The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:09:07 · Vidit Agarwal, Robert Nason
[00:09:07] S0: And before I come to Neil, Robert, just to go to your career as well, you both have had very two: successful, well established careers, but Robert, if you had to summarize it, is there a highlight from your career to date and a learning? [00:09:20] S2: Well, I found myself without realizing it, I suppose that consulting was really a really nice fit for me. I moved into corporate life after sort of a failed attempt in The US to get a technology firm and a consulting firm working together in the EDSKarney merger. I was on the executive team of Karney during that time. I decided when that split up in quite acrimonious terms, I came back to Australia and decided to enter corporate life. I just found myself in a series of disrupted industries going through major transformational change and learnt a lot about how to cope with those sorts of changes and execute and achieve transformational change while still trying to run big organisations, big industries and manage that. Was sort of a skill I picked up that I've transitioned and used my consulting experience to achieve that. I feel even in my corporate life I was operating more as a consultant inside a corporate structure than otherwise. Even as a CEO, I had consulting bent to how I solve problems. [00:10:44] S0: And would you say your Telstra time is what I think you built your credibility on?
00:10:44 · Vidit Agarwal, Robert Nason
[00:10:44] S0: And would you say your Telstra time is what I think you built your credibility on? [00:10:50] S2: Well, I got a lot of... Again, I didn't necessarily seek it, but I got a lot of recognition for that. But it's it's something... Yes. I've told the Telstra story so many hundreds of times now of what was achieved in that period under David Thode's leadership. [00:11:06] S0: Maybe a different question, if I may, on that Robert is if you didn't have the Telstra experience, do you think your career would have panned out differently? [00:11:15] S2: Speaker Well, I think it's more to say that if I didn't have my previous experience, I wouldn't have walked towards the Telstra job. It was described as the worst job in corporate Australia when I took on trying to improve Telstra's customer service, and it was only that I had my consulting background that gave me a confidence that it could be achieved. I think it's more the reverse. I was confident I could do it. Few others were, and it built momentum over time. When I say I, it was the team that we constructed that got behind it, and we achieved very good things company that needed it and Australia needed it as well.
00:11:15 · Robert Nason, Vidit Agarwal
[00:11:15] S2: Speaker Well, I think it's more to say that if I didn't have my previous experience, I wouldn't have walked towards the Telstra job. It was described as the worst job in corporate Australia when I took on trying to improve Telstra's customer service, and it was only that I had my consulting background that gave me a confidence that it could be achieved. I think it's more the reverse. I was confident I could do it. Few others were, and it built momentum over time. When I say I, it was the team that we constructed that got behind it, and we achieved very good things company that needed it and Australia needed it as well. [00:12:05] S0: Yeah, and then I think given some of the other roles you've done through your career have been really interesting. But I want to come to you Neil. I think Neil you finished high school so I can't ask you that question But maybe give us some context on, I think some of your hobbies were quite interesting. You were telling me you were into sport quite a bit so maybe touch on that and then we'll come to your career.
00:12:26 · Neil Plumridge
[00:12:26] S1: Yeah. So look, middle class family growing up in the Eastern Suburbs Of Melbourne, stable family, hardworking family. I think my dad had two jobs forever. Mom volunteered a lot, three kids under the age of 20. So in our household, it was always busy. Supplemented to that was dad's desire for his sons to play cricket at a high level. So we we had a cricket bat in our hand seven days a week and we were always practicing. We were always trying to do something different. My brother went on and played grade cricket at Carleton and had an unfortunate accident. Could have played for Australian under 21. He was an outstanding cricketer. I was okay, played at a reasonable level, went to university in Melbourne, then went and got this job at the television station, had a dream job for five years, but I'd stopped learning. Fortunately someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, why don't you go to The US and further your education? And if it wasn't for that individual, was like a sliding doors moment, you know, and it wasn't that I was open to that at that point. If I didn't do that, my whole career would have been quite different in life, frankly. So I took his advice, went to The US for a few years, learned how to learn again and I've had a thirst for learning for the last thirty years. Came back after that, met Robert, interviewed with Robert who was running a successful consulting business in Australia at the time. I joined that business. Thirty years later we're sitting here with the three of us having a chat.
00:13:59 · Vidit Agarwal, Neil Plumridge, Robert Nason
[00:13:59] S0: Yeah, absolutely. And Neil, you've kind of collected all the consulting logos, right? Because you were at Carney, then you were at and then you were at PwC. Again, could spend a whole episode talking about your career, but if you had to summarise it, is there a highlight from your career that you can share? [00:14:18] S1: Look, the yes, I've enjoyed every firm I've worked with. They are all outstanding firms, and there's more that I haven't worked with. Our industry has outstanding people and outstanding firms across the board. And so I've been lucky. I've met the right people at the right time and events have changed my career. I didn't go seeking the moves. It was an event that happened and I was open to a conversation and that conversation then turned into an advance in my career and I took that advance a little bit like you jump into the unknown. I'm not all that well planned and I'm not sort of a five or ten year planner. I'm a what's real now and where can I make the greatest difference? And so the changes were opportunistic and just hit me at the right time, and I've been very lucky to be given those opportunities by the people that reached out. [00:15:16] S0: I think he's being very humble, Robert. Neil's had a very successful career but he's extremely humble. [00:15:24] S2: Yes. I would say Neil is the best consultant I've ever worked with. [00:15:29] S0: There you go. There you go.
00:15:29 · Vidit Agarwal, Robert Nason
[00:15:29] S0: There you go. There you go. [00:15:30] S2: He's very... And he's regarded that way by those around him. He became... And I didn't have visibility of this because we were together for... With two of those firms, but then Neil went his own path. I never saw Neil in his practice management era. We sort of competed a bit crossing paths at that time, but I see his results and he was incredibly capable as a leader of large firms as well. [00:16:00] S0: I want to come to the book and Neil, I believe you are the brains behind the startup that has become the book and a firm behind it. How the Best Consultants Think, Act and Win in an AI Accelerated World. I mentioned earlier, we just had the Melbourne launch and we've got the Sydney one coming up. Neil, take me back to when you started thinking about the book. I think in the time I've gotten to know you, I never would have thought of you as someone who'd go, let's write a book and let's do a big celebration about it. But clearly you felt there was some content there that you should put your intellect and time behind and involve Robert. Take us inside that period in your life and those early conversations that led to the book.