Davidson XChange: Featuring Melbourne Demons President Kate Roffey

Introduction [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi my name's claire mccartney i'm the managing partner at davidson and today i'm joined with kate roffey the melbourne football club president and director of deals and major projects at wyndham city kate's professional career has seen her as the ceo of the committee for melbourne the ceo of vic sport and the manager of the melbourne park redevelopment for tennis australia kate was formerly a biomechanist and an athlete at the ais kate is renowned within the sporting government and corporate worlds for her transformational inclusive and no-holds-barred leadership and she's my guest for the next installment of the davidson exchange series thank you kate for joining us thank you for having me so kate i'm keen to hear about your experience of grand final week there was Grand Final week a stage where i think i spoke to you just after the prelim and um you weren't sure if you were even going to make it so tell us what it was like yeah so i got a last-minute exemption when it became looked like we might be in the grand final and i i did go just before the the prelim um so we went on a bit of a i certainly went with the belief that we would make it but um i could have been back three days after i left um to get out but i had to do my two weeks of quarantine i actually got probably i think the last exemption kylie the bulldogs president knife from given by the premier to get in uh so did my two weeks quarantine extraordinary amount of media i must have done i think on average somewhere around three to five interviews a day with various groups particularly around the two female presidents it was the first time we had two female presidents playing in the premiership um peggy o'neill had you know had won three premierships so they're going four of the last five premierships have been won by females what's going on so there was a lot of that story but and there was a lot of interest in what had happened at melbourne and the cultural journey and those sorts of things so i was really pleased i wasn't in melbourne because people would text me and say every time you turn around it's in the you're in the paper or on the news and things so it was actually quite nice being over there and actually being able to do the media but not seeing it everywhere here so i still had the touch and the feel with what was happening here in victoria but um not sort of bombarded with it personally i didn't get out until i've quarantined until the friday morning so midnight thursday my quarantine ended just before the match on saturday so first thing any victorian woman watching knows so you go to the hairdresser so 7 30 in the morning my cousin who's a hairdresser was picking me up to to take me to get my hair done and then it was pretty much a whirlwind of an afl lunch uh a dinner with some of the premier and some other people in perth that have been organized and then into the grand final day and once you got to grand final day it was function game i didn't even see the last quarter really because we were taken downstairs to get ready for the presentation and people were taking photos and things so that was a real blur i've had to come back really and watch the game to to see what had happened and then the nice thing about being in perth was we had the opportunity just as the team and and the support staff and unfortunately me we spent time just on the ground until about i don't know 1 or 1 30 am just you know we had players just lying on the ground enjoying [Music] being lying on the turf and just being able to chat and have photos with the cup and things so that was a really lovely lovely period of time but a lot of that was spent with phone calls and facetime calls back to people here in victoria who couldn't couldn't be at the game and that was the i think it was a real driving force for the players they they felt the family and friends and fans couldn't be there we we should have been at the mcg our home and we weren't so that really drove them i think to make sure they bought the cup back and we did really feel for those people who couldn't make it i mean i'm i'm extraordinarily fortunate to have been able to go and i did ask question that i said you know others can't should i go and i originally wasn't so i wouldn't take a spot in our 75 that could go and i just said no i'm not taking a spot from a player or a coach that we need there when i got an exemption i did ask my board and goody and a few others and said you know what do you think and they said absolutely we want you here and you represent the club in the good and the bad times so um fortunately for us it was a good time but it was an extraordinarily different thing probably unique i don't know that we'll ever see another grand final in perth but it's driven them certainly our men have been back out i don't think they took a break most of them they really just went back into running and keeping their fitness up because they have really driven to come back and win in front of their home crowd here at the mcg and just based on sunday i went to the to the pub because there was a supporters function on after that and i popped in down there and just walking yeah to the pub there was melbourne people everywhere and this is not 80 000 of them at the mcg on grand final day this is a replay so i can only begin to imagine what it would be like out of lockdown and yeah and with a full contingent there cheering them on so that's what we're aiming for next year we'd love to be back here and playing and winning a premiership at the mcg our home absolutely wrote the rules of the game and the mcg is our is our home it's our spiritual home so we'd love to win a premiership there and i think melbourne would pretty much go off for about a month if we did that it absolutely would and in fairness perth did an amazing job of putting on uh it's quite a showed in there it was extraordinary and the perth supporters though really we knew we'd been in perth and we knew that the supporters over there would want a team to back so yeah we got over there earlier it was part of our strategy with our team and they said get here early we were giving away scarves and chips and we had a bus going around that was the melbourne bus that would take them to the games and made them feel like part of our family and they really supported us on grand final day it's a fantastic stadium and it was a it was a great event um and you know we're so delighted that we had the opportunity to to do that in that unique place because it now gives us the opportunity to come back and do it again um over here in melbourne fantastic so how did you set about Leadership tripod tackling the job when it was first awarded to you spoken about that leadership tripod and i guess it's a bit different to in the corporate world where the leadership tripod's often described as the ceo cfo hrd in a football club it's probably president coach and ceo how did you you know what was the strategy to sort of get that alignment that you described yeah look i think they're interesting as well um so as president i'm actually um elected as president by my fellow directors so we we had a very clear discussion about succession plan and what we thought we needed to be and who we collectively felt was the person that was the right person to step up and and take the role on at this point in time and um i'm very honored to say that my fellow directors um said no we we need it to be you we think it should be you and so i think in in that they saw something that we needed at that point in time just in the person and people often ask you know is should every club have a female president is that why they're winning and it's not because peggy and kylie and i so peggy o'neill who's the president richmond and kylie watson wheeler at the bulldogs we're all very different people we do our jobs very differently because we're different people so that's not necessarily the answer it's having the right person irrespective of gender at the time and for us it was really about um i just say people say oh what have you done or whatever and i say i'm i'm just the thousands piece in the jigsaw there's 999 other pieces that we went in there first and i just bring my little bit uh to the to the jigsaw puzzle and seems to work in that presidential slash leadership capacity and i think the the thing that i bring is that um it's i'm a very welcoming very open very um accessible sort of person um our my aim at the moment is to make sure that we're very clearly one club one very united club and that includes not just the people who work there and the players and the coaches uh it's that supporters and our past players in particulars and that is me i'm a very sort of embracing and um like a mother hen sort of uh person at that club and i think that's that was the missing little bit of our jigsaw puzzle and so that's warmth or however you describe it it's difficult to put it in a in a descriptive but that's i think was our missing little bit and um we've popped that piece in and then along with my fellow directors who do the governance aspect of it with me and gary purd our ceo who does the operational element of it and our richo allen richardson and and goody and marcus and mixtonia who do our women's it's all we're all sort of on the same page we're all very open and honest with each other and i think that makes for a really positive people just say there's a different feel around the club there's a real positive energy and i think um who knows it's one of those magical sort of ingredients you put it all in the melting pot and yeah at some point in time everything just you get all the ducks on the pond and off you go and you are famous for talking about the clubs being made up of people not players so that warmth and that Demons culture connectedness i know that you accept text messages phone calls from not just players but from partners and you know you're involved in people's worlds um as much as they want you to be you're very accessible so um how would the team the coaches the players etc describe the culture and what it feels like to be part of the melbourne football club right now i think that is it it's we're we're a family and look they're extraordinarily different things to any other sort of entity you get out there because you are dealing with very much people's lives we will have a player for for 10 or 12 years and perhaps from the time they're 17 years old and so we're part of the responsibility of making them the best people that they can be and i always say whenever i speak to our players or our staff or anyone else i want you to be the best person that you can be and there's a very famous all blacks uh book that talks about the change in the culture of the all blacks and one of the the lines in there is um better people make better all blacks and that's the thing is if they're the best people that they can be they'll be more comfortable more confident more capable and then they'll be the best players that they can be but as i said to um christian petrarco once he just sent a message saying oh thanks for caring about about us players and i said chris i care about your people first and foremost because i'll know you as christian petrarch as a person for a lot longer than i'll know you as chris petraka the player because um i still want to you know in 15 or 20 years time be able to catch up with those players who've represented the club the staff that have represented the club and actually how are you going check in on them and you know it's not just a football club thing i still have staff that i've worked you know who work for me 15 years ago who'll ring up and ask advice to say i'm changing your job what do you think and i think they're things that we can do to remain accessible to help them because we know them we know them better than others may know them when they're moving into a new workforce because we work with them and help them develop as as people and that's probably the most rewarding thing for me is as a president of seeing these you know fantastic people in and around the club whether they're players or staff members developers people and go on to do other things i mean as a manager or leader you don't get to do anything better than help someone else you take steps up a upper ladder for one of a better term fantastic you've got a psychology background and have great insights in terms of how Key considerations for leaders people behave and what motivates them and how they think um as we move into this new hybrid way of working uh i guess and with also the the great resignation what do you think some of the key considerations leaders will need to take into this shift um to really engage and enhance their workplaces and work with workforces it's an interesting interesting thing i think as we've worked more at home we've realized that we can do a little bit more about balancing in fact we didn't have a choice over covered to balance our work and our personal lives and now people are looking to come back into the workforce in a different way and say oh you know what i actually want to be not just worker i want to be person as well so i think we're going to need to be a lot more flexible and accommodating because now everybody wants something different some people don't want to be in the office at all someone be in the office all the time somebody just want a hybrid mix and really if you're going to have the best workforce that you can out there you're going to need to be flexible in terms of accommodating some of these things that we've learned to do during covert which is work around homeschooling work around walking the dogs walk around work around lock down so i think much more flexible innovative and creative i love what covert has done because i'm very much a person who doesn't need an office space i love the fact that potentially i can work for a company in paris yeah and i don't need to live there so i'm no longer limited by that geo geographically defining space which says um the head office is in melbourne so you've got to be in melbourne i find it really exciting and energizing some other people not so much and i really do feel for our young people i know some of my staff have not missed me guiding them in a work perspective because they've got to get on and do the work and so here's a list of everything that we need to do this week what they have missed is that informal thing of i've just taken over as president of my local cricket club and they one of my staff would drop in and he would say hey boss what do i do about xyz so they're missing that informal learning they're missing sitting in a meeting with me and actually saying how do you respond in meetings when do you speak so they our young people i think are missing a lot of that yeah and personal interaction and and experiential learning from not being at home and i do i do fear for that sort of gap i think we'll see coming through in a few years time as they haven't had that experience i share some of those on-the-floor learnings um that it's a real concern i think um aspirations for aflw um what Aspirations for AFLW what are your aspirations for your own club but also for the competition yeah we've got a really at the moment we've got a real balance we've got a group of uh women who are coming through and playing sport who have other lives and and this is the thing that if people talk about let's become fully professional we've got some of our women who play who say we actually don't want that we like that it's the mix i can do this and i can also do my profession and career we've got others who are coming through um genuine players i mean they've come through afl and i look at eden sancker for example who plays for melbourne and i just go she is just such an astonishingly good young player great athlete um so for her i go i'd love to see it be able to be a professional pathway for you so i think at the moment we're caught in the situation of still expanding into a full league some some teams still don't have women's teams yet new licenses will be granted but we have to go slowly slowly catchy monkey so we can um make sure we've got enough players to actually spread across our leagues aspirationally absolutely we'd want it to be a a professional and a league that these women can play in and actually be paid to play similar to our men but i think there's a period of transition we will have to go through where um the people coming into play whether it's men's or women know that that's what i do yeah and i can do some other things around it but there are big demands on on your body obviously but also on your lifestyle and you really um you know it's a real struggle to actually play for example in our men's competition and work full-time as well or to work in a significant sense because the demands in you your training and recovery in particular is quite significant so we need to go through that transition for our women but it will come we have the afl behind it and i know women's sport a lot of women sports struggled for a long time to get media coverage and to get that professional thing there the great thing about the afl is it's such a big strong machine that when they say we will provide good coverage of our women's game it means we will get the best coverage channel 7 of our women's game because if you don't do that you won't get the rights to televise the men's game and that's been fantastic for for the women so i think the the strength of the afl will continue to push it forward and we'll get there but take time people we need to get it right and it will be different to the men's you know it's not just going to be a a women's version of the men's competition because we don't want nor need that it'll create its own symbiotic lifestyle that lives um yeah exactly side by side with the men's but it'll be different in its own in its own special way as it should be fantastic and kate what will you keep doing what What will you keep doing might change so that melbourne continues to be a force and and really challenges for the next eight to ten years look everyone's after us now that's the thing when you when you're at the top you become the hunted people start looking out for you more so we have to we have to keep changing our game and we have to keep morphing into something different so that um we don't become the the hunted with the knowledge of that's what you're chasing like we become the hunted with the what's just happened there so we continue to get better we continue to go back even though we've won a premier premiership and say we still we had four games during the season that we lost uh we need to to go back and look at those mistakes um we got behind on the scoreboard in the grand final you know what went wrong in that situation it certainly doesn't mean that you're going to come out and win every game premierships are hard hard to win incredibly hard to win you need so many things to go right but you can't sit there and go because we're the premiers that automatically means that we've got a game and a and a list that's going to take us to a premiership next year we've got to work at that list we've got to work out the game style we've got to work continue to work at our culture and continue to bring new people into the club we'll have some challenges without a doubt with covert in the coming seasons for our men and our women so we're going to need to be nimble and flexible to cope with those um again but we have to keep growing and developing as a club players we'll we'll leave because they retire and things we've got to have new players coming on but we've got to have a new game plan because i can bet every other club at the moment is sitting down watching that final series and going okay where are the weak links for melbourne so we've got to actually make sure that we change so when they look at the look at it they go now what's happened here that's exactly what happened in the grand final they had a plan for max scone they didn't have a plan for luke jackson in the rough and you know it's all of a sudden it was like oh what's happened yeah here so you've got to have a few tricks up your sleeve which i won't go into too much detail about but i'm sure the coaching staff are working on that i hope geelong certainly is um kate infrastructure um you're quite famous for city shaping and um iconic Infrastructure development developments what's in store for the melbourne football club in terms of infrastructure development yeah so we've we're working as uh we need a more contemporary um home base we call it a home for football we're down at amy park but at the moment things are progressing well we've just uh fenced off our training paddock cautious paddock and their state government ourselves in the afl have committed funds to actually have that upgraded so that the oval is is bigger and closer to mc's mcg size for training purposes and then we are working really hard on making sure that we have an identified home base that is contemporary and is big enough at the moment our men and women are training in separate venues our administration is in a separate place to where our training facilities are and really uh we are one club and that's something that um came across very strongly in the uh players speaking after the grand final where people would ask me are they all scripted to say are you going to talk about this selflessness and this one club and i say no that's that's the culture that's the ethos and um having us all together is really critical to us and a facility that allows us all together to be together men our women and our administration is really important so that's how that will be my probably main focal point during my time as president is hopefully to get a commitment to get something done may not be finished by the time i finish as president but hopefully we'll have a commitment and we'll know where that future is uh is going to be fantastic and customer focus i guess that really Customer focus you know every conversation we've ever had you really do focus on stakeholders and engagement of whether that's ticket holders fans or in your executive experience you know community members why is this so important to all that you've ever done well we don't need we don't have customers we actually don't even need to be there for a starter and it's the same for a football club if we don't have members then we don't need to be out there playing football so they're the people that make the club and i'm i'm so proud of the way our our staff at the melbourne football club have done the cup tour i'm constantly getting messages and linkedin notes and things from people who say i touched the cup in warrnambool or it's in sydney at the moment and people up there are going oh my the cup's here and for them it's such an enormous enormously important thing that touch point with the club and the the cup and that is all about going out and saying you're important to us because you're the people that make the club and it's the same and i i think if there's anything that organizations do poorly out there it's still they forget that it's not about us inside the organization i always say when i'm down at wyndham with the local government area i say your customers are not your staff your customers are the people who live in this municipality your job is to actually make their life better your job is to make the livability of the municipality better not to worry about what your office looks like or what desks you have and there's still way too much focus i think in in all sorts of organizations about you know how we run the trains how we run the trams how we get the planes off the air i flew into an airport once i waited forever for my bags and i had the opportunity to talk to the ceo and i think and i said seriously you know i got off there was a car to pick me up and the driver said oh we're just waiting for ages they're so slow with the luggage and i said you know that's poor customer service oh yeah that's because we take the freight off first and we worry about that and i said well i'm pretty sure the guys picking up the freight i'm complaining to 100 people like i am on abc news breakfast tomorrow about the fact that you you couldn't care less about me as the customer so yeah he said that he said i've never actually sat there and we you know we think we've got to get the freight on the road but you're right that word of mouth yeah from the customer can do a lot of damage as can one one positive thing you said about great customer service spreads like wildfire so you focus upon the people that you serve whatever sort of organization you are because i think too often that gets forgotten in my own internal yeah internal problems yeah and that connection to the cup it must have been a pretty special moment on sunday sharing that with you know how many were there i think i think it was about 37 000 yeah um and the extraordinary thing is i was heading to the to the function i had my little um rat my rapid energy and test to make sure i didn't have covered so i could be with the players and as i was standing there i made the mistake of getting out dropped off at the top of yara park and walking to the stadium and there was all this beeping of horns and yelling out at me cage kate and i thought i was my shirt undone so i checked and i thought no i had a polo shirt on but people were so excited to be going there and to you know to see me walking around and stop for selfies and things like that and i thought you know this is incredible we're getting all these people to come and watch a replay of the game the first goal was kicked by melbourne when melbourne kicked his first goal the sound was like being back in perth it was just extraordinary that one of the great things you go for a game for once you actually know the outcome so that was fantastic but the the crowd there were oh it was like they were at the game they loved it so much and the players yeah they just said this was exactly what we needed to to be able to share this with our fans with have their families there and it was really um quite an extraordinary thing people were going is this going to work and we said we think so but our again our events team did such a great job of putting that on and we had function rooms that were full of people and it was i mean it was it was fantastic actually so special lighting yeah one of our uh teammates cameron he has a photo of his little six week old baby girl inside the cup it's and so yeah i think it was one of the proudest days of his life absolutely and that's the thing is we want every every member by the time we get to the start next season hopefully every member's had a chance to have their photo with the cup and we had all 13 of our cups out outside the grounds as people came in to get their fathers i think that's probably the first time certainly melbourne but any club has probably put well most a lot of clubs don't have that many cups let's face it but they've put all their um put all their cups out for people to actually come and touch and i was talking to gary perdau ceo when we were in perth and i said it is not going to be a cup that you have to put gloves on and you can't touch and it sits in a glass cabinet i mean it's a fairly hefty thing it's got a few scratches and dents and dings already but it's like people can touch it if we need to get it cleaned and some dings beaten out of it and we already have we'll do that but it's it's not to sit there in the cabinet and nobody ever sees it we want it out at every event and it is i mean people could ask me can i bring it to things i'm like it's not here it's in sydney so you know that's really important again because it belongs to the supporters not me not the players not the coaches that's the melbourne football clubs cup and it's the supporters cup every bit as much as it's anyone else's fantastic and what's the fairy tale script look like for melbourne here on in from 2022 Fairy tale script and beyond look we have set ourselves up to be a team that's we have challenging for finals for a long time that was our plan eight years ago and it's taken a a long time to get there but we've built the list we've built the culture we've built the support around the club so all sorts of things happen and as i said we've covered people sort of forget that uh covert people will get covered we'll probably get covered the difference between us getting it and going into isolation for 10 days and coming back out and doing something like this and a player who might get it and have to come back to full-on training and playing a game is an extended time period so we'll have every club will have to cope with those sorts of things but we've we've done what we need to do off the field we've built the list we've built the culture we've got the alignment so we expect that we'll be strong and competitive and challenging certainly for finals premierships are different things they've it's very hard to win a premiership but that's what we expect for our men and women because that's what we've worked on as a club and you don't put all that work in for 8 10 57 years to to just win one so we'll certainly like every club be aiming to to win more than one but they're very very difficult to get the ultimate prize but like we said we're not being complacent and sitting there going because we won last year will automatically even make finals next year you've got to keep working and yeah and doing all the particularly the off field stuff and the preparation as i spoke to our women when they lost last year and missed the grand final when they were beaten by adelaide and i was with them in adelaide and and our coach said we would you speak to them after the game and i said um this is a learning process and maturing process you you've got to keep going you've like all whether it's work or life or anything else you'll get knocked down plenty of times you've you know you've got to have the courage to get up and get in the ring again and and fight on and you know roger federer is asking he says what's the difference between all the other players and him as a champion he says i just get up more often when i get knocked down so you know they'll come back they'll keep fighting they'll get up again and then our men and our women are ready to go and give it their best shot for more of those nice shiny cups which are very nice to hold it's incredibly exciting and kate uh one for the ted lasso fans out there if uh simon goodwin's not around to Ted Lasso coach in let's say five years from now would ted make it onto the show would ted make it onto the list look funny i've i get the um real life ted lasso people think i look like um rebecca from ted lasso so um now we've got the real life story so would ted would ted make it in look you know hopefully we'll develop a culture there and a club that can coach itself but i'm not sure that i'm not sure that ted um cambered hannah waddingham if you'd like to come down and join us um for a game um or ted then you you're more than welcome to come in but it's great a lot of people i spoke at a conference in sydney a couple of weeks ago i think it was and um someone said uh asked about the the ted lasso um sort of thing it's a very people that naturally associate the ted lasso story with the the melbourne football club stories so and we are a bit of a hollywood story at um melbourne football club not just because it was 57 years but really if there's a club that's had you know tragedy and its share of um difficulties throughout the year it's over the years it has been melbourne and i think that was one of the extraordinary things about this year's premiership it wasn't just melbourne supporters it was melbourne it was victoria because really it was a symbol that you can get through covered you can overcome these challenges and there are a lot more people i know got in touch with me and and said um we really hope melbourne win this year because it was a sign of something more that resilience that courage that beating the odds um sort of thing it meant so much to to so many people who you know really had done it tough in victoria because we've virtually been locked in our houses for two years couldn't agree anymore that's fantastic well kate it's been an absolute pleasure thanks for joining us on the davidson exchange and um we wish melbourne football club all the best for 2022 and beyond thank you