Q&A: Thought leadership with Mark Bilton

Yes, I think they should do more.

I think the outside view is often a good one, because there's lessons that can be learned from different industries that can be cross-fertilised into other areas.

Particularly at a leadership level, those skillsets are very transferable, and people don't often cross across different industries.

Diversity is a good thing – diversity of opinion, background, ethnicity, gender, age...it really helps an organisation.

People often tend to hire people like themselves, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

I'm a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, so I'm part of the problem – a white, Anglo Saxon, male baby boomer.

We were listening to a talk on diversity, and I looked around the room, and here was the irony of these white, Anglo Saxon, male, grey-haired people listening to a talk on diversity going 'Yes, that's really important'.

How do you think Australian businesses compare globally? 

Australia in particular…hasn't had the economic shocks that a lot of other countries have had, and sometimes if you don't go through those hard times...you're not forced to change, and so you'll stick with the status quo.

New Zealand for instance has gone through some massive economic shocks, and so their businesses tend to be more flexible, more innovative, and possibly more entrepreneurial, and other places in the world are similar.

We've been able to go out west, dig a hole, whatever we find, we give to China.

That's why we've been growing. But there's a whole economy outside of the minerals and the mining sector that has to grow – and has to grow quickly – if we're going to catch up.

What is the wisest thing you have been told in business?

‘Be yourself'. I think one of the biggest issues that leaders have is they're trying to be something that they're not.

We have this sort of cult of the ‘hero leader’, where we seem to have to want to be totally invincible, emotionless, always have the answers, always get things right, and that's a pretty heavy load for anybody to live under.

I believe that if you're genuine and authentic, you engage with people a lot better, so you get more out of them

 How do you actually go about managing work, life, hobbies etc.?

I think work-life balance is a bit of a misnomer, particularly these days when people want you 24 hours, seven days a week.

It's something that I think, if you're clear about your priorities, you'll tend to manage all those different things that call on you.

Some people have a capacity to do a lot of things, other people are more capable of just doing a few things. And I try and do things smart rather than spending a lot of time on them, so I'll play delegator.

Think about your time constraints, think about your priorities, and saying no when you have to is important.

How do small business owners avoid being too focused on their everyday work at the expense of taking a holistic view of their business?

For very small businesses, a lot of them often stay very small because the owner or the leader will not be able to go to the next level.

I think organisations will always go to the level of the leadership capability.

As organisations go from start-up through to multinational...often it's a different type of person that needs to be able to deal with that.

There's not too many Steve Jobs in the world; everybody's got their own little sweet spot...it's a step change.

What is the biggest mistake a lot of business owners make? 

You usually have a lot of smart people around you and if you don't listen to them, engage them and create an environment where they're respected, honoured and listened to, then you're very reliant on what you think.

You might be right 99 times out of 100, and then you're wrong and your business will fail.

How do you go about developing policies to really engage social media, make sure that it is useful to the business, without being detrimental?

It would be like going back a generation or so and banning the telephone – it's a way people communicate.

So you can have certain etiquettes [as to] how you would use your phone and how you would communicate with the world over a telephone, but you wouldn't put in a huge, massive, big, restrictive policy about how you use a phone, how you don't use a phone, and what you say and what you don't say.

I think you just have to embrace it.

What advice would you give business owners about planning for a sustainable future?

Culture comes from the top. So if you educate yourself and you stretch yourself and you're willing to embrace new ideas, and you go from there to there, then your organisation has the capacity to grow.