Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Byron Pirola

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Gone are the days when we use to compartmentalise our work and home lives. The lines between our personal and professional have increasingly intertwined and blurred and certainly never more so than during COVID-19, with many of us working from home and having to socially isolate with the people in our household. To explore some of these aspects as well as his personal experiences in managing and leading through change, I’ve asked managed director of EY Port Jackson Partners, Dr Byron Pirola to join me today. Byron is renowned for his commercial acumen with more than three decades of strategy consulting experience, serving CEOs and board of major companies across the globe as well as government departments. Surprisingly though, he actually started his professional life in biochemistry. As it turned out, managed to get his name on many published papers during that stage of his career. Outside of consulting though, Byron has extension pro-bono community based roles, has a very evident service based paradigm and is a strong believer that culture in society is built from family. I look forward to discussing all of this with Byron today. Byron, welcome.

Byron: Thanks very much for having me.

Jenelle: How are you?

Byron: Not too bad. Its … it’s a bit of a groundhog day for us all [laugh].

Jenelle: Yeah. How have you been, you know, personally throughout the last, say six months.

Byron: I think very fortunate is the first answer. I live in Sydney. We have a big family home with only two of my five children still living there. So space is not a problem so in terms of all the things that are confronting a lot of people, I’m actually pretty blessed and so I don’t have a lot to complain about really. Having said that, its challenging times. It’s the most uncertain economic environment I’ve worked in, in my 35 years professionally. There’s all sorts of challenges in the community that we’ve not faced in our life times at least but I guess I’m pretty lucky.

Jenelle: I want to get to those challenges shortly. I’m interested in, you know, how you’ve been leading through the last six months. There’s a lot of stuff that’s been going on with you in the business, Port Jackson Partners, but you know, the crisis has certainly … oh we’ve moved from crisis throughout to a different kind of hybrid, very nuanced, you know, iterative stage of this COVID-19, how have you been leading through those various stages.

Byron: Probably not well frankly [laugh]. I mean its tricky. I think, what I’ve tried to do in the professional environment is bring context and as much clarity as one can give to the team. So we’re a small … our practice, although we’re part of EY now which is massive, our practice is only 50 people. But there are 50 people there who have never lived through this. Most of them have never experienced a recession, like in any form. Most of us have never seen something like this and I haven’t lived through a pandemic. The task I think has to be provide context and clarity and not making false promises, but giving people an insight into how, as leadership, we’re thinking about it, what we can tell them about what may happen and give then whatever wisdom we have as people who have been through a few of these things before like the GFC and so on, given our best instincts and insights and then be supportive.

Jenelle: Tell me, what surprised you about yourself and maybe others during this period of time.

Byron: I saw a great line the other day which was “don’t mistake good policy with panic” and I think I’ve watched people who I thought would panic, not panic and people who I thought would never panic, panic. So I think this is sort … this is a particularly unusual situation. I mean this is an economic crisis driven by a health crisis which literally unfolded as we were discovering it and so no one knew how this was going to play and we haven’t had anything like this in generations. So it was just interesting watching how people dealt with it and some people I thought would be rock steady, you know, ran to a particular corner and other people I thought might be quite unnerved by it became quite steadfast in their resolve to sort of look through it and think through it.

Jenelle: Its an interesting, as you say that, I’ve a former life, I was in the army and we used to go and do exercises and clearly you have sort of pips on your shoulders which will designate you as a leader or not but often there were times where we would be going certain exercises where some people would have anxiety about what we were doing, others would step forward. So regardless of what was on their shoulder, you could see some different personalities and true leadership shine, no matter what was designated. Byron, I know that relationships are something that you think deeply about and speak broadly on. What are your reflections on the impact of COVID-19 on relationships.

Byron: So this is just personal observation, not research based, but I think its probably grounded us a little bit in what really matters. I mean I think its kind of funny when we’re all out there sort of charging busily towards something that we think is really important and then we have something that causes us to pause. I say that funerals, they are an incredibly cheap reminder of what's important …

Jenelle: That’s true.

Byron: … because you’re not dead. I never walk away from a funeral not thinking more deeply about my life and so I think this has sort of been a, you know, a variant of that and you know, everyone’s been touched by it in some way so you know, a couple of my kids … one of my kids lost their job, another one took a 35% pay cut just after they took a mortgage out, my uncle was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died during COVID and couldn’t go to his funeral. Two of his five sons couldn’t come back from America to see him, yet alone bury him. So everyone has been touched with it at some level and I think therefore its caused us to just pause a little bit and just think. So if there’s a silver lining in it, it might be that we slow down for, you know, we slowed down and paused a bit. Now that’s not saying its good [laugh], no one would wish this on anybody but I think, you know, in every situation there’s always something you can take from it.

Jenelle: I think that’s incredibly true and, you know, we’ve had this huge global reset in some ways, you know, around priorities and what matters. What do you think it means in terms of the future of work and workplaces and life outside of work. What … a big question I know …

Byron: It’s a very current question, as you ca imagine. I instinctively have a negative reaction to terms like “new normals”. I don’t think we’re in “new” anything yet. I think we’re in the middle of something. I think … so therefore I think taking long term projections off one or two very short term datapoints in quite dangerous. Having said that, I think that its accelerated some trends that were there much more quickly. I remember Greg Hunt, the Health Minister, saying that we’ve advanced tele-medicine more in the last three months than we did in the last five years and I remember my wife saying, we had a doctors appointment, a specialist appointment and they called and said “would you mind doing a teleconsultation” and she said to me …

Jenelle: What's that [laugh] …

Byron: … no. She said “what don’t they understand”. She’s never touched me in her life, I wait in her waiting room for 40 minutes and we speak across a table, what is unattractive about a teleconsultation”. You know, so it’s kind of interesting.

Jenelle: It’s true.

Byron: Its reframed a number of things so I think there will be some changes but I don’t believe cities are dead. I don’t think people’s desires is to cocoon in a home and never … never sort of have a place to be in the workplace but I think workplaces … the trends that have been going on in workplaces will … have been accelerated in some places and there might be some, you know, some lasting resets but I think its too early to really tell.

Jenelle: Hm, I think, you know, a lot of discussion around the fact that we are inherently social beings. We … one person was saying that, you know, we still find ourselves waving to each other as we end the zoom call, you know, that those things are so deeply in us, its what binds us as humans.

Byron: Yeah.

Jenelle: Byron, I want to turn a bit to your professional life and your history there. You described yourself previously to me, as an average student in school, yet somehow despite this average declaration, you managed to gain a PhD in biochemistry. You joined McKinsey. You then became the managing director of Port Jackson Partners. Something or some things must have fallen into place at some point along that journey. Can you tell me a bit about some of the turning points for you.

Byron: It’s true, I was an average student at school. I think the turning points were a couple of things. I think probably I was a late developer. That’s the [9.18] coupled with the truth to it. I found that synergetic space between what I was good at and what I liked. So I’ve often said to people if you’re trying to find a career or a lifes purpose, find the intersection if you can between three variables – what you love, what you’re naturally good at and what pays well.

Jenelle: Yes, those are exactly the three I talk about as well.

Byron: Right, and if you’re lucky enough to find one that hits all three of those, then you know, that’s [9.40] but if you’re going to trade them off, then be conscious about the trade-off. So I chased things I just found, partly I loved and what I was good at so you get that reinforcing virtuous circle going there so it doesn’t feel like work so you tend to spend more time at it. You enjoy it, its not a burden, you tend to be naturally good at it. So … and the whole thing goes so I stumbled into science. It was either science or economics. I love science, I loved economics – look where I am now but then I started to chase the paths of science that I’ve naturally felt better at. Not that good at maths so I stayed away … my hobby was astronomy but my maths wasn’t good enough and there’s no jobs in astronomy but I was a great chemist. I love chemistry so I fell into biochemistry and I just chased the areas of that and then I made choices along the way. So …

Jenelle: How did you make choices?

Byron: Partly by the combination of, you know, usual things people do, make a list of procs and cons and then overlaid that with gut instinct and then advice. So I drew on advice from people I thought, who I trusted and respected and I had access to. So you don’t have a lot of access to a lot of advice when you’re young but my father was a research scientist, professor of medicine, so I used to draw on his advice around things like thesis topics, supervisors and things like that and got a lot of wisdom, I think a lot of people would never have been given.

Jenelle: And what's some of the wisdoms that he guided.

Byron: Don’t choose your topic, choose your professor. In other words, work … find the best person you can work under and go and work under them and don’t give a damn what the topic is.

Jenelle: Has that framed your view on talent.

Byron: Absolutely, in fact I’ve seen it in business as well. I mean one of my experiences was working with one of Australia’s most successful business leaders and they had nothing to answer to in terms of their capability, reputation etc but what I observed was that they surround themselves with three of the smartest independent directors you could possibly bring, one of the best investment bankers, tax lawyers and consultants as their non-executive directors on the board and I watch them take really close, pay close attention and careful advice and that lesson of basically surround yourself with smart people and then listen has been something that has resonated and formed me as the way I’ve tried to work. So I think, you know, find people who have got real wisdom and expertise. It doesn’t mean you have to do what they say but then, you know, get their advice and then fold it in and then also be prepared to trust your gut instinct. So a few times I made decisions that I thought they were right in the head but having made them, instinctively they felt uncomfortable very quickly so I’d walk …

Jenelle: You change them!

Byron: … and yeah, I went with that and I think sometimes you … I say this to people quite often, “sometimes you have to actually walk through the door before you realise it was the wrong door and then you need to be prepared and brave enough to step back out and so make sure you’ve got the option to step back out.”

Jenelle: Right and so that’s an interesting one around walking through the wrong door because sometimes when people, you know, walk through that door and go “well I’ve walked in, I’m in the door now so I have to keep going”.

Byron: So you’re doing a mind game. So I’ve said to people, for example, “just imagine, stop thinking about making the decision and tell yourself you’ve made the decision” and you go home for the weekend …

Jenelle: And sit in it.

Byron: … and sit in it and tell people you’ve done it. Tell them you’ve made the decision and then watch what happens and, you know, sometimes you feel better and better and better and better about it and other times you “uhh” and you come back on Monday morning and you think, you know what I’m more uncertain than I was on Friday.

Jenelle: So you have to say it, just kidding, I didn’t really make that decision [laugh].

Byron: Well you haven’t actually and the people around you, well if they care about you, they won’t care.

Jenelle: They’re like “is this another of those pretend things Byron”

Byron: Well, you know, John Maynard Keynes, the great line is “you know, but you changed your – I forgot what it was, but it completely changes perspective on something and he was called out for it and he said “when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do” [laugh].

Jenelle: So there was a pretty pivotal change in your professional career when you decided to make that leap from working in biotech to working in business. Another door to walk through. How did you make that decision. Why did you make that change and what was that change like for you.

Byron: The reason I made the change was I was working in a centre of excellence in gene technology in Adelaide, at University of Adelaide, so it was one of the pre-eminent places to work in Australia in biochemistry at the time and actually ran a biotech company out of the department and it was called “Breezer Technology” and because I had this natural instinct in business, I found myself over time in my last year of the PhD becoming more interested in the business of science or as much interested in the business of science as the science of science and I recognised that scientists made pretty lousy managers. So they weren’t trained in business and there was a lot of biotech start-ups going broke because they were being run by scientists and I thought “well if I need to jump the bench, as I used the term, I can’t face doing an MBA after a PhD, just felt like too many years at uni so I thought I would go and get a job in business for anyone who would take me and I had an uncle who was a senior executive in BHP at the time and he was the only person in business in my family. So I would turn to him for advice and just said “should I write to this company, that company.” I read the Fin Review everyday as a PhD student. Every time I found an interesting company in the Fin Review, I wrote to them.

Jenelle: And that would have been the slow mail stuff, right.

Byron: That way … I mean I was pretty high tech in those days. I had a golf ball printer on a back of a dual floppy disk 360k, you know, IBM XP, you know, so I was right up there. But you had to look them up in the white pages, you know, find their address, you know, write the letter …

Jenelle: Actually go to the post office and buy a stamp!

Byron: … go to the post office, put a stamp on it and then wait for a return letter. I think I wrote 150. I don’t even remember writing to them. I wrote to McKinsey. I had just received a job offer from Accenture, which was Arthur Andersen. MIC, Management Information Consulting division in the early days and I was going to become a programmer in there and I had this letter from McKinsey waiting for me, sort of saying next time you’re in Sydney and I was in Adelaide, you know, let us know and we’ll give you a job interview and I almost binned it and called my uncle and he said “oh, McKinsey’s not a bad shop, give them a call”. I honestly didn’t know what they did, I didn’t actually have the wit to ask him because I had written so many of those things and everything was “no thanks, no thanks, no thanks”. So I was just going through a fairly big filter but I called them, they flew me up the next day, I did eight case studies. I’d never heard of a case study. So talk about, you know, forget prepping like the kids do today, with you know, case competitions and all that sort of stuff. I just walked in and had eight interviews, literally back to back and thought at the end of the day, how good is this, people pay you to do this for a living, how cool. Because I was a problem solver, I was a researcher and you know, I just got thrown problem after problem all day and they were fascinating. I knew nothing about them.

Jenelle: But your genuine curiosity about this was …

Byron: Yeah and I would have butchered half of them. I mean I had no idea. I mean one of them was forecast the electricity demand in New South Wales for the next ten years. What the hell would I know about how to do that and I completely butchered it [laugh] but …

Jenelle: You must have done something right.

Byron: … I must have done something right, yeah. I found a really interesting career. I found a way to get from science drawing on my problem solving skills, which was what McKinsey was buying and then had to retool. I mean, I didn’t know the language …

Jenelle: How did you retool?

Byron: The hard way. I mean they gave a bit of training. They had one good thing they did for people like me is like they stuck us in, what they called the “mini MBA” for a month and we were taught finance, a little bit of marketing …

Jenelle: It’s a whole new world on language though, isn’t it.

Byron: Oh well, you know, my first day at McKinsey, somebody handed me an annual report for North Broken Hill, a mining company that doesn’t exist anymore and said can you do a break even on them, they’re mine and I was sitting there holding this annual report thinking why is it broken and how do I make it even. I didn’t even know what the words meant. [laugh].

Jenelle: [laugh].

Byron: I had an idea of what a hedge or an option was, was you know, just all those sorts of things we take for granted, if you’ve been in the industry.

Jenelle: It is funny for those, I mean when I speak to people who aren’t in the consulting game and they like, what are these words that you are using and I remember when I started and I also didn’t come from a consulting background and I walked in and someone said to me “can you talk to those slides” and I said “why would I talk to the slides, I think I want to talk to the people” [laugh].

Byron: Right yeah.

Jenelle: So another major change in your life and [17.52] very very recent, close to both of our hearts was your decision to join EY via acquisition. I’m sure there was, you know, logic and emotion caught up in all of that. How did it happen. Was it opportunity? Was it planned and what was it like making that kind of decision and speaking to your team about it.

Byron: That’s a big question, that’s a whole podcast. So it was a natural intersection of, I think, two groups not knowing each other necessarily but heading towards the same hill where there’s a natural synergy. So we had built over 30 years, a practice that I think was well regarded in the Australian market as a very good strategy house. You know, high quality advice to government, corporates. The question was “where do we go next with it” and we weren’t’ driven by growth, we weren’t building a firm to sell. We had no intention. This was not a classic spinout, you know, build and sell and every year we’d be approached by somebody that wanted to buy us and we’ve never felt any interest in doing it but we intersected EY at this point who was … had an aspiration which I think all the firms do, to actually build a tier one strategy house within their firms but actually was going about it in a way that we actually thought was credible and that’s what we hadn’t seen before. So I remember saying to Harsher when he first called and introduced himself. I said “look, I’m going to waste an hour of your time but I’m really happy to come and meet because I don’t think this will go anywhere but I’m very happy to meet with you and get to know each other” and that’s the way we’ve always approached it and almost without exception, we walked out of those meetings after an hour and it was respectful and interesting but it recommitted us to our model of independence. This one I walked out and I thought “that’s interesting” and then we spent about eight months really testing that together.

Jenelle: So, huge decision to join EY. I mean in itself a really big pivotal point in your, I guess, professional career and for the careers of those who work with you, many months in the making. So many months in fact that a global pandemic kicked in somewhere along the way. How did that play out. Did it have an effect. What was the effect of that … I mean you’re a great strategist but I’m sure you didn’t see that coming.

Byron: No no I didn’t … there’s many things I haven’t predicted in life. Most of the important ones in fact, I’m not a forecaster. So we were fortunate we’d had spent enough time together at the leadership levels of our practice and with EY that when the pandemic hit, we’d largely decided to do this and then it took courage of our respective convictions not to back away because, you know, everyone … the modus operandi at that moment became “roll up the shutters and don’t do anything”. But I guess we were fortunate we’d had enough water under the bridge together to actually follow that through but the tricky part was actually, you know, its now … where are we now, September. We finalised the, you know, quote/unquote “transaction” in June/early June but we were actually working together as though it had been done for two months beforehand because we just knew we were going to do it. We started quietly planning even though it wasn’t public and it became public in May but as a partnership we have not sat around a table together since before we decided to formally vote to do this. So the vote to do this was done on video. The firm of 50 people who are very tight and think of themselves a bit like a family and I don’t mean that in a kooky sense but we really have each other’s backs, we care deeply about each other. We have not met as a firm. This was announced to my colleagues over video. I mean if you told me I was going to do that, I would have said “you’re mad”, you know, that’s insane. So its not a radical refit for us, trying to bring what we bring, what we bring into EY as part of helping EY build what it wants to do, which is quite exciting, which is to build a genuine tier one strategy house and it will be different. That’s a worthy goal, I mean that’s something that gets me up in the morning.

Jenelle: Right and you do like to set big goals for yourself, don’t you.

Byron: Yeah [laugh].

Jenelle: What are some of the big goals that you’ve set for yourself in life … come on.

Byron: So I wake up in the morning and I think, not every morning, sometimes I’m just glad to be alive but my life’s thing is set a goal that actually … that matters, that you know you can’t deliver but if you get anywhere towards it, it will make a difference. So stupidly at the end of my honours year, I set myself a goal of … I didn’t tell anyone this by the way, but I’d have a Nobel Prize by 30.

Jenelle: Nobel Prize!

Byron: Yeah, in science.

Jenelle: Oh, how did you get on with that.

Byron: Terribly, got nowhere near it but the aspiration was to drive me. When I joined McKinsey, the quiet little fact I found out what was the fastest anybody was elected to partner and I figured that was a relative benchmark. So what I try to do is set myself …

Jenelle: How did you get on with that?

Byron: I give up, I left before partnership and I wasn’t going particularly quickly. I was a biochemist for gods sake [laugh]. I was surprised they kept me for the first year but the point behind is its not as though I … its not driven from an external recognition thing. Its like, if you’re going to get up and swing the bat, you know, well swing it with intention and so, you know, call me crazy but the idea of taking what we spent 30 years carefully nurturing in Sydney or out of Sydney in the Australian market and work out how with colleagues around the world who I met before we decided to do this to know that they were “like quality” people in the Parthenon group with EY, to say that actually I want to have a crack at wiring this up into something with a power of a big 4 firm behind it but with the quality and the strategy linking space that we would expect to have and require to have to be who we are. You don’t get many chances in life to do that, right and so it was put in front of us and so you know, I’m a bit of a drug addict for big hairy audacious goals, even at my later in life years and so here we are.

Jenelle: Here we are! You know, its so funny as I listen to you because many years ago I came across a person who ended up playing quite a pivotal role in my life and he said “if we’re going to work together, I need to know a bit more about you.” He said “if you were to die tomorrow” – god, this is sounded really morbid this conversation with you, “what would it say on your epitaph. Tell me what your tombstone would say” and I said “Jenelle McMasters (I said this with pride) – Jenelle McMasters, under-promises/over delivers” and he’s like “that’s shocker” [laugh] …

Byron: [laugh]

Jenelle: … and I was so crestfallen and I said “what do you mean” and he said “well mine is always punched above his weight” and it made me realise at that point in time that I was always holding myself back and I really did change from that point on so your setting a goal that matters resonates with me and yeah, it took me a while to get there. So tell me, you’re the leader of a great strategy house and you have been for a long time. You work with great strategists. What makes someone a great strategist and is it something that one can learn.

Byron: If I had that recipe then [laugh]. Look, I actually don’t know to be perfectly honest. I think there are three or four elements. You’ve got to have intellectual curiosity. What makes the difference in strategy is actually finding the thing that nobody else saw because really what you’re trying to do in strategy is out-compete or do something that hasn’t been done for. You’ve actually got to find something that doesn’t exist, right and that’s sort of the research. So you’ve got to have the intellectual curiosity. The second thing I think you’ve got to be … you’ve got to be incredibly commercial or I’m not quite sure what the equivalent in government is but pragmatic. Like you’ve got to have this real groundedness. It can’t be theoretical. Its got to be something that actually will work, can actually be done. I mean I see lots of young strategy consultants get very frustrated with their clients. You know, if they just did our advice, you know, just followed our advice, its really simple and I think you have no idea how hard it is to move an organisation of 20,000 people from A to B. You know, when you’ve got, you know, shareholders on your back you’ve got, you know, regulatory complications around you and you’ve got, you know, balance sheet issues, you know …

Jenelle: Understanding how to apply that.

Byron: … really understanding how to apply it. So its got to have a pragmatic, what I call commercial acumen, just you know, a street smart commercial instinct. They’ve got to be bright. There’s an intelligence that you need in there and various forms of intelligences but they have got to have … they’ve got to be standout, they’ve got to have a spike somewhere in their skillset and they’ve got to be tenacious because you’ve got to chase the problem and its painful and you’ve got to be able to cope with the fact that it’s, you know, a lot of people find it really hard to get up in the morning and go to do a job that they actually don’t know what to do but you do that when you’re doing strategy.

Jenelle: Where does diversity play in there. I’m just thinking being able to look at things from multiple lenses, different perspectives. How does that play out.

Byron: We’re generalists. So the diversity generalist, there’s a great book out written recently, I reckon everybody in my profession show read called “Range”.

Jenelle: And who wrote that.

Byron: Its written by David Epstein and its an easy read and its … its I think a really good challenge to the hyper specialised world we’re currently in at the moment.

Jenelle: Awesome.

Byron: The value of the generalist is largely lost in a high specialised … increasingly specialised world but a lot of the time what we’re doing in strategy is actually lifting broad insights from different areas and seeing the insight from it. Not just folding it over but as an insight. So you know, you’re sitting there with a steel company and saying “this is actually a bit like pet food problem we were working on last week” and everyone looks at you around the table and say “what the hell are you talking about pet food” but there’s an insight and a trigger …

Jenelle: Yeah, the ability to connect them.

Byron: … and so our people, you can see the diversity in our people, they range from, you know, psychologists to engineers to you know, marketing backgrounds to, you know, arts graduates. You know, they tend to come from more analytical professions like engineering, finance and so on but we have a broad range of people but also an incredible diversity of the type of people we are in terms of our interests and so on. I think it helps.

Jenelle: Turning a a bit to your personal life. You’ve been a very firm believer in supporting your own personal values and finding a work/life balance early on in your career. I know that that shaped some of your decisions. Do you see the experience that we’re currently moving through as a positive in showing possibilities of better work/life balances, given that we’ve got these forced working from home scenarios.

Byron: Um … I’d like to say yes but I’m not sure is the honest answer. I mean I think the trick with work/life balance, I’m probably the worse person … if my wife was here, she would …

Jenelle: What would she say.

Byron: … [laugh], she’d say “get some balance boy” [laugh]. Look, life is all about trade-offs. If you think you can have everything, you’re kidding yourself. So you have to make choices …

Jenelle: Not at the same time, that’s for sure.

Byron: … yeah and you know, I mean, I’d love to have been an Olympic skier but I didn’t … you know, I don’t have the skills and I don’t have the time to put into it but I love skiing but, you know, I’m now 60 and my skiing days are going to rapidly diminish because I’ll break something if I go out and ski the way I used to. So there’s trade-offs. I’ve made choices along the way. The biggest choices we make tend to be where we trade-off the relationships and the people that matter for things that are … other things that are important to us. So I think working from home can provide a reset for that. I mean it has for us a little bit. I mean I enjoyed actually working from home to some degree. I found it hard in other areas. My wife and I are both working from home together at the moment so we see each other more often. We actually have lunch occasionally together which is usually just passing something to the other on a [30.25] [laugh] but anyway, its more than work. I think so, but you have to choose work/life balance. I mean …

Jenelle: What do you mean by that.

Byron: Well, it you know, work’s a bottomless pit for, you know, family is a bottomless pit. There’s more you can always give and so I think you’ve got to make active choices about them rather than expect somebody to solve it for you because they’re intensely personal choices. So I think, there’s a … friends of ours we know have ten kids which is an amazing …

Jenelle: Wow, I thought your five was …

Byron: My five is extraordinary [31.03]

Jenelle: You’re actually the underachiever here.

Byron: Absolutely and if I could have ten kids like this husband and wife had ten kids, I’d have them in a nanosecond, they’re the most beautiful family but somebody asked this woman once, you know, but how do you know which one to love, which is a great question – right.

Jenelle: Um, okay there’s your intellectual curiosity there.

Byron: And the answer was … it was life changing thing for me. She said “the one that needs it most at the moment”.

Jenelle: Ahhh.

Byron: And I think that’s … so the trick is when you’re trading off work and life, it happens at big levels, like you know do I take this job or do I don’t take this job, do we move, do we don’t move, do I travel, do I don’t travel, but it happens every morning and it happens every evening. You know, like last night we were sitting around the table and I picked up my phone and my wife said “put it down, the kids will be gone in two minutes” – right. That’s a choice – right and so COVID didn’t change that choice, that choice is mine. So I think … I think the working from home is actually opening our eyes to the … to aspects of it but you have to choose it and you have to decide. So we sort of saying, you’ve got to be intentional about your life. Not just a cork bobbing on the tide hoping you’ll wash up on the right beach. I mean it helps to put you in the right waterway, if you want to take that analogy forward but you’ve still got choices all over the place every day.

Jenelle: With that in mind Byron, you know, if making those active choices, family being such a big part of your personal values, what do you take from that into the teams of people that you work with, the business that you’ve created. How do you foster that sort of philosophy in the workplace.

Byron: I mean its probably pretty motherhoody type statements to be honest. I mean you treat people like you’d want to be treated. You know, I’m 60 this year, I’ve been doing this for 35 years. I’m employing new graduates who are younger than my children and this is going to sound a little bit goofy but I think of them, you know, I’d hope an employer would think of my children as a young person trying to make their way in life rather than somebody who’s there to do my bidding, or our bidding as a firm and it’s the same with the teams. You know, every one of my team members have got a personal life, a personal backstory, I may not be aware of but its happening in their lives.

Jenelle: But do you actively then sort of give them message around …

Byron: Yes, we sit as a team, every time we form a new … so we work in teams. Every time we form a new team to go and you know, sort working with a client, that team sits down and talks about what's happening, you know, how do we work together, you know, what's happening in our personal lives, you know, obviously things like who’s taking leave but you know, we’ve got some people who, you know, they value exercise in the morning. Some people are “if I don’t get eight hours sleep I can’t function” and other people are “as long as I can pick the kids up from 3 to 5, I don’t mind working late” but that’s sacrosanct, for family meals or whatever it might be and so the trick is to work out, you know, okay lets make this work together and you still give that lip service but then you’ve got to honour it and I think, you know, just the way we do with the people we really care about in our personal lives which is, you know, tends to be close friends and family, I think we should treat our colleagues, you know, the same way. So I think it’s, to be honest, its pretty simple but its actually hard to do and you’ve got to create a certain level of vulnerability in the work to really let people feel free to say that you know, something that they might think its unreasonable to say and you know, it takes a bit of courage sometimes to sort of say, you know, [34.34] says personal preference as a team member, knowing that’s not the preference of your bosses workstyle.

Jenelle: Yeah, sure. Husband and father of five. I imagine there’s much negotiations that goes on in your household.

Byron: Yeah and the dog.

Jenelle: And the dog, okay. So how do you deploy your strategic skills to get what you need in that household. Do you? [laugh]

Byron: No. [laugh]

Jenelle: So do you leave them at work, do you [laugh].

Byron: [laugh] my wife once said to me “don’t treat me like one of your analysts” when I was trying to actually …

Jenelle: Out manoeuvre her!

Byron: … no just logically problem solve on the incredible emotional situation we were dealing with at the time.

Jenelle: Oh yes.

Byron: So, no look, I think … so you bring … you are who you are so you bring all that into every relationship. I think the … but its different. It’s, you know, it’s a different situation so we don’t have a family plan or family strategy, god help me. No but again, it’s a bit like … it’s a bit like leading a professional service firm in the case of my wife, we’re life partners together. You know, we made a public commitment to be with each other until death do us part and for better or for worse and we’ve had better or for worse times. So you know, there’s a lot of things you need to do to make that journey work and with the kids, you know, these are our responsibility is to bring them into well-functioning contributors to society and so working out what each one, they’re all very different, incredibly different. You know, one’s doing a PhD and another is a Harley Davidson mechanic …

Jenelle: Oh, right.

Byron: … you know, another one, right now today, out at Bondi on placement as a paramedic. Another one is a construction project manager and another is taking his gap year trying to work out what he is going to do.

Jenelle: Tough time to take a gap year.

Byron: It is a tough time to take a gap year. So they’re all different individuals making their way. So you bring everything you have to that but its not a work problem.

Jenelle: So what are the maybe two or three of the biggest lessons you’ve learnt over your professional career that you sort of take forward with you, that you impart to others. What are the stand out lessons for you.

Byron: There’s a really good line that I’ve learnt that helps, I think, with the personal relationships whether they are in your family, in your community or in the workplace, which too few of us ask, which is who’s needs are being met.

Jenelle: Okay.

Byron: That’s a … so if every time you’re in an engagement, who’s needs … so if I take it into a professional world, you know, I have a … I’m a service provided to clients as an advisor but I’m also naturally conflicted. They pay me to be there. So you know, who’s needs are being met when I’m proposing to do some work with them. Mine …

Jenelle: Is that wrong though, that …

Byron: No, but ultimately you’ve got to be guided about who you’re serving.

Jenelle: Okay.

Byron: And I think there’s a … so there’s a question there about, you know, am I being self-serving in this relationship or am I being of service to others and there’s, you know, you’re not a doormat, you know, there’s a certain … but you’ve got to watch yourself. So who’s needs are being met, I think, is actually been quite a good, you know, rudder for me in life, am I really doing this for my own self-interest or am I being more motivated by my self interest or you know, for those I am in service to, family, community, you know, clients. I think that’s been useful one. I think the other thing is humility. Its one of the values of our firm. You know, people think of us as being, you know, super smart of something because we’re a well respected strategy house. We’ve got really bright people in our firm but we walk into our clients and we know less about their business than they know, we’re not industry experts. What we are, are skilled in a particular area and its quite a narrow area and so you know, learning how to take what we’re good at confidently but not arrogantly, presumptively and partner with people, even when we think they might be wrong or they think we might be wrong, to actually to a solution that actually is right. The humility is a pretty … not a very favoured word these days because it sounds like, you know, you’re being a shrinking violet. I mean we’re not shrinking violets, we’re fiercely independent advisors but we have a deep sense of, you know, we aren’t the smartest people in the room, we don’t know what's best all the time, we’re here to help you be successful. I think that’s a really good guide.

Jenelle: It is a favourite word for me, by the way. I actually love the word “humility”.

Byron: We found it in EY actually. That’s why I think we’ve resonated together, it sort of, you know, it’s a fine line between being confident and arrogant and humility keeps you grounded and frankly if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve got plenty of things to be humble about.

Jenelle: Yes, that’s right.

Byron: It’s the perfect [39.38]. Look, and the last thing and this is, I think this applies to all areas of life which is when we’re faced with a challenge and a decision to make, are we confident enough and brave enough to make the decision or do we can-kick and can-kicking I think, we see it too often in the corporate world and strategy which is it’s a hard problem, its risky to pull it off, we sort of know we need to deal with it but you know what …

Jenelle: We’ll get to it later.

Byron: … leave it for somebody else, you know, its messy, its risky and can kicking I think is, it doesn’t serve anybody and you can can-kick in your personal life, there’s an issue between yourself and the kids or you’re … but it’s a bit hard to open up and go into so you dance around it and you pretend its not there but it doesn’t build anything and it leaves you a bit hollow and leaves the business or the relationship, if its personal, weak. So I think … don’t be a can-kicker and that can sometimes cost you.

Jenelle: That’s right.

The last three. Three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.

Jenelle: I like to finish each of these interviews with three fast questions, a bit more on the light-hearted side. What's a misconception that most people have about you.

Byron: That I’m smart. [laugh]

Jenelle: Okay [laugh].

Byron: I’m not that smart.

Jenelle: You had me fooled.

Byron: No, I work hard. Yeah.

Jenelle: Okay. What's one guilty pleasure.

Byron: Chocolate. Chocolate is my guilty pleasure.

Jenelle: Okay and what's one thing that you’re hopeless at.

Byron: No, I’m hopeless at names.

Jenelle: Names!

Byron: Oh yeah, this is really bad. Literally if I’m there with my wife and five kids and somebody walks up, I have to introduce them to them, I have to drop a name. I mean quite seriously …

Jenelle: You’ll lose one of the kids names out of the [41.16]

Byron: If you ask me, I’ll go blank. I know the name, I literally go … my brain freezes. Names are terrible.

Jenelle: Okay, all right. I won’t take offence next time [overtalking].

Byron: Yeah, that’s fine Mary [laugh].

Jenelle: [laugh]. Well Byron, thank you so much for your time today. So many things I’ve taken away from our conversation. Some of those include setting a goal that matters. I love that, you know, that it really does stretch you to make a real difference with your time. I really love the following and investing in talent. You have followed great talent, you’ve invested in great talent and the power of that and one thing that’s really struck me is, you know, not for any of us to not abdicate from our own responsibilities, that … whether that’s in making active choices in your own life and your work/life balance or your contribution to culture in your workplace and in society. I love the recognition of, you know, tough times that we’re find ourselves in COVID is actually given us a time to pause and reflect on what matters and I love your question of asking ourselves “who’s needs are being met” and I think when we have that frame of mind, we understand we bring a service mindset to what we do. So plenty of things there Byron, its been great to have a chat today, thank you for your time.

Byron: It’s been fun. Thank you.

Jenelle: Cheers.

The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

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