I think the life event shifted me. I sort of look back at that point and go, maybe I
wouldn't have been as driven, maybe I would have plotted a bit more if I didn't have
that jolt. Be humble. I mean, my mum used to say to me, don't lose who you are. She
never used to talk about my career at all. She didn't really care.
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 really great advice
from our leaders. My guest today is Tony Lombardo, the chief executive of
Lendlease. Hi, Tony, lovely to see you. Thank you so much for coming in.
Thanks, Sally. I'm really looking forward to today.
Now, Tony, you're the chief executive of Lendlease, a $4.4 billion property and
construction company. And your projects include Barangaroo in Sydney, Victoria
Harbour in Melbourne, and the Brisbane Showgrounds in Brisbane.
You have been CEO for nearly three years and have 6,800 employees or thereabouts.
Is that all quite tough? It sounds like quite a lot.
Look, it's a big business, so you do cover a lot.
It is a global role. And so like last night, I was up till 2am finishing an
executive course. So it's all part of running an international business.
But it's been very clear to our people.
You've got a the market's interesting at this point in time, but it's also it
throws up challenges. But it's the opportunity to really give people a clear
structure where Lendlease is going and working quite closely with them to
pivot an iconic company such as Lendlease.
Well, thank you for coming in this morning after 2am finish last night.
As promised, this is 15 minutes with the boss.
We haven't got much time. I'll start the clock right now.
My first question is about your morning routine.
What time do you get up? What happens?
You a breakfast kind of guy?
I'm a person who gets up between five, five thirty.
I actually like my quiet time. I have a routine.
I always do a bit of yoga and stretching.
And then that's either followed by a run or some weight.
So I always mix it up.
But it's just thinking time, listening to music and really pondering
what the day holds ahead.
So I find that my relaxation time to get set.
So you're listening to music mainly when you're running, are you?
Yeah, most mainly music.
I just find it always relaxes me.
I love to do a bit of karaoke.
So you'll hear me listening to Foo Fighters or things I'm singing along.
So if you hear a crazy person running, singing, that's me.
So what time do you get to the office?
The office will probably be somewhere between 730 to 830 most morning.
So I do like to get in early.
Again, it's a little bit of that routine of planning.
What meetings have I got ahead?
If I'm doing something external, what am I trying to do?
It's either a client or my team.
So it's really trying to think through external versus internal.
Have we got the key decisions to make?
Have I got through the material?
So I'm ready and then execute the whole day
because you're in meetings and different things and try to wrap up.
But somewhere between five and six and debriefing and things
can carry on and meetings.
But I do try to get home to spend a bit of time with my young son,
who's nearly two, because that's important to me to get a bit of family time in.
OK, Tony, my next question is about a pivotal moment in your career.
Was there a point in your career which changed the nature of what you were doing
or took you in a whole different direction?
Firstly, my parents were immigrants who came into the country
and worked pretty hard to get us through private schools.
And my dad worked a couple of jobs.
So I always knew my mom was so fixated on getting an education
and to being the first children in the extended family got to university.
Education was so important to her, and it showed me the value
of how much they'd put into it.
So I really needed to focus on doing a lot with that.
Because they never had that opportunity, and we did.
And then when I was 18, my mom had cancer and she ended up being a paraplegic.
And so we nearly lost her at that point.
And I saw the fragility in life.
And a few years later, my dad committed suicide and I was 21 at the time.
I just realised life's short.
You've only got a specific time period you get to spend on this earth.
So you've got to make the most of it.
And I probably went into my career with,
how can I get to where I want to go as quickly as possible?
And so I was a bit in a hurry.
Fortunately, I got to work at GE career wise,
and I saw the halfway Jack Welsh was our CEO versus Jeff Immelt.
And I was fortunate at the time I worked at the corporate team here in Australia.
And I worked for a leader called Steve Bertamini.
And I used to always try to put my hand up to do extra things
because I knew Jack was coming into town.
And I said to him, hey, I'll do all those presentations for you
on top of my normal day job.
And I remember just spending the time getting that opportunity.
And eventually he invited me into the room with the other executives to listen in.
And that was just the pivotal moment where you went, you know,
while you're hearing someone really quite pointed,
could run multiple businesses over different lines
and really have a good understanding at that high level.
And it was a good insight just into the thought process.
And I think that sort of gave me that view in life.
I wanted to be a leader.
Yeah. So if you look back from where you are now,
would you be in such a hurry to achieve all your career goals as you were back then?
I think the life event shifted me.
I sort of look back at that point and go,
would I have appreciated my education as much if that didn't shock me
into really just appreciating what I'd been given?
And I think that was probably the moment.
And I think like life, different things shift you.
I think it's probably given me a level of different resilience.
Maybe I wouldn't have been as driven.
Maybe I would have plotted a bit more if I didn't have that jolt.
Yeah. And where did your parents immigrate from?
My parents were both from Italy.
Mum was 12 when she came across with her parents.
And my dad was in his 20s at the time.
And they met because my mum's family rented from my dad's family who owned the house.
And so we and my mum just recently passed.
But that house was in the family for about 60 years.
Wow. So, Tony, what's the best piece of career advice you've ever been given?
I've reflected on this point a lot in my life.
And I think it's about grasping opportunities when they become available.
One of my bosses at GE said, you may only get asked once or twice to do something.
And if you knock it back, you're not going to get asked for a third time.
So be very focused around when the opportunity comes knocking
and how prepared are you going to be to move?
He was sort of priming me to say, you've got to go move to the US,
which I eventually went and did for five years.
So when that opportunity came up, were you tempted at first to say no,
because for whatever reason, you didn't feel like you were ready
or you wanted to move to the US?
I always wanted to travel.
So I always had this view that I would get out and abroad.
It's just picking up the right time from your own family circumstances.
But I grasped it like I sort of took that opportunity and said, OK, I'll keep going.
And you got to be careful because I spent, if I look back in my career,
I've spent the last 22 years travelling a fair bit internationally.
And that's a lot of time been away.
So you do get a bit disconnected from friends and family and things like that,
because you're making sacrifices to get ahead in career.
But you've got to get that balance right.
I guess that's the price you pay for being a CEO.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I mean, you know, I always wanted to be a business leader.
I had that as one of my career sort of focus points.
But as I've now got my son, who's a couple of years old or getting nearly
B2, I sort of reflect a little bit, see the eyes through a young set of eyes
where everything's about curiosity and just learning.
And and it does make you just step back a little bit.
You've got to get that. You've got to strike the balance.
Now, Tony, stay right where you are.
We're going to take a short break.
And when we come back, we're going to open the chatterbox.
Welcome back to 15 Minutes with the Boss.
I'm here with Tony Lombardo, the chief executive of Lendlease.
Now, Tony, as threatened, this is our section called the chatterbox.
In front of you is this lovely brown chatterbox inside,
which are about 15 to 20 questions all folded up onto the sheets of paper.
I'm going to ask you to pick some out
and I will, of course, then ask you to answer the question.
So you ready for this? All right.
First one. OK, have a have a fish. All right.
Who is the person outside of the business world
whom you most admire and why one person who comes to mine?
And look, I'm a mad fan of music.
And it's Dave Grohl.
He was the drummer of Devana back in the day and who is one of my favourite bands.
And we all know of the passing of their great lead singer, Kurt Cobain.
And he then formed the Foo Fighters and he's the lead singer of the Foo Fighters.
So I always admired Dave because he's a real entertainer.
He really captures an audience.
If you ever watch his music clips, he makes fun of himself
and he keeps everything a bit lighthearted.
But he's got a big heart.
And I remember when we had the floods up in Brisbane,
actually flew down to have a concert to raise money for the people.
So it was it's those little things that you see in people
and the qualities of what they're trying to not just make it in their career
and what they're doing, but it's the other things that they're helping with society.
Wow. Actually, and the interesting thing there, I think, is
you also have to capture a crowd in your role.
So are there things you've learned from Dave Grohl about how to capture
that crowd and to maintain their attention?
Well, I think you watch a performer and you can say there's real passion
and energy and you can say that's what he loves doing.
And I think that's that point about anything you do around leadership.
It's trying to make sure people can see you're authentic and you believe.
And then you bring the crowd in or you make an engagement.
So it's not just about you.
It's about the experience.
Everyone else gets to join in.
And I think he's a great entertainer in doing that.
And you can always learn something from people in other walks of life, right?
Oh, definitely. And look, I try my hand at karaoke.
That's how I did meet my wife.
So I love a bit of singing and singing along.
So it's about just trying.
It's that point about you may not be the best singer,
but at least you have a bit of fun.
And I think that's the thing.
You've got to keep enjoying to get the most out of yourself
when you come back to, you know, your corporate career
or what you're trying to do at home with your family.
So did you meet your wife in a karaoke bar?
I met my wife for a friend of mine at a karaoke session.
So I said to her, it was I was singing a FIFA song, The Pretender.
I keep saying that that must have been the reason.
Tony, next question.
All right. I'm not allowed to look at it.
No, you're not allowed to look, I'm afraid.
Are there any sacrifices, if any,
that you've had to make in order to do your job?
Because they're big jobs, jobs like yours.
Yeah, I think the sacrifice you make is probably the job's a 24-7 job.
So you are making sacrifice into your personal time.
A lot of people talk about we're always online.
And when you do take a international CEO role,
the company is always ticking around the clock.
Because, you know, when we break for Christmas,
we've still got operations going in different parts of the world.
And they're not necessarily having Christmas.
They're not. And there's, you know, there's some parts of my workforce
that are working on Christmas Day because that market's not celebrating that event.
And so, you know, at the back of your mind, there's things happening.
And safety is very important to us as an organisation.
So, you know, in the back of your mind, you've got you're thinking about your staff.
Have we done all the things?
And it just sits there in your subconscious.
So you're always sort of turned on.
You're making sacrifices to get that balance right between your family
and what you're leading.
So I have had children later in life.
And part of it was I probably thought if it was too early in my life,
would I have given enough attention to that or would I have missed something?
So I'm really trying to get the most out of this time I've got with a young son
at the moment to get that balance right between those two.
So are there mechanisms that you use to make sure that as much as possible,
you're really switched on and in the moment when you're with your partner
I think it's learning to put that phone down in a way,
because I think there's a bit of a habit.
We're all built a little bit, especially think after Covid,
where we're all just always on devices or always connected in a different way
because we got disconnected, you know, face to face for a while.
So I think it's really trying to drive that, put it away for a while
so you can actually spend that quality time.
Yeah, no, I agree. Putting your phone down is key, isn't it?
Yeah, it is. And actually locking it up, maybe even put it away
and so you can't touch it for a period of time.
Yeah, exactly. When you get home, just throw it in the fridge or something.
OK, Tony, next question.
What's the advice that you would give your younger self?
I'm one of these people that doesn't like trying to change history.
So I'm going to reframe the question of what's the advice
I'm going to give to my young son.
Ah, yes, fair enough.
Make sure he does step back and enjoy an education,
enjoy the period of time where he's got to be a child.
I think sometimes we rush a little bit and just want him to really enjoy that
and see the opportunities other than, you know, I got a bit fixated
on getting to a corporate career and want him to enjoy music and arts
and sports and other things. And not be in such a hurry.
Yeah, just take a bit of time to get to where he wants to go.
But make sure he sees all those opportunities.
I had a life event that shifted me into that gear.
But making sure that sort of something he has in his psyche
and don't take for granted, like coming through a family of immigrants.
Like I've got a lot of hand-me-downs and things like that.
That was just normal.
So it actually drove you to try to succeed.
I just, you know, I want to get that balance right with he'll get
probably opportunities that I didn't.
But making sure he's got the right drive and stays humble.
Yeah, really important to just grab those opportunities.
Yeah. And just be humble.
I mean, my mum used to say to me, don't lose who you are.
He's just a normal person at the end of the day.
And you're my son.
And so she was very big on, don't lose sight of that.
Even though you're doing all these things.
She never used to talk about my career at all.
She didn't really care
because she thought she'd gave me the opportunity to do what I needed.
It was more about who I was and how I was doing things outside of work.
So it was more that that she always tried to to push us into
and staying close to family, brothers and sisters.
And family and friends are so grounding in that way, aren't they?
They are. And so it was the fun we used to have.
Like I would always try to prank call her.
I used to put a lot of different accents and pretend
there was a lot of different people calling her.
So it could have been call centers or different things.
Trying to trick her and get her down a path.
And my wife would be sitting there listening to me going,
I can't believe you're doing it to your mum again.
And then eventually she'd go, Tony, it's you. I know it's you.
So it was that moment of just, you know, having a bit of fun.
And that's the thing about life.
It goes fast, but it's having those moments of laughter.
And I just I just love those little things that make a difference.
So, Tony, that is the end of our Chatterbox session.
Well done. You have passed with flying colors.
I now have one last 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?
You know, I've been working since I was 15.
Because I started a part time job when I was a lot younger.
The longest break I've ever had actually is only five weeks.
And even that's in between career changes.
I've been pretty quick in terms of the break.
So I would say I love travel.
I would love to see more of Australia.
And I'd actually love to see a lot more of my home country,
being Italy, in terms of heritage.
So if I could have that whole year,
I'd probably spend six months traveling around Australia
and six months traveling around Italy.
So would you get a camper van thingy and drive around Australia?
Actually, I think that would be a good way to just,
you know, navigate the whole place and see a very different side to it.
I have had the opportunity on one break
where I'd actually spent the time not from Sicily,
but just drove around Sicily for 15 days.
So it's that sort of holiday where you get to meet different people
and different walks of life and see a different side.
And I think sometimes I give you a different perspective
on the whole country and the place.
And that is our time up.
It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
Thank you so much for sharing the story of your parents migrating to Australia.
And indeed, life is short.
So make the most of it and grab every opportunity
because you may only be asked once or twice to do something.
I have to wish you lots of luck with karaoke in the future.
And Tony, thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the boss.
No problem. And thank you, Sally, for having me.
Really look forward to it and looking forward to listening to more of your podcasts.
And thank you to everyone for listening.
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Our theme is by Alex Gow and our executive producer is Fiona Buffini.
The Australian Financial Review.