken a lot out of the conversation, certainly judging less and being more curious is amongst that. You know, your passion and your optimism is super clear, particularly when I think about the kind of environments you’ve been work in, that passion and optimism can still come through so strongly is fantastic. You know, I feel your lessons around being prepared to disrupt yourself as long as you are clear on the mission and the purpose that you use as your north star. Allowing ourselves to bring that outside thinking in, whether we bring it in ourselves or encourage it from others respectfully. And I love that comment around don’t delegate – you can delegate work but don’t delegate your family, don’t delegate your life. I’m sure that there’s plenty more things that others would have taken away but for me that was really enlightening, so thank you,
Jono: Thank you Janelle
The Change Happens podcast, from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
End tape

Jason Pellegrino
Managing Director & CEO, Domain

come together,
solve problems,
take feedback,
identify the best course of action or a range of course of actions to meet all forms of situations that lie ahead.

With rapid change and ambiguity, uncertainty, that increasingly becomes an issue. We did all the things that most organisations did for example. We moved to remote working. We increased the frequency of our communication using multiple channels, weekly all hands on Zoom, Q&A sessions on Slack, emails, blogs, all the things you’d expect to do. We prioritised our teams. I think we built confidence in a statement that we were prioritising our teams by backing that up with small efforts, like [4.16] and we provided some funds for them to make sure that they were safe at home. They were able to buy, for example, ergonomic chairs and set up a safe work environment. We provided some funds to help those people who needed to upgrade their internet plans for example, so they could actually work effectively. Just little things like that. Put some actions behind the words, that people matter.
I think the biggest thing and the thing I’m most proud of is we spent the time understanding the challenges that we faced and not just going to basic answers or running down well worn paths. A good example, and probably the thing I’m most proud of with our people, a thing we call ‘Project Zipline’ and that was our approach for employee costs. As a technology business nearly half that cost base is people. We couldn’t confidently or even genuinely say that we were setting up this business for whatever lay ahead without actually dealing with employee costs – which is the biggest cost line in our P&L base. We couldn’t avoid that. We couldn’t not talk about that. We couldn’t hide that from our employees. We really needed to understand what we were facing. We’re facing a few things and these are the facts that we established to start with. We didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. The facts we knew were the following:

Firstly that COVID was going to be a short term impact. We didn’t the depth or length of what I call a ‘market ravine’ that we were heading into. But we knew there was going to be another side.
Secondly the solution that we designed needed to match the problem. It needed to actually replicate the fact that it was a short term but uncertain depth and duration of the problem.
Thirdly we just needed to recognise that as a technology business our biggest assets are our people and their ability to turn talent into product IP.

When you put that all together, pretty quickly redundancy stand downs, any form of action that reduces costs by reducing capacity is just the wrong approach. Particularly where it reduces capacity permanently.
Project Zipline what we did was actually offer our employees the ability to convert 20% of their cash salary to equity over a period of 6 months. What that did is, that allowed us to galvanise our workforce. We made a consistent commitment not to actually run redundancies and stand downs. There was a commitment that we’re all in this together.
Secondly, it was an approach that was in line with the nature of the problem. It sorted out our cashflow issue but retained our capacity to build and develop product and IP which was in demand in periods of disruption. Over 96% of our employee base accepted this and step forward. I’m really proud of that because it was a leadership team that went from concept to implementation in 3 weeks on that which is extraordinary given the complexity of doing that in a listed company environment.
Then over 90% of our staff stepping forward enthusiastically to support each other and our business when we needed it most.
That’s what I’m most proud of in terms of what we’ve done with our people and our business over the last few months.
Jenelle: What an achievement I think that Project Zipline is fantastic. I think the other thing that stands out to me in that Jason is it also gives the employees and everyone in the organisation a sense of control of what they can do in circumstances that can often feel completely out of control. No one has been through this before. They’ve got something they can do and contribute. It ignites a bit of collective action.
Jason: Yeah there was definitely a sense of collective action. We were very transparent about it. We didn’t hide the truth. The truth was if we didn’t get collective acceptance of this, which we call Plan A. Plan B was redundancies and stand downs because we had to deal with costs. I think that transparency and then explaining the ‘why’ and the benefit for everyone through that collective experience really won over the team. What we have, and this is why Zipline, this is about zipping across the ravine of unknown duration and unknown depth but getting to the other side with velocity and being able to not only accelerate out the other side but also reward our staff on the other side in terms of their ability to be rewarded as part owners of the business.
Jenelle: Sounds like a really powerful initiative. Its certainly a powerful metaphor as well with that zipping over a ravine, there is fear, there is uncertainty, there is adrenaline.
Jason: We’ll get there together.
Jenelle: Exactly.
Jason: It’s been extraordinary. I think one of the key learnings I’ve had is, it’s not only helped galvanise our teams, it’s fundamentally driven significant uplift in employee engagement. That’s just not anecdotal feedback. The last 3 months we’ve seen our employee engagement results lift by 30% to levels that we have never seen before. To achieve this in a period of such deep uncertainty. To achieve that in a period where the vast majority of our staff are dealing with a 20% cash cut to their salary is extraordinary. I think it just shows the quality, the resilience and the alignment of our teams.
Jenelle: Incredible. Much has been made Jason in the media about the impact that the pandemic has been having on the property market. I’m interested in knowing how you see the property business as a whole managing now and into the future. You think about buying, selling, borrowing, renting, showing, advertising. What’s that been like to be navigating amongst all the noise that we’re hearing around it?
Jason: I’m probably going to give you quite a dull answer to that question because I fundamentally don’t think that the property market or the process of buying, selling, or renting will change in the long run. But I think what COVID has done, like many other industries, is it’s given us a clearer picture of what the future of our industry looks like. It’s actually accelerated progress on the path to that future. Let me explain that.

Jason: Fundamentally the steps of buying a property won’t change from search, to discovery, inspection, settlement, moving in, all of those processes. However, what I think we’re starting to see is an acceleration during COVID of the use of digital tools and experiences, and the increasing normalisation of those both for agents and also consumers that are moving through those processes. They’re not replacing real world experiences but they’re being used as an enhancement. No one will ever buy a property without physically inspecting it. But virtual inspections for example open up the property to a much wider audience, they encourage more people to actively inspect and consider a list of property. They expose the agent to a much broader market. Digital will move from being seen as a side distraction or disruption or even a potential competitor by agents to actually a facilitator in a system. That has been happening slowly over time.
What COVID has done, I think it actually accelerated the acceptance and the adoption of that. It’s also shown the importance of the agent, for example, in the property market industry of what their role is in the future as really a service agent rather than a transactor. What we’ve seen for example, is a clear distinction in the performance of agents during this period from those who were able to really win the trust and confidence of their vendors and support them through a sales process versus those that weren’t able to actually earn or build that trust. The really great agents delivered fantastic results for their vendors in the last few months in a market where a lack of confidence has driven a lack of supply. When there is lack of supply you get great outcomes.
Jason: … And so, you know I think in the end like most industries is we will see an acceleration of existing trends that we’ve seen – digitisation, digital tools used as an assistant rather than as a disruptor. And we’ve got a clearer picture of what the future looks like, you know, the future role of agent, the future role of digital tools in that property market. And I think that’s consistent with most other industries if it’s based on the sort of discussions I have with CEOs across different industries.
Jenelle: I imagine that might have allowed you to accelerate areas that you would have wanted to have fostered anyway. So shift in relationships to the away from transactional and much more relationship-based would, I’m sure would have been high up on your agenda anyway. Do you think that this is affording you a level of adoption and impetus for change that you might not have otherwise had?
Jason: Yes, it’s definitely accelerating that, and that’s clear. What we’re also seeing is we’re having a lot more high quality conversations with our customers and partners as to what they really want and what they really need. That is manifesting itself in very different ways. So probably another area that I’m really proud of that our teams achieved or delivered in the last few months as an example, and this is a tangential thing. Yes, we’ve delivered a lot of new solutions that have allowed, for example, our agent customers to just continue actually working during, you know, social isolation and restrictions, which is fantastic. But the single thing that I get the most positive feedback was not that we stepped up and actually supported agents with new tools, not that we actually recognised the financial impact on their business and we provided discounts and flexible payment terms and all of the things that, you know, a lot of – any good partner would provide. But we actually extended our employee assistance programme externally to any agent in the industry who needed to talk to someone.
Jenelle: Oh, wow!
Jason: What we saw in discussing and getting closer to our partners was, it wasn’t just the financial impact but just like our staff and just like that fear that I spoke about, you know, that I felt personally, our agents were scared and it was having substantial mental health and wellbeing issues. But unlike Domain where we’re in a really privileged position to be able to provide access to, you know, employee assistance programme and, you know, to help and support our staff where they need to talk to someone or they need support, and many of these agents were working for small businesses or individual contractors or they just didn’t have that access, and opening up that programme was a solution to a real problem that was pressing. And, you know, it’s a simple thing on our part but it definitely came from understanding the needs of our customers better, being deeply empathetic and understanding what we could do to fundamentally make things better.
Jenelle: You know, that’s exactly the word I was going to use. To me, the empathy seems to be at the core of that. Like really recognising where the needs are and where the pain points are. You know, we talked before around the importance of the customer and, you know, there are precious few organisations who don’t talk about the need for proximity and intimacy with customer, what do you think has changed with this time around in really understanding customer needs? How are you – how have you been able to do that differently so that you’re getting closer to them and adapting to what their needs are?
Jason: Look, I think that they’re sort of extension of the employee assistance programme out through industries. A great example of this customer centricity – because it’s a little bit left field in terms of it’s not something that you would naturally, immediately prioritise. But understanding that health and wellbeing was probably a more significant need of the industry at a point in time than financial support or transaction support is an example of action rather than words. One thing that I take from it is in my experience, you know, I’ve been involved as a leader in, you know, a number of areas where there has been events that have unfolded that have required swift action - you know, bad times as well. And I spend a lot of time, and I repeat this again and again and again with my teams and they’ve heard this a lot in the last three months, and so you know they are telling me they’re a little bit bored of me saying it, and that means that I’m close to but not yet ready to stop saying it, one of my favourite quotes is that, you know, fortunes are made in good times and reputations are made in bad times.
Jenelle: So true!
Jason: Yeah, reputations are harder to build than fortunes but they’re a lot easier to retain if you do the right thing. So, I am spending a lot of time with my teams just saying that. Let’s do the right thing. This is a time where we are able to step forward and fundamentally build reputations. It’s a time to prioritise the needs of our people and it’s a time to prioritise the needs of our customers. We will deal with what we need to do to make that happen, but really this is the time that people will remember that you were on their side. And so I think that taking that into the way that you think about customer relationships, about partnership, are particularly in times of trouble or times of urgent need is absolutely the right way to think about prioritising the efforts that you make as a good partner.
Jenelle: I think I have heard that saying before but, gosh, it rings true now as we’re living and breathing these times. Never were truer words spoken. Jason, what have you found personally to be the toughest to be dealing with during this period?
Jason: That’s really easy actually. It’s dealing with the same uncertainty and fear that everyone is, but at the same time needing to focus on providing a level of confidence to our teams, our customers, our stakeholders, our shareholders, board that helps them with the fear and uncertainty that they’re dealing with. Yeah, it’s really, really tough. I found it very tough and I don’t think I’m alone in this.
Jenelle: No, you’re not.
Jason: But I find it really, really tough to say and continue to say “we got this”, but with an internal monologue that is constantly and silently chirping with, you know -
Jenelle: Do we?
Jason: It’s this, look, imposter syndrome revels in times like this.
Jenelle: Yeah. You’re obviously getting a heap of feedback from, you know, your partners, your staff, that it’s going well. Do that helping to quell the imposter syndrome? Is that – are you drawing confidence from feedback during this time? Or is it just a constant struggle?
Jason: My experience with imposter syndrome, and that’s something that I’ve dealt with for a long time, is it never goes away, you just learn to deal with it. And so it definitely is heightened in periods of uncertainty and it’s wonderful to get feedback from customers that you’re on to the right thing or that what you’re doing is helping. It’s wonderful to get feedback from staff, for example, you know, the increase that we’ve seen in our engagement score. But it never really quells that voice in the back of your head that says that you haven’t got this. You know, you’re overconfident or you’ve got the right answer, you haven’t thought of something or there’s another problem just around the corner. So I think it’s more about managing that rather than it managing you. And it’s not about silencing it completely, because it’s just not going to happen.
Jenelle: And the other thing, I guess, about silence that you wouldn’t want to silence it completely because it’s also what makes the positive aspects of you, yet the humility, the vulnerability, the accessibility – or at least that’s the talk track I tell myself who grapples with the same thing!
Jason: No, that’s a very, very good point. It is a key driver I think in empathy because it sort of allows you or forces you to think about, you know, where you’ve got things wrong or have you got things wrong or is there another point, is there another way? You know, someone else thinking about something differently. It’s where it becomes a barrier to rapidly taking action in a way that you should and focusing on what other people need. You know, I go back to what do teams need in periods like this? It’s not the answer but it’s a sense of confidence that there is a leadership team in place that will deal with whatever comes up. And where that imposter syndrome gets in the way of delivering that confidence it becomes a problem.
Jenelle: Confidence and trust, I guess, you’ve clearly instilled a high level of trust new in the leadership team, so I think the confidence comes when they’ve got trust.
Jason: Yes, absolutely. And a big element of that trust is transparency. You can’t focus on providing the exact answers when you don’t the answers because that’s not transparency, that’s disingenuous.
Jenelle: That’s right.
Jason: Transparency is about actually telling people where we don’t have the answers but providing all the facts that we do have and providing confidence on the level of work that’s going into mapping out every potential scenario that could potentially see ourselves in and positioning our business and our people and support our customers in a way that deals with all those scenarios. Transparency is about that level of depth in thinking and confidence in actions that will be taken and outcomes rather than, you know, the illusion of confidence that comes from assuming an answer when the probability of having that answer correct is so minimal.
Jenelle: So what are the positive learnings around change you’ve taken from this in the way that we’ve adapted during this time?
Jason: There are so many. I’ve said that the last few months have been easily the most challenging of my professional life. Easily! But I’m really energised by the extraordinary resilience, adaptability, ingenuity, I’ve seen this blossom around me. Look, I’m hopeful that one of the big positives that we’ll see out of COVID is an increased level of empathy and care for those around us. And I’m seeing that. You know, I spoke about that sort of image that helps me understand the situation truly, which is, you know, we’re all in the same storm but where each of us is sailing in different boats. And I’ve seen a lot more of that across my teams, across the industries I work in, you know, and even broadly outside of that a better understanding and acceptance of, you know, that people are in different boats. And I think that can only be a good thing for our society. But, again, that probably verges on this sense of optimism. That’s, you know, the optimistic viewpoint of that. I’m definitely seeing that. And I just hope that that is a change that is permanently embedded at least in the majority because I think that that’s a positive step forward for our society.
Jenelle: Do you think having that level of optimism is a criteria for success? And I ask that question because I have the good privilege of speaking to a number of people and optimism, you know, something like cautious optimism is something that seems to be a common factor here. Do you see that as being necessary as we navigate this to coming out successfully?
Jason: I think I do. I think that the approach the way that I see it is the effective leader in times of challenge like this, and the effective leadership team, is really all about hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. Though I think if you overly skewed it either side of that and forget the other, I think you’re in trouble. So if you’re just preparing for the worst it becomes really difficult for a team to galvanise around you in a confident way. And similarly if you’re just hoping for the best but you’re not preparing for any scenarios, whilst there might be a short-term sense of confidence pretty quickly that will dissipate once the first, you know, chicane comes up or the first roadblock. So I think it is absolutely about hoping for the best, communicating that hope, expressing that hope, instilling that hope in all of those that are around you but at the same time instilling the confidence that we’re preparing for the worst, that whatever scenario lays ahead we’ve got this. And there is a sense of hope in that as well.
Jenelle: Well on that, Jason, I want to thank you again for joining me and I want to go back to our conversation where we’re talking about your journey and other learnings in that original chat. Thanks again Jason.
Jason: Thanks a lot.

The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Tony Johnson
CEO, EY Oceania

This podcast series “Change Happens, is a conversation with senior business leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. When we set out creating a podcast about how we cope, deal and work through change we didn’t expect it to be amid the biggest worldwide change in modern history, COVID-19. Actually, when I recorded this podcast with Tony Johnson it was early February and we were face-to-face. Coronavirus was in it’s earliest stages of being known and talked about. It hadn’t yet been named COVID-19 and there were certainly no signals that what would follow the next month would be the declaration of a global pandemic, where the world would shut down borders and the term “social distancing” would become both a new entrant into our vernacular as well as a forced way of operating. So, whilst that discussion with Tony almost feels like a lifetime ago, in this podcast we discuss what it’s been like for Tony to evolve and lead over 30 years at EY. We looked at how leaders can not only endure but evolve, and I can guarantee you’ll get a lot out of his insights into purpose, inclusion, listening and taking action. But with the extraordinary circumstances that we’ve all found ourselves in over the last four months of COVID 19, I felt it was important to touch base with Tony again, just to share some reflections on what it’s been like to lead the organisation and whether he’s had some more learnings to add to his repertoire of insights as a result of this period of time. Here’s Tony.
Janelle: Hi Tony. Welcome to the Change Happens podcast.
Tony: Thanks Janelle, great to be here.
Janelle: How are you going during this time?
Tony: I think we’re going pretty well. Like, it’s certainly been challenging and testing. It’s gone for a lot longer than any of us would have hoped but I don’t think we want to lose sight of the some been real positives out of it as well. I’ve enjoyed not being on planes and spending more time with my family. I think they think the same!
Janelle: Well, we’ll certainly get into some of those positives. But, you know, it struck me that, you know, when we recorded the first interview you and I would have interacted together, I don’t know, once a week, maybe once every couple of weeks. And then COVID hit and I think that first month we might have been interacting maybe three times a day, six days a week and then it dropped to twice a day, six days a week and now, you know, daily. It feels quite different sitting back in a seat talking to you, albeit virtually this time.
Tony: Yeah, gee I must tally up those meetings. I suspect it goes into the hundreds. It’s been intense but also the bond that I feel that you and I and the others that have been involved in that close group have formed, yes, we’ve been tired, we’ve been cranky, we’ve been happy, but you do form a great bond when you’re working together on a pretty tough assignment, demanding assignment.
Janelle: We’ve certainly gotten to know each other’s quirky attributes. You can almost predict them at times now, which is something endearing in an of itself, I think. Well, that’s what I’m going with! Now, I know you’ve always described yourself as an optimist. Tell me, how do you think your tendency towards being a glass half full person has served you through the pandemic?
Tony: Yeah, I mean I think in tough times, and make no mistake, this COVID time has been challenging and testing for all of us, I think you know a feeling of hope is so important. So I think being glass half full has helped as act of some form of offset to all the negative news, whether it be health news or economic news which has really pervaded the past three or four months. And, to be honest, I think all that negative news could quite easily be or feel overwhelming. So whilst you can’t be naïve and ignore reality, I do think having a positive outlook has helped me personally and then I hope it’s, you know, maybe meant that I’ve been able to share and create a sense, however small, of hope in others that COVID-19 will pass, that we’ll adapt, we’ll flex, we’ll work our way through whatever is thrown at us and reminding everyone that there are some positives to come from this that we do want to bottle and keep going forward.
Janelle: Yeah, I’ve certainly found that realistic view of where we’re at right now coupled with the optimistic view, that hope you talked about for the future, has been super helpful. One of the things that you said to a group of us actually fairly early on in that lockdown period was “the crisis is the curriculum”. What did you mean by that?
Tony: I know it’s not one that I made up myself, so I must have borrowed it from someone, but I guess I was referring to the really the opportunity to learn and to lead in this COVID environment, this COVID world. Now, whether that be sort of personal reflection or observing what others do in a pressured environment, we can see the positives and negatives of human behaviour and of leadership and I think those attributes and achievements, they’re exacerbated. So it’s almost like a classroom – being in a crisis is a classroom on steroids, if you like. In a way there’s no better classroom or curriculum than being present and mindful and being observant in a crisis like COVID-19.
Janelle: And so what have you learned during that period?
Tony: I think we’ve seen remarkable adaptability and flexibility of not only individuals, corporates, governments, communities, it really has proven what we can do when we have to. Look, in many cases our capacity to transform, that’s been turbocharged. You know, you look at telehealth, where we fast-tracked our digital capability from 10 years to 10 days. I guess I’ve been reminded of the goodwill, the generosity of spirit, the collaboration we’ve seen in EY and in the community more broadly. I think there’s been a willingness for important stakeholders to better engage and collaborate. But I guess what I hope I never forget is the importance of communicating, and that’s being honest, empathetic, visible and then creating that sense of hope that I referred to. So I think the COVID lesson, crisis in the curriculum, has been the ability to sort of to be curious, to be agile and to learn is key to thriving.
Janelle: Mm, and I like the, I guess, the mindful learning because I think often when we’re trying to just get through something, get through the crisis, you don’t have time to sort of stop and pause and go what is it that I’m learning now? What do I want to keep doing more of? And I think sort of having that awareness and mindfulness of what it is that we’re learning during this period of time is where some of that stuff becomes embedded as a new normal.
Tony: Yeah. I think it’s so important in the pressured situation that you can stand back and see the forest for the trees, because it goes back to my earlier remarks, it can be overwhelming if you’re just caught on the hamster wheel going round and round and round, getting faster, faster and faster and I think that to be able to stand back and observe yourself and observe others really is important.
Janelle: So, speaking of that hamster wheel, what have you found the toughest to be dealing with during this period?
Tony: I think it’s been the intensity of the cadence and for how long it’s gone, and we were talking about the meetings that we’ve had. But we immediately move to a crisis cadence of operation and maybe do that in other crises you do it for a few days or maybe a week but this has been extreme, you know, for really for four months and maybe we’ve got more to go. And I think clearly the uncertainty and disruption is a drain on everyone’s, including mine, energy levels and your wellbeing more broadly. So I think a really valuable learning for me, and you helped me this, was sort of understanding and appreciating that we all operate at different speeds and will mentally and physically fatigue at different times. And, you know, I’m a particularly insistent person to get things done and so a key sort of learning and development for me was to operate in a way that was probably more understanding, more aware, more flexible but more sustainable, not only for me but also for other team members, which meant that it was more sustainable for the firm more broadly.
Janelle: That’s really interesting. So in that first podcast which people will hear straight after we’ve finished this section, but you talked about that insistence and so it’s super interesting to hear how that insistence has played out now and how you then needed to adjust and evolve that under crisis.
Tony: Yeah, yeah. I guess it brings to life the learning of the period and the positives that can come from it, the crisis is the curriculum.
Janelle: Yeah, it certainly is. And what’s been the most surprising thing to you?
Tony: Oh, I think it comes back to some of my earlier remarks around the generosity of spirit and the goodwill of people. The collaboration and the teaming, and if I go back to the bushfires, which is not that long ago, in the Australian context in some ways has been forgotten in line of COVID-19. You know, it’s in that adversity that you really see the qualities of people and I think that’s played out during COVID-19 as well.
Janelle: I once heard someone say, Tony, that the best way to avoid having to make rushed decisions is to have made good decisions earlier. That sort of stayed with me, that sentence. I wonder were there any good decisions that you felt you made or the organisation made ahead of COVID that has served you and the organisation well during this crisis?
Tony: Yeah, look I think the first was our investment in technology and testing that technology in advance and the idea that 9,000 EY people in Oceania could move to working remotely within days was, you know, historically would have been a crazy one. But we did it. We sort of did it a week earlier than the market and in worked seamlessly. So I call out technology. But the other was really from the outset - good luck or good management - but we adopted a human-centred approach to our response and it really drove our thinking, our philosophy, our decisions, our communications and I think it meant that our people were on the journey with us. They knew what we knew and they also knew what we didn’t know, and there was plenty of those things. It wasn’t room for a vacuum in information or for ambiguity and I guess I’ve always been conscious that human nature means that ambiguity will always be perceived negatively. So I think a human-centred approach in the communications that followed sort of helped avoid widespread negativity, notwithstanding the disruption and the uncertainty that everyone was living through.
Janelle: That’s great. So, when we spoke previously about your predictions for society and, at the risk of having a bit of a spoiler alert here, you said “humans will always be at the centre and they will always need to be leaning in, listening and acting”. What do you think about those words now? Does it take on any different level for you? Do you stand by that? Is there any evolution of that given the last four months?
Tony: Maybe I was more profound than I thought I was. But, no, there’s no change in my thinking in that way, Janelle. If anything it’s reinforced my views that humans will always be at the centre and really through this crisis you’ve – leaning in, as much as you can lean into a global pandemic, listening and we’ve had the benefit of many great experts, health experts, psychological experts helping us through this process. It’s reinforced my views. In fact I’m perhaps more stronger in those views.
Janelle: Well thanks so much for that Tony. We’re now going to get back to our conversation talking about your journey and other learnings in that original chat. Thank you.
Tony: Thanks Janelle.
Janelle: Alright, Tony, so who are you and what is it that you do?
Tony: Well, Janelle, I’m CEO for EY in Oceania which covers Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Papua New Guinea and that takes up quite a bit of my time but as you would expect, there’s a life outside of EY which involves being a husband, a father, a son, a brother.
Janelle: So I once heard Simon Sinek say that the title of CEO is probably one of the poorest descriptors of what a role is. Other roles like CFO, Chief Financial Officer, are clearer. So how would you describe what a CEO does or what it is?
Tony: I hadn’t heard that reference from Simon but I respect everything he’s got to say and maybe he’s right in a way because there’s so much variety within a day, within a week, within a month and then I think over the period that I’ve been CEO, five years going to six years, there’s been so much change that’s occurred as well. But in some ways, I think there’s a similarity between parenting and being a CEO. As you know, I come up with my homespun theories.
Janelle: You do!
Tony: And one around what parents need to do for their kids - and I call them the Johnson Three Es - which is that parents need to provide their kids with three things all starting with E, esteem, experiences and education. And in the workplace, I guess I see our role and my role to be not much different. The people within EY, I think, need to have their esteem built and supported. We need to provide experiences and we also need to provide the opportunity for education, both in soft and hard skills.
Janelle: And how would you describe yourself or perhaps I should ask how your friends and others around you would describe you?
Tony: You might get different answers from that. Look, I’d describe myself as positive. I think I’m a glass half full sort of person. I certainly enjoy life and having a laugh. I’m, certainly at home, regarded as being patient. At the same time I’m insistent on getting things done. So, if someone commits to a task or is asked to a task, then I really struggle with procrastination and I guess maybe it’s a bit of a case of “don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today”.
Janelle: I feel the need to check with Natalie, your wife, as to whether or not she would say that you were patient, but let’s accept that for now.
Tony: She would probably put insistent first but then she would have patient in there at some point, I’m think.
Janelle: Now, I’m sure as a kid you weren’t aspiring to be a CEO – maybe you were, I could be wrong. But what did you want to be when you were a kid and how and why did that change, do you think?
Tony: Yeah, I don’t think I was – ever really gave much focus to what I wanted to be, but I suspect I thought I was going to play test cricket for Australia, AFL football and Davis Cup tennis, none of which has happened and I think the key reason for that is I wasn’t good enough.
Janelle: That could have something to do with it, but good on you. So I think you still maintain an active hand in sport so.
Tony: I enjoy sport, watching and playing, perhaps certainly not with the same fervour of energy or fitness that I used to. But I still love being involved in sport and in fact they were great years when the kids were growing up to be involved, whether you were coaching, managing sporting teams, football, basketball, cricket, whatever it might be, was sort of an extension. Hopefully not extending to being the ugly parent living vicariously through your kids, but being involved in it is fantastic.
Janelle: That’s great. So I want to move onto this sense of fairness, Tony, that you really have and you’ve always said the sense of fairness and getting a fair go was super important to you, even as a child. Just interested in where that comes from? You know, why do you think that that’s just so deeply inherent in you and important to you?
Tony: Yeah, and I don’t think I ever realised that I thought it was important, perhaps until the last three or four years. I think there’s an element I was born that way. But I think that nature piece was nurtured by my mum in particular. And the examples I can think back, which are sort of become my realisation was in junior sport where you’ve got kids of such varying will, skill and it became very easy for those that had the will and skill to dominate for those that didn’t have the will, or had the will but not the skill to be really left out, and that never felt right to me and I - but at the same time, my mum, if I was responsible for determining who’d bat or bowl, if it was a game of cricket, mum would always, I guess, be that little cricket on my shoulder, Jiminy Cricket on the shoulder, saying “little Billie or little Johnnie didn’t get a go last week, why don’t they get a go this week”. And so I guess it’s always just felt like the right thing to do for me or perhaps the other side, excluding people and not giving them a chance, hasn’t felt like the right thing. It’s felt the wrong thing for me.
Janelle: It’s such an important attribute to not just be, well, one to be aware and then to have the empathy for the experience of others around you, so I think that is an important - is certainly an important one. Now I think, you know, you’ve been with the firm for 31 years now. You’ve been a partner for 21 of those years. The organisation that you joined 30 odd years ago, and indeed the job market that you were in, was vastly different. You know, we know that work styles have changed, the physical workplace has changed. We know that worker demographics have changed, particularly now that we’ve got four generations side by side. We also know that we’ve got this, you know, exploding exponential technology that’s happening around us. If you think about it, how have you managed to keep on top of that, stay evolving, stay relevant and lead people through it?
Tony: I mean 31 years you mention, it’s sort of crazy and scary and its almost, at this point, almost feels embarrassing when you talk to young people coming through the organisation, maybe they’re 21, 22, 23 and they ask how long you’ve been with the firm and you respond with a number with a 3 in front of it. In fact, I try and duck the question now because maybe they think that I couldn’t find another job. But I always say “no one else will have me”. But the key is that things have changed so dramatically over the period and perhaps you don’t realise ‘til a bit of the boiling frog syndrome, unless you sit back and think of the change, and the obvious one is technology, and when I started there were no laptops, there were no mobile phones. Fax machines were emerging and they were so much better than telex machines to use.
Janelle: Telex! OK.
Tony: Telex machines, yeah. And then I guess some of the office workplace was different. You aspired to be a manager so you could get an office and then you inspired to be a partner because then you get a bigger office. Well, that all went out the door 15 years when we moved to open plan and activity-based working and that was absolutely the right progression for society and for our business to go. I think the attitude was very different. When I started you were quite happy to be told what to do and how to do it and you just got on a did it. No consideration, I was going to say very little consideration but no consideration of the why, or the purpose of what we were doing. So that’s now very different when our people really demand to know the purpose or the why of their work and they want to understand that that’s aligned to society and community goals, environment etc. So, there’s been some, you know, massive changes as you’ve highlighted. Clients, client related work is tougher. The work is more technical, its more complex. The sort of the parts of the practice I’m in, its more regulated. Clients expect more, they demand deliverables faster and cheaper. And then you touched on the sort of leadership roles. You know, we’ve got four different generations. We’ve got baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z. I actually stand back and you start to see, I think, some virtuous circles or some circles occurring in that place but that’s been complex. It seems to me years ago when you detect perhaps a morale issue or an engagement issue, it was all about throw some drinks on a Friday night or a big lunch on a Friday and all was well. It’s not as easy as that now because progression, the great progress we’ve made on diversity and inclusion means that one simple solution isn’t enough and isn’t the right way to go.
Janelle: And also recognising different styles and preferences. You know, alcohol ain’t going to cut it for some people who don’t feel at all comfortable in those environments. Things that we had available to us before or maybe very simplistic blunt instruments, you know, much more sophisticated now.
Tony: Just that we’re so much more aware of being inclusive and as you touched on some of the drink session on Friday, it would probably never appeal to everyone, but certainly doesn’t appeal to everyone now. And then, you know, from the CEO or leadership roles, I’m sure it wasn’t easy to be a CEO in years gone by but it does seem far more complex now, and I couldn’t have envisaged six years ago the issues that we would be dealing with. You know, I’ve touched on purpose, but driving and creating a diverse work force, but an inclusive workplace, and that goes to a safe workplace. Me Too movement, probably in the last three or four years. You know, we’ve needed to respond in that environment. Marriage equality was probably five/six years ago and you know I touched on climate environmental issues remain at the forefront so that’s a lot different to what it was.
Janelle: It certainly is. I think that expectation of activism from a CEO is completely new. There used to be very, very clear boundaries between, you know, what happens in the workplace versus what happens at home or what's the government to solve. Those lines are incredibly blurred now. Have - when you think about the Me Too movement, when you think about climate change, when you think about issues where you are expected to exercise a voice, how have you navigated that, made peace with those things? Maybe, you know, tested some of those things with your teenage kids?
Tony: And I think it does link back to purpose. That the - I’ve descried that people do want to understand the why now. So I think they do want their leaders to be visible and aligned with their purpose and certainly not ducking issues. And so for me in considering these and often you come to deal with these issues and you’re not expert in the technical client issue you’ve either got a basis or you know where to go. So, I guess my philosophy has been you’ve got to lean into the issues. You’ve got to listen and then do something about it. In the knowledge that what you choose to do may not be perfect, it may not be well received by everyone but I think the, you know, the worser evil is to not do anything. And so I do consult with people and try and consult widely, remembering that you want to get to action fairly quickly. Marriage equality was one where I did consult with my kids. Sunday night dinner is our normal get together and forum and we all talk about our week that’s passed or our week that’s coming, and one was around marriage equality and the kids just looked at me and sort of said “duh, Dad, you know get on with it”. In that case, I felt we were making a decision for not just the current people of EY but the future people -
Janelle: Future generations.
Tony: - who join EY. And the impact is, you know, on that issue and also support of cultural diversity, the impact is far greater than you expect it to be and wider than you expect it to be. You know, it wasn’t just the LGBTI community that saw EY make a stand in that regard, but we were seen to be an inclusive workplace and so therefore those that wanted to work in an inclusive workplace, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, cultural ethnicity etc., you know, saw that EY was an inclusive and safe workplace to be and aligned - so it aligned with probably with my fairness of opportunity piece. It aligned with building a better working world.
Janelle: That’s great. So, Tony, you talked about these virtuous cycles that you’re seeing and the generations coming in. Interested in knowing a bit more about that. What are you seeing? Is it history repeating itself or is there some sort of reminiscence of something for you when you look at that?
Tony: Yeah. I guess when I think back to baby boomer times, which I’m after baby boomer I might add, but I suspect I’ve got a lot of baby boomer attributes and that was a little bit around, and I don’t want to stereotype here, but it was you work hard, you get a job dah dah dah dah dah. Whereas we’ve moved then through Gen X which I am, to GenY and I guess GenY we all saw as the work/life balance, not interested in promotion, pay but you know, aholistic view. And now what we’re starting to see is with Gen Z, actually a desire and their parents - they may have seen their parents go through the global financial crisis, for example, saying actually I do want stability, I do want promotion, I actually want to buy a house. And to me some of those attributes are very baby boomer in style. They’re not the same as but they’re similar, those attributes. So, it just shows, I guess, why I call it the cycle or circles, it’s probably cycles. There’s elements of where we’re going back to where we were.
Janelle: It’s interesting.
Tony: So, you know, the challenge as we see in our organisation is you’ve got baby boomer, Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z attributes but they all don’t - there’s not a signoff date for one or for the other and there’s not one here. So it’s – and I find it intriguing. You know, at the heart of what I guess makes me tick and excited, is understanding what makes me tick and what makes the organisation tick and the organisation is the aggregation of individuals. So it’s something that I enjoy thinking about. It’s a challenge but I enjoy thinking about.
Janelle: It’s something that does bear thinking about and I’m sure that example of, you know, what people are seeking now is a really good one. And I think the other part of that equation that makes it just that bit more complex is the fact that humans are humans and they’re not going to be put into any kind of bucket. There’s fluidity there in what you want so, you know, a Gen Xer is going say “well I want work/life balance and purpose as well. Like that was never things that I didn’t want. I just didn’t think that they were available to me”. So, we’re all sort of infecting each other with the different things that each generation brings in and learning from each other. So that adds more a challenge and more excitement, I guess, to figuring out human beings.
Tony: And often, you know, we’ve got this challenge about automation, AI, which sort of says the robots run the world and as, you know, my views are that we must remain human centred and humans will stay important. But so many elements of that are driving bespoke tailormade answers, whether you think of customer segmentation and when we’re dealing with and managing. developing, inspiring, motivating people, it’s got to be on a bespoke basis. You can’t put them in boxes and think, well that will work for that group of people. It’s got to be very much a tailored approach.
Janelle: Yeah, absolutely. You also talked about how our clients are changing. So you’ve got all of this going on. Clearly our clients, you know, which span private sector, government, mid-market, big end of town, they have also been grappling with all these kind of changes around them. We have had the profiles of their workforce have changed, they’ve got more consultants in there, there’s much more sophistication to the way that they use services. Tell me a bit about how you’ve had to lead our business to change the way that we used to operate before and evolve to something that is more relevant and provides more value in an environment that’s, you know, consumer sentiment is rapidly shifting what’s expected of us.
Tony: In some ways I think we’re fortunate that we are a people driven and a client driven business and so clients pull us to change and we can push but to be honest, the most powerful message is when your clients are pulling you to change and asking for different solutions, different services than what we provided so certainly automation AI, data analytics, cyber, climate change and sustainability services were not something that we were being asked for. But because of the client demand we have invested and grown and built great capability in those areas. And then it’s also the way you deliver the results. You know, digital delivery is imperative. If you’re seen to be antiquated in delivering a, I don’t know, I think not all the way back but a PowerPoint document or beyond that, a Word document, it just doesn’t cut the mustard any more. So, I guess I’ve been - the burning platform exists in satisfying our client needs and that makes it easier, I won’t say easy, but it makes it easier to affect change within EY.
Janelle: Yeah, and I think when you’re coupling that burning platform with the burning ambition which has been purpose for us, you know, setting that north star, those two things coming together is really, really a perfect recipe for change.
Tony: Yep, yep agree.
Janelle: I want to go back to an analogy that you used just a moment ago around the boiling frog. You know, it’s got a little bit of a sombre tone to it, right, when you think about the boiling frog analogy? But I think its quiet relevant in this time of the way that change is happening and as the leader of very large organisation, as a leader of a partnership no less, you know I think we have people and a lot of, as humans, feel susceptible to not recognising how much is happening around us. That we might be in that boiling water. So how do you help people realise that the water is hot and it’s getting hotter and we need to keep evolving, keep adapting, accepting it, leading it? How do you make sure that we don’t become that boiling frog as an organisation?
Tony: Yeah. I think having the discussion is an important part of the puzzle. In some ways history does repeat and the same elements that were important 30 years ago are important now, albeit that the speed is so much greater. And I know I’ve shared with you previously, I was so fortunate one of my first bosses, they were very, very old at the time, aged about 30, a senior manager -
Janelle: Oh ancient!
Tony: - ancient, suggested to me that it was important to do my CV and I should do it every six months. I thought I was going to have the shortest career at EY ever, but really what he was emphasising was the importance of learning and the proxy was adding something into your CV. If you couldn’t add something to your CV for the last six months and couldn’t foresee that you were going to add something to your CV in the next six months, make a change. And I guess I’ve always adopted that philosophy and it’s probably - it’s even more true now about planning and thinking ahead around what are you learning, are you learning something, are you adapting, are you changing? And I think the discussion and the awareness is focussed on encouraging people to lean into change. The worst thing you can do is lean out and not accept it, not embrace it, and so come up with your own plan - put something new on your CV for the last six months and the new six months which is helping you change and transform to the new world.
Janelle: And I can attest to – I get to be on the road with you a fair bit, Tony, and I know how consistent you are with that advice to people and I know that you also do update your - you’ve got your notebook that you update so if, you know, I’m no accountant but 31 years, if you do that twice a year, you’re going to have at least 62 entries in there. If you sort of, would have metaphorically flicked back on that notebook - you’re actually reaching for the notebook right now, real time, here it is, and you think back to some of those key changes and those reflections and those updates to the CV every six months, what would be some standouts for you?
Tony: They’re learnings. I call them my rules but they’re not really rules, they’re just principles and things I like looking back on every now and again to help you with your decision making. So, they’re a little bit random in lots of ways but they include being comfortable with ambiguity, that the world isn’t black or white, that the answer is often – in fact I always say always in between. People repeat it back to me and say, “I remember, Tony, when you said the answer is somewhere in the middle” and I say “No, no the answer is not in the middle, its somewhere in-between”. I mean when I was working through the global financial crisis with financial institutions, a key learning there was the reality and the common currents of group think. At that stage the world, and particularly financial institutions, were dealing with unseen problems never seen before and we didn’t quite - we didn’t - no one knew what the impact was going to be of some of these products that had been designed. And I recall just the ebb and flow where the uncertainty but a group of people would get together, one person would make a suggestion and then everyone piled on and thought that is the answer because I guess we’re all looking for an answer, we’re all looking for certainty. So, we’ll pile onto that answer. And then that would continue to be the case for two or three weeks, or even maybe less because the world was changing pretty quickly. You’d bring a new person into the team with different experiences and they’d say “No, the answer isn’t that direction, it’s actually the opposite direction” and immediately people would pile on the other way. So I guess it’s been a, you know, that was just a clear learning, a rule just to be conscious of group think. And you refer to consultations before. I do consult widely but I deliberately try and consult with people that will give me - I know will give me a different answer to the one - I know I can go to certain people, whether they’re rational or irrational, and get the same answer that I may have, but the power of going to somewhere different and I learnt that - in fact the power of the partnership is such diversity of thought and I could go to different partners on a problem to just give me the opposite view and then I can form my own view but at least I’ve heard what the opposite argument is going to be. So, you know, there’s other things I have in my rules around relationships which is always “Never back people into a corner”, “Always give people a way out”. The importance of understanding your own leadership attributes and so you work through what they are for you and for me, that’s being about being accessible, authentic and fair.
Janelle: Yep. I thought that was going to be something starting with “a” because you do like a three word pneumonic.
Tony: And I do love a 3 R piece. I think it was – that might have come from early training on when you were speaking to audiences, it was the 1, 2, 3. It was “Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them”. So, yeah 3s works very easy for a simple mind like mine.
Janelle: So, you know, I just want to pick up on that theme of diversity of thinking and I guess I’ve been the beneficiary of your active seeking out of diverse points of view. One of the big changes that you were actually in control of and you made happen was the appointment of a 50:50 gender represented executive leadership team. How did that come about and what were some of the impacts? What surprised you, what didn’t surprise you, you know, as a result of that quite fundamental change in the profile of the leadership team?
Tony: Yeah. I guess it’s probably quite a journey to get to that point. One is becoming aware of the issue and that’s it’s not fair, it’s not right, it didn’t sit well with fairness of opportunity. I think setting targets and - but it’s got to be merit based and you can do far more damage to an organisation and to individuals if you’re not merit based in the way you go about it. But, you know, discussions that you and I have had and I’ve had with others, sometimes it was difficult to get women to step up to take a role, notwithstanding that they had all the ability, the energy, all the capability required, a little bit of that, you know, it’s a truism - men, if they’ve got four out of eight attributes for a job think they’re a shoe in.
Janelle: Yep, I was going to be a little less generous, but yes.
Tony: Yeah, well you can be. But women believe they need eight out of the eight attributes before they even put their hand up. And so it took some work over a period of time but having a target to aim for with 50% of the leadership team was important and some good management in there but there was some good luck in there that things came together and we were able to do it. And then the difference it brings to the team. The different discussions that you have, I think they’re more human discussions which is really, I think, more important today than it was 20, 30 years ago. I think there’s more - just bringing the lens for a start of - and we’re talking about women, we could go to cultural diversity as well, to discussions I think makes a – important. So I’ve only seen upside from having a better gender based team. Now we’ve got to continue that journey to have, you know, even more, I guess, inclusion - inclusive and diverse in their thinking.
Janelle: Yeah. I wonder, if I just sort of think about the concept of conscious bias and unconscious bias, you know, that’s quite an old term but really has only just come into mainstream discussions probably in the last ten years. Would you be willing to share one of your own sort of unconscious biases, because we’re all on a journey here, Tony. Is there something that you discovered about yourself around unconscious bias that you’ve had to actively address?
Tony: I’ll stop at sharing one perhaps Janelle. I’ve been fortunate to participate in, I guess, a lot of formal training over the years, whether that be inclusive leadership, whether it be specifically around unconscious bias or conscious bias and unconscious bias for training. I guess one of my reflections was, I recall doing MBA and it was put to the class that there is no such thing as politics in organisations to which people sort of reeled in their seats and said “You obviously haven’t worked in my organisation”. But the message was that there’s not politics, there’s formal systems and informal systems and if you want to be successful as a manager/leader in an organisation, you need to know how to work the formal systems and the informal systems. And so that kind of made good sense to me but I guess my - the next step of thinking for me was a lot how do you learn about informal systems? And it’s often around the Friday – or going back to days gone by, it was the Friday night drinks, it was the long lunch, it was the more social occasions where you’d be spending with more senior people in the organisation.
Janelle: The space in between, isn’t it?
Tony: Yeah, and so - but when I reflected, there were so many of those events – the Friday night drinks, the long lunch, which were very male dominated and I don’t think it was ever deliberate to say women are not invited - maybe there were cases of that - but it was kind of just didn’t happen, it just perhaps women had caring responsibilities. For whatever the reason, my realisation was that women were missing out on the opportunity to learn what were the informal systems of the organisation. So I guess and I was part of that. I was, again I don’t think I was being deliberate in it but I was certainly being subconscious or unconscious in excluding women from some of those opportunities to learn about informal systems. And so you adjust your behaviour and so it becomes perfect but you do adjust your behaviour to create more opportunities for everyone to get a fair go, so that they’ve got the same basis for their careers going forward.
Janelle: So if you were to sort of - and we have been doing a fair bit of reflecting over your time - what are you most proud of? And I’m sure there’s many but a few things that really stand out as, you know, these are the legacies that you feel you’re be leaving behind?
Tony: Yeah and I’m not sure, perhaps one was sort of planned and one wasn’t planned. I felt our capability, our skills were absolutely fantastic but we could be a little bit more bold and confident in the way we go about it. So, its work that’s not finished but I think we’re a more bold and confident organisation than what we were previously and you’ve played a role in helping with that. I think we’re more agile. So, the mantra for me has been about us being more agile, bold and confident and I feel we’ve made progress in that area. And the other one that I don’t think I set out deliberately but I think we are a more diverse, inclusive and safe workplace than what we were five years ago and that’s come about, partly being driven or pushed by some of those external -
Janelle: And being bold and confident as well to take positions on things that you wouldn’t have before.
Tony: Yeah, that’s - actually I hadn’t joined the two of them together, but you’re right. It comes back to leaning into issues. We talked about marriage equality but, you know, the Me Too movement, we did take the step to run awareness campaigns in all our offices, and pretty frank and candid discussions and then to be more visible that we’re, well, firstly to be very overt that poor workplace behaviour would not be tolerated. And then in cases, thankfully rarely where it does occur, that its acted upon and that the actions from that were visible because in too many cases in years gone by, there wasn’t transparency or visibility of what to occur. In too many cases, the victim was made to feel like the guilty party. So, all those things come together and I think, yeah, we had to lean into it which was the bold and confident piece. So, they’re the two – agile, bold and confident that are more diverse and inclusive and safe workplace.
Janelle: And I think, you know, we took - we hear people talking about diversity and inclusiveness and I’m of the real conviction that it’s actually the inclusiveness that drives diversity, not the other way around. And so it’s probably no surprise that we have much more diversity because we focus so much, and you particularly, have really focussed on that inclusion side of the equation. So not to bring the note down a bit, but I guess the reverse question also for you, Tony. You know, if you were to have your time over, is there anything that you would do differently?
Tony: I said I’m glass half full so I’ll stay positive.
Janelle: So this is going to be a struggle for you, isn’t it?
Tony: Yeah, it is going to be a struggle. But no, I’m comfortable with the path that we’ve taken but I think what you do is you do the same thing but perhaps faster and more of it. So, I refer to leaning in, lean in more. Listen, listen perhaps engage in discussions where you can listen earlier and maybe when the listening piece, the issues seem relatively small, don’t wait until they get louder and then the actions you’d go quicker and maybe challenge yourself, go bolder. So …
Janelle: You could have another three word thing happening. You could have a lean-in, listen-in and lead. How about that? Put that in your notebook.
Tony: Now I love the 3 Ls there, because you know I’ve got the 3 Es, the 3 Rs, the 3 Ls , no, that’s good, thank you.
Janelle: Oh I know, I know. Welcome.
Tony: Maybe that’s a path to my book on - I’ll just have 26 chapters, 3 As, 3 Bs, 3 Cs.
Janelle: My whole goal is get into that book, so yeah, to have influenced it. So, life isn’t always perfect, Tony, as much as we might like to believe that it could be and would be, but it’s not all cotton candy and roses. What happens when the proverbial “shit hits the fan”? What do you do? How do you cope? Who do you turn to? Maybe you could think of a specific example.
Tony: There’s probably been more surprises, I’ll call them, than what I expected and I think more surprises to most businesses in these last four or five years than what there has been in the years preceding. You know, it’s a stressful time. You have at your heart the decisions you make, the reputation of the firm, the partners, the people within it, can be hanging on how you respond or what decisions that you make. So, it’s something that you take very seriously. I guess the first piece is not to panic. It’s very easy - you’ve generally got lots of people in your organisation who are willing to do that for you.
Janelle: I’ve got that covered for you!
Tony: Yeah! The three parts that I have to it are you’ve got to communicate, you’ve got to - depending on the nature of the issues - there’s got to be some empathy there, and then you set a vision. Actually I remember that from the way Anna Bligh, as Queensland Premier, dealt with the Queensland floods many years ago and I remember just thinking she did a brilliant job and so I’ve taken those three from that situation. Then there’s a piece, you do need to keep some balance in it goes to this calmness piece. You have to keep in the back of your mind that you can only control what you can control. And I guess the other piece to that is the sun will come up next day. No matter how bad things might seem, there are always worse things that have occurred or could occur. And I do, and certainly not -
Janelle: It’s that glass half full thinking coming back in.
Tony: - yeah it is. It’s not obfuscation, can’t say that word, maybe it’s language and that word but -
Janelle: Just emphasise the first syllable, you’ll be right.
Tony: - yeah “Ob”, yeah good, got it. But so I do think there’s a bit where you’ve got to stand back and say whilst you might be stressed about the decision you’re about to make, it’s not the end of the world and I can only do what I can do, because if you don’t accept that, then I think you’ll drive yourself crazy.
Janelle: Would drive you crazy. I get to work with you and I know how amiable a person you are. I think, you know, it’s just one of the beautiful attributes about you but how does that sort of attribute, does that feel conflicted at times when you know you can’t please all the people all the time? You know that there will be times where you would have let some people down and what they might have wanted. How do you make personal peace with that given your style, your tendency towards that?
Tony: Yeah. Maybe there is a third piece in that you accept you’re not going to keep everyone happy. So, I think you learn that over time. Probably 25 years ago, that amiable element would have been, well perhaps not more pervasive, but the need for approval would have been greater. When I think over time experience it, you know a logical way to work through things, you know what's the right answer, you’ve accepted that you can’t keep everyone happy, you’ve accepted that you can’t control everything, you’ve accepted that the sun will come up tomorrow. So, I think it’s not what you do, it’s how you go about it. So providing you treat people with respect and it can be communications so people know that they have been consulted on matters, you empathise and note that they may not agree, that their point of view is valid but on this occasion we won’t be going that way and it’s got to sit with making decision and getting on with things.
Janelle: And I’d imagine going home each day to your family and seeing your kids and talking to your wife is also a great leveller as well and put some perspective on where this sits in the whole scheme of things?
Tony: Yeah, I mean I’m not sure I do that as well as I - sorry, I’m not sure I leave things in the office and not take them home. I do recall back in 2008, when your kids knew what a collateralised debt obligation was. They knew what a CDO was, that it was a collateralised debt obligation and you think, maybe I’m talking a little too much work at home. But you’re right. I think to have a break and get home and be conscious that you need to do something else, even though you need to be focussed on being present at home. Notwithstanding, you know I’m definitely not perfect at that. It does provide that perspective.
Janelle: So perhaps just, you know, thinking about with change happening so quickly, what are your predictions for society and for business over the next few years?
Tony: Yeah, I don’t have a crystal ball and five years ago you would have made some bets and you would have got some of them right and some of them wrong. The speed is going to continue with at the exponential rate that we’ve seen. I think being human centred is still going to retain and, you know, I’m not of the view that automation and robots will take out in any way the importance from people in organisations relationships, in organisations. So, you know the bit of the test there is you’ve got to keep focussed on people and relationships. So, the speed will continue. I don’t know what the answer will be, but I would say that, you know, leaning in, listening and acting upon it are still going to be the keys to adjusting and being successful.
Janelle: And for you personally, Tony, what do you see for yourself in the next five years?
Tony: Well I won’t be in this role in -
Janelle: Wait, what!?
Tony: No, breaking news! No, I won’t be in this role in five years’ time but - so I really want to keep learning, you know sticking to that fundamental that was - I was fortunately presented with 30-odd years ago about adding something to your CV every six months. And, you know, I think variety is a bit of the spice of life and change and a bit of spontaneity, so you know, something routine wouldn’t appeal to me but I hope I’m adding something to my CV every six months.
Janelle: Awesome, awesome. So, I want to ask you a rapid three questions, Tony, just to warm up a bit before we get into the heavier stuff and get us to know you a little bit better. What would be a misconception that most people have about you?
Tony: I think it could be that insistent one, that how painful I find it for things not to get done and for things on a to-do list not to be completed.
Janelle: I definitely can’t imagine that there are many people at EY that would call you a procrastinator. If anyone has the pleasure of looking at your empty inbox every single day, you are meticulous about keeping that thing up to date. What about guilty pleasures, and let’s keep it, you know, PG? What’s one of your guilty pleasures?
Tony: Look, I suspect it would have to come back to food and/or wine or maybe it’s the “and”, food and wine. And so, look, it’d be definitely a steak at my favourite steak place with a glass of red and good friends around.
Janelle: OK. And finally, we can’t all be great at everything and that might even extend to you. So, what would be one thing that you’re pretty hopeless at, no matter how hard you’ve given it a red hot go?
Tony: Yeah, it would be languages, other than English. It’s a long-term issue. I think it goes back to school years where I did French for a couple of years but it’s fair to say the kids weren’t all that well behaved in class, so every lesson we were required to march around the school yard singing the French national anthem which this day is probably the only French that I know. But when travelling with the family now, and regardless of the language, Spanish, Italian, I just butcher it. And I think it’s because I’m locked into the emphasis on the first syllable of a word, which doesn’t quite work in other languages.
Janelle: Hmm and interesting tech-nique.
Tony: Yes, well it causes all sorts of mirth for my wife and my kids who are talented, or far more skilful in the area of languages than my pretty hopeless state.
Janelle: You know I feel incredibly tempted to get you to sing the French anthem but I do want people to keep listening to the podcast so I think I’ll spare us all.
Tony: You display very good judgement Janelle.
Janelle: Thank you. So I want to wrap up here, Tony, and thank you so much for your time. I think from - some key takeaways for me apart from your love of the pneumonics here, you are clearly someone who leads change from the human side. You’ve put humans at the centre, with authenticity, accessibility, curiosity and obviously that inherent sense of fairness. I can attest to how deeply you believe in that updating your CV every six months and no doubt, you’re going to be continually doing that, we’ll talk about that whole question later. It’s a practice that’s truly enabled you to stay relevant. It’s truly enabled you to lead change over the 30 years with us here at EY and it’s been an incredibly insightful interview today. Thank you so much for your time, Tony.
Tony: Thanks Janelle.
End tape

Steven Worrall
Managing Director, Microsoft Australia

Byron Pirola
Partner, EY Port Jackson Partners

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: Gone are the days when we use to compartmentalise our work and home lives. The lines between our personal and professional have increasingly intertwined and blurred and certainly never more so than during COVID-19, with many of us working from home and having to socially isolate with the people in our household. To explore some of these aspects as well as his personal experiences in managing and leading through change, I’ve asked managed director of EY Port Jackson Partners, Dr Byron Pirola to join me today. Byron is renowned for his commercial acumen with more than three decades of strategy consulting experience, serving CEOs and board of major companies across the globe as well as government departments. Surprisingly though, he actually started his professional life in biochemistry. As it turned out, managed to get his name on many published papers during that stage of his career. Outside of consulting though, Byron has extension pro-bono community based roles, has a very evident service based paradigm and is a strong believer that culture in society is built from family. I look forward to discussing all of this with Byron today. Byron, welcome.
Byron: Thanks very much for having me.
Jenelle: How are you?
Byron: Not too bad. Its … it’s a bit of a groundhog day for us all [laugh].
Jenelle: Yeah. How have you been, you know, personally throughout the last, say six months.
Byron: I think very fortunate is the first answer. I live in Sydney. We have a big family home with only two of my five children still living there. So space is not a problem so in terms of all the things that are confronting a lot of people, I’m actually pretty blessed and so I don’t have a lot to complain about really. Having said that, its challenging times. It’s the most uncertain economic environment I’ve worked in, in my 35 years professionally. There’s all sorts of challenges in the community that we’ve not faced in our life times at least but I guess I’m pretty lucky.
Jenelle: I want to get to those challenges shortly. I’m interested in, you know, how you’ve been leading through the last six months. There’s a lot of stuff that’s been going on with you in the business, Port Jackson Partners, but you know, the crisis has certainly … oh we’ve moved from crisis throughout to a different kind of hybrid, very nuanced, you know, iterative stage of this COVID-19, how have you been leading through those various stages.
Byron: Probably not well frankly [laugh]. I mean its tricky. I think, what I’ve tried to do in the professional environment is bring context and as much clarity as one can give to the team. So we’re a small … our practice, although we’re part of EY now which is massive, our practice is only 50 people. But there are 50 people there who have never lived through this. Most of them have never experienced a recession, like in any form. Most of us have never seen something like this and I haven’t lived through a pandemic. The task I think has to be provide context and clarity and not making false promises, but giving people an insight into how, as leadership, we’re thinking about it, what we can tell them about what may happen and give then whatever wisdom we have as people who have been through a few of these things before like the GFC and so on, given our best instincts and insights and then be supportive.
Jenelle: Tell me, what surprised you about yourself and maybe others during this period of time.
Byron: I saw a great line the other day which was “don’t mistake good policy with panic” and I think I’ve watched people who I thought would panic, not panic and people who I thought would never panic, panic. So I think this is sort … this is a particularly unusual situation. I mean this is an economic crisis driven by a health crisis which literally unfolded as we were discovering it and so no one knew how this was going to play and we haven’t had anything like this in generations. So it was just interesting watching how people dealt with it and some people I thought would be rock steady, you know, ran to a particular corner and other people I thought might be quite unnerved by it became quite steadfast in their resolve to sort of look through it and think through it.
Jenelle: Its an interesting, as you say that, I’ve a former life, I was in the army and we used to go and do exercises and clearly you have sort of pips on your shoulders which will designate you as a leader or not but often there were times where we would be going certain exercises where some people would have anxiety about what we were doing, others would step forward. So regardless of what was on their shoulder, you could see some different personalities and true leadership shine, no matter what was designated. Byron, I know that relationships are something that you think deeply about and speak broadly on. What are your reflections on the impact of COVID-19 on relationships.
Byron: So this is just personal observation, not research based, but I think its probably grounded us a little bit in what really matters. I mean I think its kind of funny when we’re all out there sort of charging busily towards something that we think is really important and then we have something that causes us to pause. I say that funerals, they are an incredibly cheap reminder of what's important …
Jenelle: That’s true.
Byron: … because you’re not dead. I never walk away from a funeral not thinking more deeply about my life and so I think this has sort of been a, you know, a variant of that and you know, everyone’s been touched by it in some way so you know, a couple of my kids … one of my kids lost their job, another one took a 35% pay cut just after they took a mortgage out, my uncle was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died during COVID and couldn’t go to his funeral. Two of his five sons couldn’t come back from America to see him, yet alone bury him. So everyone has been touched with it at some level and I think therefore its caused us to just pause a little bit and just think. So if there’s a silver lining in it, it might be that we slow down for, you know, we slowed down and paused a bit. Now that’s not saying its good [laugh], no one would wish this on anybody but I think, you know, in every situation there’s always something you can take from it.
Jenelle: I think that’s incredibly true and, you know, we’ve had this huge global reset in some ways, you know, around priorities and what matters. What do you think it means in terms of the future of work and workplaces and life outside of work. What … a big question I know …
Byron: It’s a very current question, as you ca imagine. I instinctively have a negative reaction to terms like “new normals”. I don’t think we’re in “new” anything yet. I think we’re in the middle of something. I think … so therefore I think taking long term projections off one or two very short term datapoints in quite dangerous. Having said that, I think that its accelerated some trends that were there much more quickly. I remember Greg Hunt, the Health Minister, saying that we’ve advanced tele-medicine more in the last three months than we did in the last five years and I remember my wife saying, we had a doctors appointment, a specialist appointment and they called and said “would you mind doing a teleconsultation” and she said to me …
Jenelle: What's that [laugh] …
Byron: … no. She said “what don’t they understand”. She’s never touched me in her life, I wait in her waiting room for 40 minutes and we speak across a table, what is unattractive about a teleconsultation”. You know, so it’s kind of interesting.
Jenelle: It’s true.
Byron: Its reframed a number of things so I think there will be some changes but I don’t believe cities are dead. I don’t think people’s desires is to cocoon in a home and never … never sort of have a place to be in the workplace but I think workplaces … the trends that have been going on in workplaces will … have been accelerated in some places and there might be some, you know, some lasting resets but I think its too early to really tell.
Jenelle: Hm, I think, you know, a lot of discussion around the fact that we are inherently social beings. We … one person was saying that, you know, we still find ourselves waving to each other as we end the zoom call, you know, that those things are so deeply in us, its what binds us as humans.
Byron: Yeah.
Jenelle: Byron, I want to turn a bit to your professional life and your history there. You described yourself previously to me, as an average student in school, yet somehow despite this average declaration, you managed to gain a PhD in biochemistry. You joined McKinsey. You then became the managing director of Port Jackson Partners. Something or some things must have fallen into place at some point along that journey. Can you tell me a bit about some of the turning points for you.
Byron: It’s true, I was an average student at school. I think the turning points were a couple of things. I think probably I was a late developer. That’s the [9.18] coupled with the truth to it. I found that synergetic space between what I was good at and what I liked. So I’ve often said to people if you’re trying to find a career or a lifes purpose, find the intersection if you can between three variables – what you love, what you’re naturally good at and what pays well.
Jenelle: Yes, those are exactly the three I talk about as well.
Byron: Right, and if you’re lucky enough to find one that hits all three of those, then you know, that’s [9.40] but if you’re going to trade them off, then be conscious about the trade-off. So I chased things I just found, partly I loved and what I was good at so you get that reinforcing virtuous circle going there so it doesn’t feel like work so you tend to spend more time at it. You enjoy it, its not a burden, you tend to be naturally good at it. So … and the whole thing goes so I stumbled into science. It was either science or economics. I love science, I loved economics – look where I am now but then I started to chase the paths of science that I’ve naturally felt better at. Not that good at maths so I stayed away … my hobby was astronomy but my maths wasn’t good enough and there’s no jobs in astronomy but I was a great chemist. I love chemistry so I fell into biochemistry and I just chased the areas of that and then I made choices along the way. So …
Jenelle: How did you make choices?
Byron: Partly by the combination of, you know, usual things people do, make a list of procs and cons and then overlaid that with gut instinct and then advice. So I drew on advice from people I thought, who I trusted and respected and I had access to. So you don’t have a lot of access to a lot of advice when you’re young but my father was a research scientist, professor of medicine, so I used to draw on his advice around things like thesis topics, supervisors and things like that and got a lot of wisdom, I think a lot of people would never have been given.
Jenelle: And what's some of the wisdoms that he guided.
Byron: Don’t choose your topic, choose your professor. In other words, work … find the best person you can work under and go and work under them and don’t give a damn what the topic is.
Jenelle: Has that framed your view on talent.
Byron: Absolutely, in fact I’ve seen it in business as well. I mean one of my experiences was working with one of Australia’s most successful business leaders and they had nothing to answer to in terms of their capability, reputation etc but what I observed was that they surround themselves with three of the smartest independent directors you could possibly bring, one of the best investment bankers, tax lawyers and consultants as their non-executive directors on the board and I watch them take really close, pay close attention and careful advice and that lesson of basically surround yourself with smart people and then listen has been something that has resonated and formed me as the way I’ve tried to work. So I think, you know, find people who have got real wisdom and expertise. It doesn’t mean you have to do what they say but then, you know, get their advice and then fold it in and then also be prepared to trust your gut instinct. So a few times I made decisions that I thought they were right in the head but having made them, instinctively they felt uncomfortable very quickly so I’d walk …
Jenelle: You change them!
Byron: … and yeah, I went with that and I think sometimes you … I say this to people quite often, “sometimes you have to actually walk through the door before you realise it was the wrong door and then you need to be prepared and brave enough to step back out and so make sure you’ve got the option to step back out.”
Jenelle: Right and so that’s an interesting one around walking through the wrong door because sometimes when people, you know, walk through that door and go “well I’ve walked in, I’m in the door now so I have to keep going”.
Byron: So you’re doing a mind game. So I’ve said to people, for example, “just imagine, stop thinking about making the decision and tell yourself you’ve made the decision” and you go home for the weekend …
Jenelle: And sit in it.
Byron: … and sit in it and tell people you’ve done it. Tell them you’ve made the decision and then watch what happens and, you know, sometimes you feel better and better and better and better about it and other times you “uhh” and you come back on Monday morning and you think, you know what I’m more uncertain than I was on Friday.
Jenelle: So you have to say it, just kidding, I didn’t really make that decision [laugh].
Byron: Well you haven’t actually and the people around you, well if they care about you, they won’t care.
Jenelle: They’re like “is this another of those pretend things Byron”
Byron: Well, you know, John Maynard Keynes, the great line is “you know, but you changed your – I forgot what it was, but it completely changes perspective on something and he was called out for it and he said “when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do” [laugh].
Jenelle: So there was a pretty pivotal change in your professional career when you decided to make that leap from working in biotech to working in business. Another door to walk through. How did you make that decision. Why did you make that change and what was that change like for you.
Byron: The reason I made the change was I was working in a centre of excellence in gene technology in Adelaide, at University of Adelaide, so it was one of the pre-eminent places to work in Australia in biochemistry at the time and actually ran a biotech company out of the department and it was called “Breezer Technology” and because I had this natural instinct in business, I found myself over time in my last year of the PhD becoming more interested in the business of science or as much interested in the business of science as the science of science and I recognised that scientists made pretty lousy managers. So they weren’t trained in business and there was a lot of biotech start-ups going broke because they were being run by scientists and I thought “well if I need to jump the bench, as I used the term, I can’t face doing an MBA after a PhD, just felt like too many years at uni so I thought I would go and get a job in business for anyone who would take me and I had an uncle who was a senior executive in BHP at the time and he was the only person in business in my family. So I would turn to him for advice and just said “should I write to this company, that company.” I read the Fin Review everyday as a PhD student. Every time I found an interesting company in the Fin Review, I wrote to them.
Jenelle: And that would have been the slow mail stuff, right.
Byron: That way … I mean I was pretty high tech in those days. I had a golf ball printer on a back of a dual floppy disk 360k, you know, IBM XP, you know, so I was right up there. But you had to look them up in the white pages, you know, find their address, you know, write the letter …
Jenelle: Actually go to the post office and buy a stamp!
Byron: … go to the post office, put a stamp on it and then wait for a return letter. I think I wrote 150. I don’t even remember writing to them. I wrote to McKinsey. I had just received a job offer from Accenture, which was Arthur Andersen. MIC, Management Information Consulting division in the early days and I was going to become a programmer in there and I had this letter from McKinsey waiting for me, sort of saying next time you’re in Sydney and I was in Adelaide, you know, let us know and we’ll give you a job interview and I almost binned it and called my uncle and he said “oh, McKinsey’s not a bad shop, give them a call”. I honestly didn’t know what they did, I didn’t actually have the wit to ask him because I had written so many of those things and everything was “no thanks, no thanks, no thanks”. So I was just going through a fairly big filter but I called them, they flew me up the next day, I did eight case studies. I’d never heard of a case study. So talk about, you know, forget prepping like the kids do today, with you know, case competitions and all that sort of stuff. I just walked in and had eight interviews, literally back to back and thought at the end of the day, how good is this, people pay you to do this for a living, how cool. Because I was a problem solver, I was a researcher and you know, I just got thrown problem after problem all day and they were fascinating. I knew nothing about them.
Jenelle: But your genuine curiosity about this was …
Byron: Yeah and I would have butchered half of them. I mean I had no idea. I mean one of them was forecast the electricity demand in New South Wales for the next ten years. What the hell would I know about how to do that and I completely butchered it [laugh] but …
Jenelle: You must have done something right.
Byron: … I must have done something right, yeah. I found a really interesting career. I found a way to get from science drawing on my problem solving skills, which was what McKinsey was buying and then had to retool. I mean, I didn’t know the language …
Jenelle: How did you retool?
Byron: The hard way. I mean they gave a bit of training. They had one good thing they did for people like me is like they stuck us in, what they called the “mini MBA” for a month and we were taught finance, a little bit of marketing …
Jenelle: It’s a whole new world on language though, isn’t it.
Byron: Oh well, you know, my first day at McKinsey, somebody handed me an annual report for North Broken Hill, a mining company that doesn’t exist anymore and said can you do a break even on them, they’re mine and I was sitting there holding this annual report thinking why is it broken and how do I make it even. I didn’t even know what the words meant. [laugh].
Jenelle: [laugh].
Byron: I had an idea of what a hedge or an option was, was you know, just all those sorts of things we take for granted, if you’ve been in the industry.
Jenelle: It is funny for those, I mean when I speak to people who aren’t in the consulting game and they like, what are these words that you are using and I remember when I started and I also didn’t come from a consulting background and I walked in and someone said to me “can you talk to those slides” and I said “why would I talk to the slides, I think I want to talk to the people” [laugh].
Byron: Right yeah.
Jenelle: So another major change in your life and [17.52] very very recent, close to both of our hearts was your decision to join EY via acquisition. I’m sure there was, you know, logic and emotion caught up in all of that. How did it happen. Was it opportunity? Was it planned and what was it like making that kind of decision and speaking to your team about it.
Byron: That’s a big question, that’s a whole podcast. So it was a natural intersection of, I think, two groups not knowing each other necessarily but heading towards the same hill where there’s a natural synergy. So we had built over 30 years, a practice that I think was well regarded in the Australian market as a very good strategy house. You know, high quality advice to government, corporates. The question was “where do we go next with it” and we weren’t’ driven by growth, we weren’t building a firm to sell. We had no intention. This was not a classic spinout, you know, build and sell and every year we’d be approached by somebody that wanted to buy us and we’ve never felt any interest in doing it but we intersected EY at this point who was … had an aspiration which I think all the firms do, to actually build a tier one strategy house within their firms but actually was going about it in a way that we actually thought was credible and that’s what we hadn’t seen before. So I remember saying to Harsher when he first called and introduced himself. I said “look, I’m going to waste an hour of your time but I’m really happy to come and meet because I don’t think this will go anywhere but I’m very happy to meet with you and get to know each other” and that’s the way we’ve always approached it and almost without exception, we walked out of those meetings after an hour and it was respectful and interesting but it recommitted us to our model of independence. This one I walked out and I thought “that’s interesting” and then we spent about eight months really testing that together.
Jenelle: So, huge decision to join EY. I mean in itself a really big pivotal point in your, I guess, professional career and for the careers of those who work with you, many months in the making. So many months in fact that a global pandemic kicked in somewhere along the way. How did that play out. Did it have an effect. What was the effect of that … I mean you’re a great strategist but I’m sure you didn’t see that coming.
Byron: No no I didn’t … there’s many things I haven’t predicted in life. Most of the important ones in fact, I’m not a forecaster. So we were fortunate we’d had spent enough time together at the leadership levels of our practice and with EY that when the pandemic hit, we’d largely decided to do this and then it took courage of our respective convictions not to back away because, you know, everyone … the modus operandi at that moment became “roll up the shutters and don’t do anything”. But I guess we were fortunate we’d had enough water under the bridge together to actually follow that through but the tricky part was actually, you know, its now … where are we now, September. We finalised the, you know, quote/unquote “transaction” in June/early June but we were actually working together as though it had been done for two months beforehand because we just knew we were going to do it. We started quietly planning even though it wasn’t public and it became public in May but as a partnership we have not sat around a table together since before we decided to formally vote to do this. So the vote to do this was done on video. The firm of 50 people who are very tight and think of themselves a bit like a family and I don’t mean that in a kooky sense but we really have each other’s backs, we care deeply about each other. We have not met as a firm. This was announced to my colleagues over video. I mean if you told me I was going to do that, I would have said “you’re mad”, you know, that’s insane. So its not a radical refit for us, trying to bring what we bring, what we bring into EY as part of helping EY build what it wants to do, which is quite exciting, which is to build a genuine tier one strategy house and it will be different. That’s a worthy goal, I mean that’s something that gets me up in the morning.
Jenelle: Right and you do like to set big goals for yourself, don’t you.
Byron: Yeah [laugh].
Jenelle: What are some of the big goals that you’ve set for yourself in life … come on.
Byron: So I wake up in the morning and I think, not every morning, sometimes I’m just glad to be alive but my life’s thing is set a goal that actually … that matters, that you know you can’t deliver but if you get anywhere towards it, it will make a difference. So stupidly at the end of my honours year, I set myself a goal of … I didn’t tell anyone this by the way, but I’d have a Nobel Prize by 30.
Jenelle: Nobel Prize!
Byron: Yeah, in science.
Jenelle: Oh, how did you get on with that.
Byron: Terribly, got nowhere near it but the aspiration was to drive me. When I joined McKinsey, the quiet little fact I found out what was the fastest anybody was elected to partner and I figured that was a relative benchmark. So what I try to do is set myself …
Jenelle: How did you get on with that?
Byron: I give up, I left before partnership and I wasn’t going particularly quickly. I was a biochemist for gods sake [laugh]. I was surprised they kept me for the first year but the point behind is its not as though I … its not driven from an external recognition thing. Its like, if you’re going to get up and swing the bat, you know, well swing it with intention and so, you know, call me crazy but the idea of taking what we spent 30 years carefully nurturing in Sydney or out of Sydney in the Australian market and work out how with colleagues around the world who I met before we decided to do this to know that they were “like quality” people in the Parthenon group with EY, to say that actually I want to have a crack at wiring this up into something with a power of a big 4 firm behind it but with the quality and the strategy linking space that we would expect to have and require to have to be who we are. You don’t get many chances in life to do that, right and so it was put in front of us and so you know, I’m a bit of a drug addict for big hairy audacious goals, even at my later in life years and so here we are.
Jenelle: Here we are! You know, its so funny as I listen to you because many years ago I came across a person who ended up playing quite a pivotal role in my life and he said “if we’re going to work together, I need to know a bit more about you.” He said “if you were to die tomorrow” – god, this is sounded really morbid this conversation with you, “what would it say on your epitaph. Tell me what your tombstone would say” and I said “Jenelle McMasters (I said this with pride) – Jenelle McMasters, under-promises/over delivers” and he’s like “that’s shocker” [laugh] …
Byron: [laugh]
Jenelle: … and I was so crestfallen and I said “what do you mean” and he said “well mine is always punched above his weight” and it made me realise at that point in time that I was always holding myself back and I really did change from that point on so your setting a goal that matters resonates with me and yeah, it took me a while to get there. So tell me, you’re the leader of a great strategy house and you have been for a long time. You work with great strategists. What makes someone a great strategist and is it something that one can learn.
Byron: If I had that recipe then [laugh]. Look, I actually don’t know to be perfectly honest. I think there are three or four elements. You’ve got to have intellectual curiosity. What makes the difference in strategy is actually finding the thing that nobody else saw because really what you’re trying to do in strategy is out-compete or do something that hasn’t been done for. You’ve actually got to find something that doesn’t exist, right and that’s sort of the research. So you’ve got to have the intellectual curiosity. The second thing I think you’ve got to be … you’ve got to be incredibly commercial or I’m not quite sure what the equivalent in government is but pragmatic. Like you’ve got to have this real groundedness. It can’t be theoretical. Its got to be something that actually will work, can actually be done. I mean I see lots of young strategy consultants get very frustrated with their clients. You know, if they just did our advice, you know, just followed our advice, its really simple and I think you have no idea how hard it is to move an organisation of 20,000 people from A to B. You know, when you’ve got, you know, shareholders on your back you’ve got, you know, regulatory complications around you and you’ve got, you know, balance sheet issues, you know …
Jenelle: Understanding how to apply that.
Byron: … really understanding how to apply it. So its got to have a pragmatic, what I call commercial acumen, just you know, a street smart commercial instinct. They’ve got to be bright. There’s an intelligence that you need in there and various forms of intelligences but they have got to have … they’ve got to be standout, they’ve got to have a spike somewhere in their skillset and they’ve got to be tenacious because you’ve got to chase the problem and its painful and you’ve got to be able to cope with the fact that it’s, you know, a lot of people find it really hard to get up in the morning and go to do a job that they actually don’t know what to do but you do that when you’re doing strategy.
Jenelle: Where does diversity play in there. I’m just thinking being able to look at things from multiple lenses, different perspectives. How does that play out.
Byron: We’re generalists. So the diversity generalist, there’s a great book out written recently, I reckon everybody in my profession show read called “Range”.
Jenelle: And who wrote that.
Byron: Its written by David Epstein and its an easy read and its … its I think a really good challenge to the hyper specialised world we’re currently in at the moment.
Jenelle: Awesome.
Byron: The value of the generalist is largely lost in a high specialised … increasingly specialised world but a lot of the time what we’re doing in strategy is actually lifting broad insights from different areas and seeing the insight from it. Not just folding it over but as an insight. So you know, you’re sitting there with a steel company and saying “this is actually a bit like pet food problem we were working on last week” and everyone looks at you around the table and say “what the hell are you talking about pet food” but there’s an insight and a trigger …
Jenelle: Yeah, the ability to connect them.
Byron: … and so our people, you can see the diversity in our people, they range from, you know, psychologists to engineers to you know, marketing backgrounds to, you know, arts graduates. You know, they tend to come from more analytical professions like engineering, finance and so on but we have a broad range of people but also an incredible diversity of the type of people we are in terms of our interests and so on. I think it helps.
Jenelle: Turning a a bit to your personal life. You’ve been a very firm believer in supporting your own personal values and finding a work/life balance early on in your career. I know that that shaped some of your decisions. Do you see the experience that we’re currently moving through as a positive in showing possibilities of better work/life balances, given that we’ve got these forced working from home scenarios.
Byron: Um … I’d like to say yes but I’m not sure is the honest answer. I mean I think the trick with work/life balance, I’m probably the worse person … if my wife was here, she would …
Jenelle: What would she say.
Byron: … [laugh], she’d say “get some balance boy” [laugh]. Look, life is all about trade-offs. If you think you can have everything, you’re kidding yourself. So you have to make choices …
Jenelle: Not at the same time, that’s for sure.
Byron: … yeah and you know, I mean, I’d love to have been an Olympic skier but I didn’t … you know, I don’t have the skills and I don’t have the time to put into it but I love skiing but, you know, I’m now 60 and my skiing days are going to rapidly diminish because I’ll break something if I go out and ski the way I used to. So there’s trade-offs. I’ve made choices along the way. The biggest choices we make tend to be where we trade-off the relationships and the people that matter for things that are … other things that are important to us. So I think working from home can provide a reset for that. I mean it has for us a little bit. I mean I enjoyed actually working from home to some degree. I found it hard in other areas. My wife and I are both working from home together at the moment so we see each other more often. We actually have lunch occasionally together which is usually just passing something to the other on a [30.25] [laugh] but anyway, its more than work. I think so, but you have to choose work/life balance. I mean …
Jenelle: What do you mean by that.
Byron: Well, it you know, work’s a bottomless pit for, you know, family is a bottomless pit. There’s more you can always give and so I think you’ve got to make active choices about them rather than expect somebody to solve it for you because they’re intensely personal choices. So I think, there’s a … friends of ours we know have ten kids which is an amazing …
Jenelle: Wow, I thought your five was …
Byron: My five is extraordinary [31.03]
Jenelle: You’re actually the underachiever here.
Byron: Absolutely and if I could have ten kids like this husband and wife had ten kids, I’d have them in a nanosecond, they’re the most beautiful family but somebody asked this woman once, you know, but how do you know which one to love, which is a great question – right.
Jenelle: Um, okay there’s your intellectual curiosity there.
Byron: And the answer was … it was life changing thing for me. She said “the one that needs it most at the moment”.
Jenelle: Ahhh.
Byron: And I think that’s … so the trick is when you’re trading off work and life, it happens at big levels, like you know do I take this job or do I don’t take this job, do we move, do we don’t move, do I travel, do I don’t travel, but it happens every morning and it happens every evening. You know, like last night we were sitting around the table and I picked up my phone and my wife said “put it down, the kids will be gone in two minutes” – right. That’s a choice – right and so COVID didn’t change that choice, that choice is mine. So I think … I think the working from home is actually opening our eyes to the … to aspects of it but you have to choose it and you have to decide. So we sort of saying, you’ve got to be intentional about your life. Not just a cork bobbing on the tide hoping you’ll wash up on the right beach. I mean it helps to put you in the right waterway, if you want to take that analogy forward but you’ve still got choices all over the place every day.
Jenelle: With that in mind Byron, you know, if making those active choices, family being such a big part of your personal values, what do you take from that into the teams of people that you work with, the business that you’ve created. How do you foster that sort of philosophy in the workplace.
Byron: I mean its probably pretty motherhoody type statements to be honest. I mean you treat people like you’d want to be treated. You know, I’m 60 this year, I’ve been doing this for 35 years. I’m employing new graduates who are younger than my children and this is going to sound a little bit goofy but I think of them, you know, I’d hope an employer would think of my children as a young person trying to make their way in life rather than somebody who’s there to do my bidding, or our bidding as a firm and it’s the same with the teams. You know, every one of my team members have got a personal life, a personal backstory, I may not be aware of but its happening in their lives.
Jenelle: But do you actively then sort of give them message around …
Byron: Yes, we sit as a team, every time we form a new … so we work in teams. Every time we form a new team to go and you know, sort working with a client, that team sits down and talks about what's happening, you know, how do we work together, you know, what's happening in our personal lives, you know, obviously things like who’s taking leave but you know, we’ve got some people who, you know, they value exercise in the morning. Some people are “if I don’t get eight hours sleep I can’t function” and other people are “as long as I can pick the kids up from 3 to 5, I don’t mind working late” but that’s sacrosanct, for family meals or whatever it might be and so the trick is to work out, you know, okay lets make this work together and you still give that lip service but then you’ve got to honour it and I think, you know, just the way we do with the people we really care about in our personal lives which is, you know, tends to be close friends and family, I think we should treat our colleagues, you know, the same way. So I think it’s, to be honest, its pretty simple but its actually hard to do and you’ve got to create a certain level of vulnerability in the work to really let people feel free to say that you know, something that they might think its unreasonable to say and you know, it takes a bit of courage sometimes to sort of say, you know, [34.34] says personal preference as a team member, knowing that’s not the preference of your bosses workstyle.
Jenelle: Yeah, sure. Husband and father of five. I imagine there’s much negotiations that goes on in your household.
Byron: Yeah and the dog.
Jenelle: And the dog, okay. So how do you deploy your strategic skills to get what you need in that household. Do you? [laugh]
Byron: No. [laugh]
Jenelle: So do you leave them at work, do you [laugh].
Byron: [laugh] my wife once said to me “don’t treat me like one of your analysts” when I was trying to actually …
Jenelle: Out manoeuvre her!
Byron: … no just logically problem solve on the incredible emotional situation we were dealing with at the time.
Jenelle: Oh yes.
Byron: So, no look, I think … so you bring … you are who you are so you bring all that into every relationship. I think the … but its different. It’s, you know, it’s a different situation so we don’t have a family plan or family strategy, god help me. No but again, it’s a bit like … it’s a bit like leading a professional service firm in the case of my wife, we’re life partners together. You know, we made a public commitment to be with each other until death do us part and for better or for worse and we’ve had better or for worse times. So you know, there’s a lot of things you need to do to make that journey work and with the kids, you know, these are our responsibility is to bring them into well-functioning contributors to society and so working out what each one, they’re all very different, incredibly different. You know, one’s doing a PhD and another is a Harley Davidson mechanic …
Jenelle: Oh, right.
Byron: … you know, another one, right now today, out at Bondi on placement as a paramedic. Another one is a construction project manager and another is taking his gap year trying to work out what he is going to do.
Jenelle: Tough time to take a gap year.
Byron: It is a tough time to take a gap year. So they’re all different individuals making their way. So you bring everything you have to that but its not a work problem.
Jenelle: So what are the maybe two or three of the biggest lessons you’ve learnt over your professional career that you sort of take forward with you, that you impart to others. What are the stand out lessons for you.
Byron: There’s a really good line that I’ve learnt that helps, I think, with the personal relationships whether they are in your family, in your community or in the workplace, which too few of us ask, which is who’s needs are being met.
Jenelle: Okay.
Byron: That’s a … so if every time you’re in an engagement, who’s needs … so if I take it into a professional world, you know, I have a … I’m a service provided to clients as an advisor but I’m also naturally conflicted. They pay me to be there. So you know, who’s needs are being met when I’m proposing to do some work with them. Mine …
Jenelle: Is that wrong though, that …
Byron: No, but ultimately you’ve got to be guided about who you’re serving.
Jenelle: Okay.
Byron: And I think there’s a … so there’s a question there about, you know, am I being self-serving in this relationship or am I being of service to others and there’s, you know, you’re not a doormat, you know, there’s a certain … but you’ve got to watch yourself. So who’s needs are being met, I think, is actually been quite a good, you know, rudder for me in life, am I really doing this for my own self-interest or am I being more motivated by my self interest or you know, for those I am in service to, family, community, you know, clients. I think that’s been useful one. I think the other thing is humility. Its one of the values of our firm. You know, people think of us as being, you know, super smart of something because we’re a well respected strategy house. We’ve got really bright people in our firm but we walk into our clients and we know less about their business than they know, we’re not industry experts. What we are, are skilled in a particular area and its quite a narrow area and so you know, learning how to take what we’re good at confidently but not arrogantly, presumptively and partner with people, even when we think they might be wrong or they think we might be wrong, to actually to a solution that actually is right. The humility is a pretty … not a very favoured word these days because it sounds like, you know, you’re being a shrinking violet. I mean we’re not shrinking violets, we’re fiercely independent advisors but we have a deep sense of, you know, we aren’t the smartest people in the room, we don’t know what's best all the time, we’re here to help you be successful. I think that’s a really good guide.
Jenelle: It is a favourite word for me, by the way. I actually love the word “humility”.
Byron: We found it in EY actually. That’s why I think we’ve resonated together, it sort of, you know, it’s a fine line between being confident and arrogant and humility keeps you grounded and frankly if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve got plenty of things to be humble about.
Jenelle: Yes, that’s right.
Byron: It’s the perfect [39.38]. Look, and the last thing and this is, I think this applies to all areas of life which is when we’re faced with a challenge and a decision to make, are we confident enough and brave enough to make the decision or do we can-kick and can-kicking I think, we see it too often in the corporate world and strategy which is it’s a hard problem, its risky to pull it off, we sort of know we need to deal with it but you know what …
Jenelle: We’ll get to it later.
Byron: … leave it for somebody else, you know, its messy, its risky and can kicking I think is, it doesn’t serve anybody and you can can-kick in your personal life, there’s an issue between yourself and the kids or you’re … but it’s a bit hard to open up and go into so you dance around it and you pretend its not there but it doesn’t build anything and it leaves you a bit hollow and leaves the business or the relationship, if its personal, weak. So I think … don’t be a can-kicker and that can sometimes cost you.
Jenelle: That’s right.
The last three. Three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: I like to finish each of these interviews with three fast questions, a bit more on the light-hearted side. What's a misconception that most people have about you.
Byron: That I’m smart. [laugh]
Jenelle: Okay [laugh].
Byron: I’m not that smart.
Jenelle: You had me fooled.
Byron: No, I work hard. Yeah.
Jenelle: Okay. What's one guilty pleasure.
Byron: Chocolate. Chocolate is my guilty pleasure.
Jenelle: Okay and what's one thing that you’re hopeless at.
Byron: No, I’m hopeless at names.
Jenelle: Names!
Byron: Oh yeah, this is really bad. Literally if I’m there with my wife and five kids and somebody walks up, I have to introduce them to them, I have to drop a name. I mean quite seriously …
Jenelle: You’ll lose one of the kids names out of the [41.16]
Byron: If you ask me, I’ll go blank. I know the name, I literally go … my brain freezes. Names are terrible.
Jenelle: Okay, all right. I won’t take offence next time [overtalking].
Byron: Yeah, that’s fine Mary [laugh].
Jenelle: [laugh]. Well Byron, thank you so much for your time today. So many things I’ve taken away from our conversation. Some of those include setting a goal that matters. I love that, you know, that it really does stretch you to make a real difference with your time. I really love the following and investing in talent. You have followed great talent, you’ve invested in great talent and the power of that and one thing that’s really struck me is, you know, not for any of us to not abdicate from our own responsibilities, that … whether that’s in making active choices in your own life and your work/life balance or your contribution to culture in your workplace and in society. I love the recognition of, you know, tough times that we’re find ourselves in COVID is actually given us a time to pause and reflect on what matters and I love your question of asking ourselves “who’s needs are being met” and I think when we have that frame of mind, we understand we bring a service mindset to what we do. So plenty of things there Byron, its been great to have a chat today, thank you for your time.
Byron: It’s been fun. Thank you.
Jenelle: Cheers.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Don Meij
Group CEO and Managing Director, Domino's Pizza Enterprises

Intro: Change happens how we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad, and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: This podcast series ‘Change Happens’ is a conversation with senior business leaders on leading through change, lessons learned along the way and how they’re coping during the current COVID-19 crisis. Today I’ve asked the King of Pizza, Don Meij – MD and Group CEO of Dominos Pizza to take us through his experiences as a leader during the pandemic. Don’s 33 career with Domino’s where he started delivering pizza and worked his way up to CEO is one that celebrates many firsts associated with Domino’s under his stewardship. Not just the ultimate learn on the job success story but a true innovator with exceptional entrepreneurial skills. Domino’s was the first company to introduce plant based pizza in Australia, moved quickly into a permanent work-from-home policy, or work from anywhere policy, and was decisive enough to develop out of a slowed COVID-19 global trade slump into sourcing Australia ingredients by adopting a sovereign mindset from making pizzas during the pandemic. I look forward to exploring how Don and Domino’s pizza are managing this current crisis and beyond.
Hi Don how are you, and how have you personally been throughout the last few months?
Don: I’m great. Thank you Jenelle. Thank you for hosting me here. I suppose just like everybody else it’s been an incredible roller coaster from the most dramatic fear of where does the bottom hit in that peak during March/April around the world cause we’re in 9 different countries but then wrestling with all the growth that’s what we are now currently experiencing because of how we’ve embraced the environment around us.
Jenelle: I know that, we all know that many businesses in hospitality have been hit particularly hard through this time but somehow at Domino’s you’ve been able to make some quick changes to the way that you operate. You’ve managed to really leverage your delivery model and maintain stuff and at times grow your sales. Can you take us through what kinds of changes you’ve made and what’s been the result of those changes?
Don: We are fortunate that a lot of the work that we were already doing as a brand has put us in the right place, at the right time during COVID. There are some really big things like our online ordering platform. How driven we were already in delivery which are two big drivers but what we did pivot really quickly is that we went from start to finish within 6 days once we predicted that it was going to … before the word ‘pandemic’ was used, that we should be implementing zero contact delivery processes which means that through the whole ordering experience the only hands that will get to touch a pizza once it leaves an oven are those of the customer. Originally when we were sitting with the team, oh this will probably take us six weeks and we said we may not have six weeks, we did it in six days. Which has also now responded to zero contact carpark delivery which goes after the pickup or the carrier customer which is somebody we lost in the first epicentre. We got a lot of delivery, but we didn’t always compensate enough in that very early period the loss of the carrier customer. Now with carpark delivery which is like a concierge service, no extra charge, but we put it in the back seat of your car or in your boot with gloves, with masks and we are doing that in Melbourne right now.
Jenelle: Don, as you say something like that might have taken something like six weeks maybe on a good run. You managed to do that in six days. What is it do you think about you and the organisation that allowed you to make that kind of material shift in that short of a period of time?
Don: Yes so embracing technology and learning over the last ... since 2005/2006 we studied a lot of our job practices, we put them in place and I think when you are running a business agile it doesn’t mean all day you’re running at full capacity of that agility but you are continually pulsing in and out of that and you build up habits or what we call in our business ‘muscle memory’. You’ll burn people out if you run, if you are completely agile 100% of the time because you do need some cadence. You do need some normality but when you do ask the organisation to rise because you’ve got all the practices and the muscle memory is there, we found that they do. From food crisis’s, many years ago we had boning in beef which wasn’t going to do any major damage but still it was not a pleasant eating experience. We had all of the beef in Australia removed within 24 hours and a complete new menu without beef seamlessly. That’s just an example of that side let alone on a technology side. We’ve done many trips to Silicon Valley. We’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of coaches from that. We’ve had business partners work with us. We studied as a group – books and built that muscle memory over the last decade into the business.
Jenelle: That’s a fantastic set of examples. I know that you and your senior team are very interested in self-improvement literature. I believe you have been reading ‘Atomic Habits’ James Clear book amongst many others. Going back to all those first principles around working agile, making behavioural change. How do you build that kind of constant view to improving and personal and professional development into the day-to-day physic of everyone.
Don: I think part of it comes from because I studied to be a school teacher. As a business I think all leaders lead by example. So building a reading culture. Building a development. We go away on retreats and often there is one book, a couple of videos, sometimes two books that we will make compulsory reading going into that retreat. It’s sort of like a bare minimum for leadership and then personally if you ever come into my home for a dinner, of if you ever came to one of my coffees with Don sessions, I would always be handing out books and writing something on the front about what some of the key things that I got out of it. I typically would, that’s the only way I would write on a book cause for me I don’t like to change the way people read that book because I’ve highlighted it everywhere. I do think whether you’re watching video content like ‘Ted Talks’ and YouTube videos, studying people or whether you’re reading papers or books, you’ve having a personal conversation in your head with those people and that’s what we’ve been trying to drive in the organisation is that whether someone who is not even alive today or some of the most extraordinary brains on the planet and by reading their material you can get decades if not 6 – 12 months’ worth of each epicentre knowledge and you have that conversation with that individual when you read that book. It doesn’t mean you always agree with them either. You may take a different perception. Trying to feed that in the organisation and then bring a lot of outside people in because we’re quite an insular culture, we run very fast and there is always a danger that we believe all of our own information and that actually we could be misreading and we’ve seen that in the past.
Jenelle: It’s fantastic. I know that you were studying to be a high school teacher before so it sounds like that passion for training and educating people seems to have permanented into the pizza world for you.
Don: Yeah totally. We say at Domino’s, every day is a training day at Domino’s, every day is a day of learning and development. You’re either providing it or you’re receiving it but every day is a training day and at our best we do that very well and at our worst we reflect and say we could do that a lot better.
Jenelle: Don, being in the delivery business and quick service restaurants, the idea of working from anywhere seems a little difficult to get my head around. How have you managed to do that in your organisation? What sorts of changes have you made in that regard?
Don: We were really early on to close down the office because before and even our rally they were almost at the same time. We would normally have had 1,500 people at a conference on the Gold Coast in and around that time of the epicentre. We cancelled those rallies inside the organisation to a lot of people’s horror because it’s like ‘boy are we over reacting but being in the food business we couldn’t be associated with a cluster. When you think about something like a pandemic and then you were one of the contributors it doesn’t go very well with the brand.
Sometimes when it comes to food safety and human safety you’ve got to be paranoid, you’ve got to act in a more extreme sense. Now because we are a technology – we’re a pizza company I don’t want anybody to confuse that. The best way to drive retail and the best way to drive retail pizza for the last 15 years has been through technology. There was a few little things like the bandwidth of data, scientists to work from home more, producing TV commercials and graphic material required an immense amount of broadband and bandwidth, so we had to build some things in there, some security and then the culture. The culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Jenelle: How would you describe the culture? What ways have you had to evolve that culture?
Don: First it was denial. There was a fair bit of push back in the business like this is an overreaction. We had a little taste of that back with SARS where in hindsight it didn’t play out for the worst in places like Australia so the things we spent money on, well I always say they’re an investment but you could be critical and say they were a waste of money because we didn’t use them.

There was this denial and then there was a very, very sharp ... because it just came on so quickly around the world. We were going from days to all of a sudden we closed France and New Zealand and they were not even conceivable 3 or 4 days before. All of a sudden was the whole business going to close? How do you survive this and how long will this last? That fear period was actually when we were the most agile. The most extreme change in our business in many, many different ways.
Then we moved into the fatigue phase where it’s kind of like ‘well we all survived and actually business is really good and we’re all whole’. In fact, we didn’t lose a single franchisee throughout the whole experience, which for the size of our business we normally would have had somebody leave the business and yet we not only held everyone together, nobody left.
I think now in the fatigue, we’re in one called ‘the rallying’ phase now that this is our new normal. We just take the position none of us have a crystal ball but we take the position that we’re going to be living with COVID for 1 – 3 years. It’s a longer thought process so therefore don’t … whilst we do a lot of short term things in the moment, build it properly straight after. If you don’t have that long view there is always a risk you just keep it in the fragile duct tape solution upfront. That’s where we are now. We’re in the rallying phase right now. Rallying around. This is our three year window and how are we going to drive this three year window?
Jenelle: Well I think also if you take that longer term perspective, if you anchor yourself in a situation of ‘we’re going to go back to what we knew soon enough we’ve just got to wait this out’. I think you’re denying yourself the opportunity to really think about what you might do on a more permanent basis to innovate and maybe set the tone for change rather than waiting for it to happen to you and then trying to figure out what goes on then, setting up this is it for the long term, so now what creates a frame of innovation.
Don: That’s exactly right. We say that hope is not a strategy it’s a bonus when it comes along. Plan for it the truisms that you do know today and then if something happens sooner or better than that’s a complete bonus.
Jenelle: You just mentioned franchisees. It’s an interesting set of stakeholders that you have to manage. In addition to shareholders and employees, you obviously work with a large network of franchisees across the globe. To me that represents a whole lot of risk. How can you be sure that they’re going to hold to the brand that you want particularly with so many unknowns and so many changes. In your view what have you found to be the critical success factors in forming solid, long term relationships with your franchisees?
Don: I’m really glad you’re touching on this because coming into COVID there was a global rallying cry that franchising wasn’t healthy. That it needed to be far more legislated and not just in Australia but in many locations around the world which was contradictory to all the statistics but that was a populist theme that was running around the world. I think what the pandemic has shown is that we’re a franchising as well and we were able to quickly access what was going on in China, what had gone on in Italy, how they were looking at their curve. We followed almost similar behaviour in the rest of our business depending upon how lockdown you were as a business.
The reality of franchising is it is far more resilient and we kept each other whole throughout all this. To do that it’s a trust thing. When we did rally quickly and we stood beside the franchisees when they were closed for example.
We’d say to them very calmly “This is not a moment for us to do well, it’s to do good”. We’re going to be standing right next to you. Whatever it takes we are going to get through this. Don’t live in fear use the period if you are closed for example to invest in what it’s going to be looking like when you’re open because you are going to get through this. We’re going to help you through this and then we’re going to flourish.
It really strengthened a lot of our culture. The way we used Teams and Zoom around the world to … I touch more franchisees now and all the leadership touch more franchisees on a more frequent basis be it not physically through all of this media. It really drew us together around our purpose and our values and then we lived our values. Cause you can talk about values but sometimes it’s unfortunate but in extreme circumstance puts the value to test.
Jenelle: I think your point of saying this is a time for us to do good rather than do well. The reality is I think more often than not in doing good one does do well. I don’t think it necessarily does need to be a trade-off at least not in the longer term anyway. Is that something that you have found to be true as well?
Don: Absolutely. In that very early phase from everybody. Your business partners. How you treat your business partners like landlords, suppliers, everybody. You’ve got a budget, bonuses are thrown out at that very moment. You say “you know what for the longevity of this business this is just not a time to be looking at those old..” It’s hard if you’re in marketing you build all these beautiful TV commercials and they’re all now completely irrelevant to the environment you have to chuck them away. That’s quite an emotional process to go through and to make people feel ok about that, in fact, they’re champions of it by doing it rather than hanging on. That’s when that agility kicks in. There is systems too. Where we run our strategy document in the business, the way which is very, very agile and that leads to some of that positive behaviour that we want, we use this opportunity to introduce things that we’ve been struggling to get introduced. One example is our ‘whitepaper’ culture which is getting ideas up and ideations up into the group through a system not just random emails here and there that just frustrate and distract.
Jenelle: You’ve mentioned to me, I know that there has been some really interesting innovations and world records that you’ve been setting in delivery time. You talked about Project 310. Is that related to this culture and behaviour of testing fast and learning?
Don: It is. The phases that we’ve been through in technology. The first phase was bringing more or less an online shopping centre together originally with our one digital platform which is our online ordering platform which then follow into apps.
Don: The second generation of our technology and experience was around becoming a great marketer. So we got the data and we started marketing very well and we build our own media platform. But more recently the last 4/5 years we’ve really spent, and we’re spending more money than ever before now on what we call ‘Co-pilot’ or ‘Operational Technology’. The co-pilots are built along the idea that these are AI and sometimes they’re hardware, if a team member is Tony Stark we’re trying to build them the Java suite and make the execution better. Something like pizza checker is an example that improved the quality of execution and we have many other ones with productivity. That’s the phase of technology that we’re building today.
Jenelle: One of the big differentiators for Domino’s is that you own your delivery arm. I’m interested in the role of aggregators like Uber Eats and Deliveroo and why perhaps you think ownership of that delivery arm is so important for the success of your business?
Don: Yeah the aggregators play an important role in aggregating those who haven’t invested in technology and creating a market place. It’s a little bit like what Google or Facebook have done in their areas. We think of aggregators as ‘Frenemies’ just like a social media or a search engine or YouTube or so on in that unlike television or our own media we do share our data with these platforms, so you’ve got to play to win in each of those platforms in which we think about the aggregators and they’re really just another search engine. But what we will not give up is the Domino’s experience because nobody delivers like Domino’s. We’re far more efficient than anybody else. A lot of these companies are giving away – I mean all they are serving is a product and they’re not in control of how the standard of that product arrives. They are literally giving up everything than that bit of brand and the origin of the product.
If you look at any retail experience it’s product, service and image. We can’t give up that service. We can’t give up that image and we’re far more efficient. We won’t give that away and we still get some of the data. These are important pillars that are not comprisable today and we’re very passionate about these things.
Jenelle: Yeah it’s really clear to me that your clear on where your value proposition is, where you get the most value and then quite fearless in facing into anything else outside of that which is fantastic.
I’m interested in talking about customers and consumer preferences. Attitudes and consumer sentiment and preferences are shifting rapidly. When I think about consumers looking for healthier eating options, I know Domino’s has really led the healthier product innovation in the world of pizza. When I think about your footprint in 9 different countries and how fast consumer preferences are shifting, how do you make sure that you continue to stay relevant to consumers across a global landscape? And stay if not in line with their expectations, even ahead of them? How does that work for you?
Don: Yeah so you do have to be careful of getting ahead of. The big thing here is you’ve got to once again know who you are and what are your brand attributes and then how are you going to bring something to life? For example, customers will say to us the number one reason I buy Domino’s is it’s a treat but they’ll also say sometimes it’s the number one reason why I stopped buying Domino’s because it was too much of a treat. The fine line of that is that they’d say ‘Look I want to eat better but whatever you do don’t take my treat away from me’. We often talk about indulgent health. We always said if you can eat that most indulgent donut and still be healthy then that would be like nirvana. We try and do the same thing with pizza.
These things flow in different trends and different times. There was a phase of low fat. We would measure that by removing what we call the ‘stain of regret’ in the bottom of the pizza box and that is you love eating your pizza but you get to the end and you see this oil stain at the bottom of the box and that’s a reason not to buy pizza next time cause you have this ‘ohhh’.
Don: We were really successful in removing that and ironically now with the Keto diet and does fat really make you fat and so on, there is a shift changing in that. You’ve got to eb and flow with these things.
Talking about plant based meats, how do you bring a product to market that is plant based that is still actually natural, cause some of the plant base food actually are worse than the natural ingredients. You are trying to suit one audience only to alienate other one. We think we’ll try and be preservative free so how do you do that with some of the plant based foods. How do you make sure that they really are indulgent? That they are still non-compromised because if you bring a compromised product to market then really you’ve failed what you weren’t meant to be which is a treat.
All of these things, whether it’s gluten free, whether it’s vegan menus, the most successful promotion in Australia’s history of what we called the ‘Taste the Colour Promotion’, I think it was 3 or 4 years ago. That was when you squint with most fast food it’s all browns, yellows, it’s all processed food. We wanted to show the consumer how much we were bringing. Real food has colour and how we were showing that at Domino’s our roadmap meant that we were continually putting natural foods on the product which were colourful and tasty cause natural food is tasty. Tastier often than preservative food. That was a huge campaign. I think we shared with the shareholders we were up 28% in one month off the launch of that and we’re not a new brand. It just showed how you could bring that treat in a way in a story and particularly with females cause we were losing female customers leading into that and ‘bam’ Mum’s the gatekeeper to the home and she opened the doors cause she said ok that resonates with me and I’m going to put Domino’s to the test.
Jenelle: Well I can honestly tell you that I had not heard those three sentences at all much less in one answer to a question. The taste of colour. The stain of regret and indulgent health! I definitely learnt a bit from that answer Don.
Don: Thank you.
Jenelle: Now when we spoke before this discussion you said something to me that really stuck in my mind. You said we like people with opposing opinions so we can find our own truth. I really like that sentence but I’m keen to know what exactly did you mean by that?
Don: I’ve never lived the other way or moving in and out of companies because my whole working life has been in this one business and so its hard for me to get my head around how someone has got to build all of that muscle memory, knowledge and sync with a company when they’re only there for five years and deliver a lasting result. You know, it just doesn’t sit naturally with me, although there’s so many professional successful CEOs who seem to be able to do it but for me, when you’re building something that’s built to last over a really long period of time, having you know, a lot of leadership and if you look at the tenure of all of our senior leaderships, its material. You know, you’ve got people who have tendered 25 years, 33 years and yet they’re all so young because they all started in this business so young. You know, I’m 51 and I still feel like I’m really young.
Jenelle: So tell me, I’m trying to figure out, you know, was this a conscious mindset that you had from somewhere. It sounds like it did or did it sort of morph over time because what shifted in you to move … moving from a part time job as a delivery guy to making this a long term career path. Do you remember a moment when you’re like, this is it for me or did it just kind of creep up on you.
Don: Yeah it did creep up and there’s many periods of time that then cemented it to be more real. You know, I literally took a full time job in the original business Silvios, because I just didn’t finish my degree ironically. I thought I was going to start a new degree the next year and I had nine months to kill. Which, you know, in hindsight sounds really silly. Why didn’t you finish those nine months and go to the next place but in my view as well, it was just the next natural thing. You know, here I still am but as time goes on, when you’re a public company CEO, you do realise that as much as I’m a large shareholder, I am a paid employee at the whim of shareholders and all the stakeholders, you know, I’m a servant leader. That’s my job, its to serve this business. You know, with that there could be things that happened unintentionally that then I could be a casualty of that and so the way I’m comfortable in my own shoes, is that I hope I’m here for a lot longer but if I wasn’t, I’m also not fearful of what else I could do in my life.
Jenelle: I’m interested in your appetite around risk. I love that one of the Domino’s values is “crush convention”. That there’s a difference between having a failure and being a failure and I think that’s something that many of us perhaps struggle with. You know, we want to avoid taking risks with the, you know, possible chance that we could fail and what does that mean about us and I feel like that’s a clearly separated thing for you. You’ve won accolades for entrepreneurial leadership, you champion innovation top to bottom at Dominos. Where is that confidence and … comes from to take those kinds of risks. You know, and have there been times where it just didn’t pay off for you.
Don: Yeah, well when you take a lot of risk then of course you get a lot of things that don’t work and they’re constant. You know, just in the last seven days, one of our team got a brilliant social media idea, it started out fantastically, we were celebrating and then it shifted on us publicly and you know, that particular person in the organisation felt hurt the next day and meanwhile I’m writing a private email saying “congratulations, I’m so proud that you did this, you went out there, you fearlessly brought an idea to life out of nowhere in 24 hours”. The key to that and we learnt this once again from our trip to Silicon Valley, is its actually harder to celebrate failure but you have to if you want to get more risk in the organisation. You’ve got to be grounded in the reality that it doesn’t always work but if you do post an analysis, you know, one of the worst things I watch in organisations is the benefit of hindsight and people crush ideas that fail with the benefit of hindsight and therefore people become risk averse but if you celebrate, you know, that you pushed the envelope and because you’re that kind of person, you’ll – on the law of averages, are going to get more right than wrong because you, you know, you’re going to continue to push, you’re fearless, we check and learn. There is still a post analysis why it didn’t work but organisations need to learn from what it is but celebrate that learning, that’s the benefit that came from that and without that risk, you didn’t get the learning and then, you know, more often though you will … once you do build up all that muscle memory and have it around it, you’re going to get even more of them right. You know, me personally, one of the benefits of being a public company is having a very strong board, very deep in governance, having … we have those who … the entrepreneurs in the group and then we have those who measure the risk. So you’ve got to have those balances, you’ve got to have very strong opinions in the room who are the anti-risk in a sense. Like they’re running it through the legal filters, they’re running it through, you know, brand damage filters. They’re running it through financial filters or the downside because without that, yeah I scare myself sometimes, that there’s some ideas that maybe just are not right for this, for who we are.
Jenelle: And do you see it at the time when you’ve got one of these brilliant Don ideas, that maybe doesn’t get over the line or get the resounding support you might have hoped for from the broad or whomever else and in hindsight, have you looked back and gone “that was probably right”.
Don: Yes and so most of the ideas aren’t my ideas. I just become one of the champions to support it, based on … once its got through more or less that white paper process and there’s enough thought and consensus for buy-in. I’m the face of Dominos but most of the ideas in the organisation come from all the great people in our organisation and I’m just one of the cheerleaders and I can help cut through all of the bureaucracy and I mean, I had a call this morning where it was, you know, it got a little bit bureaucratic in the business where someone who was taking a big risk and the peers were trying to bring them back down again. So in my job was to say, “no, we’re going to protect the risk taker here because otherwise they won’t be a risk taker and we will sort of the process of why did we get, this conflict”. It was potentially avoidable, rather than the other way around because that’s what's important. Its that culture of encouragement of “hey, you just got beat up over the weekend, because your idea somehow didn’t go through the right channels and you got a few noses out of joint but don’t stop being who you are, lets just fix how we would have got the channels right”.
Jenelle: Love that. I had the good fortune of spending some time in Silicon Valley myself earlier this year, at a time when we were actually allowed to travel, so long ago but I remember speaking to some Venti capitalists and they said, “we take failure as a badge of honour an when we speak to people that we want to invest in or their organisations, we ask them where they’ve failed and unless they’ve got a few up their sleeve, we won’t back them because it means they have taken the risks, they haven’t learnt from those, they’ve haven’t checked and learnt like you said. So that was really eye opening for me who’s probably, where actively work to avoid failure, to see that as a badge of honour was really interesting.
Don: Yeah, the words we use … its not okay to fail in a sense. We’re not trying to go out there and fail all over the place. We’re not taking risks to win but in the event we do, yes, all the values and the learning and so on and we celebrate it in that way and yep, that’s what encourages it. I think the heroes in the business are often supported as the biggest risk takers.
Jenelle: So Don, what's surprised you during this period of time.
Don: If you would have asked me pre the pandemic, you know, as a full tax paying company, following all the laws of the land that it was a privilege to trade, I would have told you “no, it was a right to trade, its democracy and we’re doing everything right so who could take that away from us”. But we very very quickly learnt in that late March/early April is that there were five stakeholders who had the ability to take away that privilege if we didn’t nurture those relationships and work very very hard and the five were, first of all our own team members. If they didn’t feel safe, they wouldn’t rock up to work and if they didn’t rock up to work, we didn’t have a business to run because we need our customers, they needed to feel safe, that you know, we weren’t putting anybody at risk, that the practices we were talking about were real. Our own franchisees, their own trust in the brand. You know, we saw in France, we’ve got a little bit of divided thing there where there were different epicentres in the country and some would have been legal if we wanted them to trade and others were saying “well you have to let me trade, otherwise I’ll be legal against you” because it was that passionate with how dramatic it was in France. So then you’ve got the government. The government. Well, we’ve clearly seen that they closed us in New Zealand and they can … we’ve seen quite strong measures from government to manage the pandemic and finally the whole community spirit that goes beyond the customer, that even the stakeholders in the community that aren’t your customers, that may take a view and there’s a little bit of that in New Zealand too, where one of the large competitors that wasn’t able to trade rallied the government that we shouldn’t be allowed to trade during that so it was kind of an interesting experience for us, but yeah, we will never forget this, that we have a mission mindset now to keep all of those stakeholders fully informed, with all the processes and why we are doing what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, or putting communications out to customers or government. Anybody who trades through this pandemic, it’s a privilege and don’t abuse that privilege and be very generous as a result of that because there’s under-employed, unemployed, under-trading or not trading businesses and if you are trading, it’s a privilege to do so, then you’d better be very generous in all of your actions.
Jenelle: I love that. So shifting from a view of seeing business as a right, being business as a privilege, means you have a mission mindset which translates to a behaviour of generosity. Is that what you were listing that as.
Don: Absolutely. That is 100% correct. That you know, we need to lean as little as possible on government, we can do so much more rather than taking as few as possible, those handouts. You know there’s going to some in different forms, sometimes that you know, those on the front lines, feed the front lines, those are in needs, you know, through donations of money to organisations and individuals that are suffering to our own people. If we’re doing well right now because of the hard work they’ve done, make sure that they are being paid their bonuses and I’m proud to say at Dominos, that our team members will get pay rises this year because they’ve done such an extraordinary job and they deserve that. They should share in that. Just like shareholders and all the other business partners that the stakeholders have. So you know, it’s a time to do good and well now so its to do both but through the “well” just keep channelling that back to those stakeholders because its such a privilege and literally “deer in the headlights” privilege that you know, you see the fear when you know, that governments are deciding about lockdowns or team members may not want to come to work, you know, very very passionate about it.
Jenelle: It’s a real humility to a business mindset which is great to see.
Don: I also think what's being and it shouldn’t be surprising but how quickly we adapt, both good and bad to what's going on around us and what I mean by good and bad is that the good news is that mentally I think people have just so quickly shifted and adapted. The bad side of that is often then we’re missing the opportunity because they’re not looking at it with the same fresh eyes of the circumstances that are around us. Business success and wealth and the ability to be so good in our communities come from that really wide awareness that as much as we’re now fitting into the new normal quite quickly, it isn’t a long term normal. This is still a moment in time that may last one to three years. At the end of the pandemic, then there will be a much more, a longer cadence of that normal versus this three year in and out of lockdowns and change and shift and … because who would have predicted Melbourne a month ago. You know, you could have predicted it was going to happen somewhere but the fact that it came on so fast in Melbourne. Again, its surprising how people just adapt and normalise and for the bad and the good, they miss the big opportunities that are on the table, that pivot to and run it. One of our … we had a culture coach at Dominos who’s an outside person who’s worked with us for 30 years, Bernie Kelly, and his current programme is “run to the raw”. In other words, run to the fear. If Don’s asking you all to take the biggest risks in our company history, with data uncalculated, be fearless, be bold, be brave, have courage because we’re going to really really support that and there’s enough shifting sands around us at the moment that feed that compendium when things are in the normal, you know, run of the mill cadence that it runs at in real life.
Jenelle: Love that. So if I was to ask you, reach down and pull out a crystal ball that you might have sitting next to you and asked you the question, you know, “what do you think in five years’ time, people will be saying about COVID-19, what are your predictions for society and business as a result of what we’re going though now”. What would you say.
Don: I think that there will be the winners and losers and the strong will get stronger, that the big trends that were already pre-COVID just accelerated things like, in our case, delivery and online ordering and the retail change that needed to happen, our priorities in life around … I do unfortunately think business travel will be affected although I think people will still want to get back to social travel and experience the social things of life. I don’t, you know, almost go back to where it was pre-COVID if not even more for a moment in time because we’re so missing it but businesses will be different. I think we’ve all learnt a way to be more productive. We get a lot of CEOs on our global weekly calls to get these different views from big and large companies. We’re very fortunate at Dominos that we can attract those sort of quality speakers and common theme is “less space for office space, far less business travel”. I can’t see us ever returning to that if there is an ever, rallying to health, speeding up at the moment. We’re appreciating our health and wellbeing more than before because of what the pandemic, you know, our immunity should be stronger and we should be healthier and so on. So I think those things will be the things that will be quite strong.
The last three, three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: I’m going to finish up, if I can, with a more light-hearted “fast three”. So the first one is, what is a misconception that most people have about you.
Don: Calls it a success in the tenure that I’ve been here that I’m a lot more in the business than people probably think, that in fact it’s the great leaders of Dominos all through the organisation that are really doing the incredible work and I’m the face of the company and I do want to know how everything works but I lead the business, I actually don’t manage it all day, every day. There’s a whole network of incredible people here that are doing the real brilliance that’s Dominos and I just get the credit, you know, and trying to give more credit to more of the leaders but its just how it falls sometimes in the public company.
Jenelle: And what's one guilty pleasure.
Don: I love fast food. I love pizza but I love fried chicken, I love donuts, I love hamburgers, I love fries, I love fast food.
Jenelle: And what's one thing that you’re absolutely hopeless at.
Don: I’m not a person that “dots the i’s and crosses the ts”. I get the bigger picture and lucky we’ve got great lawyers around us to do all that.
Jenelle: And look, I can’t let you go without asking you the question “what's your favourite pizza”.
Don: Anything with pepperoni. I love pepperoni. Pepperoni cheese, you know, jalapenos, mushrooms, but the base has to be all the varieties of pepperoni and cheese and very rich rich sauce.
Jenelle: So Don, look I wanted to say thank you so much for your time today. Your passion is very clear. I’ve taken away many things from the conversation and in no particular order, I think, for me doing good to do well and playing the long game. Building an organisation that’s there to last has come through strongly. I love the view of, you know, treating every day as a training day and your clear mission to keep people developing and growing and learning and reading and building the muscle memory of the organisation. Absolutely love celebrating those who take the, you know, chance to push the envelope and check and learn and creating that culture of encouragement and finally, you know, I’m sure it wasn’t really a call to action for us but it certainly feels that way to me, “run to the raw”. I’ll definitely be taking that one forward with me as well. So thanks very much Don for your time and all the very best to you.
Don: Thank you for taking the interest, thanks Jenelle.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Dr James Muecke
Chairman, Sight For All

Intro: Change happens how we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight in to how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad, and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: James, hi and welcome to the “Change Happens” podcast.
Dr James: How are you today.
Jenelle: I’m pretty well thanks, but more importantly how are you and how have you been personally managing throughout the last few months.
Dr James: Yeah, its been an extraordinary few months. You know, Scott Morrison said this is the worse year of our lives, so here I am, Australian of the Year, and the worse year of our lives so [laugh].
Jenelle: Quite the rollercoaster for you as you say. Over the last few months, you have the high of being named the Australian of the Year in late January and then like the rest of us, plummeting into everything that’s Covid-19. No doubt that changed your outlook of what you’d planned for the year.
Dr James: It sure did. In fact there’s not ever been a year like this in the course of history of the Australian year programme so I’m a bit of a pioneer in this process as well so I’m really sort of paying attention to what's going on and I’m hoping to communicate that by the end of the year so that they have a real understanding of what's happened. So of course, the Australia Day weekend this year was full of excitement and I won the award, it was just this flurry of requests to speak. All sorts of really really fascinating things that suddenly arrived in that first or two after receiving the award. I had something like 60 speaking engagements even at that point were booked out for the year then a month or so later the virus struck and one by one all of those engagements were struck off and I was left feeling pretty dejected. I was feeling dejected for a number of reasons. One of which was this was an opportunity to really tell Australia about work the science world was doing which suddenly was no longer there and the other of course, was I was using the platform to raise awareness of the toxic impact of sugar in our society and in particular the linkage to type 2 diabetes. So this was going to be a great opportunity to talk about that and raise awareness amongst the Australian public and again I saw that dissolve away because no one wanted to hear about type 2 diabetes or a poor diet [laugh] and I was the same. You were watching, glued to the TV set for those first few weeks of the pandemic. So yeah, it was a really tricky time for me. I had to do some pretty quick thinking, you know, how was I going to continue to get the messages out there, how was I going to make most of the platform and so I did a number of things. I started being more active on social media, on a number of social media platforms that I have, hoping ultimately by the end of the year they would have had more reach and if I’d been jet setting around Australia delivering my presentations. So that’s why I’m really interested in seeing how this year pans out, that actually going forward, depending on what happens of course with the pandemic, the next Australian of the Year, you know, there’ll be some good learnings to be had and the best way to continue getting the message out in this very different time that we’re experiencing.
Jenelle: Now I believe that you’re in a national Covid-19 health and research advisory committee and that was established, I think, about April this year to provide advice on Australia’s health response to the pandemic and that’s advice to the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer. What does it actually involve and what's that experience been like.
Dr James: Yeah, its been a fascinating experience. Very lucky to be on that committee and know some extraordinary brains that are involved in that process from across Australia, from a number of different fields and so I feel very privileged to be a part of that and its fascinating because of course, you’re getting firsthand information that others are not exposed to. So hopefully in some small way contributing to it. So what happens is that when the Chief Medical Officer is wanting some information or some answers or solutions to a particular element of the pandemic, he will reach out to the group and then we’ll form working groups and then discuss those elements and then feed back that information to the Department of Health. So it’s a really important process which is informing the Department of Health and the NHMRC how to progress through this process. At times I feel its going over my head because the extraordinary knowledge of many of these people that are involved, its quite overwhelming actually. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m actually able to contribute at the level I’d like to but its certainly a special experience to be a part of.
Jenelle: I’ve no doubt you’re holding your own. I’d be interested in … what are the good and bad health behaviours that you’re seeing people exhibit during the pandemic and does being at home and people working from home en masse, do you see that being an opportunity or a threat around good and bad healthy behaviours.
Dr James: I think perhaps a little of both. You know, in those early weeks when all the toilet paper went flying off the shelves, what I did notice was it wasn’t just the toilet paper, it was also the pasta, the white flour, the soft drinks. All of those food stuffs which I suppose, in many way you can store, many of these products such as … well obviously the sugary drinks and the confectionary chocolates and so forth are high in sugar but these other products such as your foods made of flour, such as white pasta, you know what we call refined carbohydrates. So refined carbohydrates are simply starch in many respects pretty much pure starch and starch is long chains of glucose which are then broken down in glucose when they reach the gut. So when we’re eating refined carbohydrates such as products made from white flour and also white potatoes. White rice was the other one I was trying to think of. You know, you’re pretty much eating pure sugar so people are stocking up on these products and no doubt consuming these products which probably unwittingly, they don’t realise they’re inherently [5.32] unhealthy for us, particularly when they’re consumed in large amounts. So that’s one thing that worries me, that people will be, particularly during lockdown periods, that they will be consuming products which are inherently unhealthy. Probably also during the lockdown they’ll be utilising takeaway services and you know that takeaway services, particularly for some of the fast food chains, foods are inherently unhealthy. As well, during the lockdown as well, perhaps people won’t be exercising as much and the other thing that people do with sugary products and again, unwittingly they may be actually ingesting sugary products to relieve stress in their lives and make themselves feel better when they’re down and of course, during the pandemic and during the lockdown, mental health is suffering in many many people and so often using sugary treats to make themselves feel better to counter that cortecell reaction and flooding the body during those anxious times. So I do worry that people’s health will decline and what's interesting in sort of normal times, we’re seeing about 250 new cases of type 2 diabetes every single day which is quite extraordinary, isn’t it. What we don’t know yet is whether there’s been a surge or not because I think what's happened is what and I’ve noticed this with my own patients during the lockdown and during the sort of significant threat, patients with chronic diseases who are at bigger risks during such times as pandemics, they are at greater risk of morbidity and even death, particularly when they have conditions such as type 2 diabetes, if they have obesity or significantly overweight or have hypertension, they are at serious risk. So, people haven’t been coming for their medical appointments and so we, as eye specialists, were encouraging our patients to come. We were doing everything to keep both our patients and our staff protected as much as we could and yet during the height of the first virus wave and in March/April, my patient numbers dropped to about a third and so it really worried me that people were going to be losing their vision during that time and we’re certainly seeing examples of that. It will all come out eventually how this all pans out but my worry is that there’s been a surge in type 2 diabetes during these periods of social isolation and lockdown.
Jenelle: I think it’s a fair caution to us to be vigilant about our health there. I want to turn questions a bit more to you personally here. I actually can’t work out whether I describe you as someone who’s single minded in focus, or someone who has a massive breadth of interests, its probably both. On the one hand you’ve had this really science fact based depth of passion and focus on medicine and specifically in ophthalmology and surgery and you’ve spent nigh on 30 years in that space, so true dedication and singlemindedness and on the other hand, you’ve got this hugely creative entrepreneurial side of you, you know, I understand that you’ve been in the game of designing furniture, you’ve travelled off the beaten tracks, supported humanitarian causes, you’ve written books, you make music. How do you describe yourself.
Dr James: Well yeah its interesting isn’t it, because I’m definitely focused and when I set my sights on doing something, I always want to give it 100%, I always put my best into anything I do. That is one side of me which has allowed me to have some of the successes that I’ve had in my life but at the same time I’ve always had a huge breadths of interests and I’ve looked at opportunities to continue to foster those interests and one of the things I did when I came back from training abroad about 22 years ago now, I made sure I always kept a day off a week. I mean it was one of those things when you’re starting off a medical practice that you quite comfortably, you know, try and fill up your week as quickly as possible and to get things happening where I always kept that one day a week so that I could pursue other interests because I’ve always had these other interests and you mentioned some of them there because for me that makes my life more full, more colourful, more rewarding and something I’ve always made time for to have this breadth of interest in my life. One to satisfy my own curiosities, I think I’m inherently a curious person but also I think, I look back at myself, I spent so many years and so many hours studying through high school to get to medicine and through medical school, to get through ophthalmology training. I spent so many years studying that when I came out the other end I didn’t feel like I was a particularly interesting person so I started to pursue all of these others …
Jenelle: Made up for that …
Dr James: Yeah [laugh] there was always an active desire to make myself more interesting and look for other things to do with my life but listeners may not be aware, I’ve developed a neurological problem with my hand which I had to give up surgery back in 2013 and I didn’t … one of the things I didn’t do with all these other interests that I had was foster them to adhere to a life after medicine. I just did it to make my life more interesting as I went through medicine. Not that I didn’t love medicine, in fact I go off to work every day feeling fortunate and loving it and looking forward to my day but what its done, its just given me this breadth, lets say weapons for want of a better word, for … to prepare for a stage of life now where I am faced with an early … having to retire early from my career because of this problem with my hand. So now I have all of these wonderful things to be able to draw on to take me through to the next stage of life. So I feel I’m very fortunate about this step but at the same time, it’s something I would encourage other people to do, always to make the most of everything that life has to offer, make the most of the incredible adventures that are out there and make the most of all these things that will allow you to have a full and rich life but also prepare you in case things take a turn for the worse, such as what has happened to me.
Jenelle: Well I’m going to come back to some of those things you’ve just spoken about but for those who aren’t overly familiar with your story James, can you take us through how it came to be that you focused the vast majority of your history in medicine in the area of ophthalmology and specifically in the developing countries of the world.
Dr James: Sure. I mean I always had a curious nature as I mentioned, I have a love of adventure, I have a love of travel, I think probably my parents, when I was 9/10/11, we were living in the United States and every opportunity we used to go and travel, get a campervan and use to explore the length and breadth of the United States so I think that really, at that period of time, the very formative time for me and still this love of adventure and this love of travel. One of the things I also loved at that time of my life was using my hands. I used to just immerse myself in building scale models of world war two aeroplanes and tanks and things like that but I also had a desire to pursue a career in medicine and you know, it’s interesting, I look back, there was no one thing that drove me down that pathway. It just seemed to be something that I always had inside of this desire to do medicine and I also had a love affair of Africa, a desire for adventure and travel, an interest in medicine and a desire to use my hands, particularly the idea of surgery and particularly micro-surgery was something that was really appealing. So …
Jenelle: A great packaging up of all of those interest, you managed to do.
Dr James: [laugh] yeah that’s right and so towards the end of medical school, we had the opportunity to do our medical elective so then I went to Kenya, it was really to satisfy all of those elements of travel, adventure, medicine and surgery and I came across this little hospital while I was there and I met some young Australian medical students who were working in a hospital two hours north of Nairobi in a village called Toomu Toomu and I went and spent a weekend with them and I just had a love for this place and I thought so one day I would love to come back and work here, after my internship. I was becoming a little disillusioned and I was really just over this grind, I’d had so many years as I mentioned of studying. I just needed a change and as soon as I finished my internship, I packed my bags. In fact I’d saved my entire internship so that I could volunteer as this general doctor in east Africa and as soon as the year finished, I headed across to Africa to work and that really did, for me on so many levels, reinvigorated this love for medicine which was beginning to wane a little bit during my internship and it really instilled in me a desire to then pursue a career in public health and so then that combined with the idea of using my hands for micro-surgery. It’s a critical or core part of ophthalmology and then curing blindness in poorer communities, once again, all of those elements conspired to lead me down the pathway of ophthalmology. So I headed back to Adelaide after my time in Africa to undertake ophthalmology training so yeah, that’s kind of the way it panned out and its all really expanded from there, you know, wanting to continue to work in poorer communities and to give back and to use that public health platform and to use my hands and I love teaching really has allowed me to continue this pathway.
Jenelle: And then as you say, you kind of then headed back, not just to Africa but to all sorts of amazing places and I think, you know, you’ve encountered the kinds of things they make movies about, James. You were captured by rebel soldiers when you were in Uganda, you were chased by wild animals, you’ve worked in refugee camps on the Gaza Strip. I think we could talk all day about any one of those experiences, but what did you learn about yourself in that time.
Dr James: I think, you know, I was in my early 20s when I headed off to Africa and I just wonder what my mum and dad thought because I had some pretty extraordinary experiences and you mentioned this getting captured by rebel soldiers in Uganda and that experience was quite extraordinary. Before I started work actually at Toomu Toomu hospital at Kenya, I wanted to go and visit the rivers in Rwanda which is sort of landlocked country southwest of Kenya and I didn’t have a lot of money and I couldn’t fly to Rwanda but I was desperate to see the gorillas because I’d just seen Gorillas in the Mist, you might remember the film was about, Diane Fossey and so I wanted to go and visit the gorillas before I started the work and to actually get there, I had to go via land, via southern Uganda and southern Uganda, much of the country was actually still in civil war at the time. I arrived at the southwest corner of the country before crossing into Rwanda when Idi Amin, who you might remember, was this horrific brutal dictator of Uganda who at the very time I arrived in this village was attempting to come back into Uganda to try and stake his claim again and he’d actually sent a band of rebel soldiers to really pave the way of his return and so I was with a travelling companion, the guy from New York City who had never left New York before. So we arrived in this village, literally the minute we set foot in this village, we were surrounded by these guys who were very very frightening, they were drunk. They were filthy and they were seriously menacing. They torn apart our backpacks, they were looking for weapons and of course we were just tourists, we didn’t have weapons but they found our binoculars in our packs so then they said we were spies and they’d actually seen us in the fields, looking out over on them, spying on them, which of course we weren’t’ and then they marched us away at gunpoint and they locked us in this hut at the edge of this tiny little village and they said to us, behave yourselves if you want to stay here and then they just past and left us alone there. So we were seriously seriously petrified and this guy from New York was completely freaking out and I said to him, come on we’ve got to get out of here, we can’t stay here, if we stay here we’re surely going to die, these guys will come back in the night because they were completely unpredictable. So we broke out of the back of the hut and escaped into the jungle behind the village and then found a road from there and went on but of course I eventually made it to Rwanda and I did see the gorillas which are fantastic and I wrote a letter to mum and dad and at that time, letters would take at least a couple of weeks to arrive and so as soon as I had the chance and again, its not easy at the time. Communication was no internet, no emails. It was very expensive to make phone calls and quite often it was difficult to make phone calls and when I eventually had the opportunity to phone mum and dad, I said you’re about to receive this letter from here, I had this really really terrifying experience but don’t worry I’m alive and I set off and continued on my way and I just felt that was enough of reassurance for mum and dad but you can only imagine what they were thinking. What those experience did, I think, was ultimately build this element of resilience in me and this is why I say that, you know, making the most of adventures. Of course, not everyone is going to be comfortable with their kids trekking across or backpacking across Africa and potentially landing themselves in life threatening situations but … and I know, I think probably for a good year or two after I came home there wasn’t a day I reckon when I didn’t wake up in the morning, almost in a cold sweat reliving one of these experiences that I had and I suspect on retrospect and I didn’t realise at the time, I’ve only just thought this recently, maybe I did have an element of post traumatic stress disorder, PDSD, because it really was so vivid, you know, a day after waking up and reliving these experiences but I think ultimately they do build a degree of resilience in you and I think that’s one of the things I look back on that time, at that experience and the time, in your 20s and you’re invincible and you’re just having the time of your life, the adventure of your life and I certainly don’t believe I was considering at the time “hey this is great, I’m building resilience for the next stage of my life” but certainly looking back, that was definitely what was happening and it certainly allowed me to handle a number of the confronting experiences that I’ve had since that time in my life.
Jenelle: Now James what about then working with others. So if you think about the nature of the experiences that you’ve had. Now obviously you’ve worked with teams in local communities or even back in Adelaide etc, what … how has that impacted your leadership style would you say.
Dr James: Yeah, I don’t often think of myself as a leader but I suppose I sorted of landed myself in this position a few years ago when I, in those early years of coming back to Adelaide and setting up a practice here and working as a consultant for Adelaide Hospital, a women’s and children’s hospital, but I wanted to keep this love of adventure, this love of travel, this love of teaching and being involved in public health in poorer communities. I wanted to keep this alive so I then became involved in some research and teaching projects in Asia so that for me, was my outlet, my release to be able to continue doing that and so that then ultimately evolved into Sight For All which as you said I co-founded, that’s back in 2008. So I kind of landed myself in this position, suddenly to lead this organisation forward and I really had no business skills and I had to learn on the job and I learnt quite quickly on the job how to run and grow a not for profit and certainly there’s been some interesting experiences from that but one of the tings that I’ve always been, I suppose, passionate about in what I do is leading by example. I think that’s a really important thing so you know, when you’re expecting your team to give a 100%, I think it’s very important for them to see that you’re also giving 100% so whenever I, and again it probably harks back to me, always wanting to do my best and to give my everything. You know, my team see me very much hands on, whether it be a research project, whether it be teaching, whether it be setting up an eye clinic in one of our partner companies in Asia. You know, I’m right there hands on and I think that’s really important for people to see that. Again it probably harks back to wanting to be involved, wanting to learn, having fun, being part of the team, having an adventure. So I think when you’re a part of that team, one, people respect you and people are drawn by that enthusiasm, that energy, that passion and just I think makes for a much more vibrant experience for everyone.
Jenelle: James, you and I come from two entirely different worlds. I’m trying to imagine what it feels like to do something like restore someone’s sight. Do you remember the first time you restored someone’s sight. What was that like.
Dr James: Its intriguing. I don’t have a memory of that and occasionally I do get asked that question. I don’t have a memory of that and what's interesting in ophthalmology training, well these days you have what we call wet labs where you might be practicing on a pig ear or you might have, these days we have artificial intelligence training programmes but again, you have to train on humans but you would start by putting one stitch at a time and then make your incision and then … so it would slowly build up so there was in a sense, no one kind of hallelujah revelationary moment that you would have and so I think that’s medicine and that’s surgery, you know, you’re slowly conditioned to these things. So for me, I think, what we do with sight, we’re not a fly in-fly out organisation where [23.52] organisation so we teach our colleagues so that they can continue to do the work. So it’s a sustainable model and for me the thing that I find endlessly satisfying and what it is, is just seeing the results of the people that we’ve trained in our partner companies and one example which is really really powerful to me and it actually was built on the back of a research study that I was involved in in 2007. We were conducting a study in Mymmar in southeast Asia to determine the causes of blindness amongst children in the country and the results were absolutely staggering. We found that nearly half of the kids that had blindness that could have been prevented or treated and the thing that was really profoundly disturbing for me and in fact the whole teams, the leading cause of blindness that we discovered which was measles to be surrounded in multiple schools of blind across the country that we visited, we were assessing the kids at these studies, surrounded by kids that were blind from measles, it sounds on the surface to be pretty confronting but when you actually quite literally there and these children who would have had the most horrendously painful experience as young kids but also the disfigurement that is caused by measles as it destroys the eyes, was absolutely devastating for myself and it really made me look at medicine in a completely different way. I mentioned that during my internship, I was getting a little bit over chronic medicine which is largely preventable related to lifestyle factors and self-inflicted things. You know, here was kids across the country, the leading cause of blindness which was an entirely preventable disease in measles, so that really drove home to me how important prevention is in medicine. So it was this experience and actually a number of experiences that we had in a number of other countries in Asia. We also found that measles was a leading cause of blindness in Cambodia in 2008, Laos in 2013 and what those experiences did was, one – instil a passion for me to do something about it but two – to then use the results of those studies to persuade health authorities to train children’s eye specialists for each of those countries. So just to tell you about the experience in Myanmar, we arranged for a young eye specialist to come out from Myanmar. His name is Doctor Tan [26.24] and he spent a year training with myself, my colleagues at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide training to be a children’s eye specialist, what we call a paediatric ophthalmologist and he went home at the end of his hands-on year of training in 2010. We set him up in the country’s first children’s eye unit in the capital city, Yangon, the major institute there and in fact I was there in February this year filming a documentary about his work and I was so proud and so overwhelmed by his dedication. He is providing close to 30,000 treatments every single year which is astonishing, almost difficult to comprehend but I think what's even more impressive in this story is that he is training his own colleagues. So in 2015, he was training a second paediatric ophthalmologist for the country. He now trains at least two every year, so that just really shows you the power and the sustainability of the training programmes that we run and to go back and just to sit back and capture this on film as part of this documentary at the time I’m producing was just one of the most proud experiences of my life and for me, that is so much more powerful than taking someone’s bandage off and seeing a smile on their face, which of course is very special, very rewarding, its particularly wonderful for them but the power of that, its almost difficult to comprehend that the reach …
Jenelle: It so much broader reaching when you’ve kind of got this ripple effect that just keeps going on and on as a result of you training one, one training two, two treating 30,000 to 60,000 to [28.03]. I think you have an impact of around a million people a year. Is that right.
Dr James: That’s right. Well that’s probably being conservative actually because what we’ve done. We have projects in nine countries in Asia, two in Africa as well as locally here in Australia, we have also trained across all of the sub-speciality areas, there’s about nine sub-speciality areas, paediatric ophthalmology is just one of those. Collectively they’re impacting on such a huge number of people every year and if you think of yourself, lets say if you’re a parent, some of the listeners are parents, if your child is hurt, both parents are impacted by that. You know, something as simple as a minor stubbing of the toe an upset a parent. So you can imagine when a child is faced with a vision threatening disease or blindness, how devastating that is for a parent. Now if you were able to reverse that, how impactful that is, not just on the child and the child’s future, but the parents, the family, the community, the country. You know, it is far reaching and we know that for every dollar spent on fighting blindness, four dollars comes back to the communities. So you’re not only fighting blindness, you’re also fighting poverty, so it has a really really profound impact. So it’s a special thing.
Jenelle: You’re talking about it from a vantage point of seeing that success come through now but no doubt there were a ton of challenges in the early days of setting Vision Myanmar programme which then evolved in Sight For All. Based on those experiences James and looking back on it now, you’re still in it I know, what do you think are the ingredients that are essential to creating a social impact organisation that is capable of making the kind of impact that you’ve talked about.
Dr James: I think if you call what I’m doing social entrepreneurship and if you call myself a social entrepreneur, then to me, there are three key elements to that. There’s the spirit of adventure, particularly if you want to take this to poorer parts of the world. You have to have the spirit of adventure. I think, my story earlier on shows that something that’s deeply ingrained in me. The second is a humanitarian spirit and I think humanitarian spirit may be partly genetic but I think its probably more environmental and its related to life experiences and powerful life experiences that can then ultimately result in a deep passion within yourself to want to make change, to want to ultimately change the world and again I think, showing you that experience of that research study, that Myanmar work did instil me with this incredible passion to do something about it and in fact I’ve had a number of experiences like that which is … continues to fire that passion and continue to give me that drive to keep on doing what I’m doing and the third thing is the entrepreneurial spirit which to me, as I mentioned before, I didn’t have any exposure to business and it’s something that I think I’ve learnt on the job and there are a number of core ingredients to an entrepreneurial spirit. You have to be a creator, a communicator, a leader, an innovator, a problem solver and a risk taker, just to name a few and a leader of course. So those things are really core to an entrepreneurial spirit which allows you then to take your passion and then use it to do good or to change the world at whatever level you want to but then ultimately, as you say, you have to create a vehicle that is going to allow you to deliver the passion that is going to ultimately impact on your social vision and change the world and again, there are a number of ingredients to that which we can talk about. Literally, one of the first things I did when I decided, okay to establish Sight For All. We have come up with a name that is going to be memorable. You have to come up with a brand so I immediately went to a graphic designer who I was recommended to and coming up with a brand because you need that brand then to, I suppose, ultimately to sell what you’re doing and then you have to surround yourself with people who you’re able to take on board on this ride. So it continues to grow from there. I mean we could talk about this for hours really but it’s, you know, those early years, I remember back and I had no idea. I had never been on a board before and here I was, the founding chairman of an organisation and that, as I say, a lot of learning on the job and I think when you surround yourself with people and tap into that diverse fuel set. You know, in those early years I had to … the first director on the board were people with financial skills, with legal skills, with marketing skills. All of those skills that I didn’t have. We of course had the ophthalmetic skills which were really important to what we were doing but we needed those diverse skills that we could tap into and the learnings that I had from those early directors was just invaluable. So you know, surrounding yourself with good people, people who are prepared to roll up their sleeves and get stuck into. You know, you don’t want people who are just coming along for the ride. So again, that was some of the early learnings that, you know, you soon realise who are there and are wanting to be there to help, its important. Not a fascinating process for me to learn that. The creation mentioned, I have this creative interest, this creative streak and the creation of this [33.30] was one of the most satisfying things that I’ve ever done.
Jenelle: You know, you started earlier on sharing some, [33.37] decided pre Covid days, 250 new cases of type 2 diabetes each day, perhaps understated now, not so sure. There’s many many horrifying stats when it comes to disease and related diseases. Situation maybe … it seems to be getting worse, not better or at least not improving so what do you think we need to do to make change happen here.
Dr James: Well if we look at that first three months of the Covid-19 outbreaks, so from March to the end of June, we had something like 102 deaths from Covid-19 which of course is tragic but what is not widely known at that same time, that same three months, we had over 5,000 deaths from type 2 diabetes and when you look at it on that scale, it is quite staggering and this is a disease that just shouldn’t happen. Its in essence, a dietary disease and so if it’s a dietary disease it’s a preventable disease, its avoidable disease, so it really should not be here in our society. Yet it’s a growing epidemic. Its grown four fold in the last 40 years. Its impacting on, you mentioned at one point, two million, that’s 1.2 million that we know of and there’s an estimated, at least 500,000 more who have type 2 diabetes who have not been diagnosed as yet so we’re talking 1.7 million plus people with type 2 diabetes in our society and that’s kind of pushing close to 10% of the population but there are some areas of Australia and particularly poorer social economic areas such as greater western Sydney for example, where half of the population, half of the population have type 2 diabetes or pre diabetes and we know that in Australia, there’s about two million people with pre diabetes who basically on the pathway to developing type 2 diabetes and many of those will be going down that pathway because of their poor diet that they’re exposed to at the moment. So it’s a huge problem that we’re not seeing type 2 diabetes in kids. This is something we used to call maturity onset diabetes. We’re seeing it kids. We’re even seeing it in children as young as three and it is quite disturbing and its impacting on aboriginal people. There’s been an 80 fold increase in type 2 diabetes over the last 40 years and really this diet that we’ve been exposed to over the past 40 years which is really driving this poor health and it’s a diet which is rich in sugary foods, something like 75% of our food drinks have added sugar. It’s the diet that’s rich in refined carbohydrates that I mentioned, particularly foods made from white potatoes, white rice, white flour. It’s a diet that’s rich in highly processed foods, in junk food. So it’s this diet that’s really leading us down this terrible metabolic dysfunction and this terrible pathway as I mentioned again before, close to $15 billion spent every year in dealing with type 2 diabetes alone and that was back in 2012, so I suspect its possibly even double that in that time, at least $20 billion every year that the taxpayer is funding. So this is a huge huge problem and its only getting worse. So this is why we are using this platform to raise awareness and to lobby the government to implement change. This is a very very critical time, I believe, in our society, in the health of our society, you know, going forward. So I’ve come up with this strategy, which I’ve called “the five As of sugar toxicity” and there are a number of elements here which, I think, I certainly wasn’t aware of and I suspect the Australians wouldn’t be aware of but when you look back and think “gee, how did I not know that”. So the five As for me of sugar toxicity are, the first A is addiction. So sugar is highly addictive. Its as addictive as nicotine and so we often use it like drugs. It triggers the release of dopamine from the reward centre of our brain. So it really is acting like a drug. The second is alleviation. We often use sugar as an [37.49] to alleviate stress when we’re down, we’re certainly seeing that at the moment. The third A, accessibility. Sugar is cheap, sugar is absolutely everywhere in our lives. You can’t walk into a service station without being confronted by all of the confectionary. You certainly can’t check out from most supermarkets and stores without being enticed by half priced soft drinks and chocolates. The fourth A is addition. I mentioned this astronomical amount of that’s added to our food and drinks and the fifth A is advertising. You know, the lure of TV commercials and ads and this predatory marketing that is going on in our society which is really enticing and playing on our addictions. So these three things are really critical to our poor health and the other thing is, you know, the poor advice that we’ve been receiving through our dietary guidelines now for close to 40 years. So to me the solution is twofold. One is to raise awareness amongst the Australian public of the addictive nature of sugar. In fact, we’re using it to alleviate stress and the dangers of excessive sugar consumption and the other is accountability. So its accountability of businesses, industries and government to do the right thing by the Australian people for those other [39.02] sugar toxics that I mentioned, accessibility, addiction and advertising. So that’s a long winded answer but that gives you a broad strategy that I’m really approaching this year to try and make a difference in this space.
Jenelle: James, I think that’s really interesting and at the risk of on the spot, adding another A into your mix of [39.23] consideration. Going to give you the book “Atomic habits”, an accidental other A there but James, [39.30] a book around making change happens and one of the things that he talks about in changes that very often its hard to make change when the things that you did before are just easier. So if you can find an alternative that is equally easy to switch to, so I’m thinking about that as another A here [laugh], when there are alternatives to those refined sugars that are readily at hand. Maybe there’s a responsibility for supermarkets, [39.56], government and education but also responsibility for the individual to prepare beforehand to have something to hand when you’re feeling peckish or thirsty that’s an alternative could be another way to make some shifts in mind certain behaviours around healthy lifestyles.
Dr James: That’s a really good point. I’ll ponder that another way, alternatives. Interestingly awareness and accountability are also As so we’re starting to build a book full of As here [laugh]. The interesting thing about that and people often say “well its about choice”. You know, you choose to drink or eat excessive sugary products but I would argue that its not often about choice particularly when we are unwittingly addicted to sugary and using it to alleviate stress. You know, we know people who are addicted to alcohol, to drugs, they don’t have a choice. So addiction is incredibly powerful thing and I suspect if we look at some poorer parts of country, at poorer parts of the world where people are using sugar to alleviate stress. There will be a deeper psychological component to this addiction, not simply a physical dependency, what we call a physical dependency. So for me, you know, I would say that I’m probably still addicted to sugar and many of us are addicted to sugar. Its really just a physical dependency, you get the withdrawal symptoms and you’re needing that sugary hit to counter that withdrawal that’s happening and it is quite literally a withdrawal symptom, cravings and headaches, [41.29], irritability that when you haven’t had your coffee hit or your sugar hit that day or your drink or your cigarette or your drug, you know, you do get withdrawal symptoms but you know, for many people there is a deeper deeper component to this and so I do strongly believe that addiction is playing a bit part and its often the thing that’s not talked about. So when you are seriously addicted to something, its not about a choice. So okay, you can go to the checkout counter and you might have a chocolate bar or you might have a bag of nuts but if you’re addicted to sugar, you’re not going to go for the bag of nuts, you’re going to go for the chocolate bar. So I think, you know, this draw of addiction, its very hard to overcome. Having said that, there is a strategy in detoxing from sugar and it takes a few days and its clearly something that we can get through but when you’re actually faced with a withdrawal symptom, its very hard to take the healthier alternative but being aware is one thing and then you can put in place steps to counter that addiction and to detox from sugar and for me it was quite simply just detoxing from the heavily sugared products. So the chocolates, confectionary, soft drinks and fruit juices, you know, cakes and biscuits and ice creams. Ice cream was one of my favourite things and just simply detoxing from those heavy sugar products gave me withdrawal symptoms, started day one, took a few days to get through but then I was in, once I got over that barrier, I was able to get on with life and not be constantly enticed by these sugary products. But the other really important thing here is alleviation. So being aware that you’re actually using it to alleviate stress. So if you’re addicted to something, being aware that you’re using it to alleviate stress, you can then put in place other things to counter that. So when we’re stressed, the brain is releasing some stressful hormone cortecells that I mentioned before and the brain needs to balance it up with feel good chemicals, serotonin, dopamine and so you can choose a healthy pathway, you can choose an unhealthy pathway. So you can choose to eat excessively sugary foods or to drink alcohol excessively or to take illicit drugs or to smoke too many cigarettes. You know, all of those things are actually quite effective in countering the cortecell reaction in the body and that’s why people do it but its important to know that there are other equally as effective things which are much healthier of course and quite simply some of those are going for a walk, cycle, a run, outside somewhere beautiful. So that’s a really important thing to be aware of, for people at the moment, is to get out and have their exercise, particularly if they can, go somewhere beautiful because that triggers the release of dopamine, it does make you feel good. Listening to your favourite music is really important, you know, and often just reaching out and doing a good deed for someone else because there’s always someone in a worse situation than yourselves and you know, scientifically all of these things have been shown to be as effective as sugar in countering that cortecell reaction. So you know, it’s important.
Jenelle: Thanks James, I think they are all important messages. You touched a little earlier, your own personal disruption where you were diagnosed a few years back with an inherited neurological condition. I can’t imagine how difficult that would have been, considering that its in your hand and considering that performing micro surgery was really the track that you were on. I’m interested in how you went about embracing what was … forced a changed upon you. How long did that process take to get your head around it. How did you sort of manage yourself faced with that news.
Dr James: Sure. Well the interesting thing is and so when you face adversity in your life, it can either lend suddenly, like you’re suddenly captured by rebel soldiers in Uganda, or it can happen I suppose sub-acutely, like pandemic we’ve suddenly found ourselves in or it can happen very slowly and quite often insidiously and so for me, this neurological disability in my hand is something that really slowly crept up on me and its, when I look back, it was slowly evolving for many many years and you know, I first noticed that I was holding the instruments in my right hand with increasing force and it was actually giving rise to a discomfort in my right hand and wasn’t impacting at that time on my surgical skills but it was, you know, concerning me in those early years and I was also noticing a similar problem with writing and over the years, the right hand function slowly and steadily deteriorated and it wasn’t actually until 2012 that I actually caught up with a neurological colleague and found out from him what was going on, when I explained my symptoms to him. So it was a process that even by the time I’d had my diagnosis, I’d already put in steps, little – what I call micro innovations, to deal with the progressive dysfunction. So you know, I was starting to hold the instruments with my right hand in different way so that I wasn’t having that cramping effect on my hand. So through this whole process, I just constantly was making little changes to deal with it and this was before I even knew what the diagnosis was. When the diagnosis came in 2012, again when this thing landed I thought “okay, its good to know what happened” and I actually realised that my dad had the same problem and it wasn’t until I had my diagnosis that we knew what was going on with dad. A year later, I actually had to move my writing to my left hand and because it was just becoming so difficult with my right hand. So then I had to use my left hand to write and I went cold turkey and then is started doing that with other things that I was doing in my day to day life such as, you know, using a spoon or using the computer mouse or the keyboard. So constantly adapting all the time. So for me and one of the really important things in, I suppose, forging resilience, building resilience, is innovating and so when we look back at the last three months, we see everywhere people innovating to get through this adversity that we’re all facing and so for me, here was an adversity that I was facing, albeit it in a slowly progressive manner where I was constantly innovating to get through this period. I think the other thing which is very very important to this is keeping a cool head and I realised, from my time in Africa when I was captured by these soldiers and put in this hut and awaiting our death sentence really, and my New York friend was freaking out and I somehow managed to keep a cool head. I think perhaps I have a cool head when I’m faced with these situations and maybe that’s just the way I was built but its also in a ways of also cooling your head, I would say, during times, during threatening times or during anxious times, its really important to just maintain a cool head and you know, again we look at those early weeks of the pandemic and people were not showing cool heads. They were racing out and buying up toilet paper by the dozen and so its important just to keep that cool head and when you’re faced with a difficult time in your life, its important to say to yourself “I’m going to get through this” and what happens is that you then start to forge a positivity. A positive mindset. You can then say to yourself “well I’m going to get through this, how am I going to get through this. Well, I’m going to innovate” and that’s the really the three elements for me to building resilience. So start with the cool head, you forge this positive mindset and then you innovate and that allows you then to get through things. You know forging a positive mindset, I think, is really the key element to all of this and again, to me, are several ways that we can help forge a positive mindset and I think again, in your introduction, you alluded to the fact that having good health is really important and so I’ve come up with this concept which I call “four good things for forging a positive mindset”. So having good health is critical. So when you’re suddenly captured by rebel soldiers in Uganda, you can’t suddenly have good health or when a pandemic suddenly arises, you can’t suddenly have good health so it’s really important for our resilience to ensure we eat well and exercise. The second thing is a good nights sleep. If we don’t sleep well, we’re not as resilient, we don’t cope as well. The third thing, surround yourself with good friends. So people who are positive and uplifting, who make you feel better about yourself, who are not trying to drag you down. I think this is absolutely vital in this process and we hear this social connectivity and social connections are really really important during these tough times and the final thing was good habits and we talked about those before. [50.12] some of those good habits in these times rather than taking the unhealthy option. So for me, a positive mindset is essential in this process but you start with the cool head and you work your way through to innovation and I’d like to think that would help people get through the most difficult times in their lives.
Jenelle: Fantastic James and you know, I actually have heard you speak about the four good things in the past and it might surprise you to know this but I actually got your four bullet points written up on my whiteboard above my desk. So I literally have a tick list, good health, good sleep, good friends, good habits and it’s amazing what a difference it is. Every day I come in and look up, glance at that and sort of maybe frown at myself with my sleep measure but it has been really helpful. You know, just to wrap up this interview James, I do like to finish each interview with three fast questions, much more on the light hearted side of things. What's a misconception that most people have about you.
Dr James: Ah, very good question, very interesting question [laugh]. I think people think I fill my time up, I never rest and I don’t a moment where I take a breath and relax, whereas I love, more than … well I wouldn’t say more than anything, but I do love … I love holidays of course. I do love travelling but I also love lying by a pool, just relaxing and reading a book. People don’t … I think they probably don’t believe that I actually ever stop, that I ever rest and probably also think that I don’t have a lot of tie for my family. I actually … you know, the family is incredibly important and particularly during these last two weeks, having the family around has just been magnificent.
Jenelle: And what's one guilty pleasure James, you have.
Dr James: Oh I think I mentioned that before, is ice cream and …
Jenelle: That’s right [laugh].
Dr James: … and the hardest part of detoxing from sugar was giving up my ice cream. The worse punishment I could receive as a child was to be sent to my bedroom after dinner without ice cream. I would bawl my eyes out. So my parents knew how to really hit me when they needed to punish me and I would say there’s rarely been a day since when I hadn’t had ice cream and when I went through my sugar detox earlier this year, I did give up ice cream. When I say give up, you know, I used to have it literally every night, it was just a ritual and not a healthy ritual but I’m not willing to be evangelical about this. I want to … I still want to be able to enjoy an ice cream, just not every night.
Jenelle: What's one thing you’re hopeless at. I’m suspecting it might be the gardening but what would you say is one thing you’re hopeless at.
Dr James: I’m actually quite good at gardening if I put my mind to it. I would say that the one thing that terrified me more than anything in my life is public speaking and still to this day, the thought of public speaking, sort of speaking publicly like for example on the podcast, terrified me. I woke at, after two hours sleep, at 1.30 this morning …
Jenelle: Oh my god
Dr James: … anxious leading into this morning, so yeah, I talk about having a good nights sleep as being a pillar of resilience and good health. Okay, so here it is, so one thing I’m hopeless at is sleeping. Definitely there’s no doubt about it. Sleeping has been, for me, the one bane in my life that I think you find. If I was able to get more sleep. It’s almost without fail, if I have something next day … I was on Sunrise TV on channel 7 last week and again I woke at 1.30 in the morning after two and a half hours sleep and you go into these things with your brain kind of in second or first gear. So it drives me mad. In fact from this very podcast, I’m going off to the sleep psychologist so hopefully [laugh] work out what I can do with my sleep. So yeah, sleep is to me the thing that I just haven’t mastered. I’ve tried everything. I’ve even started writing a “how to sleep” book but I haven’t finished it because I haven’t found the final piece to the puzzle. I think its quite simply I’ve just got too much going on in my brain, going on in my life, yeah, so maybe I would say that I’m not hopeless at saying no, but I’m very good at saying yes and I just love filling my life with too many things.
Jenelle: Well good luck with your sleep challenge. Its one of your four good things so its definitely a critical one to nail. James, I wanted to say a massive thank you for, not just for your time today, but for the incredibly important work that you do. I really haven’t formally congratulated you on being awarded Australian of the Year, most deserving title and recognition. Its really clear that you don’t do anything by halves and James, you know, its really clear in talking to you that your inherent curiosity, your unbelievably positive mindset and your willingness to make the most out of everything that life has to offer, has been, you know, what has allowed you to have the kind of impact that you have globally on something that is so critical and one of the things that’s really stood out to me is that, you know, in embracing all the opportunities that you have, these are where, you know, we don’t all have to be captured by rebel soldiers or being attacked by wild animals but the kinds of experiences you pick up by just embracing them, allows you to form the element of resilience, even if you don’t realise it at the time. [55.17] tend to kick into place at some point in your life and it all seems to make sense. So your spirit of adventure, your humanitarian spirit, your entrepreneurial spirit, the things that you said make, are the makings of, you know, strong social entrepreneurship. Its incredibly evident in you and serves as a great inspiration for me and no doubt for many of our listeners today. So massive thank you for your time, James.
Dr James: Oh thanks Jenelle, I very much enjoyed being here and chatting with you today. It was fabulous, so thank you for all you do as well and I wish you all the very best.
Jenelle: Cheers.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Michelle Price
CEO AustCyber

Intro: Change happens how we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight in to how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad, and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: Hi I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to the ‘Change Happens’ podcast. A conversation with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. And today I’m joined by Michelle Price, CEO of AustCyber.
Michelle is a passionate advocate for all things cyber but that’s going to become apparent to you pretty quickly when you listen to her speak. Michelle was the inaugural Chief Operating Officer or AustCyber when she joined the company in January 2017 and then was quickly appointed as CEO in April 2018. And prior to that Michelle was with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet where she played an instrumental role in the delivery of the highly regarded 2016 Australia’s Cyber Security Strategy and coordinated national security budget.
Michelle was recently awarded the AWSN Award of 2020 by the Australian Women in Security Network. And that recognises and honours the accomplishments and contributions of individuals or companies that are making a real difference in reshaping the security landscape.
Michelle has made significant strides in the world of cyber and her ability to lead change across the cyber security ecosystem has resulted in new growth avenues for Australia’s economy both domestically and abroad.
I look forward to exploring how Michelle goes about creating change and hearing the lessons that she’s learned along the way.
Welcome Michelle, how are you?
Michelle: I’m great. It’s so good to be with Janelle. Thanks for having me.
Jenelle: Oh my pleasure. I’m excited to have this conversation. Before we get into it Michelle, in layman’s terms, what does AustCyber do? And what does your role entail?
Michelle:  AustCyber is one of the Federal Government’s six industry growth centres. And so we focus on the growth of cyber security and my job is to grow Australia’s cyber security industry and ensure that we’re globally competitive and we can contribute to the country’s sovereign capability when it comes to cyber security. But I guess a bit more than that too is to make sure that the broader economy understands the role of cyber security as a growth opportunity as well.
Jenelle: Just thinking about the context that we find ourselves with COVID, I imagine, with a near overnight shift to remote working, digital businesses completely rethinking their supply chains, there’s quite a massive set of implications for AustCyber, how has COVID been impacting your professional world?
Michelle:  It’s been so significant.
Jenelle: I’ll bet.
Michelle:  I think that obviously there’s been a lot of discussion in the national media about the increase of malicious cyber attacks on Australia during the lockdown periods, plural now. But also more broadly there’s sort of vulnerabilities that have emerged within the Australian economy that can be taken advantage of through malicious cyber activity. And I think further than that, there’s been, that realisation now that goes beyond our own sector into broader economy that we are living now in a cyber physical world. That things that have a physical manifestation will also have a digital manifestation and things that go on within the digital world can have physical impacts as well.
And so from the moment that we found out from the World Health Organisation, you know all the way back in February that there was a global pandemic emerging, AustCyber got super busy and we could foreshadow some of the things that were coming but of course like everybody else there was lots that we didn’t foreshadow or foresee at all.
And so it’s been a mix of going into full tilt support to those companies within our portfolio and our industry more broadly to help them survive. But of course with the increased demand on cyber security services and products to help remote working and remote schooling, it’s also been about right sizing some of that capability to be able to be deployed quickly but also to help the smaller companies within the industry understand where they can fit because they haven’t necessarily had the scale to be able to deploy quickly. But that’s scaled right up into being able to help the Australian Government as well as Governments overseas. Try and work through the sort of quagmire problems and challenges that the world has been facing during this time.
Jenelle: Just speaking about Australian Government and malicious activity, in June this year Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that Australian private sector and the public sector organisations had been under sustained cyberattacks by a Foreign Government and over the past 6 months we’ve seen a lot of headlines mentioning Australian organisations that have been attacked. In your opinion how well placed are we as a nation to individually and collectively deal with that increasing threat?
Michelle:  I think that’s from an individual point of view. The situation is vastly different from where we were 5 / 6 years ago. But it’s still not at a level where we can say that we’ve got an overall baseline and common understanding across the Australian community about why it is so important to be thinking about the security and privacy ramifications of the types of activities we do in this cyber physical world. But collectively I think we’ve really stepped up our game over the past 4 years in particular since the release of the 2016 National Cyber Security Strategy and the Government obviously had released an update to that this year with the 2020 Cyber Security Strategy. I think in between almost every jurisdiction in Australia has also released its own cyber security strategy to organise at the state and territory level as well as local Government level. That’s really driven forward a lot of change within the ICT and technology areas of the economy. We’re probably still though honestly quite lumpy when it comes to boarding out across the rest of the sectors that haven’t traditionally had digital infrastructure as their first port of call. We’ve seen this obviously manifest in challenges and problems in moving rapidly from an office environment or a school environment into the home environment. We’re seeing a lot of vulnerability being exposed as a result of that.
We’re doing better than where we were 4 /5 years ago, but we still do have a way to go. I guess the upside within that is that we shouldn’t feel as though that’s a depressing state. This is actually the situation for every nation on the planet and the high, high bar that is set around what great looks like when it comes to cyber resilience is often Estonia because Estonia does have a very centralised approach to digital identity and the intersection of physical infrastructure and digital infrastructure. But we need to remember that Estonia actually did that in response to some significant attacks from their near neighbour Russia and had a really, really big push on trying to maintain their sovereignty through the digital domain and how that then impacted on the physical domain.
Australia is in a very, very different position and we often refer to the incentives to step up our cyber security game coming from the economy more so than the protection of our country’s sovereignty. The incentives to do this is very, very different. But we’re certainly not at the bottom of the pack by any stretch of the imagination and in fact we’re one of the top nations within our part of the world when it comes to dealing with cyber risk and cyber threats and more broadly across the world we probably sit somewhere in the top half so we’re not doing too badly.
Jenelle: I understand this is a big week for you with Cyber Week. Can you tell us what that’s all about and why it’s so important during this time of recovery?
Michelle:  Yes Cyber Week. We’re doing this for the fourth year in a row at AustCyber and it’s all about having a national focus for a week where we can de-risk, disarm, myth bust, all of the things that go into people’s perceptions of what cyber security actually is and really open up conversations around different elements of the cyber security industry and the role that it has on both the Australian economy but also the community more broadly.
This week we’ve got huge amounts of activity going on across the country both in hybrid events through an online platform that’s a bit like a circuit gauge style virtual conference where people can access a whole range of different topics to learn more about what goes on for cyber security but also to meet the companies that are these fantastically innovative entrepreneurs that are both inventing but also driving change through both products and services in the economy globally. It’s all free. Engage, engage, engage.
Jenelle: Just picking up on the point around the quality of skills that we have available to us in this market. Clearly skills can be used on the wrong and the right side of the ledger. I’m interested in hackathons that are being run. I guess they’re ethical hackers who get applied to solve problems like Missing Persons Week for instance. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Michelle:  At AustCyber we work quite closely with the National Missing Persons Coordination Unit which is a part of the Australian Federal Police to be able to take some of the live cases, the real cases out of National Missing Persons Week and apply that within a hackathon type environment where we use ethical hackers within teams of 4 people come together to actually use what’s called ‘Open Source Intelligence’ to be able to see whether or not we can generate new leads for police to follow through on in finding those real missing people. We worked on 14 of real cases last year and while we haven’t been able to solve any of those cases through the hackathon all but one of those cases actually had the generation of new leads that police are still working through.
Jenelle: Wow.
Michelle: This year again we’ll be working on different real missing people cases and what we also do as part of that and I’m getting tingles as I say it. We actually get the families of the missing people involved in the hackathon and I cannot describe the amount of energy that is in the room for this hackathon.
Jenelle: I’ll bet.
Michelle: Where we have the case workers from the Missing Persons Unit, police officers who are investigating the cases, the family of those who are left behind, these teams of ethical hackers that come together of all different skills and maturity, ages. It’s a really great showcase of skill being applied to a complex problem but of course we can’t escape the emotional side of it of being able to use our community of ethical hackers to be able to find real missing people. It’s incredible. It’s a privilege.

Jenelle: Oh it is incredible. Such a powerful application of the skills being used on the right side of the equation. It’s hard not to be aware of the enthusiasm in your voice when you speak about this stuff and actually when you and I spoke last week, you said something to me that has sort of stuck in my mind. You said “that people accuse you of being passionate about cyber”, which I thought was an interesting term of phrase. Obviously the word ‘accuse’ as a negative connotation to it. Why did you use that word? Do you think people see it as a negative thing? What is it about cyber that has you so passionate about it?
Michelle: Such a good question! I think that the ‘accuse’ piece is because the birth of cyber security came out of national security and this concept of the way that you protect a nation and the crown jewels around that being vested in a nation’s Government and that’s all for very good reason.
Within that space though, of course the behaviours of how you go about doing the business of traditional cyber security has been very conservative and bound up in the world of the intelligence community, which is a world that I have spent some time in and fully appreciate why it is the case for that part of the industry and sector. But there is this whole world out there that exists beyond that needs to actually exist to support the intelligence and national security communities and vice versa.
So when you come out of a conservative and comparatively narrowly focused world as a discipline, and you kind of have this birthing out into the broader economy and broader society having a passion for the topic and understanding how it can have positive impact and help grow the size of the pie for both individuals, their families, as well as the economy and sustain the prosperity that Australia enjoys so much. I think that you stand out from all of that conservative world and so I’ve come out of many years of being accused of being ‘passionate’.
As part of the culture that we’re hopefully starting to cast aside now into history in Australia that we have traditionally of course assigned ‘passion’ to tall poppy syndrome. That element of Australian business, whether that business be in the public or private sectors has been something that’s obviously been quite a legacy that has in many respects held us back as a nation. To see all of that negative connotation starting to be unshackled and not being valued anymore as part of how we do business as much as there is a long tale to that, I think is a really, really positive thing. I now kind of actively joke as I did with you Jenelle that I get ‘accused’ of being passionate and I talk about that publicly reasonably often because it’s about inspiring people of all ages, all ethnicities, all genders to be able to feel as though they are empowered to jump in and understand cyber security because it is just so important to everyone’s lives now.
Jenelle: Is there any one moment or moments maybe that you can remember that really ignited your resolve and your passion to get into this space?
Michelle: Yeah I think the moment for me came when I was working in the Prime Minister’s Department and it was under Prime Minister Gillard. At the time I was working on the National Security Strategic Risk Framework which was the first of its kind - actually it turned out in the world. In doing the risk assessment as part of the development of that framework to demonstrate to the senior people within Government including Ministers why we needed to embark on such an endeavour. You do your horizon scan and of course you translate the threats that emerge in that horizon scanning as well as the opportunities to translate that into risk, both upside and downside. I came across this thing called ‘Cyber Security’. I had heard a little bit about it through various conversations and reading various materials – I had to in that role in National Security within the Prime Minister’s Department. I became instantly fascinated around it’s ‘sense of convergence’. That it really embodied such a range of different disciplines, thinking and creativity as well as needing to have structure and robustness and trust. For me, that just brought together in an instant, all the different things that I had worked on within my career to date and I also saw in that moment that it was going to become one of the biggest issues of our generation.
Jenelle: What was it like working with the first and only female Prime Minister?
Michelle: It was, can I say, and I hope that, wouldn’t it be amazing it Julia was listening, she was the most…
Jenelle: Well we do have a wide audience so it’s inside the realms of the possible.
Michelle: Well if you’re listening Julia, it was amazing to work for you.
Jenelle: Tell me about the changes then. If you were to sort of bullet point a few changes that you would be seeking to lead or drive at AustCyber, what are those changes?
Michelle: I think first and foremost for me it is about recognising in the country that we really have do have talent in Australia around cyber security. Both in product and service. That from my background as a kid, I grew up in a house of inventors. Both my Mum and Dad invented foods. I love telling people this that my Dad invented the Pine Lime Splice and the Golden Gaytime.
Jenelle:: No way! Did he really?
Michelle: Yes.
Jenelle: This is a gem, I love Pine Limes.
Michelle: It’s super cool. And my Mum and Dad were both food technologists. When they went to university, which is where they met, they were doing food technology and food tech has now become a new thing again. They were doing this in the 70s. And their food technology strengths focussed on sort of food innovation and so then invented things. Mum invented the technology that enabled caramel within the Magnum Ego to remain liquid when the ice cream is frozen and that’s now used in space. That’s the environment that I grew up in. And so being able to kind of appreciate the value of entrepreneurship and the value of small business. And the value of small business scaling into medium size business and seeing firsthand the impact that that has. On both community and economy. And that that really has been a lived experience of a lot of Australian business.
For me I want to see that happen for cyber security. Because cyber security has such an important role now as I’ve mentioned. And so that’s one of the changes that I’m trying to drive at AustCyber is that understanding of how we really can do this. Not just for ourselves but to be able to impart some of that capability into the right hands globally to help others as well.
And I think the second thing for me is around now we can use cyber security, how it can be a use case for technological change. Where we do see the convergence of technology and humans happening every day. And further how we adapt as humans in that point of convergence and really drive forward the changes we want to see around diversity in our community. There’s lots of misperceptions and misunderstandings around what it genuinely is when you sort of have these images from the movies and the tv shows and all of that kind of stuff around how complex it is. Absolutely it’s complex but that’s why we need everyone involved. Then of course we want to make sure that people further value the fact that it is ok to make money from being an entrepreneur. And that in Australia, entrepreneurship often means that when you make that money, you’re giving back as well. And that’s the spirit that I think that we can carry forward for future generations to continue that spirit of giving in Australia. At times maybe we’ve stepped back from that a little bit. If there’s a couple of good things that could come out of the cascade of events over the past 12 months in Australia with, you know, drought, flood, fire and pandemic, it’s that we can come together in times of crisis. But it shouldn’t take a crisis for us to maintain that spirit.
Jenelle: AustCyber put out a Digital Trust Report and in that report you talk about the role that digital trust plays in attracting investment and driving job growth and enabling growth opportunities across other sectors of the economy, how do we, we – Australia – rate on the dimension of digital trust and what do we need to do to lift our digital trust worthiness?
Michelle: Oh that’s so good! There’s so much to unpack in that! I think that, it’s interesting again this tall poppy thing comes into play because domestically I think that we’re actually quite distrusting of each other even though we’re reasonably good at going after solving complex problems. There’s so many sort of, you know, tensions that exist across the way that we do business and how we collaborate with each other in Australia. Outside of Australia, particularly within this region of the world, we are actually seen as a trusted and sometimes in the world of technology, honest broker. In being able to navigate the complexity of what we find ourselves in. And so beyond our shores, I guess as per usual, the learned experience of the past 30 or 40 years, Australia actually fairs quite well when it comes to the sort of digital trust quotient if you like. We are often drawn in across, it doesn’t matter really if it’s Government, business or academia, we are drawn into international conversations. Because we are seen as being knowledgeable. That knowledge is trusted. And we are seen as being a trusted set of hands in how you go about applying that knowledge.
Domestically though, of course, we lot a fight. We love the battle. We see that on the sporting field. It translates into how we do business domestically, it’s fascinating. And we do need to, I think, particularly when it comes to these concepts of a cyber physical world and the digital infrastructures that we’re investing a huge amount of time and effort into now and of course the data that those digital infrastructures carry. We need to, I think, increasingly remember, it’s almost like we’ve got to have it on a post it note on the computer screen kind of thing to remind ourselves that we are actually all on the light side of the equation.
Jenelle: Others see us, overseas they view us as more digitally trustworthy than we view ourselves. Is that what you’re saying?
Michelle: Indeed. That’s absolutely the case. Now of course we know that trust is hard to earn and very easy to lose.
Jenelle: Correct.
Michelle: Some of the changes that we’ve made in Australia at a regulatory and legislative standpoint has eroded some trust over the past couple years in Australia but it’s been very limited to particular industries. And this is again where we see that kind of conversation happening around, you know, sort of the flow through of culture where Europeans are kind of seen as being as a bit more open and less risk averse as oppose to the Americans and by association I guess the so called Five Eyes nations of which Australia is a part. And that we tend to be more conservative when it comes to matters of national security and the way that national security intersects with community and of course the big issue that has happened over the past two generations in that case is terrorism. And of course New Zealand had to be the latest example of how that gets born out through changes legislation last year. And necessarily so, of course, in trying to push back against that kind of intrusion on Australian and New Zealand and global lifestyle.
The trustworthiness piece is just, it’s a classic case of that convergence between human and technology. Because of course now we are entering into conversations around whether or not we can trust the technology, whether or not we can trust the machines and in a world of artificial intelligence, can we trust the data that the machines are talking to us about. And that relationship between machine and human. But of course we need to remember in all of that that it’s the humans that are developing the machines.
Jenelle: That’s right.
Michelle: And so we can get into lots of conversations about ethics but ultimately, at the very basis of that, it is about trust.
Jenelle: It’s interesting you know, you talked a lot about the complexity, which I completely agree with you on, but you talked about the physical threats and infrastructure, in a mega trends report that we wrote at EY fairly recently actually, we mentioned that cyber warfare has expanded into a new domain altogether and that’s around disinformation. So the target’s not just physical infrastructure, it’s not about data or money, but it’s actually around truth and truth itself. And we saw that really come into public consciousness in the 2016 US Presidential Election for instance. So there’s every reason to think that tactics can be used to attack, like the disinformation tactics can be used to attack companies. I know that the Edelman Trust Barometer for instance, found that six in 10 people across 27 countries are no longer sure what’s true and what’s not. And in 2019 the coverage of fake news and conspiracy theories increased by 93%.
So I guess my question, Michelle to you on this one is, what’s your thoughts on the weaponising of disinformation as a threat to companies, and what responsibilities to business and Government leaders have to counter that kind of threat?
Michelle: This is a really interesting area and it’s one that is climbing up risk registers all over the place. But perhaps not as much in Australia as what it needs to be. And I think the conversations around foreign interference is probably what’s going to scratch the surface around this one for Australia because absolutely companies do need to be more aware around what risks this can have for the operations. And of course if a company is listed, what kinds of implications this can have for shareholders and, you know, we’ve long had discussions publicly through, particularly through the media, but also through other forms of communication around the ways that these kinds of acts of disinformation can have an impact on, you know, hostile stakeholders and shareholders, hostile board directors and whether of not the hostility is actually true. It is really, really complex and of course this is where it gets really properly scary for a lot of business owners as to how they could keep across that kind of a landscape.
Jenelle: Exactly.
Michelle: Especially with the pace of how everything is happening these days. When you do pick up your phone to be able to quickly do an internet search around answering a question really quickly to be able to just move on with you day. And that can obviously expand out into quite serious and significant decisions that companies and organisations might be making about their future. And the way that they spend money or the way that they hire staff, the way that they manage their staff, all of those kinds of things. I mean ultimately of course the responsibility does lie with organisations, when it comes to the business world, whether that be Government or the private sectors, but I do think this is where, it’s one of the manifestations in our modern world, if we can keep referring to it as that, it’s the current world and what we’re seeing over the horizon as then needing to be business and Government in lock step. We have to work on this together because there will necessarily be organisations within the economy, whether they’re small agencies, and if you think I apply this to local Government, local Government is now very distanced in their service delivery from the Federal Government for example, how did they keep pace with these kinds of things in the same way as how does the local sole ???[26:36] and a franchise of a lawn mowing business stay across this when they absolutely could be leveraged as a vector for disinformation through either their website or their invoicing or even their Facebook presence in the same way that a very large corporation could be. And I say to my team all the time, if we’re not five steps ahead of the rest of the industry, ensuring that the stepping stones are there behind us, then actually we’re not doing our job effectively. It’s our job to take the bullets out in front of making some of the mistakes early so that the rest of industry can benefit.
Jenelle: How do you do that? How do you stay ahead of the threats?
Michelle: Great question. It’s really, really hard but the first thing to do is to actually care. Understanding what the threat landscape looks like. If you’re an individual and family and school and community group, you can go to staysmartonline.gov.au and if you’re a business or you’re even a Government agency you can go to cyber.gov.au. These are resources that provide alerts around the kinds of threats that are manifesting at the moment and so the first thing is understanding and reading the news is a really good way to stay across some of the threats that manifest.
Jenelle: Sure.
Michelle: If you go to reputable sources, there’s lot of websites that being actively protected against disinformation and fake news that means that you can trust those as information sources to be able to better inform yourself to ask the right questions.
Jenelle: It strikes me that there’s a number of words that people use in the cyber world, they have a really specific meaning in the world of digital and cyber. You know words like trust, resilience, vulnerability, but those words also carry a hell of a lot of weight in the world of, when I talk of leadership styles and attributes and I just wonder if it’s something that you are conscious about, that you’re thinking that these words of vulnerability, resilience, testing, failure, trust, how do you marry that up when you’re talking about it in cyber and how you lead personally?
Michelle: Yeah I marry it up all the time in my own mind. Whether or not I’m effective at demonstrating that or talking about it I guess that’s for others to decide. But I guess one of the principles of how we do business at AustCyber is modelling the behaviours that we would love to see collectively. And I don’t mean it’s AustCyber telling the rest of industry how to behave. I’ve been told by numerous people over the past, particularly 12 months, that my leadership style is more from the centre. And really of course that’s actually how cyber security needs to behave as an industry. We need to be leading from the centre and showing a better way on how cyber security enables all other industries. But also within our own industry how different capabilities enable others. And how you can have that collaboration and cooperation happening within the sector as well and so being vulnerable within cyber security is something that is very, very treacherous because of course the second that you admit vulnerability means that you are open to attack. And if we’re open to attack it means that actually we’re exposing our clients, customers, colleagues, partners, upstream/downstream to attack. And so thinking about it from that perspective is that, you know, it’s less of a focus on vulnerability as a leader and more about empathy. Because we do need to lead with empathy because being attacked through cyber means it’s one of the most devastating things that anyone can go through now because it does have physical ramifications. And one of the examples that I give often to kind of illuminate, it’s a pretty negative one so I sort of give the warning that this can unsettle some people but at the cost of less than $50, a perpetrator of domestic violence really can end a woman’s life and do that in front of her children. By buying information on the dark net around their whereabouts. And so that sort of sense of having a new identity and that identity being protected by agencies and things like that is really challenging business these days because of the pace at which information can be obtained and then sold at a really cheap rate. And that rate has come down from hundreds of dollars only a couple of years ago. And so that really shines…
Jenelle: Brings it to life doesn’t it, yeah.
Michelle: It really does.
Jenelle: Michelle just turning to your pretty amazing career trajectory, you’ve had a collection of skills and experiences and evidently so has your parents, which I find fascinating, you started out studying graphic design then you moved into food safety, so no doubt that was inspired by your parents, and then you became a cyber specialist and that included five years with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, can you give me a bit of a potted history maybe of how each of those transitions happened and perhaps what is was from each role that you carried forward and evolved into the next role.
Michelle: Yeah sure. So I also studied economics at university. So I did economics and business law first and then I did graphic design and I think that when I…
Jenelle: Natural progression!
Michelle: That’s right. When I get forced to admit in that very un-Australian way what the strengths are that are a foundation of my career it’s that I did listen to my left and right brains. I was one of the first six students to graduate in the country with environmental economics. I didn’t actually kind of end up getting a job in that space because it was so new that I instantly then thought in my final year well I kind of really like colour and the psychology of colour and then went off and did graphic design straight off the back of graduating from my economics degree. But I did my graphic design degree while working full time in food safety risk and that was actually in my parents’ business. So they owned three companies, one of which was a global company. Ended up running one of those companies for them largely and I guess it was kind of a convergence of the two degrees in one job. That sort of I guess, what gave me a pretty strong sense of what small business is in Australia and at the time Mum and Dad were actually writing on behalf of the Federal Government the National Food Safety Standards for the country for the first time ever which then got adopted and adapted into different jurisdictions in the country and they went on to help out Woolworths, Coles, NSW Government, Victorian Government to actually figure out what food safety meant.
And so again that spirit of community and that spirit of business and being able to marry those two was instilled in me very, very early. Of course the backdrop of invention, going after your entrepreneurial spirit and all of that kind of stuff. But I ended up marrying boy in uniform of the Air Force variety and so I ended up in Canberra. It was interesting because we got posted here and I’d always had an interest in politics and so you know, coming to Canberra and seeing what Government had to offer, I just jumped in and it was a completely different world. Just for whatever reason, early days, that’s sort of bringing into my first job in Government which was in Workplace Health and Safety at Comcare. Having a leader in that agency at the time who recognised instantly that there was someone in me that not only understood economics and as it applied to different context, but also understood risk. And this was at the juncture of when Comcare on behalf of Government policy was trying to nationalise workplace health and safety legislation. And get away, remove this kind of separation of different ways of doing workplace health and safety legislation around the country.
Really interesting time to jump in and start to understand how legislation is developed and drafted. How you form trusted relationships between Government and industry. And those were some really hefty conversations around how we needed to do better as a country on that with people, those skills come through from my private sector experience into that world. Actually what was propelled me forward. I didn’t stay at Comcare for very long because then I got sort of poached from there to go off to Customs, got poached from Customs to go off to Medicare, got poached back to Customs again and then got poached off to the Prime Ministers Department. And so I guess the sort of thread across all of that was this understanding of how industry worked and how relationships really even mattered. Putting the shoes on of the other people sitting across the table from you in negotiations. But also of course having a pretty in-depth understanding of the difference between threat and risk but necessarily how they operate together. The time at ??? [35:16] was critical in where I’m up to as a person. It was a privilege to work for, four people, there were five Prime Ministers. Prime Minister Rudd had two shots at it, everybody would remember.
Jenelle: Indeed.
Michelle: Absolutely I do have my favourites in those four people but it is a privilege when you work in that environment and when you’re working on national security it can get very, very sharp. You are dealing with life and death situations and I learned a huge amount and across the trajectory I was always that square peg because I had come out of industry. At one time I was the only person on the national security side of the equation that had worked in industry. But it was highly valued at by the very senior people including Prime Ministers.
Jenelle: Most people when they describe themselves as square pegs or sort of sitting outside of the norm see that as something that is problematic. When did you realise that that actually was your strength? That you were sort of different to everybody else in terms of your skills experiences profile?
Michelle: I think it was probably when I was doing the work on the National Security Strategic Risk Framework where I had the trust of the then National Security Advisor, Duncan Lewis, we don’t have a National Security Advisor at the moment as a position within Government but at the time I was working to Duncan and he trusted me to be going and having conversations with some very, very senior people in Government. And I was a middle ranked person at the time and he knew that I had the subject matter expertise and he also trusted that I had the right kind of experience and self-awareness to understand how to read the body language and the circumstances of the people sitting across the table from me and I guess after having a series of kind of quiet, you know, hearting throat conversations because they got quite pointed with some of these very senior people, you know but I actually did have something to offer because of how different I was and that I needed to just slightly reframe how I positioned that to be seen by them and not just by Duncan as an asset. And an asset in how they could pursue what they were trying to get done in the whole equation as well. That was probably where it came from I think.
Jenelle: What changes do you think need to be made in order to encourage more women to become more involved in the industry and to nurture greater diversity in cyber.
Michelle: This would not be surprising to you Jenelle, but I get asked this reasonably often.
Jenelle: Yes!
Michelle: It is a challenging question because I deeply appreciate that for a lot of women and also people from ethnically diverse backgrounds and, first Australians and, first Nations people as well as those who are gender diverse, it can be incredibly challenging. I guess what I would say in the first instance is that I’m really proud that now in cyber security increasingly I’m not a minority. I’m very, very conscious of the kinds of emotions and kinds of challenges that I experienced when I was part of the minority. For groups that are still experiencing barriers to entry and barriers to being valued that there is still a long way to go in that equation.
The number one piece of advice that I give to people of any age, any persuasion, is to figure out who you can trust, even if that is someone within your own family. Figure out who you can trust and ask for help because the experiences that you are experiencing in having barriers or challenges in being valued and being appreciated, you’re not alone.
You’re absolutely not alone and I say to particularly younger girls and women who are just entering into technology fields including cyber security but also people of ethnically diverse backgrounds because of course in anything that has anything to do with national security there are matters of having security clearances which can make it challenging.
Asking for that trusted help means that you can leverage people like me who have gone through these kinds of challenges and experiences before and you’ll get some really, really helpful advice, but use us as your bullet proof vest for as long as you need it. Use us to help you push forward in those barriers because there is absolutely no shame in doing that. There just isn’t and if there are people around you that are making you feel shameful for asking for that kind of help they’re not useful to you in your career endeavours and what you want to have impact on in the world.
That’s probably the sharpest point that I can say because it is really hard of course. This is all driven by emotion and it’s really hard to cast aside those emotions that get reinforced especially the negative ones. I guess I’m acknowledging that this stuff is really tough and it’s really, really hard and that the Australian way and also the western way is, if you ask for help you’re admitting that you’re not perfect and that we need to be perfect to be considered valuable and to be worth it, and that’s just simply not true.
Again, I’m trying to use our industry in cyber security as the ‘use’ case for change around these things – to be able to stand up and call out some of these really quite treacherous but also quite tricky behaviours that can happen. We absolutely come into the economic side of it, we have to have diversity.
We all know and we can see now through the work of many organisations the economic metrics around:

Why we need to have diverse Boards
Why we need to have diverse Management
Why we need to have diverse teams,

in making decisions and getting work done.
As a country we have to do that to be able to continue to maintain our global competitiveness not just grow it. It is now an economic imperative quite apart from the fact that culturally and from a community standpoint. Largely as a society we want that to happen as well.
Jenelle: I couldn’t agree with you more Michelle. If I draw the formal questions to a close with maybe a broad big one. Maybe you can look into your crystal ball as you answer it. From your perspective what is recovery and reframing the future look like to you? Think about our country – what do we need to do to really take advantage of the respective crisis that we’ve navigated together as a country.
What do we need to do to recover and reframe?
Michelle: It is a big question!
Jenelle: I’ll give you some light ones after this I promise!
Michelle: I can never give one answer. I think I’m going to give a couple of answers.
1. The first one is that we need to move deliberately away from having a hierarchy structure to our economy to having one that is networked. We already see a whole range of technology oriented segments of sectors bare.

They are taking a networked approach to how they structure their businesses
How they engage internally within their organisations
How they engage with their partners, suppliers, customers etc

We need to do that. We have to or we are going to get left behind and what better time to be doing that now than ripping the band aid off on some of that legacy. Structurally we are still hierarchy as an economy and it means to me that it’s one of the number 1 barriers around diversifying the base of our economy.

2. I think the second point is we have to back ourselves and recognise that we really do have global strengths. It’s not in some of the areas that we have nostalgia attached to. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t leverage the knowledge that has come out of those industries that are seeing some set happen for them. We have to leverage that knowledge. We need that knowledge and I think we’ll find that from most of the people involved in those industries, a lot of those people are retired or on the verge of retirement, they want to be able to help. They absolutely do. Everyone I speak to in those age brackets want to give back. They want to still be involved. They want to keep their minds active because we all know that the science of dementia and Alzheimer's is that we need to keep our minds active. But also for those industries that are transitioning there is lots that can be leveraged there that doesn’t require significant structural reform to be able to get done.
3. I think the third point is that we need to just celebrate more.

Jenelle: I’m up for that!
Michelle: Absolutely! Australia has got so much going for it and we shouldn’t be afraid to celebrate the wins. Let’s absolutely recognise that poppies were never indigenous to Australia. We have so many other things that flourish in our landscape that we can reference and celebrate the growth and the trajectory that we have in front of us if we can get a couple of these foundational pieces right.
Jenelle: Oh how about that. That was a great answer to a big vague question!
The last three. Three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: I’m going to finish with three fast questions, much lighter questions Michelle. Firstly, what’s a misconception that most people have about you?
Michelle: I’ve only ever worked in Government.
Jenelle: Well we know that not to be true! I’m trying to figure out where you haven’t worked! What’s one guilty pleasure? Like to keep it PG if possible!
Michelle: PG, guilty pleasure! Okay I love binge watching things that completely take me away from what I spend most of my time doing.
Jenelle: So Border Security wouldn’t be one of those?
Michelle: I used to be involved in it. So no! but my kids love it! Bondi Rescue or Housewives of
New York!
Jenelle: Very good I should compare notes with you! What’s one thing that you’re hopeless at? This is going to be a tough one for you!
Michelle: I am absolutely hopeless at getting out of bed before 8am on a Sunday and then get cranky with myself because I haven’t fit everything into my day that I want to fit in. I’m absolutely hopeless at it, which means that it kind of does bleed into the rest of the week sometimes.
Jenelle: Oh come on! You need to be kinder to yourself. Take the sleep in! Celebrate the sleep in. There you go!
Michelle: Oh that’s good. I like that! Thank you.
Jenelle: Michelle, thank you so much for your time today. So much to be taken from this conversation. Not least of which is the passion for your industry and I think that you’ve really painted a compelling picture about why we should all care about the industry and about what it means for our nation.
A few things that really stood out to me. A bit of a theme – whether it’s through your own history and the way that you’ve worked but as you called it the ‘networked economy’, but for me what I also saw in the way that you’ve worked is the power of understanding the intersectionality of industries, of skills, of relationships and the collaboration and the
co-creation and cooperation that’s required to work in that space. I think that’s been really powerful.
I think your point about backing ourselves, our capabilities, our digital trustworthiness. If the rest of the globe sees it, then we should too. I think we need to back that capability and make sure that we leverage that and really achieve what we can from that.
I really liked your point about following intuition. If something doesn’t feel right, there is no harm in asking in the question, and there is no harm, and probably there is a real imperative to follow the trail of that question to understand how that can be physically manifested in organisations.
Some powerful takeaways. I know there is plenty more that others will reflect on as well. Thank you again Michelle, it’s been a pleasure.
Michelle: It’s been so much fun to be with you Jenelle. Thanks for having me.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Elizabeth Broderick AO

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad, and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to the “Change Happens” podcast. A conversation with influential leaders who embrace change, sharing their experiences and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. Today I’m joined by Elizabeth Broderick. Elizabeth is Australia’s longest serving sex discrimination commissioner from 2007 to 2015. Liz has worked tirelessly to break down structural and social barriers faced by women and men and to promote gender equality. She’s a globally acknowledged leader, social innovator and advocate. She founded and convened the Male Champions of Change Strategy, activating influential men to take action on gender equality. She’s led 13 major cultural reviews into Australia’s leading national institutions including the Australian Defence Force. In 2017 Elizabeth was appointed by the United Nations in Geneva as a Special Rapporteur and Independent Expert. She’s currently Chair Rapporteur of the UN working group on discrimination against women and girls. She’s managed so much change here in Australia as well as overseas, influencing women and girls in change around the world. I look forward to exploring how she goes about creating change and the lessons that she has learned along the way. Hi Liz, how are you?
Elizabeth: Good, its wonderful to be here having a conversation.
Jenelle: I love it and how have you personally been going dealing with the pandemic?
Elizabeth: You know, I just think every day about, you know, the nation you live in, the family you’re in, your access to power and influence, all those things determine how you’re experiencing this pandemic and I have to say I feel so very lucky, firstly to be here in Australia but also to continuing to be connected to family and friends. The children, they both lost their jobs, their employment at the beginning of the pandemic but as I said to my daughter, who was sobbing on my shoulder, she said “Mum, I thought I was doing a really good job”. She was a para-legal at one of the law firms and I’m sure she was doing a good job but really just to help her understand that external context matters. You can be doing a great job, what's happening out there in the world really matters as well. So I have to say I feel so very privileged the way I’m experiencing the pandemic but I never forget just the experience is totally different for so many people across the world.
Jenelle: Oh, I think your sensitivity to the experiences of others is probably one of your strongest attributes, so I’m not at all surprised to hear you say that. Liz, your current role with the UN. To me it’s a clear indication that despite all the progress that has been made in integrating women’s human rights fully into domestic law in many countries over the years, there’s still obviously so much work to be done. Can you tell us about that role and the mandate of the working group to stop discrimination against women and girls.
Elizabeth: Yeah, the working group was set up about ten years ago now and it was the result of national states coming together with women’s organisations to really say “look, if we need to accelerate change on gender equality and women’s rights across the world, we need some additional UN mechanism” and out of that the working group was born. So the working group comprises five independent experts. They come from every region of the world. So there’s one from Latin America and the Caribbean, from Asia, Africa. I represent what we call the developed nations of the world, western Europe and other groups and the five of us come together and there’s one from Croatia as well. All of us, we have a global mandate but really to advance the interest and the rights of women and girls. So we have a number of roles, Jenelle, and first of all its really to undertake country visits on behalf of the United Nations. So we go to different countries and we look at the status of women and girls and we make recommendations to that nation on how they can lift the status of women and girls, either through introducing new laws or a whole range of things. So that’s one thing we do. The other thing we do is each night we write official communications about human rights violations against women and girls that are happening in different countries and this year or over the last few months, I’ve been appointed as their Lead Rapporteur. So I’m the Chair of the working group which means that those communications go out under my name. So just to give you an example of that, just a few months ago now I wrote to a South East Asian nation about an issue which was happening for young women. So many of these young women were working in the informal economy, they were street vendors and when the lockdown came to their city, they decided to become digital entrepreneurs. So they would start selling their clothes online rather than public states and indeed they modelled their clothes on their Facebook page and what happened a few days later was that the police came around and dragged these women out of their homes. They were taken to prison and incarcerated and they were charged with provision of a crimes act which said that these women had damaged the morality of the country.
Jenelle: Sorry, why was that. What was the damage.
Elizabeth: The damage that they had done was that by modelling on their Facebook pages, some of their arms had been exposed. Some of their leg had been exposed and that was seen to be damaging the morality of the nation. So indeed, human rights defenders came to the working group and alerted us to what was happening in that particular country and we were able to write to the Prime Minister of that country, just asking for an investigation and restating what the international law and human rights law said and I have to say the reason I’m referring to that one is because it had a good ending. Those women were released from prison, those young women and all charges against them were dropped.
Jenelle: Wow, well done.
Elizabeth: But its interesting Jenelle in that it shows the different impact of governments responses to the pandemic because you might have said the lockdown and everything would have impacted everyone equally but it shows there is a gendered impact of some of the governments responses and that was one which I wouldn’t have … sitting in Sydney, I wouldn’t have ever imagined.
Jenelle: Well lets just stay on that. The gendered impact of that. We know that women have been hit the hardest from the effects of COVID, they’re the ones that largely bear the brunt of a reduction in pay or home schooling responsibilities, caring responsibilities, domestic duties. What else have you seen during this time.
Elizabeth: There’s a number of gendered impacts. So one is the significant increase in domestic and family violence, so violence against women. Now, you know, we know that even in a nation like Australia, a wealthy prosperous nation, almost two women a week, so more than one woman a week is murdered by her intimate partner and that really is a result of gender inequality. The fact that there are different power differentials between men and women. What we’ve seen during COVID is because everyone’s locked down in the house, because there’s a lot of financial stress on families and everything else but also because of a power dynamic, that the levels of violence against women and domestic and family violence have increased significantly. In fact, I think here in Australia, just from talking to the CEO of the 1800 Respect line, they’ve seen a 75% uplift in the number of calls to their service and I know many women’s [7.40] are reporting that as well.
Jenelle: Certainly some deep implications there for us to think about and Liz, I guess there are many people who would be listening to this who may well see something in the workplace, may see something in their neighbourhood. What should we be doing in that circumstance.
Elizabeth: I think if you’re witnessing a crime, then you need to ring the police for sure but if you’re in the workplace and someone discloses to you, most workplaces now see domestic violence as a workplace issue. Possibly your workplace will have some strong polices but if not, the best thing to do is to ring the 1800 Respect number which is the national 24 hour hotline and they’ll give you some good advice. You don’t have to know really what to do, what you want to do is to get that individual, either the victim of the abuse or indeed the perpetrator, you want to get them to a service which can actually set up and support them. So that’s one impact. The other really significant impact and here in Australia as well is the disproportionate amount of underpaid work that women are doing. So even prior to the pandemic, women did about three times the amount of unpaid work as men but coming into the pandemic, because of you know, kids out of childcare, home schooling, the additional care for elderly relatives, the amount of unpaid work that women are doing now has actually doubled during the pandemic. So its three times more going in and its doubled during the pandemic and we’ve seen that play out in so many other countries around the world as well. So that is having an impact and even in my own small team interestingly, Jenelle, you know, and we’re all focussed on gender equality. You know, some of my beautiful female staff have said that you know, the way that household chores and everything are being divided has placed an unfair burden on those particular women. The reason for that is often and just as one woman recounted it to me. She said, “look my husband is so worried about his job, he knows that if he doesn’t keep up every aspect of his productivity while he’s working from home, he’ll be the next to go“. So she also has a full time job as well but she explained how the home schooling particularly was falling almost solely on her. So I thought even when couples are aware of this, just because of a way society is structured, you know, the fact of the way work is structured, often the unpaid care work falls disproportionately to women.
Jenelle: What do you see as the role of organisations in that picture. You know, we’ve got some systemic sort of issues in society. I think, you know, a lot of people listening today are employers in organisations, leaders in business. Where do you see the role of business failing in that particular dynamic.
Elizabeth: I think business has a huge role to play here because I always used to say when I was a sex discrimination commissioner, if I could only do one thing to promote gender equality in Australia, what would it be. Well it would be the better sharing of paid and unpaid work between men and women. That would ensure that men had greater opportunity to be engaged in care and no only that women had greater opportunity to be involved in economic life, in working life as well and you know, good businesses are recognising that and helping men to step up, particularly around flexible work. Now interestingly with the pandemic, when we saw that flexible work and particularly working from home, it wasn’t that the technology couldn’t support that. The technology could always support that. It was inertia and habit that was stopping us from doing that and now I think that’s shifted. That means that both men and women can, you know, equally I hope be in flexible work arrangements but not only that, some of the good CEOs that I’ve been working with and some from the male champions of change organisation, they’ve been doing men’s only zoom calls. So getting all their senior men in the organisation, just to share experiences and stories of strategies as to how better to share caring at home, which has been fantastic.
Jenelle: Excellent.
Elizabeth: Unless you can see it, unless you can feel it, you know, its probably hard to understand what it is that you can do but there’s been some really good strategies from that and most importantly is that organisations have policies which don’t presume that women, only women make good carers. So that they’re, in a sense, gender neutral policies that both men and women can also be involved equally in care. I think it’s just so critical.
Jenelle: You know, when I listen to you speak Liz, I remember a conversation I was running, a focus group on … we were setting up a male champions of change actually, a spring off group for one of the industries and we ran a session and I was talking to a bunch of men who are really really committed to try and make a difference and we sat around and one man said “you know, I really feel disappointed with my wife’s organisation who, you know, she doesn’t have any flexibility, not like our workplace but she doesn’t have flexibility to leave early and pick up the kids and it’s just something I wish we could address” and I said “but why don’t you leave early and pick up the kids” and he just … and I don’t think he was a poor intentioned individual at all. It just hadn’t crossed his mind and it seemed really obvious to me. So I think sometimes, you know, you can’t attribute negative intentions, some people just don’t think of it. Their mindset has just been fixed one way so opening those stories up and highlighting that can make a real difference as well.
Elizabeth: That’s right and I think for senior men in organisations to actually make visible their caring responsibilities because when you do that, as a senior man, you kind of send a cultural message that I can be a strong player in the workplace and also an engaged father or son or whatever it is. So you know, there’s no substitute for not just having a good policy. By itself that’s not going to change anything. We need the licence and a critical mass of, particularly men, taking these types of arrangements.
Jenelle: Liz, we, you know, have a lot of conversations around the future of work which, you know, I probably would take out the words “future of” these days, that’s pretty much our reality but we talk constantly about trends like automation, globalisation, climate change, demographic changes. In the context of advancement and moving things forward, but you also think about it in the context of how that might deepen existing discrimination against women. What are some of the ways that that might happen and what could or should we be doing about that. Whether its sort of really strong intent around it.
Elizabeth: That’s one of the worries that I have and there’s so much written about the future of work and that’s globally as well, thinking about the ILO and other, you know, good organisations. Hardly any of them actually look at, you know, the place of women in the future of work. If you look at technology which is becoming ubiquitous and of course with COVID we’ve got accelerated digitisation, that presents both opportunities and risks for women. You know women that can access technology, the better balance working care. So that’s a real positive but the downside of it is technology has the possibility of taking women back to where they’ve been in the past, which is as peace workers because in the gig economy where everyone’s e-lancing, free-lancing. I mean the risk for women is that we’re substituting a digital sweatshop for a physical sweatshop and indeed in many countries of the world, if women’s work is seen to be in the home, that just reinforces the cultural and social norms that exist which actually limit women’s freedom. So its really about a deprivation of our liberty. So I think we have to think very carefully about technology and how it might benefit or not women, particularly around the informalisation also of women’s work and the fact that they are often in more precarious employment as here in Australia.
Jenelle: Where are you seeing signs of there’s real intentionality about the upside and downside of these things. So there’s real thought going into advancing technology. Is anyone getting this right.
Elizabeth: There some good NGOs that, look … even going back to technology, over 90% of AI and machine learning coders, so people involved in the development of those technologies, over 90% of them are men. Now those technologies are shaping our futures, not just our work futures but our … generally our life future. Because they’re being shaped largely by men, you know, potentially and I’m not suggesting that this is done by those men intentionally, but when you’ve got all men shaping our future, its probably going to be a future which is less open and available to women and where women’s needs are requirement and wants are actually not intentionally put into that future or put into those technologies. So I think it is really important that we address the under-representation of women in STEM (in science, technology, engineering, mathematics) because the absence of women in those disciplines means that there’s an absence of women voices and needs in the future that we’re all shaping together.
Jenelle: You have an unbelievable and well earned (by the way) platform and access point with the UN role that you have. There are just so many issues, potentially [17.03] up, you know, you’ve been candid in discussing how several countries are using the crisis to restrict women’s rights, to sexual health and reproductive care for instance. How do you bring attention to that. How do you go about deciding what you’re going to go after. How do you figure out what success looks like each and every day because it could be so overwhelming how many things there are to address.
Elizabeth: You’re absolutely right and sometimes, you know, you can feel really heavy. I mean I have to say at the moment, just looking around at all the violations, human rights violations against women and girls across the world, it is a really heavy feeling. The other thing I’d say is that in many roles you have across your life, you know, you’ll take a particular action and you’ll have an expectation of some kind of impact and the trouble with the roles that I currently have is when you work at the global system level, its so complex that this idea that any given action that I will take, a letter I will write, a country visit that I will do, a conversation that I will have, that that would have a known outcome is an illusion. Its highly unlikely. So I think when you’re working in that environment, instead of judging yourself on how much impact you’re driving on any one day, you need to stand back from that and say “no actually, if I’m going to do it that way, then I’m going to take on smaller and smaller tasks, the only tasks I know will deliver any given outcome” and indeed that’s not where I want to be. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to believe in the truth, the value and the rightness of the work that I do and I’m going to keep those principles as my guiding principles because otherwise I think you can lose faith in the possibility of change.
Jenelle: Absolutely.
Elizabeth: You can start to say, “well why doesn’t domestic violence or violence against women stop, does my work matter, do I matter” because I still believe that you just … you plant an idea, a change and the way change works is that irrespective of what happens immediately after, everything that every one of us does actually will at some point change the world. It might not be in the immediate future but it will be at some time in a longer term view and interestingly, I met a beautiful woman from Ethiopia recently and I also ask people … I say “look how do you stay emotionally replenished and sane in such a crazy world” and she said to me “look Liz, I believe that change always starts with a seed, so if you think about it here in Africa, on the African landscape you’ll see huge trees”. She said “that tree started with a seed came to be and then the rain came and watered that seed and then the sun came”. She said “so you do your part and know that I’ll do mine” and that’s how change happens because I think otherwise to hold the enormity of a responsibility of change, its overwhelming so you have to believe you’re part of seven billion ecosystem and you’re going to do your little part and you’ll know the next person will do theirs and I’ll stay with that.
Jenelle: That’s an incredible line of thinking. I mean is there an underlying train of optimism that you’d say that … pervades everybody that you work with in this space that ultimately there’s this hope and optimism that those seeds will sprout, that people will play their part. Is that a part of the common characteristics.
Elizabeth: I think most people that I, you know, engage with, we kind of live in a world which is between hope and despair and you have to practice hope as a discipline. It’s a learn to discipline, starting with from the minute you get out of bed and put your feet on the ground. All people are different. For me, to have a period of silence, which opens up possibility because I’m a different person today, to who I was yesterday and no only that, the world’s different today, to the world yesterday. So that opens up a whole new set of possibilities because if you bring that narrative of despair into the next moment, then you have no chance of a possibility of change. So I decided I don’t keep a chair at my table for despair. Sometimes I feel it but it won’t dine with me and I remind myself that while I’ve got a heartbeat and breath, I’ve got power and I’m going to use that power to create a better world. So I’m kind of hanging onto that.
Jenelle: I’m hanging on to it too right now. So hope is a learned discipline. I’d love to unpack that a little bit more. How do you learn it. How do you master it.
Elizabeth: Because its interesting. I spoke, in my role also, I’m the keeper of thousands of stories. As you said in your introduction, I’ve done 13 major reviews of national institutions, not just here in Australia but elsewhere. So when I go into listen to the stories, the stories which help the organisation learn, then I hold on to both the hopeful parts of it but also the distressing human harm that’s actually happening. That’s one of the skills I have, not many skills in life but one of the skills I have is the ability to sit deeply with human suffering. Do you know, I don’t really know how I’ve come to that place. I think maybe my parents, actually they ran medical surgeries and I used to sit with the patients, get them cups of tea and coffee, probably from about the age of four and they were people who were going to find out whether they had cancer or brain tumours or whatever so maybe that’s where it came from. But the ability to sit with human suffering and then hold that at what I call “the compassionate part of me”, my compassionate self, that’s the self that feels things emotionally and deeply, I’ve been able now to hold those stories and that emotion is a positive way rather than in a negative way that drags me down. So, you know, when I step up to advocate for change now, its not just me, Liz Broderick, speaking. Its Liz Broderick fuelled by the thousands of instances of human inequality that I’ve seen. So you’re kind of, you know, don’t get in my way. I will create change. I will be influential and powerful and I think it’s the feel I get from the emotion of the stories that helps me do that and the hope that it gives me as well but there is a better future and that shared humanity, that underneath all the brokenness that we’ve seen in the world, there’s such wholeness …
Jenelle: Absolutely.
Elizabeth: … that I will tap into and use in my work.
Jenelle: Wow that’s amazing. You know, your ability to sit deeply with human suffering, to be able to go okay how am I going to use this. Not turn away from it but you use this as a force for change. Society and people, the minute we get bored, we’ve got to get into our phones. The minute we get a bit hungry, we’ve got to grab some food. The minute … we have to relieve ourself of the discomfort really quickly and that moves us beyond what that moment is telling us. It doesn’t forge resilience. We avoid thinking about what do we do with this discomfort.
Elizabeth: And you know, really two moments that I found most deeply challenging. One was probably about eight or ten years ago where actually the Prime Minister and it was Kevin Rudd at that time, had asked me to go to the Acid Survivors Hospital in Dakar in Bangladesh and I was to present on behalf of the Australian government. The largest single check that they’d had for facial reconstruction surgery and I knew I had to steel myself to come into the hospital because acid violence, particularly across South East Asia, its huge, and its often young girls who have had acid thrown at them by jilted boyfriends or lovers and its seem as a personal issue and I wasn’t as good at self-care then. I think I just … I steeled myself and I went in and I met the most beautiful women. Women who were just so courageous in some many ways but so badly disfigured as well. But I still remember one beautiful young woman saying to me, she was ten and her father was quite educated and when this man came to her father’s door and he was … I don’t know, he would have been 30 years older than her, to ask for her hand in marriage, the father said no. He wanted his daughter to continue her education. A couple of days later this potential suitor had gone back to the house and this young girl’s father was out that time and when he knocked on the door, she said “let me bring you a cup of tea” and when she went to hand him the tea, he threw acid all over her. So she was ten and he said “look, if I can’t have you, no one can have you” and I had … I remember she was about the same age as my own daughter at that time. I remember having the most beautiful conversation with her. After I had sat with her, the discomfort of her physical appearance and we had such a beautiful conversation and she said “well you know, I might not be beautiful outside, she said, but I’m beautiful from within and that’s where my power comes from”.
Jenelle: Woooowwww!
Elizabeth: You know, what a gift and coming back to hope and holding onto the beauty of some of the things that I hear and bear witness to, that was one of those beautiful moments and then the other moment that I had and I’ve become better at self-care by this stage and this was just last year when I led the country mission, the UN’s country mission to Greece, looking at the status of women and girls there. I travelled all around the country. I talked to everyone from senior ministers to human rights activists and I also went out to some of the Greek islands. I went to Lesbos. Moira Camp is one of the camps on the Greek Islands which houses refugees and asylum seekers. This is a camp, you may know, that two weeks ago burnt down …
Jenelle: I do yeah.
Elizabeth: … yeah, it was built for 1,500 …
Jenelle: highly overcrowded camp, isn’t it.
Elizabeth: … having 20,000 in there and you know, just so deeply sad but I remember the morning I was going to go into Moira. I was travelling with a number of translators because I was interviewing women from Afghanistan and Sierra and Jordan and Turkey and everywhere, just to talk about their experiences and what was happening in the camp and how we could make it safer for women and I remember thinking I am just so powerless to create change. I mean, these incredibly courageous women will tell me their stories and what is it that I can do with those stories. Am I going to change European nations immigration policies – unlikely. So I thought about it and realised, well yeah, I may not have power externally although of course I have a very powerful platform and I will absolutely use that to tell the stories of these women but whilst I might not feel power externally, I can feel powerful internally because how you turn up and bear witness, that matters and that’s what I did going in there. I, you know, I had some beautiful poems, covered myself with white light, like did a lot of meditation because I’m a keen meditator and I went in there and I heard the stories of bravery and courage, the terrible stories of sexual violence either on the journey into the camp or while in there but I knew, you know, that I would have those stories as the fuel to actually step up and make strong recommendations to the Greek government, which I did and also reach out to some private sector organisations and just try to do whatever I could to create some better condition within the camp and at least give visibility to what was happening there. Not only was it a tragic kind of situation that’s happening, its in a sense become more tragic with the fire that started in Moira Camp following some COVID and then just the dispersal but one good thing was that 300 of the young minors and a number of them that I had met. So people who … young kids who were in the camp without any parental support, they have been relocated to Germany so you know, that was something, but you’ve got to hold onto the moments of … the moments of lightness and change which are possible.
Jenelle: So Liz, you talked about the change happening slowly. You work on things for months at a time, years at a time even. How does it feel when that change has happened. When you see the effect of the decisions that you’ve made or the conversations that you’ve had with others that’s translated to a woman getting promoted, somebody being released from a prison. How does that feel when you’re looking at those people.
Elizabeth: I feel quite euphoric I suppose. When I see that someone’s life has improved. Someone’s voice is now heard but they have more opportunities. A chance of at a different life. I mean that’s the reason I do the work that I do and you know, it’s a beautiful joy of the role that I have.
Jenelle: Okay, taking a step back, I feel like I probably need a breather with those kinds of examples which are so incredibly powerful, but taking a step back Liz to the beginning of your professional career when you started out in law. Even back then, you were in a pioneering space, you had a focus on creating, I believe a legal technology practice and you were the first female and part time lawyer in the firm. What were those early experiences like and were there things that happened there that shaped your views then about leading change.
Elizabeth: It’s interesting because when I look back across my whole career, pretty much its all been about leading change. I probably wouldn’t have thought that. I just thought, you know, I’m just doing my thing but now when I look back on it, change is the common element in every role that I’ve had or done and even starting from school. So I’m an identical twin and maybe that’s why I’m so focussed on fairness and equality as well. I think when you’re born an identical twin, you know right from the get go, that if your sister gets something and you don’t get something of equal value, then the worlds not fair and you’re going to do something about it.
Jenelle: That’s an interesting take, yes I can see that.
Elizabeth: And then interestingly, my parents were quite progressive. They wanted both my twin sister, Jane and I, to have strong and independent lives. So even from kindergarten, they sent us to separate schools. So my mum would trek Janey off in that direction, my dad would take me in that direction and we’d go to different schools and we used to dress up in each other school uniforms occasionally and swap schools.
Jenelle: Oh god, how fun!
Elizabeth: I still remember … we had lots of fun. I still remember the time when my twin sister and I had decided to swap schools. What I forgot to tell Janey was it was the day of a big year 9 science exam …
Jenelle: I feel like there’s inverted commas around that “forgot to tell her” [laugh].
Elizabeth: [laugh], you forgot to tell. I’m pleased to say I came third in the class, thanks very much, thank you Janey. When we decided about what it was that we wanted to do, we were both keen on something to do with people and interaction and so my sister actually started off life as a physiotherapist and is now a professor in Sydney University in the School of Medicine and I went into law and also went into technology law. Now it was the first time the University of New South Wales had ever offered a computer science degree with a law degree and I didn’t know where that would take me but I had strong interest in technology because my father had been a nuclear medicine physician and we had grown up with technology and imaging as part of our lives. You know, so then I did technology and law and even then, so I think there would have bene only three women in a class of about 100. You know, we each went off to do different things. The law side of it, there would have been many more women, they would have been approaching 50% but in the technology side, there would have been only about three women but I think that enabled me to do something which was a bit different. So that when I actually firstly started in my legal career, you know, I was in an area where firstly there weren’t many lawyers anyway and secondly there were no women. So it allowed me to kind of develop some kind of unique practice group and unique perspective and interestingly that’s really where I learnt about my passion for gender equality was some of the work that I did in the law firm.
Jenelle: Look, I know you were making some pretty exciting changes in the technology and law space when you were working, I think it was Blake Dawson at the time, now Ashurt. Why did you leave it and I guess what was the tipping point for you to make the shift from, you know, someone who’s forged out this new successful path there in technology and law and make that shift becoming a full time advocate of human rights and gender equality.
Elizabeth: That’s interesting because I loved every day of my work at Blakes as it was then. I had amazing experiences. I was out in internet incubators when the dot.com boom came along, experimenting with new ways to deliver legal services. I was experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI), you know, rudimentary forms of that in the early 90s and not only that, at that point I was running a team of lawyers. We had a day that started like any other day actually and then one of my junior lawyers came to tell me that she was pregnant and fantastic, when will you take parental leave and how exciting and in that same day another of my lawyers, that same afternoon, and said “guess what Liz, I’m pregnant”. Fantastic, when will you take parental leave and when the next one came the next day and what they didn’t realise was that I was pregnant [overtalking] …
Jenelle: Oh of course you were.
Elizabeth: we had half of [overtalking] team off at exactly the same time. So we had to try and reinvent the business which is … what was so much fun as well, because we all knew that we, you know, we didn’t want to just have our babies and you know, see you later. We wanted to be able to combine work and family. We reinvented the way we worked. We had flexible work arrangements but if you needed to come in on your day off so to speak, you could bring your baby in and you know, I still remember when I left Blakes, as you said at that tipping point, my kids were just so devastated because they had, in a sense, grown up as part of the firm …
Jenelle: They have all these fun aunties with all their cousins!
Elizabeth: … exactly, they had lots of things there but I’d kind of come to a stage where I’d started to do much more advocacy, about work and family, about the particular ramifications for women in trying to build strong careers and those long hours kind of … they were directly overlapping with, you know, child rearing and fertility and how that was going to work and that we needed to reinvent how work happened. So it was at that time I had an opportunity because the sex discrimination commissioner, it was Prue Goward before me, her term was expiring and the government were looking around for a new sex discrimination commission and I was fortunate enough to apply. Look, to be honest, I was as surprised as anyone that [laugh] … that I was successful in the application but there you are, and that started me on a new journey which was just such a brilliant journey as well. I mean there is no better job I think, than the sex discrimination commissioners role.
Jenelle: Well exactly, I mean Liz lets be honest. What you did with that role, longest serving sex discrimination commissioner and during that time, I mean so many things that you did in that time but certainly one of the more recognised, much recognised initiatives that you put in place was the Male Champions of Change initiative and I’ve heard you say actually in order for change to happen you have to disrupt the status quo. It’s something I agree with. So when so much about everything feels like it needs to change, how did you land on the angle around working with the men in power. How did you land on that being the position that you would take to disrupt the status quo.
Elizabeth: It’s interesting because I think I was a bit of a slow learner. I mean I clearly came into that role thinking, listen this is women’s business and it’s the collective action of women that has got us all the rights we have today and we just need to continue with that and really what I needed to do was open up my contact list and actually that we would go from there and I absolutely believe the collective action of women and the fact that some women I’ll never know who she is but if she cared enough a couple of generations ago to step up and demand change, that’s why I can live the life that I live today, I will also honour that and acknowledge that and we do need the continuing collective action of women but we’re missing a part and that is really supplementing that collective action with the collective action of men because what I learnt in the first couple of years that gender equality is about the redistribution of power, whether its in the nation, whether its in organisations or indeed back into the family and if we want to redistribute power, we need to work with those who largely, not exclusively but largely hold the levers of power and that is usually men. So having come to that realisation and working with some good men at that time and also women who saw that as well, we decided that if that was the case, we really needed to step up and ring the most powerful men in the nation which is what I did. I remember ringing me, even like Alan Joyce and the head of Woolworths, the head of the banks and the beautiful man, Glenn Boreham, who was the head of IBM at the time and I made a personal plea. I said “will you use your power and influence, your collective voice and wisdom to step up beside women, not to speak for them or to rescue them but to step up beside them and really take strong action on gender equality here in Australia” and I still remember Glen. He had twins, a boy and a girl and the idea that his daughter would never have the same opportunities as her twin brother, all because she was a girl was just so abhorrent to him …
Jenelle: And that’s got to hit home when you bring it as an example like that in his own life.
Elizabeth: … absolutely. So and once you’ve got the first couple of men to sign up, you know, its easy to get the others on board. So we started small. We started with six and I still remember the first couple of meetings. It was almost like we were running group therapy. You know, every one had their hands in their … their heads in their hands saying “oh my god, I’ve tried everything and nothing seems to work” but we kind of came out of that phase and we also realised that no one of us acting independently would ever be as good as all of us acting together and that’s what we were determined to do. We needed to change the national systems and structures that were still holding back women and ten years on now from that, we have around 270 Male Champions of Change. We’ve got 17 different groups including one in Pakistan and the Philippines, one out of New York and London, all of them stepping up with each other, trialling different strategies because there is no one strategy that, by itself, works. It’s a combination of many things. So they’re running hundreds and hundreds of real life experiments and then offering up that experiment or initiatives together with the learnings from it to everyone else in the coalition, so all 270, to shamelessly rip off and make better in their own organisations, that is really what lifts everyone. So its been a really, not only disruptive strategy but its one that actually has driven impact in many areas, there’s still so much work to go though and they are imperfect leaders. They’re not male champions because they’ve got it sorted. They’re male champions because they want to lead tangible action to create change.
Jenelle: A bit of a surprise here Liz. I get to interview a range of interesting people in this podcast series and as a matter of fact, the last person I interviewed was Wendy Harmer and we were talking about her experiences as something of a pioneer, female stand-up comic, one of the first leading female broadcaster on radio, the first to be running a women’s news series etc etc and I mentioned to her that I was going to be interviewing you next and she actually wanted to ask you a question. So I might just throw that one in.
Elizabeth: Go Wendy! [laugh].
Wendy: Hi Liz, its Wendy Harmer here. My question is. What is happening in our top companies in Australia. The latest statistic says that we are 80 years behind, we’re going backwards. Some companies have no women at all in their leadership teams. Its really disappointing. What’s the answer.
Elizabeth: It’s such a great question. Wendy, thanks for that and Jenelle. You’re right. I’m just looking at the censor data which just came out last week from Chief Executive women. While there’s been good progress on women on the board, so over 30% of women on boards and I remember when I first started with this, it was down at 8% so that’s good progress. It’s the women, female CEOs, they’re declining if I look at the ASX 200 companies and its also women in the C Suite and that part of the organisation is so much more difficult to shift because it comes down to culture.
Jenelle: It does.
Elizabeth: To retain women through to the most senior level is about ensuring that you have a culture which actively and intentionally includes them and the fact is pretty much every organisation in Australia, you know, was created by men for men and is largely run by men and what we’ve done is poured in a few women and stirred and not surprisingly, they’ve been exited for a whole variety of reasons from the organisation and indeed, what I’ve come to learn is that if we don’t actively and intentionally include women, the systems which actually preference the male life trajectory and the male way of operating because the organisation has been created by men, for men. Those systems will unintentionally exclude women and that’s happening all across the country. The fact is whilst we’ve seen some really fabulous female CEOs, there’s not a critical mass of women coming up behind them. Women are taking their talents and starting as, you know, as founders, starting new enterprises and that’s a really positive story of women entrepreneurs. But I think until we actually have some really strong interventions and I’m talking targets. So you know, we can talk about a quota. Quotas are usually applied at the board level. I’m talking about strong targets. I’m talking about intentional action and strong leadership, this is not going to shift itself. What have we learned from Male Champions. We’ve learnt that if the CEO himself steps in, change happens. So we need more of that. We need people being held accountable and that gender equality is not seen as just a discretionary, something nice to have. Rather it should be seen as absolutely core to business strategy because what we know from the research now is that those organisations which have more women, particularly at the senior level actually performs better. They outperform other organisations, but it’s one thing to know the business case in our heads Jenelle, we have to believe it in our hearts and I think that’s where there’s a disconnect. So we have to engage people’s hearts and that’s really where the story telling comes into being.
Jenelle: And I think that has been the blend of what you’ve done, always armed with research, always armed with the stats but those stories that you tell, you know, the holding of the light on the twin and saying you’re going to have a vastly different experience with one of your twins as compared to the other. Those are the things that make the data leap off the page that connect the head to the heart.
Elizabeth: Yeah that’s right because, you know, when you connect people’s hearts then you spur them to action.
Jenelle: Liz, as you know this podcast is about change and you’ve used my favourite words “change happens” throughout this and I know it’s a big and broad question on what your lessons are in leading change, but there really aren’t too many people I know who have created the levels of collective change that you have. If I was to ask you for your top insights on how to inspire and drive and sustain change, what would you say.
Elizabeth: What have I learnt. I’ve learnt that change doesn’t come in a giant leap. It comes of millions and millions of small steps that everyone can take. So that’s one thing. I’ve learnt that, I mean maybe earlier on I used to rush in with a reform agenda and you know, try and get everyone on board. What I’ve now learnt is that change happens more organically when you open up spaces for all the views to be aired. You know, so that you create psychological safety where you’re vulnerable in the way you talk and present change and that you build collaboration and build coalitions of change in a deeply human way which of course is part of the story telling. Sol that’s one thing I’ve learnt. Another thing that I’ve learnt is when you step into a conversation with someone, always assume good intent. I mean it’s a small shift but if you step into a conversation going “oh my god, he’s never going to buy this, what I’m trying to sell, you know, previous experience and his track record shows that he just doesn’t get it at all”. If you step in with that mindset, the conversation actually has nowhere else to go and not only that, you and that individual, whether it’s a he or a she, you might have quite different views but if you can get beyond the view to actually understanding what an influence is that has shaped this individual to hold the view that they hold, then you can step into their shoes for a minute and you can feel some commonality with them and maybe just to give you one example of that. The Chair of the working group at the minute. We come from the five regions of the world. We couldn’t be more different but we’ve all come together for the noble cause of promoting the rights of women and girls across the world and we need to traverse some pretty emotive territory, from abortion to sex work, to surrogacy. You know, where depending on where you come from, you’ll have a different view and just to give you an idea. One of … a beautiful rapporteur that comes from Africa, she has a view on abortion which is probably more restrictive than the rest of us. Now we could disagree with her view but actually what we’ve come to understand is the reason she holds that view is that when she was a very young girl, maybe around ten, there was a change of government in her nation and her parents were taken to a re-education camp, they were arrested and taken away and she was there, left to bring up her brother and sister. Now when she needed help, who reached out but the Pentecostal church. So she grew up in a strong faith in the Pentecostal church and that has helped shape her views about topics such as abortion. So when you understand that that’s some of influences that have shaped her, we can all say “yeah, absolutely we understand why you hold the view, so lets work out where the areas of common ground are because that’s where we can build a platform for reform” and I think you know, they’re some of the lessons that I’ve taken to heart in the work that I try to do to build the bridges of understanding between diametrically opposed views but so I can find some common ground from which to reform and change.
Jenelle: Wow. Such powerful lessons. I know I really feel like it’s … that’s kind of willingness to really unpack the “why people believe” what they do must open up such new areas of understanding and growth. I think that’s really powerful. So Liz, so much here to be kind of getting our heads around. What are some of the basic tools that we can arm ourselves with in everyday life to combat discrimination.
Elizabeth: I think the first thing we can do is it starts in the family. So we can look at the gender division of work. We can look at what we’re teaching our sons as opposed to our daughters. So that’s one thing. The other thing I think we can do is if we look around us and we can ask the question “if I’m not seeing 50/50, I need to ask the question why not” and what I mean by that is look women make up 50% of Australia’s population, in fact a bit over 50%. So if I’m looking at my workplace and I’m not seeing 50% of people coming to the organisation are women or I’m not seeing 50% of them on the talent development course or indeed on the board, I’m asking 50/50 if not, why not. Now there may be, there’s likely some explanation for it but it will help to surface the barriers which need to be removed if women are to thrive equally to men in a workplace.
The last three … three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: I would love to talk to you all day long but I’m not going to be able to do that. So unfortunately we are drawing to a close but I always finish each of these conversations on a more light hearted note. First one, what's a misconception that most people have about you.
Elizabeth: I mean one of the things I think some people have about me, because I come from a place of respected dignity, its integral to my work, that I’m just going to be a pushover but …
Jenelle: Hang on, people think you’re a pushover … that is not a misconception I have about you!
Elizabeth: They may well because of the softness or whatever, you know, try to create … I can assure you, I’m absolutely not. When I speak, get out of my way, so maybe that’s one of them.
Jenelle: Okay and what’s one guilty pleasure.
Elizabeth: Lots of guilty pleasures. I think probably … the main one at the minute. So not to read anything COVID related but just a binge watch scandi crime thrillers. I love doing that from Netflix to [52.11] to On Demand. If its On Demand, you name it.
Jenelle: There’s a bunch of new stuff released, we’ll have to chat about [overtalking] …
Elizabeth: I’m very excited about that so that’s my guilty pleasure.
Jenelle: And what's one thing that you’re hopeless at.
Elizabeth: There’s a lot of things that I’m hopeless at. I think probably the most … the one that I’m most hopeful at is probably domestic duties. It was interesting. I was talking at an organisation the other day and I had the pleasure of my niece giving the introduction and she started off by saying, she said “look Aunty Lizzie will talk to you a lot about, you know, sharing unpaid work, I just need to tell everyone that when the vacuum man came a few months ago and asked Aunty Lizzie where the vacuum was, it took her at least a good half hour to find it”. So yeah, that’s me, I’m hopeless at cleaning, cooking, domestic work. I can do it if necessary but I’m not very good at it.
Jenelle: Okay fair enough, its always good to know where your skills are and capitalise on those ones. So all good. Liz, I really cannot thank you enough for your time today. Its been such a rich conversation. Many many things for us all to take away from that but you know, if I was to try to summarise what's been an incredibly rich conversation, some of the things that I’ve really taken away from this is the need to really get underneath the systemic issues that are going on. What are the underlying causes. You talk about the redistribution of power. Even the underlying drivers for people’s beliefs and opinions. It allows you to find the common ground. It allows you to create the cut through and the advancement of change. I love the story of, you know, Ethiopian friend that you spoke about, the seeds of change will eventually sprout. If you do your part, I’ll do mine. I love the recognition of your … the ability to sit deeply with human suffering can do, when you can take those stories on, when you can use it as something to fuel you and very often we do feel a bit powerless in circumstances but as you said, how you turn up and bear witness is power in and of itself and we can again use this ignite change and I think intentionality to the decisions that we make in business is an important one as well. Things won’t just happen because you think its going to or because you have, you know, you have a positive attitude. The systems aren’t necessarily always built to help things along so bringing some intentionality, some purpose and consciousness to the decisions that we make in business is really critical here and of course, your ability to harness the power of the collective to ignite change is something that we could all learn plenty from. So Liz, thank you so much, its been a pleasure to speak with you today.
Elizabeth: Thank you so much Jenelle, its been fantastic, I’ve really enjoyed it, great conversation. Thanks for having me.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Wendy Harmer

Dr. Bronwyn King
Founder & CEO, Tobacco Free Portfolios

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.
Jenelle: Hi. I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to the Change Happens podcast, a conversation with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today I have the great pleasure of speaking with Dr Bronwyn King who’s an absolute firecracker when it comes to making change happen. She’s a radiation oncologist and founder and CEO of Tobacco Free Portfolios and, as you will soon hear, she’s on a mission – a mission to save a billion lives from tobacco, the greatest preventable cause of premature death. And he has well and truly already made a formidable impact. By working collaboratively with the global finance sector, large banks, insurers and pension funds, Bronwyn and her team have been pivotal in major financial organisations in several countries moving to tobacco-free finance. Their efforts have shifted more than US $12b away from investment in tobacco, putting a spotlight on the critical role of the finance sector in global tobacco control. Her collaborative work with finance industry executives has contributed to more than 40% of Australian pension funds implementing tobacco-free investment mandates. The not-for-profit is now working with more than 100 financial organisations, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, banks, insurers and fund managers. Bronwyn also has other accolades to her credit. She was awarded an Order of Australia, an AO, in 2019 for distinguished service to community health. In 2015 she got the Victorian Heath Award for preventing tobacco use and 2019 saw her achieve Melbournian of the Year. I know we’re going to learn a lot from Bronwyn and I look forward to exploring her story. Bronwyn, welcome! How are you?
Bronwyn: I’m well thanks Jenelle. It’s great to be here.
Jenelle: Bronwyn, before I get into our detailed questions I guess I’d love for you to kind of just set a scene here on what the change is that you’re trying to make happen?
Bronwyn: Well, look, in your introduction I think you outlined it pretty well at a very high level, which is that the World Health Organisation predicts that the world’s on track for 1 billion tobacco-related deaths this century. So 1 billion. There’s only 7.5 billion of us. So if we pause and think for a minute about the scale of this it’s an extraordinary problem. And the world’s health sector is really aware of that and is doing absolutely everything it can to try to help people who suffer as a result of tobacco and to try to implement better preventative health policy. Governments are on board. There’s this huge treaty, the only global health treaty that exists, that is the UN Tobacco Control Treaty and 181 countries have signed and ratified that. And governments everywhere are busily implementing better regulation to reduce the impact of tobacco on the community. And then we have teachers. We have parents. We have everyone standing together to bring an end to tobacco except the finance sector, and that’s the missing piece that we are trying to address at Tobacco Free Portfolios.
Jenelle: Mm, I’m going to get into the how of all of that shortly. But tell me how COVID-19 has been affecting the progress of your work this year? I know that you typically spend a significant amount of time on planes and in other countries. You’ve been based in Melbourne as you’ve just said. So you faced into even tighter restrictions. How have you made sure that Tobacco Free Portfolios has stayed visible and high up on the agendas during this period of time?
Bronwyn: Well I think a couple of really interesting things have happened. I mean one is that the world has realised that health is a really fundamental part of whatever conversation you’re having. And it’s really shown people during the COVID pandemic that if you haven’t got health established as a really set solid baseline, you can’t really build anything else on top of that. And so when Tobacco Free Portfolios, when me and my team we go out there and we’re engaging with finance leaders, for many years we’ve really had to really do a lot of nudging and moving and shaking to try to put health on the agenda. But we’re not having to nudge or move or shake anymore because it’s already on the agenda. So we’re finding that people want to talk about health far more than ever before, even the finance sector. And along with that is a very robust discussion around sustainability and sustainability frameworks for finance organisations. So once upon a time that was considered fairly niche, or boutique, or a bit out there but it’s not any more. It’s a really – a mainstream discussion. So we’ve been very pleased to be able to play into that. And also when it comes to, you know, my personal travel, absolutely that ground to an absolute halt in March along with everybody else around the world. And initially I was very disappointed thinking that that would be, you know, a terrible barrier or challenge. But in fact it’s been a year and it’s been surprising because it’s been the opposite, because rather than having to book meetings in with people sort o two or three or even four months in advance and look at these very tricky schedules and fly myself all over the other side of the world and take huge amounts of time out of a normal life, instead I just sit in front of my computer and ask somebody if they’re accept my meeting request. So in fact I’ve found that people are far more accessible and far more open to the exact conversation that we’re trying to have.
Jenelle: Oh that’s – I mean they’re two incredibly positive upsides, I guess, not having to convince people about the criticality of health on the agenda is one and you already pack so much into your days. I’ve known what your schedules have looked like in the past so the idea that you could now put in even more. But yours is a fascinating story of making change happen, Bronwyn. So I want to go back a little to understand a bit more about the evolution. Tell me – tell me how you arrived at radiation oncology as your medical speciality of choice?
Bronwyn: Well that was a complete accident actually. So I started my medical career not entirely sure of where I was going to land but I thought that the most likely thing would be sports medicine because I had been an elite swimmer and a very nice junior swimmer. I represented Australia at a junior level.
Jenelle: You can’t just swim in a pool?
Bronwyn: No, can’t just swim in a pool. Mind you, I wanted to be an Olympic champion! That didn’t quite work out, did it? But I – but I was really lucky actually in that I was able to take a lot of my lessons from elite sport and convert them into high performance, I guess, in other areas of my life. And there are some things that it doesn’t matter if you’re, you know, in a swimming pool or on the basketball court or doing a final exam or standing in front of an enormous crowd presenting. They’re similar skills that I’ve been able to use. So I was very lucky, I think, to have a sporting career as a young person. So I started medicine thinking that’s where I was going to – was probably going to end up. And in fact I did work as the team doctor for the Australian swimming team for 10 years. So I absolutely loved that but it was this incredible three month term that I spent working on the lung cancer ward at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne that really changed me. And in fact it was the person I worked for who changed me, which is often the way it, isn’t it?
Jenelle: Mm-hmm. It is. Someone inspiring.
Bronwyn: You know we think – that’s it! We think it’s the topic or the place but it’s not. It’s your boss. It’s who it is. And so I worked with this brilliant doctor, Professor David Ball, who’s one of the world’s best lung cancer doctors, and I just couldn’t help but be inspired by him. And during that three month term I really saw what tobacco was doing to people. I saw how people in their 40s and 50s and 60s had been really lured into smoking when they were children or teenagers. Many of them had tried to quit and really tried very hard over many years, but there they were at the Cancer Centre being treated for lung cancer. That was the ward I was working on. And despite living in what I think is an incredible country with all of this great medicine and all of these sophisticated technologies, there wasn’t really very much we could offer our patients in terms of curative treatment. And nearly all of my patients suffered terribly and nearly all of the died. And as a result of that I had this first-hand, front row seat, I guess, watching the disaster of tobacco play out in front of me. And so it just got stuck in my head as a career that had some big gaps in it. A career that really needed enormous change and enormous attention. And so, yes, I ended up doing radiation oncology and I became a specialist in 2008.
Jenelle: So how do you go from being that radio oncologist, busy treating lung cancer victims to then mobilising funders around the world to stop investing in tobacco? It feels like there’s got to be some story bridging those two things. How did that happen?
Bronwyn: Well, again, it was an accidental story. So I was just buying a house with my husband and we sat down with the accountant, and this was in sort of late 2009/2010. We sit down with the accountant and he just says to us “Come on guys you’ve got to sort out your money. How much money do you have in your superannuation plan?” And I knew superannuation existed, but that was it. I had never paid any attention. I don’t think I even knew the name of the fund, which is a terrible thing to admit but that is how it was at that moment. So he said “Sort it out”. So I organised to meet with the representative for that super fund and we met at the cafeteria at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. He’d brought along some material, showed me how much money I had and then the meeting had finished. So I shook his hand and walked away and completely as an afterthought I rushed back and I said “Oh look, I forgot to ask you, was I meant to tell you what to do with that money?” And he looked at me and said “No, no, no, you don’t need to worry at all. You’re in the default option. It’s completely taken care of”. And I said “Oh, option? Does that mean there are other options?”
Jenelle: It’s what the word suggests!
Bronwyn: That’s what it does suggest, doesn’t it? And so he just looked at me, but then he rolled his eyes at me and said “Oh, look, there is this one greenie special option for people who have a problem with investing in mining, alcohol or tobacco”. And then there was silence. And I sort of just absorbed what he said, and I said “Did you just say tobacco?” and he said “Yes”. And I said “So am I currently investing in tobacco?” And he said “Oh, yes, everyone is”. And that was it. That was just this incredible moment where I thought I just can’t continue.
Jenelle: The irony of sitting there in a hospital talking to him.
Bronwyn: And that’s it! That’s it! And I thought gosh, you know, here I am, I knew absolutely what tobacco did to people. I’d seen it so many times. Not just dozens of times. Perhaps not even just 100’s of times, maybe more than 1,000 of my patients had either died or suffered absolutely terribly as a result of tobacco and then there I am finding out that my own money invests in the companies that make the products that are killing them. And so, anyway, I haven’t really slept since that moment. So, you know, it’s about 10 years of being slightly unsettled by that discovery.
Jenelle: So what happened then? You go, OK, somehow I’m in advertently bankrolling this situation. How did you take that discomfort of the moment and turn that into “I’m going to do something about this”?
Bronwyn: Well I think straight away. I have to be honest, straight away at that exact moment I actually had a little thought to myself where I just said, well, that’s it. I just can’t leave that. That has to be fixed. And I mean I really remember it, right there in the cafeteria, just saying no. Nope, that is not – nope! That can’t go on. It just can’t. And so a few weeks later I was the radiation oncologist who was set to present at our Friday afternoon meeting where one radiation oncologist presented an interesting or challenging case to all of the others. We just had this once weekly meeting.
Jenelle: OK.
Bronwyn: And so when it rolled around to my meeting I, instead of presenting an interesting case, I presented this discovery. And I said to everybody I’m sure that you’re all going to be equally concerned but in fact all of us here at Peter MacCallum, all of us who know only too well what tobacco does to humankind, all of us currently invest our own super in these companies. And by then I’d done some homework and I had asked that super fund representative, I said to him, you know, can you just explain what exactly do I hold shares in? You know, what have I – what’s going on? And he explained that it was in the international shares portion of my portfolio, and for me that was quite a large portion, which it is for most Australian investors, especially the under 50s. And he explained that the top holdings for me in that international shares portion was number one, was British American Tobacco. Number two Imperial Tobacco. Number four was Philip Morris and number five was Swedish Match Company. So four of the top five holdings for me in that international shares portion were tobacco companies. And so everybody was very disappointed and straight away they said, look, you have to tell the CEO of the hospital. I did. He then rang me back one day later and said, look, I’ve booked you in to speak to the CEO and the investment team at the pension plan for the hospital. And that then kicked off the very first conversation that I ever had with a big financial institution. And that is quite different to the conversation that I have now because you got -
Jenelle: Exactly. I was just about to say that firstly I’m gratified that everybody was suitably shocked and outraged and wanted to do something about it. That’s a really reassuring response. But, you know, as you say it’s a different world. You’re a doctor. You – you’re now finding yourself appealing to people in an industry that you have no background in – finance, governance, funds management, all the layers that exist within the finance industry. Oh, it’s a whole other language. Completely different mental models. Completely different business models. Completely different motivations. How did you go about making yourself heard in that world much less being able to influence them to redirect what would have been very profitable investments, right, moving them elsewhere? How do you get heard?
Bronwyn: Well I think first things first is I just did it step by step. So I think in a way being a little bit naive about how complicated it was, was probably a great thing. And sometimes I think that it’s actually an advantage that you don’t have a background in a particular sector for these very big issues that have global implications because it actually -
Jenelle: Otherwise you’d run away and go it’s all to hard!
Bronwyn: - but also it might influence the way you think. Whereas if you come from the outside you can offer a completely fresh perspective. And I think that that’s probably what I had at the start which was a big advantage. Which was just coming in and saying I know that this is how it’s always been but can we just stop for a second because that doesn’t make sense. In today’s context, that doesn’t make sense. And with tobacco it really is the most black and white sustainability issue there is.
Jenelle: I understand that, you know, you being a radiation oncologist, you being in that lung cancer ward and seeing the aftermath or the impacts of tobacco, tobacco has a very deep and personal meaning to you, but when you speak to CEOs or national leaders who wouldn’t necessarily have a personal connection to the cause - like, they would care. As you’ve just said they’re all good people who understand it’s important but they have many, many things to care about and no doubt there’d be lots of people making lots of well evolved presentations to them about their particular issue. How do you get these people to prioritise this issue?
Bronwyn: So I would often come home from a presentation – I can remember doing this very early - it was maybe 2012 or 13, and I remember coming home saying to my husband “Gosh, you wouldn’t believe it? I did this presentation and someone chased me out of the room to the lift and said just so you know, my mum died of lung cancer when she was 55 and I just want to say thank you so much for doing this, it means a lot, keep up the good work”. And so I told my husband that. And then about a week later I said, “You won’t believe it” - I come home again “You won’t believe it! This man chased me into the taxi queue and said look, just so you know my brother just died of lung cancer, he was 61, he’s got 2 teenage kids, keep up the good work”. All of these people suddenly had their stories that they wanted to share with me. So actually the impact of tobacco is so vast, 8 million people will die in 202 because of tobacco. Eight million people. It’s about 6 times the number of deaths from COVID to put that in perspective. So it is - and all of those deaths are terrible from COVID. That’s a terrible tragedy and many of them should have been prevented and – but in terms of prioritising it on the agenda I think that it also did come down to sometimes quite a personal reflection for the CEOs. I mean one of the biggest financial institutions in the world is Crédit Agricole and their CEO, Philippe Brassac, he just spoke at an event that we had this year in 2020 and he said that when he was considering this issue of tobacco, he went to his family, he went to his friends, he went to his community, he went to his colleagues, and he said to all of them would you want your children to smoke? And every single one of them came back to him and said no. And he just thought why on earth would I be financing or investing in a company that everyone is trying to protect their own children from?
Jenelle: So true.
Bronwyn: But tobacco’s really not complicated. You can’t use the product safely. There’s a UN treaty that exists because the problem is so big. And there’s really no other strategy, there’s no half way that you can - or approach that you can take with this issue. You can’t engage with the companies. That makes no sense. It’s a futile exercise and it’s not recommended by the UN or the World Health Organisation. There’s these other financial strategies that might exist like best of sector investing or impact investing, but they also make no sense when it comes to tobacco. So really you’re either in or you’re out. Which does mean that it is one of the easier sustainability issues to act on.
Jenelle: I once heard you share a fascinating story about how you think about changing people. And you used the analogy of a protractor and shifting people by degrees. Can I get you to explain that approach?
Bronwyn: Yes, absolutely. So I am a bit of a maths geek so sorry about the protractor analogy but I – it’s just how I imagine taking people on that journey of influence. And so I imagine this protractor out in front of me going from 0 to 180 degrees and when I meet with someone, so say I’m meeting with a CEO of a big financial organisation, in that first few minutes I try to work out where they sit on that protractor. And if they’re really not interested in the conversation at all and really, you know, you’re not getting good vibes, say that’s 0. Over at 180 degrees you’ve got someone who’s totally on board and is ready to donate to the charity that we’ve got running. And in between you’ve got everything else. So I try to find out where are they approximately on that scale and once I’ve worked that out I try to pitch my conversation 5 to 10 degrees in front of that. And I do that really strategically because there has to be some sort of magnetic tension between the two of you so that you can pull someone along on that journey that takes them from 0 to 180 in whatever timeframe it is. All I do when I meet with someone is aim for that. Just move them 5 to 10 degrees along and then try to secure a second meeting so that you can keep the dialogue and keep the conversation going.
Jenelle: You launched the Tobacco Free Finance Pledge at the UN Headquarters and, look, it wasn’t like you were invited to run that session as I understand it. You actually had to go about – you had to create this, you know, idea from conception right through to getting people along and getting them signed up. I can’t imagine how or where you’d even start to make something like that happen. I don’t know who takes it upon themselves to say of look I’m going to convene my own UN thing and make that all happen. It sort of defies my sort of frame of possibilities. Tell me about that initiative. Tell me about that process because that’s got to have been a herculean task.
Bronwyn: It, look, it really was. And I think, again, it just sort of evolved step by step. If I had of known how difficult it would have been at the start maybe I wouldn’t have done it. So I think a little bit of naivety is always good. It doesn’t hurt. But what had happened was in 2016/17 Clare Payne, my colleague at Tobacco Free Portfolios and I, we found ourselves on the global sustainable finance circuit and we were going to all of these events and we ended up being invited to the UN, during the UN General Assembly in 2017. And there we were at the UN and I could see that everybody who was addressing a global challenge of any kind seemed to be having an event. And I clocked that and I thought well that’s all very interesting. And then later that year in 2017 our work was going very well. The biggest bank in Europe, BNP Paribas, had just decided to go tobacco free and that was a $2b decision and everything was, you know, everything was great. So we’re all in a good mood – it’s summer in Australia, it’s right before Christmas and I thought, you know what? I rang up Clare and I said well why don’t we have an event at the UN? Everybody else seems to so why don’t we do one as well? And she’s like absolutely, yes.
Jenelle: She’s feeling quite festive. She goes, right, let’s do it!
Bronwyn: She’s feeling – yep, she said right, let’s do it. So I emailed three different UN agencies and I said to them, look, would you consider partnering with us to have an event during the UN General Assembly in September of 2018? And I honestly thought that there was maybe a 1% chance that 1 of them would say yes. But I was wrong because 2 days later all 3 of them came back and said absolutely, we’ll all partner with you. And I thought oh my goodness! OK, wow, this is fantastic! And so then I reached out to a whole lot of business partners and colleagues from all over the world and I said, look, if we had this event at the UN would you come? Would you come and speak? And they all said absolutely, yes we would. And then I decided to give the event a name and we decided that were going to launch this initiative called The Pledge – the Tobacco Free Finance Pledge. And then we were having our first phone call, and this was only about 8 months out, and we were all on the phone from all around the world and I was getting all very excited saying of this is going to be magnificent, it’s wonderful, everyone’s going to come together, it’s going to be terrific and then one of the heads of one of the UN agencies said to me oh, Bronwyn, you do realise if you’re going to have an event at the UN during the UN General Assembly you need to have at least one prime minister and one president that has signed off on your event.
Jenelle: Oh, no biggie!
Bronwyn: No biggie! But then he goes and – and one of them really needs to be from the G7.
Jenelle: Oh, of course they do.
Bronwyn: And at that moment I think I just sort of froze and said, right, right, right. Just leave that with me. Now, so who’s organising our next call? And I though oh my gosh. A prime minister and a president. Righty-oh! Well what on earth do we do with that. So, of course, I write down our prime ministers and presidents from – I padded it out to the G20, and then I thought well what are we going to do here? So I wrote to all these business leaders around the world and I said, look, can anyone help us with this, you know, absolutely, you know, miraculous task, but let’s just see what’s going to happen. And about two weeks later the CEO of BNP Paribas, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, he wrote back to me and he said well what do you think about this. And he’d attached a letter that he had written and it was signed by the CEOs of four of Frances biggest financial organisations and they’d written directly to President Macron asking him to consider supporting the event at the UN and he said, you know, their letter said that they’d all worked with us at Tobacco Free Portfolios and we were doing good things and we were going to launch this Pledge and would his team accept a meeting when I was next in Paris. And the bottom line is they said yes. And so a month later I was in Paris as the Élysées meeting with President Macron’s advisor and asking if he would support the event. And President Macron’s advisor said look, President Macron is totally into sustainability. He’s going to love this. Go back home, sort this out with your Prime Minister and Australia and France we will both go together and we’ll sponsor this event at the UN. So it’s all great. And I was like OK, all right, done.
Jenelle: I hope we were on board.
Bronwyn: So this is it. So, well, this podcast doesn’t go long enough for me to tell you the whole story, but suffice to say that on the way home I secured the support of the Head of the UN Tobacco Control Treaty, she said she would come. I met the Director General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros, who was sensational and he listened very carefully to what we were trying to do and he gave me a big smile and he said that is the missing piece of global tobacco control. Absolutely I’ll be there. I’ll speak at your event. And then I came home and to cut a very long story short, when President Macron came to Australia on the 1st of May 2018 I was very, very fortunate to be invited to the official dinner to welcome him and it was at the Opera House in Sydney. And that night I met him, he did sign off on our event. At the time the Australian Prime Minister was Prime Minister Turnbull. He signed off on the event and there we were in September 2018 at the UN with this full complement of world leaders from the UN sector, from finance, from health, from government agencies and we launched our flagship initiative. And that has, I mean that journey taught me so many things but having that initiative as our flagship initiative has been an incredible thing. We’ve now got financial organisations from more than 20 countries that have signed up to it and they control more than $11 trillion US dollars.
Jenelle: Far out, Bronwyn. I feel like I need a bit of lie down after that.
Bronwyn: Well so do I! Even retelling it is exhausting. But the thing is that year I – I mean my, you know, I had a terrible carbon footprint that year because I kept seeing people. So I mean that is the other thing that was really important was to go and see people and meet them in person. I mean obviously now people will accept Zoom meetings and Teams and all of those things but I think if you had of sent a Zoom meeting to President Macron’s advisor at the Élysées in 2018 I think they probably would have just passed.
Jenelle: No, no.
Bronwyn: No, no, no, no, no. Exactly! Come and see me! So I did go to huge efforts to see people and to discuss with them what we were trying to do and to sell the vision to them. And the thing is that in the end I think everyone really does recognise that tobacco is a problem that is of catastrophic proportions and it can be fixed. It absolutely can be fixed. It’s just a matter of choice.
Jenelle: So the stats. I mean you’ve outlined some and you said more than 20 countries signed up. I know that there’s more than 100 financial organisations that are involved in tobacco free investment mandates. In Australia more than 40% of pension funds -
Bronwyn: Well actually – actually in Australia it’s more than 85% now.
Jenelle: Is it?
Bronwyn: And really in Australia it’s become a race to the end. So once upon a time it was very tricky to encourage people to make that decision and then – but it’s like that curve of change, you know, how you have the early adopters and then the – it’s exactly that curve of change. So we’ve seen all of the early ones and the big mainstream that follow and we’re now down to the laggers. And people -
Jenelle: It’s that real tipping point you hit.
Bronwyn: - absolutely. So we’re well, well beyond that. But every country in the world is at a different point in that change curve. And so, you know, we’re really focussing our efforts, you know, in the USA especially just because it’s got such an enormous finance sector. And although there’s been pockets of brilliance where organisations really individual organisations and unfortunately localised to really very few States have been very bold on sustainability. By and large the mainstream finance sector is just taking it up now. And I think 2020 really will be remembered as a year where that conversation just suddenly changed dramatically.
Jenelle: So tell me how it feels? Like I feel these are such big stories and they’re such big, big shifts and there would have been little small moments as well. But how do you feel when you think about these kinds of changes? Do you sort of sit back incredulous? To you kind of just go yeah, yeah, that’s all fine but we’ve got more to do? Talk to me about kind of where you’re sitting emotionally, you know, with the very first movement you made, the first change that you got over the line to sort of sitting back and evaluating kind of where things are now.
Bronwyn: Well, yeah, I mean I think – it’s funny you ask that because obviously during COVID and not travelling so much I’ve had more time to pause and think than otherwise. But because so much more needs to be done I really don’t think too much about the past. All I really want to stop and note is how important it is to recognise that anything is really possible. And this is where I go back a bit to my swimming days and then being the team doctor for the Australian Swimming Team. Very early in my life I really understood that that the concept of “impossible” was one that should be pretty much rejected. And I don’t like the word. So I always tell people if I was the Prime Minister of Australia I would ban the use of the world impossible unless -
Jenelle: You should hang out with my daughter!
Bronwyn: Oh, is that right? Yep.
Jenelle: She says there’s no such word as impossible, it’s “I’m possible”. That’s what she says to me.
Bronwyn: Oh, I like that.
Jenelle: Yeah. There you go.
Bronwyn: Yeah, I like that. My little take on it is that if you want to use the word you must include a time clause the in same sentence. So if you want to say it is impossible to do this today, I will accept that. But if you want to say it is impossible full stop I just don’t think that is correct. I think you need to go back and have another think because I’ve just seen so many things in my life done that even I in just this little bit of my brain thought oh, I just don’t know, I just don’t think that can be done, but then time and time again I saw swimmers in the swimming pool go faster than any other human being has ever swum. I saw them break world records when no one thought that could happen. I saw people win races that, on paper, they shouldn’t have been able to win but in real life they did. With a little bit of magic they somehow translated that into a gold medal. And I saw that then also in my life in medicine I’ve seen it, but then I have also seen it in – with this work with Tobacco Free Portfolios. Because you’re right, going back to that even at the UN there were so many little things that had to happen there a long the way for us to pull that off but they all happened. And maybe if at the start you look at all of those factors and think gosh that’s overwhelming, it’s just too much, you will think, you know, if just can’t be done. But when you do if bit by bit, step by step there is this I guess sudden realisation that just one step forwards can be done, and then one more, it can be done, and one more, it can be done. So I think it’s breaking it down into little pieces to create, you know, what might look like a little miracle.
Jenelle: I guess as a successful social entrepreneur there is quite a bit to making a, you know, not for profit business be as successful as you have. Apart from the genuine motivation that people have that’s beyond the money side of things, are there any other ingredients that you see as being essential to creating, you know, a social impact organisation that is capable of making the kind of impact that you guys have done?
Bronwyn: I think it’s – I mean I think it is to also dream big and to really outline a vision that is extremely bold and something that’s – I always say with tobacco the problem is so big that it requires really big thinking solutions. So don’t be afraid to put something on the table that is extremely ambitious. So I think maybe that’s sort of part of the culture that, you know, I’ve certainly hope that we, you know, my team members really feel here at Tobacco Free Portfolios. We’re ambitious yet it doesn’t matter how big the idea is if it’s good enough it’s something that we might need to have a crack at. And we now have a really great track record. And the truth is that it’s quite exciting work. You know, I mean I started the year at Davos at the World Economic Forum annual meeting and obviously it was just before the world was sort of came to a standstill because of the pandemic but we at Tobacco Free Portfolios get to meet with some of the world’s most interesting and influential people and so, you know, I also try to learn as much as I can from everybody else because even though they might be from a different sector attacking a different problem I think that there are a lot of common lessons that we all need to embrace to create really big global change.
Jenelle: And, Bronwyn, you’ve done an amazing of building a bridge between, you know, health and finance sectors. Are there are other sectors that need to be bridged as well? Are you starting to turn your attention to other domains that you think need to be part of this equation that aren’t already?
Bronwyn: Oh I think when it comes to sustainability I mean we have for many years already shifted from just talking about tobacco to building out a sustainability framework more comprehensively. I think early on, you know really back in 2010, 11 and 12, no one really had a sustainability framework and it was really issue by issue that financial organisations were dealing with things. But that has really gone now and it’s been gone for many years because I certainly think, you know, whole teams and whole boards can’t be held up by one issue of the day. And, as I said, it’s a never ending number of issues. So if you just think this year, most financial organisations have added to their sustainability frameworks. Absolutely they’ve added COVID but they’ve also added biodiversity, they’ve added Black Lives Matter, they’ve added AI and facial recognition technology and that’s probably just in the last 12 months. But we’re just going to see a never ending list of issues that fall into that category of sort of are they controversial sectors, or undesirable industries, where doe they fit? And they al – and they added to things like alcohol and gambling and sugar and private prisons and guns and controversial weapons and all sorts of different climate initiatives. Then there’s basic human rights and there’s ware and, you know, you can go on and on and on. And so we really encourage financial organisations to acknowledge that all of those issues are important and to work through their toolkit in terms of what are the different approaches they can take that deals with each one of those issues. Should they engage with the company? Should they use a best of sector approach? Should they use ESG integration? So environmental social and governance integration. Should they use thematic or impact investing? Or, in very selective circumstances where none of those are relevant, should they consider an exclusion policy for that particular company?
Jenelle: Bronwyn, as the economy moves into a recovery phase what are your thoughts about how Australia will recover? And what kind of impacts do you see this as having on the, you know, tobacco free landscape and maybe the landscape of the various, well, the sustainability areas you just talked about?
Bronwyn: Well I think Australia is extremely well placed at the moment to recover from COVID. So it’s almost mid-November, we’ve had very low if not zero community transmission across Australia for the past couple of weeks, and I think that Australians are going to be able to enjoy a freedom of movement and a quality of life that’s going to be pretty rare compared to the global landscape over the next couple of years. So I think Australians are going to really, really enjoy being Australian and it will have never been more clear than what’s going to unfold in front of us over a few years. So in terms of how this might play out regarding tobacco, some of the interesting things from this year have been noting the absolute uplift in the number of Australians who have contacted quit services wanting to quit tobacco. And we have seen that in other countries as well. So I think since the pandemic started two million Brits have given up smoking, which is more than ever before. So if it really -
Jenelle: Wow. It’s honest – I actually thought it might go the other way with an increase in smoking with stress levels.
Bronwyn: So some people thought that but in fact – well, for a start tobacco – smoking tobacco actually makes your heartrate go up, so actually it increases the sense of stress even though there is that, I guess, myth that it is a stress reliever. But people have really seen this year that health is so crucial and people know that COVID is a disease that particularly impacts the lungs. So there’s been this very visceral response to that by people want to quit smoking and to really prioritise their health. I think also while the world is being disrupted and everything is on the table for reinvention, it really is a great moment to think would you allow tobacco companies to continue to operate the way they operate knowing that in the last 12 months tobacco companies have made products that have killed 8 million people? And it’s a really important thing for all of us to sort of pause and think about because when COVID came along we all realised this huge health threat that it had, and the world stopped to address it. Businesses changed the way they were working. Different ways of interacting with people were set up and many people took massive sacrifices to really protect the health of the community. Yet at the same time we’ve had what many people describe as a slow burning pandemic that’s been playing out in the background for decades that we just continue to allow to go on. So I think that we will reflect deeply and make some bold decisions as to the environment that we allow tobacco companies to continue to operate in. And there are many elements there. So, for example, while everyone’s thinking about sustainability issues, one issue has been very heartfelt, I would say, over the last year or two, and that is the issue of ocean plastic. We know people really care about ocean plastic. When plastic straws were banned they disappeared almost overnight. And many people including me, I was so shocked when I found out, that in fact cigarette filters are the number 1 ocean plastic.
Jenelle: Oh, right!
Bronwyn: More than – yeah! I bet you didn’t know that!
Jenelle: I had no idea. No.
Bronwyn: Most of your listeners would not know this. I didn’t know this. So I thought it was probably plastic bottles or bags or straws. It’s not, it’s cigarette filters. Number 1 ocean plastic. People are looking at human rights issues and supply chain issues and many people would be shocked to know that there is child labour in 16 countries that is used to produce tobacco, which is just totally unacceptable. It cannot be part of your business model. Yet an estimate occurred earlier this year showing that about 1.3 million children are involved in tobacco farming. So it’s not just a terrible health impact. There’s also environmental impact and human rights issues that are tied up with tobacco. So I think it will give people a little bit more confidence to suggest truly shaking up this industry because it is really a relic of the past.
Jenelle: Do companies lose money when they redirect their investments away from a tobacco portfolio?
Bronwyn: Well the really interesting thing has been that the tobacco industry has been under a lot of pressure for a while and there’s been a whole range of risks that have materialised, really about 3 to 4 years ago, that have had a major impact on tobacco share price. So it was hard for us to argue about the out performance of tobacco companies prior to the point in about 2017. But since then there’s been a dramatic reduction in tobacco company share price, so over the past 3 -3 .5 years In fact, in 2018 the tobacco sector was the worst performing sector on the market.
Jenelle: Wow!
Bronwyn: And many companies have now had their share prices halved or even more in the last three years. So much so that some of the big financial organisations we’ve worked with have actually ended up significantly better off. So – and there’s been much research done and a whole lot of different reports coming out showing that, in fact, there is no reason that you need tobacco in your portfolio to have excellent outcomes. And in fact the risk is so high at the moment that, in fact, it’s the opposite. So where, you know, we certainly want people to have a very solid retirement and a comfortable retirement and absolutely tobacco free is part of that.
Jenelle: And how do people check, you know, where their superannuation is being invested?
Bronwyn: Well we have just launched a new stamp. It’s a little bit like a Heart Foundation tick or a mark that can go on your product and it’s called The Pledge stamp and it’s for organisations that have signed up to the Tobacco Free Finance Pledge and it’s a nice little stamp and they can use that on their websites, on their sustainability reports or annual reports. Some people are putting it in their email signatures and some people are sending it in brochures to their members or their clients. So it’s a symbol and we hope that that will become a really recognised symbol of an organisation that is committed to tobacco free.
Jenelle: And so literally if people are speaking with their superannuation advisors they can say, look, can you make sure that my investments are going to those – a part of that portfolio is going to, you know, organisations that have The Pledge stamp. Is that the way that would work?
Bronwyn: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So if you’re with a big super fund we are encouraging the super funds to put it on their websites in a really visible place, because we’ve always argued, you know, you shouldn’t have to spend half an hour on your super fund website click through to find some, you know, little statement in the bottom corner. Or if you sometimes get an annual report, you know, it shouldn’t be on page 35 that you don’t own shares in big tobacco. It should be very easy to see. And so the super funds wanted a way to do it. They wanted to work with us to produce this stamp and we’re really happy that there’s more than 30 super funds in Australia that have already signed up for that.
Jenelle: Fantastic.
The last three: three fast questions on change to finish the podcast
Jenelle: I’m conscious of our time coming to an end here. I always like to finish our – off my interviews, Bronwyn, with three fast questions which are more at the light-hearted end of the spectrum.
Bronwyn: I’m nervous now!
Jenelle: First one is – oh, don’t be! What is a misconception that most people have about you?
Bronwyn: Ah, yes, OK. A misconception would be that I don’t eat chocolate cakes for breakfast when in fact it turns out that the day after my children’s birthday parties that is exactly what I indulge in.
Jenelle: My favourite time to have a chocolate cake, in the morning – leftovers. What’s one guilty pleasure – and you can’t say chocolate cake. It’s got to be something else and it has to be PG.
Bronwyn: OK. One guilty pleasure – Nigella Lawson’s Ricotta Hotcakes that I make for breakfast almost every Sunday morning.
Jenelle: Oh, wow, sounds awesome.
Bronwyn: Thank you.
Jenelle: And what’s one thing that you’re hopeless at? I’m quite interested to know this one to be honest.
Bronwyn: Mm, I would say cooking anything except the aforementioned Ricotta Cakes.
Jenelle: OK.
Bronwyn: So I eat a lot of tinned tuna for dinner.
Jenelle: Oh, right. Well, Bronwyn, I really want to thank you for time and for being so open with your story. There’s just so much inspiring and fascinating stories in here. What I’ve loved is your ability to take what you called as an accidental moment – several accidental moments – whether it’s going into that lung cancer placement or buying a house, but the ability to turn a moment into a movement. It makes me think, you know, how moments do we all walk past that could potentially be a movement. And how do we do that? Well your words were “step by step”. I think that, you know, you talked about the naivety that carried you along, but your doggedness in taking that step by step, and the importance of degrees of change if, you know, reflecting on your comment that everybody moves. So moving people 5 to 10 degrees can collectively make the difference. And, as you said, anything is possible. And if anybody dares to say otherwise then I’m going to force them now to put a timeframe on it to finish that sentence.
Bronwyn: Please do! Please do. I think we’d all be – we’d all – it would really free our minds, I think, if we all believed in that. And the truth is that actually is how the world works. That is how we push things forwards and that is how the world gets better. So I would absolutely love that.
Jenelle: And I want to extend my virtual thanks to Professor David Ball for entering your life and causing you to be inspired to follow him and I think the world’s a far better place for having you in it. Thanks very much for your time, Bronwyn.
Bronwyn: Thanks so much Jenelle.
The Change Happens podcast. From EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Cathal O'Rourke
Managing Director, Laing O'Rourke Australia Hub

Intro: Change Happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change; the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, Change Happens.
Jenelle: Hi, my name’s Jenelle McMaster and welcome to the Change Happens podcast. A conversation with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today, I’m joined by Cathal O’Rourke of Laing O’Rourke Australia. Following a succession of senior leadership roles in the UK and Australia Cathal was appointed Managing Director of Laing O’Rourke’s Australian operations in October 2013 and is a member of the Group’s Executive Committee. Cathal has played an instrumental role in managing and delivering many significant building and infrastructure projects over his 15 years with this multi national construction company that, of course, bears his surname, including quite notably elements of the Heathrow Terminal Five development. Now during Cathal’s time as Managing Director in Australia, this business has been twice named as one of the country’s most innovative businesses and was the 2016 winner of the Australian Construction Achievement Award. In 2020 Laing O’Rourke was awarded the prestigious Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s Employer of Choice for Gender Equality. Now with the property and construction industry being hit by the impacts of COVID 19 and now as we are looking to beyond, to be a key enabler for the recovery of the country, I look forward to exploring how Cathal goes about creating change, what it’s like to be navigating a family business and the lessons that he’s learned along the way.
Jenelle: Welcome and how are you?
Cathal: I’m very well, thank you very much. Yeah, pleased to be here chatting to you. Today is 11 years since I landed in Australia.
Jenelle: Is that right.
Cathal: (overtalking) __. So it’s amazing how time flies when you’re having fun, as they say.
Jenelle: It does creep up on you and you’ve kept your accent pretty strong though, so I think you’ve got the best of both happening.
Cathal: I don’t know when I go back there they seem to think that my accent’s become Australian and when I’m here I’m still seen as sounding like an Englishman.
Jenelle: Tell me a bit about how COVID 19 has been impacting your business. Clearly, construction is an industry that has been able to keep working during the pandemic but with the reduced work force, adhering to social distancing, how have you been able to ensure the ongoing, the continuity of your projects and maintaining all those norms, social distancing norms.
Cathal: Yeah I think it’s different across the sector. So I think we’re incredibly fortunate as an organisation and the infrastructure part of the sector, that we’ve predominantly been able to keep going pretty well. I’d call out a few factors in that. First and foremost, I think our client body is predominantly governments across States and also the Federal Government. All worked pretty hard to try to get everybody to keep going. So that was, I think, a real big endorsement. I think the second thing that played out well for us because of our industry and that we’re used to operating with a level of regulation and how we go to work from a health and safety perspective, that’s the norm for us. So while this did bring in some extra areas to focus in on, we were able to adopt those and adapt them very quickly to what we needed and what it drove was a lot of collaboration with both the clients and the government agencies and the different players in the market where nothing was seen as company specific. We were putting the best ideas into the industry. So okay how can we all keep going because this is what we need to do and this is good for us as an industry and good for the country. So yeah, very fortunate.
Jenelle: I’m interested in that word - collaboration. We saw a lot of that happening during this period of time. Do you think that it has become an impetus for a new way of working the way we would move forward, or is it you know situational and we’d probably have to work much harder to make sure that that is something that becomes embedded in ways of operating moving forward. What’s your views on the sustainability of the levels of collaboration you saw over this period of time.
Cathal: Is it sustainable? Absolutely it is but it’s a choice and it’s not an easy choice. I think we’ve seen some great outcomes by delivering in a collaborative way and what COVID did was take away some of the perceived barriers and cautions that sometimes stop us doing that, you know. And that the greater good and the bigger impetus was to keep going and that drove great behaviours. We have been working over the – well we’ve finished now – but we were working on the Bushfire Recovery Project which was following the bushfires last summer, clearing all of those sites across the whole of New South Wales. That was a project that started before but again the impetus was there and the collaboration between ourselves and the Department for Public Works as the agency. But broader government in truth to actually get around it to make things happen. We saw some fantastic outcomes where we were able to engage with the local supply chain in a very different way that was more focused about what they needed than what, traditionally, our processes or government processes would need. That meant we could actually get people working a lot quicker. We could pay them really quickly, which again was the driver from government to make sure that the money that was going to be spent on this got into the communities affected really quickly.
And we got to having, I think, somewhere in the region of 93%/95% of all of the teams working on that particular project being from the local council area that the project, the specific house clearance site was or in the adjacent ones. So it was a real direct impact onto the community that had been affected, with I guess a recovery step that allowed them to get some upside in terms of being able to work and create returns for themselves but also done really quickly. When we want it and we focus on it, we can absolutely do that. Now, of course, we then, we were on that program of work and COVID hit, and it drove another level of collaboration because everybody had to come at it again. So in that specific project, we saw it double down. And, you know, I’m delighted that the team, the project team from the government departments and also ourselves, we were awarded the Premier’s Award for the Best Collaborative Project Delivery, I think it was.
Jenelle: Oh, congratulations.
Cathal: So, you know, it goes to show. Yeah, we’re really stoked, that the whole team, cause it was a whole team effort, really got that to work. So when I look at broader procurement and I look at broader models, we, for many years, have been looking to move to more collaborative forms of contract. Now that can be a challenge because often in our industry and the perspective of it is quite a rough and tough industry and quite combative. Well I think that’s counter productive and the opportunity to move to more collaboration where you can’t just hide behind a contract, you’ve actually got to work together to get solutions to drive forward, is absolutely the way forward. We’ve seen some great projects across the country and programs of works over the last few years that are really making ____ change. And you know what they’re actually getting better outcomes as well. So projects like the level crossing removal program in Victoria. Really by picking their teams, working collaboratively, they’re seeing over the – I think we’re four or five years into that program of works – and we’re actually seeing the elemental cost is coming down, the time that these projects are being delivered is reducing, and that has less impact on the local community that actually has to work through that infrastructure development phase. So many benefits that really can come about if you invest in that partnership. So we’re very – very much on that agenda. And I see that the opportunity coming out of COVID is to push that more and more, especially as we move into effectively a stimulus phase in the construction and infrastructure markets.
Jenelle: You’ve raised a couple of fascinating projects with the Level Crossing. I think with the tidy up New South Wales Initiative that you won with that New South Wales Government, you know, it strikes me that, that must have been a daunting – like an exciting win of a contract – but a daunting one. When you think about – well I think about the geographical spread of New South Wales, that you had to cover, and I think about the emotional – like the sensitivities of the local communities, I think about the indigenous, heritage areas that needed to be factored in, how did you even sort of set up the principles, ways of working. I mean were you quite conscious about those kinds of things as you mobilised?
Cathal: So this would have been back at the back end of January this year, so obviously people came back from the – through the fire season – came back into the New Year and then there was a bit of – what’s government going to do and how is it going to address it? While that was unclear, I guess as an organisation culturally we were, you know, shocked by what’s happening in our broader community and we wanted to help. So we did a couple of things. We did, same as many organisations, we donated some funds, respecting that we are part of the broader community so we’ve got to be part of how we help. We also enabled our teams to volunteer time. But there was a sense that the business could and would want to do something if it was allowed to. So we did a bit of planning and preparation about what did we think we would be able to do. And for us it was very clear that the impact on the people affected, it was so material that pace was a key thing. And for our business we’re very good at mobilising, we’re very good at delivering, and we do that through trying to be as smart as we can be and using technology. So we did a bit of work thinking about how would we do this. And when we got the call from Public Works - were we interested in being part of the tender process – it was a really easy answer to say, yeah absolutely, if we can we’d love to help.
Originally, it was planned as three packages across the State – a Northern, Central and Southern package – and we had some quite expensive operations happening up in the Northern part of New South Wales with the finalisation of the Pacific Highway. So we felt we knew that market really well, we knew the supply chain, we thought we could add a lot of value. But we were going to lead it with a technology led approach which was around how we’d track, trace and engage with the supply chain. So we pitched that forward for that first phase, up in the North, and we said we could probably do a little bit more but if you want to do it in the time frames you’re talking that’s probably the max of our capacity. I happened to be heading to London for some group meetings at the time and we submitted our bid and by the time I got to London I had a message from our team which was – we’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we’re preferred and the government wants to work with us, the bad news is that they want you to take on the whole of the State. So you were right it was …
Jenelle: Oh all three packages.
Cathal: … it was a deep intake of breath moment and then we had to seriously say, well could we do it, cause the worst outcome would be for our team to attempt, not achieve, and then we’d leave people who’d been impacted so much already, hanging out, and that wasn’t a good outcome for them, for government or for us. So we had to get confident we could do it. We came up with a plan and then we executed the plan and the beautiful thing for me was the feedback that we’ve had back from the individuals who our team connected with. We knew this program was going to take months. There were going to be the people who were going to be first and sadly somebody had to be last, and we had to weigh up the benefits, of which were the sequence that we would go through, and we did that through working with an ethics committee to say – okay how would we prioritise – which was really helpful. So we gave the team a framework and then they could engage with really extensive communication with each local community so that the expectations were managed and then when we engaged with everybody it was very much on a personal, one to one, this is your home, what do you want and how do we best service your needs that allows you then to start rebuilding.
And there’s some great stories. There was one where this lady, her house had been lost and the one thing that she was really looking for, was her wedding rings, which were in the house. Now the team had a magnet on the project with their excavator and they just took the time to do a survey across the whole of the rubble and the burnt remains before clearing out. We didn’t actually find that wedding ring, but the fact that the team took the time and were considerate enough to do that, gave this lady, at least she knew she’d tried everything she could, and so much so that she actually wrote to me to comment on that. And then there was another gentleman; he had – we were there to clear his property and he had a pizza oven which he had built with his son and I think he thought that we had to clear the whole site and then he sheepishly asked – well can we keep the pizza oven. You know, it survived the fire. I said, yeah absolutely. And this brought this individual down – to breaking down in tears – and all it was, was just by partnering to get to what was the best outcome for them. So there’s lots and lots of little stories there, that play out, and it was because everybody got dealt with individually and with sensitivity. So that’s the most proud I get about my team for what they did in that program of works.
Jenelle: And there’s no greater way I think to connect your staff, your employees, contractors to the cause, than those kinds of stories. I think it connects the head to the heart and the discretionary effort, you know, to look for the rings, to save the pizza oven, it is done with pleasure and pride when people can see that homes are saved, memories are kept intact and these stories will outlast, you know, the rubbles of ruins any day. Cathal, I – just on the topic of kind of daunting tasks. You had to move, you know 50% of your workforce to remote working and I know that you had described that as daunting in the past. One measure that you adopted was to – adopted around building that trust and preventing anxiety with your employees, was to introduce something called the No Apology Framework. What was that?
Cathal: So the week before we were having a workshop trying to promote a bit of, like some people being able to work from home and – or wherever they wanted to accommodate a different sense of a lifestyle. The industry’s reputation and its culture for a long time has been presenteeism, being on the site, being in the office and long days. So all of a sudden lockdown came. We moved everybody out of our offices pretty much, so that we were all working from home, and that what we tried to do on each of our project sites was get down to at least 50% reduction so the people who are in more administrative or site office base roles could work from home. And then what we needed to do was space out our workforce across that – but the actual work face. We were delighted to find that our IT infrastructure that we had – it was already there ready to go. We had all the tools and it worked incredibly well. But you also have the other dynamics of people’s lives. So they might not be the only one at home. They might have had a working partner and also their children and home schooling was coming in at that stage. So we had a lot of pressures on and we were finding that people were struggling to reconcile that and feeling that they needed to keep this veneer of a work professionalism, if you like. This was creating an added level of stress, where we’re trying to act as though everything’s normal where obviously everything is exceptional in this situation. So what we did, we just came out with this policy, that if you had one of your children or a partner or you know children coming in looking for help with their homework or schooling, or a dog barking or a cat jumping up on the table, that was just our new normal and we made it very public by saying, no apologies. So if something happened you weren’t actually allowed to apologise for it, you just had to say – kick on with it, let the noise go in the background, we can all deal with it, it is what it is. Exactly. But because we vocalised it, we named it and we normalised it, it just took a load of pressure off of everybody that said, okay, well if he’s comfortable with it then – and the leadership team are comfortable with it then I can get comfortable with it. And it just gave everybody a bit of a licence to just accept that this is exceptional, it’s different, and if you get distracted for five minutes, it’s not the end of the world.
Jenelle: And there’s a remarkable level of relatability. Let’s be honest, we’ve all got, you know, distractions, laundry pilling up, mess in the background.
Cathal: Well, I myself, I never have mess in the background. It’s always just off camera. It’s just off camera. I try not to – not have it in view.
Jenelle: If you could articulate the kind of change or changes you’d like to see and drive in the industry, what are those changes?
Cathal: Yeah, I think what we’re looking to drive is a sustainable construction industry. So what I’m trying to do is get a sustainable business working to actually come up with a way where we can drive a better industry for clients, companies and also people in it. So we’ve got to look at our culture first and foremost. So I mentioned earlier where there’s the long days, maybe toxic masculinity coming through sometimes. I think that’s changing. I really do, I think people now wanting a more balanced life. They want a – and we’ve got great people who work on exceptional projects and they loved them. And they really put their heart and soul into these things, which is great and that’s what you want. But that shouldn’t come at the cost of maybe their family lives, or their personal health or other things. So we need to find a way to balance that. And one of the things I think we need to do is make our industry more appealing. So by having a less combative culture, I think we can attract more people in. If you look at that against the backdrop of COVID 19 now, we’re an industry that didn’t stop. So we right now, we’ve had historically I think a brand issue. Right now we’ve got a really strong selling point. That if you want to have a sustainable career and you want to look after your family, your mortgage, or that – work in the construction industry – gives you a level of certainty. I think we need to play on that and actually really reinforce it. But do so with an improving culture. And one of the key things that we need to drive on that is around gender diversity, for example. We’re so under represented in our organisations and our organisation has won but the industry, especially at the very senior level. So we can – we can attract in graduates and new recruits at the young stages of a career, but we’re struggling to retain them through and get people into senior leadership roles. And that’s a big focus area for us right now as a business but also as an industry. So we started off with that, with our graduate recruitment. We’ve now got to a stage where we’re 50/50 gender on our graduate recruitment, which was a massive shift from where probably 5 years ago we would have been 80/20.
Jenelle: At the risk of being a little bit provocative here, on that one Cathal, how do you ensure that those numbers which are great, turning at a graduate level, that we don’t find the women all bunched up in traffic control and not into the upper echelons of leadership?
Cathal: Yeah so I think we bring in our graduates – we are talking professionalism, we’re giving them exactly the same career opportunities at an early stage that plays out as the guy candidates as well. Okay, so that’s there. But what we see is, we’re still not seeing that transition up. So the first thing we need is a few more leaders in those roles for people to aspire to. Over the last probably four years, our executive committee here for our business in Australia, we’ve actually moved to 40% representation female and 60% male. Whereas historically, we’ve been 100% male. Not good, but it’s what it was. But we’ve made changes now and I think having those visible leaders upfront really is key.
I think then we’ve got to recognise some of the behavioural differences that play out and again naming it, recognising it and then supporting it and coming up with strategies. So what do I mean by that? In my experience, some of our male colleagues are much more forthright. They’d be much more prepared to put their hand up for the next role where they may not quite be ready, whereas a lot of our female colleagues would wait until their at least 100% if not 120% ready for the next role. So what that means is we’ve got to take a bit more of an encouraging role as the leadership team in terms of finding the right opportunities and supporting some of our really talented, capable female staff members, to take those next steps. And that just takes a bit of focus and a bit of – I guess a bit more care to make sure that we do it. And that they’re successful in that. And I believe we start seeing them positive steps going forward, where, you know again you see some of the engineers saying, okay I can be that technical leader or I can be that project leader and that’s the step change we need. And I think then that starts driving a different set of conversations around what do our team want in their life, what’s the balance they need to have between work and home and what’s the culture that plays out on our projects as well.
Jenelle: It’s really clear to me that you have, you know, a real passion and focus on flexibility, on gender diversity. I know you’ve done a lot of work around pay equity, paid parental leave. Tell me about where that conviction, that passion comes from, and maybe some of the perhaps more unique strategies that you’ve put in place to advance those particular areas?
Cathal: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think it comes really from a morale position that it’s just – it’s not right. That’s I guess the starting position. I’ve been very fortunate to always have very strong female leaders around me as I came up through my career as well. So my mentor for many years was a lady called Anna Stewart. She was our commercial director for a very long time in the Group and then went on to become our Group CEO. So from a capability perspective, I don’t know if I’ve met any or definitely not many people who were as capable as she was. So I guess that’s my starting point, that I’ve had some great role models myself. Then I looked at the benefits of actually having a diverse team and I’ve witnessed that around my own executive table, where the conversation, the perspectives and the starting viewpoint is so different that it’s really enriched the conversation, and we’ve come up with better outcomes. That just makes absolute business sense to me. And then when I actually watched the engagements that some of my female leaders will have with their counterparty and clients, it’s a very different outcome as well. It’s less combative, it’s less – listen I’m saying things like they’re absolutely binary statements, this is a range, obviously. But I have definitely witnessed that you can get to different outcomes by engaging in different ways and often the female leaders tackle it from the get go in a very different way that gets to a more successful outcome.
So from a business perspective, I think well that’s an interesting observation and it’s something that if we can tap into, then we are going to have the bigger goal which is a better culture in the industry. So there’s the things that drive me and I guess it comes into the philosophy of collaboration being better than actually combative engagements. And the truth is it’s actually harder to collaborate because you can’t just hide away and defend, you’ve actually got to constantly come back to the conversation and find a way through. And we just have to be courageous enough to try things. And I’m hoping that possibly coming out of COVID we can have that conversation. And I think the scale of what we do when you’re into hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars, it gets a bit scary for people to take those big jumps. But what little micro experiments could we try? That’s probably a philosophy. It’s one we use in the business ourselves. You know when we’re trying to work on people’s flex or energy, we say well what could you do differently? One thing that may improve that. I we let them try it. And once they try it, if it works, great keep it, if it doesn’t, fail, fail fast, move on, try something else. And by having that experimentation culture I think it could be a way that we could unlock some things that could add real benefit and they could be scaled across the whole of the business and the industry, merged from one to one to another.
Jenelle: So just moving from diversity over to the technology, you’ve been quite vocal about the need to the industry to look at new technology and be willing to try new ways of doing things. How have you been going about that at Laing O’Rourke?
Cathal: Yeah, look I think as an industry it’s not a great advert to be honest. But sometimes we are caught up in quite old practices and yet the appetite to look for new stuff is quite low and I think that leaves us open to being disrupted. So we’re more keen to be at that front end ourselves to make sure we disrupt ourselves as opposed to it happening to us. That’s our – I guess our philosophy but that’s still challenging. I think the biggest lean in for us is around our digital technology and we start by design first and foremost. So, you know, traditionally design done on 2D drawings, and even when you moved into CAD it’s a digital form of a 2D drawing. We’ve been big advocates for moving from that into digital modelling. So we don’t call it BIM which is Building Information Modelling, we call it digital engineering. It’s not just about buildings, it’s about any particular element you’re working on, that can actually be designed, modelled, in the model. And what that’s led us to do is to be able to quantify things, very quickly. We’re doing a thing, we’re calling parametric design modelling, and what that allows you to do is to work on multiple scenarios, really quickly and get to within the level of accuracy of plus or minus 10%, a sense of what this is going to cost you and also the time to construct it. Now this might take, in a traditional design team, six to eight weeks to do. We can do that down in about a fortnight and come up with multiple options. So the benefit of – and that isn’t Laing O’Rourke doing it, that’s the whole team, working in that collaborative, digital, immersive environment and using new tools. So you actually get to the better conceptual answer quicker.
So you’re saving time, you’re able to move through discount things and end up on your primary work flow a lot quicker. Then coming into how you actually manage projects, understand your productivity, what are the barriers that actually stop you being more productive. We’re using a lot of tracking and tracing and dashboards to actually do that and they’re now becoming automated which feeds into then being able to quantify again, able to price and also being able to pay. So if you go to the Bushfires Program for example, we pitched in with a very clear, digital dashboard. So that at any given time we’d know what projects were being worked on, what stage they’re at on their process and what value has been quantified for the teams being employed to deliver it and what that means, is we could move to a payment schedule which the industry traditionally works on, maybe 30 days, in some cases 45, and in some parts of the industry, even worse. We were able to move to weekly payments. So, again, a real critical driver for government but they wanted to get that money into the community to actually help the people who had been affected and we could enable that by having that technology to play into it. As we sometimes find that with customers too, that their not quite ready to take that step, and we’ve taken a philosophy, well this is the way we work, so if that’s the case, we will still carry on in the way we feel is best. We’ll fund that, potentially, and we’ve had cases where we’ve shown the out workings in a digital environment to our customers, and they’ve come back and said actually, we might buy that back off you now. Now that we understand it. So maybe we need to get better at communicating and giving the narrative of what we’re trying to achieve and selling the benefits. Because once they see it, they really, really believe it and they get it but it’s hard to articulate when we’ve got a bit of a traditional mindsight sitting behind it.
Jenelle: I mean I was about to ask you, what is it that’s holding the industry back. You’ve mentioned a couple of times in a couple of spheres, that the industry is behind on things like flexibility and the use of technology, and I was wondering what it was and do you think it’s that point about not really being sold on the upside of it, not seeing enough examples, which is where you’re trying to play or are there other things there that you also think are the resistance to change factors?
Cathal: Yeah, I definitely think the – we’re a very tangible industry. I mean if you look at what we do, a lot of people join construction and infrastructure because they can point and say well look I did that. Yeah. It’s a very tangible entity. To taking that leap of faith without the evidence and you know we’ve an awful lot of engineers sitting in this business and this industry. We like to know the facts and the evidence. So I think we need to be a bit more courageous about that in places. But I think we’re probably not the best storytellers either. I think we have to be a bit bolder about our dreams and our visions and what we could be as opposed to just being consistently constrained by what it has been. And I think if we can get a few more leaders being bold and putting out some thoughts and some ideas, and then others can get behind that, I think it makes a big difference. There’s a lady Alison Mirams she’s the Chief Executive of Roberts Pizzarotti. And this is a relatively new company in our market, but actually they’re looking at, sort of, how do we move the industry from a traditional 6 days a week industry to a 5 day a week industry and protecting the weekends so people can get more balance. And fair play, Alison’s been really articulate about that. She’s doubled down and actually put in tenders where they give clients two options and again she’s given them a narrative and a story that’s allowed them to then weigh that up and in fairness to the clients, they’ve chosen to go with it. Now that’s – we need a bit more of that I think. People actually daring to dream, articulating what it can be and then finding a way to implement that into a real life situation. Once we have that and a few places to see it work, guess what, people are very smart in the industry. They’re going to follow where they see benefit and I’m a huge believer that once people see the good stuff, they’re going to take it onboard. And what are we excellent at in this industry is implementation. So once it’s been established, I think we’ll adopt really quickly. As we saw during our individual COVID journey. We went from not doing much flex to being incredibly good at flex.
Jenelle: Oh that’s fantastic, I love that response. I’m going to change tack now and get onto something that, I’ll put a disclaimer right up front. I am obsessed with the series, Succession, and so I’m going to ask you about your family business. I’m not in any way suggesting that you are anything like the Succession family but a family business can clearly bring some challenges, it can also have many positives.
Your dad is Ray O’Rourke, he’s the Chairman and CEO, runs the company along with his brother, or your uncle…
Cathal: That’s right.
Jenelle: …And your uncle I should say, not or, Des. And I believe they founded the original R O’Rourke & Son back in 1977. So the business has gone through a number of twists and turns and permutations over five decades, there’s got to be a truckload of stories in there I’m sure – all of which I’d love to unpack but not going to – tell me, what is like to work in a business which bears your surname?
Cathal: It’s a huge privilege and an honour in truth. But it comes with a bit of responsibility that you want that association which is our family in effect to be associated with good things, not negative things. So the business started in ’77, R O’Rourke & Son, I was the son in R O’Rourke & Son and now I don’t even get a credit, I’m just part of a broader group.
Jenelle: I did wonder, I was like why don’t you just call him out? And son. The unnamed son.
Cathal: So my sisters’ weren’t too happy about that. They thought it should have been R O’Rourke & Son & Daughters but it’s moved on to Laing O’Rourke and I think working in a family business, and I’ll take you back, so when I left University, I’m an Engineer by training, when I left University it was when R O’Rourke & Son where operating and our business was a very different scale to what it is today. When I left Uni I wanted to go out and get my own job.
Jenelle: So with a view that you would eventually go into it? Or like no way, I’m not going to be the son in this picture?
Cathal: I think naively I thought I’d be able to strike out on my own and I think if I look back on it now, I think there’s a sense inevitability of giving it a go. But at 21/22 I thought I knew better. I went to work for part of the Ford Motor Company actually as a financial analyst. I still look back on those times and I learnt some interesting lessons through my time in that organisation. Some that I didn’t realise until much later on but I used to sit at the desk which was right by the front door and I’d see the manager, the General Manager for the division used to come in every day, walk past and never used to say hello to anyone. And I can’t honestly remember feeling upset about that at the time. I just thought that was normal. But I know now I would never do that. I walk into our office and I would always greet people and say good morning and I think that’s just a nice human characteristic that I think is a good leadership trait. Well just a human trait never mind leadership.
Then at the time, the division I was working at was a company called Visteon which was Ford’s parts division that they’d separated out, made a separate company but it was wholly owned and worked predominately for Ford with a few other car manufacturers they were trying to engage with. And the way that company operated was people would move between Ford and Visteon. It was just like a rotation and a cycle. You just did that as part of your career journey.
In the 6 months I was with them, they actually moved up from being a two-way door where you’d move backwards and forwards into a one-way door where if you move into Visteon, you couldn’t get back into Ford. So people, the culture aligned working with Ford was you were a Ford person. It was pretty much all encompassing.
And for them to then be left effectively cut adrift into this other vehicle, just because I happened to be there on that cycle, that felt quite tough. And then to compound it was that the General Manager, she actually gave the news that this was happening, there was no way back but just before that door shut, she was moving back in to Ford.
Jenelle: That was a bit handy for her.
Cathal: Yeah and it’s interesting because I didn’t realise the impact that had on me but I guess that’s the thing that sat in my mind was “rats leaving a sinking ship”. And unfortunately that company didn’t survive once it became a separate entity. I always think about the consequences it had on people. I was in there as a temporary employee, I got great feedback and I asked for, as most people do, I asked for a bit of development and a bit of a pay rise and a permanent job and I was greeted with “oh we’d love to, you’re doing well but we’ve got a recruitment freeze”. And it lead me to then start looking at other opportunities.
And at the same time as I looked out into other businesses, our business won at the time was a major project for us, which was the Citigroup Tower in Canary Wharf in London and I remember my father saying to me “right, come on, now or ever son, give it a go”. And I thought ok I’m leaving one business because I’m not getting opportunity but the one thing I will get in a family business is opportunity so I said ok, I’ll give it a go, I’ll give it a year.
And here I am 21 years later on the other side of the world, running my own portion of our business, which is much larger than the business I joined. So it’s been a very exciting and diverse career that I’ve been able to have inside of our family business.
But the things that I take away from the early years is that people have choices. I had choices and when I wasn’t being on the road in terms my opportunities, I voted with my feet and I left. So we bring that culture into our business, well that thinking into our business and our culture I should say. We look to do, we’re quite heavy on people development, invest a lot into our teams and our people and that’s about them choosing to spend their careers in our organisation. So we have to make that exciting, we have to give them opportunities and there has to be growth. And this is their career and they’re choosing to spend it with us so let’s make it the best it can be.
So I think that’s a really strong characteristic of our culture is our people. And I think you see more of that inside of a private business than, I assume and I’ve never worked for a big PLC company even in our sector, so other than the Ford experience which is quite limited. So I think that’s one of the characteristics that being in a private business affords you. In terms of being, the benefits of it from being a family member in an organisation, I remember this from when I was a lot younger, I’m still living at home but working with these, I’d hear, or even on a Sunday lunch table, you’d hear the impetus and the thought process that was going behind what the senior leaders were trying to do.
Jenelle: Senior leaders being Dad?
Cathal: Dad and the executors.
Jenelle: And Uncle Des.
Cathal: He was leading, yeah they were leading it. But then you’d see it filter back down through the organisation and it was quite fascinating how it had morphed into something not quite what was needing to be done. That sits quite highly in my mind and that’s why I think in our business we try to do a lot of direct communication as well.
Jenelle: Yeah that’s fascinating.
Cathal: So that you actually get the channels where you can converse with people directly and you can have unfiltered message. You can explain what you’re trying to do.
Jenelle: How do you ensure that you honour the legacy and the history of the previous generation and still create change respectfully and leave your own mark in a family business?
Cathal: That’s a great question. I think you always respect what’s gone before. I mean this is my Dad, my Uncle and all the people that they worked with, they were our leaders for many, many years. All my time in the business. You’ve got a huge amount of respect. However that doesn’t mean you can’t suggest things and I think that the approach I’ve been taking, which has got some traction for me, is again communicating. Being very clear about where you might have a different view, but I tend to do that in a one-on-one setting. Now the majority of the time we’ve already aligned which is great so that makes it quite easy. But when there are different perspectives of things I try to frame up what I’m thinking, why I’m thinking it. And to my father’s credit, he’s a great listener. So while he might not like an alternate perspective at one particular point, he will always consider it. And we’ll always come back round.
What I would say you mustn’t do in a family business, is let the emotional stuff play which is so much more easy when it’s a family conversation. Because if you’re critiquing or challenging, that can be intended as a professional view but it can be received as a personal comment. So that’s the danger zone so you have to make sure you step out of that and I couldn’t sit here and pretend to you that I’ve done that incredibly well all the time. But as I’ve got a bit more experience and a bit older, making sure that you have considered thought time, give your message in a clear way which is less threatening than the emotional way it can be. As a younger gentleman I probably was a bit more hot headed and I’d share things in the moment. So I think taking those lessons, because the worst thing for me, and I love the business and I love what I get to do, but I love my family more. So at no point do I want the business to be a point that creates conflict or it damages my more important relationship. And it doesn’t have to be but you just to got to be quite conscious of it.
Jenelle: What are you most proud of Cathal?
Cathal If you’re asking me that holistically, I’m most proud of our business as a whole. I hope and I believe that we’re a great place for people to work. We’re not perfect, I’m sure there will be pockets where we could do better but I think there’s always a great intent and we’re always trying to do good work and do better things.
For me, myself, I’m 11 years in Australia as I said, I came for three and I’ve managed to grow my career and develop a really exceptional business here as well. That isn’t me alone by any stretch of an incredible team of executives here locally and I get huge support from the group but we’re still allowed a fair amount of latitude and I’m very proud of the business we have here.
Jenelle: Fantastic.
Cathal: And the efforts I’ve put into that as well.

The last three. Three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.

Jenelle: I’m going to finish with a light, fast three questions for you. What is a misconception that most people have about you?
Cathal: Good question. I think there’s a, the outward perception of confidence. I am confident but we all have our little insecurities at times. And it’s nice to have people to give you a nudge in the right direction. So no, yep, you’re doing the right thing.
Jenelle: Very good. What’s one guilty pleasure?
Cathal: Love a beautiful drop of Barossa Red would probably be the worst thing.
Jenelle: Very nice.
Cathal: Or chocolate. Chocolate’s probably my real undoing but I’m on a, I’m three weeks into a detox. I haven’t had any for a while.
Jenelle: Oh goodness me. And what’s one thing you’re hopeless at? Staying off chocolate?
Cathal: Yeah. Actually I wish I was more creative. I think that’s the point. I’m a great energiser of ideas but I sometimes struggle to come up with the concepts. So that’s why it’s important I have the team around me because they’ll come up with a great idea and I’ll just come in right behind and put a lot of energy into it.
Jenelle: Very good. Thank you Cathal. I wanted to say a big thank you for your insights today, I really loved a number of your messages. You talked a lot about collaboration and collaboration being a choice and I think we’ve seen that things like bush fires, things like COVID have taken away a number of the barriers to collaborating and we’ve seen we can get far better outcomes. But as you say it is a choice. It’s something that we need to be consciously working on and towards and then we can more systemically drive those better outcomes by working in that way.
I love the stories that you’ve peppered throughout this conversation. It really shows your connectedness to your work and to the impact that your work brings to staff and communities. And there was sentence that you said that will stay with me that is: we have to be bolder about our dreams and ambitions and think about what it could be rather than what it has been. And I think that’s a beautiful way to summarise where, not just the industry but the world needs to be going when it comes to change. So thank you so much for your time.
Cathal: Thank you for having me I’ve enjoyed it.

The Change Happens Podcast from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

[END OF TRANSCRIPTION]

Dylan Alcott

What restaurants we can go into.
What airlines we can fly.
What jobs we get the opportunity to apply for.
What universities we can go to.

That choice is often taken away from us because of people’s unconscious biases and a lack of understanding about discrimination of things like that. I felt like I had to stand up for my community and I’m really glad we got the opportunity to play. I didn’t win. I played crap in the final unfortunately but got a little bit of revenge in the French Open which was nice.
Jenelle: Absolutely you did. It really speaks to the power of the platform that you have. Whether or not you intended for those things to happen it certainly was a powerful use of your profile and network.
Dylan: Well I think also one of the things which was always really tough for people with a disability and the generations before me is there was always people who could speak up for inequality when it comes to gender bias, or the LGBTIQ community, or racism, or whatever it is, but for people with a disability there was and there still isn’t enough people in the mainstream with that voice to stand up for our community.
Previously when someone got discriminated with a disability no one cared or knew. I think now one of the things I’m so thankful for and I’m so privileged to be in a position is that for some reason unknown to me the community and the Australian public and people have really bought into my story. They’ve really got behind me which gave me that platform to speak out. It’s something that I don’t take for granted because when I get discriminated against on an airline or whatever, they’re buying me red wine because they don’t want me to call them out because they know that I’m a bit famous. But what if you’re a 40 year old lady with MS. Or a little kid with cerebral palsy at school. They don’t have that profile that I have so they get discriminated against. So I think it’s important for not only people with profile like me to stand up for the community with people with a disability, but also all of us to continue to highlight people with a disability who are doing great in our community as well because we need more voices out there. Not just myself or other Paralympians or whatever it is.
Jenelle: Yeah and just on that the challenges. I know that COVID has added so many more challenges for people with a disability. Simple things like the virus surviving on the surfaces of wheelchairs or being unable to rely on support workers if they’re unwell. There has been the need to isolate more due to compromised health and the risk of contracting COVID.
From your perspective, what’s been toughest? And what are you seeing as particularly tough for people with a disability and how can we continue to create an inclusive environment for them, particularly during this time?
Dylan: Ripping question. Look a few things. First and foremost the pandemic has been terrible for everybody but I know some people that have been in full isolation, have not seen a single person since February because of their compromised health. So I’m not saying all people with a disability have compromised health but if you are immunocompromised. Or you have problems with your repository system due to your disability well then that’s a long time ago and it’s probably going to be for a little while longer.
People go ‘oh it’s just a mild cold, why can’t we get out and live?’ Yeah it might be for you but it’s not for some people. You know what I mean? I think in particular the people from Australia have played such an incredible role in doing the right thing to make sure there is limited numbers all around the country especially people from Melbourne at the moment which is where I’m from. They’ve done it tougher than anybody throughout the country.
As you said some support workers decided not to work anymore because they didn’t want to get infected or infect other people. If you need full time support it’s often been harder to get but there are incredible support network companies out there. Like I do a bit of work for one called Mable, whereby they’ve made sure that they’ve done everything in their power to not only get in the home and help people when they need it, but also support work through online systems to benefit people with their mental health and connect and things like that. Because one thing I hated Jenelle about the pandemic is the word ‘social distancing’. Because people distanced physically but they also distanced socially. They didn’t check in on people. They didn’t say hi. They didn’t make sure that they’re ok. I think the term physical distancing is way better.
Jenelle: Yep.
Dylan: Because you still socially check in on people but for people with a disability that have been in isolation for a long time they’ve found that they haven’t had that social connection which they’re looking to.
Jenelle: Yeah isolating.
Dylan: It is. It affects their mental health as well. One of the other biggest things as well is that I’m really passionate about but also worried about is obviously the economy has been hit so hard and people’s employment have been affected massively, whether you’re disabled or not. But something that I’m really passionate about is trying to advocate to people with a disability to get employment. For example, are you ready for this?
Jenelle: I’m ready.
Dylan: There are 4.6 million people in Australia with some kind of physical or non-physical disability. One in five Australians have a disability.
Jenelle: Wow.
Dylan: Did you know that? That’s a massive number.
Jenelle: I didn’t realise it was as high as that.
Dylan: Yeah and of that 4.6 million, only 50% of those people can find a job which is devasting even though they want to. So one thing I’m super worried about is Corporate Australia they were starting to look towards people with disability to start working within their workforces but obviously with the pandemic people’s bottom lines and things have been affected massively. I hope those opportunities are still there for people with disability to get out and work especially on the backend of what’s going on. I think all of us in Corporate Australia to continue to provide those opportunities because people need it.
Jenelle: I think you’re right.
Dylan: Yeah people with a disability make incredible.. can make a huge impact on the workforce.
Jenelle: Well I know that you are certainly doing plenty in that space yourself. I believe you’re in the process of launching a new business ‘Able Foods’ which works in some part to creating employment opportunities as well get skilled access, same deal. Do you want to tell me a bit about those and how they help that particular cause?
Dylan: Yeah I’ve founded two organisations. One of them, they’re both profit for purposes. One’s called ‘Get Skilled Access’. We’re a consulting company working with governments and corporates to help them better understand the needs of people with disabilities. Not only get them ready to employ people with a disability but also get them ready to improve their customer service and product offering for people with a disability they’re consumers as well. People are often shocked to know as I said about the high numbers of people with a disability within the country, but people with a disability, studies show they have higher productivity than able bodied people when they get a job. They have lower absenteeism and they have higher retention rates as well. But as I said unemployment is well over doubled compared to able bodied people and only 50% odd percent can find employment.
It’s about educating Corporate Australia and governments about what people with a disability can really do but also how easy it is for them to integrate people with a disability within their workforce cause often people over complicate the process and think it’s too hard or they think people with a disability can’t do it. Or whatever it is. All of our consultants have a disability as well. All lived experience which is cool.
Yeah the other organisation I’m about to launch is called ‘Able Foods’. I often talk to businesses about how to employ people with a disability and the benefits and I thought you know what ‘stuff this!’. I’m just going to go and do it. One thing I really struggled with that was tough for me was getting around the house and creating food and looking after my diet and things like that because obviously it’s quite hard to cook Jenelle. Like benches are too high. You might drop things on yourself, things like that.
So we started a ready-made meal service to help people with a disability live happier and healthier lives providing them with a nutritious meal plan and things like that. With the NDIS which has been a huge benefit to people with a disability across the country. People on the NDIS now can get our services for a very, very minimal cost which is pretty cool as well, and throughout the whole business whether it’s in the office, whether it’s creating the food, whether it’s in the warehouse we only employ people with a disability. Trying to provide those opportunities as well.
Jenelle: I love that. The product helps people with a disability and the creation of the product helps people with a disability. So it’s got a great circular reinforcement in the model.
Dylan: Yeah that’s the plan and hopefully we can show other businesses what assets people with a disability can be. I love winning grand slam tennis tournaments but my true passion in life is trying to help people with a disability – get out and live the lives that they deserve to live. That’s why I get out of bed every day and luckily the grand slams and that gives me the profile and the platform to be able to do that which is pretty cool. That’s why these entities – I’m just trying to further that as much as I can.
Jenelle: Let’s just talk about the grand slams for a minute. Just in the sense – clearly sport has been an amazing platform for you to be able to do these other passion areas as well that you’ve talked about now. You’ve been quoted as saying ‘sport saved my life’. Pretty profound statement. How did it save your life?
Dylan: Yeah it 100% did. People might know me as the person they see on tele. I like to think that the person I might see on tele is exactly the same as I. I try and be as authentic all the time. I’m always me. I can’t honestly be anybody that I’m not. When I was 12, 13, 14, Jenelle I hated my disability. I got bullied about my disability and I was pretending to be somebody that I wasn’t. My life sucked. It really did. I never thought I was going to get over it. I never thought I was going to be anybody. I didn’t think even I’d be sitting here potentially talking to you today and I mean that. That was until I started playing sport.
You could take away all the gold medals and grand slams, I tell you the biggest thing that sport did for me, it introduced me to people that were like me. I’d never really met anyone with a disability but I started playing sport and I was like ‘Oh my God that guy in a wheelchair is driving a car’. ‘Oh my God that lady in a wheelchair is married, she’s got kids’. ‘Oh my God that person has got a Uni degree’. I didn’t know you could do any of those things.
That social aspect of sport was massive for me and it just so happened that I was alright at it. I’m so glad it gave me so many opportunities to travel the world, to do something that I’m passionate about. But something that has been a big passion for me is not only trying to change the way people view people with a disability in our community but also the way people view athletes with a disability in our sporting career as well. Because I get it. We have inspirational stories and everyone always goes ‘Oh my God they are so inspirational’. ‘They’re so inspirational’, and there might be that element to it but I tell you what else we are, elite athletes we train our backside off and put on a show every single time that we play. Something that I’m really proud about is the way that Corporate Australia, broadcasters and ticketholders are now starting to care about Paralympic sport.
Jenelle: Well it must have been something else when I know you were on centre court, recorded live in one of your grand slams. That must have been quite a moment of this is now not playing second fiddle it is a main event in itself. They must have been incredible.
Dylan: It was the most amazing experience of my life especially Jenelle if you did go back five years when I started playing tennis again, my first Australian Open, there was probably six people watching it and I knew of three of them!
To have 10,000 people in Rod Laver Arena, 1 million people watching on tv and it’s changing the landscape of Paralympic sport. I don’t take for granted that I’m the lucky one. I’m the one with sponsors and things like that. The generation before me it was so hard for them because they didn’t have that opportunity to get sponsors, broadcasters, people didn’t buy tickets to watch, yet they were still putting the same amount of effort and went in the same tennis tournaments and things like that as I was. I just want to leave the Paralympic sport in a better spot for the next generation of young athletes to come. They deserve it just as much as their abled body counterparts.
Jenelle: Now you’ve been quoted as saying if I can take a magic pill that would mean I’m not in a wheelchair anymore, you couldn’t pay me enough to take it. I’ve thought about that sentence a bit and to me and at least you can tell me your take on it, but to me it felt like you see your disability as a super power rather than a liability and it’s something that I’m really interested in. One of my previous guests, I think you know Wendy Harmer. I interviewed her a couple of weeks ago and she talked about that moment when she recognised that her differences were actually her strengths.
I’m just wondering whether or not that’s the way you meant it when you said that and whether there was a particular moment or an event or something that happened which made you realise that? Or whether it’s just something in hindsight you’ve come to appreciate it?
Dylan: I think my disability is my biggest asset in my eyes. Or one of my biggest assets. It doesn’t define me but it plays a massive role in who I am. I used to shy away from that. I used to not be proud of my disability. I used to get called a cripple and a spastic at school.
Jenelle: That’s so jarring to hear that.
Dylan: Yeah and I believed them. I stayed at home two years of my life thinking ‘Why me?’ Why am I disabled? And then I looked in the mirror one day and I thought ‘stuff this’ I’ve got to try and get my life back. I found that people didn’t actually hate me because of my disability they were just actually awkward and didn’t understand it and didn’t want to talk about it and used to shy away from it. I found as soon as I started talking about my disability and embracing it and being proud of it, everybody else around me became more comfortable about it.
The most important thing that I can pass on is the influence of a positive perception of your situation because it’s not the events in life that dictates a life that you live. It’s how you perceive those events that determines the path that you take.
You know what I’m not trying to say I’m always positive about my situation of having a disability. For example, I want to have a kid one day and I’ll have to ask my brother Zac to teach him how to kick a football cause I can’t do it. That sucks. When its summer time I have to watch people like yourself Jenelle run along the sand and jump in the water at the beach, something I’ve never been able to do in all my life. That sucks as well.
But for every one thing that I can’t do there are 10,000 other things that I can do. I’m easily the luckiest guy in Australia, if not this world to be living the life that I live. I get sent so much stuff about stem cell research and things like that and go ‘why don’t you try this?’ and I can honestly say there is not enough money in the whole world you could ever pay me enough to do it because I used to say the Dylan in the wheelchair and the Dylan that walks is the same Dylan but that’s not true. Because the Dylan in the wheelchair is a much better version of any other Dylan that could have ever lived and I honestly would not change my situation for anything. And if was able bodied, would I have won 11 grand slams? Would I be gold medallist? Would I have met my beautiful partner Chantelle who I love so much. Probably not. So why would I give all that up? You know what I mean? I’m so lucky to be who I am for sure. When I can’t get up a few stairs and someone tells me I can’t go in their venue, that’s bullshit and that annoys me, but hey there are so many other things that I can do. I try not to get too caught up in those things.
Jenelle: That’s incredibly powerful. I think there are some really important lessons there. In terms of the way you perceive the events. You instituted obviously the Dylan Alcott Foundation which was about helping young Australians who are struggling to come to terms with their disability to help them fulfil their potential, achieve their dreams.
How do you go about convincing and helping them to shift their mindsets about possibilities? About ambition? Are you working to change their perceptions of events the way you’ve just talked about? Are there other mechanisms that you go through to help people change their mindsets about their circumstances?
Dylan: Yeah. One of the biggest ways to help people change their circumstances is to provide opportunities that aren’t normally there. What we do at the Dylan Alcott Foundation is to try and eliminate those barriers to young people with a disability to achieve their dreams.
When I was growing up I went to a great school and was given opportunities and that, but you speak to people who are career counsellors or going into university and they kind of look at the person with the disability and the kid goes ‘What can I do?’ They’re kind of like ‘I’ve got no idea’. You know what I mean?
Or they might not have access to a certain opportunity that they might have. What I say to them as a young person with a disability. For example, when I decided I wanted to play sport, my brother got a $100 pair of footy boots. I needed a $10,000 wheelchair just to even try. If you can’t afford that, well guess what? You can’t do it.
What we’re trying to do is provide those opportunities for those youngsters to do what they do. Some of the cool stuff. We’ve already put a young girl with a disability through university – become an Access Consultant to make her community more accessible for people with a disability which is super cool.
We’ve actually given people money to do their own start-ups because they weren’t able to get a job. Instead of actually trying to get a job, we’ve given them the opportunities to start their own business themselves, which is super cool. Provided sporting equipment so they can go on their quest to become a Paralympian like I have.
It’s also that element and as you said, mentoring and just talking to them about their situation and trying to give them a bit of the wisdom that I was able to earn throughout my life about that it’s ok to be different and as soon as you harness that difference and be proud of that, it’s actually a more positive thing. But it’s really hard to do. It’s really hard for these kids because one of the things that I see quite a bit which breaks my heart, is I’ll meet a young kid with a disability. They’ll be 12 years old and I’ll say “hello what’s your name?” My “Hi my name is Sarah”. And I’ll say “What’s your disability, Sarah?” And they’re parents go “They don’t have a disability”. When they’re clearly in a wheelchair.
Jenelle: Trying to normalise it as much as..
Dylan: Well because society tells that mother that having a disability is a bad thing, so she tells her kid that they don’t have a disability. When I say to them “Well you clearly have a disability”, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But societal pressures has told that family that if you have a disability, you can’t get a job. You can’t go on a date. You are less than them. You can’t do anything. So they tell their kid they don’t have a disability when their kid clearly knows they do. That makes it so hard for them.
I think it’s really important for all of us to try and break that stigma that having a disability is a negative thing. That will give people with a disability the confidence to go out there and be proud of who they are. That only happens when we have that societal shift. When people with a disability are given the opportunities they deserve.
I think all generations learn because I think it is happening. It is getting better. But it’s up to people to promote these conversations and talk about it so it can happen quicker.
Jenelle: You’ve met people and worked with people and played alongside people who’ve been born with a disability and you’ve met people who’ve had accidents later in life. Do you think it’s different in dealing with the change and dealing with circumstances? Is it a mindset? And is it a propensity the way you look at the world? Or is it situational? This circumstance happened later, I’ve known a different life therefore it’s harder. What’s your views on that?
Dylan: Yep its apples and oranges in some ways but it’s also similar in others. I was born with my disability. I was born with a tumour wrapped around my spinal cord so I’ve been in a wheelchair my whole life compared to some of my team mates who were 20 years old and had a car accident and next minute they can’t walk. I can’t compare cause I obviously didn’t have an accident. But one thing I can say is this, when you are 20 years old and you have an accident or whatever, you know what it’s like to kick a football. You know what’s like to feel the sand between your toes but when you have that accident you lose it. So it’s an interesting question. Would you rather know what it’s like to have and then lose it? Or never know like me.
One thing I will say when you have an accident or something happens to you, hopefully you have a great support network around you. You might have a partner, friends, family, you’ve already experienced things in life where you went to school, you might have had a job, you might have went to uni whatever it is. One thing I can say about being born with a disability, unfortunately kids can be brutal. It’s so hard sometimes for young people with disabilities to get friends. To get opportunities. They get bullied because they’re different.
One maybe good thing about having an accident later in life is that you might have a better support network around you but there is challenges in both. There is obviously opportunities in both. It just completely depends about the lens in which you look at it.
One of the hardest places to go in the world is a rehabilitation centre after an accident because there are just so many people in there that have had accidents. They’ve lost legs. They’ve had brain injuries. They’re in wheelchairs, whatever it is. They think they’re life is over because that’s what they’ve been told. That’s why changing that narrative is so important because ‘yeah your life is now different but it’s not over’. There are still so many things you can do. It’s up to all of us especially Corporate Australia to keep providing those opportunities so people realise that they’re life isn’t over when something pretty severe happens.
Jenelle: I’m interested in the pace of change when it comes to the disability sector. Not that you’re an old man now of course!
Dylan: I am! I’m getting old!
Jenelle: No you can’t say that cause I’m older than you! If you’re old, I’m ancient!
Dylan: I’m 30 years old in a few weeks! Washed up!
Jenelle: Good grief!
Dylan: You could stick a fork in me!
Jenelle: If only you could so something worthwhile with your life! Thinking back to your younger years and the kinds of challenges as a kid you’ve had with a disability. We’ve talked about a few of those. Do you think looking at the situation now that any of those challenges have lessened? Has societal understanding for instance changed? Has technology advancements helped things along? Tell me about the pace of change in the sector.
Dylan: Change has been so important for people with a disability in the whole sector. I’m so glad I’m born now put it that way. Looking at photos 30 years ago of the wheelchairs, the way people tried to drive cars, I can’t even begin to describe what’s it’s like.
Dylan: My current tennis wheelchair is a carbon fibre mould of my body, the same way Daniel Ricciardo has a carbon fibre mould of his body and I’m lucky that I’m looked after by a company called Melrose Wheelchairs who do my chairs. My chair is like $40,000/ $50,000. The technology is incredible, even for people not just with my disability. For people with non-physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities, whatever it is. I got on a plane last year with a guy who was blind, 100% blind. The plane landed, he was with his guide dog. He ordered an uber and uber eats on his phone that he can’t see or use.
Jenelle: Wow.
Dylan: I was like how awesome is that! He was able to get a ride share, get food or whatever it is, using technology through his watch and through his phone. Now that helps him be independent and things like that which is super awesome to see.
The one thing that is changing, but needs to change quicker, is societal perceptions, stigmas and opportunities. I like to think that employment of people with a disability is getting better. Yet the unemployment rate is exactly the same as 10 years ago.
The population of people with a disability is 4.6 million people, yet only 3 – 4% of them are actually in the workforce throughout Corporate Australia, in Australia’s biggest organisations.
The public sector, in some states, only 2% of their staff have a disability.
Jenelle: Why is it that you think society is being so slow to move on this?
Dylan: There are a number of reasons. There is a perception that:

People with a disability can’t do the job as well as able bodied people.
It’s going to be expensive or hard to onboard people with a disability.

One of the things I say is if you compare you and I right. If you had to do a workplace adjustment for me and you to work at the same place, I actually save money because I BYO chair. I bring my own chair to the desk! So we get rid of your chair and then it’s actually saving resources. But actually people often think that’s it’s a hard process, when actually it’s not, and when you do require workplace adjustment, there is government funding to do it, so it actually costs you no money.

I think also there is a lack of education around it.

I often hear “We once employed someone with a disability. We put them in a teamwork of 10. No one really talked to him and then he ended up leaving 6 months later”. I say “Did you do any onboard training for those people about how to integrate someone with a disability into your workplace?” “No, we didn’t”. “We didn’t think we needed to”.
I don’t blame people that they don’t understand the best way to integrate and talk to someone with a disability because they might have never met someone with a disability. They might not have had any exposure for someone with a disability. You can’t just assume everybody will go ‘Oh yeah, they’ll go up and talk to them’ – even though they’re in a wheelchair or have a speech impediment or whatever it is. You can’t assume that.
It’s so great that there are now education tools like what we’ve done at Get Skilled Access to educate people out there about the best way to integrate and onboard people with a disability. But also we need more government funding. We need more people to realise that this is a great thing to do.
I’m not complaining cause it is getting better. It is happening. There is a thirst for it. There definitely is. The example that I give is, 15 years ago if you were homophobic in your workplace, you might have got away with it, potentially. These days you aren’t allowed to do that.
Jenelle: That’s right.
Dylan: And rightfully so. You get destroyed. You will lose your job. Your business will go under. You will lose customers. Now if you are discriminatory to people with a disability, hopefully not, but maybe you might get away with it. It might not be as big. But guess what! I want to look back in 5 years, I want it to be now. We look back and say “You cannot do that” because disability is now in the mainstream, just like the LGBTIQ community. Just like gender equality. Just like race. Just like religion.
People always say when they talk about diversity, they always say the other 4 or 5 streams and they never mention disability until now. It’s starting to become in that conversation which is awesome. I think change is starting to happen. I think it’s up to all of us to keep promoting it.
Jenelle: Good on you. Clearly you’re a powerhouse of motivation and inspiration here. When was that moment that you’re like ‘You know what I have to exercise my voice’. I’ve got the ability to use my voice. Was there a particular moment when you went “Yep, I’m going to put myself out there.”
Dylan: You kind of fall into it a bit. One thing I will say is I never made a point of doing it. I made a point of being me. Being authentic to me. Being fully proud of my disability. Talking about it. Taking the piss out of it. Making jokes out of myself. I’m not going to not talk about it, like it’s in the elephant in the room.
Jenelle: At the risk of being ironic, you’ve just made it so accessible.
Dylan: Yeah exactly! And I didn’t do it on purpose. I honestly didn’t do it on purpose. I was just like I’m going to give everybody 100% full view of it. I’m going to talk about sex and disability. I’m going to talk about what’s it was like going on a date. I’m going to talk about how upset it makes me feel when I get discriminated. I’m not going to not. Cause it’s true. Everyone was like maybe there was a thirst for it, but it had cut through. That gave me the platform to be able to talk about these things I’m most passionate about and I mean this, I could win 25 grand slams, 10 gold medals hopefully, whatever it is, and I would regret not doing what I was put here to do – which is try and help people with a disability get out there and live the lives they deserve to live. I know I’ve said that before but honestly it’s my passion in life.
I think the key to unlocking success in your own personal life, within your work life, is happiness and purpose.
They’re the two things. It’s not money. It’s not cars. It’s not in my case tournaments, championships, whatever, it’s not. That goes across all of us. It’s happiness and purpose. I love my life. One of the reasons I’m so happy is because I have that purpose. It also helps me perform at my best. I’m so lucky to be who I am. I really am and I don’t take that for granted.
I want people like me to feel the same way that I do because unfortunately they don’t because they haven’t had the opportunities that I’ve had. They have never been on a date. They’ve never been in love. They’ve never had a job. They’ve never been to a restaurant. That’s serious. They’ve never done those things because they haven’t been given the opportunities or felt like they can. That’s why I do what I do. If it helps even one person, well then that’s awesome. You know what I mean?
Jenelle: I do.
Dylan: I’m not going to stop being me and people might see me in the media and go ‘that guy is a dickhead and I don’t like him or whatever’. You can do that. I couldn’t care less because I’m just being me. I’m not trying to be anybody else. I’m not trying to please anyone. I’m just trying to help in any small way that I can.
Jenelle: Well personal plea for me, please don’t ever stop being you cause we need you. You said that you kind of fall into these things, these opportunities, but there has got to be some sort of fear of the unknown when you are presented with new opportunities. Whether it’s radio DJ do you kind of go in with a ‘hell yeah I’m in’ or is it ‘oh I’ll give it a crack’ and then you become bolder over time as you kind of get success with that.
How do you approach new opportunities?
Dylan: I’m just like you. I’m thinking how the f am I going to do this! I’ve got no idea what I’m doing!
Jenelle: I know I’m always convinced I’m going to nail it. No I don’t!
Dylan: I got offered this job on JJJ. I had one lesson. By the way on radio, everyone thinks everyone runs the panel, when I was on JJJ I did everything. You do all the buttons. You do everything. It’s like a spaceship right! I had one lesson then I was broadcasting live to the whole of Australia. I had no idea what I was doing! But I’m always thinking ‘Hey I’ll figure it out’. You know what I mean?
Jenelle: Yep.
Dylan: Maybe I shy away from this. I don’t know write on the wall ‘I’m going to get a job as a broadcaster’, ‘I’m going to interview Prince Harry’, ‘I’m going to win this’, I’m not that kind of guy. But maybe there in the back of my head but for some reason all these opportunities come, keeping coming.
I will say this people say ‘you might be lucky’ and I’m very lucky to be in my position but you 100% make your own luck. In a sense that you put yourself in situations where these opportunities will come. If I was still that fat kid that I was eating Doritos, playing video games at home, I would never have had all these opportunities because they are not just going to fall into my lap at home, are they? You have to put yourself out there. You have to buy a ticket to win the raffle. If you put yourself out there, good things tend to happen.
I just realised that I’ve got to keep putting myself out there in situations that I might feel uncomfortable but that’s where things seem to happen. I will always have a crack.
We did the not-for-profit the DAF, the Dylan Alcott Foundation, or whether it’s Able Foods or TSA or whatever it is, I had no idea what I was doing when I founded these things. I just found a way to do it and as a result you not only have success but you also realise it’s ok to ask for help. It’s ok to ask questions. It’s ok to put yourself out there to other people and say ‘Can you help me with this?’. The one thing I have found is 99.99% of people will help you. If you’re a good person and you are doing a good thing, people seem to get behind you. I’m really lucky to.. It’s not a me, it’s a we. We have done this whether it’s the people in our team. Whether it’s the public. We’ve all got behind this crazy journey and message that I construed in my head. I actually can’t believe that it’s actually come true.
Jenelle: Love that. You’ve certainly had the opportunity to meet some pretty amazing people along your journey. I know there has been world leaders in there, Royalty, actors, musicians. Who stood out to you in terms of leadership or inspiration? Who has made that mark on you?
Dylan: The people that have had the biggest influence on my life. Personally would be my brother and my family. I know my brother Zac is my best mate in the whole world. When we were kids he used to want to watch what he wanted on tv so he used to put the Foxtel remote on top of the fridge where I couldn’t reach it! What a jerk! But retrospectively best thing he ever did cause he never cared that I was in a wheelchair. He treated me like I was any other brother. He always protected me so much. From bullies in the yard. He was massive and my parents they never wrapped me in cotton wool because I was different which made a big impact.
In terms of my sporting career probably one of the biggest influencers was a guy called Pat Rafter.
Jenelle: Pretty familiar with that name.
Dylan: Yeah. Not that I had much to do with him originally but I used to watch him on tv. Win, lose, draw, whatever, he was always just a great bloke. He was always gracious in victory or defeat. I wanted to be like that as well. He also looks great in underwear! I’m still waiting for an underwear brand to come knocking!
Jenelle: Ok there is still time!
Dylan: There is still time! It’s pretty cool now when I win something and Pat shoots me a text. We had a hit at the Australian Open whatever it is. It was pretty cool to get his interview, Prince Harry. He doesn’t do interviews, he does conversations. He doesn’t do interviews, it’s conversations. Alright. Fair enough. We had all the Royal protocol and things like that and to be able to have a conversation as I said with him was pretty incredible and I love what he has done for people with disability through his work with the Invictus Games. I remember thinking to myself you’ve interviewed rock stars, musicians, politicians, everyone and I always think if you take away all that, do you know what they are? They’re just people. I thought you know what I’m going to go for it, I’m just going to be myself. I thought I was brave. There is all this Royal protocol. Had this chat with Prince Harry, I made him put on a pair of budgie smugglers. Believe it! It went viral! And you’re not allowed to touch Royalty. I was on a roll, I forgot. I patted him on the back. Idiot! He patted me back on the back and we gave each other a hug. It went so well.

Jenelle: Wow.
Dylan: His Press Secretary, came over and said “Oh that was one of the best interviews he’s done!” I said “Oh I thought it was a conversation!” It just made me realise he is one of the most high profile, in demand people in the world, and his life would be so tough. Like the amount of press they get.
Jenelle: Particularly now.
Dylan: If you strip all that away he was just a normal dude. I think we are all like that. It was a good lesson for me just to be always be authentic to you. The people that are in these successful positions or whatever it is are just that for the most part. They’re just being them and that makes you vulnerable to being open but if you are open, whether you’re a CEO. I talk to a lot of people in the C suite level and some people feel like they can’t be their vulnerable selves because they have to be this position of power. But your staff relates to you when you are vulnerable.
Jenelle: Absolutely.
Dylan: That’s powerful. I think that’s an important lesson that I learnt and try to pass on to a lot of people.
Jenelle: Yeah and I do think there has been a growing recognition and realisation of that, particularly during COVID when everyone has been in the same boat together. We’re all stuck in our own rooms. People are seeing dirty laundry in the backgrounds of CEOs and it has been so fantastic for people to see that vulnerability and the human side.
Dylan: I love doing a Zoom call and you try and guess where everybody is. You’re like, “You’re in bed aren’t you?” and they go “My kids are screaming!”
Jenelle: That’s fantastic!
Dylan: Good stuff!
Jenelle: I have to ask you, tell me I said in the intro that you were crowd surfing in a wheelchair in a mosh pit of sorts right and I can’t get my head around that even in a COVID world now. But what was that like?
Dylan: Yeah well I was just sick and tired of looking at people’s arses all day long so you can’t see much from there and I obviously got picked up. First time was at Coachella during a Jay Z gig and he like stopped the set and said “Ya’ll give it up for this dude” and I call it the best seat in the house because obviously like they pick up the wheelchair, it’s the only time I get to see and I don’t like sitting at the back, my friends always go “We’ll sit up the back with you”. I go no, no stuff that we’ll go up front and guess what, I’ve only been dropped once.
Jenelle: Ok, that’s probably once too many isn’t it?
Dylan: Well I only got dropped once and I didn’t end up any more disabled than I started.
Jenelle: Fair call.
Dylan: That’s what I assured my Mum.
Jenelle: So we’ll call that a win.
Dylan: Correct.
The last three. Three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.
Jenelle: All right Dylan, I’m going to wrap up with a fast three questions for you. What’s a misconception that most people have about you?
Dylan: There’s two. The biggest misconception if you actually don’t know who I am is that I can’t do anything. For example not too long ago I ordered a coffee and this lovely lady came up to me and she was in tears and she congratulated me on ordering my coffee.
Jenelle: Oh my gosh.
Dylan: I said to her “Well it’s great to see you getting your own coffee too”. Her misconception is that I can’t do anything. The biggest barrier in my life is not ramps, not stairs, not access, it’s a lack of expectation of what people think…
Jenelle: Yeah it’s underestimating you. Ok what’s one guilty pleasure?
Dylan: My guilty pleasure is I absolutely love sitting on the couch and doing nothing. When I get the opportunity I can relax like with the rest of them. When I do get the opportunity to do nothing I’m extremely glad.
Jenelle: I’m going to feel like I know what you’re going to answer this question with but what’s one thing you’re hopeless at?
Dylan: Ah besides walking?
Jenelle: Thought you were going to go for walking.
Dylan: Yeah. I’ll tell you what I can’t do, I cannot draw even a single stick man. I like to say I have two disabilities. Walking and drawing. I have no artistic ability, I mean maybe I do have artistic ability in broadcasting at that, but when it comes to arts and crafts, absolutely I’m shocking. Absolutely shocking at it.
Jenelle: Ok, well there we have it. Dylan I want to thank you for your time today. I’ve enjoyed every single moment of it, so much for people to take away. For me there’s been a bunch of things. One clearly, you’ve taken a lesson out of Pat Rafter’s book, you are a great bloke and you smack of authenticity and I want to thank you for making disability accessible, approachable, giving people a language to kind of just ask the questions that they wanted to. Make that fine to learn. I think you’ve raised consciousness about how prolific disability is in Australia, one in five is pretty profound. I love that you’ve talked about the power of harnessing difference, the power of reframing how you perceive events, the need for us to change the narrative, and I love the whole “stuff this”. “Stuff this I’m just going to go and do it”. “Stuff this I’m going to take my life back”. I think you’ve managed to make those two words sound pretty profound. So thank you so much Dylan it’s been an absolute pleasure.
Dylan: Hey you’re an absolute legend. Thank you for having me on and if anyone wants to get in touch, please hit me up on my social media. It’s just my name @dylanalcott or want to do any work with any of the companies that I have please reach out. Because I’d love to help, love to get involved and I’ve got to say, you’re a bloody good broadcaster. You and I could do radio together Jenelle.
Jenelle: I’m up, I’m up for it!
Dylan: We could do some AM talkback. Let me just retire and that could be our new gig.
Jenelle: Ok, let’s take that one off line, like it! Thanks Dylan we’ll put the links to your pages as well on our post.
Dylan: Appreciate it thank you.
Jenelle: Thank you.
The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Sir John Kirwan
Co-Founder and visionary at Groov

JK
Somewhere along the way, people said, don't take your real self to work.
Jenelle McMaster
I know.
JK
I don't know when it was and.
Jenelle McMaster
It was a sad day when it was.
JK
It's a sad day. Yes. You know, I talk about two things. Don't mix your humanity up with your ability. You can still be an amazing boss and an asshole you can still be an amazing boss and a really good person. You know what I mean? You can still be a boss that's struggling with anxiety and relationships or whatever it is. That is just a human thing that we've got. And that's what I'm excited about because I don't think that's the future for leadership. The future for leadership is actually being way more authentic and bringing your real self to work.
Jenelle McMaster
I also think the future for leadership is not just this the individual hero leader anymore. I don't think that there's one person that wears a cape and saves the day. I think there's the power of the collective leadership, the people who work together and harness that ability of the broad masses. I think that people who can tap into the diverse abilities of others, people who show their vulnerability, I think that the archetype of leadership has totally changed.
JK
How do you lead and deal with egos at the high level?
Jenelle McMaster
Yes, there's a little bit of eyeball rolling that still happens. And I'm like, okay, I think it's really instructive as well. So when there are really big egos, there's usually a reason behind it. It's usually masking some amount of insecurity about something. It's usually masking some lack of information about something. It's usually a worry. So I think if you can get to the driver behind that to do, like hypothetical so one might ask oneself and then sort of tap on the very thing that they would never be humble enough to put out there. But you can diffuse that. I think when you come up with shared language. I think what we both want here is this or co-opt them into answering questions where they would normally be sitting back with their arms crossed, expecting you to have the answers. How might we solve this? Why not appeal to the ego? And then they actually what they're worried about is that they will be cut out. So I think the psychology of it is to try to understand what's driving that behavior, then tap into that rather than go, you're an asshole.
JK
That's great advice, because when I was at my worst, when I was an arrogant asshole rugby player, I was just hiding from me, hiding from my anxiety, hiding from what was really out there. And it was the best defense that I had because often that's what people expected. They expected me to be
Jenelle McMaster
They could reconcile that persona much more readily than someone who is talking about mental health issues or I'm not doing okay.
JK
Yeah, exactly. And I think luckily it didn't last too long. But it was a pretty sad time.
Jenelle McMaster
You've had such a diverse career. What was it that drove you so clearly towards mental health as your focus for a career once you left the sporting world?
JK
Can I just hold you there? I'm blissfully average at a whole lot of stuff, which is okay.
Jenelle McMaster
And you're also exceptional at a number of things as well.
JK
Yeah, but I think it's also important it's okay to be blissfully average. I was hiding my anxiety and my depression.
Jenelle McMaster
And what was happening in your life at that time? Where were you at in your sporting career.
JK
I was incredibly successful externally. I was an all black playing for my country, but I was suffering from anxiety and depression. A lot of people that do have anxiety, and then it falls into depression. I was one of those. I didn't know what it was. My reference to mental health was one flow of The Cookies Nest. Anyone is old enough to remember that movie. So I didn't talk to anyone because I thought I'd be locked up with Jack Nicholson. And that was a real fear. So I spoke to no one. But one night, I was in a hotel room in Buenos Aires and the guy lined next to me said, JK, you've got a good heart. And it saved my life.

Holly Ransom
Founder and CEO, Emergent

Holly Ransom
I love that you've asked that question, because it's one of the things I most admire about my grandmother. And I think if there's any trait I hope to emulate of hers, it's this. It didn't matter who she was talking to, the guy that was coming to pick the garbage bin up, whether she was talking to the librarian at the local library, anyone in between, the mayor of the town, you name it. Every time she spoke to someone, she had the ability to make them feel like they are so important, they matter so much, and the world is so lucky that they are doing what they're doing. And I always thought, what a gift to give people, you know, this ability to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel appreciated. And I just remember how important that was, particularly growing up, to have someone who those people who believe in you before you believe in yourself. That's my grandmother. And that's not just my grandmother for me. That's my grandmother for everyone she ever meets. And I just think that's such an incredible leadership trait to me. She is an embodiment of what I think leadership needs to look like.
Holly Ransom
My grandmother was someone who always embraced that sense of, well, yeah, actually, you're leading. You have a responsibility in every interaction you have with everyone you meet. Your energy, your curiosity, your attitude. That's an opportunity to shape the world for the better.
Jenelle McMaster
What an incredible human being. She is such a special attribute, and good for you for recognizing that at such an early age.
Holly Ransom
I often think there's an enormous importance in our earliest memories, one where my grandmother and I were out shopping in a supermarket, and this guy who was in front of us in the queue, who I would have been four or five at the time, this man looked like a goliath. He was yelling at the poor young girl on the checkout who had evidently given him the wrong change, and he was making a real song and dance about it. He was being quite aggressive, and before I even blinked, my five foot tall grandmother, Dorothy, had inserted herself between goliath and this will be the one on the checkout said, how dare you talk to that young woman like that. You apologize. And it was this moment, this man who had obviously never been told by anyone to kind of check his behavior. And then he sort of went right red in the cheeks and mumbled sorry and grabbed his things and ran out of the store. And my grandmother sort of proceeded like nothing unusual had happened? And went off we went. And then I just said, Grandma, that was so brave. And she said, honey if you walk past it, you tell the world it's okay.
Holly Ransom
Now I think about it, and I go. I reckon it took me two decades to work out what that meant, maybe longer in terms of actually understanding what my grandmother meant and what that phrase meant, what that idea meant. But the power of what my grandmother did there, she didn't say it, she did it. And I think that for me, was one of the earliest lessons in leadership. Right? It's about what you do, not what you say.
Jenelle McMaster
It's funny you said it took you a couple of decades to be able to narrate what you experienced. That intuitive leadership on her part. But there's so many words that have come into our lexicon now. Crucible moments, understanding, empathy, being an upstander leadership without authority that your grandmother just demonstrated as a manner of course without even thinking about it. The language came afterwards for not just you, but I think for the rest of us in the world, she just obviously embodied that so intuitively.
Holly Ransom
100% I think it's great that we're starting to see the shift in trying to change up the narrative of who we're role modeling as examples of leaders we're still not admiring and lionizing leaders of empathy, we're still not talking about a diverse set of archetypes for what leadership can look like. And I think it's really, really important because if we don't do that, we risk too many people looking at the terminology, the discussion, the conversation around leadership and going, oh, well, that's obviously not about me. I'm obviously not involved in that mix because I don't look like those leaders, I don't lead in that way. That's not my context. And as you and I both know Jenelle, like, particularly the problems that are facing the world right now. We need everyone to understand their role as a leader, and everyone has a role to play as a leader. Whether you're leading, for better or worse, you're leading every day. You know, any influence you've got in your immediate relationships, whether that's your household, your team, your community, you name it.

Hugh van Cuylenburg
Founding Director/Facilitator, The Resilience Project

Hugh Power
Yeah, it's a fantastic question because I was discussing this only yesterday afternoon with my psychologist, but I think it's important conversation for me to put out there because we don't talk about this enough. I have felt enormous pressure, and I think people in corporate world feel this pressure to be OK all the time, like, to be seen to be totally on top of everything thing. The irony there is that we're not a lot of the time. And the irony of that is that pretending that you're okay and not being honest with how you're traveling often leads you to being even more not okay. So with my psychologist yesterday first question, she said, how are you going? I said, you know what? I'm going amazingly well. And then I talked to her through the last couple of months of my life. I haven't chatted with her for a while. And it involved saying to the CEO of the Resilience Project, man I'm not okay at the moment. I'm really battling with work-life balance, with burnout professionally, and I'm feeling pressure that I have to be okay because I'm the resilience guy. So if I'm not okay, does that mean that, you know, I'm just a fraud?
Hugh Power
And then saying to my wife, she said to me, you're okay? What's going on? Use your gun. Fine. What's wrong? And get a little bit shitty at that question. But I said, no, I don't think I am okay at the moment. I'm so bummed out at work, and I meant to recover at home, but I actually find work at home more difficult than work at the moment because there's a one and a half year old who doesn't sleep. There's a four and a half year old who's having a lot of issues. I can't recover anywhere. I'm exhausted emotionally, I'm exhausted mentally. And I admitted that to two people who I really care about, who I've pretended to be okay in front of for a long time. So I felt like they needed me to be okay. And I sit here now, a month later, and I am in such a good place right now. And my psychologist said, you're okay now because you tell people that you weren't okay a month ago. She said, if you kept pretending that you're okay, I can't even begin to imagine what state you'd be in right now.
Jenelle McMaster
How did it feel for you when you said those words to you out loud to your wife and to your psychologist? How did it feel at the time?
Hugh Power
I love both of them dealing, in very different ways, obviously. I've known him for a long time, and the Resonance Project is I mean, I get a lot of credit for it. That is Martin Are, the presenter, but it's successful in most part because of him. He's an extraordinary individual that he went straight to Operation Mode. He was like, okay, so we need to shift this. We need to move this. We need to cancel that at the time, like, oh, gosh. But then I went home and told Penny, and she said, okay, so I need to do I need to do this, I need to fix that, I need to do this. And neither of them really sat in that emotion with me. I think it was a bit confronting to have me saying I'm not okay. So I never said that before. And they were both so desperate to help that they went straight to, okay, let's problem solve. And funnily enough, we interviewed Dr. Billy Garvey, a pediatrician on our podcast. He was talking about how you deal with a child who's got a problem. And he said the first thing you do that, you sit in the emotion with them and you validate it.
Hugh Power
Then you identify that as an opportunity. Then you give them some space and then lay your problem solved. And I was listening, thinking, that's not just kids. That's us as adults as well. Yes, you validate it. You say, I can see you're feeling this, and I understand why you'd feel like that. That makes sense to me. And then in your head, you think, here's an opportunity for us to grow our relationship or to us to grow this situation or this team or whatever you're going through. And then you give a little bit of space. You don't try and problem solve straight away, and then you come back to it a day or two later, and you say, what can we do here? But I experienced that first hand with this with my wife finally, who did it the other way the next day. She said, I totally understand why you feel like that must be. You've been doing this for ten years nonstop. You haven't taken a breath in ten years. And then the CEO, Ben, I chatted to him two days after that. He said to me, I'm really worried about you. I get why you feel like that.
Hugh Power
And so the both of them did. It should have been reversed. And it was funny having lived it. Don't get wrong I'm not having a go at either one of them. They're two of the most special people in my life. But both of them went solved the problem first. So to answer your question, how did I feel? I felt much better the second time we chatted when they just validated how I was feeling. That's all I needed. That's what I really needed. And the problem solving part, yeah, that was going to be part of it, but I didn't need it straight away. I just needed to be validated for the way I was feeling, because I felt really vulnerable when I told him I wasn't going. Okay. I mean, my psychologist said to me yesterday, I know you feel pressured to be okay as a resilience guy, but she said, this is the most resilient I've ever seen you in two years. You're showing up today living and breathing resilience because you've said you're not okay and you're curious as to what you can do to get better. She said that's more resilient than putting on a performance around gratitude in my opinion.

Christine Nixon AO QPM
Former Chief Commissioner, Victoria Police

Jenelle McMaster
Turning to the Black Saturday. Bushfires occurred in 2009. Sadly, 173 lives were lost. But it was also a time when you personally faced criticism, for what was described at that time as hands-off leadership, you also had to front a royal commission. Was it just time that helped you find your way out of that? Or was it turning your attention to more recovery efforts? Was it another role? What was it?
Christine Nixon
I think the recovery helped because I knew what I was doing. I mean, there were some people in the recovery communities and people who some of the committees affected who said, oh no, you should stand down. But what really, I suppose, got me a bit more focused on that and what I described as you have to get over yourself sometimes is a family who big public functions down in Federation Square and sort of see the assembled media and everybody else.
Christine Nixon
We all made mistakes. Perhaps my husband and I have made mistakes and maybe Christine's made mistakes, but in this case, we just had to get on with it. We wanted to stay and we wanted to help. The woman making that statement had lost two kids at the time. And I figured to myself, she's lost her kids, she's lost other family and friends. And what I've lost is a reputation. So I need to get over it.
Christine Nixon
And I need to be able to be here supporting those people in the recovery of their communities, 109 communities across Victoria, and leave the authority to a point when my job is done and then, you know, someone else could take it over for the next phase. That helped. I think writing about it afterwards helped and my job just started the controversy again in some ways.
Jenelle McMaster
Exactly.
Christine Nixon
But at least I got to put out my view of what had happened and the various players that had caused this to, you know, to be bought to the full.
Jenelle McMaster
You know, it's very powerful. I mean, time is a powerful healer, but also shifting perspective and being clear on purpose, all of which you sort of had around you, is really powerful. And in 2002, you defied critics not only by allowing police officers to march in uniform, but also becoming the first chief commissioner to join the Gay and Lesbian Pride March in Melbourne. Pretty historic moment. What impact did that have for you and for the community? What was the feedback and reaction?
Christine Nixon
You know, I figured a long time ago, that leadership is not about popularity. I wasn't looking to be the most popular person in Victoria Police because I figured that was never going to be a way to do things.
Christine Nixon
You sometimes have to make that decision that not everybody is going to agree with you. But what I think many people did agree with, I would say I'm standing up for people who have been doing a good job and they need me to do that for them to stand up for them and that was both the police officers and professional staff but.
Christine Nixon
It was also the broader Gay and Lesbian community and the relationship between the police and the Gay and Lesbian community has been atrocious. And I knew a lot of that history from the 70’s and 80’s and so it seemed to me this was an opportunity now not only to march it was just really a small symbol, the more important piece was to put liaison officers in place to figure out how we could do better to attract people to join the police who were gay and lesbian, transsexual, bisexual backgrounds, you know all of that, so they would see pleasing as something they felt comfortable to be part of.
Jenelle McMaster
Were there any moments in maybe that time when you were with the police association that you were like oh, I did make a change happen that served as something of the fire in the belly that you could do that? Is there anything in particular?
Christine Nixon
Yeah, absolutely. That was the point when we got quotas lifted when we did actually get maternity leave. I mean they're all the kind of things and of course we got women to be able to work in operational policing and actually I was one of them hadn't quite necessarily planned that it would be me but sometimes you get to jump in yourself and put your money where your mouth is somewhat and so I think that was that time. So I did see that changing. It doesn't all work perfectly and as my career progressed over time I started to see that you could bring about change and I think you do have to take the successes as you get them and they often spur you on to try for more change.

Dr. Bronwyn King
Founder & CEO, Tobacco Free Portfolios

Bronwyn King
But then he rolled his eyes at me and said, oh, look, there is this one special option for people who have a problem with investing in mining, alcohol or tobacco. And then there was silence and I sort of just absorbed what he said. And I said, did you just say tobacco? And he said yes. And I said, So, am I currently investing in tobacco? And he said, oh, yes, everyone is. And that was it. That was just this incredible moment where I thought, I just can't continue the.
Jenelle McMaster
Irony of sitting there in a hospital. Talking to you…
Bronwyn King
And that's it, that's it. And I thought, Gosh, you know, here I am. I knew absolutely what tobacco did to people. I've seen it so many times, not just dozens of times. Maybe more than a thousand of my patients had either died or suffered absolutely terribly as a result of tobacco. And then there I am, finding out that my own money invested in the companies that make the products that are killing them.
Jenelle McMaster
So what happened then? You go, OK, somehow, I'm inadvertently bankrolling this situation. How did you take that discomfort of the moment and turn that into, I'm going to do something about this?
Bronwyn King
Straight away at that exact moment, I actually had a little thought to myself where I just said, well, that's it, I just can't leave that. That has to be fixed. A few weeks later, I was the radiation oncologist who was set to present at our Friday afternoon meeting. I, instead of presenting an interesting case, I presented this discovery. I said to everybody, all of us at Peter McCallum, who know only too well what tobacco does to humankind, all of us currently invest our own super in these companies. The top holdings for me in that international shares portion was, number one, british American Tobacco, number two, Imperial Tobacco, number four, with Philip Morrison, number five with Swedish Match Company. So four of the top five holdings were tobacco companies. They said, look, you have to tell the CEO of the hospital. He then rang me back one day later and he said, look, I've booked you in to speak to the CEO and the investment team at the pension plan for the hospital and that then kicked off the very first conversation that I ever had with a big financial institution.
Jenelle McMaster
I'd love for you to kind of just set a scene here on what the changes that you're trying to make happen.
Bronwyn King
The World Health Organization predicts that the world is on track for 1 billion tobacco related deaths this century. So 1 billion. There's only seven and a half billion of us. So if we pause and think for a minute about the scale of this, it's an extraordinary problem and the world's health sector is really aware of that and is doing absolutely everything it can to try to help people who suffer as a result of tobacco and to try to implement better preventative health policy. Governments are on board. The only global health treaty that exists, that is the UN tobacco Control treaty and 181 countries have signed and ratified that, and we have everyone standing together to bring an end to tobacco except the finance sector. And that's the missing piece that we are trying to address at Tobacco Free Portfolio.

Jenelle McMaster, EY Oceania Markets Leader, reflects on what she's learned from great leaders through her discussions on the Change Happens podcast.

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.

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Season 5

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Jenelle McMaster, EY Oceania Markets Leader, reflects on what she's learned from great leaders through her discussions on the Change Happens podcast.