Tuesday, 11 April 2006

Hear it from the BOSS: The Leadership Question (Sydney)

Transcript

This is an edited transcript of HEAR IT FROM THE BOSS "THE LEADERSHIP QUESTION", held at Angel Place, Sydney on April 11, 2006. The panel discussion was moderated by Adam Spencer with John Mulcahy, CEO, Suncorp; Alison Watkins, Executive chairman, Mrs Crockett's Kitchen; Ross Fowler, Managing director, Cisco Systems; Janine Allis, CEO, Boost Juice; David Deverall, CEO, Perpetual Limited.

ADAM SPENCER: Let's start from the beginning. What is leadership? What is its essence? John Mulcahy, what would you say is the essence of leadership?

JOHN MULCAHY: I think the responsibility of a leader is to make a team successful and make sure each individual in the team is also successful.

ADAM SPENCER: Ross Fowler?

ROSS FOWLER: I agree with John, particularly in terms of leading teams, but I also believe that an individual contributor can be a leader. For example, we have very senior account managers who work with our clients, and our clients expect them to lead on behalf of the Cisco organisation.

ADAM SPENCER: Alison?

ALISON WATKINS: I think a leader is someone who makes things happen through people, and hopefully makes the right things happen through people.

ADAM SPENCER: And Janine?

JANINE ALLIS: Leadership is inspiring people to achieve the unachievable.

DAVID DEVERALL: I was appointed chief executive of Perpetual in 2003, having been recruited from Macquarie Bank, where I'd worked for the previous seven years. And at the time of my appointment at Perpetual I was 37 years old and about to head one of Australia's most successful wealth management companies and, perhaps not surprisingly, some analysts and some members of the media had some questions about the way in which I was going to lead. In particular, they wondered how I would lead a team of people who were, and still are, considered to be among the most talented and best people in the market at what they do. And this concern seems fair, particularly about someone that they'd never met before.

I felt comfortable that I was able to rise to the leadership challenge because of three things. First, I had a very good understanding of my own leadership style, which is driven by understanding yourself; second, I had a very strong grasp of the industry that I was working in but also of the organisation I was joining, and that sense of compatibility was very important; and then, finally, I had absolutely no doubt about the work/life challenge that lay ahead of me.

I had a good understanding of my leadership style, and over the years I'd participated in countless diagnostics such as the Myers-Briggs type indicator. There's a whole range of them, and the results of those and my willingness to listen to those results gave me a good understanding of who I am and what my leadership style is. And understanding your own leadership style is, in my opinion, one of the fundamentals that all leaders must have – that is, you need to understand the way in which your words, your actions and your behaviours influence others and are influenced by others.

For example, it helps you to determine the sorts of people who should be on your team to complement your own strengths and weaknesses. It reminds you of the sorts of things that should be programmed into your daily diary because they are important but they don't necessarily come naturally to you. In my case, it was providing more positive feedback than negative feedback to others. And, just as importantly, it tells you the sorts of things you shouldn't do – again, in my case shutting up at meetings and letting other people talk is a very important thing.

As aspiring leaders, I strongly recommend that you engage in these leadership diagnostics. However, I'd like to add a word of warning. You need to understand that in the process of receiving feedback on your leadership style there will be some good news and there will be some bad news, and you must recognise that, because, as human beings, you will receive negative feedback about your leadership style. The really successful leaders are the ones who learn to listen to and act upon the bad news.

The second thing is that I had a very strong grasp of both the industry and the organisation I was joining. Some sense of compatibility with the organisation is what drives the passion for the job you hold. And having worked in funds management for many years, I knew that success in this industry is about your ability to harness the talents and teamwork of your people. I learned pretty early on that one very important rule for a leader in funds management is to know when it's appropriate to direct people and when it's better to try to influence them, and that plays to my own leadership style.

I was also very aware of what we call the down-to-earth culture at Perpetual. Accessibility, and approachability are very important leadership elements there because the organisation is so egalitarian, and this suited me to a tee. I'm sure my colleagues were relieved to see me arrive on public transport on my first day at work, and there was also a certain amount of interest when people asked me about my choice of car, which I told them was a second hand Honda Civic. So while I don't recommend each of you to trade in your BMWs for a second-hand Honda Civic, I do believe it's very important for you to understand the nature and culture of the industry and organisation in which you lead and to assess whether you are compatible with that.

Finally, I was very clear about the work/life challenge that lay ahead in my role as CEO, and my biggest concern was how I was going to juggle my job, my hobbies, my relationship with my wife and our four young kids, and my other outside interests, such as friends and family. And I don't subscribe for an instant to the view held by some Generation Y types that you can have it all. I wanted to be very conscious of the adjustments I would have to make in my personal life in order to cope with the demands and pressures of the new job and unless this satisfied me, I wasn't prepared to take the job. I had to make some decisions about cutting down those things that were not central to my life.

So, for example, I haven't played a game of golf for two and a half years although I love playing golf. I've augmented those things that could potentially be compromised by the rigours and demands of the job. And, so, as many people in Perpetual know, I religiously go out to dinner with my wife every Tuesday night, and, given that tonight is Tuesday night, she's out there in the audience and we're going out to dinner after this. I encourage you to develop a very healthy understanding of the things you're prepared to compromise and those that are absolutely sacrosanct as you move into ever more demanding leadership roles. Life is a series of trade-offs and you need to be aware of what are the right ones for you.

ADAM SPENCER: Ross, you worked your way through Alcatel for 29 years. You started as a cadet electrical engineer in 1974, went through various executive, sales and engineering roles, then finally to CEO. Is that a fundamentally different leadership experience to the one that David's had?

ROSS FOWLER: The thing I valued is the experience in working in a variety of job roles. I was never in more than one role for more than two years, and I worked in everything from the tool room at Alexandria to a plating shop to a factory line and then through a series of management positions. A diverse range of experiences at various levels of the organisation, – I think that's stood by me through the rest of my career.

ADAM SPENCER: But in 1974 did you covet the head job?

ROSS FOWLER: No, absolutely not, and I can remember in a number of conversations with my bosses over the years saying that I actually did not want that job because I did not think they got the right balance in terms of the life, and my learning was you don't have to do it the way of others; you have to do it the way that suits yourself.

ADAM SPENCER: John Mulcahy, will great leaders always be consumed by a desire to one day run the entire show?

JOHN MULCAHY: I don't think you can make a sweeping statement like that. Whenever I was in a team environment I always wanted to be the leader, and so I did covet the leadership position in most instances, but I understood my drive.

ADAM SPENCER: What did the person who was the leader at that time tend to think about that?

JOHN MULCAHY: I always thought I could grow into the job; I didn't think I could do the job now, but I always wanted to grow into the job.

ADAM SPENCER: Alison, what would you say on that point?

ALISON WATKINS: I'd say I was just a little girl from a farm in Tasmania, and I probably in the early stages lacked confidence. I used to look at leaders and think, "Wow! I could never do that," and it took me quite a long time to work up the confidence. I was lucky I worked at McKinsey for quite a few years, and that was an organisation that really helped people succeed; that was one of the core values. Through that, I built up my confidence and began to think, "Well, yeah, look, I could have a shot at this."

ADAM SPENCER: And when you were in various jobs, Janine, before you set up your own organisation, were you always craving to bust out and run something of your own? When did the feeling come that you could make a complete change and move into something totally new?

JANINE ALLIS: A bit like Alison. It did actually take a few years because, I went to a tech school, and tech schools were designed to create people that could be apprentices, mechanics, and I can do woodwork and sheet metal from my tech experience. So, my aspirations, my parents' aspirations for me – if I became a secretary I would have exceeded their expectations. So it wasn't really until I travelled the world and, you live your life and you do lots of different things that you open up the door to opportunities. But I have always had a great deal of tenacity, and I remember if I thought, "Okay, I want to get into advertising," I'd pick up the Yellow Pages and just ring them all from A going through. I wanted to do something, I would just attack it. So it wasn't really a leadership thing I was going for. It was really like, "What do I want to do right now?"

ADAM SPENCER: Let's hear now from Janine Allis, creator, designer and founder of Boost Juice, who has just opened her first outlet in Chile.

JANINE ALLIS: A lot of you probably recently went to a seminar that I went to in Melbourne, and it had Bill Clinton and Carly from H-P and a guy called Michael from Disney. And what I found really interesting about their talks is that Carly got up and said, "Anyone can be a leader. You have to be given the opportunity, but it's in everybody." Michael stood up and said, "Rubbish. It actually is inbuilt in you."

I do believe that, in great leaders, it is inbuilt. I think anyone who has people who report to them is a leader of some sort, but great leadership is something I think we all aspire to in leadership roles.

A mentor of mine and a dear friend, Geoff Harris, who is the co-founder of Flight Centre, is a passionate Hawthorn supporter. And he came into the Hawthorn football club and he said, "I need a new captain for my team." So he encouraged them to go on the Kokoda Track, and there's a movie coming out about that. They took these footballers up to Kokoda and they had to carry logs up walls, up hills, and they covered 96 kilometres in a ridiculously short amount of time. But one of the purposes was to see who were the true leaders under extreme circumstances, and they picked the captain from that experience.

I think true leadership does come through and people do really stand up in adverse situations, not in the good times. And you can't go, "Okay, that person over there is a is a leader. I want to be like him." I think you need to be natural, be yourself; it doesn't mean that just because you're not that type of leader you can't be a great leader.

My husband was a senior executive of Austereo. He's very harsh, but he's very honest, and there's a type of leadership style that he has. In the early days he said to me, "No, Janine, you need to be harder. You need to be forceful. You need to, you know, be uncompromising. You need to be this way," and I said, "Look, I can't be you. I have to follow my own path." Two years later he actually said, "Janine, I think you're one of the best CEOs I've ever seen."

Now, he was a bit biased. But the key thing he was saying was that you really can be yourself and still be a great leader. I think the leader I was when I started Boost and the leader I am today are very, very different. I'm probably a lot harder than what I was. I think I have more courage than I had, but I also realise I'm not a great leader yet. I've still got a long way to go. I'm probably the junior burger of this group with regard to the experience and some of the things that they've gone through, and I'm still learning. So even though I'm up here, I am really interested in picking up some more tips.

A great leader has to have enormous courage, and courage comes with not necessarily being people's best friend. Courage is making the hard decisions, even though they may not be the most popular ones.

Clear and decisive decision-making – nothing is worse in leadership than not being able to actually make a decision. It's much better to make a poor decision or a wrong decision than no decision at all.

Accountability – if everything is my fault, it gives me enormous power in what I'm doing because I can fix it. If I actually push that accountability off to someone else, well, the, you've completely lost power as a leader and also lost respect.

But the key thing that leaders have to have is the ability to inspire and unlock passion in the people who work around them. We've had an amazing six years, and I'm sure that ignorance and naivety was part of the reason we succeeded because no one told us at the time we couldn't do it. I find that just inspiring the people around us to do the undoable was actually one of our great strengths at Boost and it continues to help people achieve what a lot of people cannot achieve.

Leadership is in you, and I think a lot of people don't realise they have it. When the ship is sinking, or you're walking 96 kilometres of the Kokoda Track, that's when that leadership comes through. You can be the quiet mouse in the corner, you can be the bombastic one, but if you are a true leader, be who you are and true to your core, not someone else.

ADAM SPENCER: Janine, are you also saying that there are some people who just don't have it in them and can't learn it?

JANINE ALLIS: There are some people who are phenomenal workers and phenomenal at what they do and incredibly high achievers, but they don't have the ability to work a team. They can only do it on their own or they can't do it at all. Leadership is that: you're leading something or someone. You need all sorts to make it work.

ADAM SPENCER: Alison, what would you say to that?

ALISON WATKINS: I have to say I'm uncomfortable with the idea of categorising people into born leaders and not, because if David had done his psych test and found out that he was not a leader, he might have just tossed in the towel then. I think from an organisational point of view it's really important that you say, "Look, everyone can be a leader."

You've got to want to be a leader, and you've got to be prepared to be self-aware, as David was describing. So you've got to not think, "Well, I'm instantly a perfect leader." I've got to understand what I'm good at and what I'm not so good at, naturally, and work on that. You've got to have the will and develop the skills, but I think if you have the will, you can be taught the skills.

ADAM SPENCER: What would you say, David?

DAVID DEVERALL: If leadership is about change and making things happen and doing things differently, we distinguish between what we call people leaders – the people who are trying to mobilise large groups of people – through to what we call thought leaders, who could be just individuals but have immense impact across the entire organisation, and there I'm talking about, our senior fund managers, who don't actually manage anybody but they look after billions of dollars and they have an amazing leadership role in the organisation. And then we have what we call opinion leaders – people who help drive and change and shape the culture of the organisation.

You don't necessarily have to be the person running 400 people. You can be an individual yet still have a profound impact.

ADAM SPENCER: Can you spot leaders at an early stage in your workforce? Ross, could someone have looked at you in 1974 and seen someone who could have eventually run the company, and can you look back even further? John, I'm getting the impression that you're saying that people are almost born into it. At what age can you spot someone's capacity to truly lead?

ROSS FOWLER: I don't think anyone would have recognised it in 1974. I had long blonde hair and wore a lumber jacket walking down Botany Road to what was STC in those days, in the metalwork shop. But I think as my career developed, as I proved that I could add value in a different way from other people around me, I became recognised as someone who did have unique skills, who did have leadership potential. As a result, my responsibilities increased through my career.

ADAM SPENCER: What do you if you recognise it in someone else now? What are you seeing in someone 25 to 30 years old that suggests they're destined for greater things?

ROSS FOWLER: Someone who's very self-aware, aware of their strengths and weaknesses, very willing to get feedback and improve upon that feedback. And someone very conscious of those around them and the need to add value to the people around them, whether they're within their team or outside it, whether they're customers, or the boss. It's that sixth sense of knowing how to add unique value compared with other people around them.

ADAM SPENCER: John, what would you say about the kid who wants to be sports house captain and wants to run for SRC in sixth grade, who maybe proposed a hostile takeover of the milk shop down the road because the canteen just wasn't cutting it at their school?

JOHN MULCAHY: Oh I'd tell him to go for it. I do agree that most people can be leaders, but the real critical fact is you need to want to be a leader, whether you want to be a thought leader or whether you want to be a leader of people.

There are some people who just don't want to take on the responsibility, don't want to be leaders. But I think most people have leadership potential. You can identify often in young people the real potential for being people leaders, in particular, which is where I usually focus, and you can actually see them really trying to learn.

I think leaders learn more than others. They try to learn all the time about how they can do things better, how they can contribute more, how they can influence the people around them. So I think you can identify potential, but I don't think you can actually identify and be guaranteed that any one person at a young age is going to be a great leader.

ADAM SPENCER: I think your insights are really valuable, because for a lot of people in the audience there is an entire industry committed to trying to take their money to teach them to be leaders through self-help books, corporate workshops. Is there benefit in that sort of stuff?

DAVID DEVERALL: Oh, I'll give it a go. I don't read a lot of management textbooks and I don't read all the latest fads, and I remember back when I was at Macquarie Bank, and the Managing Director, Allan Moss, has this very large office and I remember bringing my brother in, who lives out of the country. He wanted to see where I was working. And Allan came up, we went into his office, and my brother said, "This guy manages this incredibly successful organisation. Where are all the textbooks? Where are all the management how-to books?" And there weren't any. And it dawned on me very quickly that you don't necessarily have to immerse yourself in all that stuff in order to be good at what you do, good as a leader.

JOHN MULCAHY: I don't read management books at all, The way I learnt was to observe other leaders, good and bad, whether in the team I worked in or whether I worked for them or whether they were in another organisation.

ALISON WATKINS: I have to say I've done my fair share of reading. I was a management consultant at one point, so it was my stock in trade. I know I've created my share of frameworks in my time. But nowadays I find it helpful every now and again to go back and look at a book, and it gives me a reference point, to think, "Yeah. Okay." That helps me think about a particular problem more clearly and also to learn from other great companies, other great leaders.

ADAM SPENCER: Janine, both yourself, and Alison are in charge of organisations that are going through remarkably successful times. Is there a different sort of leadership needed in the good times versus the bad?

JANINE ALLIS: As a leader, I am so different now from when I began in what I have to focus on and what I do. You have to adapt. If you go back to your question, would you have seen leadership qualities in me? Probably not earlier, but you develop and you learn and you discover.

I am a different person at 40 than I was at 21, when all I wanted to do was put a backpack on and go overseas. So I think that there are eras in your life where you're actually better. I'm a better student than I was when I left school at 17.

ROSS FOWLER: My lesson going through the tough times was the need to pay attention to detail and as Janine was saying, it's just as important to pay attention to detail in the boom times. It's the big picture story and making sure that that's correct, but also the attention to detail – particularly during times when you're fighting for survival.

ADAM SPENCER: John, you've been through big property busts. What are the toughest things about being a leader in those times?

JOHN MULCAHY: If I can go back to my definition of a leader – it's about making a team successful – then I think it's in that responsibility to understand the environment that you happen to be operating in. So if you're operating in a boom time, then you'll make different decisions and you'll head the team in one direction, but if it's a tough time, then sometimes it's about survival. So then you'll bear down on those issues that allow you to survive and get rid of the superfluous stuff that you might want to focus on when there's an opportunity. The most important thing even in tough times is to make sure the team understand the environment and, therefore, where they're heading in that type of environment so everyone is on the same page.

ALISON WATKINS: I've been involved in a fast-growing company relatively recently, and the big thing I notice is that everything is happening so fast and the company has come from nowhere in such a short period of time that all the systems and processes and ways of doing things – they're not there.

So as a leader the most important thing you can do is hire the right people, and you've got to be hiring people quite fast to keep up with the growth and you've got to make the right calls in terms of the values of the people that you're bringing in because you're going to be relying on them to be making judgments, decisions every day. They don't have policies to refer to or manuals or whatever. They're going to make it with their judgment. So if you pick the right people in that fast growth environment, you know, you'll be on track. If you don't, you can be a disaster.

ADAM SPENCER: What should be the role of the leader in terms of being approachable? Now, I presume if I asked all five of you, none of you would go, "Oh, I'm deliberately standoffish and distant," but are you approachable? Is that important? There are some very high-ranking leaders in our business community who are famously unapproachable. What's the role of approachability in leadership?

JANINE ALLIS: I find you throw it out there but quite often people don't use it. Like, you'll say, "Okay. Guys, email me if you've got an idea. Talk to me if you've got a thought or, you know, if there's a problem, come and talk to me." Very few people actually get on the email and do it, I find. However, we have a fairly flat structure in our business and so obviously the key teams feel comfortable but it's even at the store level. I love it when I hear from a person that serves the customer at the coalface. I think that's critical that you keep your finger on the pulse there.

ADAM SPENCER: David?

DAVID DEVERALL: I think the cycle times in our businesses are so short, whether it be the demands from customers wanting an improved way of doing things through to the development of a new product, that you have to be so wired into what is going on, and you can have whatever formal structures you like in terms of reports coming up to you and all the rest of it, but the best way to really know what's going on is going out and speaking to people and being with your teams and asking the questions. And if you're going round like a cranky old, so-and-so they're not likely to talk to you. Approachability is such a critical part of being able to just find out what's going on, to thrive and survive in this very competitive world.

ADAM SPENCER: But there have been many Australian CEOs at the highest level who are famously unapproachable.

DAVID DEVERALL: I'm not one of them. But maybe they were in businesses that weren't in a real-time environment, and I think more and more businesses are operating in real time and the leaders do need to keep their finger on the pulse and the staff need to feel comfortable enough to raise issues in real time. I think it's very hard to generalise because there are different circumstances for different businesses and different leaders.

ADAM SPENCER: John?

JOHN MULCAHY: My response would be: How great would they have been if they were approachable?

ADAM SPENCER: But then, within the dynamic of the group, what about being everyone's friend? When you're a leader you're not really part of the gang any more, are you, or you're part of the gang and not part of the gang at the same time? How is that interpersonal dynamic? David?

DAVID DEVERALL: It's tough. You're approachable, yet you're not one of them, and you have to be aware that at one stage as a leader of a team, particularly if you're a people leader, you may have to pull the trigger, and that's tough. Move people on, fire them, change their responsibilities. So you need to be aware that you are close to people and you want to be hooked in, but at the same time ultimately there is that distance. Having a personality that allows you to be comfortable with that is important.

ADAM SPENCER: Janine, I presume you would have started with some close friends in your organisation to be building it yourself. The first two or three people there, it would have been quite an intimate setting. How does that dynamic evolve over time?

JANINE ALLIS: Well, unfortunately, sometimes people can't evolve with the business. Even some suppliers I had. Our designers they just couldn't keep up with our growth and, consequently, didn't deliver on what they had to deliver and they're no longer with me. And I know some people some people can't go on the journey because you have to change as your company changes, whether you've got fast growth or whether you've got some serious issues, as you have in business. You have good times and bad times.

ADAM SPENCER: Have you lost friendships?

JANINE ALLIS: It's always an emotional pull because business is business. You're there 60 hours a week, 70 hours a week. But at the end of the day you've got to do the right thing by the business because the business is a bigger beast, and if you do the wrong thing and have the wrong people in the wrong roles, well, you're not doing anyone any favours, including them.

JOHN MULCAHY: If you've got a person, even if they're a friend but they're in a role and they're not performing, then you do them a favour by making that decision and saying, "This is not working for you," and in most instances later, on reflection, they say, "Thank God you made that decision," because if someone is not performing, they know they're not performing either and they may commit getting better and they'll do it, but if they haven't got the capability, then they're actually better off doing another job.

ADAM SPENCER: You'd agree with that assessment from John, Ross?

ROSS FOWLER: Yeah. It is a very difficult issue, but you have to also look at it from the perspective of the other people. If you've got a personal relationship with a person that's on your team, there's always the perception there's favourable treatment of that individual, and you have to be very careful of that, and also it's really not fair on the other people. If there is a person on the team that isn't performing and the other people know that, it reflects badly on your leadership and impacts the morale of the organisation.

ADAM SPENCER: There was an interesting point that you also made, David, about understanding the family balance and that sort of stuff. I want to ask in terms of the leadership capacity, men versus women, is it just not an issue worth discussing? Is it an issue that some of us might be afraid to discuss? Is it a valid analysis of different business styles, leadership styles, leadership potential? Where do we stand on the gender divide on leadership? David, your field would be one in which the vast bulk of people in your position would be male?

DAVID DEVERALL: Yeah. It's a really tough one. I'm a firm believer in just meritocracy. It's part of my generation, I guess. So I don't analyse the question too deeply, although I do recognise that when it comes to work/life balance, stuff happens, particularly when you're in your thirties, and particularly when you're a woman, when things get really, really tough. You're raising a family and you've got the job and you're trying to balance it all together, and it's a real challenge, particularly when you're in that leadership role.

I'm blessed in the fact that I go off and work 60 or 70 hours a week and my wife doesn't and we're able to get that inbuilt balance, but it's very difficult to generalise. I certainly empathise in a big way in terms of the challenges of people-leaders, particularly in their thirties, as they start move up the executive ranks.

ADAM SPENCER: Alison, what would you say?

ALISON WATKINS: Well I'm going to be a bit controversial here but I think the view that David expressed is why we have the corporate culture that we do, and to say that it's a meritocracy and "I don't really think about it too much" and "I empathise", is a very passive attitude. We need a really active attitude if we want to change our workplace culture, and there's a whole lot of good sound business reasons to [exercise] positive discrimination. Taking risks with people. And I'm lucky that I've worked with a couple of men who don't sound like David.

ADAM SPENCER: I should have said David is not his real name.

ALISON WATKINS: I'm lucky I've worked with a couple of men who went out of their way to say, "Actually, I'd like to see a woman in a leadership role. I'm going to take a risk with this woman. I know she doesn't necessarily have all the credentials, but I'm going to take a risk." And, you know, I really wanted to make it work and they wanted to help me make it work, and it did work and as a result, they've created some change. But if we just hang back and say, "Good women will rise to the top. Watch it happen," it's not going to happen fast enough.

ADAM SPENCER: Well, let's move on to our focus topic tonight, Generation X and GenerationY, because there's one thing that's been made clear so far: there's no generic shape or size in which leaders come – male, female, younger, older, home-grown, imported. There's no hard-and-fast rule to ascertain the best leaders at any given time. But one thing is certain: many of the leaders of tomorrow may well be the assistant leaders of today, but many of them also are today's recruits and will come into positions of leadership and influence representing an entirely new generation of Australian corporate society.

To help us analyse the issues of Generation X and Generation Y, let's welcome to the panel the author of the polemic The World According to Y, Dr Rebecca Huntley, and one of Australia's most high- profile corporate commentators, a man who's self-esteem on steroids, Gen Yer Peter Sheahan.

Let's start by asking the original panel, before we throw a few questions to our commentators: Do you analyse things in terms of generations, Boomers, Xs and Ys? Are these distinctions of the workforce relevant to analyses of workers and leaders?

JOHN MULCAHY: I think we do have to take into account people who have different experiences and are from different age groups. So of course you have to understand what experiences they have, what their aspirations are. But I think to say that every generation is different is wrong. There are different types within each generation. So there will be some very driven Y Generation people, there will be some very driven X Generation people and some very driven Baby Boomers. They're the same types in each generation. The proportions of types within generations might change, but I don't think you can classify everyone in Generation Y as exactly the same and everyone in Generation X as exactly the same, et cetera.

ADAM SPENCER: David and Ross in particular, you'd have a high intake of young, tertiary- qualified go-getters. Is there a certain drive and a certain demand for success and achievement? Is that a characteristic of some of the people moving into your fields?

ROSS FOWLER: Absolutely. But I think it's more an issue of the phase of their life rather than the generation that they're in and, so, people coming out of school, particularly this current generation, have more familiarity with technology and they're able to work in a flat organisation much more comfortably, and because the technology is in the organisations to allow that to happen, they take that as a given. But when I hear things like that GenerationY doesn't like hypocrisy or wants bosses to do what they say they're going to do – I'm a Baby Boomer and I expect the same of my leaders.

ADAM SPENCER: David?

DAVID DEVERALL: Yeah, you get young people coming in who are tertiary educated, they've done very well throughout their whole lives in many situations, they're used to being successful, and joining an organisation there's no change to their attitude on that, and that's Generation Y now. It was certainly the case when I was a GenXer coming through. The same group of people were equally ambitious. So I don't see it as such a huge contrast.

I think the issues are often very similar. You're just getting tighter feedback loops, because what I'm finding is Gen Y telling you much more quickly what they think of you, but the solution is the same. It comes down to the central leadership issues that need to be dealt with.

ADAM SPENCER: So, Rebecca, is it the case that there's no such thing as Gen Y and you and Peter can just sit back down?

REBECCA HUNTLEY: Well, that was what I felt. I had that attitude before I wrote the book, but I actually found a real gap in the students that I was teaching, and then I got some extraordinary feedback from managers in law and in publishing saying, "Actually, this group of graduates, we're having problems with them. We're having problems with their expectations. They don't want to do boring work. They don't want to get the coffee." And some of them were just writing them off and saying, "I don't care how well they're doing at university. I don't want them in my organisation." So, think that the generational conflict can be overdrawn, but the fact that we're having this debate here and the fact that I'm getting that feedback means that there are some issues.

Whereas perhaps Generation X and the Boomers would have sucked their unhappiness down and created a nice little ulcer, Generation Y aren't prepared to do that. So that's a management question that has to be talked about. My concern at the moment is that what I'm hearing from managers is that immediately they're angry at their workers coming to them and saying, "I don't want to do this boring work," and all the rest of it. So it's about managing that. I think it's important.

ADAM SPENCER: Peter Sheahan, what do you mean by "self-esteem on steroids"? Where does that come from and how does it manifest itself in Generation Y?

PETER SHEAHAN: I think in two ways. One, we're a product of an education system that was more driven towards positive feedback than negative feedback. When the Boomers were at school and they got into trouble, they probably got into twice as much trouble at home for getting in trouble at school. But now if you get into trouble at school, your parents come down and get the teachers into trouble for getting you in trouble at school. And we don't fail students any more; we give them non-awards.

So there are huge differences; it might just be that the economic conditions surrounding Gen Yers entering the workforce allow them to get away with it. I often say that, if your average Xer came in with your Y attitude, which is, "I want your job at 24 but I'd like to only do three and a half days a week to get it, with my gym membership and a sabbatical in two years," they would have slapped you in some organisations and said, "Sit down, shut up and do exactly what you're told." Now we do it, because every young person wants that, but instead of ushering them out the door, we say, "Nice boy", "Nice girl", because there's not an endless stream of people coming in the door. We have an ageing population and they'll take 40 gigabytes of your most valuable intellectual property with them when they go, on their iPods.

ADAM SPENCER: Alison, your business is growing at the moment. You'd be taking on a lot of people of different ages, including the newest crop of the youngest generation. What are you making of what's being said here?

ALISON WATKINS: I think that GenerationY are a really exciting group to work with, and for me it's just making sure you understand what's important to them, what's motivating them, as with any individual, trying to understand what's driving someone, and I think those comments are absolutely right for a lot of the Baby Boomers getting a job.

It's like Maslow's hierarchy. A lot of Baby Boomers were very driven by the need for food and security and a roof over their heads because their parents didn't necessarily have it easy and they didn't necessarily have it easy, and so that was an important motivator.

You could characterise Gen Y as spoilt brats, I suppose, but they've really had it all, haven't they? And so the self-actualisation end of the pyramid is where they're at, and trying to understand, "Well, what does that mean for how I motivate them, excite them and retain them and develop them?" is what it's all about.

ADAM SPENCER: Janine, you probably have the largest percentage of part-time or casual and teenage workers of any of the organisations here. Is that where you're spotting your next franchisees and leaders are going to come from or are they two totally distinct work forces? How do you deal with the range of people you have at your organisation?

JANINE ALLIS: We're obviously quite young, and there are a lot of Ys and at the lower end, Xers. I do think, though, that it's the era of confidence. There hasn't been a war that has really affected us in Australia. When we did some research on Generation Y, their aspirations are actually their parents'. The fathers are more involved in their children than they ever have been. It's a completely different era, but it's all based on confidence. So of course they're coming into the workforce and going, "I want this. I want that." But I have to agree with John that in that mix there are the ones who go, "You know, what? I'm happy to get the coffee and I'm happy to do this, and I'm happy to do what it takes to get what I need." So you do have in that mix of Yers and Xers and Baby Boomers the type of person who will achieve and go all the way.

ADAM SPENCER: David, you would have been squarely in the middle of Gen Y when you took over Perpetual aged 37. What was the standard age or profile of people doing equivalent jobs at other places, and was that an issue? There are people here tonight who may well be offered tremendous leadership challenges in their early thirties. What's the issue there?

DAVID DEVERALL: I can't remember exactly what the average age is of these sorts of equivalent roles but you're talking 10-plus years older. The guy I replaced was 56 when he retired. You know, the whole age thing is not something I think too much about. Maybe partly it goes back to the highly meritocratic organisation I was working for previously, which was Macquarie Bank, where you just had people thrust into leadership roles – very, very senior leadership roles – at the age of 27. So I try not to make too much of the whole age thing.

ADAM SPENCER: For the leader of the future. one issue is mobility, the technological space that is changing rapidly. Even though you worked for Cisco for so many years, Ross, do you still have people coming into your organisation now who are technologically far more literate and far more diverse in their skills than you are?

ROSS FOWLER: Oh I've been a technology geek since I was born, so I rarely find someone who's more gadget-savvy than I am, and it is the heart of our business. What I do find, though, is the expectation that the technology is there, whereas the Baby Boomers and the Gen Xers are willing to accept some compromises in terms of connectivity, working from home, broadband access, in convergence of IT and telephony. Gen Ys take it for granted. They want wireless access, they want to be able to work anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

ADAM SPENCER: Would that be a fair comment, Peter?

PETER SHEAHAN: Absolutely. There's a difference in that sense of expectation. I did some work for a consulting engineering firm. The number-one frustration they had was money, and the second frustration they had was that the quality of the equipment they used in the company was second rate compared to what they had at home. What was higher on the list than work/life balance or anything else was, "Get us a decent computer and we might do some good work on it."

ROSS FOWLER: Don't underestimate the impact of consumer electronics on IT in the workplace because it is driving behaviour there and it's driving expectations.

ADAM SPENCER: What would you say about this, John, in terms of technological interface with new workers?

JOHN MULCAHY: I think it is critical. I agree totally with Peter. People who come into the organisation now expect connectivity, they expect to be able to have technology to assist them to deliver the expectations that you put in front of them. But I think that the best leaders of the future will be no different from the best leaders of the past. I have the example of Dick Dusseldorp, who founded Lend Lease in this country. Lend Lease was a fantastic people company, and he was a visionary and he was connected to people; he was accessible and he was really a people person, and he was a great leader. And I think future leaders will be the same, but they will have different tools required to do their jobs in the future. So it's about the tools, not about the leadership.

ADAM SPENCER: Would you agree with that, Rebecca? Would the same people who rose to the top 20 years ago do so 20 years from now?

REBECCA HUNTLEY: Well, I think the people who are prepared to sacrifice everything to get to the top will always get there. I just think that there's going to be fewer of them in Generation Y, because I think the key tension at the moment is between the idea of having it all and being successful and work/family balance. If you're in your early twenties, those things are the intention. I think they have yet to work out whether they're prepared to give up everything just to get to the top.

ADAM SPENCER: Let's examine work/life balance. How have the five of you managed it? Have you managed it? Do you manage it better at certain stages of your career maybe than you did a while ago?

JANINE ALLIS: There's no question if you want to achieve and be the best you can be in anything, whether it's sport, business, anything, something has to give. Whether that is friends, the gym or your golf, something has to give. And I think you can have it all but you have to have it in clumps. I have three beautiful children – actually a fourth, which is a very needy husband – so I've got this group that is my priority, and Boost. But then my next clump will be more work/life balance.

ADAM SPENCER: David, is there anything that could stop you having dinner on a Tuesday night with the wife?

DAVID DEVERALL: If I'm out of the country. That's it.

ADAM SPENCER: You've got a leave pass six nights a week as long as you're there on Tuesday. I mean, it's a beautifully personal example of quite an issue you have to deal with all the time, I presume, in your position.

DAVID DEVERALL: Yeah, that's right. I remember when I went to America to business school, and Phil Knight, the chief executive of Nike, the top of his heap, the absolute pinnacle and a highly regarded guy was asked how he does it. And he said, "You have to make these choices," and he learnt the hard way because he tried to do everything but it didn't work for him. That had a profound effect upon me, listening to such a super-successful iconic figure coming back saying there's no such thing as the super human being; you have to make these choices, and it's tough.

ADAM SPENCER: Alison, your reflection on work/life balance?

ALISON WATKINS: I definitely agree you have to make choices, and I'm very lucky. My husband has chosen to look after our four kids, so that is what really makes it work for us. He's done that for the last four or five years.

ADAM SPENCER: Well, clearly, David, you and Alison would never have worked out. You would have had eight kids and no one looking after them. It would have been an absolute fiasco. Rebecca.

REBECCA HUNTLEY: I was just going to say on the data out there there are fewer men who are prepared to stay home and look after four children than there are women. So, I mean, when you talk about the having-it-all stuff, I totally agree that that's the message you give to Generation Y – to manage those expectations.

My experience is that that speech is given to women more than men, and for this generation of girls who have been mainstreamed to succeed, they often, more than boys, do very well at university. They have all these extraordinary cultural messages about success, and are being told in their twenties, "You've got to manage your expectations." But some of the boys are being told, "You go and get it." I think there's still that general divide in business. I think it's up to the leadership of extraordinary men such as Mr Deverall to really make sure those gender divides are really negotiated well.

ADAM SPENCER: Peter Sheahan, how much of Generation Y are saying that work/life balance is really important and that's what's going to drive them forward? How much of that is a bit of naivety that when you really reach the crunch times that some of the people on the panel have spoken about, they will realise that it has to be compromised?

PETER SHEAHAN: I don't think your average Yer thinks "work/life balance". I think they think "life", and if work is an integrated part of life, then they will be engaged. There are going to be fewer people in Gen Y who will be prepared to give up their life to climb the corporate ladder, because when you talk to them about ambition, they don't say, "I want to be at the top of my heap." They talk about consuming experiences, they talk about living their life, travelling the world, trying different jobs, learning new skills, different languages, and the whole concept that work should be one part of what you do and life should be another is, I think, equally dysfunctional. It's just about life.

And as a business owner with two kids, I constantly struggle with the same things, but I don't go, "Right. I'm going to park my work over here. I'm going to do my life thing over here." It's is all part of an integrated whole. I think it's about life, and it all just fits. If it works for you, it works for you.

ADAM SPENCER: As technology changes, will the style of skill required by leaders change as well? What sort of skills will a leader need 10 or 15 years from now that perhaps they don't need as much at the moment?

ROSS FOWLER: The fact is that more and more of the workplace is becoming virtualised, and the fact that people have wireless at home, that they can sit there with the family in front of the TV and still do emails in real time –work and life is merging. I think we'll find that more and more leaders have to accept that as a fact. That's a way of attracting skilled staff into the organisation, and expecting that the people have to be visible in the office to be seen as productive workers – those days are diminishing.

ADAM SPENCER: In closing, I'm going to get one juicy tip for aspiring leaders from each member of the panel. Peter Sheahan?

PETER SHEAHAN: I'm going to give two, because I'm Gen Y. The first one is authenticity. I think Gen Y will see through any level of BS that's around. I think, be upfront – Janine, talked about having your own individual style. The advice for aspiring leaders is you'd be surprised how seriously people will take you if you give them time and energy and start delivering. I think there are fantastic opportunities for anybody in any organisation to really do some good things regardless of age.

REBECCA HUNTLEY: Create a vision that's your own, and back it up with hard work and take any opportunity. People don't talk about luck in terms of success, but I think vision, hard work – and cross your fingers.

DAVID DEVERALL: And build on that, because sometimes luck comes into it. Keep your feet firmly on the ground. Don't let it go to your head.

JANINE ALLIS: The key thing is to listen; you don't have all the answers. And use the word "we" a lot.

ROSS FOWLER: The path to the top isn't always a direct path. Invest in your experience, invest in a variety of activities because you can't predict the future. A bit of luck and a bit of preparation always helps.

ALISON WATKINS: Find the people who are going to create opportunities for you. Create a relationship with people who will take risks with you, because if you rely on those in your organisation to do it, it probably won't happen.

JOHN MULCAHY: You've got to be self-aware, understand what your strengths are and work on your weaknesses.

Venue

Sydney