Meet the Maestro - Paul

Fractional Expert Queensland, Australia

Paul - Fractional Commercial Growth Architect

At Maestro, we know there’s more to life than work. In fact, it’s the experiences, relationships and pursuits we have outside of work that can often give us an edge in what we do each day. We host an interview series called “Meet the Maestro” where we interview our Maestros and get an insight to who they really are and what makes them tick - beyond the CV.

Paul is at his best when there’s a business to grow, a knot to untangle or a big ambition that needs a practical plan behind it. He combines the analytical mind of a strategist with the commercial instincts of a business developer and the hard-won perspective of someone who’s been in the CEO and COO seats himself. His career spans investment banking, global business development and senior leadership, including roles with KPMG, Linklaters and Clifford Chance, but over the past decade he’s found a particular passion for working alongside SME owners and professional services leaders. Today, through consulting, coaching, mentoring and fractional executive roles, he helps leaders work out what’s really holding their business back, get their people pulling in the same direction and turn good intentions into measurable growth. He’s also spent six years as a business adviser and Queensland Government Business Mentor. Paul’s superpower? Cutting through the noise to find the few things that will make the biggest difference, then helping people make them happen.

1. Tell us about a career highlight to date…

Being seen as someone who just gets things done with the intellectual bandwidth to join the dots.

Looking back across my career, the highlight is not any single title or achievement. It is knowing that I have helped leaders, teams and organisations become stronger, more capable and more successful than they believed possible.

The most rewarding feedback I receive is when a business continues to apply systems, disciplines and ways of thinking that I introduced, long after my engagement / role has finished.

2. Talk us through an unusual career choice you’ve made along the way…

A defining career choice was leaving a successful global consulting role as a director and statistician with the IMS Pharma Strategy Group for the unfamiliar world of professional services. Following a chance conversation with a Magic Circle law firm partner, I took a leap from certainty into uncertainty to pursue a career that better aligned my analytical, commercial and leadership capabilities. The decision led to senior roles with some of the world’s leading professional services firms, more than 20 years in general management and C-suite leadership across Australia and the UK, and a rewarding career advising and mentoring high-growth SMEs.

3. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I was brought up in an English town that apparently is the furthest distance away from the coast of any town in the UK. However, because of my out of school activities I was determined to join the Navy and spent most of my adolescence either sailing, kayaking or involved in outdoor activities. Sadly, my eyesight let me down and it was not to be.

4. What are your passions outside of work and how do you make time for them?

I think another potential superpower of mine is time management. Regardless of commitments I have always pretty much handled all of the cooking because I absolutely love it. I walk exhaustively, follow jazz and am fascinated and spend a lot of time on the application of scientific philosophy to modern day society. I absolutely love my role as well mentoring business owners, pro bono as part of the Queensland Government Mentoring for Growth scheme as this non-paid work allows access to wonderful people and new business areas that I would never be exposed to.

5. If you could instantly master any skill or hobby, what would it be and why?

I just would love to be able to play jazz piano. The ability to passionately drive emotion through tempo, arrangement and adlib is an unbelievable skill that is so undervalued. When I hear what was being done in the early 1920s I still cannot fathom how brilliant these people were as people who played by ear. If I could instantaneously have 10% of the skill of somebody like Oscar Peterson or Count Basie, I would consider myself talented beyond my wildest dreams.

6. What’s a personal value or belief that guides the way you live your life?

I have always and always will believe in absolute delivery of service and my word is my bond. If you say something you deliver on it. If you can’t deliver on it you manage expectations and get the cover you need to ensure that people are not disappointed. In my lifetime I have seen the transactional nature of business and contract replacing handshakes. This is business life, but for me if I say I will deliver something when my hand is shaken or I give you my word that word will be fulfilled. I believe others should look at this as a simple universal leadership value that transcends many contemporary risk management philosophies.

7. What’s a challenge you’ve overcome outside of work that shaped you?

I think the key thing for me has been not to dwell on my minority status or my small size. I was brought up in a world where being ethnically different was an issue and it was pointed out at various stages - and there was friction because of it. However, I was brought up to simply aim at being great at everything I did. I was not a great sportsperson, but I made up for it intellectually and with a sheer force of character and grit, I created large groups of friends across all races and all levels of society. To me that has been my biggest personal achievement - working my way through challenges that other people have found can define a self-imposed ceiling on their progress, and which I turned into a facilitator for my own personal life and career journey.

8. What do you think your job will look like in 10 years’ time?

My own view is that the professional services model and the current model of corporate life is going through such radical change that it is hard to predict the future. As a fractional executive I would see there being opportunities, but as ever tomorrow’s experts are not necessarily even thought of yet. There was a time when engineers were the rock stars of the 19th century and lawyers and accountants were seen as cheap necessary evils. What I do know is that the divergence between highly required skills to move society along commercially and the skills to deliver the trades and stuff we need to live our lives - such as a good plumber and a good carpenter - are going to expose a hole in the middle. How people who have been knowledge workers for so long fill that hole is going to be a defining restructure of an established order - with lots of senior leaders taking higher risks and adding superior value, a hollowed out middle class and a virtually non-existent middle management.

9. If you could travel anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would you go and what would you do?

I am fascinated by civilisations that have disappeared but not through the lens of sheer historical interest, but through the legacies that they leave for today. The trail through the legacy of the European empires is well trodden and we are still in the fallout from the end of the British Empire. For me there is the fascination of the different dynasties of China, the traffic along the Silk Road and magical destinations that hardly anyone goes to where I would love to take in the history and really understand the dynamics of such interesting and world defining trade routes visiting places such as Turpan, Urumqi and Kashgar.

10. What does success look like to you?

Success is not a destination or a single achievement. It is the cumulative effect of many successes that create a fulfilling life as well as the failures that also define us because if there are none of those, we cannot objectively benchmark success when and if it arises. As I write this today future ambition is grounded nicely in a well-rounded view of success spanning a hunger that still exists to take on real business challenges, balanced by an ability to judge my success through what I can provide for those people that matter to me - my friends, my family and the community where I live. However, to live with good health, although it may well be a lottery, must be a clear marker for success as well.

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