ALISON MORLEY
Hiring good people with a passion for their role makes you really want to come to work, Iluka Resources country manager Kazakhstan tells Helen Shield.
What was your biggest or best career break?
About four years ago I was given the opportunity to be chief executive of Brumby Resources, a role I held for three years. That role taught me a lot about the corporate side of the resources sector, it drew on every skill that I had gained until that point, and gave me a strong network into the West Perth community. I had a great chairman Geoff Jones and a board, John Hutton, Tom Henderson, who guided and mentored me and that allowed me to learn as I went. It also gave me the confidence to try career moves that could be considered risky.
Describe your leadership or management style?
I tend to find good people, bring them in, and let them get on with it. I’m fairly hands-off and put a lot of trust in my staff to do their jobs well. For my technical reports, I see my role as a filter — I am someone who can support them upwards in the organisation, get the roadblocks out of the way and let them do the best technical work that they can.
What was your most memorable board or corporate moment? Why?
I attended the Cranlana Colloquium last year which was, for me, a very special learning experience. You get to sit in a room for a week with 20 or so other leaders from various backgrounds and sectors; you read some key texts (Plato, Sen, Sartre were critical for me) and discuss the philosophy of leadership and talk about how you make decisions in situations where there is no “right” decision. The week was a huge intellectual challenge for me and I loved it. I found I came out of it really able to understand my motivation for doing what I do. That’s quite powerful when you’re faced with tough decisions — and the decisions only get tougher as you move further up in management.
What is the best way to improve workplace productivity?
Hire people with passion for the role. For me it’s easy to see why geologists are very enthusiastic about their roles, because rocks are cool — yet I also see this same enthusiasm in many accountants, IT and support staff about their roles. It is this energy and enthusiasm I look for when I’m hiring — everything else can be taught. There’s something really exciting about walking into an office where everyone really wants to be there.
Do you use social media? If so, how?
I tend to be a lurker on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — I watch what everyone else is doing because I get great ideas and inspiration from some of the posts, but I’m old fashioned enough to value my privacy, so I don’t contribute too much about myself.
What do you do in your spare time?
Spend time with my family, I read and I run (slowly — it is really more of a shuffle). I’m also on the board of the WA Youth Theatre Company and the advisory committee for the Minerals Research Institute of WA, both of which I love doing, so some of my spare time is taken up with those activities.
Best Australian holiday destination?
I went to Saffire Freycinet (a luxury resort in Freycinet National Park) in Tasmania last year to celebrate a milestone birthday, which was a phenomenal experience. But for more regular (and affordable) holidays, Dunsborough is the place I go to really recharge and relax.
What was the last book you read?
Brazil by John Updike, but it isn’t one of his best. I’m reading Amnesia by Peter Carey. He’s pretty dependable, so I’m feeling confident.
Why are there so few women in executive positions in mining?
Because no one expects us to be here and so much of our society depends on rules of thumb, shortcuts in thinking and pre-defined expectations. I recently met with the Minister of Mines for one of the other ’Stans and he started the meeting by saying, “I didn’t expect you to be a woman”. It’s easy for us to make an assumption that this is an old fashioned view from an underdeveloped country but I have also had that same conversation in Perth more often than I’d like. If you don’t expect something, if it isn’t the norm, then you don’t recognise it as a problem and you don’t do anything to make it change — and in the case of the mining industry, the expectation that senior management is male is often held by both men and women.
What needs to change to change this?
Once a woman is in a senior position and she’s performing well, it starts to feel pretty normal, pretty quickly. The best thing we can do is get capable women in visible senior roles and change that expectation. One of the reasons I chose to join Iluka was because of (chief executive) David Robb’s commitment to this ethos — a personal commitment that is showing measurable results within Iluka’s hiring, flexible work and succession planning activities. And all the women that I know who are in senior roles in Perth are incredibly supportive of younger women — they mentor, they sponsor, they advocate. And together, we are moving up the ranks to influential positions. I am very optimistic about the future.
