The board chair gleaned three important lessons from his time at Telstra, KWM and PwC
Earlier this week, new Wotton Kearney board chair Tony O’Malley told Australasian Lawyer the tale of how he got into his new role. In the second part of this interview, he reveals his top three priorities for the firm, as well as the three lessons he learned from his previous roles that he’s likely to bring to Wotton Kearney.
What are some important lessons that you took from your previous roles that you've been able to apply to the board chair role?
I've been privileged to work at some great Australian organisations over the past 25 years, including Telstra, KWM and PwC, and each of them contributed enormously to my professional development. It's early days yet in terms of applying that to Wotton Kearney, but from early experience, I'd say there are three probable lessons that I've learned that I think will definitely be relevant.
The first of those is the importance of the business staying focused on what I call the main game – to make sure that there's an appropriate amount of resources and time spent on the insurance customers who choose the firm to do their important work. Also, that there's an appropriate amount of time spent on the fantastic people that we have in the business, who choose to come up to the office, in the lift every day, that actually do all the critical work to support those clients. Keeping an eye on that as the main game and not getting too distracted by other things will be key.
The second area is really continuing to invest in preserving and strengthening the culture of the firm. It's clear to me that the culture has helped drive the success at Wotton Kearney and that they need to invest in that going forward, as they would in any other value accretive initiative, and not to lose sight of that.
The third area is an issue that faces all businesses all around the world at the moment – the pace of transformation and reinvention. There's no doubt that that is a critical exercise for all businesses. But the one bit of advice that I will be giving to the business is to make sure that that's done at a pace that the business can support, that there's a real emphasis on building new skills for the team and making sure that with individual projects, that there's a real clear focus on what the return on investment is in terms of what we're doing.
What are your top three priorities as board chair of Wotton Kearney, and how are you working with the leadership team to execute those priorities?
I had my first full board meeting recently, and I was enormously impressed with the work of my predecessor, the outgoing chair Steve Gledden, who's from the Straight Bat private equity firm. I feel that I have very big shoes to fill – he has, together with the other directors, done an exceptional job in guiding the business through a period of extraordinary revenue and profit growth.
I see my most immediate priority as safeguarding the strong and positive trajectory of the firm. I think the best way I can do that is to focus on three areas. One is making sure that the governance framework that we have keeps pace with the growth – that as we expand and grow, we keep an eye on the composition of the board. Do we have the right skill sets and backgrounds, and is there a diversity of skills to deal with new product lines, new markets? Are we clear on the delineation of roles between board and management? Given that we're going to face new risks, do we have the forward-looking reporting and indicators to help us gauge how we're doing against those new risks?
We've already touched upon strengthening the culture – it's clear that that's underpinned a lot of the success to date. If you can't attract and retain highly talented people in professional services, you're going to struggle. So, making sure that at the board level we reinforce the culture, and that the standards we set for ourselves in the business are consistently applied, will be key.
The third thing will be anticipating and working through what I'd call major strategic decisions or strategic pivots. So when the firm is presented with a very significant strategic turning point – whether it's going into a new market, new product lines, transformation – the firm's fully informed, has anticipated those issues and is able to navigate them effectively.
