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Introduction

Being an agile executive is about understanding your strengths, leading with purpose, and making choices that are right for you and your situation. It’s about understanding the trade-offs that each of us makes, being comfortable with that and getting on with our contribution—in whatever we do. It’s about continuing to grow and evolve, no matter what stage of career or life we are in.

Over the past twelve years I have been a leadership advisor, working with many executives and managers to help them build and sustain the people part of their businesses. My work as a partner and co-owner of NGS Global has two parts to it: the first is about partnering with clients on executive search and recruitment (commonly known as headhunting), the second is about enabling teams and individuals regarding their strengths and career aspirations, while concurrently being, what one of our clients referred to as, a ‘carefully blunt’ sounding board.

A few years ago, I was getting requests to give many talks or workshops about combining my professional and personal life. This included more general things like how do you do what you do? How do you manage making difficult career decisions? How do you manage trade-offs and career risks? Early on I found these challenging, being much more comfortable on the professional side rather than talking about my personal journey. After all, I expect not many people would want to make some of the choices I made, and there is nothing necessarily better or worse about that. But, I was able to blend aspects of that journey with the perspective and context that I have now, and frame that in a way that seemed to provide a useful lens for others.

Then my daughter Katie shaped the challenge for this book by giving me an empty folio for Mother’s Day. On the front cover was ‘In My Mother’s Words’ and the rest was blank. She explained to me that it was about time I gathered some thoughts together about my ‘blended life’ and eclectic career and put them into some sort of order.

My objective is to provide insights on what makes for executive and management success—drawing on both the professional and the personal. Some of these insights tend to be more critical for women, who, from my experience, second-guess themselves far too much. It is about having a good sense of purpose, knowing your strengths, where you might need some support, making considered decisions and then leading yourself and others with resolve. We all have highs and lows, and none of us are perfect.

This book is also about how to be a ‘guilt-free’ executive and, particularly, how to be a ‘guilt-free’ female executive. Female managers and executives tend to have to make more choices more often and, to a greater extent than men, we are expected to justify or explain them. Over about five different careers, and all the travel that went with it, I was often asked how my husband managed with our four growing children when I was away. My standard response was, ‘Well about as well as I manage when he is away’. I don’t think he was ever asked that question. When we make considered choices, for my husband and I, it was just figuring out how to do the things that were important to us—blending work, family and friends. I came to realise that I did not do the ‘guilt thing’ and maybe that was a very positive approach.

The decisions we need to make aren’t easy and we need to weigh up the trade-offs (as there are always trade-offs), but then get on with it. Those of us with real choices are the lucky ones, I count myself amongst those, but then sometimes we do also have to work at making our ‘luck’.

An Eclectic Career Journey

My career has been a little unusual, particularly for someone who started her professional career in 1970. The career start was not unusual—as a high school teacher in Sydney’s outer suburbs—but then it progressed to encompass about five different careers, alongside the parenting one.

Following eight or nine years of high school teaching, I transitioned into a Head Office consulting role. Then, after moving to Melbourne, I had a career shift with about eight months of freelance work before landing a role as a lecturer in what was then the library and information services department at RMIT University. Over another six years and some promotions, this transitioned to a Head of Department role in Information Services leading a considerable amount of change.

Alongside this and parenting four school age children I was completing a PhD part-time at Melbourne Business School (MBS) in an area that became a passion—the link between business and technology strategies and their implementation in large companies.

As I was completing my PhD, MBS offered me a position as Director of the Centre for Technology Management. My colleague Peter Weill and I completed a major international industry-funded program and published a book with Harvard Business School Press.

Then came the invitation to join the large US-headquartered advisory services firm Gartner. Leading businesses locally, regionally, then being part of an innovative global team, was a huge learning exercise. The experience of career diversity was raised another notch.

After six years at Gartner there was a second Harvard Business School Press book going through production, and I thought I had achieved what I could at Gartner at the time. I had some career options and took the invitation to re-join Melbourne Business School, this time as Associate Dean.

Then after a year or so, Gartner came back to me with another challenging role—to lead new product development globally as part of a major transformation program. It was too good an opportunity to turn down and the then Dean at MBS was understanding—as was my generous spirited husband, Robert, who knew it meant that the Qantas Melbourne/Los Angeles/New York crew would again get to see a lot of me.

All the while my friend, Mark Lelliott, was suggesting that at some stage I should come and work with him and his colleagues. I was not sure what that really meant, as taking on a partner role in a leadership consultancy and executive search firm would be yet another career shift. But that is what I did when we could see that the Gartner transformation was well on track to double digit growth.

That leadership advisory firm is now NGS Global and that is where I have been Managing Partner and co-owner with colleagues since 2007. This is the longest I have been in any role. The reason is that every day is different and the work is always stimulating. It is a privilege to be an integral part of the journey of so many individuals and organisations.

Both my academic and commercial roles have always involved quite a lot of writing and presentations, but usually about research and professional areas of interest to clients. I have written regular columns about technology management and leadership over the years. This career journey has meant many lessons along the way and has, thus, been pivotal to this book and its evolution.

Journeys on the Home Front

While my professional journey progressed, our kids—David, Andrew, Patrick, Katherine (Katie)— grew up, met and married partners, and had their own kids. Each has made their own journey and today we are lucky that they are not just our kids but also valued friends of ours, as are their partners.

Their journeys have meandered a bit too. From an initial interest in law to history and education (David), teaching to theatre and performance (Andrew), a determined jazz trumpeter who plays many genres and leads others in music (Patrick), and combining occupational therapy and student well-being (Katie).

Even my husband Robert veered from his PhD in chemistry to being CEO for industry, professional associations and regulatory bodies, none of which required a chemistry qualification.

The lesson for all of us is to study what you are passionate about as it is likely that you will succeed in that area—or it might be a great base for something else entirely. You never know where it might take you.

This book is about finding your passion and your purpose, focusing on what you are good at, and making considered decisions about risks and rewards. It will introduce you to the passions of others and how they shaped those into careers with meaning—careers that appear to have meandered but where the professional passion evolved along with the individual’s personal journey.

We are each people with many different facets to our lives, or many ‘faces’, but how do we integrate those so that we thrive with the decisions that we make? Knowing ourselves well is important to being able to lead others well. We need to be able to build trust, through sharing some of our vulnerabilities, so that others will then trust us. It helps if we are continuous learners, with a good level of curiosity, who are able to glean insights from others.

The Agile Executive is in three parts: The first part of the book is about how we grow our careers through a series of decisions, rather than a pre-determined plan. The second part of the book is about how we lead others through change, and draws more on the professional work we do. We each have much to learn from others and the third part of the book brings together the learnings and insights from over twenty female executives and managers.