Her Article Library > Power Profile > Cruise Control
|
|
Cruise Control
Cruise ControlWords: Catherine MurrayAdd opportunity and risk to a healthy dose of chance and you’ve found the ingredients of one woman’s success. Ann Sherry is the CEO of Carnival Australia, Australasia’s largest cruise ship operator, and believes good fortune comes to those who do their best and have a go. “There’s a piece of alchemy that goes with most people’s success that is peculiar to them, so I was lucky enough to have my piece,” she claims. “Ultimately life is a great journey and a great exploration – you find things to do and you have a go.” It seems such a simple mantra for someone who is changing the face of the cruise shipping industry. Ann took over the helm of Carnival Australia in 2007 at a time when the sector’s reputation needed some repair. Since then the only consistent element in the company has been change. “We have really looked at every single aspect of the business - nothing has been left out,” explains Ann. “Everything from the sort of food that is served on board the ships, the number of crew, where we hire people (for example to provide economic opportunities in the South Pacific), right through to the way we answer telephones in the office and do marketing campaigns. So, absolutely everything has changed, and the benefits are pretty obvious with 20% growth year on year and 20% plus in some years since I became CEO. We are now the fastest growing cruise market in the world and the benefits of it are there for everyone. For people in the business there are long term jobs along with the excitement and energy that go with such dynamic growth. People have to work hard but this creates opportunities.” Ann herself is not one to shy away from doors that open, whether they’re in her path or slightly off the beaten track. She’s also the first to admit that some career choices throughout her life have been anything but logical. Her first career was in radiography, and coming from a family of health professionals it seemed like the obvious choice. “My parents had a pharmacy in the main street of town, and we walked by there on our way home from school,” recalls Ann. “My family were all pharmacists, doctors and nurses, so health really was a logical choice for me. In keeping with the times, my mother valued education and a good marriage. She was very keen that I meet and marry a doctor and thought a hospital was a great place to work. That’s how I ended up in radiography. So, my first career choice was my mother’s. The rest have been mine!” Following marriage to Public Relations Consultant, Michael Hogan, a son and a few adventures, Ann was appointed First Assistant Secretary of the Office of the Status of Women in Canberra, advising the Prime Minister about improving the status of women in Australia. Next a 13-year career at Westpac commenced where she sanctioned paid maternity leave, an achievement she counts as one of her greatest. “We were the first private sector company in Australia to do it, and the rest of the private sector fell like dominoes afterwards.” Ann’s contribution to the Australian community was recognised with an Order of Australia in 2004. She received the accolade for her advocacy of gender equity, social justice and work and family partnerships through corporate management policies and practices. “Acknowledgement is an interesting thing because it’s always about something that has happened, often quite a while before,” Ann muses. “The value of it is that other people thought you were worth mentioning. That’s not why you do things, but I guess it was nice to have that – and of course my mother was chuffed!” The year 2002 saw Westpac appoint Ann as the first female CEO of a New Zealand bank, an appointment New Zealand was ready for – but only just! “It was a time when there were lots of women in positions of authority and power in New Zealand, less so in business, but much more in institutions,” recounts Ann. “To me New Zealand felt much more open to the idea of a woman running a business. Of course what I found was that there weren’t that many women in business.” Ann mentions Telecom’s Theresa Gattung as the other key female CEO of the time, in a business environment she describes as very gentile but still very male. It is Ann’s aptitude for risk that has seen her manoeuvre across industries with apparent ease, taking advantage of “amazing” opportunities despite cautionary counsel from others. “Whether it was jumping from banking to cruise shipping, moving from Australia to New Zealand or going from government to the private sector, at every one of those key points most people thought I was completely mad. They were very forthcoming with their opinions! They were all risks, but they were calculated. I think if you don’t take risk then life is probably nice and safe and secure, but other opportunities just don’t open up.” Now Ann’s life is almost a world away from her childhood in Queensland’s Gympie, where her opportunity for risk taking was a little muted. “Gympie gave me a typical Aussie country town upbringing,” she recalls. “We had horses. All the stuff you do when you grow up in the country. I have fond memories of a horse named Prince, an old racehorse that couldn’t run all that fast anymore.” Finding strong female role models outside the family circle was a futile exercise for Ann. She says it wasn’t until she was much older that Australia provided strong women identities. “The strong women in my life were my mother and my grandmothers. They all worked in paid employment, which wasn’t all that common at the time,” reflects Ann. “Women in our household were not wilting flowers by any stretch of the imagination! A lot of my female role models when I was growing up were actually women overseas … women who were breaking the shackles.” It’s not really possible to mention women and work in the same sentence without inviting some discussion on the ever-elusive work/life balance. Ann says it’s a concept that everyone defines differently and that evolves over a person’s personal and working life. “I think there’s a danger in talking about it as if it’s this absolute place that you can get to, where your whole life is really ordered and you’ve got that image of balance with the kids and family on one side and work on the other, and it’s all sitting there in happy equilibrium. I think it’s a day-by-day proposition – actually it’s hour-by-hour sometimes,” she quips. The lines between Ann’s own ‘work’ and ‘life’ are comfortably blurred. Ann is a founding Board member of Jawun, a non-profit organisation connecting corporate businesses with Indigenous communities. Companies second employees into communities that need assistance and skills, giving them the opportunity to develop businesses and become self-sufficient. “Jawun started with modest objectives and now we’re working with communities on much bigger ideas, for example a walk from Cairns to the tip of Cape York, and all the infrastructure that goes in between. In East Kimberley we’re working with communities that are beneficiaries of the mining there, on how they might invest their money and develop community infrastructure.” Carnival Australia is also looking after the communities it visits en route. At some destinations local tours, such as dining with a resident family or seeing a demonstration of a craft, are available to give passengers an insight into the lives of the people they are visiting. Creating jobs is also on the company’s agenda. “We bought a boat for one of the islands in Vanuatu to take people from one island to another, and we’ve trained equal numbers of men and women to run it,” says Ann. For the women of the island it means they have some financial independence, a completely new experience for them. As for the future, Ann has her sights set high. “At Carnival Australia we have called this the ‘decade of cruising’ and I think the next 10 years will bring even more growth for the industry and greater choice for customers. Both the challenge and the opportunity is to get the infrastructure issues resolved so that port facilities are sufficient to support industry growth and the economic contribution that goes with it. In Australia that means achieving a three-berth solution in Sydney – one west of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and two in the eastern harbour to accommodate the increasing number of cruise ships that are too big to pass under the bridge. In New Zealand it’s a matter of getting Queen’s Wharf in Auckland sorted and also working with Christchurch so we can again contribute to the region’s economy by bringing tourists back. Everywhere we go we need to see that things are done to really make the cruise experience hum.” While for now Ann finds her sea legs in cruise shipping, she has some sage advice for women contemplating a career shift across to a new industry. “Do your due diligence on the job and the company to make sure it has a long-term future, and people are what they say they are. But otherwise if it makes your heart sing and you think it would be a great adventure, I’d say absolutely grab it, do it! What’s the worst thing that can happen? It’s a good question to ask. Often the answer is I’ll be looking for another job in six months’ time if it doesn’t work out – and that’s not the end of the world. If the best happens then it’s a fantastic opportunity. Sometimes working out the worst thing that can happen gives you enough courage to go out and do it.” Catherine Murray Ann’s tips for when opportunity knocks
|
|
|
|