Absolutely, I believe that we're getting very close to AGI.
If you were to go back in time though and show the artificial intelligence capabilities
of today, I would be of the mindset that we are already in that era today.
Look, I wouldn't know anything near as much about this situation as anyone here, but allow
me to ask some dumb questions.
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 Nick Flood, the general manager of IBM in Australia and New Zealand.
Hi, Nick, how are you?
Thank you, Sally.
How's your day been so far?
It's been wonderful.
I'm a morning person, so I've started with a lovely cup of coffee and it's a great pleasure
Now Nick, as I said, you're the general manager of IBM in Australia and New Zealand, IBM being
a multinational technology consulting company.
Your annual revenues in this part of the world are around $5 billion and you employ about
IBM, I'm reliably informed, has been in Australia since 1932 and your clients include the federal
and state governments, the big four banks, and the major insurers.
And I should add that IBM is the largest technology supplier to the federal government.
That sounds like you've got quite a lot on your plate.
Absolutely, Sally.
It's a great honor to lead the company that I joined as a graduate here in Australia.
Okay, we've only got 15 minutes.
The clock starts now.
Tell me about your morning routine.
What time do you get up?
Sally, I get up just before six in the morning and my immediate ritual is to walk over to
the local cafe and I've spent some time to unpackage that.
Why it is that I have a consistent set of behaviors.
Yes, I love coffee, but I think it's more a callback to my upbringing.
So I was raised in country New South Wales and I feel that that sense of being part of
a community, knowing people on a first name basis, showing interest in them and their
lives is what I get from going to my local cafe time and time again.
So when you're at the coffee shop, do you talk to a whole lot of regulars?
Absolutely, the regulars, the baristas, the wait staff, and it's an opportunity to connect
on a really personal level with those people in my community.
I remember being a child and it was always, who are the heroes of the local community?
It wasn't the people that had the most fancy jobs or the most wealth, it was really the
people that were known to be good pillars of the community and that were there and that
were looking to advance everyone's interest rather than their own.
So when you grow up and have those set of experiences, you come to value it and I look
to try and emanate that in my local community.
My next question is about a pivotal moment in your career, say a project that you worked
on or a promotion that you got, that changed the trajectory of what you were doing?
What comes to mind is I was midway through my career.
I was having a fantastic executive development experience as the chief of staff to the CEO.
This was about 2014.
And then I had my choice of assignment and I took the decision to prioritize a personal
relationship. I had finished my MBA, I'd met a girl who's now my wife.
She secured a job at the Commonwealth Department of Treasury and that led me to moving to
Canberra. And then in Canberra, there were two things that really benefited me when I
looked back. Firstly, working for a wonderful boss to the extent you can.
I think it's so important to choose to work for the people that really see something in
you and to really spur you even when you can't exactly see what it is that you're capable
of and your potential.
And were you able to choose your boss?
I was in that case.
That's interesting that you thought about who you wanted to work for and how they would
help you in your career at a fairly young age.
Absolutely. I think just feeling who do you get along with best?
Whose leadership do you admire?
We're all factors that went into that decision.
So yes, a rational based approach, but also that instinctual feel of who's going to be
the type of boss that I'd like to work with and work for.
And if you were choosing where to work again, would you always prioritize your family?
And your personal circumstances over the work, because that can be a bit of a tussle, right?
It really can. And I think that the best leaders are those leaders that have all dimensions
of their life in order. And I think it's critical that you have those holistic conversations
with your employees and your staff. How can you set them up so that they have a sense
of order and balance in their lives so that they can bring the best version of themselves
My next question is, tell me about a piece of advice that you've been given that you
have really treasured.
So I remember I was so thrilled to take on the role leading IBM in Australia. And to
mark that occasion, I remember calling all of the former CEOs and gaining advice from
them. And there's countless learnings and lessons from that set of calls and experiences
that I was able to have. The one that comes to mind was with a gentleman called Andrew
Stephens. His one piece of advice to me, Sally, was try to be the leader that gives
people a cool sense of forward progress on the front of their face and don't be the
leader that gives people a warm sensation of always breathing down the back of their
neck. And I really took that on. If you can be a leader that's always telling the team
what progress you're making toward your objectives, celebrating successes, I genuinely believe
and have seen personally that you get the most out of people. And that's how you unlock
the scalability that all leaders up lines are looking for, because that's really the
litmus test of their preparedness to promote you to ever increasing levels of responsibility
So what do you do in times where that may not be the case? Because to be constantly
moving forward is all very well, ideally, but probably not the way companies work. So
how do you deal with times when you're not moving forward?
Well, a couple of things. I think be very clear around which audience you're communicating
with. There's different messages as a leader that you want to be delivering to the front
line employee to what you would be prepared to share in a more candid setting with your
immediate leadership team. So firstly, be really conscious which setting and which audience
that you're communicating with. Second of all, really flip the conversation from cadence
to coaching culture. So rather than really getting the stick out and highlighting to
people how they're deficient on certain metrics, reshaping it such that their leadership know
that there's a heightened expectation on them to coach that employee back to higher
levels of performance or to overcome that challenge. The third dimension is to roll
your sleeves up yourself. Be the leader that's prepared to thrust yourself toward the most
challenging situations and grow and learn through that. But always know that in those
challenging situations and times of crisis, certainly my experience, you're really most
often on the cusp of a breakthrough moment that can change the trajectory for the business
or that specific relationship or partnership.
On that note, we have finished the first section. We're going to take a short break. When we
come back, we're going to open our lovely chatterbox. So Nick, don't go away. I'll see
you in a minute. Welcome back to 15 minutes with the boss. I'm here with Nick Flood, the
general manager of IBM in Australia and New Zealand. Now, Nick, this is our section called
the Chatterbox. In front of you is this really beautiful brown, very, very lo-fi box,
inside which today are about probably 15 questions. I'm going to ask you to pick one
out and we'll get going again.
What's your pet hate in the office?
My immediate reaction is someone opening a can of salmon or tuna at the kitchenette.
That's a little bit cliched, I would say. The pet hate, I think, instinctively, I don't
like to see is conflict among teams. And I really look to help those teams so that we
can shorten the time that teams are experiencing those moments of conflict and increase the
time that those teams are experiencing times in flow and close collaboration and strong
working partnerships.
Can conflict sometimes be a good thing because it means that people are bringing together
different views, which as a company is a good thing?
Absolutely, it is. And I think there's moments and strategies that as a leader that you can
display and role model to help teams overcome those moments. You can say self-deprecating
things like, look, I wouldn't know anything near as much about this situation as anyone
here, but allow me to ask some dumb questions. Can I just provide an alternative perspective,
set the norms that, look, we're going to go through a brainstorming mode here. No idea
is a bad idea. As a leader, you can have those interventions to really take the temperature
out of the room and set things on a much stronger footing.
So do you go and ask dumb questions?
All the time. If you frame up the situation or the dialogue around you not knowing as
much as that person, help me understand why it was that that's the view or that why you
believe that to be the situation. I'm genuinely just looking for insights here to build my
own level of understanding. I find that to be a really useful technique to help teams
and help yourself overcome those periods of tension and friction.
That's really good piece of advice. Be prepared to ask dumb questions. In fact, go ahead
and ask dumb questions. I love that. Okay, let's have another fish. Right, this one.
Okay. What part of your job don't you like?
The part of my job that I don't like, it's a cliche of not having enough time to achieve
everything that we want to achieve. And I find that challenging. As an outcomes based
person, you have a great sense of satisfaction when you reach an objective or deliver to
a metric. But the reality is that you just can't have the time to do all of that by
yourself. The leadership challenge that I'm working through is really how do you scale
through others? And I've found that transition from being an earlier career professional
to a leader to be one of the most significant challenges that you can face.
So how old were you when you were appointed General Manager of IBM in Australia and New
Zealand? 37. How did you cope with that? Because that is quite young, I imagine.
It was, yeah, definitely in the experience, our 92 years of the Australian operation,
that's the youngest person to have taken that role.
Was it daunting? It was very daunting. And the gravity of that responsibility was
certainly something that I felt very directly.
And how did you deal with people who are much more experienced and have been with the
company a lot longer than you, who had probably more knowledge than you?
It was really how do you enroll them on the journey and the mission of what you need to
do as the leader, highlighting to them your aspirations and your vision for the company
and what it could be, seeking out their experience and insights and observations and
doing so with great levels of humility.
I always found that if you approach someone humbly, you ask for their guidance, you
expose to them a business issue or a performance challenge that you're facing and
you're seeking their advice.
I've undoubtedly benefited from different insights, different ways of approaching
challenges that I would not have possibly been able to identify if I assumed that I
needed to have all of the answers to all problems just by myself.
OK, interesting. All right, have another fish in the box.
Let's go. Oh, this is an AI question.
We normally ask, what does AI mean for your business?
But seeing that you work at IBM, I'm going to refrain that question.
What are the key advancements in AI that you're seeing and how will it help us more
I had the great fortune of being in Washington with the Australian government trade
delegation toward the end of last year.
One of the interesting things to me, Sally, was how AI can help propel advances in
quantum computing to the point that we reach what we track as the period of quantum
utility, where quantum is actually useful in solving societal issues, whether it's
climate modeling, developments of advanced medicines, advanced material sciences, and
the specific use case being how AI in a more accessible language or programming
language can help quantum researchers write code for quantum applications that at a
rate and pace that wouldn't otherwise be possible.
So are you full of optimism around AI or do you have some sort of hesitation as
I think that human ingenuity is such that we'll always find a way to apply technology
to advance the human condition overall.
And I do see a set of challenges that face the world that I do genuinely believe can
be overcome by these emerging technologies.
And on balance, I'm very positive about it.
So how far away are we from being able to use AI and artificial general intelligence
to solve the big problems like climate change?
I'd say three to five years maximum.
In fact, I understand that AI is already contributing to a greater understanding of
our planet and that's helping researchers, climate scientists take actions that
A specific example that I track closely is IBM's work with the Marshall Space Center
So the Marshall Space Center have a enormous network of near-Earth satellites that
are capturing a lot of geospatial information around climate patterns and climate
The information is so significant that no researcher or research team could hope to
garner all of the insights available in that material.
And so the artificial intelligence use case is how can you, in a chat-based format,
allow a researcher to pose a query or raise a prompt and then the AI will then go and
correlate and serve up the information that's most relevant to that query.
So am I right in saying that AGI is the point at which artificial intelligence
actually becomes smarter than the humans?
That would be how I define it.
And are we close to that point?
I believe that we're getting very close to AGI.
Equally, I think that that could be a never achievable goal that as advanced as AI
becomes, society, the theorists, the commentators will always deem AGI to be just
that little step ahead.
If you were to go back in time, though, and show ourselves 10 years in the past, the
artificial intelligence capabilities of today, I would be of the mindset that we
are already in that era today.
On that note, that is the end of the Cheddar Box section.
I now have one last question.
And that is, if you weren't doing your current job, you could do anything you
liked, what would you be doing?
I think I'd go back to school and I'd pursue my passion for engineering.
One of the things that's on my radar is the Churchill Fellowships, which is
something specific that I've got on my horizon that I'd love to do in the future.
Look at a societal problem where a greater understanding of that problem would have
the potential to benefit many, and then pursue a set of immersive experiences in
international universities or placements in other countries to really bring back
those insights and learnings to Australia is something that I'd love to do in the
And what societal problem would you look to solve?
Helping people in regional communities and parts of country Australia to have
greater access to the digital economy, to have greater pathways into careers in the
technology sector.
And I just think how powerful would it be to expose those sorts of careers to a
broader range of school children so that they can have all of the wonderful
experiences I've been fortunate to have.
On that note, our 15 minutes is up.
Nick, it's been fabulous talking to you today.
I've really loved listening to your sense of community and relationships and the
idea that the best leaders are those who have got their personal and their
professional lives in sync.
I love the way that when you hire people, you're not prescriptive about their
backgrounds and the experiences they've had and ask the dumb questions.
What a great piece of advice.
Disarm people and that will help you to solve conflict.
So thank you so much, Nick, for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the boss.
An absolute pleasure, Sally.
And thank you to everyone for listening.
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This podcast was hosted by me, Sally Patton, and produced by Lapfan and Martin
Our theme is by Alex Gow, our head of podcast is Lapfan and the head of premium
content is Fiona Buffini.
The Australian Financial Review.