The Making of a CEO: Jeanette Marais on Leading with Purpose and Never Having a Plan B

Debbie: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to On Work and Revolution, the CEO series. I’m your host, Debbie Goodman. I’m CEO of Jack Hammer Global. For those of you who don’t know us, we’re Africa’s largest executive search boutique, working and operating in about 24 countries on the continent. I’m also a CEO coach. I work with top leaders all over the world, and the objective with all of my work is to help companies and leaders to create amazing workplaces.

This is the fourth season of the podcast. I actually can’t believe it. I. In this season, I go deep with CEOs, many of whom I’ve known for years, uh, talking about their personal and professional journeys to the top. And today I have as my guest, the absolutely fabulous Jeanette Marais. Jeanette was appointed as CEO for Moment Group in August, 2023, making her the first female CEO of a large listed financial services group in South Africa.

She has decades long history of building strong, profitable businesses in a range of financial services organizations in South Africa, and she’s known for producing exceptional financial performance as well as for being a beloved and highly respected leader, and I’ve. I’ve been privileged to witness much of this from the sidelines because I’ve known Jeanette for more than 20 years, and so I can vouch for the fact that what I’ve just shared wasn’t just the PR bio that I was sent,

all right? It’s 100% accurate, and today I feel really lucky to have this time with her to do some straight talk, which is another thing she’s well known for, about what it was really like to step into the CEO seat. What she’s learned in the last couple of years, the hidden challenges of navigating boards, whether MBAs actually hold value, thoughts about hybrid leadership, and we’ll talk about some advice for aspiring CEOs.

I hope we get to all of that. Welcome, Jeanette.

Jeanette: Thank you Debbie, and uh, thank you for waking up really early to do this.

Debbie: Yeah, it’s uh, 4:39 AM my time. By the time the listeners hear this, who knows, but you and I have known each other a really long time. You’ve always been frank direct, no nonsense. Which is why today I am hoping to go a little bit deeper than the usual talking points that gets sent your way for podcasts like these. I think that listeners really do want to understand the real experience of stepping into such a significant leadership role. So you ready?

Jeanette: Here we go.

Debbie: Okay, good. I want to start with the years before the CEO seat, because, was there like a moment when you realized I want to be the CEO? Because I mean, you started [00:03:00] out in the, not, not there.

So where did that ambition come from?

Jeanette: Debbie, I think I was always ambitious. Whatever role I took, I always, wanted more. I always wanted to stretch myself. I always wanted to challenge myself. In fact, I’ve often left companies or roles when I felt that I was no longer growing.

I was no longer waking up at three in the morning going, what have I done? How am I going to do this? So I think that was always, maybe, somewhere in me. But I mean, you refer to the MBA or the executive MBAI did. And I think that really was a mind and an eyeopener for me because here I was, girl from the free state, which, for your podcast listeners who don’t know is the tiniest province in South Africa.

Grew up on a farm and suddenly here I was amongst 70 of the top executives around the world and I came out top of my class, I started to realize, hang on, when I compare myself to others, I’m not that bad. Maybe I can do it. So I think there a seed was definitely planted for me.

Debbie: Mm-hmm.

Jeanette: That there was this possibility in my future.

Debbie: So that was about how many years ago when you took your MBA?

Jeanette: That was exactly 10 years ago now. 2015. We literally just had our 10 year, anniversary, right. And reunion. Yes.

Debbie: And then from that moment, did you then start to strategically plan or was it still one step in front of the other?

Jeanette: At that point in time I felt, I found myself in a very senior position in an organization and I did come back maybe with a bit of a different mission. I also came back with a, a world of knowledge and it just meant that I was starting to maybe, challenge everyone around me a lot more.

I wanted more, I wanted bigger. I wanted, to kind of drive harder and faster. And sometimes organizations aren’t ready for that kind of thing to happen. So, uh, uh, the, I, I’m part of the [00:05:00] statistics. The company who actually, tolerated and gave me the opportunity to do this. I’m no longer there.

Yeah. And then of course, within two years I was offered, the opportunity to rejoin this group. But I think one of the things that, that I also realized was, when you do something like this, for me, it was never just about the title. It was never just about being a CEO. Mm-hmm. I also wanted to do it somewhere that I, that I could give my heart and my soul and my, my everything to it.

It needed to be somewhere that I love and when the opportunity was afforded to me to come back to the group where I actually started my career, for me, that just felt right and I think there, it really started to be something quite real for me.

Debbie: But you were tapped to be deputy, CEO and then you sat in that role for, I don’t know, five years.

Right. What was it like to sit in waiting like the lady in waiting for, I mean, it’s a long time, five years.

Jeanette: Well, so firstly, I knew it was going to be five years because actually, they, they asked me and, a previous CEO to come back Hillie Meyer. So I knew that I was going to be in the deputy role for five years mm-hmm.

Unless something happened, but I knew it was going to be five years. But the one thing that I had that I think was wonderful, I wasn’t sitting in a deputy CEO position waiting. I actually had a very big business to run and actually not to even just run, to turn around. The moment investments business , ended up being at that point in time, one of the biggest profit centers for the group.

Mm-hmm. But it wasn’t when I joined, so I knew that I had five years to do something that I think I’m very good at, and that is to turn a business around and put a score on a scoreboard. So my focus wasn’t so much on positioning myself the whole time. Mm-hmm. I think that is almost transparent in a bad way.

Yeah. I was there to do a job, but I knew that everything I did in fulfilling that role could help or hinder on the final outcome, and that was whether I was going to be the next CEO.

Debbie: Yeah, I mean, I see a lot the people who are in line for succession and the amount of time they spend doing the positioning versus the job

that they’re actually doing currently. And it’s, it sometimes is really hard to balance the two. I mean, I’m not sure that people are aware that you actually had to interview for the CEO role. It wasn’t just like a, a red carpet that was laid out for you, and it was a very rigorous, almost competitive process.

So how, how was that for you?

Jeanette: Yeah, look, it was, and, and again, maybe to just get back to the previous point, I think when you start to do all sorts of positioning, especially in quite a non-political environment and organization like this, I think that just wouldn’t work because people would see right through it

and I think there’s nothing authentic about it. People will immediately tag it and say she’s doing these things because she’s positioning for a role. And I tried to stay away from that as much as I could. But it was incredibly rigorous. It was more than six months. I mean, it kicked off in November 2022.

And I was informed that I was successful, late in May 2023. So it really was a very tough seven months. And I’ll tell you why it was tough, firstly because by then I really had my heart and soul on it. Yeah. I really was all in. Secondly, the, I mean, just the rigorousness of all these assessments.

And I kept on thinking I was going to fail the test. I’m like an over performer. I was like, I’m going to fail this test. So that was a very big thing for me. But I think what was also quite tough is the way in which it was run here was that it was completely transparent. I knew that there were five of us in the running.

Mm-hmm. I knew exactly who I was up against. Two of them were colleagues, and then two people from outside the organization. But I knew where they were. I mean, I stalked them and I researched them and I tried to know, and then I stopped and I said, focus on me. What is it that I bring to the table?

What is my wish and dream for this organization? Because actually that is what’s going to make me successful. Yeah. Not to chase the role for the title. And I think when I made that mind shift, it really helped quite a lot because it, it focused me on doing the right thing, not for the wrong reason.

Debbie: I think you and I met up on a couple of occasions during that process and I could really see how invested you were in nailing this. I’m just like doing it Great. And getting this job, it’s everything. You’re 150% committed, but did you, I mean, you must have considered the scenario.

What if you didn’t land the job? What was going to be plan B?

Jeanette: I had to think about it and I, that was the one thing that kept me awake at night because I was so invested in it. And I tell you why. What made it even harder was that every time I got home, my husband was like, okay, right. Is this happening? Are we any closer to it?

So he wanted it almost more badly for me than I did, and I only realized afterwards what a, the sacrifice that he was willing to make for the five, six years before was actually his investment in that specific and that particular future for me. But I’ll tell you what happened with me.

Firstly, I’ve never had a plan B in my life. Ever. I’m not a plan B person. I have Plan A and I go all out for Plan A, but something clicked with me one night, literally, it was probably three in the morning, and that’s when I realized that I will always have choices. Afterwards, no matter what happens, I can choose to stay.

I can choose to go. I can choose to check it out. I can, I have choices. Why would I focus any further energy on the what if? And rather focus on what is it that I need to do in order to secure this position? And that for me, I think made a very, very big difference. It also changed my behaviour. It took the angst away.

Because suddenly I didn’t need to have that. I could only focus on going all out. I needed to know that when I look back and I was not successful, that I’ve truly given it my all and that they’ve truly chosen the best person for the role. And if that then happened to not be me, then that was what was best for this organization at that point in time.

And that really changed my behaviour and I think it helped me a lot.

Debbie: I mean, that’s like a mic drop moment. We could end here. I mean, that’s pretty, pretty profound. Like there’s no plan B. This is it for now until I get to the end of this road and then I’ll make a different plan.

Jeanette: And then that plan is a new plan A, yeah. Actually not plan B. Yeah. I just don’t settle for Plan Bs. Right.

Debbie: But then you did get plan A and thank God for everybody in your life because I’m sure it wasn’t just your husband, I’m sure it was all the people that love and support you. , I mean, I was waiting to, I was definitely watching the media around that time and when it happened, it was just like such a feeling of happiness and gratitude and relief. But okay, so now you’ve transitioned from deputy CEO to CEO. Like what’s the, what’s the transition? Was there something that was surprised you about the move or was it all just like, oh, well, we’re just like living together now, we’re married, nothing really changes.

Jeanette: No, everything changes actually.

Ah, and, and I think that the biggest change for me personally was to not. It was that realization that. I was the CEO, I had the business card. I didn’t need to now try and be all CEO-like, if you think about it, we all have our ideas. The three o’clock in the morning wake up was also the dream about, oh, If I get it, how will I be and what will I do? And then suddenly there’s this reality. And I think for me, two things happened. The first one was exactly what you said. Now, I’ll never forget very, very early on, in my tenure, we had a leadership conference and I, I got on a bus. As I got on the bus, almost like with complete spontaneity, people burst into song and it was a song in vernacular.

I didn’t, at that point in time, even understood what they were saying. And then afterwards when they translated it, they said, you’re, is our queen. Welcome our queen. I mean, how profound. I was in tears, literally I was in tears that people found so much motivation in this, but if she can do it, we can do it.

And this is where it links for me to that second point of not trying to be CEO-like. When I realized that I was CEO and that I didn’t need to try and step up into a formidable previous CEO shoes. Mm-hmm. That my high heels was what this organization needed now authentically real. That I didn’t need to try and figure out what it is to be CEO-like. All I needed to know was live who you are, be authentic, be real. And I think being a real human being as a CEO actually makes me a better CEO. And that was big for me because you would always think, oh, now I need to act different, look different. No. This organization need me, my passion, my magic right here, right now, and I’m giving them all of it.

Might be too much sometimes, but, I think it’s that heart that shows and when heart shows it’s real and it’s authentic. And for me, that is one of the non-negotiables in life that you bring yourself and your own magic to the table at all times.

Debbie: But nevertheless, now you’ve got. Well, not autonomy, I guess. I guess there’s never like full autonomy. One thinks there is, but there are a bunch of other stakeholders that need to be taken into account. Was there a decision that you made in sort of like the very early stages that was pivotal for you, that has lasted?

Jeanette: Yeah, and actually it ended up being more pivotal for the organization than I could ever have imagined, and it was quite a courageous one.

Think about it, the first female CEO whole story. Mm-hmm. In this organization and , in the industry. And I come in and the very first thing I say is not, let’s double our targets. That came. Well, we can, we can talk about that. Yeah. But actually, I believe in purpose. I want to unite 16,000 people around why we are here. Now the moment it’s female, it’s already soft and it already,  these, it’s labelled with emotion and it’s labelled with softness. And then you come and you say, well, actually I’m not focusing on new tough targets. What I’m focusing on is how are we as an organization going to help build and protect our client’s financial dreams?

Now, I’ve always believed in purposeful leadership. That was always something for me. Why am I here? Why is an organization here? But this was a very big and a very brave move. I had board members who came and said, what are you doing? You need to send a strong message about how things are going to be. And I said,

what message can be stronger, right, than for us to define why we here, why we are on this earth now. Look, it was backed by, lots of many, many leadership books written about, profit Follows Purpose, but to put that in action was very brave. And to put it in action at a time when the organization was on the up our results started to come through and suddenly, instead of saying, how am I going to build on that?

I said, hang on, why are we here? I asked a whole different question, and I must say that was quite brave but pivotal. It’s changed this entire organization.

Debbie: Yeah, brave, bold. And I imagine the board may have been somewhat taken aback by that, which is the segue into my next question around boards. I know that when I’m coaching CEOs,

it’s the one area that is constantly underestimated. I spend a lot of time helping them with board politics. Everyone says a CEO’s success is not just about what kind of financial performance they can drive, but actually whether they can navigate board relationships successfully. What’s your honest advice to an incoming CEO about this board navigation piece?

Jeanette: Well, so I’ll start with the honest answer of, maybe a mistake I made. I came in and I thought, okay, here it is. The board have chosen me. Therefore, let’s asse they all want me. They all love me. They all think I’m great. They all think I’m brilliant, so I don’t need to worry about them. What I need to worry about is this organization, how do we take it to the next level?

Let’s formulate our next strategy. How do I make sure that I hold onto my EXCO team?  that they all motivated, so what did I do? I turned and I focused on the business. Mm-hmm. And actually, that is a mistake. I wish you were there. I wish you phoned me and said, Hey, can I give you a few tips?

Because actually. You only realize later on, and I mean luckily, these things are not irreversible. The one thing I know is that everyone on the board want the same things that I want. They want this organization to be successful. They want me to be successful, but don’t underestimate how much you need to communicate.

Mm-hmm. Over communicate, take them on the journey with you. My natural style is one of, going to ask for forgiveness, not permission. That does not work. You’ve got to take not only the organization on this journey with you, you’ve gotta also take the whole board on this journey with you, and just looking at myself, I’ve always hated having a boss.

Suddenly I had 13. Mm-hmm. 13 people with different needs, once different viewpoints. And it’s hard work. It’s really, it’s hard work and you’ve got to find a way in which you can navigate that and it is hard. It definitely is something that I think you could easily make mistakes on. Yeah, and work really, really hard on.

Debbie: Do you have a, like a practical tip? I always share with, my CEO, clients is that a lot of the decisions get made before the actual board meeting and you have to, not about lobbying, but you need to do a lot of relationship management one-on-one, prior and after. , how do you feel about that?

Jeanette: So I have to constantly work on that. Our organization’s culture is quite an open one. , One of the things that, that we believe we never do is, and I, maybe I’m talking more about, our own leadership team, but you’ve gotta, you want to make sure that it extends into how you also work with the board.

But for instance, we don’t have little triangular meetings before, and then we kind of, enter the, let’s say the executive boardroom with a decision already made. Mm-hmm. And I needed to find a way in which to build trust in me as the new leader for the organization. Build trust in my judgment, my capabilities, but without triangulating on making decisions outside of the boardroom, not inside the boardroom.

And I, and that remains tricky. Now, not all organizations put the same, but with ours, that has an incredibly transparent and direct culture. I found it quite hard that, when you then sat with board members, they wanted to know how you want them to vote on a certain decision. Mm.

I always say, no, trust me, that what we bring to the table is the right issue, but please bring your best version of the answer to the table so that we can have open debate. And then get to the right decision rather than one where you’ve almost triangulated about the outcome that you want before the time.

I’m not a political person, so I find it very hard to lobby, but what I cherish more than anything are strong trusting relationships, and that’s what I actually invest my time in. Mm-hmm. Now, when you have a trusting relationship, you create the space for someone to have a strong different opinion to your own, you create space for them to challenge you, and I believe that’s how you get to better decisions.

Not by trying to lobby an outcome before.

Debbie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. We are going to switch now to talking about, okay, so that sounds like an on the job MBA experience all on its, uh, on its own. , we spoke earlier about your eMBA, through IMD, which you did c laude of course, as a pivotal moment in sparking your, not just ambition, but recognition that you had the potential for the top CEO role.

But these days there’s actually quite a debate around the value of the MBA, eMBA or MBA and what do you think makes the difference between an average MBA that is just going to be letters on a CV because it’s become very commoditized. I mean, everybody’s got an MBA these days, and they don’t necessarily, I see this from my position as from an executive search, position.

They don’t necessarily, provide the differentiator that people going into it think that it will. And so what do you think moves the needle between an MBA, that actually is the game changer, versus one that is just like another bunch of letters on the CV?

Jeanette: So when I started thinking about some form of executive education, I mean, and let me, let me give you my scenario.

It’s very different in organizations today, but in the, my first 20 odd years of my career. Maybe at that point it was 15 years of my career. I’ve never done a leadership course. I’ve never even spent a day in any form of leadership development or anything, because the organizations where I worked, I was just working day and night, I was learning on the job, I was learning on the fly, and I got to a point where I felt like I wanted a few letters on a CV behind my name, more than just, the degree that I had.

And I always felt that that almost when I, when I worked with some colleagues junior, more junior than me, who went on some of these, middle management development courses, and I saw what they learned. I was almost jealous thinking mm-hmm. I know those things because I’ve learned them the hard way, but I can’t put a name or a label to it.

Right. So I started thinking about it. My husband then said, no, no, no, you don’t just do a one of these like three month management courses, wherever in the world. Go do a proper MBA. Yep. He had an MBA, so he thought that it had some value. And then when I spoke to my CEO about it, some amazing thing happened more than what I was expecting.

He literally got up, he went to his desk, he gave me the Financial Times, and on the front page was published the top 10 business schools in the world, and he said, pick one of those. It’s on us. Wow. That’s how serious we are about your development. We’ll pay for everything, but make sure you pick one of those.

So, I mean, how amazing is that? So firstly, I do think the quality of school. It matters where they rank. It does. Yep. Yeah. Then go figure out what it is that you want to learn. Some will bring you technology, some will bring you innovation. What I wanted was leadership. I wanted leadership development and IMD, for many, many years of literally being, the top-rated school in Europe or in the world or whatever in terms of leadership development.

So that was my very, very first choice. Secondly, I wanted a school that could give me some international exposure. I’ve managed South African businesses doing expansion mm-hmm. Into Europe or into the international world. I’ve never lived and worked overseas. I’ve worked in South Africa every single day of my entire career.

So I wanted as much of a global perspective as I could get. And IMD through their discovery program through the world also offered that. So that’s why I chose the school. Your question is what moved the needle? I then think how you completely immerse yourself into the experience does too. But lastly, I have many colleagues who have done an MBA when they were right after varsity.

I think that is just theory. It’s just a few more books and it’s theory. What I could see with what we were doing in the exec MBA, the bigger value, the more value was being with 70 CEOs from around the world because you bring real life experience. Every single thing I learned, I was like, I was in a situation like that before.

, you bring that realness to it versus theory. And I think many, many MBAs teach you theory. What we taught was these incredible real life experiences and what shifted was, I should have done it this way. I could have learned from that, or in future, when this happens, I will handle it in a different way.

And I think that made all the difference. Wait a bit, get a bit of experience and then do it, but then pick the best school you could possibly go to or afford.

Debbie: I mean, that’s really great advice. I see too many people who are sitting on the fence. They’re not sure what to do, and then they do something that’s convenient, affordable.

Jeanette: Don’t do an MBA. Go do a course to, I don’t know, to do code or to do something else, but don’t do an MBA. Wait, wait and get life experience before you do it. I really think that makes all the difference.

Debbie: Yeah, that, that’s really brilliant advice. I want to switch topic now to, talking about flexibility and remote leadership, which is a hot topic.

I mean, we are like way post COVID, but it’s still a hot topic. And for listeners who don’t know, the Moment Group, HQ is in Centurion, which is a different province from where you live, which is Western Cape. It’s a two hour flight plus time on either side. And how have you made that work professionally, personally?

’cause that’s quite a thing.

Jeanette: So, when I took the job or the decision to come back here in 2018, I already started living remotely. I suppose the, the board at that point in time when they wanted me to come back, wanted me so badly that they were okay with the fact that the home was always going to be there, because that’s where my husband also had his life and where we’ve built a life?

And then I think by the time that they had to make the decision about me and the fact that I was living there, they already knew she doesn’t live there. So let me say this. Mm-hmm. I’m probably more here face to face in my office where I am today than many people who live five or 10 kilometers from the office.

I come this whole year. Maybe what I’m saying is not a hundred percent true, but I think this entire year there might be three weeks that I worked remotely from Cape Town, so I believe to be here, I believe in face-to-face interaction, I believe to, walk the floor, speak to people, go downstairs for a coffee.

So my leadership style is not a remote one. There are times when I really, really need time to think where I really, really need time to do some work. And then, I’ll, I’ll have the luxury of a Monday or a Friday that I will work from home in Cape Town, but I travel to Gauteng to Centurion in every single week of my life.

So the way I do it. We have a home, which has been our home for 25 years now. No one lives there, but it’s still home for us, which is in Hout Bay in Cape Town. I have a townhouse here because I couldn’t bear to live in a hotel room, so I bought the townhouse. Mm-hmm. And I have all my shoes, all my suits, all my handbags, everything I need to be able to do

my job here is here, so I don’t have to pack a bag. They are literally here. And then my husband, when COVID happened. Actually moved to our farm on the west coast because, we had people and animals there and we realized we couldn’t leave it alone through COVID. And by the time COVID was over, he just said, okay, this is where I now live.

I’ll never come back because you never home anyway. So actually, mm-hmm. It’s three homes, not two. So I do my commute back to Cape Town on a Thursday or Friday, and then I do another two hour commute to actually spend my day and a half of marriage with Johan, my husband. And the way I do it, when I’m here, I’m available to Moment 24 hours a day.

When I’m with him, I’m available to him 24 hours a day, and I’ve completely compartmentalized my work life and my weekend marriage life, and that’s how I do it.

Debbie: I think that that’s an amazing example of how to manage this. I mean, I see tremendous pushback from boards, when we talking about a CEO appointment and then we come across a phenomenal candidate, but they’re in a different location and they won’t relocate

permanently. And I think the thinking is that this is just impossible. But I mean, here you have a very workable example of how you’ve absolutely made it possible and possibly beneficial for everyone.

Jeanette: And I think the difference is this. Moment honestly, truly have me, I have no life here other than work, and that means I don’t go home.

Cook dinner, wait for dinner, have a glass of wine, have an hour or two of conversation with my husband, and then I squeeze in another hour or two of work. Yeah. I don’t stop. I don’t ever stop working when I’m here. And then I totally take that literally Friday night, whole of Saturday and half of Sunday, I’m his and he knows there’s a deal three weekends a year.

I work. It’s before half year results, before full year results and one other, because things happen. Other than that, I totally switch off and I completely recharge so that I can be available again 18, 20 hours a day to the group when I’m here. And in a way, I think Moment gets way more of me than they might.

Oh, for sure. If I had husband at home waiting for me to come home and have dinner and things like that. So it can be done for sure. Yeah. But it’s a sacrifice can be.

Debbie: Sacrifice huge. Sounds like it’s, I mean, also I know you’re very disciplined, but that does require a huge amount of sacrifice and discipline.

And so that needs to be taken into account. Not everybody’s cut out for that, frankly. I’m still going to hold you as the model on what’s possible for remote leadership. Jeanette, you have got a solid ethos around what you believe in when it comes to leading and what you stand for as a leader.

I’d love you to share like what are the key principles, the non-negotiables that you are like, this is the way no matter what. These are the 1, 2, 3 things that I stand by.

Jeanette: Authenticity, and the ability to be truly yourself in any organization or situation. I think if an organization is expecting you to be a different person, and I’m not talking about growing as a leader, that’s not what I’m referring to.

But if my magic is too much for this place, then this place is wrong for me. Then go find that place? And I can honestly say to you, I’ve worked for amazing organizations in my career, but never one that so completely fully embraced who I am. And that is why I can give so much more because, it’s like my, everything is in this.

Mm-hmm. So I think that authenticity, the ability to be safe in who you are and to live your true self, I think for me, that makes me a better leader. So I think that’s one. The second one is truly, and I really think that I have that talent to spot people who are way, way, way better than I am.

Bring them together and then stretch them to places that they did not think was possible. For me, the most amazing is when people come to you afterwards and they say, when you said, that’s what you were expecting of me, I thought you were mad. I went home and I told my wife or my husband, this woman, I don’t know how I’m ever going to live up to those expectations.

Then we did it. So for me it’s appoint the best people and then get out their way. But get out their way doesn’t mean that you disappear. It simply means that they know you are there, you back them, you support them, you will stretch them even more. So I think that for me, is another one. And then purpose.

Purpose for leadership. I know why I’m here. Therefore, I need to know why my organization is here. And I don’t believe that any organization deserve or will ever thrive if they’re just there for profit. So there’s got to be higher calling. And if you can find that, I think it, it can honestly mobilize hundreds of thousands of people around something that is truly more meaningful and more important than just the score and the numbers that you put on the scoreboard.

Debbie: I mean that’s, all of those are profound, but they’re actually hard to put into practice and I want to switch to talking about book club.

That book that I think we both may have read it round about the same time, Unreasonable Hospitality where, I mean, you’re known for being an exacting demanding leader who expects things out of your people that they don’t even know is possible. And when they hear what those expectations are, they probably are, shit scared and don’t know whether they have any chance of reaching those lofty goals.

And then the fear of disappointing you. But then this to switch to this book, Unreasonable Hospitality, the principle of which, so this is by Will Guadara. And , the principle is to really, I mean, we talk about going the extra mile. It’s around, uh, being unreasonable, about customer delivery. It’s about going so beyond what you think is possible that it is extraordinary. And I was inspired by this. I know you were too. But how did you translate those concepts into a 16,000 person organization?

Jeanette: Well, so when someone gave me the book as a gift, which was actually, April last year, literally probably weeks after we launched our purpose, which, I’ve said to build and protect our client’s financial dreams, and you can hear their new leader purpose and you can hear client right there, right?

So, mm-hmm. I don’t have to even say what it is that I stand for. I mean, my absolute unrelentless kind of passion is client and client centricity and being there for client. And then someone gave me this book, and actually when he gave it to me, one of my colleagues, he said to me, Jeanette, either you wrote this book under a different name or someone wrote it about you.

Because when I read it, I thought, this is Jeanette, he gave it to me. And I read it and I loved it. I mean, I read it 3, 4, 5 times because there’s so many different lessons. There are leadership lessons. There are these client, relentless client, centricity lessons in there. There’s cultural lessons in there.

But what clicked for me immediately was it opened the world to be who I am was that I’ve been called fundamentally unreasonable about certain things, standards, challenges, and client in my life so many times. Yeah. Now, when people call you unreasonable, I mean, never mind when they add fundamentally in front of it, but when they call you unreasonable, it’s a hard word.

The first time I heard it, I thought, well, that’s not a compliment. And then in the book, he said, people use that word to shut you down, but actually you need to realize that only the fundamentally unreasonable will change the world. Because they are the only people who have the courage to keep on challenging to change the world eventually.

And that almost gave me that little chip on my shoulder to say, don’t stop doing what you’re doing. Your question is how did I galvanize. Well, firstly, I ordered thousands of the book. I think they had to do a reprint probably when Jeanette heard about it because there were thousands of boxes delivered here.

And I actually handed it out to as many people as I could. Yeah, I started with my entire leadership team, about 350 people. And I keep on stopping them in the corridor saying, have you read the book? And then if they can’t quote something, then I know they haven’t. And then I make sure they do.

But how we did it, it came at the perfect, perfect time for us because by then we have already formulated our strategy, our impact strategy, with all the stretching targets and everything that went with it. That basically raised that bar just a little bit and we were then embarking on redefining our culture. I would call it the behaviours that we wanted in this organization to be able to live that purpose and deliver on that strategy. So we were mid in designing and formulating for ourselves what our culture needed to be. And that book was a wealth of just the perfect way to put it.

So I’m proud to say that we’ve got six culture pillars. Two of them actually deal exclusively with client. The first one is as simple as this. We care a lot about how we make our clients feel. How beautiful is that? And it comes straight from the book. Mm-hmm. We don’t care about, we do, of course. But what we didn’t formulate was how fast do we answer the phones, do we?

And how many mistakes we make. No. Because it’s about, about how you make them feel. Mm-hmm. That makes a difference between a loyal client that will do anything for you and a client that is just mildly like, okay, yes, tick the box and then being fundamentally unreasonable about simplicity, making the client’s life. Our industry is so complex. Yeah. And for us to go from a very complex organization where you send your client a 63 page contract. That we know no one ever reads. To what I’m still hoping to launch soon is here is the fine print in big print. Here’s the two pages. Mr. Client, read this, trust us and everything else will. So it’s work in progress. There are so many more things we needed to do, but what I did was not to introduce a new tick list of 10 things we needed to do, but to rather create this as part of we are changing our culture behaviours. What are the behaviours that we will tolerate and what are the behaviours that we will not tolerate and that in fact we will celebrate in this business.

A lot of those concepts we actually worked into how we think about culture and behaviour in the organization.

Debbie: And did you have facilitators? Was this part of like a, a change program? I mean, how did you act? How was the actual physical implementation done? How did you spread the word?

Jeanette: Well, I got the first 10 people who were passionately reading this book and couldn’t wait to tell me about the amazing things they learned.

And I said, okay, you are our ambassadors. Come, let’s sit together and let’s do this. And firstly, I needed to get my leadership team to buy in. And I can tell you that was not hard. But once your leaders start to live in a different way because, there’s the saying that, I can’t hear what you say because what you do is so loud that, that we started to live it and we started to keep each other accountable every single day and moment on are we living these values? Is that how we behave? Are we keeping each other accountable for it? So I didn’t hire consultants to come and do it because actually I think that leadership and behaviour start right at the top, but then you can’t keep it right at the top. You’ve got to actually try and get it into the organization as quickly as you can.

And we ran quite a, human capital and our marketing team helped us to kind of formulate and we ran quite formalized processes. But we also left it to our nine different business units mm-hmm. To take the ones that mattered most to them and make it their own. So this is not a prescriptive culture.

It’s one that says, these are the pillars, these are the guidelines. Now go and make it your own, in your own businesses. And that seemed to work, in fact this morning. Mm-hmm. We add a culture session. We spend three hours together. We had 5,000 of our employees online. We had probably another two, 300 in a room, and we spent two hours just talking about culture and we shared with each other what’s easy, what’s hard?

Courage is hard. It’s hard to be always courageous, to always challenge the status quo, and that’s something that also comes out of the book. If you stop having the courage challenge the status quo, well then that’s what will prevail, and it’ll become mediocrity. So you’ve got to always challenge, courage is hard.

Debbie: [00:43:00] Alright, well you’ve reinspired me to give this another go because I, I tried to do some of the implementation of some of these principles because I’m also madly passionate about, about the book and I failed. So I’ve just felt like I was asking people who are already working extremely hard to stretch themselves even further.

So I’m going to give this another go. You’ve definitely sparked some inspiration. Again, job, try and built it into the heart of what you’re doing already by tweaking and tweaking the language. Because I think often these things are also in the language we start to use again, when we amongst each other rather than to add another.

Stick list of 10. I think that makes it hard. Yeah. Because then it doesn’t fit. Then it’s an extra thing I’ve got to do. Right. Versus when you live it because it’s baked in your purpose and your culture, then I think it becomes quite real. Okay. 2026. Here we come. One final question because we are running out of time.

If somebody listening has got that ambition, that like little spark that says, this is my destination. I really want to be a CEO, let’s say the next five years. What do you think are the 1, 2, 3 things perhaps that they should be focusing on right now?

Jeanette: One of the gifts that our previous CEO gave me was when, probably about two, three years before the process kicked off. He actually went around and he spoke to every, Exco member and colleague about all of us. And he said, if Jeanette becomes CEO, would you like it? Won’t you? Why would you, why won’t you?

And he actually came and he gave us the feedback. And I mean, I, I found the feedback, I got particularly harsh. In fact, afterwards I told him that he vomited all this stuff out on me and then he left. I felt like, I was terrible. I was never going to make it. Feedback, true, honest, tough feedback is the greatest gift.

Find someone that has the courage to give it to you, that care enough about you that they will give it to you. Then listen and focus on that because this whole phenomenon that people can’t change, it’s nonsense if you really know and and because actually it’s just about self-knowledge and self-awareness.

Have the self-awareness to know the impact that you have on people, the positive as well as the negative one. Now, I’m one of those people, when I get feedback, these like 50 good things and three bad ones and I focus on the three bad. Yeah, actually the 50 good ones are the ones I could have predicted.

The three bad ones are the ones that actually has a harsh and harsh and a negative impact on other people. So I think. Self-awareness on your journey to be the CEO is incredibly important because that’s often the blind spots we have, and that’s the point about a blind spot. Unless someone has the courage to point it out to you, you might never know.

Mm-hmm. So I think that’s the one thing. Seek feedback, but seek it from people who will actually give you the true feedback. Ask feedback in meetings after meetings. I started doing this thing. When I get into my car in the afternoon, I would go, okay, what did I do today? How did that go? And not to like go.

Yeah, it was all great. No to say, sure. I remember an expression on someone’s face after something I said, I wonder what happened there and think about it. And then you realize sometimes you got to apologize because sometimes you realize that you had this negative impact on someone. So I think a self journey, a journey of self discovery, and then to be tough on yourself on that I think is one.

Then stand for something. In my case, it was never a hard thing to stand for client and to stand for this absolute relentless, pursuit of excellence and perfection in terms of client service. The way in which I live it, because remember we say don’t make it a theory live it is that I read before I go tonight, every single night of my life, I read every single client query I receive that day.

I have a team who will sort it out, but I read every word. Why? Because it keeps me current about what’s going on in my organization. It keeps me current on where things are going wrong, on leadership failures, on appointment failures, on process failures, and it makes you so powerful because your business inside out.

And I don’t know everything about this business. But I know enough about the things that I really, truly care about. So stand for something, figure out what that is for you. It could be to be the best person on the numbers or the strategy or the marketing or whatever it is. For me, it was client and I think then don’t put your mind on it to the extent that it changes your behaviour.

Because actually in the end of the day, it is more important to be you and authentically you and end up in the best place for you. Sometimes people have such a blind spot about it that they become CEO and they’re the worst CEO the organization has ever had because maybe it wasn’t at the right point in time for you or the organization, or it’s the wrong organization for you.

Mm. So I think that almost relentless pursuit of a title is less important than to be the best person you can be and the best leader you can be in the right organization at the right time. So that whole thing about synchronicity, I believe in that so, so much.

Debbie: Well, this has been 50 minutes of so many golden nuggets. The pearls of wisdom, they’re just like overflowing. Jeanette, thank you so much. This has been just fabulous as always. I really appreciate your time and it’s just been a delight to sit here with you. Thank you for being here.

Jeanette: Thank you, Debbie. It really, really is a privilege and I enjoyed every minute. Thank you so much.

Debbie: Thank you.

Bye-Bye.