David Gee [00:00:00]:
Some point, when you’re interviewing for a a CISO, you’re not looking back at the degree. You’re not looking back at their accreditation. That’s all foundational, but what you’re looking for is you’re looking for, do they have the right sort of international experiences, experiences in driving change, experiences in talking to boards and their behaviors in in doing that. Those things are what makes up a true leader, and you can actually build those and develop those over time.

Karissa Breen [00:00:37]:
Joining me today is David Gee, adviser at JS Careers, Bain and Co, and Amitel. And today, we’re discussing how to aspire and grow into a CISO. So, David, thanks for finally joining, and welcome.

David Gee [00:00:55]:
Thank you so much.

Karissa Breen [00:00:56]:
So, David, I wanna talk about you just for a moment and for people who perhaps don’t know you. You’ve you’ve held some very heavy hitting titles. People would look

Karissa Breen [00:01:07]:
look you up on on LinkedIn. You’ve had

Karissa Breen [00:01:07]:
some really big roles over the years. So I think you’re probably the better person to ask around how to grow into, you know, a CISA or CIO as a leader. So maybe let’s start about building a career. And I would say my follow on question to that would be, you know, leadership is really, really hard. And sometimes I’ve found over the last, you know, twelve or so years I’ve been in this space that people get into these leadership roles and they discover, well, actually, I don’t really enjoy managing people. So share whatever you feel, what comes up in your mind when I ask you that question. I wanna get into some of the specifics.

David Gee [00:01:43]:
If I go right back, right, let let’s go back to when I was at on high school. Okay? So in high school, I I played basketball and rugby and all that sort of things, right, but I’d I’d love basketball as my key sport. I just, you know, excelled at it. And then, I was the the best shooter in the team, and I was getting promote, you know, into big higher higher teams. And then at one point, you know, get into the second and the first and first first for two years. And then my coach said to me, David, can you actually, can you stop being a shooter and just pass the ball, be the point guard? And I was like, what do you mean? I’m the best shooter. No, no. I want you to make others better.

David Gee [00:02:14]:
And, and that was my first sort of lesson in leadership, which is being out of your comfort zone and doing things that, you know, that aren’t natural to you and then trying to make others better for the team rather than you being the star. That was my first sort of stretch moment where I was like, oh my gosh, can I do this? Can I actually be the point guard rather than the shooter? So to me, I really believe that that was something that took me a good stab. So when I got into my career and, you know, I started, and by the way, I was married at 20 at university and I was doing a sort of odd jobs, but I had some principles in my honor to do beside the fact that I had a wife and kid to support. I really wanted to make sure that whatever I did, I enjoyed, and I didn’t wanna be stuck at any one industry or company or country. I had this motion. I didn’t know how to do it, but I, to me, it was like, how do I have a career with enables me to keep learning and doing things and keep, you know, reinventing myself. And then if I can do that, then I won’t get stuck in the new place. And to me, that was sort of my principles I I I work with, and that kinda led me down the path of, you know, being a CIO for twenty years and a CSO with HSBC.

David Gee [00:03:14]:
And then my last role, I did three, four years with Macquarie running tech cyber and data risk. So to me, the iterations was all about leadership and all around trying to reinvent myself and then trying to do different things, if that makes sense.

Karissa Breen [00:03:27]:
I used to work at a bank. That’s how I started my security career historically. So and I I think everyone listening to the show has definitely heard me say that so many times, but you may not have known that. So I have a question for you considering your background and leadership. What I found at times working in a bank, there are people who are in these heavy hitting roles. I don’t know if their leadership was genuine, though. Have you seen that? And then tell me more about what genuine than leadership means to you.

David Gee [00:03:55]:
In a recruitment standpoint, right, you’re looking you’re looking to to classify people. So if so if I doing recruitment or screening candidates, for example, right, I’ll I’ll be able to figure out, you know, pretty quickly within five minutes, what’s this person’s DNA? What what drives them? Are are they a person maybe you just uncrewed, which is, are they going to be a painkiller in terms of they they’re gonna come in and actually make a big difference in the organization or they’re just the vitamin, right? If they have vitamin, they’re actually just something that’s nice and might help progress things, but actually not gonna make a big difference. And to me, leadership is about making the big difference, you know, being the painkiller, the going and solving big problems and being willing to take the hits with that. Now, you know, there are a lot of people who are in the art of survival and their survival means I’m going to just stay under the, under the pulpit, not taking any chances, you know, speak up at all times and be visibly a leader, but actually when it comes down to taking the hard yards or, you know, get taken the hits because some of your team screwed up, That’s not leadership to me. Okay. That’s that’s just being a manager. And so you you see both of those type of people in the organizations and there’s statistically, you say there’s probably 14% of people in the organizations who are true leaders and wander the

Karissa Breen [00:05:03]:
hard yards, wanna make a

David Gee [00:05:04]:
difference, wanna transform, and to make changes happen.

Karissa Breen [00:05:06]:
So what are the rest of the people doing? Just sort of sitting on the bus waiting for someone to drive them somewhere. What does that look like?

David Gee [00:05:13]:
Life goes on. So we all have different motivations. Right? Some some people are motivated by just wanting to go to work to meet ends and pay the bills and have fun outside of work. Everybody’s motivated a little differently, different stages of your life, different stage of your career, you motivate differently. And so it’s, it just takes an army to have different people to make up an organization. You need to work yourself out in terms of what makes you tick and, you know, what’s the person you want to be. And therefore you wanted to make the sacrifices to like take my, in my case, right? I worked across pharmaceuticals insurance with MetLife in Japan. I was pharmaceuticals in Australia, China, Asia Pack, Japan, The Us.

David Gee [00:05:52]:
So I moved, you know, five times five countries. You know, if you’re willing to be uncomfortable and learn new things, you know, be uncomfortable and grow because you have to speak different languages, deal with people who, you know, may not get it the way you get it and then work with that sort of understand that that makes you grow faster. I think because you’re out of your comfort zone, you’re in thrown in the deep end, literally with, you know, with large teams, small teams, and both of those have different stresses. Right? So to me, that’s some people wanna do that. Other people say, no. No. No way. I don’t wanna ever, you know, be involved in something that’s so different and foreign to me.

Karissa Breen [00:06:26]:
Okay. I got a couple of questions about corporates. I’m ex corporate myself. I always say to people I was a really bad employee. I’m definitely a better entrepreneur, definitely an entrepreneur at heart through and through. But I wanna talk about climbing the corporate ladder. Now and there’s so many questions I have around this, but one thing that I observed in my career early on is someone could literally be hopeless in the corporation, but survive in terms of any you know, when there’s a restructure, they always survive. There could be someone who was really talented in terms of their craftsmanship, but would always be the first person out the door because people didn’t like them.

Karissa Breen [00:07:03]:
So perhaps their social prowess or their social game wasn’t as strong as the other person who maybe technically wasn’t as good or but people liked them. So talk to me more about how people in these corporations can climb the corporate ladder with having a good social strategy and a good social game.

David Gee [00:07:21]:
It’s a good good question. I mean, I, you know, wrote a book last year, which I came out called the aspiring CEO and CEO, and then I talk a lot about, you know, soft skills. Now, to me, every individual is made up of all the above, right? So you’ve got a, a series of skills, knowledge, experience, and behavior skills, knowledge, experience, behavior. So to me, you know, in early in your career, you, you, you build up those foundations of skills and knowledge, things that you’ll want to, you know, you think is going to help you with as a certification, accreditation, you know, whether it’s networking, whether it’s now pump engineering, you know, skills and then knowledge around how to do that across, for example, living industry. So then the realization is, and I maybe to your point, is that what matters more is actually for the people who do succeed for the right reasons, because sometimes people succeed with the wrong reasons. Your experiences and behaviors, right? Top of the equation. That’s actually how you act, how you perform, how you, how you do things when no one’s watching. For example, that’s part of your brand.

David Gee [00:08:19]:
People see you being a leader to get stuff done, you know, ask problems, solve problems, to bring a team on the journey with you to, you know, make change happen. That’s all becomes, you know, your experience and then your behavior to then, you know, for example, say no to boards, say, say no to your boss, you know, when then things are tough. All those things to me makes up what makes a great leader. And you’re right. There are people who hide in the shadows and then they, somehow survive. But listen, that’s not the way to live. The way to live is, is to, you know, get out there and do things that you enjoy make some money on the way, but the money is not the motivation. It’s me having the challenge and learning and, you know, continuous learning and then making people that you work for work with, sorry, better and the best versions themselves to me is so motivating.

David Gee [00:09:06]:
I just love that part of it where, you know, you can, you know, develop these people into CIOs or CSOs and or leaders because of their, maybe some coaching you gave them or some tips you gave them. And, and, you know, without overdoing it, you can actually provide them, you know, little anchors and north stars that help them through the whole career.

Karissa Breen [00:09:24]:
So what about people that play the game, though? Like, I mean, I’ve been in companies. It’s like, oh, that guy’s playing the game or she’s playing the game. I hear that a lot. What what do you think people mean by that person’s playing the game?

David Gee [00:09:35]:
Well, as you say that, you know, people who who do that in your organizations have done it in the past. Right? They’re playing by different set of rules. They definitely get away with it sometimes. They they maybe get promoted. Now what what that means is the people who they’re working for perhaps are okay with that. Cause they’re, you know, very loyal, they’re very supportive. So therefore they’re not gonna actually ever feel challenged by that person. That’s playing the game.

David Gee [00:09:58]:
Okay. And so I’ve seen many really bad examples of all that examples of people playing the game. And to me, you see that and I and I go, that’s just how not how I wanna live. That’s not how I wanna, you know, see myself in any fashion from an integrity standpoint. So how do I try to just avoid even going down another path or, you know, trying to acknowledge that that’s okay. Because that’s not okay. Those those people get caught up eventually, maybe. But look, I think it’s all about you living with yourself and knowing that you’re doing what you believe is important and making a difference to the world.

Karissa Breen [00:10:30]:
So So you said that you’ve seen some bad examples. Can you provide one?

David Gee [00:10:35]:
Yeah. I can. And I why why name companies? But I I was, you know, interviewing for a very senior role, and I I got, you know, some stakeholders involved, senior stakeholders involved that were in the c suite and said, can you interview this candidate? Because, you know, it’s really important that you have, you know, you get buy in on this candidate. And then they came around and said, no, no, no. Can you actually instead of hiring this person involved, can you go and hire Carissa who’s not even interviewed for the job? Right.

Karissa Breen [00:10:58]:
And I

David Gee [00:10:58]:
was like, oh, that’s interesting. That person is not qualified. Actually, he’s a bit of a muppet, to be honest. Okay. And I was thinking, okay. They’re playing, they’re playing the game. They’re actually wanting me to hire the wrong person for the, for the wrong reasons. And, and, you know, I’m I’m saying to them, you know, I’m in a Zoom meeting saying, thank you very much for your input.

David Gee [00:11:16]:
And I and I completely ignored them because I know they’re not playing with a straight bat. Right. In terms of intent, what they wanted was the person to come into that job, a senior role and actually be a muppet. Right. Be someone who would not do the right thing. And so that you get that and say, hey. Do you then work through that in a in a in a graceful fashion so you don’t tell them off tell them off or say you that’s inappropriate. Just move on with it.

David Gee [00:11:37]:
Okay? And then get do what’s right rather than do what someone else is aiming towards.

Karissa Breen [00:11:42]:
So why would that person wanna hire someone to your words and muppet? Is it because

David Gee [00:11:46]:
because it makes their life easy makes their life easy.

Karissa Breen [00:11:47]:
Is it because they’re not gonna challenge them? Like, okay. Well, I need this person.

David Gee [00:11:50]:
Exactly. Now that’s listen. I I as I said, I I do a bit of adviser work for today’s careers from creating and tech and cyber and data, and and we know that, you know, most people do wanna do the right things in terms of, can I hire the best person possible? Right? And then you put forward five candidates out of maybe thirty, forty, you screened, and you go, well, actually, they don’t like you with these people. Why is why is that? Is there there’s something else going on that I don’t understand because the candidates you put forward may be amazing. Right? Amazing. Got the experience, a background, the right sort of cultural fit, particularly all the boxes, but don’t get the job. Then he realized, actually, they’re a bit afraid of this person because they’re a little bit too high powered or they may be fearful that they might take their job. And, you know, I learned it in my career, Chris, is that, you know, I learned this from a a guy who was, you know, end end up being the global head of HR for Lilly Pharmaceutical, which is the largest pharma company in this America right now.

David Gee [00:12:41]:
He said to me, David, when you’re hiring people, can you hire someone who could be your boss? Can you hire someone that you think you can see that person being so good that can be your boss? And I thought, wow, that’s a that’s a really high bar. Okay? Because you have to put them in different light. And so when you think about that through that lens, you definitely will, you know, look for look for amazing look for, you know, incredible abilities, etcetera. Okay.

Karissa Breen [00:13:05]:
I wanna keep going on this Dennis talk track for a little bit more. This is quite interesting. So I’m just gonna use myself as an example because probably other people are there listening, and I think it’s better to pick on myself than someone else. So when I went to corporate, I spoke up a lot. Clearly, it makes sense. I’m a journalist, and I’m asking you questions. This is how I’ve always been. People didn’t like that, David.

Karissa Breen [00:13:23]:
So then I don’t think I was ostracized, but I sort of got the vibe that management, middle management started to feel a bit rattled by that. For someone of my caliber, how I mean, obviously, I don’t I don’t work in corporate, etcetera, anymore. I don’t have a boss, so maybe that’s why I’m an entrepreneur. But how do those people succeed in these environments where you’ve got people out there, they don’t want Carissa Breen in there asking questions and speaking up and challenging things? And, you know, I was junior. I was an analyst, so it’s not like I was a senior person. It seemed to get people at times I maybe I would rub people the wrong way. Right? But then how does someone like me ever progress to be potentially in a corporation like that to a management role, leadership role, if people are just trying to, you know, keep my head under the water?

David Gee [00:14:10]:
Yeah. It’s really it’s a hard one to to analyze, but I think the look. I’ve met people of that sort of persona. Right. I’ve met people that person who’ve been successful. Clearly they’ve had to think about their approach somewhat to say like, you know, for all means challenge for all means be yourself. Cause otherwise you’d, you’d think why bother being here. Right.

David Gee [00:14:29]:
But then how do you, how do you maybe tweak your questioning a little bit to, to be a little bit as confrontational, to be a little bit more open ended to be somewhat, you know, in the conversation for sure, rather than, you know, cause if you are there in the conversation or you didn’t say, check out and say, oh, well, I’m not not gonna say anything because these people aren’t gonna listen to me. Right. That would be a bad outcome. So how do you, how do you refine your, your behavior somewhat to be, to be effective rather than saying, okay, I don’t wanna change my, my core values. I don’t wanna change what I’m trying to get to. I think this objective is still right. How do I work with this conversation to get what I want out of it? Now, if I give you an example, right? You know, I’ve, I’ve always been myself a transformation person. How do I get stuff done? I’ve, you know, run program director, project director, you know, getting, getting things done.

David Gee [00:15:15]:
And to me then I said, well, actually I only get things done, but why don’t these people get out of the way and get, you know, let me get faster. Right. So that was the sort of change happening faster. And I realized actually that one work. How do I then adjust, adjust myself to bring people on the journey? So I talk about this being one of my, you know, twenty, twenty five year, you know, improvement plans for myself. I wanna be known as a transformation strategic person, which which is what my brand is. However, my brand was also David doesn’t always bring people with him because he’s in a hurry. Okay.

David Gee [00:15:45]:
So how do I then still be, you know, passionate, active dynamic, bring people with me. So I over explain, I, you know, take the time to repeat myself in different forums with the same message to say, is it okay? Do you guys get guys and girls get this? Do you think there’s other inputs I need to take on? And then by slowing down a bit, I get everybody buying into it. So therefore I can go faster because they’re, they’re bought into it. So I’ve kind of learned there. There are ways to, if you like improve yourself, you can take the input from others to say, this is what I have. If I did this approach, would that, would that work with you? Would that, you know, make you feel like you’ve, you know, so I think that’s a way to test the water. Certainly, you know, in your case, you could have got a mentor to help you tweak your, your, your, yourself a little bit. But listen, it’s a really interesting problem because because leaders have, you know, have strong opinions.

David Gee [00:16:36]:
So, you know, it’s to not have opinions actually would be counterproductive, but then how do you make it work in an effective fashion?

Karissa Breen [00:16:42]:
Yeah. I like that. And I think I’ve probably just got those leadership qualities. And I think that’s if I perhaps loved the environment to the point I may not have been able to go out on my own, like, years down the track. Right?

Karissa Breen [00:16:53]:
So I

Karissa Breen [00:16:53]:
sort of see it as more of a blessing in disguise. But one of the things I really wanna understand is loyalty. Now I’m very big on loyalty. I you know, when I back someone, like, I really back them. And how do people stress test? Well, not stress test. It’s not like it’s a playing game, but it’s just more so how do you know for sure that people in your, you know, your team or whatever it is or your your counterparts, how do you know that they’re loyal towards

David Gee [00:17:20]:
you? Gosh, look, listen, I, I start with giving loyalty to everybody, right? So a higher person, I give them trust. He or she gets my a % trust and I don’t want to micromanage, but but I do wanna see results. Right? If I see that I’m talking and I’m not seeing Carissa coming to the table, not seeing Carissa, you know, getting the outcomes that I’m looking for, I’ll start asking the question. Right? So but you’ve gotta start with that premise around to me. That’s, that’s what a good leader does. It starts with the, you know, I wanted the team to be, you know, strong and individually with the best versions of ourself. And so if I, if I get on a little sidebar, if I can, and I talk about this in my keynotes and stuff is around, look, the as a leader, you get you inherit a team. Sometimes you get a chance to rebuild that team from scratch.

David Gee [00:18:04]:
Mostly, you get a chance to just take what you have and make them better. So if I use the lovely example I always took about as this little algorithm for leadership, which is really simple. You got to see him with four people. Right? You got David, and David’s, you know, David’s sort of five out of 10 some days. He’s six out of 10 other days. He’s he he kinda plugs along. Right? You got Carissa. She’s star, man.

David Gee [00:18:25]:
She works between eight or nine out of 10, and and you got two other colleagues. Now each of these colleagues, if I coach David to actually, you know, be his best version, he could maybe be a seven some days, other days a six, but I’m trying to get him to be, comfortable that I’ve got his back. Right. That he, that he screws up by pushing the barriers a bit. He won’t fall. I’ll, I’ll catch him. So he’ll, he’ll try to be the best version of himself. Similarly, Carissa can maybe spider be a nine, you know, rather than just this, an eight.

David Gee [00:18:54]:
So if you then have the each member operating the very best version of themselves, and they’re actually then working as a team rather than, you know, chipping at each other and being bad caustic behavior, then you get this very simple equation, which is Carissa’s a nine David’s a seven and there’s a time is multiplication sum, right? Guess what? As a leader, you get more done. You get more outputs. Okay. Amazing transformation results. But when you got negatives or people operating at the lowest of their range, because we all operate different days out days. Some days we’re good. Some days we’re not so good. That’s the truth.

David Gee [00:19:24]:
Right? So how do you as a leader elevate people so they feel comfortable being out of the comfort zone and being that in that space where they’re maybe pushing their barriers, way beyond where they normally would.

Karissa Breen [00:19:36]:
Yeah. And that’s interesting. I think, I like when you said that getting making people operate at, you know, their best in their respective roles. Right? I wanna talk a little bit more about how do you feel when I ask you this question? And I know people have variants of opinions that do you believe leaders are born, or do you believe you can train them?

David Gee [00:19:59]:
I’ll get back to my it’s kinda like the, question around intelligence. Right? Intelligence, people born with a certain amount, but you can also develop that. And so if I talk about that first, if I if I say, okay. I was a 20 year old dad. My wife and I still married after all these years, right? We, we had a, we had a kid and we didn’t kind of look nervous about it. So we said, how do we, how do we grow this, this little being, you know, to be safe and, and, and healthy and smart? And so we, we went down this path of, of trying, trying different things and we went through a little course and we, you know, we basically, you know, my son was three, four months old. And so the. Taught you to say, you know, schools operate a certain paradigm, not two or five years old.

David Gee [00:20:38]:
So how how do you actually teach the kids earlier? So therefore we played Mozart, you know, so you’re gonna play Mozart, listen to the best music. And we showed, we showed my son, so we showed him Monet and Picasso and Renoir and, you know, so we, we showed him the, the best. Okay. And then we, instead of just saying doggy, we’d we’d say, oh, here’s a photo of an association. Here’s a photo of a Dalmatian. You know, we’d showed them the different genres of dogs and so forth. So he became, in a very able to classify things. So so when my son was 12 old, he could read, he could, you know, he could read sentences.

David Gee [00:21:12]:
He could, he could swim. He could, now when he was, I think it was 15, 18 months. And we did Suzuki Valley. He did all these things because we, we tried because we had no, we tried to make him brilliant. And so to me, I learned my first lesson around people development as a 20 year old, 21 year old that actually, it doesn’t matter what the school system says. You can be anything you want to be provided you focus and use the right approach. And so to me, leadership is the same, right? If you actually you’re born with certain skills and you’re born with certain knowledge and experience, but actually if you push yourself, anybody could actually be a sweet C suite person. They just need the right coaching, the right, ingredients, and understand, you know, what is it they need to do around, say, experience and behavior side.

David Gee [00:21:55]:
Forget the the knowledge and skills are important. That’s sort of the foundation. But at some point, when you’re interviewing for a a CISO, you’re you’re not looking back at the degree. You’re not looking back at their accreditation and looking back at, you know, that they worked in cloud for that’s all foundational. But what you’re looking for is you’re looking for, do they have the right sort of international experiences, experiences in driving change, experiences in talking to to boards, you know, and their behaviors in in doing that. Those things are what makes up a true leader, and you can actually build those and develop those over time.

Karissa Breen [00:22:25]:
Okay. So in terms of leadership qualities now, obviously, you know, with Trump taking over, for example, it’s gonna use him as an example. Now people either really not like him or they really like him. So in leadership, do you think especially in Australia, because I find Australians aren’t like rocking the boat a lot. I mean, corporate America, I mean, you’ve worked there. It’s a bit of a different game. But do you think people feel uncomfortable with knowing that some people just may not like you and your leadership style? And then I also wanna zoom out and then compare that between, you know, corporate Australia versus corporate America.

David Gee [00:22:59]:
Well, gosh. I mean, I I think, you know, Trump thrives on that. He he loves the fact that, people find him controversial. I think he likes to shock people. He likes to you know, I remember working at a firm MetLife in Japan and was, you know, the CIO role and that has MetLife’s largest retail market globally. And the CEO was saying to me, Hey, David, we need to think like Trump does. And I was like, I was a bit horrified. Right.

David Gee [00:23:21]:
And then he, what do you mean? He says, well, what would Trump do in this situation? And that is okay. So maybe I don’t want to be Trump. Maybe I don’t think the way he does, but what would he do in this particular market or whatever situation? So that was another wave of, you know, worrying a persona if you like, and then trying to operate that way. Now, obviously you, you meet people like that, that are a bit Machiavellian and so forth in your career. It’s not always fun to work with people like that necessarily, but it is what it is. And then you gotta figure out how do you how do you operate, you know, that fashion without actually becoming that person because you’ve I’ve also seen people who start imitating leaders and because they like their style. I think the curse, you know, this is the CIO or whatever, and act like that and even talk like that or have the same expressions. It’s a form of imitation, you better call it that, and some people do that.

David Gee [00:24:08]:
But I I see that in my kinda shutter internally when I see that, because it it kind of it kinda shows that you may have a lot of soft doubt in a way that you’re just imitating someone else rather than trying to be yourself.

Karissa Breen [00:24:19]:
Okay. That that’s interesting. So when so when the the CEO said, you know, what would Trump do, what does he mean by that? Does that mean, like, trying to polarize people, or what does that what does that statement or slash question in in varying?

David Gee [00:24:32]:
It’s a really scenario scenario thinking, right, which is, you know, you know, normal person would go this these paths. What would Trump do? Trump would do something very different now. I think that’s a you know, you think about all the things you’ve seen recently and heard about recently, he may go a complete three sixty degree view of where traditionally would go. And then, so that’s that sort of radical thinking. Now that’s really great for brainstorming. That’s really great for, you know, when you’re thinking about out of the box, that’s something that’s, you know, you’d never think about Panama Canal or Greenland being part of America, for example. Right. But that’s, that’s where Trump thought about things and, you know, logically, he’s got a view.

David Gee [00:25:08]:
Right? Doesn’t mean there’s right or wrong. It just means he’s sort of radical view of things. And so if you if you are trying to develop strategy, then that’s sort of bad place to start with because you wanna have a clean slate.

Karissa Breen [00:25:17]:
So the other thing I’m curious then to know just to, like, build on this a bit more, the interview I did with Shannon Sedgwick, as you know, we spoke about, like, Australians, even from a geopolitics perspective, you know, we’re we’re fence sitters. We don’t like to rock the boat. Whereas Americans are more like, you know, to your point, a bit more radical. Right? So would you say in your experience it’s not about which one’s better, but which one can be more effective? Because sometimes, even Australian politics, people obviously say, I’m like, oh, like, I don’t even know what this politician thinks. They don’t really have an opinion. Whereas to Trump, it’s like this guy has an opinion. Now, again, some people really like that. Some people really don’t like it.

Karissa Breen [00:25:53]:
But which one would you say in terms of an outcome is better?

David Gee [00:25:57]:
Oh, gosh. What what what I would maybe replay is that I I did a MBA at Macquarie graduate school a long time ago, but I remember the teacher was telling us around differences between American style management style and Australian management styles. And I said, okay. That’s really that’s an interesting one. He said, actually, Americans all about personality, not about integrity in Australian management or the opposite, which is, it’s all about integrity, not personality. And I said, okay, that’s interesting. Yeah. I get it.

David Gee [00:26:22]:
You know, which is integrity is all about doing the right thing. Right. And personality is all about being charming. And so I kind of worked in many different, you know, elite, midlife. I went to many American based companies. And I said, that’s kind of true. You’re meeting these amazingly charismatic CEOs who can talk and slice their skimmoes for God’s sake. They’re amazing.

David Gee [00:26:45]:
Do that. They all have the great integrity that match that some, some did some actually were just outstanding, right? Like to the Obama level and others were, oh my gosh, I wouldn’t trust this person at all. And so I kinda believe that that that theory is kinda true in terms of trying to break down, you know, the vast difference between Australia and The US.

Karissa Breen [00:27:03]:
But in terms of getting the outcome, would you say that I mean, I I know the answer depends, but do you think having that bit more radical approach better in terms of outcomes? Or

David Gee [00:27:14]:
Yeah. No. It’s it’s interesting. If you look at, you know, America, despite its problems and issues it has, it’s still the, you know, most patterns in the world come from America. So clearly there’s some really smart thinking there and some, you know, great design thinking, some different innovation that comes out of that, that place. So I would say that works for that that aspect of America, for sure. Now does that translate necessarily into corporate America? Some some times I’ve seen that work, not always, but sometimes it does work that way that but obviously in the valley and places like that, that these guys are very good at that. And there’s a lot of tribes that sit there that are amazing in this space.

Karissa Breen [00:27:49]:
So I wanna talk

Karissa Breen [00:27:49]:
to you a little

Karissa Breen [00:27:50]:
bit more about vision. Now you would know in your career, there’s people out there that talk a big game, but you gotta play it. Right? So how or what have you seen in your career around vision and then communicating that? Because in journalism, I look at what companies are saying, and sometimes they they they talk about all these things they’re gonna do, but then there’s no follow on. So and that goes into the integrity piece. So how how does that sort of look from how you see it with your background?

David Gee [00:28:16]:
Yeah. I’ve got I worked for some amazing organizations in my career. And so, you know, strategies and strategic planning and having that big picture view, you know, and then saying, okay. This is what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to build, you know, the organization between here and next ten years, these sort of changes. I’ve seen some incredible strategies developed, which said, here’s our ten year plan to to grow. Let’s take the example, the China market. Okay.

David Gee [00:28:38]:
I was I was in China back in 1999 when China was an idea, and we were trying to convince people to invest in China. Now, of course, China’s had the rise. It’s, you know, maybe flattened out somewhat. Right? But between that period of time, no one believed that that this was gonna happen, that there’s gonna be, you know, China would be such a big market and, number two in the world. But back then, it was, you know, below Germany, UK, etcetera, number 20 or 25. I can’t remember. But we had this long term plan that says, okay, if we can do these things and execute and measure that on the way and make these kinds of specific investments in different markets, within products and different staffing resources, we’ll get that growth plus some. And that, again, that that strategy, for example, with Lily in in China, back in ninety nine nine was a 2010 plan, and we thought that China would be, you know, for Lily would be number four in the world by 2010.

David Gee [00:29:25]:
And we were wrong because it’s number two by that stage. Right? And so we’re wrong by fact, but even though we had sort of three scenario curves around growth. So I think I’ve seen some good examples where people have got the strategy and had the execution ability to actually go and do that and back it over, you know, sort of a long term view rather than being tactical. I think there’s probably probably more good examples than bad examples, to be honest.

Karissa Breen [00:29:47]:
So then you talk a lot about when people get a new senior leadership role, they’ve gotta have a bit of a ninety day plan. So is there anything that you can sort of share? Because, again, that goes into what we just discussed before. You wanna be able to back it up. So everyone can talk a big game, but how do we actually play it and actually get those outcomes?

David Gee [00:30:04]:
Got it. Alex, and it’s so important. Like I said, I spent fifteen years at Eloliti, you know, as the COO for Australia, then China, then Asia, back in Hong Kong, then up in Japan and The US. And so every time I moved, it was fifteen years, five jobs. So I kept moving roughly a bit every three years. And every time I moved, I didn’t take my team with me. I didn’t have the abilities, you know, to bring people with me because they were different countries. And so, but I, I built up a methodology, which I started writing down and say, here’s my ninety day plan.

David Gee [00:30:32]:
Okay. Here’s what I’m going to be focusing on. It’s one page. And by the way, it’s played in my book. It’s in the book for CIOs and CSAs. So across people process technology, where do I want to spend my time in my first thirty days, sixty days, ninety days, and by definition where I don’t want to spend my time, right? Because you want to be very focused. So I first built this up many, many years ago. Then I, I wrote about pretty see some CIO.com articles that I wrote this on.

David Gee [00:30:55]:
And then I, but what I, what I would do is I would actually build this plan, call it a draft plan. Even I’ll be interviewing for a job, for example, right. I’m interviewing for a job and Clarissa says, hey, Dave. What’s your nine day plan? I said, well, actually, I’ve got a plan here. Now I’m I’m a bit sheep just because I I don’t yet know your organization well enough to know this is true or not, but here’s what I wanna do around, you know, different things. So I wanna go and review the strategy, perhaps, you know, revise that or tweak it. I wanna make sure that the stakeholder engagement is efficient. So the right input coming back and forth, and then we’re getting input into our strategy.

David Gee [00:31:30]:
I wanna look at hygiene things, things that are perhaps not quite right, that could be fixed. So there’s different things you could do there. And then you also need to look at the team, right? What team do you have? Review that, figure out what DNA is missing and how do I tweak it? Because you may not be able to just suck every body. Right? So how do I tweak it and make changes so people understand what the requirement is. And so by going and putting it in the paper, as I entered in into an organization, I would actually share that in my town hall as my first day. And so here’s what I’m planning to do. I wanna be very focused on this. So you’re kind of setting a brand, which is, hey, David wants to get this stuff done.

David Gee [00:32:06]:
He’s concerned about strategy, about resources, about hygiene, about metrics, and all these different things. Right? And you brand yourself, but you also start to tell them I care about this. So therefore they should care about this. I share that same plan with my boss, my peers, and, you know, in in the executive ranks and say, hey, because I meet with you one on one, I wanna make sure that I’m, you know, fulfilling what you see is important here. Now you’re gonna get people suggesting, can you also add this or can you take that off? Which is, you may wanna tweak that depending on your situation, but, it sets you up for, to success because if you think about these jobs, CEOs maybe last four years, he says maybe two to three years. How do you try to be the one who lasts a little bit longer by actually starting strong and knocking out the park from day one?

Karissa Breen [00:32:51]:
So from your experience, where do you think people are spending their time? I think at the start, you said, I’m gonna be focused on this, but there’s also I’m gonna be writing down what I’m not gonna be focused on. So where would you say people are spending time on things perhaps they shouldn’t be from your experience?

David Gee [00:33:05]:
A great experience. I like I wish I wish this was visual because I’ll show you a slide. As I’m doing the keynote, so I actually have a slide that says, here’s the day in the life of a CIO, day in the life of a CISO. Okay? And they feature my book too, but it then says, here’s all the things you think about a CIO or a CSO. You had all these things coming at you, right? It’s a board re board presentation. It’s a regulatory requirement. It’s a transformation project. It’s a, you know, some sort of portfolio reporting.

David Gee [00:33:29]:
It’s an incident happening from the other side. It’s, you know, sort of a stakeholder engagement. You’ve got twelve, fifteen, 20 things around you in your day coming at you. Now, obviously some of those things you care about more than others. Other things will just take your time because they, they do. And so as a leader, you gotta make those choices to say, actually, you know what? I, I just need to not do this and this and this and just focus on this today because that’s that to me is gonna make a difference. That to me is gonna be what I call a moment of truth, right, where I’ve actually picking the right thing to focus on. And and, you know, when you’re the CSO or CEO, there’s no one coaching you on this stuff, right? So anybody’s screaming at you and saying, I want this audit wants this, risk guys want this.

David Gee [00:34:09]:
Some of my boss wants this, my stakeholders want, how do you keep everybody happy? You can’t. So how do you figure out actually, you know, what’s really important today as I focus today on this? I’m sorry. I I know your board report’s important. I know this is important, but actually we have a pretty serious incident right now. So I need to focus on that. And other things, we’ll just have to just slide because I can’t do that. That takes a bit of courage and a bit of sort of your own decision making ability to make a quick decision and say, okay. Today, this is gonna because this is gonna define me.

David Gee [00:34:38]:
I wanna do this, get this done. And if I do that, I’m doing the best thing for the organization.

Karissa Breen [00:34:43]:
So, David, I just wanna quickly touch on you talk about moments of truth, survival skills. What’s that?

David Gee [00:34:50]:
Oh, kinda touched on that a minute ago, but look in the day, right, is that if you’re a CSO, you don’t have many comfortable moments in the end of day. You’ve got a lot of stress. Your team’s under stress. You have incidents and issues to deal with. You’ve got, you know, too many projects to handle staff with shortages. Right? So, so a lot of the skills operate at two levels, one individually, how do I manage this stress, but don’t appear to be stressed and just be able to think clearly sensibly and make the right decisions. And, you know, that means I’m going to be open to my team’s input because I want the strength of the team, but also I’d be strong enough to make the decisions that, you know, that mad that matter because at the end of the day, right. You’re gonna be accountable for that.

David Gee [00:35:31]:
So I think that’s the first, the first aspect. And then you want to make sure that from a survival skill standpoint that you’re, you’re helping your team, because your teams, you know, if they got the religion with you, working with you, right, they get your agenda, they get your change agenda, they get that they need to be pushing on things. So they, they will also create some friction. So how do you help, how do you help them with their moments of truth as well to back them up? Right. So now sometimes your teams screw up and maybe do things that create friction and noise that you might agree with the other party, but how do you then work through that with them? So you can, you know, help everybody get to the best outcome by pushing the barriers a bit and, and knowing, you know, this is the path, you know, we think about elasticity, right. And resilience. How do you like a rubber band stretch back and forth somewhat, but don’t break that. That’s the important part.

Karissa Breen [00:36:18]:
So, David, do you have any sort of closing comments or final thoughts you’d like to leave our audience with today?

David Gee [00:36:23]:
Look. I’m just about to go live with an announcement about a fund, sort of not for profit thing I’m gonna work on. So, I’ve been working the last few years as the chairman for the FS ISAC, which is the financial services sort of group that works around sharing cyber intelligence. And I’ve just been asked to be an ambassador for the CI, critical infrastructure ISAC group. Now think about this. This is all around critical infrastructure. I remember rightly there’s 12 different sectors. So, you know, in the day, it’s power, it’s water, it’s, it’s networks, it’s data centers, right? Hospitals, all these things we rely on to be, you know, operation resilient as a CIO.

David Gee [00:36:58]:
So if we don’t have the power, electricity, all that stuff working data working, then actually we can operate and doesn’t matter how good our plans are and what we invest in. So, there’s sort of a ambassador role is trying to help us to work as a, across the silos. We kind of call it that. How do we work across the silos to to get intelligence and share intelligence across the industry so we can actually protect Australia better than we do now? And, you know, so we work in our silos and our is our silos being our companies, but how we didn’t operate more broadly. That’s pretty exciting if we can start to do that. I think it’s a really, you know, gonna be a massive challenge going forward in future years around how do we protect ourselves without giving up our individual concerns, but actually more broadly, Australia as an entity will come under more attacks, I think.