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https://minterellison.co.nz/our-view/an-interview-with-john-allen-ceo-of-new-zealand-racing-board

An interview with John Allen: CEO of New Zealand Racing Board

DATE

19 December 2016

Lessons of Leadership

Lessons of Leadership

MEttle donned its silks and headed down to the racetrack to interview New Zealand Racing Board CEO John Allen, one of New Zealand’s most inspirational and colourful business leaders.

True to form, John was not afraid to speak his mind and did not shy away from the fences on the MEttle track. To give him free rein, he speaks now on these pages in his own words.

I am a lawyer who became a postman and then a diplomat, and I’m now a sort of jockey or driver depending on which code you want to look at it through. Obviously that’s an unconventional pathway. A key driver was people asking me to do things and me being willing to say ‘yes’, even if it was a step into entirely new industries and roles for which I had no formal qualifications – this is a testament to the strength of the skills developed in the law.

Legal skills can take you anywhere because they teach you to objectively assess and analyse information and to make judgements on the basis of that information. Essentially, that is what you do in any leadership role.

In addition, the law teaches you advocacy skills, which are essential. It also puts you in a very clear team environment, which is an indispensable building block of effective leadership in larger organisations.

"You’ve got to get over wanting to be liked by everyone"

Leading through advocacy and adaptability

Leading an organisation is fundamentally about people: creating a strategy, and organising people to deliver that strategy. It’s about being able to advocate the strategy and build the partnerships necessary to make it a reality – not really technical or industry-specific skills at all.

I certainly don’t think it’s necessary to have a deep knowledge of an industry to enable you to lead effectively, although it does help to be a quick learner. What I’ve found, now in my fourth industry, is that when you come into an organisation in a leadership role and you really have no particular insight into the specifics of the industry, you are able to approach issues and challenges without the encumbrance of what are often quite limiting industry perspectives of how something might be solved.

You don’t know if your idea was tried 10 or 20 years ago – and didn’t succeed for some reason. You’re also able to bring ideas and experience from across a range of industries. That’s helpful, given the speed of change occurring across most businesses in this country and around the world.

Frankly the industry that you are leading will not be the same it was 15, ten or even five years ago, and in five years it will be different again. So, adaptability, creativity and the ability to bring different perspectives are key components for successful leadership in the 21st Century.

Three lessons from challenge

The launch of Kiwibank was a very challenging time for me. We had court challenges, people telling us it couldn’t be done and headlines in the paper around all of that. Then, when I made changes at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, again that was a very difficult thing and a publicly difficult process.

Three lessons I learned through experiencing tricky times are:

  • 1. Keep calm – many people react in a slightly hysterical way to that sort of pressure, and that amplifies through an organisation. I think it’s really important that when you’re in the middle of a difficult situation or crisis, you remain calm and considered to work through the issues to the best possible outcome.
  • 2. Take the long view – if you get wrapped up in what’s happening in the short term it can become very difficult. You’ve got to keep in mind the long term goal you want to achieve and be confident about it.
  • 3. This is hardest: you’ve got to get over wanting to be liked by everyone. This is really hard, because most people start with a view that they want to be liked and they like to have that relationship with people. It’s very difficult to have a long term leadership career and sustain that position, and I don’t think it’s possible if you’re leading from a position where you’ve got to be liked at the end of it.

Change is an opportunity for disruption and continuity

The international betting market is changing incredibly rapidly. As new technologies become available, people want to be able to bet where they are, any time day or night, on a vast range of products.

Customer preferences are also changing and, like most New Zealand businesses, we have to make an assessment on how we want to respond to this. The judgement we have made is that we want to be a fast follower. The reason is that we have neither the scale nor the balance sheet to be able to invest in the development of what might be regarded as world-leading solutions with the speed and rapidity that is required.

Our strategy is about securing opportunity and speed to market through partnering, which has been very effective, two years in. I’m confident in that strategy to enable our continued business growth.

I’d also say that sometimes there’s too much focus on disruption, and businesses aren’t thinking enough about continuity – how you secure the long term continuity of a business.

One of the things about the common law is it forces you to think about a long-run view of issues and how they might be resolved. It’s incremental development of the law over the long term. One of the challenges in a highly disruptive and rapidly changing world is maintaining the threads of continuity, because in the end people do want to belong to a tribe and community that has a longer life span than two or three years.

“Sometimes there’s too much focus on disruption, and businesses aren’t thinking enough about continuity”

The best board and CEO relationships

In my view, based on my experience across a range of different boards, the foundation needs to be that the board and the executive are on the same team, not competing teams.

According to textbooks, the board has to be constantly holding the executive team to account. I think that’s true, but if that’s the only lens the board is looking through, you won’t build the trust between the board and the executive which is necessary for you to move with sufficient agility.

If everything becomes an exam and a transactional process about the preparation of unbelievably detailed business cases and all those sorts of things, then frankly you’ll spend far too much time doing that and not nearly enough time on developing markets, technologies and customers – the actual things that will drive a successful business.

During my NZ Post years my relationship was with Jim Bolger as chair of that company. Jim is a master of asking the toughest questions: he will always ask the one question you don’t want to be asked. But at all times I knew he was looking to find the way to make the business successful and address challenges in a successful way, not looking to score points against the executive team.

Learning, thinking and creativity are key, as is failure

I am not a believer that there’s only one pathway to being a successful business leader. What you need is the ability to think, and the creativity to be open to new ideas.

Some people get to that through a course in poetry and art history, and I know a number of very successful business leaders with that sort of background. Other people go through engineering and astrophysics, but for me it’s more about the capacity your background builds to create a lifelong love of learning, because that’s the key component.

In New Zealand I don’t think we’re helping people to understand that failure is a necessary part of any successful career. A lot of the way we think about things and do things is that we want our children to be successful, and there’s a huge premium put on success.

“I don’t think we’re helping people to understand that failure is a necessary part of any successful career”

In the real world your biggest learning comes when you fail. If you look at most successful people, you’ll find that they have tried things that haven’t been successful. I’m not saying ‘go out and fail’, but if you’re not prepared to fail then you’re not going to develop the resilience and the risk-taking attributes that are necessary to succeed.

I’m a serial failure – in the sense that I have done lots that has gone wrong, but the key component for me is that I have been able to stand back up on my own feet again. People learn from that and move forward. This is a culture New Zealanders wrestle with, and our education system doesn’t develop that resilience and risk-taking attitude.

Take risks, be curious and say ‘yes’

In my view, you’ve got to be prepared to take some risks in your career: you’ve got to try things. You can’t develop the skills to be a CEO simply by working in a narrow discipline – you need a multi-disciplinary set of skills, so you need to step outside your areas of comfort on the journey and take some risks.

You’ve also got to maintain your curiosity. In my mind the biggest single thing a leader needs is to continue to be curious about the world, to be interested in new thinking and new ideas, and be able to think about how to translate those ideas into the context of the organisation.

Be willing to say ‘yes’ to opportunities that are presented – many people find that extraordinarily challenging. You’ve got to be willing to try new stuff, you’ve got to be willing to develop new skills and you’ve got to be willing to take risks. Inherent to that is you’ve got to be willing to fail.  So if you’re scared about failure and taking risks and challenges, then I’d be saying to you think carefully before you take on a CEO role.

“You’ve got to be willing to try new stuff, you’ve got to be willing to develop new skills and you’ve got to be willing to take risks”

Finally, don’t give up. Lots of people will experience leadership quite early on in their career and they’ll find it very challenging and confronting, and an awful lot of people give up and become consultants.

I think people have to recognise that you become a much better leader if you go through these processes time and time again.

It’s rough, and it can be lonely, that’s true. However, the reward of being able to build and create something is really terrific.

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The only John Allen quote I have ever read which I agree 100% with "I’m a serial failure". At least he is consistent.  As for the rest of his ramblings I would rather be reading what comes out of a Xmas Cracker even though he is the bigger joke.  

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