I am a perfectionist. What I do have to make sure I am doing is not asking too much of
everyone around me. I probably need to think very consciously about whether or not I need
to keep asking for the extra 5%. You know, a number of the people who've been promoted
have reached out to me, to members of the executive team, to their leader and said,
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 aiming to get some really great advice from our leaders. My guest
today is Kate Farah, the chief executive of Brighter Super. Hi, Kate, are you well? Thank
you very much for coming into the studio today.
Hello, it's fantastic to be here. And thanks for having me.
Anytime, anytime. Now, Kate, you're the CEO of Brighter Super, a Queensland based superannuation
fund that has more than 285,000 members and manages $33 billion of assets on their behalf.
And you have around 260 employees. And over the past three years, you have merged with two
other funds. And I'm guessing that has kept you pretty busy.
Certainly has not just me, the whole team, I have to say.
Okay, there's no time to breathe right now, because we only have 15 minutes. The clock
starts now. Let's get started. Kate, my first question is about your morning routine. What
time do you get up? What happens?
Well, I normally wake up at four. And I will sadly do my emails
at four o'clock. I do have to put warnings on to say, please don't do anything about this
till you get to work. But it does allow me to go on to the next phase, which is exercise.
I do exercise every morning with friends. I swim, spin class, love my spin classes, or
walk, and then finish it off with coffee, glass of lemon juice with my partner and my
cat and off to work.
So how long do you do emails for at 4am?
Well, it's a clearing the decks thing, I have to say. It's more a, you know, I'm going to
look at that later. I'm not going to look at that at all type of in out ruling so that at least
the inbox is reviewed. And I know there's nothing that is really urgent that needs to be
attended to at that point in time. And I can kind of anchor my head for the day to come
what the priorities are, that sort of thing. So it'll only be, you know, 10 minutes.
So have you ever thought about switching that around doing the exercise first and then
dealing with the emails? Or do you really need sort of for your head to get that done
Look, I actually use the exercise time as a time to think through some of the things
that are on. I find it's amazing for coming up with creative solutions or innovation.
When I've got a particularly gnarly problem, I'll often say to myself, okay, back brain,
solve this problem. And then I'll go for a run. And by the end of the time I finish the
run, something's come up.
Okay, my next question is about a pivotal moment in your career. Was there some point
or some project that you worked on that changed the nature or changed the pathway that you
were taking in your career?
Yeah, well, it was definitely my move to Brisbane. So when I was 27, I think, or
thereabouts 28, I moved from Sydney, which is where I grew up to Brisbane with my husband
at the time. The whole culture, I think, in Brisbane is quite entrepreneurial. And
every member of the Brisbane sort of workforce is different from each other. There's a
lot of independence in thinking. And I think that's a real gift, actually. It's quite a
standout differentiator of the Queensland firms that I've seen. And what that allowed
me to do, or in fact forced me to do probably, was to think more entrepreneurially, to
take more risk, to consider a whole range of different options with respect to different
industries, and really to teach me how to understand the benefits of the things that
I have done for doing the things that I'm now doing.
Interesting. So what did you do then job wise when you arrived in Brisbane?
I have to say in Brisbane, almost everybody works for Suncorp at some point or another.
It's almost the first question you ask somebody, when did you work for Suncorp? So I
worked there for four or five years, I think, ended up running the Bond Fund
But that doesn't sound that entrepreneurial. That sounds like very similar to what you
were doing in Sydney.
Very good point. But then I went into energy, electricity trading, actually, probably
wouldn't have done that, I don't think, in Sydney. I thought to myself, well, how can I
take the risk management knowledge that I have and competency that I have and applied
elsewhere? And electricity, it was a wild market, I have to tell you, it went from
fifteen dollars to fifty thousand dollars at the drop of a hat. And for a risk manager,
that's an amazing opportunity.
And do you still feel like you've got an entrepreneurial mindset in the way you
approach your current job?
Absolutely, I do. Yes, we have done things that no one else in the market has done.
So, for example, the fund that I run called Brighter Super now was the local government
fund for Queensland.
And it was subscale at the time.
So we needed to get the scale up.
We looked around and there were two others, Energy Super and Suncorp Super.
And so that's who we merged all together.
Now, the interesting thing about that was that the local government fund is a public
sector fund. Energy Super was an industry fund.
And we actually acquired with the first industry fund in the market in Australia to
acquire a retail fund, Suncorp Super's fund.
So we've put together three funds from completely different sectors in a way that's
actually created, I think, something really quite unique with a culture that brings the
best of all three together.
Interesting. OK, Kate, what is the best piece of career advice you've ever been given?
Well, it was actually some advice that was given to me just before I moved to Brisbane,
which was take all the opportunities you see when you see them.
You may not know this, but I started off my undergraduate degree is in music.
OK, yeah. And then I did a master's degree in econometrics.
So I've taken the opportunities where I've seen them, and it's led me into this
incredibly rich, diverse, interesting career where I've been able to see
opportunities within an individual sector or an individual company, which I can then
take the learnings on into another area.
Right. OK. Do you miss music?
Look, I do. You know, I don't play now because classical musicians are perfectionists
and you need four hours a day to keep that level of perfection up.
And I just don't have it. So I don't play anymore.
But I was singing just pre-COVID in a choir, which I absolutely loved.
I definitely miss that feeling of being part of a musical moment that comes together.
So are you a perfectionist as a result of your music?
I am a perfectionist, but I consider it's not as a result of my music.
Because a lot of people will say that rather than being perfect, you really have to
settle for something a little bit less, because if you want perfection all the time,
you'll never get anything done.
Is that something that you have to consciously think of?
I would consider myself a pragmatic perfectionist.
We do get a lot done.
You know, we've done two mergers in three years.
So I know that we actually get a lot done.
That's that's quite fast.
A few people have said that to us.
So I don't think I have to consciously think about that.
What I do have to make sure I am doing is not asking too much of everyone around me.
I probably need to think very consciously about whether or not I need to keep asking
for the extra five percent.
Kate, on that note, we are going to take a short break, but don't go away.
We're going to come back very shortly and open our beautiful chatterbox.
Welcome back to 50 Minutes with the Boss.
I'm here with Kate Farah, the chief executive of Brighter Super.
Now, Kate, this is our section called the Chatterbox.
In front of you is this beautiful brown,
shiny chatterbox, inside which are about 15 questions.
I'm going to ask you to have a forage, pick out some,
and we will continue our Q&A section.
Good luck. Have a forage.
Tell me about a time when you failed at something.
How did you recover and what did you learn?
When I was at BZW, I was working as a quantitative analyst
in the bond division.
And the quantitative analyst basically looks at,
you know, the relative prices, high or low, of different bonds
with different risks.
And I developed a relatively innovative way of helping
to take advantage of differences in the way that risks a price.
But without being exposed to market risk.
So anyway, I did a whole lot of testing and I tested it on
huge amount of historical data from a huge number of different
markets around the world.
When it was ready, proudly rolled it out and the trading team
took advantage of it.
Unfortunately, a week into that process,
we had the biggest market move for 50 years.
And needless to say, the insulation didn't quite hold up.
To the full market move, as I had hoped it would.
And you lost money at that point.
And we lost money at that point.
And so you can imagine as a poor, young,
quantitative analyst who'd been given this amazing opportunity to do this.
That was absolutely shattering.
And I guess there's a couple of learnings for me and others out of all of this.
The first one is you can do all the work that you want in the ethereal
world of data, but in the real world, you really need to do test and learn sizing.
It's very similar when you're going out into the market and trying a new product.
Don't try it on your home market.
Try it on a very small sample.
Get it better than try it on another sample.
Get it better. Keep working.
Keep improving. Get it great.
And then do it big when you got it really fantastic.
Interesting. I love that.
OK, have a fish. Let's go.
In your experience, how do people get promoted, even if they haven't gone
for or requested the promotion themselves?
The attributes of the people that we promote, I think are very important.
The obvious one, of course, is work hard and do a good job.
I also think that you need to be in touch with the
cultural context that you're working in, being able to deliver, show that you're
delivering, think innovatively and do it relatively quickly and being able to be
in sync with that cultural context.
I think that's very important.
I also think that, you know, reaching out doesn't hurt.
You know, a number of the people who've been promoted have reached out to me,
to members of the executive team, to their leader and said, I want more.
And so when the opportunity comes up to think about somebody else
for a different role, then, of course, they're in the consideration set.
That's actually very good advice.
Don't hide under a bushel.
If you want to go somewhere, tell someone.
Let's have another question.
What part of your job don't you like, or don't you like so much?
I love the purpose in my job.
I mean, we're privileged to be the custodians of other people's money and
it's so important to them.
And every time we go and talk to them, they tell us that.
So I really do love my job.
I guess the bit that I don't love as much is the stakeholder management.
I'm a pretty cerebral person.
And so I'm definitely not as good at the, the stakeholder management.
And I do have to say that, you know, as a retail and industry and a public sector
fund, Brighter Super does have a complicated set of stakeholders and quite
a diverse set of stakeholders that, you know, it does become quite a cerebral
challenge to work out how to satisfy all of them appropriately at the same time.
So do you ever get overwhelmed by how many stakeholders you have to manage?
Look, sometimes I do.
I have to say, bring together those constituencies in a way that
makes sense for the fund.
Ultimately, everything has to be done for the benefit of the
fund and the members.
That's what we're here for.
So bringing together all of those stakeholders in a way that makes
sense for the fund can be a little bit overwhelming.
I breathe five, five, five.
But a lot of those stakeholders you're talking about are your members.
And, you know, one of the things that has been beautiful this year is
that we finished our integrations.
As I said earlier, we've brought together three funds at none, two
integrations in three years, which is quite rapid.
And you do put members through a bit when you do that, and particularly
also the rebranding, you know, these are all old funds.
We're celebrating our 60 years next year.
And, you know, these are all funds where there was a lot of attachment to the
fund itself and to the idea of the fund and how it was embedded in the
industry and the name, the fact that the name signified, you know, what
that fund was doing.
So we worked very hard on just doing a really good job.
You know, we've reduced fees, we've improved performance, we've delivered
more and better services.
And what has been wonderful this year when we've gone out and talked to
members is how much they love that.
And that's what I think kind of makes it all worth it.
And that's how you manage the member part of it.
And in fact, I think that's probably how you manage all of it.
You just do a really good job.
You know, what's right for the people, deliver well, if it doesn't work, pick
yourself up and do a better job next time, you know, and just keep going.
And that's how you get there.
So you mentioned that having a lot of stakeholders is overwhelming.
How do you get over the fact that that's actually not your favourite part?
So I just suck it up.
And I tell myself, sometimes you've just got to suck it up, Kate.
And to be fair, I quite often do that.
And in the end, once I sort of get over it, I find I quite enjoy it.
Sometimes things actually aren't as bad as you think.
Now, Kate, earlier when we're talking about stress, you talked about 555.
It's the 555 breathing approach, you know, five in hold for five and then five out.
It's amazing because somebody told me the other day that, you know, when
you're stressed, all these involuntary things happen to your body.
The heart rate goes up, you get all stiff, you know, all these sorts of things.
And the only thing that you can actually control is your breathing.
And that really resonated with me.
So being able to do five in hold for five and five out, you can take
control in an environment where otherwise you don't have control.
And that's really resonated.
On that note, you have passed with flying colors, the chatterbox section.
I have one other question for you, which we ask everybody who comes in.
And that is, if we gave you 12 months off, you were unencumbered, you
could do anything you liked.
What would you do?
Well, I do think I would spend a bit of time with my partner and my pet because
I travel quite a bit at the moment.
And, and look, the cat gets quite unruly when I'm not there.
And by the time I come back, it's then a recovery process, but it would be
the doing the things that I don't get time to do.
And there's two that I would really love to be able to have time to commit
to that I just don't at the moment.
One of them is choir.
And the other thing I would do is row.
Uh, I never got to row, uh, at school.
I wish I had, um, I was lucky enough to join with a group of wonderful women.
Only a couple of years ago where we did a sort of beginners rowing course.
And I thought, Oh, this is fantastic.
I want to do more of this.
So they're the two things I'm going to do when I have some, my year off.
So why do you like rowing?
Uh, very meditative, I think it's amazing actually, when I, one of the
things that I really felt when I was out on the water rowing was how musical it
is, the whole body moves rhythmically and it's about the progress of time,
which is exactly the same as what you have in music.
So do you feel like you've got a metronome going at you the whole time?
Um, I think I've probably got a metronome going inside the whole time.
And that's probably what drives me.
And that is our time up.
Kate, I really had such a great time talking to you today.
And I think some of the things I took away most was the fact that you get up at 4am.
You use that time to clear your inbox, which obviously gives you a chance to
let your mind wander and solve some pretty crucial problems after that.
I love the way you test, test, test, go small first.
And before you do something or to do something on a bigger scale, I really
like your advice of taking every opportunity.
I so get you when you say, if you want a promotion, if you want to get ahead,
don't hide under a bushel, go out and tell someone.
So thank you so much, Kate, for all your great advice and for allowing us to
spend 15 minutes with the boss.
And thank you to everyone for listening.
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This podcast was hosted by me, Sally Patton produced by LAPFAN and Martin
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The Australian financial review.