Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci is levelling the playing field

The South African-born CEO of Woolworths doesn’t have all the answers, he tells Kirsten Galliott, so he’s going down the chain to discover who does.

How do you defifine good leadership?

You get a group of people to be highly energised and committed to doing the right thing. I’m not a big believer in the cult of the individual, the CEO as an icon.

How do you encourage them to be energised?

I try to orientate from the “I” to the “we”, orientate from objectives to purpose. In the future, the way we work and the way we make decisions will change – it has already – and I don’t think organisational structures or leadership have fully understood those changes. I know broadly where we have to go but there’s a lot more personal discovery on that journey.

Presumably that’s a lifelong journey…

We talk a lot about this as we’re becoming more datadriven – the people who have these insights aren’t in the senior team. We aren’t the people best equipped to make these decisions [now]; they’re a couple of levels down. How we empower them to make the right decisions becomes a very interesting question.

How do you seek out those people and encourage them?

We have to empower our digital team members to be even more aspirational in terms of changing the world and being purpose- or ideas-driven. The senior team won’t be making individual decisions. That sounds trivial and obvious but it’s actually very hard because senior people have been used to making the big calls; they quite like making them. In the old days, you had to be very good at vertical leadership – managing up and managing down. Where we want to go, you have to manage horizontally. How effffectively can you work across the business with your peers?

How will you judge that?

We’re still fifiguring that out. We’re all realising that we need to change the way we lead and the way we work. At a very simple level, you need to be able to work with your peers to achieve an outcome without having to elevate it. If the senior team has to get involved in every decision – or you tell your team not to share something until you’ve looked at the data, which is a traditional way of doing things – I’ve got a problem.

How do you manage such a big transformation?

We’re all swimming in the maelstrom together. Most of the change will focus on us as a senior team. We need to create the right conditions for the team to

make the calls. It’s actually quite exciting. I’d love to be in a world where my pitch is evaluated the same as anyone else’s.

Wouldn’t you fifind that confronting?

I would. I’d like to win my pitch on merit, not because I’m the CEO. It’s hard to deal with but I do love it when someone says, “Good idea but I’ve got a better one.”

Do you think you’ve created the kind of culture where people can feel free to disagree with you?

I aspire to. In parts of our business we have, and in parts of our business we haven’t. A previous CEO used to rate stores. He’d say, “You’re a seven or an eight.” That’s the way it worked. But I always say, “You don’t set up a store for us; you set it up for your customers. Every day.” I never want to see a store set up for me.

How oftften do you go into stores?

I try to go Thursday, Friday and Sunday. I’m learning all the time. I could walk into grocery stores for the next 15 years and I wouldn’t understand them perfectly. It’s a very complex business, which makes it cool.

How do you take your senior team on the journey with you?

Purpose is about authenticity. I decided to shoot a weekly video. At fifirst, there were three people running a professional production unit with a script. It was just not me, I’m not good at that stuffff. Now, I have it down to one camera person and I shoot it once, a maximum of twice. I think about the narrative and I have 30 or 40,000 people who watch it every week. They watch it not because I’m good – because I’m not – but because it’s real and the video is telling them what we’ve collectively learnt in our business that week. If I’m emotional, which sometimes I am – mental health is a terrible issue and we have a number of terrible things that happen in our business – I have to be honest about it, not hide it. Being perfectly polished doesn’t give you the same cut-through.

When you have a strategy to combat an incoming threat – such as Amazon – how do you communicate it?

There are two very difffferent philosophies to digital and I take the road less travelled. Our team needs to be part of our digital journey. There’s a school of thought that says you take digital and create a separate business and it creates a future. I’m a passionate believer in skilling up our whole team to be part of the digital journey. We all want to be 21st-century leaders and managers. In terms of Amazon, funnily enough, I was looking at its values on Sunday. I think Amazon is fantastic and any of those values apply to any other business. I keep saying to the team, “Forget about Amazon; you never focus on the competitor. What you do is focus on your customers and your team.”

You go into stores on Sunday, you read Amazon’s values on Sunday – is there any balance?

Work-life balance is a very personal thing. I’m dogmatic that I’m home at 5pm on a Friday night. Being home at 5pm is more important to me than [not working on a] Sunday morning. My view is each person should make those trade-offffs themselves.

The days of ruling by fear have passed, haven’t they?

It’s still there much more than I care to think. Work is about feeling good and if you feel good, you’ll give discretionary effffort. Magic happens when you do that. Fear makes you less open to making quality decisions.

Does meditation help with that, too?

I think it does. I’m a big believer in mindfulness.

Your wife was a meditation teacher?

Still is. I believe everyone needs to fifind how they relax and how they become mindful. I don’t think there’s one path to it. You can go swimming in the ocean, which I do a lot. Being mindful is key to managing stress – stress reduces your ability to make good decisions and fear-based decision-making is very dangerous.

There’s a lot of pressure on CEOs to turn things around very quickly. Have you felt that pressure?

It comes back to don’t act under stress, and do the right thing in the right sequence. We’ve got a long way to go. When we stopped trying to make things happen too quickly, they actually started happening. Things can happen faster if you’re more structured and thoughtful and plan a more holistic long-term process.

What advice would you give to a new CEO?

I’m still a new CEO, for the record. Crikey!

“I’D LIKE TO WIN MY PITCH ON MERIT, NOT BECAUSE I’M THE CEO. IT’S HARD TO DEAL WITH BUT I DO LOVE IT WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, ‘GOOD IDEA BUT I’VE GOT A BETTER ONE.’”