They will both be the first women to lead their organisations, and they both succeed leaders facing significant public scrutiny. They take the helm during particularly tumultuous periods for their respective organisations, and have both been touted as bringing much-needed fresh perspectives.
They are Vanessa Hudson, who will become CEO of Qantas Group tomorrow (Wednesday the 6th), and Michele Bullock, who will become the first Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia on September 18.
And they both have serious work ahead in pulling their organisations back from the precipice.
Hudson’s tenure comes two months earlier than planned, with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce’s retirement brought forward in a surprise move announced by Qantas Tuesday morning. Qantas announced the immediate succession will support the company in accelerating its “renewal”.
While Bullock waits another couple of weeks to take the helm of the RBA, the man she is succeeding is also experiencing a finale of sorts today. RBA Governor Philip Lowe will be chairing his last meeting of the RBA board, overseeing for the last time a decision on the future of the official interest rate (the markets are predicting there will be no change).
Both Joyce and Lowe represent two leaders of two very different organisations who have become key villains in separate stories that the public are hooked on reading.
But they also share some similarities. Lowe was the ninth man in a row to serve as RBA governor, following another succession of six men who served as Commonwealth Bank of Australia Governors until 1960. Joyce also followed a long lineup of men in the role.
Both have spent significant time in their roles. For Lowe, it’s seven years – and he would have liked another term. For Joyce, an astonishing 15 years as CEO.
Joyce leaves Qantas with the airline having lost serious trust among the Australian public. Last week he faced an intense Senate inquiry grilling, with the ACCC later launching Federal Court action against Qantas, alleging the airline had sold tickets for flights already cancelled.
Days prior to the inquiry, Joyce announced a massive $2.47 billion full-year underlying profit, thanks to high ticket prices and strong travel demand. And yet Australians are still contending with constant disrupted travel plans and remain out-of-pocket due to cancelled flights, while thousands of workers have lost jobs. The ACCC alleges were more than 8000 flights where sold to customers between May and July last year, even after Qantas had already cancelled the flights, a period when Qantas cancelled close to one in four flights and also removed around 15,000 flights from its 66,000 domestic and international flights.
Joyce described bringing his retirement forward as “the best thing I can do”.
“In the last few weeks, the focus on Qantas and events of the past make it clear to me that the company needs to move ahead with its renewal as a priority,” Joyce said in the statement
“The best thing I can do under these circumstances is to bring forward my retirement and hand over to Vanessa and the new management team now, knowing they will do an excellent job.”
As Qantas chair Richard Goyder said on the early CEO succession announcement, “the transition comes at what is obviously a challenging time for Qantas and its people.”
He noted that the airline has an important job to do in restoring the public’s confidence in the “kind of company we are, and that’s what the Board is focused on, and what the management under Vanessa’s leadership will do.”
Hudson has some work ahead. She needs to regain the trust of the Australian public, deal with the ACCC, fallout from the Senate Inquiry and rebuild relationships with workers and the unions, among other things. She gets to do it on a base salary that will be 25 per cent less than what Joyce took home — and that’s not including the massive $10 million in bonus shares Joyce was awarded last week.
Meanwhile, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said on appointing Michele Bullock to lead the RBA back in July, she will bring a ‘fresh perspective”. He also commended the “style and the nature of her leadership.”
Bullock also has work ahead. She needs to rebuild Australian trust in the RBA, contend with inflation, lead an overhaul of how the bank operates, and navigate all the future uncertainty that a central bank must deal with, including climate change, which she described last week as bringing acute uncertainty, with effects that “could be severe and irreversible if tipping points are reached.”
So often, the need for “fresh perspectives” and “renewal” are sought just as an organisation is on the precipice. What better opportunity is there to try something at least a little different? But in this case, as in many similar situations previously, women don’t just take on an organisation, they take on the crisis and all the scrutiny and expectation that comes with them being tasked with pulling things back from the brink.