The Culture Nerds - A Leadership Podcast

Tim Davenport (Director at OzFish Ltd.) on Delivering Bad News with Incredible Humanity

• Simon Thiessen & Kirralea Walkerden

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This week’s podcast features an interview with Tim Davenport, the Director of Fundraising & Sponsorship at OzFish Unlimited.

Tim spent a significant part of his career as a senior executive in the media. After a period of stability, the organisation changed constantly and rapidly. That involved a succession of mergers, acquisitions and takeovers - each coming with change and a clash of workplace culture. His insights for leaders dealing with change (so all leaders!) are invaluable.

Interview Summary
Our interviews are conversational, and not always linear. These are the main points, roughly in order.

  • Sitting in a boardroom making decisions that affected other people’s lives
  • Helping people get comfortable being uncomfortable
  • Communicating to team members about change
  • Conveying clinical decisions in humanistic ways
  • Being the guy who has to deliver decisions that were imposed on you
  • Stay mentally healthy as the leader delivering challenging messages
  • Taking time out in a busy leadership routine to reflect and learn
  • A strategy to have your partner be a sounding board without making home a place where the stresses of work derail the rest of your life
  • A story of delivering bad news with incredible humanity
  • When people thank you for taking away their jobs
  • How visionary leadership transformed the outcomes of a basket case
  • Taking a year off (paid work) and growing as a leader and as a human
  • Leaving the party when it’s still fun
  • The greatest success as a leader - growing others
  • The importance of an excellent mentor

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Got a question for the Podcast? You can drop us a voice message via instagram or email us at: theculturenerds@reallearning.com.au

Thanks to our Podcasting producer, Josh at Deadset Podcasting for all his work behind the scenes.

Thanks for listening!

Speaker 1:

Hey listeners, it's Kiralee here, can you believe? We have been podcasting now for over two and a half years. Over that time, we've had some really fantastic chats with other leaders. Simon has had a rant or two. We've discussed leadership topics that are relevant to the current news. We've had a couple of name changes. Now we even have a podcast producer.

Speaker 1:

Shout out to Josh. Thank you for all that you do for us. But most of all, we have had so much fun bringing you our podcast on a topic that we love culture and leadership so we wanted to mix things up a little. So we have dug deep into the archives of the show to find the best tips, tricks and conversations from the past two and a half years of discussions that we've had around culture and leadership. Essentially, we've gone back and found the gold. So you don't have to. If you listen to any of these bite-sized episodes that are coming up over the next few weeks and you would like the full episode, you can follow along over at reallearningcomau, where you'll find not only the full podcast catalogue but also loads of super helpful blog posts and other resources that every aspiring culture nerd needs. Now we won't hold you up anymore here at the start.

Speaker 2:

Let's jump into the podcast Before we get into today's episode we want to acknowledge the privilege of living and working on Aboriginal land and we pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging. So kira lee, our guest today, is someone that I've known for many years, um worked with on a number of projects over the years, had great admiration for and actually taught me a lesson which I haven't told him about yet, but taught me a lesson in one aspect of leadership and I'll be interested to see I'll bring that up a little bit later whether he remembers that. So it was a very positive lesson, but he made me really stop and think, and we'll have a chat about that later. So welcome, Tim.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, simon, and thank you, kiralee, for having me. It's an honour and a pleasure to be part of it today.

Speaker 1:

It's great to have you here, Tim.

Speaker 2:

And so, tim, just tell our listeners a little bit about what you do today, and then we'll sort of go back to the journey you've been through and you've learnt some remarkable lessons along the way that I think, for our listeners, are going to be both educational but also entertaining, because that's in your nature, I think. But tell us a little bit about what you do today.

Speaker 3:

Right at the moment I work for a nonprofit, which is also a registered charity, named Ozfish, which primarily it's about seven years old, it was founded by a guy called Craig Copeland and it primarily does environmental restoration, habitat restoration work around waterways, so rebuilding oyster reefs and planting seagrass and engaging a community of recreational fishers right around Australia to do a lot of the volunteer work. So, as our founder says, we're saving the planet.

Speaker 2:

One fish at a time. As our founder says, we're saving the planet One fish at a time. So, tim, when you say a community, I think you mentioned the other day that there are about 10,000 members who, in turn, become a volunteer workforce for you.

Speaker 3:

Correct, correct. So we're a small organization. We're growing, we have about 30 staff, but we do have about 10,000 members and participants who volunteer for our work, to do cleanups and help us do tree planting. Or we've got people running around to restaurants collecting empty oyster shells that we've used to then make oyster reefs and those sorts of things. So it's wonderful. We've got a huge army of volunteers that really help us bring our dream to life.

Speaker 2:

Not a bad role for someone passionate about fishing.

Speaker 3:

Correct, correct. It's lovely it's lovely, I don't have to apologise at staff meetings that I wasn't there yesterday because I maybe was out on a boat.

Speaker 2:

Kiralee, it sounds like your husband and son's dream job.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing. Very avid fisherman, Come and remember join Ozfish.

Speaker 3:

There's the plug. Join Ozfish O-Z-F-I-S-H. Okay, I've written it down and.

Speaker 1:

I will talk to them about it.

Speaker 2:

So this podcast has cost you money already, kiralee? Yes, oh, so this podcast has cost you money already, kiralee? Yes. So, tim, when we connected on LinkedIn and you know I was looking through my LinkedIn connections the other day and saw you and I thought, oh, I would love to interview Tim on the podcast and one of the reasons was the charisma and character, of course, and charm and good looks. But the other reason was when we met it was way back in your days in media and it was a really settled time in that organization for a short period of time. And then there was quite tumultuous change and quite a series of changes, and I think you've got so much to add for our listeners around how that impacts culture, but also about leading people through change. Tell us a little bit about those days, or tell our listeners a little bit about those days, and you'll probably have to refresh me because there were so many name changes back then that I've lost the sequence.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'd been in commercial radio for a number of years. I'd had a little foray into an advertising agency for about a year and I spent three years working for the world's biggest sports marketing company and then fell back into a TV organisation so regional television, which was then in about 2003, 2004. When I joined it was Southern Cross Broadcasting. So they were broadcasting the Channel 10 signal throughout regional Australia, so up and down the east coast, and it was a very settled time. But media ownership rules and legislation was changing and with that legislative change just came a number of changes to the industry which caused a flurry of mergers and restructures and acquisitions and subsequently a lot of change management. So I went through probably I was with the company for 15 years we went through a significant restructure in 2003-4 where the business had run effectively.

Speaker 3:

There was four businesses within the business. So Queensland ran out of Townsville and northern New South Wales ran out of Coffs Harbour, Southern New South Wales ran out of Canberra, Victoria was run out of Bendigo and Tasmania was run out of Launceston and not long after-.

Speaker 2:

That's odd, mate. I'm having real trouble coping with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

And each of those businesses were entirely self-sufficient. They had their own leadership, they had their own marketing, finance, sales teams, news facilities and not long after I joined, all of that got hubbed and centralised into Canberra. So a lot of people lost jobs. A lot of people were given the opportunity to relocate, but if you're living in Townsville and that's where your family is, or Coffs Harbour or anywhere else, your job all of a sudden went to Canberra.

Speaker 2:

Fortunately for me, I was in Canberra and I was no one's ever said that sentence before, by the way, but in this case it probably applies.

Speaker 3:

Canberra gets a bad rap. I love my time in Canberra. It's a wonderful city, Simon.

Speaker 2:

We'll circle back on that later.

Speaker 1:

It's rich Tim, coming from someone that lives in Tasmania, isn't it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I know, and for someone who now lives on the Gold Coast and has no desire to go back. So, um, we went through a major restructure there that that took us about a year or so to implement. Um, and then in 2006 we got acquired by macquarie bank by a radio company. So a tv organization got bought by a radio organization and we got thrown together. Um, so big cultural clash and changes. Um, yeah, and then, and then a couple of years later, about three years later again, we restructured, macquarie Bank exited, so that changed our leadership and the way that we restructured. Then we went through, a couple of years later, another merger where the combined then TV and radio regional business acquired Austereo, which was a metro radio business. You know the hit and triple M networks. So every time we went through one of those we found a whole lot of senior people in a boardroom working out how we're going to get through this and continue the business, taking it where it needs to go, but implement and affect a lot of change.

Speaker 2:

What did you learn as a leader through that?

Speaker 3:

Oh, simon, did you learn as a leader through that? Oh, simon, I think one of the key learnings for me was just really around as a leader, making people comfortable, being uncomfortable, I think, getting people comfortable with the idea that there's a whole lot of stuff in front of them that affects everything that they do. That's about to change. How did you do that? Most of the time there was the senior team were put on a plane and we'd fly into Canberra or Sydney or Melbourne or somewhere and be told about.

Speaker 3:

You know what the plan was, yep, and then we just had to work out operationally what changes we needed to make and then put them against a timeline and put them in order and sequence and have a timeline and a plan and a strategy for each of those and then go to all of the you know, travel around Australia and stand up in front of all of the staff and communicate it and let them know what we were doing and why we were doing it and how it was going to affect them and answer any questions that they have and just take people through that whole process and you know, when you fly into a market and you're the new boss and you've never met a bunch of people and all of a sudden, you're standing in front of them telling them that they might have to move office, that they're going to get a new boss, that they're going to be sitting next to someone that used to be their competitor in the market, you're about to take all of their clients off them and you're going to change their pay structure.

Speaker 3:

You know, when they get home and their husband says how was your day at work, kiralee? And you say well, all of this, I got told, all of this, you know that's a lot of information to impart upon someone and have to deal with.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so communicate. It was just a lot of talking, a lot of communicating, a lot of listening to staff.

Speaker 2:

That must have been hard, you being the guy that's standing in front of them, because often these decisions were made and I'll let you take this where you want to, because there were certain. You talked about a number of evolutions there, and some of those evolutions were done in very humanistic ways and some of them were done in completely non-humanistic ways, and some in between. But there were times at which decisions were being made with nothing but EBITDA in mind and then you had to be the guy that had to go out there and be the human and convey a very non-human message to people who are having a very human experience. How did that impact you as a leader?

Speaker 3:

It was tough. It was tough. I remember through one of the when we got taken over. I remember flying into a boardroom and being told by the CEO meeting for the first time a bunch of people who were in similar roles in the organisation that had just acquired it. So you know, cat meet dog, collingwood meet Carlton. All of a sudden you're in bed with your own dog and someone trundles around the room and takes your coffee orders, and then the CEO stands up and says right, I need each of you, before morning tea, to complete this spreadsheet and put 50 names on it, because we're going through a headcount reduction exercise. Who can we get rid of?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And leave the room and you're left sitting there, blinking, going, where do we start, how do we actually start? And then you know that then just kicks off the discussion and understanding why it is we do. Because when there's mergers and acquisitions, the first thing that needs to be realized is the synergies around cost reduction. So often the first things that happen are all of these departments that are replicated. If there's two of them, they get turned into one. So then it's just a matter of determining.

Speaker 3:

If there's two companies that come together, you've got to go through a stage of assessment of whose system's better or which process works better, and then determining who are the people that run this process or this system the best.

Speaker 3:

And then you've got to consult with those and talk to them about how they do it and then ultimately, you're ending up having a. You know that then just cascades right through the organisation. So we do a couple of days of thinking and talking and then, like a military operation, you know, the regional leaders would all jump on aeroplanes and go off to their markets and start talking to people, and it was hard, but we understood what the task was. We were very fortunate in, you know, a big, publicly listed company that was well resourced, with a good HR department. So the people how the people were treated and managed, was forefront in our minds to making sure that they understood things. But it's uncomfortable, you know. There are really uncomfortable conversations sometimes to have Because whilst you're also then trying to implement those changes, you're still trying to keep the business ticking along and doing what it's supposed to be doing day to day.

Speaker 2:

How do you stay healthy as a leader through that process?

Speaker 3:

It took me a couple of years to work out that you don't need an entree, you don't need to see the dessert menu and you can probably just have a glass of water with dinner instead of not having one.

Speaker 2:

What about mentally healthy under all that stress?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a really good question. We were fortunate in that, even though I had responsibility for another region, there was three or four other guys and girls who had exactly the same role, looking after different regions. So we would connect and talk a lot and discuss how that we were doing things and how that they were feeling. I actually, over the years I learned that I needed about an hour a week where I just needed to disappear and not tell anyone where I was going and turn my phone off and take a pen and a blank piece of paper and go and sit in a coffee shop or an airport or somewhere and just think like like fair dinkum, just think for 60 minutes and sometimes I'd, at the end of that 60 minutes I'd have nothing on my piece of paper and other times I'd be writing furiously. You know, just getting some clarity with the piece of being not confronted with having to make thousands of decisions a day. You know that's, that's exhausting.

Speaker 2:

Kiralee remind me. That reminds me what Tim's just said about something that John Hardy, the CEO of the RSL here in Tasmania, said. What was the phrase he used, is it? Stand and stare, what's that Stand and stare, stand and stare. Yeah, I think that was it. And again, it was a very similar process of taking that time to recentre and so on.

Speaker 1:

And just being in your own thoughts without the outside noise.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I had another really good trick that my wife, jo, was unfortunately the recipient of, but I used to. She and I actually talked this through and I would leave work and call her and just debrief. She would just listen to me. And about 100 metres from this was some training. This was actually some training.

Speaker 3:

I got on how to deal with these sorts of things, how to compartmentalise and leave work at work and those sorts of things, because when I walked in the door at home I needed to be husband and dad. So when I got to this tree that was about 100 yards from home, that was where I needed to stop talking about work and have a deep breath and do that. It didn't always work. I oftentimes found myself sitting in my car in the driveway, still talking to my wife on the phone, who was looking out the window at me. I'm just unloading all of this work stuff because I just needed to get it out of my head. I just needed to talk it through and get it out of my head and she was tremendous through all of that, just listening and not trying to solve problems. Like you know, I'm a bloke, so I hear something and straightaway go into how do we fix it? Jo was always there to listen, so she was tremendous for support for me while I was in that role.

Speaker 2:

Two colleagues of ex-colleagues of yours. We had the same discussion, and one of them lived in a more regional market, had a longer commute home, and one of the tricks we talked about was there was an intersection that he went past on the way home. It was about halfway home and he would literally stop, change what he was thinking about. He would change what he was listening to on the radio, because he worked in media and so listening to commercial radio, you're always hearing advertising and that sort of stuff. So he would deliberately change what he was listening to listen to a podcast, listen to something else, but make that transition on the way home at some point, so that, rather than getting home and starting to unwind, he'd actually use part of the journey home to unwind. And I think it's a tremendous strategy. I really like that plan, tim. I think it's something a lot of our listeners could learn from, because we can have a bad day at work, but do we allow it to ruin our night at home as well?

Speaker 3:

And it's all pervading. You know, I had a period of time my wife and I met in a radio station and I remember a period of time where Joe was working in a radio station and I was working in a TV station. We'd be having breakfast and the radio would be on and all of a sudden Jo would say, oh bloody hell, that shouldn't be on air right now. And she'd be trying to make phone calls and eat her toast and that sort of stuff and I'd be laughing saying, ah, you know, your day's gone to poo already. And then I'd come home and the news would be on and I'd see a promo or an ad and think, oh bloody hell, that shouldn't be on air yet or that should have finished last week. And Joe would be laughing and I'd be making phone calls trying to get things going.

Speaker 3:

It does, it can be, you can't escape. You know, and this was, you know, this was 20 years ago when there wasn't, you know, podcasts and Netflix and all this on-demand video service didn't exist. You know, People got their news via newspapers and TV and radio. Yeah, newspapers and TV and radio.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's so true.

Speaker 2:

Another colleague of yours at the time and it was actually and you'll know who I'm talking about, but it was one of the cohort of people that were in the similar roles. I'll never forget a conversation that we had in which he said to me mate, if someone does the wrong thing, if someone performs poorly, gets feedback, gets support, continues to perform poorly, or if they behave badly, or he said, I can look them in the eye and say we just don't have a role for you anymore.

Speaker 3:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

The hardest thing that he talked about was saying to someone who hadn't done any of that stuff, had done a good and solid job, had fulfilled their part of the obligation, having to say to those people that we don't have a job, and trying to explain that it's a decision made in a boardroom and someone was going to do that. And the conversation I had with him was and it was referring to you at the same time was, mate, as hard as that is, I'm glad it's you guys doing it, because you'll do it with humanity and dignity. Where there are people out there that will do it with callousness, and if you don't feel it, there's something wrong, isn't there?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I went early in my career and it was a fellow Tasmanian, I think we might be talking about the same person.

Speaker 3:

I had to go to a market and we were restructuring and had to make an entire department redundant and there was 12 people and some of those people had been working there for 20 and 30 years and I had never stood in front of anyone and had a conversation about someone's made a decision and your job doesn't exist anymore, had a conversation about someone's made a decision and your job doesn't exist anymore, and what I learned from that process was the preparation that went into it to treat everyone with empathy and understanding.

Speaker 3:

And I remember having to fly to the market and just before we went into the room to talk to people, this person rang the union because these people were also a member of the union and said look, we're about to have a tough conversation with 12 of your members. Here are their names. Can you contact them today please? He'd also gone through and had a look at the entire industry and the jobs that they were about to lose. He had found all of the job vacancies in the industry right around Australia and put that into a document to be able to hand to them.

Speaker 3:

But when you go into a room and you're standing in front of a dozen people and there's someone from head offices flown in and said thanks for coming here this morning, they generally know what's going on. Yeah, and I remember sharing that news. And the moment you tell someone that their jobs doesn't exist anymore, they stop listening.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So it becomes a really short discussion and you need to have. What I learned was that you needed to have a number of short discussions over a period of about a day, just so that they can digest it and let them think, Because as soon as you sell someone, their job doesn't exist. They're thinking school fees, car payments.

Speaker 1:

Am I going to be?

Speaker 3:

having a holiday. What am I going to tell my wife? Am I going to find another job? What's happening to my super? What am I going to tell my wife? Am I going to find another job? What's happening to my super? All of those things. And I remember being in that market for a day and the manager of that department that we were making redundant actually called us into a meeting at the end of the day with all the staff that had been made redundant and a few of them had a few beers on board by then too, and they actually thanked us for the way that they'd been treated and I sort of thought, wow, you know, we've just taken 12 people's jobs away and I felt sick.

Speaker 3:

But the fact that we were thanked because it had been done with empathy and it had been done with an understanding of what it was that they were going through, it's one of the toughest things I've done. I went through a year where I think and I've talked to other colleagues about this I went through a year where I think and I've talked to other colleagues about this I went through a year where I think I had to make more people redundant than I had to give pay rises to. So that's hard, you know that's hard, and when you're travelling on your own and you're sitting on an aeroplane or you're on your own in a hotel in Toowoomba or Cairns or Ballarat or Bendigo, you do a bit of soul searching and you're wondering why I do this.

Speaker 2:

I think when I look in the mirror and say I wish it didn't have to happen. But if it's got to happen I'm glad I'm doing it, because I'll do it with the most humanity and dignity I can. I think is a great thing, mate. It was about this time. Now I'm going to name the place and if you feel not enough time has passed, we'll get Josh to edit it out. But you remember the market at the time that was probably one of your markets and was the market that gave you so many headaches. It was diabolical for you.

Speaker 3:

Was it in Southern New South Wales, Now my geography of New South Wales isn't all that.

Speaker 2:

You Was it in southern New South Wales. Now my geography of New South Wales isn't all that good, but it was in New South Wales and it has a zoo, oh yeah yeah.

Speaker 3:

So absolutely, absolutely a basket case.

Speaker 2:

Dubbo was a basket case Dubbo, and I'll never forget so. One of the things we talk about is look, I've got to tell you just a little side way I love a good rabbit. I had Uber Eats in Dubbo in 1993. No, actually it wasn't 1993.

Speaker 1:

I was like I don't think you did have it in 1997.

Speaker 2:

No, it was 1997 or something, but it wasn't actually Uber Eats. Yes, I'll never forget the experience of I was sitting and I think I might have been there with you, tim, and we're both cricket fans and I don't know if you remember this night. But the manager in the market at the time was possibly and I won't mention his name, was possibly the most miserable human being I've ever met in my life. He was so desperately unhappy and so desperately clinging to unhappiness and he'd suggested we all have a meal that night at the accommodation. And I'd bailed. I said guys, I'm really tired. I've been on the road a lot, I just need some time. I'm going to watch the cricket.

Speaker 2:

And so I was sitting outside my unit in Dubbo with the television in the doorway, because it was one of those beautiful warm evenings. I had a few beers and I could see you sitting with this gentleman in the restaurant and every now and then you just looked out through the glass and gave me this wistful look gentleman in the restaurant. And every now and then you just looked out through the glass and gave me this wistful look. But I ordered Chinese food that night and about 20 minutes later a kid about eight years old, came hurtling around the corner on his bike and I think that was the original Uber Eats. So I don't know if you remember that, but what you taught me. We talk a lot about different styles of leadership and the importance of visionary leadership, and I don't know if you remember something that you said, because Dubbo was a bit of a joke in the organisation and there was one year where we were talking sort of around the beginning of a year and you said something about Dubbo. Do you remember what that was?

Speaker 3:

What I recall was that when I took responsibility for that market and so I had Canberra, wollongong, orange, dubbo, wagga, griffith, I think, in that region and I remember saying to someone once I'm sick of Dubbo being the punchline it was always sort of in the boardroom, it was always like a threat, you know. If someone wasn't performing, it's like, oh, we could always send you to Dubbo, but that was no, so don't refresh me, it's exactly what you said.

Speaker 2:

I'm sick of Dubbo being the punchline and by the end of this year Dubbo won't be the laughingstock. And it really struck me a number of years later when we were talking to a group of people about visionary leadership and someone said you know, this is what I've got. How do I deal with it? And your words came back to me and I thought I didn't realize at the time, but you changed the vision and you communicated that vision. But you also I remember in that room when you said that, that you almost took away people's permission to joke about Dubbo. So it was almost like I don't want to hear this anymore, guys. And I thought that was a really great example of visionary leadership. And I know that that next 12 months Dubbo didn't become the star performer, but it definitely became a better performer because you had a different vision for it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it really did. I actually got permission from the CEO because we went and found what the record revenue that the business unit had written and we put it up in permanent ink on a whiteboard so that everyone saw it all the time and said that's an outcome. But to get there we need to do a whole lot of things internally. Internally, and the CEO said to me he said if you ever beat that, I will personally fly into Dubbo and take everyone out to dinner, possibly to the Chinese restaurant that you've had a delicious lunch at. And about 18 months later we broke the record. We broke the record and the CEO was true to his word and flew in.

Speaker 3:

If I can add one little other thing, on the day that the CEO flew into Dubbo, he flew in at about lunchtime and we went to the RSL for lunch and I remember lining up at the. They had some ladies serving at these bay maries at the Dubbo RSL and there was fish and I said to the lady can you tell me what sort of fish it is? And she said it's crumbed. And I remember thinking, yep, this is Dubbo, I'm in Dubbo.

Speaker 2:

What kind of music do you normally have here? We have both kinds country and Western. Sorry Dubbo.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was going to say apologies to our Dubbo.

Speaker 3:

And.

Speaker 2:

Canberra.

Speaker 3:

No, I love Dubbo, it's actually a really good market. I apologize to our Dubbo and Canberra and Hobart no, I love Dubbo, it's actually a really good market, and Dubbo is a market that needs to stand on its own feet because it's a long way from anywhere and it's got a very, very viable and solid and vocal business community and it deals with some tough stuff, yeah, but it's a really good market. It's a really good place to be and look.

Speaker 2:

I think that was a tremendous example, because I think Dubbo changed when you set a vision for it, and that's the power of leadership. I know they then had to do all the hard work and all that sort of stuff, but someone gave them a different vision and someone gave the whole organisation a different vision, and it was very easy to fall into that lazy trap of just going along with Dubbo's the Punchline, dubbo's the Joke and, as I say, it was only a number of years later. It really struck me how that one moment was so pivotal, and that's the act of a leader. So, mate, after all this, you ended up taking a year off to reflect because it had been a pretty rocky journey. What did you learn through a year of reflection?

Speaker 3:

Wow a lot. I got to the point where we were restructuring again and I just made the decision internally that I asked myself the question am I prepared to do this again, you know? Am I prepared to do this again, you know? Am I prepared to have another lap around the mulberry bush doing this? And it's something that I'd done in Victoria and I'd done it in New South Wales and I'd done it in Queensland. So I made the decision to jump out and I didn't know what I was going to and I was terrified and I had a young family I've got kids in a good school and bills to pay and my wife Jo't working because, um, she was running the house.

Speaker 3:

She was the ceo of the house. I had no idea about what was happening at home. So in that, in that that year off, I think I ended up thinking I would have six months off and what I found was in the. It took me about three months just to disengage, just to clean, just to clear my head, because I was totally my entire identity was around my job. All of my friends were colleagues. You know, I didn't really have any friends outside of work. Because you're also, you're not only just working with them Monday to Friday, you're jumping on aeroplanes to go and host corporate boxes at football and netball and do those sorts of things on the weekends. So all of a sudden all that's taken away. So it took me about three months just to switch off.

Speaker 3:

It sounds funny that I sort of reconnected with my family, but there had never been any issues at home. Like you know, I used to travel and people would say you poor family, and I was like my kids don't know anything other than dad goes away for two or three days a week and the bonus for me was that every time I walked in the door you get a hero's welcome. When you came home You'd been away for a couple of days but I learned I was at the stage where I didn't know who my kids' friends were. I didn't know who my kids' teachers were. I would get to things that I, if I was home, I would get to the things that they were doing.

Speaker 3:

But that first six months that I had off, my wife was off as well.

Speaker 3:

So we just had a lovely time. You know, we had days where I remember one day we jumped in the car and dropped the kids off at school and then just drove off up into the hills and went on a hike and walked under waterfalls and we just sort of walked around and then we went to a super restaurant on the beach and I falls and we just sort of walked around and then we went to a super restaurant on the beach and I think we then had to leave the car at the restaurant and get an Uber to school to get the kids home. So you know, we had some wonderful days. But then Joe went back to work and I was, so our roles were reversed and I had a really deep understanding and learning around what it takes to run the household. You know, I became the guy who was doing the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, the washing, the ironing, organising the kids' parties, doing the school pick-ups, organising school sport, that sort of stuff which was quite funny.

Speaker 3:

You know, I'd be down at the school swimming, sitting around with a bunch of other mums and it would be a nice day and I'd sort of look out and say, hey, it's a good drying day today. I've got three loads on.

Speaker 1:

I love that.

Speaker 3:

Or you know, it looks a bit cloudy. I need to get home, I've got to get some washing off the load and you know I've always enjoyed cooking but I never really had the chance to cook, so I'd sort of whip up these fabulous meals at home and do all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1:

So three months to clear my head, I can't believe that your wife ever let you go back to work.

Speaker 3:

If I had that at home. I'd be like no, please, forever, I think. When I then eventually went back to work, my eldest daughter said does that mean we're going to stop having yummy dinners? But no, so it took me three months to clear my head, I think we can afford them now.

Speaker 3:

Two-minute noodles is okay, kids. Three months to clear my head. I had some overdue knee surgery. I've had a few knee operations, so I had a knee operation that I needed to have. I surfed, I rode my motorbike, I slept. I got my health really back in shape. I got my diet sorted. I had to make new friends. I started connecting with school parents and sort of making some new friends and just initiating things at home.

Speaker 3:

I'd always been the recipient of whatever was happening in the household, but then having to take control and initiate things at home. So it was a wonderful year and I started reading again. I hadn't been all of the reading I'd ever done was. You know. I used to wake up every morning and before my head was off the pillow I had grabbed my phone and I was having a look at the overnight revenue report to see whether or not we were plus or minus 3%, because I'd have to. You'd be dark. Yeah, exactly right. So it took me a little while, but I got back into reading and found it was absolutely okay to lie on a pile of cushions on the lounge room floor for a day and read a book and scurry outside every now and then to bring the washing in.

Speaker 2:

I shudder to admit this because I know that Kiralee will give me grief over this for years to come. But when my wife, we had I've got four kids, two younger ones who are now 13, 16. When we had them, jane didn't go back to work externally, she worked within our own business. So, because that gave us the flexibility between the kids and she worked a smaller amount and just did what she wanted to do, basically, and we had that luxury. We had a business that she could have a role in and she intended to go back to work. But it was in the days when employers weren't as flexible and weren't as required to be as flexible, and so they were so stringent about what she would need to do when she went back to work. She made the decision to quit work instead, and we were happy with that. She kept doing some work in the business and she got approached by someone about six months before, seven or eight months maybe before we really were ready for her to go back to work, and before the youngest kid was at school and so on, and so we could manage it. So she went back to work and I said youngest kid was at school and so on, and so we could manage it. So she went back to work and I said, yeah, no, that'd be fine, because I mean, I run a business and I can do that from home. I can do both, I'll be fine.

Speaker 2:

And it was mayhem. It took me. So you took you three months to decompress. It took me three months to stop kidding myself that I could actually do both effectively at the same time and get to a point where I went. You know what? Maybe I've got to have more realistic expectations about what I can do. It was a great period of time and I probably focused much more on being the parent than on running the business for around 12 months, and then another 12 months sort of a bit of a limbo in between, as they start to go to school. It's time that I treasure. I would say to every father do some of that, because we tend not to. And it's time that if I hadn't done it then, I would never have the opportunity now, and it's definitely changed my outlook on life and definitely changed my relationship with the kids.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, I agree, I think if anyone's in a position where they can do it, I'd strongly recommend it. Yeah. I strongly recommend it. It's terrifying For me. It was, you know, and you know when you're ready to go back to work, but I just wasn't ready and you know, taking that year was just wonderful.

Speaker 1:

So after that 12 months, when you went back to work, what was different for you in how and what you did in every day?

Speaker 3:

That's a really good question, kiralee. I think when I got to about six or eight months in on my big what I called the big break and the big break incorporated the big think I really didn't know what I wanted to do. So a lot of internal soul searching around what am I good at, what presses my buttons, what do I don't want to do those sorts of things. When I went back, I went back to a completely different organisation that was run by a couple of entrepreneurs with 20-odd staff who were located around the planet. But I had a.

Speaker 3:

I had an understanding that I'd left the party while it was still fun in my media job, and I came to the understanding really quickly that my workplace was going to be very different because it was probably not going to be as much fun, which sounds a little bit weird. But being in the media and being in the TV and a radio network, you know every day there's celebrities walking past your window and you've got tickets to everything and it's just a vibrant, fun environment. So I just really had to then sort of focus down on what I was trying to do and what I was achieving and having more of a life balance. You know work is something that I do and I want to enjoy it, but my life is also very much around my wife and my family and my kids and what they're doing and what we're doing next.

Speaker 2:

And I think we probably always say that, don't we? But probably while you were in the media, it was something you said but not something you did, whereas maybe what had changed for you afterwards was it became something that you actually did.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, exactly right.

Speaker 3:

And I had gotten to the point where I had realised through my media career that I sort of really found I really enjoy and get great reward from identifying where there's some talent or ability and getting an understanding of what their motivation is and that they want to do and then taking them where they want to go but can't go by themselves.

Speaker 3:

And that's where I really got my satisfaction in seeing young boys and girls come into an organisation and you can see that they've got a spark or they've got some natural leadership abilities and to be able to push them and test them leadership abilities and to be able to push them and test them. And some of my greatest what I say my own greatest achievements in work were identifying kids who were sales reps, who then you made them sales managers, who then moved into becoming general managers and then they became regional general managers and those you know, moving them up and making sure that they had the skills and seeing them succeed. I really got great satisfaction out of that. So when I went into my new job, it was just making sure that people understood what their roles were and how they you know how did they get satisfaction out of their role, making them, you know, not just get caught up in the grind, you know, understanding what, the vision of the company and which direction we were heading in and making sure that there was a bit of fun.

Speaker 1:

Is it fair to say that you felt like you'd outgrown where you were, like that you'd had such a period of significant growth, of having so much clarity around who you were and what you wanted to do? And the reason I ask that question is because I think that there will be a lot of leaders out there that may feel like that, that may feel like they've outgrown where they are out there, that may feel like that, that may feel like they've outgrown where they are, but sometimes lack the courage to say that out loud and put the actions behind that of what that means, like they feel it in their soul that this isn't what sets me on fire anymore. But what does that even look like if it isn't here every day? What?

Speaker 3:

would you say to them? I'd say to them go and have a think, go and find an hour and go and sit down with a bit of paper and find out what's important to you and get a real understanding of yourself. What do you like doing and what do you enjoy and what do you don't like doing, and what are you good at and bad at, because there's some people who are very good at things who don't like doing them.

Speaker 3:

So they get pushed and pigeonholed into jobs. Pushed and pigeonholed into jobs. So I would say to someone do that. And I mean I had a lot of conversations with my own brother who was in an executive role in a big company and he went through a lot of angst working for two different companies. I remember not sort of mentoring him, but just having a lot of conversations with him and getting to the point of saying to him mate, there's a lot of companies out there. Maybe this one's not necessarily right for you. Just because it's a big global brand and just because everyone knows that brand doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right place for you to work. Because it was a values. It was a true values clash. What he believed about what he wanted out of his work and the company that he should have worked for didn't match with what was happening in the workplace.

Speaker 2:

That's not reconcilable, is it? Yeah?

Speaker 3:

It caused him so much grief and he fought it and fought it, and fought it until he arrived at the point to say, yeah, it's okay to leave because there's a lot of people out there and there's a lot of businesses. You know, just I said to him go and find a company that you think you'd like to work for, and then ring them up and see if there's something going. You know and it sounds like high risk, but I think there's a lot to be said for you know, find a company and learn about them, somewhere that you'd really like to work or something that you'd really like to do and just make a phone call, just start the process.

Speaker 2:

It's not that you need a job, it's that you've got some connection, some alignment with them. So, tim, you mentioned a phrase I loved you left while the party was still fun, and it would be easy to hear that and think that that sounds like there's some regret there, but I don't think there is. Am I right in reading that, when you say you left while the party was still fun, that that's actually a good thing to leave before it turns sour?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that that's actually a good thing to leave before it turns sour. Yeah, and it was. I mean, the media is an aggressive, high-profile, fast-moving, deadline-driven, hungry business.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So I had been fortunate enough to have been elevated into some jobs. I was really tested and pushed and stretched and I learned a lot. I'm very grateful to the company for all of the training that I was given. But I did. I just then got to the stage where I was thinking I'm capable, but I just can see that I'm not going to continue to enjoy it. I'm not ready to go and do this again. And I actually had three weeks off at Christmastime and had that thought and talked it through with Joe and had a bit of a think about it and thought maybe I just need these three or four weeks of Christmas and I'll go back and do it. And then by the time I got to about Easter time, I thought, no, I think I'm done, but I now need to see it through to the end of the financial year because there's a whole bunch of things we got to deliver on and then, once the budgets go through, and then we had a restructure in about August, september, that was it for me.

Speaker 3:

So it actually took about nine months of thinking to bring it to effect.

Speaker 2:

Yeah right, I had a similar experience, but it was much quicker that my last job before I started this company. I wasn't particularly happy, took some time off over Christmas, thought I'd reflect, went back feeling fresh, made it to morning tea and realised that I just couldn't do it anymore. And you do know when it's time, don't you? And actually, that's why I think that really resonated for me when you said you left while the party was still fun, because I don't think I did. I think the party went flat and I stayed too long, hoping to, you know, kick some life back into it. And I look back on my career and think I could have gone a year earlier and back myself to find something and I did, obviously, but I could have done it sooner. So, tim, when you went back to work and I know that there's some boundaries here around what you can talk about, but it was a bit of a wild ride, wasn't it? Yeah, and I think a lot of what you learned as a manager of change probably helped you through that process.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it did. A fabulous company run by two co-founders. The company was about five or six years old, very driven, very successful, very smart young guys Well, not young guys about the same age as me, are they young?

Speaker 2:

guys, yeah Well, not young guys about the same age as me?

Speaker 3:

Are they young guys? Yeah, and they was. You know, I can't go into a lot of detail about it, but they were selling a world's best course. They'd created a course which was the world's best in its area and it was digital and it was sold via digital marketing. So all the advertising was Facebook, instagram, youtube was sold via digital marketing. So all the advertising was Facebook, instagram, youtube, and that would create leads who would then be converted to attend a webinar, and they'd watch a webinar and then hopefully convert into buy the course. What was so fabulous about the company was that it had about 30 staff, but when the people, the customers, bought the course, they weren't customers, they were called students and there was a curated community that the company, at its expense, ran, and there was, you know, well, over 10,000 of them, and so the company's purpose really became about serving those students and helping those students on their journey to build their own entrepreneurial story and to build their own businesses. So the company had its finger very much on the pulse of its customers and students, and serving them and the success of them drove the success of the company. Yeah, really fabulous place to be Very, very different.

Speaker 3:

You know I'm working a nine-to-five and then you know my chief operating officer. She was in South Africa, so about four o'clock pm she'd come online and I'd have an hour or so with her on a video conference call. And then our marketing guy was in London and he'd come online at about 6 pm on my paypal for a bit of food and then I'd hand over to them and eventually go to bed and wake up in the morning and hope everything had transpired. You know, while you're asleep, yeah, but great company, great company, very nimble, very quick-thinking guys. You know one of the directors. He's the sort of guy. He's a high-risk, high-reward guy. He's the sort of guy that would just jump out of a plane and think he'd jump out of a plane without a parachute and think we'll work out how to make one on the way down.

Speaker 3:

Yeah right.

Speaker 2:

And invariably he did, until he didn't from the sound of it, because things did change, didn't they?

Speaker 3:

Things well. Covid came along, so we also the company also ran big events. So COVID the business was all around teaching entrepreneurs how to set up and run an online business. The business was all around teaching entrepreneurs how to set up and run an online business, and what happened with COVID was that we had about 10 years accelerated growth towards e-commerce in the space of one year and, as a result, these guys have created this business and they were first movers. They were first to market and all of a sudden, we had thousands of competitors surfacing. It became a very congested space. You know people, businesses that are out there selling online training courses can be a notoriously shady space to be trading in.

Speaker 3:

And these guys had very high integrity and very high ethics and it was all about doing the right thing. You know they'd spent millions and millions of dollars supporting a charity, sort of in Southeast Asia restoring sight to people. But they didn't need to be doing. You know they'd spent a high percentage on that. They, you know, had a giving out a huge volume of microloans to people in third world countries to start up their own businesses and those sorts of things and the space just got very congested.

Speaker 3:

We had a big event that was about to happen. We'd sold 2,500 tickets. We had the Gold Coast Convention Centre completely booked out. I had sponsors coming in from all around the world America, asia to our trade show and 10 days before it happened that event, covid shut it down. So we had to pivot. You know everyone talks about COVID and we had to pivot. And we had to pivot very quickly and we did and we were very, very successful. But these guys also had other interests and everything at play and sort of. They're now, I think, at a stage where they had made a decision whether or not the company can continue the way that it continues and whether or not they wanted to continue to do that if they couldn't maintain the level of integrity in their space that they wanted to do so. So you know, hats off to them. They did it very, very well and they have. Every one of their customers couldn't say a bad word about them. They just serviced them and looked after them and did very, very well with them.

Speaker 3:

You know they didn't just take their money and say here's your course. They actually were available and communicating to them, but it was a very different business, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And, as CEO, how did you use your past experiences to help the staff group that were disseminated all over the world? To help the staff group who were disseminated all over the world? How did you use your experiences going through change to help them cope with what was obviously a fast-changing organisation?

Speaker 3:

It became a matter of just making sure that they were communicated with all of the time. Everyone knew what was going on. Yeah, we used a lot of. You know, we used technology very, very well. You know we had little windows open and chat groups happening and those sorts of things happening all the time, but it was again around communication, the directors of the business.

Speaker 3:

They had another startup that they were working on, so that's sort of how I got to be in the CEO role, so they sort of left me to do that. But there was this constant evolution within the business, you know coming up with ideas. You know I'd get to work and they'd say, right, we're thinking about doing this. It's like right, okay, how are we going to do it?

Speaker 3:

Just how are we going to do this? And you know there would be dead ends, but that was okay, because these are dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneurs who are prepared to take risks, they're prepared to have failure, but they're high-risk, high-reward. So it just became about with the staff, about communicating with the staff and making sure the staff understood what it was that we were doing, because it was a very nimble organization.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, kiralee, do you have any final questions for Tim? I've got one final question, but I suspect you've got something you want to ask him. No, you go, you go. So my final question to you, tim, is, as you sit here today and you look back, and you look back at that young Tim Davenport coming into maybe your first management role, first role, where all of a sudden the level of responsibility ramped up a bit, if you were able to sit with that Tim Davenport now, what advice would you give him?

Speaker 3:

Find a very good mentor early. Find someone who's trodden the path. Or find someone who's close enough to the business maybe not even close enough to the business. Find someone who understands business and who's beendden the path. Or find someone who's close enough to the business, maybe not even close enough to the business. Find someone who understands business and who's been there before you that you can just sit with and not unload but debrief, just communicate and say these are the challenges I'm facing and be brave enough to say I don't know how to deal with it. I don't know. I know that there are options, but I perhaps don't know which is the best. Or can you talk me through? You know what would be the particular outcomes if I went this way or that way, just so, for me it would be finding a mentor, and I was very lucky in that I had some very good people around me early, that I didn't necessarily anoint them as mentors, but I just gravitated towards them.

Speaker 3:

You know, I just gravitated towards them and it was always. I was very lucky in that I would sit in rooms and there would be a you know a woman speaking in a senior role, and I used to just sit there and think, wow, I wish I thought like that, I wish I spoke like that, and try to find them and have a coffee with them on the morning tea break, or reach out to them and communicate with them and just see if you can get an understanding of what they would do in your situation, because I only had success by taking all of the good bits off all of the other people that I'd seen and trying to meld them into my own style. That was all I had.

Speaker 2:

I know that you coach kids' sport and so on now. So I know you've got a role as a mentor and I saw firsthand some of those mentors that I presume you're talking about and the strength that came from those relationships. Are you a mentor to anyone now?

Speaker 3:

Yes, I am, I am, and it's not a TAFE course. You do and you get a certificate and you know it's. Yeah, there's a couple of people who regularly reach out to me. One of them I employed when he was about 18 and he and his wife their life is very much following the path of me and my own wife's. But I remember saying to him early if you listen to me, I can give you. He said I wanted to. You know, I want us to be like you and I want to have your success. And I said if you listen to me, I can give you all of that, probably about 10 years earlier than I got it. You've got the skill and he has. He's had, you know he's had a very successful career and now runs his own business.

Speaker 3:

Him and his wife run his own business. So you know there's a couple of people out there that I have.

Speaker 2:

That's incredibly rewarding.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it is Simon. And even you know I coach an under-13 girls football team. We just appointed a. We asked the team to select a captain just last week and the young lady that is the captain you know, even just having a five-minute chat to her about what it means to be a leader and you know some people just have it this kid's going to go all the way In business or in industry or with whatever she's going to do. She's going to be the person that naturally people listen to and respect. And even just having little three and four-minute conversations with a young lady like that, who you can see has the spark and the drive and the understanding to be a leader, that's really rewarding. Just to be able to identify that and see that early and know that if you can just guide her, keep her within the running rails and keep her moving forward, she's going to have a wonderful life and hold many leadership positions, I hope.

Speaker 2:

I love that philosophy that sometimes we never know we'll never see the good we do, that sometimes we never know we'll never see the good we do. It's just it's got to be enough to know that we've done what we could and somewhere down the track she may do something or be something and in some way you may have contributed to that. And I think it's a lovely thought, isn't it, to know that that could be 20 years down the track and it might be. You might have contributed 1% and she might not even join those dots, but somewhere you were part of that fabric. And I think that's one of the things that really defines the best leaders we see is they're so attached and they're so motivated by the growth of other people and what other people can achieve, and they get personal gratification just from knowing that they might have played some tiny role in that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah. I had a great CEO who just said to me one day, just do the right thing, use common sense and if there's bad news, give it to me early. You know that wasn't that one. If there's bad news?

Speaker 1:

give it to me early. You know that wasn't that one.

Speaker 3:

If there's bad news, give it to me early. I remember it, you know, just do the right thing, use common sense and give me bad news early. Oh, I love it, you know, if you're ever in doubt. It was kind of like, right, am I doing the right thing here If I use my common sense, and is there anything else I should be telling them?

Speaker 2:

Well, and is there anything else I should be telling them? Well, tim, that's been fantastic and awesome to catch up with you, mate. I mean, we obviously worked together a reasonable amount a number of years ago and then it's been quite some time since we really caught up and I have thoroughly enjoyed it For our listeners, and this tells you a lot about the quality of the human that is Tim. A couple of days after I reached out and sort of connected with him and we had a bit of a chat, I got a book in the mail called the Lion Tracker's Guide to Life, and it arrived yesterday in fact, and I sat down last night and started reading it. One of my goals is that I'll read a significant enough chunk of that to be able to share more of that when we, kiralee and I record the rest of this podcast. So, tim, final word tell us about the Lion Tracker's Guide and why it impacted your life.

Speaker 3:

The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life by Boyd Vardy. It was a vodcast I saw by Boyd Vardy. Guide to Life by Boyd Vardy. It was a vodcast I saw by Boyd Vardy. He's a South African guy where he was being interviewed by Tim Ferriss and the guy's just got an incredible story and I bought his book. And I wish I'd bought his book a year earlier because that was at the end of my, when I had my year off, but it was basically it was. You know, without giving too much away. It's about understanding your true self and being comfortable, in that you don't know where you're going but every further step you make along the way will expose you to something else that might be good or positive, that might take you down a different path. So you know that whole being comfortable with, being uncomfortable, that sort of story. So it really touched me. It was a great little story. It's not a big read. I'd encourage anyone who hears this to maybe look up Boyd Vardy or find that book and read it, because it's a great read.

Speaker 2:

And the language is beautiful, from what I've seen so far.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's just a lovely story almost delivered like a fable. Yeah, it's a great little story.

Speaker 2:

It's a lovely gift and it's special coming from you, mate, so I really appreciate that and I'm going to enjoy reading it. Really loved spending this hour with you. I can't believe we've spent an hour talking, but from memory that's the way it used to be. When we used to catch up. The time used to fly Always did Always.

Speaker 3:

Did Simon Always time too, to play an ad and pay the bills right.

Speaker 2:

All the best mate. Thank you.

Speaker 3:

Thank you very much, simon, thank you, kiralee, and all the best with your podcast. Cheers, cheers.

Speaker 2:

Cheers. Come and see the real thing. Come and see the real thing. Come and see. Come and see the real thing. Come and see the real thing.