Andy Penn

The CEO role is a very, very different role, particularly in a publicly limited company.

company where complex stakeholder management is actually a really important part of it.

And so I just think being self-aware enough to know that you've got a lot to learn, even if you make the transition through that pathway, it's not the only pathway, but it's super helpful.

Firstly, I've always been very curious and inquisitive.

And so I've always been inspired to learn new things and learning new industries has been one aspect.

But also, I think that even when you transition into a new industry, there's a lot of patterns and a lot of experiences that you can take from one to the other.

So, for example, I moved from financial services into telecommunications, a very different product proposition for customers.

But, you know, the concept of the regulatory environment in which you're operating, the responsibilities that that brings about, the governance aspects that you need to deal with, just basic people understanding

leadership and leading large teams through complex situations, the technology environments, the core fundamental base of it may be different, but some of the principles, some of the things you learn.

And so I've always found that super interesting.

How do you take what I know and what I've learned and then apply it in a new sector?

But then how do I take the time to actually learn the new sector?

And that is super important as well, because a lot of industries, and I don't know if this is becoming more the case

than in the past, probably it is.

But the degree of specialization and, I guess, uniqueness within industries, whether it's telecommunications or financial services, whatever it may be, I think is pretty important as well.

Whilst they were very different sort of issues, customer complaints, regulatory issues, network outages, those types of things,

It became apparent pretty quickly that they were all rooted in the same problem, which was that fundamentally the organization had not really tackled a upgrading and transformation of its core business.

And there was a major structural change that was happening in the industry, which was effectively

being implemented by the government, which had profound impact on the organization.

I won't necessarily go into the detail of it.