There's moments in your career where you've got to speak up and use your voice for good
and that's what I did do.
I got lots of pushbacks, some hate mail, but for every customer I may have lost, we might
When I look back, you almost got to write your resignation in advance, so when I look
back, what will I be known for, what will I be remembered for, to make sure that you
leave a positive legacy?
Hi, I'm Sally Patton, the 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 great advice from our leaders.
My guest today is Paul Zara, the chief executive of the Australian Retailers Association.
Hi Paul, are you well?
Great to be here.
Thank you so much for coming in, looking very dapper, I must say, in a beautiful green
Fletcher gets you everywhere, Sally.
Paul, as I said, you're the CEO of the Australian Retailers Association, which represents more
than 120,000 physical and online shops that employ more than 1.4 million Australians.
So that's quite a few people that you're advocating on behalf of.
And I should also say that you're the former CEO of department store David Jones.
It's so lovely to have you on the podcast.
So thank you again.
Thanks for having me.
We've only got 15 minutes.
Let's get started.
Paul, my first question is about your morning routine.
What time do you get up?
Well, look, I'm a really early riser.
So I get up before most people, 4.45 is probably the latest I would get up.
I'm normally up and at them, black coffee at the gym by 5.30 most days.
If not, I'll be at the office earlier.
I generally sort of make sure that I get organised the night before, have breakfast
and then I walk to work every morning.
And during that time, I listen to RN breakfast on the ABC because it was, it's my, my only
time to actually be across the headlines for the day.
My job is very much following the politics and knowing what the headlines are and it
usually determines that I'm going to have a good day or a bad day.
So I sort of want to be across what I'm up for.
So when you say you prepare the night before, what do you prepare?
I'm very much around making sure that I use my time really well.
So knowing what's in my calendar, whether that's morning television, whether I'm having
to do a radio interview, if I'm able to be organised to make sure I've got all the information
I need to get through my day as seamlessly as possible.
So what time do you go to sleep?
If you're getting up at 4.30, 4.45, it's pretty early.
I'm an early riser, but also early to bed.
So usually by eight o'clock I'm in bed.
It's a fairly disciplined life and more so in this job because I need to be ahead of
That's really disciplined of you.
So my next question is about a pivotal moment in your career.
Was there a time or a point where something happened that somehow changed the trajectory
of what you were doing?
The interesting thing for me, there was a particular moment in time that actually really
It actually relates to an AFR journalist.
Now I can't remember the journalist to be frank, but I got a call during the marriage
equality debate around me going on the record around marriage equality.
At that time, this is 10 years ago, ASX listed CEOs completely stated in their swim lane
they did not talk about social justice in any way.
It was very much around the fact that the journalists are saying they were just really
struggling to get somebody to speak on the record and would I do that?
I had to really think about why would I do it and what the impact would be if I did speak
I gave it lots of great thought because in fact in my mind it was around the respect
for equality and the importance of treating customers equal but equally for our staff.
Most people within the organisation knew that I was gay and this was my opportunity
to actually make sure that I went on the record in support of marriage equality from an equality
perspective, more than a marriage perspective.
And the time you were working for?
I was running David Jones at the time.
And did you tell the board?
Well, I didn't need to, it was in the press so they all were very aware, they weren't
that happy about the time.
I think the rest is history because for me there's moments in your career where you've
got to speak up and use your voice for good and that's what I did do.
I got lots of pushbacks, some hate mail, but for every customer I may have lost, we might
have gained 10 in my opinion so it was a really important moment in my career.
And then when I left David Jones, oddly enough, most of the work that I got was actually in
D&I, which is diversity, equity and inclusion.
As an advisor for large corporates wanting to change the makeup of their organisations,
I did a lot of work there.
I became the chair of the advisory board for PWC in D&I and I didn't have the formal training
but that lived experience made a big difference in actually in my next job.
So actually it even helped you in your career and as soon as you left David Jones, you had
other things you could immediately walk into.
That's true. So oddly enough, I had more work in D&I than I did in retail at the time.
So it was a real good bridging role for me for a period of time.
And what was the hardest part about deciding to say something and then the aftermath?
I think it's important to trust your intuition, speak up where it aligns to your own personal
values. And if it's worth fighting for, then you should.
And I was prepared to give up my career and impact my career if that's what it meant.
I knew it wouldn't get to that.
But sometimes you've got to change history by by speaking up.
I love that. My next question is, what is the best piece of career advice you've ever
Ah, knowing when to leave, knowing when to leave a party, a relationship and a job.
I always strongly believe around leaving a party when you're having a good time.
I think that goes not with relationships so much, but certainly with jobs, knowing the
right time to go and knowing when you've had your moment in the sun and it's time to hand
the baton over to a successor.
Ideally, it's best to leave on your terms.
So when do you ideally think it is time to go in terms of being a CEO?
Like after how many years should you start thinking that?
Look, there's a whole science to it.
But, you know, generally CEOs, I think the average tenure keeps getting less and less.
You wouldn't want to do less than two and you probably shouldn't do more than five.
That's really the time frame.
So I assume you're talking about David Jones.
Yes, I think David Jones.
But in my current role, I've just stepped down as well.
So, in fact, it's timely that we're having this conversation and I've just hit that
So how do you know when it's time to go?
You can sense it in your own self when it's time to move on.
When I think when the when you believe that what you set out to do has been done, when
you believe that you have a little less to offer, when you start to see what you're
doing is becoming more and more routine and the joy starts to reduce, it's time to
OK, on that note, Paul, we're going to take a short break, but don't go away.
When we come back, we're going to open the beautiful chatterbox.
Welcome back to 15 minutes with the boss.
I'm here with Paul Zara, the CEO of the Australian Retailers Association.
Now, Paul, this is our section called the chatterbox.
In front of you is a beautiful brown box with about 15 to 20 questions inside.
I'm going to ask you to have a bit of a forage round, pick out a few questions and
we're then going to play our chatterbox game.
What are your favourite interview questions when hiring somebody and why?
I stick with standard interview questions generally, which are the general HR
questions, but I always ask people what their career aspirations are.
You get to a sense of whether they're going to join and stay, whether this is
the job where their dreams or they're aspiring for something completely
different or using this as a stepping stone onto something else and allows you
then to understand their motivations.
And I think that's really important.
I was talking to someone the other day who gave me a piece of advice and she said,
the secret to running a good business is to hire fast and fire fast because you
never know exactly like how good someone is going to be.
Because all you can do is look at their CV and interview them.
Do you tend to spend a lot of time hiring somebody or do you also hire and fire fast?
I do hire fast and fire fast.
I think I'm known for holding people to account and if people, particularly in
that first, you know, three to six months, if people haven't stepped up, haven't
actually absorbed the role and showing visible difference, then you know, they're
not going to make it and you should, you should move on them.
And I think it's one of the lessons I learned very early in my career around
actually not delaying decisions on people, when you get to a CEO level, you're
really the sum of everybody else's efforts.
And if you think of it that way, you only succeed if you've got really great
soldiers that are delivering on the work that's required.
So it's a really good principle to own.
And do you also think that you can overthink hiring people because you
could interview lots and lots of people, but you never really got to know someone.
So do you think about overthinking it?
Yeah, look, I'm an overthinker.
I'll just state that, but I also think, yes, you can.
There's a risk in overthinking because some people are professional
interviewees, so they know what answers to give you.
And I think you've always got to ask people to give examples, get them to
demonstrate, because then if they can't quickly get to an example, it's very hard
to make all those examples up in your mind very quickly, but I also think
managing the risk you think about if they don't work out, what is the risk?
So you might come back for a second interview, but if it's a contract role
for a short period of time and the risk is low, then you start to
make some sort of compromises.
So managing the risk becomes an important part.
Let's go to another question.
Another dip indeed.
Who is a leader, business or otherwise, whom you really admire and why?
You're probably going to be surprised by my response.
My response is actually not a business leader so much, but Sir Winston Churchill,
who was the prime minister at the time of the UK during the wartime effort.
Now, the reason why I say that, I'm not necessarily about his politics, but I
think he was highly intelligent, very philosophical and a lot of the things
I've struggled with from a leadership perspective, he's actually on the record
giving a response to, and I think when I first went into the CEO's role, when I
was appointed at David Jones, I think what I learned quite quickly, you're
not going to please everybody.
One of the things that Winston Churchill famously said, if you have enemies, good,
because it means you've stood for something.
And that's really changed my mindset around actually not, you know, I've had
this constant wanting to please others.
And in fact, you know, the times where I've upset people, I've created enemies
is because I've stood for something that was really important to me.
And there's many quotable quotes by Winston Churchill that from a leadership
point of view has been very helpful.
And anything else in Winston Churchill that particularly stands out?
Winston Churchill was also famous for saying, you know, that he was asked
once in an interview, whether he was going to cut funding from the arts
to fund the war effort.
And his response to that was, well, in fact, if we're not fighting for art,
then what are we fighting for?
And I had to think that through a little bit further, it was all around the
fact that artists generally are expressing themselves and that the whole idea around
war was around to achieve peace was actually to allow people to express themselves.
So that ability to express yourself freely, I guess, is the operative word there.
And how does that play into your everyday activity or the way you think?
Well, I think because for me, being different to most, being a visible gay
person, I guess, that for me, I've had to be very conscious, you know, I spent
most of my earlier life having to fit in, having to not be obvious.
And now that I realise it's really, truly a celebration, I think being
different, understanding your own differences, not, not necessarily if
you're LGBTIQ, but if you're, if you're different to others, whatever that
difference is that you should celebrate it and see it as a superpower.
Okay, interesting.
So actually, do you see being LGBTIQ now as a superpower?
So I think about particularly in my work, because I've been in the
retail industry, I've been in fashion, you know, I would argue that I understand
women more than a straight man would, but equally, I'm just having that
fashionability sensibility that comes quite naturally to gay people, gay men.
My ability to actually manage largely what a female work workforce has
put me in good stead.
So when I think about all the qualities I have as an LGBTIQ leader, it's
definitely a superpower.
The downsides that are there in dealing with homophobia, that's something you
have to deal with, but I think over time I've learnt more how to manage
that as I've gotten older.
Yeah, interesting.
Next question, have a fish.
How do you create a positive culture in your company?
It's always hard when you're managing large groups of people, because the
culture can often be embedded way before you're even the CEO.
That is hard, but you've got to work at it around the edges.
In a smaller organisation, with people that I work with directly
that are direct reports, I always try to work out what motivates them
and where their boundaries are and try and focus on what they're really good
at and try to amplify that.
And that creates quite a positive workplace culture.
So Paul, you talk about the importance of finding out what motivates other people.
What motivates you?
Look, I'm motivated by doing a good job and that's always been my career.
I've always never looked around me.
I've always focused on the value I was adding.
So I feel that I always want to make sure that the job that I'm in, when I look
back, you almost got to write your resignation advance.
So when I look back, what will I be known for?
What will I be remembered for?
And making sure you're working to that outcome to make sure that
you leave a positive legacy.
So do you consciously think, or have you been thinking while you've been doing
this job, what will my legacy be?
What will I be known for from day one?
And what do you think that'll be?
Well, for me, the organisation has been going for over a hundred years.
It didn't have the profile that it's got, that it has today.
And I wanted people to see the retail industry for what it was, that it employed
one in 10 Australians, it was the largest private sector and that retail,
whilst it's hard work, it's an amazing career.
I started my career as a shop assistant at the local target store at the age of
15 while I was studying.
You know, I didn't think back then that I was going to be the CEO of a department
store, all I ever wanted to do was to do a good job.
And by the age of 22, I was running a target store, which I look back now,
think how the hell I did, because most of the staff at the time were all older
than me, but it just happened naturally because I was just always best in show.
For me, that narrative has got to be really strong around what do you
want to be known for.
And just on that issue of managing older people, was that difficult?
Did you find a way of doing that?
It wasn't as difficult, but I'd, oddly enough, I did a course on supervision
about supervising others.
It was a very basic course.
And I learned from the teacher at that time.
And she said to me, find things you can align on.
So what I started to do when I was at work, part of actually giving instructions
and getting things done was ask, asking for recipes from an older, a mature woman
or asking assistance on something that was actually outside of my skillset.
That's the way you develop relationships.
You align on that sense of teamwork and that you demonstrate respect.
And that, Paul, is the end of the chatterbox.
Now, my last question, I'm going to slightly tweak today because you are
leaving the Retailers Association.
So I will ask you, what are you going to do when you leave the association?
What plans have you got?
Are you going to take a long holiday?
What's going to happen?
Well, first off, I'm super excited about not having to work Christmas
Day and Boxing Day for the first time for God knows how long.
So I've got to be very excited about that.
But my plan is to have a, have a break.
I spent my whole life planning and being organised and being disciplined.
And for the first time I'm going to have, it'll be quite organic and unstructured.
And I'll work out in the new year what that may look like, but it's most likely
to look like a portfolio career, which is what I had between running David
Jones and between this role, anything from sitting on boards through to private
equity to, you know, doing, supporting others where I can.
And do you want a slightly less gruelling lifestyle?
I don't mind the gruelling.
I'd just be nice not have to be somewhere at a particular time each morning, but,
you know, it, but less gruelling would be great because it does, there's wear
and tear on the body and you sort of, as I'm getting older, I'm sort of looking
forward to actually having a bit more me time and doing other things outside of
the industry that might be a little bit more creative.
And on that note, Paul, our time is up.
I've so much enjoyed talking to you today.
I really love the quote that you have from Winston Churchill, that if you're
going to have enemies, that's actually a good thing because it means that you're
standing for something and that might be difficult, but it is really important
I love the fact that you hire fast and fire fast.
You need to have good people around you because you are as a leader.
There's some of everyone else's efforts.
I really like the way you think about what your legacy is going to be.
And that clearly helps to motivate you and set your path of what you do every
And I also really like the way you have gone about gaining the trust of people,
not just older people when you're working at Target, but figuring out what motivates
the people around you so that you can get the best out of them and they can trust
You have a great relationship.
So Paul, thank you again so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the
And thank you to everyone for listening.
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This podcast was hosted by me, Sally Patton, and produced and edited by Lapfan.
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The Australian Financial Review.