When I was younger, I had a job interview once for the Deckchair Theatre Company in
Fremantle and the chair of the board said to me in the job interview, what do you do to
manage stress? And I said, I drink. And everyone laughed. And she said, that's a very honest
answer. And I said, yes, well, what do you do? And she said, I drink too.
Hi, I'm Sally Patton, editor of BOSS from the Australian Financial Review. And welcome to 15
minutes with a BOSS, a podcast about success and failure and everything in between. And along the
way, we're having to get some really great advice from our leaders. My guest today is Richard Evans,
the chief executive of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Hi, Richard, how are you?
Hi, Sally, very well.
Thank you so much for coming into our very black studio.
It is dark today in here, isn't it?
It is. It is. Now, Richard, as I said, you're the CEO of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The
orchestra presents between 200 and 250 performances per year. And you tour nationally,
regionally and internationally. The ACO employs just under 70 people, including 17 musicians. And I
can imagine with all that travel, like that's probably keeping you pretty busy.
Keeps all of us pretty busy, actually. Yes, there's always something going on. And because we
perform, as you say, nationally and internationally at any one time, we can have several groups of
musicians anywhere in the world. So, yeah, there's a lot of frequent flyer points.
I can imagine. I'm loving that. OK, Richard, we've only got 15 minutes. The clock starts now.
Let's start. First of all, tell me about your morning routine. What does it look like? What time
do you get up? What happens?
Look, it's changed a lot over the years, Sally. When I was a youngster working in the arts, the
mornings weren't something I was very experienced with. They kind of happened while I was
sleeping. But of course, more recently, my mornings are pretty active these days.
Yeah, absolutely. Up around 5.30, catching up on work because kind of our days is kind of so busy
with meetings or traveling or kind of other things. The only quiet time we really get is first
thing in the morning. So that's very precious time for me. The other thing as I kind of grow older
that is very important to me is exercise. My latest regime, my new thing is actually pilates.
Oh, yeah. I'm told that's excellent.
Well, yes, I look forward to feeling excellent about it. At the moment, it feels quite
challenging. How many classes of pilates are you trying?
To about two or three a week in the morning, which I alternate with spinning.
Spinning is something I'm quite good at. That's the cycling class. That's quite fun where
someone yells at you for 50 minutes. But I felt like I needed some more flexibility and kind of
core strength. So pilates is my new thing.
So after pilates and spinning, are you a breakfast person?
I am a protein drink person.
OK, so like a protein milkshake.
Yeah, protein powder, raspberries, some oats in the blender. It's terrific.
I guess in your job, you'd be having a lot of canapes at night because you've got a lot of
functions you have to go to.
Yeah, kind of eating is a kind of a real problem for us because kind of meals that are at
odd hours and often you're eating cocktail food, which is not ideal night after night.
And also just getting as much protein in as possible.
So I find the protein powder in the morning just lets me relax for the rest of the day.
Yes, protein is key, isn't it?
OK, next question. This is about a pivotal moment in your career.
Was there something that happened or some project that you worked on that changed the
trajectory of your career or changed you as a leader in some way?
Many years ago in the late 90s, I worked for a youngish Bell Shakespeare company with
John Bell. And I had the most wonderful chairman, a guy called Tim Cox.
And after I'd been there a year or two, he said to me, I'd like you to go to Harvard
Business School and undertake this short course.
It's a course that they run there called Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management.
It's a two week residential course.
And the opportunity was amazing.
The quality of the learning and the participants just kind of brought my brain to life in a
way quite unlike it had been brought to life before.
So what one or two things did you learn at that course that has stood out and you have
carried ever since?
I grew up in New Zealand in Christchurch at a time when Christchurch was a town of 200
or 250,000 people.
And I guess kind of having begun a career in Australia, there's always a sense of
imposter syndrome.
And I think going to participate in the course at the business school, it made me
realize that I wasn't so thick, really, and that, you know, against a class of other
people that actually I could hold my own and actually I had something to contribute that
people were interested in.
So I guess there was there was a confidence which came just being admitted and just kind
of being in the group.
So was there a lesson, say, even from other students, your fellow students that you took
with you that really sort of grabbed you?
There's not a specific thing that I can look back on now, but I do remember that sense
of people being vulnerable in front of one another and talking about how they felt in
their leadership roles and the challenges that they had and suddenly realizing that
We all have these moments and the best thing that we can do is actually reach out and
tell people about them, especially I think as a man.
I think kind of the female leaders kind of more naturally have a group of people around
them that they speak to things.
But, you know, it's not so common amongst men.
And so I've been very conscious about being especially vulnerable.
I'm very happy to be vulnerable in front of the staff as well.
And why is that so important, being vulnerable?
I think it's just telling the truth about who we are and how we are.
I've always felt that the more honest and vulnerable I am with the staff, they don't
think any less of me.
In fact, I think I hope that they may think more of me.
And they probably trust you more?
Well, certainly what you see is what you get.
OK, Richard, my next question is, what is the best piece of career advice you've ever
I haven't had any kind of formal career advice.
However, when I was in my late teens, I knew a guy in Sydney called Frank McDonald, who
He's a gallerist specializing in 19th century Australian painting.
And one of the things that Frank taught me actually was that anything is possible not
to be bound by convention.
In fact, anything you kind of dream, you can do.
And of course, there are constraints for everyone, but it was more of a mindset, actually.
So we didn't have to go down a conventional mindset of going to university, completing
university, kind of going into a chosen field.
But rather, if you are interested and keen in people and ideas and were widely read and
communicated well, then in fact, you could do anything.
So the key to success and the key to getting ahead was really taking into account views
from a whole range of sources and talking to lots of different people.
You know, if you think about the kind of multicultural society that we live in in
Australia, there's a diversity of views, there's a diversity of religions.
There's an incredible number of people any day on the train or the bus that we live
alongside. We all do tend to kind of live in our bubbles.
But the more that we can kind of challenge ourselves and kind of break out of these
bubbles and try and live life through other people's experiences, I think it gives a
certain richness and it also kind of allows us to see, you know, issues of the day
through another lens.
So what do you do personally?
Do you make sure that you read newspapers or the Economist from front to cover as well
as see documentaries?
How do you do it all?
There's not as much time and I'm not smart enough to read The Economist.
I've tried really hard.
I find it very dense.
Actually, it's not that bad, I must say.
But anyway, yeah.
But yes, no, we read in our house very widely.
We're very old fashioned.
We get all the newspapers on the weekend.
I think that reading kind of widely and reading widely from a variety of political
viewpoints is very important.
And of course, today we're just inundated with kind of news and I spend my life
unsubscribing to things, which means that I must have subscribed to a lot.
So you're really making a conscious decision to feed your mind with lots of
different viewpoints.
On that note, don't go away.
We're going to take a short break and when we come back, we're going to open the
Welcome back to 15 minutes with the boss.
I'm here with Richard Evans, the CEO of the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Now, Richard, this is our much flagged section called the chatterbox.
In front of you is the lovely brown, shiny cardboard box inside, which, yes, I
think they're probably 15 or 20 questions.
Could you please have a fish in the box and we'll no, no, I get to read it.
Thanks very much.
Thanks very much.
I get to read them.
What's the one device you can't live without, but you can't nominate your
Oh, I can't nominate my phone.
No, I guess the thing I can't live without then is the turntable and the
music we play in our house.
Do you have an actual record turntable?
I do have a record turntable and I have a collection of records, jazz and
However, the records are seldom played because there's another device, which I'm
not allowed to talk about, which kind of streams the music and it's, and it's kind
of so easy now to kind of play that music.
And it's fascinating for me.
When I was younger, I had, um, I spent an immense amount of money on kind of
hi-fi equipment and now we're so used to hearing music in so many different forms
and the immediacy is more important than the quality.
Now that said, we do have a turntable and we do have some very beautiful speakers
and there are occasions when the quality of the music is just very important.
And it's often when I'm at home by myself.
And when you do that, what are your favourite couple of pieces of music to
It can vary widely because I work for Australian Chamber Orchestra.
We play a lot of small repertoire generally.
So I liked listening to big repertoire when I'm not at work.
So you'll get a booming symphony, a big Mahler symphony, Mahler five, a big
Brahms symphony, some of those kind of very big classic works.
I find depending on what mood you're in, they kind of really feed you.
So you will turn on the turntable every now and then when you're on your own.
Do you have a coping mechanism for high stress situations?
When I was younger, I had a job interview once for the Deckchair Theatre
Company in Fremantle and the chair of the board said to me in the job
interview, what do you do to manage stress?
And I said, I drink and everyone laughed.
And she said, that's a very honest answer.
And I said, yes, well, what do you do?
And she said, I drink too.
And I was very practised at managing my stress through drinking.
And about 10 years ago, I discovered that it's a tremendous tool until it isn't.
So 10 years ago, I stopped drinking and now I find other ways of dealing with it.
I go for a walk, a cup of tea.
A cup of tea will de-stress you.
A cup of tea will de-stress me.
You know, it's interesting being the boss, isn't it?
Cause there, there are those moments of overwhelm, which are
entirely self-induced often.
And then there are, there are acute responses to pieces of news or, or, you
know, kind of business situations.
And our personal response is quite different to all of them.
And our sense of agency or power in these situations varies, but certainly
the kind of the deadening, the feeling is not a recipe for success.
And so I think taking some deep breaths and kind of reflecting and not acting
too impulsively is critical in those key moments.
And you look back now and think, why did I ever think that alcohol
was a good de-stresser?
I think one of the reasons for that for me was that, you know, I was a
chief executive from my early twenties.
It's very lonely being chief executive.
So, you know, I was in situations where I had to deal with
things largely by myself.
And that's a very young age to be doing that.
I just found it to be very effective for a while.
I was interested when you said that a lot of stressful
situations are self-induced.
Do you think that's true in general?
Do you think if we were able to organise our minds better, we may not
have those sort of self-induced overwhelming or very stressful moments?
I think, I think that is true.
I've been through periods of my life where I've meditated.
I'm a casual meditator, but certainly that's moments people who have that
kind of meditation discipline, I think, are able to contextualise things more.
And now what I am, I have been able to, to react in a better way.
It doesn't mean you don't have the feelings.
In fact, you kind of, you understand the feelings a bit more deeply, I think.
So would you say on reflection that the drinking was more sort of escaping
the situation rather than actually dealing with the stress?
Delaying the stress.
Well, the problem doesn't go away the next day.
Let's see what we've got next.
Who is a leader, business or otherwise, whom you really admire and why?
One of the leaders in the Australian business community that I've known for
about 30 years is Michael Cheney, who's the chair of West Farmers, who recently
actually become the principal partner for the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
And whilst I've never worked with him or kind of for him, what I have
observed is this kind of absolute sense of calm and control and genuinely
interested in younger people, what they had to say.
I've always really, really admired that.
You know, there's that sense in some leaders where you never feel like
they're rushing to the next thing.
That's something I've kind of always tried to try to model as well.
So it's that combination of being calm and creating time for people,
including younger people and making them feel like they've got your full
attention at that point in time.
Yeah, that's right.
And you try and emulate that too.
I would love to think that I can emulate some of that.
I really like that.
On that note, Richard, that's the end of the chatterbox section.
You've passed with flying colours.
I now have one more question and that is, if we gave you 12 months off,
you were unencumbered, you could do anything you liked, and you could
have your job back at the end.
What would you do?
When I was avoiding rather skillfully university where I was doing a
degree in Italian and English, I had the kind of great opportunity to kind
of go and live in Italy and work in Italy as a youngster, I was 18 or 19.
And I was kind of managing kind of villas or kind of properties in the
countryside where other people went to play and I was working and mowing the
lawn and, but I was an art history freak and I used to spend all of my pocket
money kind of going from village to village to look at kind of pictures.
And what I'd really like to do after I'd been at the ACO for 10 years is actually
take an extended period off and take the children and the family to live in Italy.
The children can go to school.
The wonderful thing for me about Italy is that kind of sense of cultural
appreciation and the way people exist in the environment, which is kind
of so different than Australia.
When I worked in the villa company, there are a bunch of kind of farmers
who were kind of tending to the kind of the wine and the olive trees.
And you'd watch them have the kind of biggest argument in the world about
which tree would be nicest to sit in to have lunch where the breeze was
coming and where the sunlight.
In Australia, people just like, as soon as the kind of lunch bell goes, they're
just going to sit down wherever they are on the side of the street or whatever.
So there was that kind of, that kind of essential love of life and that of how
we experience life in a today to day fashion.
I love that sense of kind of being in the environment and that sense of how
we can make the most of our day.
And just perfecting the art of living.
Yeah, absolutely.
Richard, I really love talking to you today about the fact that you're doing
Pilates now a couple of times a week.
I'm not quite so sure about having six cups of coffee today, but now you
mentioned it, I think actually also lanyards are not very attractive things
to be wearing around the office.
I love the way that you have done a bit of a flip in the way you deal with stress.
You're not drinking anymore, but have decided that getting a cup of tea and
having a walk are much more effective ways to de-stress.
And actually also I loved the bit you said about being vulnerable and just how
important that is and how important it is to create a circle of people around you
with whom you can be really honest because let's face it, we're all in this
together and we all face quite similar problems.
So thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the boss.
Thank you, Sally.
And thank you to everyone for listening.
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At The Financial Review, we investigate the big stories about
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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.