I'd been in the job for seven years and it was really heavy going and you have this sense
that you're owned by the job and I wanted to do something where I would do for myself
I guess which would make me feel as if the job didn't own me but I owned the job.
Hi I'm Sally Patton, editor of BOSS from the Australian Financial Review and welcome
to 15 minutes with the BOSS, a podcast about success and failure and everything in between
and along the way we're hoping to get some great advice from our leaders.
My guest today is Louise Herron, the chief executive of the Sydney Opera House.
Hi Louise, thanks for coming into our beautiful studio in North Sydney.
Thanks for having me Sal.
Louise, you're the CEO of the Sydney Opera House, Australia's most iconic building.
You host more than 1600 performances every year, you employ 1000 staff and have a really
complex set of stakeholders ranging from the state government to performing arts companies,
the general public, restaurant groups, cultural institutions, tourism agencies and heritage
and architecture groups.
Are you exhausted?
No, I'm not exhausted, I love hearing that.
Clearly you don't have a huge amount of time so thank you so much for coming in and allowing
us to spend 15 minutes with the BOSS.
We don't have much time so let's start the clock.
My first question Louise is about your morning routine.
Tell me what happens, what time do you get up, what do you do next?
I get up at 10 past six.
I wake up one minute before the alarm as I know a lot of people do and then I ride my
electric bike to the gym where I work out for 45 minutes.
So what sort of exercise do you do?
One day a week is a weights class which I love because it's so sort of calming and
three days a week I do a high intensity fitness class which is riding the bike and smashing
ropes and going onto boxes.
Okay, so that's how many minutes?
Then I cycle home, make a cup of tea, make orange juice for my husband.
At eight o'clock until nine o'clock I play the cello which I took up exactly four years
ago and then I leave for work at about quarter past nine and I start work at nine thirty.
There aren't that many people I imagine who play the cello before they go to work for
an hour every day.
How did that all come about?
Actually having listened to previous interviews I understand that you ask people what they
would do if they had a year off unencumbered and in fact that was a question that a group
of us, we were on a walk and we said what would happen if tomorrow you lost your job
because two of the people on the walk actually lost their job right before they went on the
This was a seven day walk.
It was on the Laura Pinter trail in central Australia and so we were talking about what
would you regret not having done while you were working to prepare yourself for not working.
At the very end it just came to me I said play the cello and after the final Sydney
Symphony Orchestra concert for the year in 2019 I went up to the principal cellist and
I said I really want to learn the cello and she said I'll teach you.
I think the thing about it is with these big jobs is that it's very easy for the job to
own you and at that point I'd been in the job for seven years and it was really heavy
going and you have this sense that you're owned by the job and I wanted to do something
where I would do for myself I guess which would make me feel as if the job didn't own
me but I owned the job and you know the funny thing is that for the first three and a half
years or even look this it really only changed about two months ago where I can actually
pick it up and I can now you know as long as it's not really complicated I can sight
read the music and I can play with other people and it's a complete joy.
Okay Louise my next question is about a pivotal moment in your career.
Can you tell me about a moment in your career that really changed you as a leader or changed
the trajectory of your career?
In January 2000 I had been a lawyer, a partner in a law firm, Minter Ellison, working in
the technology and telecommunications area and we'd spent most of 1999 and some time
before working on Y2K thinking you know this is going to be the end of the world and all
So I might just interrupt you there that Y2K bug as far as I remember was when the clock
was switching over from 1999 to 2000 and we all thought that would play absolute havoc
with our computers and the world computing system would just fall over.
And we went overseas as a family in December including to Paris and I remember standing
on the Champs-Élysées and it was midnight, it was the year 2000 and nothing happened
and I thought wow this is a really stupid career.
It actually doesn't matter to anyone like you put all this tremendous amount of effort
in it but it doesn't actually mean anything.
And I came back to the law firm after the holiday and I looked around and all the partners
in the law firms they're sort of you know they have these corner offices and I honestly
looked at them and I thought you're 70 years old, I do not want to spend the next 30 years
sitting here doing things that don't really matter that much to anyone.
And don't happen as Y2K didn't actually happen.
And don't happen and so I'm out.
And then I got a call basically the next day asking if I would be the co-CEO of a Macquarie
private investment billing company which was way ahead of its time and I was literally
out the next day like it was the fastest transition.
Oh really so it just happened coincidentally?
It just happened coincidentally like it was literally it occurred to me and I thought
this is terrible and then got the other job.
And so did you love that job with the Macquarie vehicle?
No I didn't love that job but what it really opened my eyes to I think when you've been
doing something for a long time as I had been being a lawyer for a long time you sort of
think that's all you can do and then when your eyes get opened and you see that actually
you can apply the rigour and the discipline that you've learned in your fundamental career
to another thing it's just so liberating and so I then went on and did a lot of other gigs
Okay we might move on to my third question in this first section of the podcast.
What is the best piece of career advice you've ever been given?
When I was about 26 I went to London and did a masters of law and I happened upon this
subject European competition law which is anti-trust law which I absolutely loved and
I got a job in a London law firm and I was working for this amazing guy called Peter
Freeman and I thought wow you're so clever and your manner is so fantastic you know I
want to be just like you and I said something like that to him once and he said you can
only ever be the person you are and I think it is such good advice because you can expand
yourself and you can look at different areas but you can't ever change the fundamental
person that you are.
And do you look around and think that a lot of people are actually trying to be somebody
else and not really comfortable in their own skin?
Yes and I also think that you know it's very much about mentoring people that there is
no point in trying to you know develop someone into being something that they aren't which
is you know put crudely it's playing to your strengths.
So if I see a person who is really diligent I wouldn't say to them be more relaxed I'd
say okay how can we really actually mind this so that you feel that your diligence is properly
rewarded like what do you really want to do to give you a sense of satisfaction?
I guess in order to do that you've got to be quite self aware about your strengths and
You do and other people's strengths and weaknesses.
So one time I did one of these personality profile things that you have to do for work
and it came back that I have low impulse control and high self awareness and apparently that
is a very typical profile of someone at the top of an organisation because the low it's
not self control but you look at something and you just really want to do it and you
go for it but at the same time you're aware of the consequences of doing that so those
two things are sort of always out of balance and you're trying to put them in balance.
I look at other people sort of through that lens and so I say well I know that I shouldn't
say this but maybe I'm going to say it anyway but I'm very aware of the consequences that
it might have on the person.
But nevertheless you're willing to take that risk so you're a risk taker.
I am a complete risk taker.
Louise it's excellent to know that you're a risk taker because our next section is all
Stay right where you are we're going to take a short break and when we come back we're
going to open the very risky chatterbox.
Welcome back to 15 minutes with the boss I'm here with Louise Herron the chief executive
of the Sydney Opera House.
Now Louise this is our section called the chatterbox.
In front of you as you can see is a beautiful shiny cardboard box inside which are 20 questions
all folded up on little bits of paper I would like to ask you to pick out three of them
one by one randomly hand them to me and I will ask you to answer the question.
So please start fishing in the lovely chatterbox.
All right I'll choose that one.
Hang on have a bit of a move around move around forage around yes okay thank you.
Here's the first question.
Do you have a coping mechanism for high stress situations?
I do which someone told me once which I think is really very useful.
Sit back in your chair and put your feet firmly on the ground.
So you actually know I'm right here like a yoga pose I can just sort of feel myself centered
right in my core.
So how long do you have to put your feet flat on the floor for?
It's just the moment that you do it you're sort of feeling grounded because you know
that feeling when someone attacks you or whatever you have an instinct to go forward and attack
back or to fight or yeah.
And the idea of just sitting there saying no actually I know I can deal with this and
just relax your hands put your feet flat on the floor sit back in your chair not a long
way back and just concentrate on your core and it's like your body is out of the frame.
Maybe I should try that.
I try and breathe but that sounds like a good alternative yeah okay.
Okay next question have a forage around.
Okay what's the piece of advice you would give your younger self?
Take every opportunity.
So tell me some examples of when you have done that.
Well when our sons were really little and they were going to a Montessori school then
someone came up to me and said would you chair the Montessori school and I thought what a
weird thing to ask me but yeah why not I'll give it a go and so that was the beginning
of entering a whole lot of different experiences that I never would have expected and then
I chaired Bellevoix Street Theatre for a very similar reason someone just asked me and I
took it up or when as I mentioned before you know going to Macquarie and doing that e-bill
like you can do anything take every opportunity whether it's big or small.
So with the first chairing job at Montessori what did you really learn there?
I really learnt the importance of seeking the views of everyone around the table and
making sure that we were left with a concrete action point because there's no point having
a meeting discussing things and then not being able to work out okay what did we decide because
otherwise you keep on coming back to the same issues.
You always need to arrive at an action point.
You need everyone to be heard and you need to distill things down to an action point
and you need to state what those action points are before you move on to the next topic.
Which is the critical role of the chair of the meeting.
Okay Louise next question from the chatterbox.
Okay try that one.
Is this one acceptable?
I don't know I can't actually fully see that one oh here I've got a good one here hang
on give me that one back.
I'm not sure I'm not sure that we're allowed to do all this cheating but anyway.
We're not cheating.
We're not cheating.
We're taking the opportunity of having a different question.
What do you do when you switch off assuming that you do switch off?
Well I love doing tapestry and I love knitting you know I like the sense of the shape of
the day and it's almost like a do you remember those sand things that used to make it school
where you'd have all different layers of sand and you'd look at the colours those sort of
sedimentary tubes you remember that you'd compile a bit of red and a bit of no I was
deprived of those.
And you'd look at those and I feel like days are a bit like that you know you start with
with a few gritty things like you know going to the gym and playing the cello or whatever
and then this breezy thing of writing to work and then maybe a couple of difficult meetings
and then looking forward to eating lunch and looking forward to having a few good meetings
maybe coming to talk to you and if I'm not going to a show I really look forward to cooking
dinner but then to sitting down and watching television or talking to friends while doing
tapestry or knitting it just makes me feel complete.
Now is that because you love the tapestry or because you can't actually sit still and
you need something with your hands all the time?
Well I wouldn't like to be wasting time I do I do agree with that but I also do love
doing tapestry and I used to do ones that were sort of more planned whereas now I just
do them as a I just pick the colours and then just make something.
Oh so no pattern?
No pattern I just make it I mean when I say I make it up I just do it and it comes out
a particular way.
And it relaxes you?
I'm not sure I'll take up tapestry but I'll take that on notice.
Okay that is the end of our Chatterbox session.
Now Louise I've got one final question which we ask all our guests and that is if you had
12 months off unencumbered you could do anything you liked what would you do and would it at
all be related to the previous conversation we had about the cello?
So my husband Clark is very keen on a three month walking trip crossing the Alps.
The Swiss and Italian Alps.
So to go from one side of the Jura over the Alps and end up in the Dolomites for example
I love that idea I don't want to be carrying all the gear in a lot of those things they
have those refugee you know where you can just go and all you have to take is a small
So I'd like to do that in breaks and then maybe just walk for like 10 days at a time
and then you end up in a town and then magically there's a cello in the town.
Rest my feet and play the cello and ideally go swimming and read a little bit.
And then keep on going and do the same thing in quite a repetitive way.
And I would hope that our son Finn who doesn't have children that he and his partner would
come with us as well that we would do some of the walk with them because he's so great
to spend time with.
And then in another time we have a place in Marimbula I would just go and spend two or
three months in Marimbula which is actually on my stand up paddle board and my cello and
my tapestry and cooking.
And I'd spend a lot of time with my grandchildren and my other son our other son and beautiful
beautiful daughter-in-law Lily.
On that note our time is up.
It was really great to hear about your love of the cello and tapestry at the other end
Your advice on always being the person whom you are in order to expand the way you have
taken every opportunity that has come your way.
It is all such great advice.
So once again thanks Louise so much for coming on our last episode for 2023.
Thank you Sally very much and a pleasure being with you.
And thank you to everyone for listening over the last couple of months.
We're so looking forward to coming back in 2024 and drawing out all sorts of insights
and pearls of wisdom from our CEOs and along the way of course we want to have some fun.
If you like the podcast and would like to hear more consider sharing the podcast or
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At The Finance Review we investigate the big stories about markets business and power.
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This podcast was hosted by me Sally Patton, produced and edited by Lapfan, our theme is
by Alex Gao and our executive producer is Fiona Buffini.
The Australian Financial Review.