Often people, colleagues, see something more in you than what you see in yourself and if
you trust them you should in many cases take that advice and follow what they're suggesting.
She said to me, can I have a coach for the first three months because that way I'll
be set up for success.
It surprised me but I think it's a great idea.
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 Mick O'Brien, the chief executive of Equity Trustees.
Hi Mick, how are you?
Very good, Sally.
Thank you very much for venturing all the way from your office into our Melbourne studio.
Hope it's a nice spot for you down there.
Pleasure, yeah, pleasure and a very short walk so it wasn't too bad.
Now, Mick, you're the chief executive of Equity Trustees which is an investment funds
governance specialist.
The company was established as long ago as 1888.
It's valued at about $850 million on the stock market.
You have some 500 employees and you oversee $184 billion worth of assets from a governance
That's quite a lot of assets to look after.
Yeah, it's a very big footprint across the Australian financial services landscape and
we take the responsibility very seriously of looking after other people's money.
I'm very, very glad to hear it.
Now, thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with you, the BOSS.
Let's start the clock right now.
We haven't got long.
My first question is about your morning routine.
What time do you get up?
What time do you have your first cup of coffee?
Well, I typically get up about 6 a.m. in the morning.
I have a very quick breakfast and a small breakfast at home and I go to the gym a couple
I might ride my bike in 25 kilometres into work maybe once a fortnight or so and when
I'm driving in the car, I'm listening to 3RW or a podcast and as soon as I get into the
office which is about sort of 10 past 7, I have a cup of coffee right then and there.
So when you say a small breakfast, how small?
Maybe one piece of toast, one piece of fruit.
And that'll last you until lunchtime?
And what's your coffee poison?
I like to have a strong, skinny cappuccino.
So I sort of say to the person behind the counter, just like me, a strong, skinny cappuccino.
The perfect nugget of a cup of coffee.
So you say that you listen to radio and podcasts, anything in particular on the podcast front?
My favourite podcast at the moment is, the rest is history.
I find the two presenters there are very funny.
They take the mickey out of the world leaders of the last 2000 years effortlessly and you
can listen to two or three episodes and learn a lot of history in a very, very short period
Do you have some favourite leaders that you've learnt about?
I've been learning about the American Revolution of late.
Napoleon was a lot of fun to learn about as well.
He was an interesting fella.
So it's been good fun listening to it.
Okay, Vic, my next question is, tell me about a pivotal moment in your career, a moment
or a project that you worked on that changed you as a leader or changed the trajectory
of what you were doing.
Well, I think a pivotal moment might've been when I was about age 27.
I qualified as an actuary, so a fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.
And I've been practising as an actuary for maybe four or five years leading up to that
But then I took on a job being a business manager for the group insurance business of
National Mutual, as it was at the time.
And it meant developing a whole range of different skills, being a manager or a leader of people,
running a whole business, the distribution, the product design, the service, the operations
technology for that business.
And I guess I realised from that, that having these broader skills opened up an enormous
opportunity for me to do other roles.
So did someone tap you on the shoulder and recognise the potential in you?
Or did you see that job opening and think, I really want to go for that.
So you applied off your own bat.
Sally, definitely someone tapped me on the shoulder.
And I guess they did that because they could see something different in my approach.
And, you know, I guess that would be one of my words of advice to people is that, you
know, often people, colleagues see something more in you than what you see in yourself.
And, you know, if you trust them, you should in many cases take that advice and follow
what they're suggesting.
And were you somehow quite different to the person that you replaced?
You know, I was previously, I guess you'd the person would have been more a distributional
marketing person, which is all well and good in that role.
But it is a technical product and you need to ensure its profitability.
And I guess I could come up with solutions more quickly that I know would satisfy the
market, but also satisfy the profitability requirements of the group.
So I think, you know, the multidiscipline skills that I had enabled me to operate more
quickly and come up with solutions that were absolutely viable and sustainable that
would still make us competitive in the market.
So the person that tapped you on the shoulder originally was absolutely right.
Like they saw in you what you couldn't see in yourself and you could indeed do it.
That's right. Yeah, they did.
And do you in turn do that for other people consciously?
I do. Yeah, I spend a lot of time talking to the younger people in the organisation
and they have, you know, just really unlimited potential, but they don't realise that
and they don't have the confidence to pursue other things.
So I try to take them, you know, into different paths and to think about different
opportunities and just get experience in different ways and take some risks.
So I love really try to give the, you know, the younger people and the older people in
the organisation, you know, different opportunities.
And an example at the moment, I've got one of our, I'll say more mature employees, you
know, has moved out of a sort of a technical legal role across to Western Australia to
look after some of our First Nations clients and they're thriving.
Wow, interesting.
So do you also feel that corporate Australia in general is not using older
experienced people well enough?
You know, our business is sort of a business of judgment.
So the more experience you have, the better you are at it.
And we've got multiple people in that workforce of 500 over age 70, one person,
you know, around 73, still getting in around 7.30 in the morning and working full
days and really at the top, top of the game.
People who've got those ages, they still, they can have the same work ethic.
And in any event, you can adjust their days if need be.
That's fantastic.
Here's my next question before the break.
And that is, what's the best piece of career advice you've ever been given?
Oh, look, I think the best advice is to take some risks, you know, because you're
working for a very long time, you might be working for four decades, maybe more.
So you want some variety in that and you need to take some risks and get some
experience and, and certainly do that a little earlier in your career rather
than later, if you can.
And the second thing is, I guess, you know, find something that you really
are passionate about because you'll do a good job, you know, if you're passionate
So when you say take some risks, do you mean apply for a job that
you don't think you can do?
That's exactly what I mean.
So do things that you haven't done before apply for roles that you think, or
maybe you're not perfectly suited to, because invariably you'll learn in those
roles and develop, and then you can always move back to whatever you were
doing beforehand, if you want.
So I think, you know, getting that base of experience in your first sort of 10
plus years of your career, you know, really holds you in good stead.
Cause then, you know, managers look at your CV and go, wow, there's a breadth
of experience here and a willingness to try different things.
So people are always looking for employers who've got flexibility and,
um, you know, a broad sort of range of experiences.
Okay, Mick, on that note, we're going to take a short break, but don't go away.
When we come back, we're going to open our probably infamous by now chatterbox.
Welcome back to 15 minutes with the boss.
I'm here with Mick O'Brien, the chief executive of equity trustees.
Now, Mick, this is our section called the chatterbox.
The chatterbox, this beautiful brown cardboard box is today in front of me
because we're in different studios.
So you are going to have to trust me to pick out a few
questions and ask them of you.
Are you ready for me to start fishing in the box?
Sally, I trust you and I'm ready for you to start fishing.
Shame you don't have any choice.
What's the one device besides your phone that you can't live without?
I would get pretty frustrated.
I didn't have my bicycle.
And what do you love about cycling?
Well, you know, it keeps you very fit.
You're unlikely to get injured.
You can also go away on holidays on long extended holidays for beautiful
bike rides, organized bike rides.
And, uh, you know, it's a very social endeavor, you know, typically cyclists
like to stop somewhere for a cup of coffee and have a chat.
So, um, it's just a lot of fun and it's convenient.
Oh, that's interesting.
So do you have a couple of cycling holidays you'd recommend?
The last one I did was, uh, in Tuscany.
And I can vouch that there are no flat roads in Tuscany at all.
It's a beautiful place to cycle around.
And, you know, the Europeans typically respect the cyclists probably more on
the roads than what we do over here.
So it's fairly safe as well.
And I really had a lovely ride in Tasmania one year for the Steve war foundation,
a foundation that looks after children with rare diseases that don't really
get funding around Australia.
And, uh, he had an arrange of, you know, incredible bike riders join that ride.
So he had Cadet Levens on the bike ride.
Australia is only winner of the Tour de France.
Daly Thompson, uh, Olympic decathlon gold medalist from decades back.
Shane Gould, triple gold medalist at age 16 in the swimming some 30 years ago.
And also Mark Webber F1 driver.
He was certainly faster on the, in the car than on the bike, but, um, but it
was, it was a very, uh, fun nine days, uh, going around Tasmania.
Sounds beautiful.
Let's have a little bit of a shuffle here, a bit of a fish in the box.
What are your favourite interview questions when you're hiring someone?
And why do you ask them?
Uh, well, I guess one insightful question is always to ask, you know, what do you
think the challenges are going to be in this role and what would you need to,
you know, need some help or support or areas to develop to take
on this role successfully?
The reason I asked that is because, you know, some people are ready to
talk about all the positives and it gives you an insight as to whether they've
got a sort of a self-awareness of where the gaps might be and what they could
actually do about them, uh, cause no one's perfect for every role.
And do you think the most people have thought about the areas they might
struggle in and need some support in?
Most haven't, no.
So, uh, it sometimes catches them out, but then you can see some that can think
on their feet, knowing that it's a safe environment to answer that question.
Cause they know they'll have challenges in a new role and the
people who can think on their feet will come up with the answers pretty quickly.
I guess they must've had to thought quite deeply about the role to answer the
So I guess you're then weeding out people who haven't really thought
about the role too much.
People who answer that question really well, you can tell that they've really
thought about it and they want to make a success of it when they get there and
they're going to prepare themselves for it.
And, you know, in fact, I've hired someone recently for a very senior role.
They haven't started with us yet, but, you know, she said to me, can
I have a coach for the first three months because that way I'll be set up for
success and it'll take some other issues off me and I'll have some questions
that I can bounce off and someone a little independent.
I thought, oh, that's interesting.
No one's asked for that.
I was myself, that's a great idea.
You know, I want you to be successful.
You think that's going to make you successful.
You've thought about it and that wasn't a response to my question.
That was just off her own bat.
That's a really good idea actually to ask for a coach for a few months, just
to get you started, to have someone to, yeah, as she says, bounce stuff off.
It surprised me, but I think it's a great idea.
I shall start foraging on your behalf.
Tell me about a time where you failed at something.
How did you recover and what did you learn?
Well, if I go back about 30 years ago, I was looking after some super
innovation business for national mutual and we needed to build a new administration
system and we'd customize something that we'd bought offshore and it didn't go well.
It took a long time.
The platform wasn't as functional as what we would have liked and the
transition of all the data across didn't go well, so it wasn't good.
And I sort of knew that was going to happen.
And I really didn't change the trajectory in any way to fix it.
And I could have by getting more resource in a whole range of different
things, getting different people into help and support me.
And I probably wasn't quite ready for that.
I've never been a great implementer of technology and sort of project management.
I'm getting better now 40 years later, but that mistake won't be made again.
So what did you learn then about importing technology systems, like third
party tech systems, because they're often horrendously expensive projects,
very difficult to execute on.
The first thing is that when you're taking stuff from offshore into Australia,
there's a lot of nuances in Australian legislation in taxation and invariably the
customisation to Australia is more than what you anticipate.
That's in financial services.
That's the situation.
The second thing in terms of IT implementation, I think you've got to have
excellent project management at the top.
And if you've got that, you've got a very good chance to get through
anchored project sponsorship.
So issues are raised and identified and addressed very quickly.
I think technology today, it is easier to customise.
It's easier to connect different sort of platforms and systems than what
it previously was, but yeah, I think project management is very
important in that whole process.
Let's go to the next question.
So Mick, what's the secret to being in that job for a long time and
keeping up the energy?
I guess the first thing is almost all the clients at Equity Trustees really
need our services and as many vulnerable groups of clients in the client mix.
So, you know, every day you come in that there's a real purpose and there's a
real, I guess we look at trusteeship as a privilege to be appointed because
it's a position of incredible power and also accountability.
So when you have that purpose every day, I think it's sort of easy to be motivated.
Also, while I've got this purpose and while I am very experienced and able to
do the job, I'm highly motivated to do it and I get enormous energy from
the people that I work with.
They've got high intellect.
I love being challenged intellectually.
And, you know, I feel privileged to lead them basically.
And I know that, you know, I won't have that opportunity forever.
So make the most of every day.
On that note, Mick, that is the end of our Chatterbox section.
I now have one final question and that is, if we gave you 12 months off, you
could do anything you were like, you were unencumbered, you could come back
to your job at the end, what would you do?
12 months off, I think I would do some long hikes, maybe some longer bike
rides that I haven't been able to do.
And I've always dreamed of being able to learn to play the piano.
So where would you like to walk first?
Somewhere mountainous and warm.
South America sounds pretty appealing and Kilimanjaro would be, would be lovely
to do, I think it's a nice size mountain, probably not going to die on it.
And could probably do it.
Yeah, there's a couple of, a couple of areas that appeal to me.
And which long bike ride?
It'd have to be in Europe and in the mountainous areas.
Maybe connected to the, you know, the, um, the Alps.
And have you learnt the piano before?
Were you musical as a kid?
I was, I think the best recorder player in my primary school.
So I have learnt music, but I haven't been, I've never played the piano.
So, uh, I think I'd have a lot to learn.
But you were good on the recorder.
I was very good on the recorder.
Moon River was my specialty.
Mick, on that note, thank you so much.
I really love the fact that you don't see age as a barrier, but you actively try
to employ older people, wiser people, because they'll bring something else to
I like the fact that you say it's a good thing to take the advice of others
because they might see something in you, which you don't see yourself.
And I really liked the fact that you talk to your younger people about the
potential they've got in them.
It's really fantastic.
And on the bike riding, I'm not really a bike rider, but I appreciate the
fact that you have had great trips in Tuscany and Tasmania.
And if you ever get to Kilimanjaro, good luck.
And thank you again, Mick, so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the boss.
Our pleasure, Sally.
I really enjoyed it.
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.
Video and audio assistance and our music theme is by Alex Gao and our executive
producer is Fiona Buffini.
The Australian Financial Review.