Leaders on LEADERSHIP
LEADERSHIP CONSULTING
Andrew Mackenzie CEO BHP Billiton
Peter Coleman CEO Woodside
John Bertrand President, Swimming Australia
Lyall Gorman Executive Chairman, Western Sydney Wanderers FC
Professor Ian Williamson Melbourne Business School
Strategy + culture + shared leadership = smooth execution
To gain an insider perspective
on the rapidly changing
business models confronting
Australian companies today,
we invited some of our most
forward-thinking business
leaders to discuss the role
played by corporate culture
in individual, team and
organisational effectiveness.
There was unanimous agreement that having a
higher purpose and a culture that supports that
purpose inevitably leads to a smooth execution of the
organisation’s strategy. In fact, intentionally shaping your
culture to align your people to strategy and purpose will
almost certainly guarantee success.
In the following pages, the leaders reveal exactly how
they are approaching the challenging task of aligning and
engaging their teams.
In our own experience in assessing and developing
individuals and teams, and shaping corporate cultures, we
know that the two main questions asked by CEOs when it
comes to their top teams are:
• How can I get the right people exhibiting
the right behaviours?
• How can I make sure I am preparing the
next generation of leaders?
Every year, with predictable regularity, corporate surveys
emphasise the importance of talent management and
succession planning as the top concerns for organisations.
Yet proper planning is done only by around 50 per cent of
companies of all sizes and shapes around the world.
Why isn’t planning done more often?
The answer is two-fold:
• Companies tend to take action only when
an event makes a problem visible.
• When they do take action, they often leave out an
important part of the puzzle – the forward strategy
and how to align the culture through a motivated top
team and workforce to execute on the mission.
Leaders on LEADERSHIP
2 Leaders on leadership
Our approach is to start a process of ‘discovery,’ which
looks at the strategic direction of the organisation up to
five years out, while at the same time assessing internal
talent and mapping the external talent market.
It is increasingly common for chief executives to find that
current leadership may not be sufficient for the forward
direction. At that point, CEOs can turn their attention to
precisely what changes are needed in the strategy from
technical, behavioural, and cultural perspectives.
Getting the right fit for all involves a structured approach,
looking at four main features of the organisation:
1 Strategic direction
2 Desired culture
3 External brand expectations
4 The leader’s desire to develop their leadership style
The outcome of the process is a leadership journey which
both develops and acquires the best talent to fire up the
engine for the next phase of growth.
The questionsWe asked our corporate, academic and sporting group of
Andrew Mackenzie, Peter Coleman, John Bertrand, Lyall
Gorman and Professor Ian Williamson to discuss:
• The role culture plays in individual, team
and organisational effectiveness.
• The changing nature of strategy in an
increasingly fast-moving world.
• The desired profile of future leaders.
Follow-up questions revolved around the challenge of
developing cultures ‘by design’ which facilitate agility,
consistency of the enterprise across geographies, and a
sense of engagement with the broader community.
There was general agreement that:
• The current business outlook is uncertain.
• A ‘sense of purpose’ is fundamental to success.
• Engaging the workforce around the ‘how’ of strategy,
or execution, is the hardest thing to achieve.
The answers, in their own words, follow.
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ANDREW MACKENZIECHIEF EXECUTIVE, BHP BILLITON
Higher purpose means higher performanceNot only is the world demanding
high performance in today’s
business climate, but in themselves
people want to wake up every day
and do extraordinary things.
4 Leaders on leadership
Culture is all about the higher purpose. Start with the why.
People need to have a connection with the purpose. At
BHP, we have a single-minded focus. And if you do this,
you will find that when you shift the mean performance to
your highest performance, your competitors won’t see you
for dust.
If the right values are not present, you cannot have an
aligned culture. We believe in a sense of service to the
nation. We say to Australians, ‘We’re not working for the fat
cats – we’re working for you.’
While culture is hard to define, you will know when it
is not working. My view about culture at the executive
level is that leadership covers everything – it’s the email
you don’t send or the phone call you do make. It’s about
authenticity. But the CEO sets the tone and must personify
the culture.
I don’t like the word ‘behaviours’ because it sounds like a
correction. People can become overly compliant due to
fear, so you need to change the way you do things in order
to remove fear and unlock the potential of your people.
How do you change beliefs? I don’t think you can – but
what you must do is to couple your goals with people’s
need for self-actualisation. You have to change the
conditions that people impose on themselves. So you
don’t so much change the beliefs as change the context
so your people can perform. They need to feel more self-
determined and empowered.
We have a ‘step-up’ culture which helps people to grow. We
will grow our company not by using more capital, because
that won’t help people do their jobs better. We will grow
the company as people step up and add more value.
You can have a million conversations about how people
can be more productive, but what ‘improved productivity’
actually means is a radical re-direction of people’s time.
But culture alone is not enough. You need systems in
place. Strong systems will facilitate creativity. We will soon
have everyone globally on SAP. You need systems to know
what’s happening in an organisation in order to identify
what’s working and what’s not.
Lastly – and this is hard – you have to pull away parts
of the systems that have become self-serving.
“I don’t like the word ‘behaviours’ because it sounds like a
correction. People can become overly compliant due to fear,
so you need to change the way you do things in order to
remove fear and unlock the potential of your people.”
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PETER COLEMANCEO, WOODSIDE
Culture of ‘we’ – with a flexible, global outlook
We believe that culture is all about the ‘we,’ not the ‘me.’ At Woodside we
don’t manage risk through assets but through relationships. So we are
constantly engaged in a global team-building exercise.
6 Leaders on leadership
While we have ‘the Woodside compass’ which expands on
who we are (culture), what we do (strategy) and how we
do it (the hard part), it could be summarised simply as ‘do
the right thing.’
The first two – who and what – set the expectations and
the ‘how’ is where we create value.
Getting the right graduates and developing them is
important, assessing the executive talent we have, and
developing them, is important, and then buying people
off the street to fill the gaps is also necessary to bring in
fresh blood and new ideas.
We are a knowledge-driven and relationship-driven
industry. The oil and gas business is a long-dated industry.
And engineers love certainty. But today we are learning
to embrace uncertainty because that is where the value
is captured.
For a CEO today, understanding business on a global
scale is a huge part of the job. While 95% of our value
comes from assets in Western Australia, the Asian market
beckons, and we need to have global intelligence. We
need to understand what is happening in governments,
sectors, new areas that are opening up, potential
disturbances, and the commoditisation of technology.
Our executives today are those with a broader view.
They need to be open to our competitors critiquing the
company, and they need to examine the way we are
treating people and how we are interacting with the
marketplace and our customers.
Our executives also need to be flexible. The markets are
becoming more liquid. Where once the spot market for
gas was 1%, now it’s 30%.
“today we are learning to embrace uncertainty because that is where the value is captured”
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JOHN BERTRANDPRESIDENT OF SWIMMING AUSTRALIA FORMER AMERICA’S CUP-WINNING SKIPPER BUSINESSMAN AND PHILANTHROPIST
Trust, transparency, and world leadershipIn business, as in sport, you have to understand that you are not
competing against your competitors – you are competing against
yourselves. You’re competing against your inability to take the blinkers
off and ask, ‘How will this look in five or 10 years’ time?’
8 Leaders on leadership
If that is the prevailing mindset, your human capital, your
people, will be unleashed, because we know that in the
future, the game will be much more sophisticated, much
more efficient. Higher, further, faster. History tells us that.
The question is, ‘who can get there the fastest?’
We know the future of this great country of ours is to
unleash the creativity of our workforce and our people.
We would never have won the America’s Cup if we’d
accepted the status quo. We were in the business of
endeavouring to understand and apply what the game
would look like in 20 years’ time, within our world of
administration, technology and team-building. We
then launched ourselves on to a new S-curve of high
performance. We knew we were in the business of creating
sporting history.
Leadership is about the creation of high-performance
teams. In swimming, you have a group of individuals who
have to work as a team. The vision for Swimming Australia
is eventually to have the Americans benchmark Australia
as the pinnacle of achievement.
We aim to excite the minds of our swimmers and coaches,
and our administration, to empower them to search for
excellence as we become the world’s best in everything
we do.
Great leaders are listeners – they learn and lead. The
three Ls are ‘listen, learn, lead.’ And the starting point for
leadership is vision. People need to know where they are
going. And natural leaders are natural visionaries. They
have the ability to communicate and constantly reinforce
that vision.
What defines a leader? Leaders have the ability to form
teams of people with complementary skills around that
vision. They also have the ability to live their life with a
strong set of values, so that people want to be involved.
These values will typically be very basic human
traits – trust, integrity, honesty, and transparency of
communication. I would add another element for
Australians – ‘having fun.’ You could also call it ‘passion.’
Two sports are fundamentally important in the Australian
psyche globally – cricket and swimming. When we’re not
on song with these sports, it affects the nation. So there is
real responsibility here with Swimming Australia, and of
course a wonderful opportunity.
We will generate substantially more medals at the next
Olympics than we did in London. By 2020 – and this is
the big vision – we aim to be the Number One swimming
nation in the world, from the Olympic podium and
Paralympic podium, through to grassroots.
It’s a huge challenge, and an exciting challenge.
We are in the business of exciting the minds of our
swimmers, and empowering them to search for
excellence. We are in the business of leading the world.
“What defines a leader? Leaders have the ability to form
teams of people with complementary skills around that
vision. They also have the ability to live their life with a
strong set of values, so that people want to be involved.”
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LYALL GORMANEXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN WESTERN SYDNEY WANDERERS FOOTBALL CLUB
Community engagement, long-term commitmentThe future cannot be built entirely in Microsoft
Excel spreadsheets. People are our most mportant
investment. We employ people, not “players and staff.”
We work and partner with people and organisations.
We engage with people, not customers.
10 Leaders on leadership
High-performance organisations grow when the people
within them are growing, and when they are doing what
they do best. We call this is a ‘strength-based culture.’ This
means we don’t try to teach goal-keepers to be strikers.
When we created the Wanderers, we had the advantage
of being able to start with a blank sheet of paper. We had
a rich football heritage and multi-cultural diversity across
western Sydney on which to frame our business model,
but we firstly had to establish:
• How we do what we do – our cultural
and values framework
• What we do – our strategy
• Why we do it – or a sense of greater
purpose and vision
We were in a western Sydney catchment area with
professional sporting codes all drawing on the same
resources, and we needed a point of difference. It is the
point of difference, not the point of sameness, that makes
all the difference!
Yet we had only three months to build up the club. When
I asked Football Federation of Australia Chairman Frank
Lowy how we could turn the club around in just three
months, he counselled: “It’s very simple, Lyall – just double
the shifts.”
Armed with that sage-like piece of wisdom, and with
the belief that successful organisations are built on a
foundation of clarity of vision, values and culture, our
journey began.
Through a process of consultation, communication,
collaboration and ultimately connectivity across our
region, we were able to establish:
Our vision – to be a world-class football club, and the
pride of western Sydney.
Our purpose – to enable our elite men’s women’s and
youth athletes to be the catalyst for true social impact and
change across the western Sydney region.
Our values – a great culture flows from the consistent
application of core values.
We then set about recruiting and retaining the best
people, by which I mean getting the right people in the
right seats on the bus!
‘Fit’ was critical, because our future was built around being
a significant community asset through a focus on making
a real difference across the western Sydney region in a
values framework that had already been defined for us
through our market engagement.
The focus was to be ‘proud, respectful, inclusive, youthful,
raw and real, aspirational and ambitious.’
Ambition was defined as ‘a future of endless possibilities’
and we also decided we would not be glamorous, elitist
or intimidated. So Shinji Ono would fit, but Del Piero
would not.
‘Stand up for us, make us proud, and be competitive’ is
our mantra.
Authentic and relevant community and stakeholder
engagement became a driving force for us. This also
meant that we would regularly and consistently engage
with our community at all levels, whether fostering
and nurturing grassroots and community football,
enhancing elite player pathways, working in schools and
community organisations or partnering with business and
government sectors.
For us, our business – the business of football – is the
conduit to being a true community asset and making a
real contribution.
When we go anywhere, the club goes, not the team. It’s all
about communication, collaboration and connectivity.
Our culture is one of long-term commitment, internally
and externally. Our vision and values drive our strategy.
For example, we partner only with organisations which are
like-minded.
Leadership is driven by ‘cause’ and not ‘self.’ We espouse
a culture which fosters a safe environment that allows
for ideas, challenge and input to come from all.
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PROFESSOR IAN WILLIAMSONMELBOURNE BUSINESS SCHOOL
Leadership means being a role modelFor years people have talked about the ‘War for Talent.’ However, I believe
this war is over and talent has won. The balance of power has shifted. Today
highly skilled individuals are in short supply and high demand across the
globe. As such, individuals, not companies, have far more power when it
comes to shaping their career paths. Thus, leadership today is more than
just shaping the firm strategy. It is equally about convincing talented
individuals that they should join an organisation in order to implement
that strategy.
12 Leaders on leadership
One key for effectively attracting and retaining top talent
is the development of an effective organisational culture.
Culture can oftentimes seem hard to define or measure,
however, from my perspective an organisation’s culture boils
down to three things:
1 What you see
2 What you do
3 What you believe
If culture is to be a positive asset for an organisation, leaders
must work to make sure these three aspects of culture align
with each other and with the broader mission and strategy
of the firm. A failure to do so will cause employees to raise
questions about the viability, legitimacy and even the integrity
of an organisation and its leaders, hindering a firm’s ability to
attract and retain top talent.
Senior leaders in particular play an important role in shaping
‘what employees see.’ Rightly or wrongly, leaders have
a symbolic role in organisations. Their behaviors set the
stage for what employees expect or don’t expect from their
employers. When the leader’s behaviour is inconsistent with
organisational practices and values, their very legitimacy to
lead is questioned, as is their strategy. Thus, leaders must
embrace the role of being a role-model for the culture they
desire in their organisations.
Organisations often face situations that challenge cultural
values. But these situations of dissonance represent critical
leadership opportunities. It is in those moments that
employees will look to leaders to reconcile the dissonance
and illustrate the behaviours necessary to support the firm’s
culture. For example, if a firm values trust, is the leader
transparent with bad news about firm performance? If the
firm values collaboration, does the leader accept selfish
behaviour by a high-performing executive? If the firm values
innovation, does the leader punish an employee who tried an
unsuccessful experiment?
Each of these examples represent symbolic opportunities
for leaders to reaffirm the culture of their organisation and
in doing so establish the firm’s credibility and their personal
credibility in the eyes of talented employees.
“When the leader’s behaviour is inconsistent with organisational practices and values their very legitimacy to lead is questioned, as is their strategy.”
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Clearly, we see similar themes
mentioned by the corporate,
academic and sporting leaders
who have contributed to this
paper. This is not surprising, given
that organisations are made
up of people and we all have
similar needs, regardless of our
chosen profession.
We need a clear outline of success – starting with the
‘why,’ and moving along a simple pathway to achieve
‘the how,’ and then developing a meaningful way of
achieving this within the work environment. Think of
the work environment as being ‘who we are.’
What is challenging is harnessing the right leaders,
and then aligning them with beliefs that can engage
and motivate the whole organisation into action.
What is critical is the ability to create an organisation
that is agile in the fast-changing global environment.
At the same time, leaders need to provide significant
meaning to those within the organisation so
they can move together in delivering exceptional
business results.
Summary and conclusions
At Heidrick & Struggles, we help leaders understand
the linkages between strategy, structure and culture
in order to ensure they are all working in unison
to accelerate the achievement of their business
goals. We do this by working with the leadership
to ‘design’ a culture that fits with their specific
business imperatives, assisting the leaders to ‘live’
the behaviours and then provide the framework to
cascade this throughout the organisation.
We also ensure that there is a plan to align all systems
and processes to the desired culture to ensure all
is working in harmony. Sustainability is delivered
through a structured ‘transfer of competency’
program, enabling the organisation to continually
refine the culture with the changing needs of
the organisation.
“we help leaders understand the linkages between strategy, structure and culture in order to ensure they are all working in unison”
14 Leaders on leadership
Leadership Consulting Practice
The Leadership Consulting Practice at Heidrick & Struggles provides a range of services including:
• Leadership assessment and development
• Senior talent management
• CEO succession and transition
• Top team performance enhancement
• Board effectiveness reviews
• Culture-shaping consulting
Diana CoelhoPrincipal Leadership Consulting Practice, Heidrick & Struggles
Level 35 140 William Street Mebourne VIC 3000
+ 61 (0)3 9012 3000
Lana LedgerwoodPrincipal Leadership Consulting Practice, Heidrick & Struggles
Level 28 Governor Phillip Tower 1 Farrer Place Sydney NSW 2000
+ 61 (0)2 8205 2000
Dani FraillonPartner Leadership Consulting Practice, Heidrick & Struggles
+ 61 (0)3 9012 3000
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