Why this top 100 CEO gets his executives to swap jobs

“When you become a CEO, you start watching people, everything about them, their behaviour, their decision-making and leadership style, you watch them in the job swap and you go, ‘yeah, this person has got it, or maybe they don’t have it and need some more development’.”

The executive team recently completed the fifth iteration of the initiative, which runs for a fortnight and has built up with five primary principles.

The golden rule is you’re not allowed to come back to your department for two weeks. The new executive gets full decision-making power while in the seat.

A full handover is required between executives before the exercise, and all executives are required to present to the executive team at the end of the fortnight.

For example, the CFO reported there wasn’t enough financial rigour and due diligence in the people and culture department. TechOne is now looking at extending the program to its middle managers across its top 30 roles.

Something is clearly working in the business, which Chung calls the quiet achiever in the tech sector. The share price has risen from less than $5 in 2018 to more than $15 and a market capitalisation of around $5.2 billion to become one of the country’s largest 100 companies.

The job swap fits with TechOne’s “power of one” mantra which coalesces around building, marketing, selling and supporting its software in-house, rather than outsourcing. It also fits with TechOne’s culture, which some have described as unique and driven.

Over recent years, the company has made headlines for more than one high-profile bullying case.

Chung admits the culture is not for everyone. Since starting as CEO in 2017, he sent a Net Promoter Score to his staff, which he found was sitting at -17, but most recently has rebounded to +30.

“It’s a driven culture in all parts [of the business], it’s not for everyone. I say to everyone I hire it has a unique culture, it will pick you up and dust you off a number of times. But if you make 12 months, you’ll stay forever.”

‘A little on the crazy side’

The head office in Brisbane also includes the almost mandatory tech fit-out of a two-level gym, end-of-trip facilities, foosball table, craft beers on tap and regular “tribal days” to bring the 1200 staff together.

The company’s extensive employee share scheme – if you buy two shares, you get one free – also means 50 per cent of the staff are shareholders.

BOSS asks MacDonald where the job swap idea came from. “We made it up completely,” he says. “It is a little on the crazy side, I’ll admit it.

“We had a big reorganisation project about six years ago. “One of the long-time execs had been in the same department for about 19 years and their response was very departmental.

“We said, ’that would break a, b and c in the other parts of the business, but their response was, ‘well, I don’t know how those other departments work’.”

This latest iteration brought in the CFO, COO and head of people and culture into the experience for the first time.

TechOne’s head of strategic operations, Brock Douglas, became the CFO. CFO Cale Bennett became head of people and culture, head of people, Alison Chalmer, became the COO, and the chief technology officer, Chandan Potukuchi, became head of sales and marketing.

Head of sales and marketing, Tim Moylan, became head of customer experience, head of customer experience, David Cope, became head of UK, and UK head Leo Hanna became the CTO.

MacDonald, the COO, took on special projects, which currently involves a build-up of the company’s Kuala Lumpur office.

“It’s full on,” MacDonald says. “Our head of UK flies out here, someone from here flies to the UK, our CFO went to run people and culture,” he says.

‘A change is as good as a holiday’

“Becoming CFO of a publicly listed, $5.2 billion company is no small task, especially when you don’t have the skill set.

“Brock had meetings with investors, he made business decisions relating to the strategy; it’s understanding the business all the way through.

“You are also getting your teams to see a different view. They say ‘a change is as good as a holiday’, and our teams get to see a vastly different leadership style.”

Cope, the head of customer experience, headed over to the UK for the experiment and says, “until you sit in someone’s else’s chair, you don’t really understand”.

“I got stitched up by the UK team who told me Leo buys them pizza every Friday, but that’s part of the relationship building,” he says.

“You also have a second set of eyes or someone else ‘living in your house’ for a couple of weeks.

“They very quickly pick up on pain points that you have learnt to live with. When Tim Moylan came into my role, he asked ‘why do you do it this way’, it gets you to reflect and round your own team out.”

“I have also said that I would love to try the CTO role because it’s an area I’m cognisant that I just don’t have the required level of understanding.”

Strategic program manager Danielle Windle is not in the executive job swap, but says the program is just as beneficial for the employees.

“Our CTO is obviously a very technical person, he swapped out and Leo from our UK office came in. Leo has a very commercial background. You normally talk in a particular way, so having a different line of questioning from what you would normally get is really challenging,” she says.

“A really good example is our software sessions. One of the difficult questions was around ‘why are we doing it this way, and what are our drivers’, which we really struggled to answer. So, going back and doing a simple business case was really helpful. .

“You’re always running at 100 per cent, and you just want to get things done, so it’s a real challenge, but through this you realise that there are these gaps.”