I'm famous for deleting emails and I actually actively tell people not to email me.
Excellence is different moment to moment because it's the idea that striving for excellence
has an attainable element and it's not about perfectionism.
I feel sometimes it can actually be a bit disheartening.
I actually like a little bit of chaos in general because I think it actually breeds creativity.
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 Sarah Derry, chief executive of Accor in the Pacific.
Hi, Sarah, how are you?
Thank you, Sally.
Thank you so much for coming into our Sydney studio and allowing us to spend 15 minutes
I'm excited to be here.
Now, Sarah, you're the chief executive of Accor in the Pacific, which is a hotel chain
with more than 400 hotels throughout Asia Pacific and more than 21,000 employees.
Quite frankly, I don't know how you do it, but today, hopefully we'll find out.
That's how I do it.
Now, Sarah, this is called 15 minutes with the BOSS for a reason.
Our 15 minutes starts now.
My first question is, Sarah, what time do you get up?
How do you start your day?
I'm a night owl, so I'm not really a morning person.
I have two teenage daughters and usually the way I wake up is my husband trying to get
them out of bed and I hear that in the morning.
I start my day usually kind of rushing to a meeting, which tends to be on Teams, a virtual
meeting or I take the opportunity to take the dog for a walk, maybe drop one of my daughters
to school and sometimes fit in a PT session.
Not all at once, just one of those at a time.
So if you do PT, what time are we talking?
I'm a sort of nine o'clock sort of PT person.
I think that's the time I'm sort of almost at my best between about nine and 11 is my
sort of peak time.
So before that, then you've already done a bit of work, I assume.
I've usually kind of checked in on the emails, maybe drop my daughter off at school, had
some breakfast and then I sort of head off and I work out in the park.
I like to be outdoors.
Ah, so are you a coffee drinker?
Do you have breakfast?
I might have a cranberry juice and some cereal, maybe some fruit.
You sound like your morning is a big routine, like it's very...
It's very flexible.
I'm a very flexible person, so I can change from moment to moment what I'm doing and one
morning I'm happy to get up early, the next morning I'll sleep in and do a late PT.
So when you say you're a night owl, what time are we talking?
Oh, it can be late sometimes, honestly.
I think it started when I started working in hospitality because I was working in bars,
which was great fun and it was always late night.
So I think my body clock just sort of adjusted to that.
So anywhere between about 11 and midnight, you can imagine also we're a French based
company in Paris, so there's often late night calls with Dubai or Paris, so it takes a bit
of time to unwind from them sometimes.
I admire your flexibility.
I must say I quite like a more stringent routine.
Yes, I actually like a little bit of chaos in general because I think it actually breeds
creativity and so that means that I can sort of weave in what I love to be doing at any
Maybe I should adopt some of that for a bit of my own creativity.
Maybe I should adopt some structure as well.
Okay, next question.
Tell me about a pivotal moment in your career that shaped you as a leader or somehow changed
the trajectory of your career.
There's a few times in my career I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and actually
I was working in a corporate role and I actually resigned three times at three different periods
over a couple of years.
The first two times, lucky for me, the company wanted me to stay and convinced me to stay
The third time, my husband was the one who said, Sarah, you've tried to do this already
a couple of times.
So that was a pivotal moment for me when I went out on my own and started my own business
because what I thought I was going to do actually ended up being vastly different.
I had a business plan initially, but that's actually not what people came to me for.
So I had to really think on my feet quickly when I didn't have your standard salary and
wages coming in and a business and a young family as well.
So what business did you set up?
A consulting business actually.
So it's called People Reaching Potential, PRP for short, and it was all about connecting
people to their potential and that's my personal passion.
So we would do transformation work for organizations, working on their culture, their values, their
I also became a qualified executive coach, which was a new skill I had to learn from
sort of manager, leader to executive coach.
So I did a lot of executive coaching and I really loved that 10 years of having my own
What particular thing that you gained from executive coaching that you have carried with
you in your life as a chief executive?
One hundred percent.
Actually when I was, the reason I got into coaching was that somebody, and this is what
happened in my business, I thought I was going to do certain types of work, but people came
and said, Sarah, do this.
And someone came to me and said, Sarah, we'd like you to do coaching.
And I said, what's coaching?
And so I actually, not a word of a lie, I bought The Dummy's Guide to Coaching, you
know, those black and yellow books.
And eventually after coaching someone, I thought I really need to get some qualifications.
So I went and actually studied and got my coaching qualifications.
One of the things you learn as a coach, which is very different to a traditional manager,
is that your skill is actually asking great questions and often very short questions.
So a lot more listening, creating space for the other person.
I don't always get it right and I'm not perfect at it, but I try to have that coaching mentality
in how I work with my teams.
That's very good advice to take on as a leader, isn't it?
It's the coaching mentality, asking questions and drawing the answers out of your team members.
And it's a belief that the other person actually has the answer.
That's the difference between coaching and say mentoring.
Mentor is the wise old Al type.
You kind of go, oh, in my experience, this is what I did.
Coach says, tell me more about that.
Okay, now next question.
What is the best piece of career advice you've ever been given?
I've been given lots of different career advice.
Often it's a recommendation of a book or something to read.
So a couple of things that I have really stuck with me in terms of advice is the concept
of being impeccable with your word.
Don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions and excellence is different moment
And the last one's really important to me because it's the idea that striving for excellence
has an attainable element.
So today my best is going to be very different to what my best looks like tomorrow.
And it's not about perfectionism because perfectionism is actually quite hard to attain.
And I feel sometimes can actually be a bit disheartening.
But if you're striving for excellence, then that's actually a really powerful goal to
So striving to do your best rather than striving to be perfect at everything.
Yeah, really important.
And it's something I really believe in the strengths based philosophy as well.
And I think everybody has individual strengths that they can utilise in any moment.
And it's not the same for everyone.
What you and I do and our strengths will be very different, but we bring something special
to the table, I believe as individuals.
I am going for an excellent day today on that note.
I think it started out pretty well.
OK, Sarah, on that note, stay where you are.
We're going to take a short break.
When we come back, we're going to open the Chatterbox.
Welcome back to Fifth Demons with the Boss.
I'm here with Sarah Derry, the chief executive of Accor in the Pacific.
Now, Sarah, as promised, this is our section called Chatterbox.
God love that music.
In front of you, you will see our Chatterbox, this beautiful brown Chatterbox, inside which
are 20 questions all folded up on little bits of paper.
I'm going to ask you to forage around, pick out three questions, hand them to me, and
I will then ask you to answer them one by one.
OK, let's get going.
Here's question one.
Do you have a favourite productivity hack to help you get more out of your day?
My name is for deleting emails, and I actually actively tell people not to email me.
I just don't think that adds a lot of value.
So WhatsApp, text me is the best way to reach me, gives me hours back in my day.
So what do you do then with people from the outside, because you know you can't tell everybody
not to email you?
I try and tell as many people as possible.
No, that's where I prioritise my time, is on the external emails, and then I address
them quickly as they come in.
That's the other tip.
So no one internally ever emails you?
They do email me, but there has to be something that I really need time to read.
If it's don't just send me a long email with a discussion on a topic, that's something
you can WhatsApp me and say, Sarah, can I have five minutes of your time to talk?
So do you have other tools like Slack or Teams that people might message you on?
We do have them, but given we're out and about in our business, I'm out in our hotels and
I'm visiting other people, that's where I get my best work done.
Really the mobile phone is the best way.
So WhatsApp and text is 100% the best way to reach me.
Your staff are well trained.
Maybe they've trained me well.
What do you do when you switch off, if you switch off?
I can switch off very quickly, actually.
I love listening to podcasts or books, audible books as well, particularly.
I can just sit on the couch and just enjoy some not so great TV at times.
And I just love being with my family and going out to restaurants and travel.
Ultimately, travel is the number one thing.
So how do you switch off so easily?
I was kind of shared some advice early in my career about don't sweat the small stuff
and it's all small stuff.
So there's an element of that and I'm really good at compartmentalizing things.
So I think if you look at everything that's happening in your life at the end of the
day, it's still going to be there tomorrow.
You know, often I'll get to the Friday and what seemed really important on
Monday is no longer important.
So there's things like that.
I think it's actually, it's discipline.
It's actually having the discipline to say in this moment, this is what's most
important, it's being present in that moment.
And I also believe in a concept around decision-making.
I call it ruthless execution.
And really that idea is, it's not a tough way of being.
It's really, you make a decision, action from that.
And if it's not the right decision, make another one.
So you can just, it's all about progress in my mind, your ability to keep moving
I was speaking about hope recently at a conference and I was saying that, you
know, hope's a really interesting concept because a lot of people think it's just
about emotion, but actually hope is a cognitive theory and it's a goal-setting
Can you explain that about the hope?
So hope is really a theory that, you know, it means you can set a goal and you say,
I really hope that I'm going to achieve this in the next three months.
That's just goal-setting.
And then you work out steps as to how you're going to get there.
So I think it's a really beautiful way of thinking about business and work.
It's all about excellence, not perfectionism.
I really like the way you think about the relationship between hope and goal-setting.
Now, earlier you mentioned audio books.
Are there any that spring to mind that you could recommend?
I mean, a classic one that I listen to a lot is Bob Iger, Right of a Lifetime.
It's an amazing book.
I've listened to it several times just because the opening is so astounding.
And you think as a leader, imagine being faced with that challenge.
I won't ruin it for any of your listeners in case they want to listen to that.
I love autobiographies.
So Gina Davis, Dying of Politeness, it's an incredible book.
And I always learned something about that.
Even someone, you look at her and she's such a strong woman and she's got this
persona, but actually much of her life, she was incredibly polite.
And didn't step into that confidence fully, but now like she's
absolutely charging ahead.
So Ursula Burns, first female on a Forbes, you know, listed company, incredible book.
So lots of things like that I enjoy listening to.
That's lots more to put on my already very long listening list.
I'm going to dig deep here.
Do you have a coping mechanism for high stress situations?
I use a technique called PTA.
It's one I actually developed when I was coaching, which is pause think act.
And it's quite a visual tool that I use.
So actually when something happens, I take a moment and this can just happen
in two seconds, three seconds, I hit the pause button, I see it visually light bulb
goes off, so I think about what my response could be and then act is a traffic light
So within that, it means that if I get a green go proceed with whatever I'm doing.
Amber means you can still go, but there may be some risk attached and red means
stop and rethink.
So it's really, it probably goes back to my coaching training about sometimes
you've got to go slow to go fast.
So can you give me a recent example where you have employed PTA?
We had a situation with an IT breach in one of our hotels and I had to make a
decision about, was it significant enough that I would actually call a crisis
committee meeting and how quickly I would do that, use that.
So literally I assess the situation with the information I had and then hit the
pause button for a minute, thought about the opportunity and I thought, no,
something like this IT crisis meeting immediately.
So literally five seconds, bang, decision made.
That's quick, yet you consciously employ the PTA method each time.
Well, certainly in a high stress situation and certainly where there's a crisis
situation and people are counting on you, because in those moments, those decisions
count more than your everyday decision.
So just taking a three, four, five seconds, just to step that through.
And what's really important about it is the act part, because that's where you're
assessing the risk and the traffic light system really helps me to assess when I
should proceed and how I proceed.
And that comes to the end of the chatter box.
I now have just one question to ask you.
And that is, if you had a month off unencumbered by anything, you could do
whatever you wanted to do, what would you choose to do?
Given I travel so much, the first thing I'd want to do is spend a couple of
weeks just at home and just do very ordinary things, training, workout.
But then I think what would happen is the adventurous spirit would come in and I
would want to go to Europe and have a chateau for a month or so, or Tuscany and
a villa and just experience daily life in a different culture.
That's what I'd love to do.
And whereabouts in France do you think the chateau might be?
Champagne, naturally.
I love champagne.
So that would be a great place.
Recently I went to Bordeaux and I just thought that was a beautiful city.
I'd love to spend more time around there and incredible vineyards,
people, the food was amazing.
What is it about France that you love so much?
I remember as a little girl and when I was in high school, I always had this
ambition to see the world and there was a couple of places I always wanted to go.
One was Egypt and the other was France.
And I always imagined France to be a really sophisticated place where, I mean,
I would see things I'd never seen before.
So I grew up in a place called Townsville in far North Queensland.
And so there was probably, it was probably the whole or
opposite to Townsville in my mind.
So what I love about France is the people and the experiences and just that it's
got an incredible personality when you go to Paris or anywhere in France.
So I actually went there on my honeymoon.
That was the first place I went on my honeymoon.
So it's a very special place to me.
I celebrate 29 years married this year.
So it's been a pretty happy place for me going to Paris.
I took both my daughters there when they were two and a half each.
So they're very lucky.
We're lucky we've been able to travel there, but it's a special place.
In my office, actually, I've got a beautiful photo of my two daughters, about six and
probably three and a half on the carousel in front of the Eiffel Tower.
And I took that photo and I had it blown up and it's in my office.
And every time we go back, we get the same photo on the carousel and now they're 17
and 15 and how lucky am I that I get to go there for work sometimes.
I love that image of you having your daughters on the carousel so many years
later, taking exactly the same photograph.
Not always easy as they're now teenagers to get them on the carousel, Sally.
Still, it's a wonderful aim.
Thank you so much, Sarah.
On that note, sadly, our time is up.
I've loved talking to you and I've loved listening to your advice about excellence
versus perfectionism, about PTA, pause, think, and then act.
And I've loved the fact that you embrace chaos and that you don't have a really
strict routine every morning.
I would find that quite difficult to adopt myself, but I think I'm going to try.
Sounds wonderful.
And I will adopt a little more structure.
On that note, thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the
It's been an absolute delight.
Thank you, Sally.
It's great to be here.
And thank you to everyone for listening.
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The Australian Financial Review.