Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Cathy O’Connor

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change. The good, the bad and everything in between. Because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: This podcast series “Change Happens” is a conversation with senior business leaders on leading through change and the lesson learnt along the way. When we set out creating a podcast about how we cope, deal and work through change, we didn’t expect it to be amid the biggest worldwide change in one history, COVID19. With that context in mind, today I’ve asked Nova Entertainment CEO Cathy O’Connor to join me to share her insights into leading courageously during this crisis. Cathy has spent more than twenty years in the radio and broadcasting industry, twelve of those years as CEO and a strong advocate for women in media. She has already lived through much change in the industry with the constant need to innovate and digitise offerings and leading the workforce who are based in both capital and regional cities. Radio is a unique medium that can adapt to change almost instantly on the air. When news breaks, you can turn on a mike and record it. No TV studio, no makeup, no camera person is needed. I look forward to exploring how Cathy and Nova Entertainment are managing this current crisis. Hi Cathy, welcome to the “Change Happens” podcast. How are you going during this time?

Cathy: Well its an interesting question, isn’t it, mid COVID19 but I would say all things considered, I’m healthy and life is going on, albeit in a very set of operating circumstances to what we’re normally dealing with.

Jenelle: So Cathy in the context of COVID19, we’re seeing strong leaders really leading with courage and with their own examples. You’re well known in your industry for being a courageous leader. Can you tell me what that means for you and how its playing out for you currently.

Cathy: It’s a good question at the moment, isn’t it, because what I’ve observed over the last six weeks or so is that everyone looks to the top when things change dramatically and that’s what we’ve certainly dealt with as a business. So whether its pressure in the revenue lines or people starting to feel anxious about what's happening from an employment and job security point of view. Everybody looks to the top and I think as a leader, these are great opportunities to lead. Really my response to that has been to get on the front foot and get communicative and so that’s sort of really been the underlying theme.

Jenelle: Now I know speaking of being tough, Nova Entertainment you had to face into the COVID19 crisis quite rapidly when one of your on-air presenters was asked to self-isolate with virus symptoms. So tell me about the approach you and the team took to ensure that there was minimal disruption to the business and still ensure the health and wellbeing of other staff.

Cathy: So yes, we had an early case. I got a call on a Sunday night saying one of our Smooth announcers, Richard Wilkins, had tested positive and then we’ve quickly worked out that he had been in touch with Fitzy and Whipper, our Sydney breakfast show and many other people in the building and that was Sunday night and I think people were saying “this is going to happen, right, its going to touch your business in some way” and I think we just felt we had a bit of time to get organised but there it was …

Jenelle: And very publicly.

Cathy: … that’s it, very publicly. So we knew that you know, and we knew we had to be fast because people would be reading about it or watching it on the Today Show the next day, which is what happened. So just fast, just like “okay everyone stay at home in Sydney, everyone in Sydney stay at home” and work backwards from there and it was fine. It was dead on the front foot, I think, by that … so we asked everyone, we sent out a note the next morning. Everyone stayed at home, work from home to the extent that you can, where you don’t have your tools, don’t worry, we’ll communicate with you and by sort mid that day, I had recorded a video message to them. First and foremost your safety is everything to us, the rest can wait. We’ll work out how the business can operate but you must stay safe, you must stay at home and yeah, then we just had some pretty feverish operational work to do and within a week, the whole business nationally, not just the Sydney unit, but nationally, was working.

Jenelle: You’ve got five on-air presenters in different locations. As you said, dramatic event that happened, all very public, had to mobilise. What have you learnt from that experience, looking back on it. What insights has that given you.

Cathy: I think to my earlier points, people appreciated the speed and the visibility and so I think, you know, sometimes leadership communications, they don’t always have to be a masterpiece and I think, really I look back at some of the video stuff we were doing on that day and the subsequent days and a lot of it is like saying we don’t really have a rulebook here guys, just work with us, we’re on it, we’ll get back to you and I think people just appreciate that that was real. Don’t sit back thinking should I or shouldn’t I. I would err on the side of just get on the video and say what you can say …

Jenelle: And don’t let COVID get in the way.

Cathy: Yes, that’s right. I think that we were probably judged well for that by the staff and there was enough in our history to know that working remotely, at times you have announcers that are in other cities from each other and we had the technology to do this. We just hadn’t done five or six presenters working from their lounge rooms together but we knew we had the technology to do it. We upgraded our broadcast systems to allow our announcers to move from state to state where they might be doing stand-up comedy shows or TV appearances and so forth. So it was all there and I … look I think too, it caused us to perhaps review again that concept of what the perfect broadcast setup is. Is everyone in the room together with the organic sort of chemistry that happens and the bouncing off each other. Really I think that’s to the trained ear, to the untrained ear I don’t think people would know the difference and in many cases, working from home with peoples kids and so forth around creates new basis for content, its real. It’s a reflection of what's going on in everyone’s life and I think in many ways there were probably advantages to having to go into this remote broadcast situation. It improved content in a way and made it more topical, more relevant and more relatable.

Jenelle: Yeah, that relatability. I mean there’s a level of intimacy that I see coming through now, just when you see you’re in people’s homes, you’re seeing their lounge rooms, you’re seeing the family photos on the wall. That’s insights and connection that we would never have otherwise had.

Cathy: Yeah its interesting, isn’t it. I feel the same. Not just, you know, in the on-air sense, but off-air. You do feel and even when you’re consuming media, watching news report and people being interviewed, they’re, you know, oh they’ve got books, they don’t have books, they read, they’re in a hallway [laughter]. So yeah, its an interesting place and I just think everything is up for grabs now. So through this set of operating circumstances, many things I think can change and like all things, once your paradigms are challenged, you realise they were there to be challenged.

Jenelle: Let’s just talk about that Cathy for a minute. You said everything is up for grabs now. What do you think is up for grabs. How do you see the media landscape changing and what are some of those paradigms that have been shifted or could be.

Cathy: Well I’m not sure they’re only media paradigms. I think they’re business paradigms which is you know, I think we’ve articulated flexible working arrangements for a long time and we’ve delivered them well in many areas but I think this has taken it all to a new level and the reality that I’m observing is that these operating conditions really suit some people and they don’t suit others but I think its probably produced a new lens for us to look at flexibility in the workplace and how people work and to tailor our approach to the way that teams can be productive. I think, in many ways, I think ironically not being physically close to each other, we feel more 8.05 communication with each other.

Jenelle: And there’s a different kind of cadence coming in on reflections and what we’ve got ahead of us, don’t you think.

Cathy: I think so and you know, I’ve observed my own communication, I’ve got a team of seven direct reports and I feel that we’ve never communicated better because we’re being more frequent about it and in the work environment, what I find I would do is hold onto something because I’m going to meet with them tomorrow. Now because I’m not doing that or I’m doing it virtually, I’m just … everything I want to talk to someone about, I get on Microsoft Teams. I think the paradigm that has been challenged for me is that you need physical presence to be communicative and that’s the best kind of communication. I think we’ve morphed into a bit of a hybrid here where digital can be as productive and you can feel as connected and perhaps it’s a mixture of the two which is 8.55.

Jenelle: I mean digital connection is pretty much what you do in radio as well so I mean, you do it in your landscape of business, your service offering that’s doing that in your workplace is now a sort of internal reflection of that.

Cathy: Yes and I think too, we’re like comparison to many corporations, quite 9.15 staff and one of our paradigms has been you’ve got to the there in the markets with the people and that’s what they want from leadership and I think that will still be the case. I think that, you know, that shouldn’t stop you from thinking of ways to be visible digitally as well and you know, I think we all have those strategies and call it videos from time to time and so forth but I think there’s a whole other potential of digitals comms that will take from this crisis and play into the way that we communicate and it will be a mix of face to face and digital. I think that the new normal.

Jenelle: Cathy, you know, we’re learning that radio listening and fortunately for me considering what we are doing today, podcast listening has gone up relative to other forms of audio streaming like 9.59. Why do you think that is in a time like now. Why do you think that it continues to go up in popularity.

Cathy: We have seen that over … over the ages with crisis, whether it was 9/11 or bushfires or so forth because if it was only about playing music, then you could argue that radio would cease to exist because there are many other ways to consume music and sometimes its music of your choice. So the music side of radio and the spoken content side of radio has a broad utility and one of things we do know is that radio provides a sense of connectedness. Connectedness to the things you find funny, the people you like, the community you live in, the news of the day and the personalities that you trust and you relate to and so its really how that whole package comes together and music is part of it of course and the utility around music with broadcast radio is really about duration and you know, tell me what I should be listening to, what's songs, it’s a public celebration of hits and things, rather than the song by song personalisation which is very much what streaming music does. So its not surprising in a time like COVID where communities are displaced and feeling anxious in some cases, out of the loop in others, that that sense of connection comes to the fore and you see increased listening or we see that in our own data and we … both in terms of a number of our podcasts, number of our radio listening occasions that are being listened through app or through desktop. All of it is massively on the increase and that’s through our stations, through our competitors stations, through the talk stations, industry stations and so forth and so I think really that’s why it is. There is a utility around connection which even beyond COVID, in modern society where there are so many opportunities to choose what you’re going to listen to, what you’re going to watch, what you’re going to read, what news service you are going to use. Sometimes people just say just give it to me. They want to sort of absolve the responsibility of customising their everything. You tell me what song I should listen to today. You make the jokes. I’ll just sit back and be entertained and so there’s this sort of wonderful role of you know, the performance of broadcast which is totally curated by people, other than the individual versus this highly customised on-demand world and they are co-existing beautifully and I think in many ways, the analyst community, the media commentators, they always try to make it who’s going to win, A or B and the reality of the modern media marketplace is it is all these things. Its and and and, not either/or and we’re finding a way as an industry and our brands within that to flourish and that doesn’t mean there’s not more competition for advertising revenue or 12.59. You can’t be a bad version of radio and hope to be successful but there is many opportunities and I think that’s the way that every industry has to look at it. Play where you can play, do more of what you’re good at and stay close to your customers and you should be able to navigate any form of a new competitor, be it digital or other.

Jenelle: Lets talk about navigating those disruptors in the competitive landscape. So the introduction of other music and streaming platforms meant that you were amongst the first wave of technology innovation. As a business you have definitely evolved, continuously over the last twenty years. Can you tell us how you make decisions to adapt to that changing environment in your industry. How do you stay up with it if not ahead of it.

Cathy: Well I think decision making is a continuum so what I’d say to that is, you know back in 2012 when Spotify launched in Australia, we had already had a look globally at the music streaming services and what they were and what they impact they’d had and I think the view was that three or four would survive, which is what's happened and of course, we ran enthusiastically at that and thought well this is going to disrupt radio listening. We must participate and we developed a partnership with a music stream business. That partnership went for a couple of years. It was a business called “Rdio” and they had launched globally. They launched in Australia actually in the January of 2012, before Spotify which is in the May of 2012 and so we thought, no we’ve got that one covered and the reality is that fast forward two or three years, that was an interesting partnership. We learnt a lot about music streaming. We learnt that the economics of music streaming are very different to the economics of broadcast radio and we learnt that perhaps music streaming was more a disruption of people’s desire to play their own music which had always been something radio has faced, whether it was your vinyl collection or your CDs or your bought digital music with your iPod. So in many ways we sort of learnt a lot. The partnership ran its course. We walked away with lessons. We didn’t … I think and this is where I think we first learnt to say, that was a good experience, it actually wasn’t a great business initiative. We probably didn’t make any money out of it but we learnt a lot. We learnt about music streaming and we learnt about you can’t actually compete in everything that’s going on around the place. In many cases, you don’t need to. So I think that was our mentality. Get in and partner to understand and learn and if that then went on to be bigger than Spotify, then great, but it isn’t the way that that worked and we’ve taken the same approach with podcasting. So when podcasting was coming to the fore, I think 2017, I was at a radio conference in Europe and I saw podcasting was coming into the dialogue of broadcast radio and obviously you know, it was existing further out there in the media space, we developed a partnership with a tech platform called Adcast which is a partnership that we hold to this day and they bought all of the technology around putting ads into podcasts and we knew that we could do the content side of things, we knew we could educate the advertisers about it but we didn’t really feel that we knew a lot about ad technology, around digital audio, so how do we put ads into podcasts and so we partnered in and we learnt and that’s been a great partnership and its been a revenue positive partnership and it remains so. So I think that’s just been our approach, is you know, stay close to the consumer, see what's coming, see the behaviours and perhaps just try to get into the space and start learning. Now your eventual strategy may give it a round, you may end up not partnering. Yeah, that’s just sort of our approach.

Jenelle: So Cathy, look I think that’s fantastic, I love the mindset with which you have talked about, you know, participating in the disruption maybe rather than pretending its not there or digger deeper on what you used to do before. I love how you have taken away the lessons, regardless of whether or not its successful (in inverted commas). There are certainly learnings that you take away from each 17.09. It was going to be … my next question was going to be what philosophy do you personally hold around change. Is it something that you enjoy, is it something you endure. I feel like I’m getting a strong sense that change is something that you embrace, is that right.

Cathy: I think you have to. I think, beware any seer that says they hate change. I think you have to and it’s not an optional extra. It is the way that it works. I think you learn to stop staying “gosh it used to be easier before blah” because you realise when you start to say that that you’re anchoring yourself in the past and you’re going to sound like a dinosaur and just don’t. You can quietly reflect in a nostalgic way about easy business used to be when it was just radio or when there were just radio advertising briefs and not all media briefs or communications briefs but you develop new skills and it becomes the new normal. So I think I have a healthy enthusiasm for new things. What I’ve learnt is that you cannot … you can put a business under a lot of stress through doing too much new stuff. So what I think you do develop over your career is more the ability to discern a bit better and actually work out, you know, is this just hard, too lofty or is there too much of it and there was time in our business where you know, some of our commercial teams were saying “enough with the innovation guys, I’ve got to sell, I’ve got to sell podcasting I’ve got to sell radio, I’ve got to sell digital, I’ve got to sell the goat platform and don’t bring me e-sports. I can’t … there’s nothing more in me” and so you do have to make sure its practical innovation and its innovation that’s ultimately leading somewhere and how are you going to decide if it is or it isn’t. You have to sometimes say “you know what, that was great learning, lets use it for something else”. Some of those journeys have been difficult when, particularly teams and executives, get very attached to things that they may have worked a year on and those decisions can be as difficult but as important as the decision to innovate in the first place.

Jenelle: Can you tell me what changes or obstacles women had to overcome in radio and media.

Cathy: Of course. Look, I think in many ways radio and media is business and therefore the things that have applied more broadly in business have applied in media and radio. So those things are around the opportunity for women to have the equal opportunities to men in all manner of their corporate life. So the ability to work flexibility and so forth, you know, all of those things, it almost feels a little bit like obvious to be talking about them but all of the things that need to exist corporately to support men and women to work and be fulfilled in their lives is one thing. The harder thing is the bias that I believe exists in business and in media towards women and that is a trickier thing because it’s a little more, you know, underground and in many ways, its often unconscious so …

Jenelle: What's the nature of the bias?

Cathy: I think it comes from male executives for the most part and I think even those with the best intentions can sometimes view women differently to men and often that comes through a lens of “I’m really supportive, I’m really supportive of women and therefore I didn’t even think about asking her would she want that promotion because you know, she’s about to have a child and you know, at home she wants support and there’s a lot that’s going on there”, you know. Those sorts of filtering processes which often come with the best intentions, its like well, we need to let our staff lead us to whether or not they should or shouldn’t be considered for promotion if we believe that they’re high performers and so there should be nothing in their personal circumstances that is causing us to filter them differently to a male candidate and that’s one that I’ve observed over the years and I think having the courage to call that out when you see it.

Jenelle: We do have something of an accelerant so maybe it’s a hope for me speaking now but with COVID19, I guess those corporate policies have been all challenged. You know, people are working flexibly across all industries, or most industries and I think we’re seeing so much press, you know, when you talk about the bias that may exist around, it does exist around a number of stereotypically female attributes. So many great pieces around analysing the communication style of the number of female leaders we’ve got across the globe who ae making enormous strides in leading through this crisis. A view of where empathy plays in a time like this, a different lens on risk taking, so those very attributes that you’ve talked about as being the bias before are starting to get 21.54 right now in this corona virus so perhaps there is something on the diversity front that’s really going to help us want to come out of the COVID world. What do you think about that?

Cathy: Oh look, I think absolutely if we don’t use this as the dress rehearsal for the new world then it would be a missed opportunity and a great shame and managing to outcomes. I mean, it should … its too obviously to even say it but often it doesn’t happen. We managed to a view of how things should look or be or you know, what gets noticed, managing to outcomes. What else can we do in COVID but manage to outcomes and we are and there’s great work going on. People are delivering. Communication is not suffering from where I sit and so there’s your proof. That’s one thing we can take out of this situation we’re in, I think we’ll take a lot out of it and they’ll be some tough sort of business decisions no doubt, depending on the pace of recovery to come but you know, there’s many positives I think from a employee point of view and a staff resourcing point of view that will be great. Stimulus for, stimuli I should say, for new thinking. New thinking in people practices in corporate Australia.

Jenelle: I agree. So you know, you’ve had an incredible two decades history. Twelve years as CEO. What are the biggest lessons you’ve learnt over the years and over your journey to CEO.

Cathy: Look, I think decision making and trusting instinct is something … you develop instinct through … obviously I’ve had deep sector experience in radio and now deep experience in this role. So developing instinct I think, its served me well and helps you with being decisive. So I think there’s a big role for instinct. I think equally and not to contradict myself, having the right data and using data to guide decision making. It can’t be all instinct, is something I’ve grown capability in and certainly I need good data and good analysis in the teams that work with me because I tend to have that more conceptual approach to my thinking and the way I operate. You know, its balance, balance in the team, hiring the right people is the other big one. So often in my career where things haven’t gone well, its often about either having the wrong people in certain roles or not making the tough calls on people that might in some ways be great at what they do but might be working against the team dynamic and so forth. So just those decisions around people are really important.

Jenelle: So lets just … you know, if you imagine five years time and you and I having this conversation and I said to you “Cathy, you know, remember COVID19 five years ago”, what do you think you would say about it, what do you think we will be saying about this time in our lives if you were to fast forward.

Cathy: It’s a good question. I mean if I fast forward and I look back at now, I’d say that was great, that really helped us to evolve. I think we will … you know crystal balls are difficult because we don’t know where we’re at but my optimism comes to the fore and this is a great country. We’re blessed with wonderful resources and we live in a beautiful place. I think we need to balance our natural laidback Australian style with the requirements of a global economy and so I think investment in innovation and education and all the things that go with progress need to keep happening and in as much as we have a beautiful country, I worry, you know, that it won’t remain that way if we don’t start to think a bit more strategically about the climate and so forth. So I just see opportunities for business. I see leaders needing to change their view of how business is done in view of what COVID has done and that not only is about this, you know, ways to operate with people that we’ve talked about, but it may well be that your sectors are not going to recover and we’re not going to be able to press “reset” and go back to the beginning of the movie we were watching [laugh] because recovery might look like a whole different set of things and I don’t even know what that looks like. I think we’re all trying to think about what data we’re going to rely on to know that but we’ll see it in our own business performance and I think we can assume it won’t reset as quickly as it declined and therefore, you know, we’ve all got decisions around how we adapt and those things I think, I’ll rely on the instincts that I’ve talked about to guide myself and the team to what happens next. But I think we will probably look back and see it as a turning point of some type because its pre – its probably too significant, too materially significant at the moment to not be a turning point.

Male: The last three. Three fast questions on change to finish the podcast.

Jenelle: All right Cathy, three fast questions. First one, what's a common misconception that most people have about you.

Cathy: Okay, so I get the same response to this all the time. When I say I love camping and that is tents and …

Jenelle: You don’t really mean that.

Cathy: But people say “no way, you don’t love camping”. I do love camping. There you go, so that is a misconception. Most people think I would hate camping and perhaps [laugh] they think I prefer the finer things in which I do as well but I love camping.

Jenelle: But as you said, two things can be true. What's one guilty pleasure?

Cathy: Okay, I’m going to … this is in the interest of full transparency. I have never missed a series of The Bachelor or the Bachelorette or MAFS. So all …

Jenelle: You and I need to talk shop [laugh].

Cathy: Same here … and I have a wonderful excuse. I say “look it is topical content, I need to be in the know for work and don’t you hate on me for it.” So there you go.

Jenelle: No judgement from me, I don’t even have those as an excuse [laugh]. What's one thing that you’re quite hopeless at.

Cathy: Okay. They’re both related to each other. I’m hopeless at reading maps and I tend not to because now we have google maps or apple maps, whichever you use and I’m also hopeless at asking for directions. So those two things, being hopeless at both those things …

Jenelle: That’s unfortunate [laugh].

Cathy: … they do not work as a dual sort of strategy, they do not work.

Jenelle: That’s a double whammy. One could definitely help the other but fair enough. You’re really owning it.

Cathy: Now I’m going to let technological advances let me off the hook on that one.

Jenelle: Good on you. Well Cathy, thank you so much for your time. Its been a really interesting chat, really taken away a lot from this chat. I think, as you said, that this really is an opportunity for us all to evolve and adapt. I love your point around the opportunity for us to really shirt our paradigms. You know, paradigms about what it means to work flexibility, around productivity, around managing to outcomes, around communications and as you said right at the start of this talk today, everyone does look to the top in a time like this. These are our times to lead and leadership communications don’t have to be a masterpiece. So lets not let perfect get in the way of an authentic conversation at pace with our people. Thank you so much, I really appreciate the time.

Cathy: Thanks, it’s been great to talk to you.

Male: The Change Happens podcast, from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

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