Issue link: https://enterprise-resources.awscloud.com/i/1516052
Page 2 Transcript Well I don't think you can be in charge of technology without understanding that people are the really key part of that. I think that any CTO needs to have a level of soft skills, needs to have an understanding of their organisation's purpose and be willing to talk about that purpose really passionately, or you probably shouldn't work there. The culture is not just there to, about the conduct of the organisation, it's about the purpose of the organisation. And so when you see people in the office at you know Saturday night at ten o'clock they've just finished a game and they're having a chat about the game, they're just as passionate about the game as Monday morning when they come in and do the same again. So just it feels like the culture of an organisation for me is so interwoven into why you come to work that if you can't get behind it just don't work there. I'm pretty fortunate that I probably don't have to work at the AFL. I could get a job somewhere else if I wanted to. But I'd want to go somewhere where the culture was strong enough that it made me want to come to work. That's not always that easy when you're working 60 hour weeks. But if you go somewhere where the 60 hour week feels like a 40 hour week because you're doing something on purpose, it's a pretty great feeling at the end of the year. That's how I feel about it. Now I know not everyone might feel that way. But for me because I've charted my career around working for purpose organisations, if I can't buy into that purpose, I can't talk passionately about it, I don't really think I should be working there. So it's so ingrained in the DNA of the AFL, the purpose of us is to progress the game so everyone can share in its heritage and possibilities. I think when you're thinking through the lens of how you progress the game with every decision that you make, that's a pretty clear lens to make decisions through. How do we meaningfully move the dial to get more people playing more sport, more AFL, more often. And that could be a whole different thing. Our vision is that there's a football in every home by 2030. It's a pretty lofty goal when you think about it as a vision. But that football doesn't have to be everyone's playing football it might be that you're at home talking about the football results on a Saturday afternoon or it might be that you're playing the AFL game on PlayStation or whatever it might be but we want people to be thinking about football and playing football 'cause we passionately believe that football is something that makes people lives better and brings communities together. And so that's a pretty fun thing to be involved in. We make money to be able to invest in those things, not just for the purposes of making shareholders richer. People will give their discretionary effort for things that they believe delivers on their purpose. And so my job is to paint that purpose and make sure I hire people that are matching that purpose and keep talking about our purpose. And progressing the game so everyone can share its heritage and possibilities is our purpose. That's pretty easy to get behind. You watch a kid play Auskick at half-time at the MCG and they're having the best time of their life whether they're kicking a football seriously or doing cartwheels on the ground waving hi to their Mum and Dad in the stands. If you can't get excited about that, it's pretty hard to get excited. Transcript