Behavioural / Fit Flashcards
Why PE?
A few reasons; the first is ownership. Consulting has been great in terms of giving me exposure to different companies and industries, but I’ve been very aware that my remit is to advise – rather than do. As consultants, we put a lot of work (and over a short period of time) into developing recommendations, but we don’t have oversight over whether those recommendations were successfully implemented – if at all.
Another reason is the opportunity to take a more holistic view of a company. Instead of drilling down into one relatively specific segment of a business (say outsourcing business processes in HR) in PE you have access to a much broader set of value levers – which in turn enables you to drive a bigger impact on the companies you work with.
I’m very keen to supplement my operational and strategic skillset with the rigorous financial analysis involved in PE, to identify and realise value in companies as investments.
The hands-on, end-to-end nature of the work and the opportunity to drive large scale outcomes really excites me.
What is your strength?
I think I’m bold. I’m not afraid to go after what I want, even if it involves some calculated risk.
When I was offered the Lead Press Secretary role at Parliament in New Zealand, I was the youngest in the cohort by some 10, 20 years – and several of these people tried to dissuade me from taking the role. They said I was too young, too inexperienced. But I did it, because I wanted to, and I really believed I could do the job. On reflection, it was bold – a big step up in a pretty unforgiving, high stakes environment where L&D was non-existent. But I’m glad I did, and I think I did well; when I left, the political editor of one of the mastheads said I was one of the best media advisers in government.
Similarly, it’s probably bold of me to forgo a clear-cut path in consulting and try to move into PE now – especially given my rather unconventional profile. But again, it’s something I really want to do, and something I believe I can be good at.
What is your weakness?
Aside from my technical skills, which I have a plan to address, I think one weakness is that sometimes I can get too fixated on one piece of work.
I think it’s some kind of workplace muscle memory from my time at Parliament, where the first output to the Minister was expected to be the final output. Contrast that to consulting, where you have an 80/20 mindset and the first deck is usually an educated guess and succeeded by about 100 more.
I like to try and get things right the first time, and where you have 10 high priorities on the go, it’s often meant working harder and longer than might have otherwise been necessary, but I’ve since been working to find a better balance where I’m still producing quality work, but reminding myself to not allowing perfect to be the enemy of good.
How would others describe you?
- Results-oriented: I’m not afraid to think outside the box sometimes to get the job done – I’m not easily deterred by an obstacle.
- Driven: I like to set constant goals and use them as motivation to constantly improve.
- Curious: I like learning new things – understanding different perspectives to broaden my own.
- Happy: I’d say I’m pretty easy-going – I’m usually able to make light of most situations, which has often helped in stressful and high-pressure situations.
How do you manage senior stakeholders?
What I’ve learned so far – supporting senior stakeholders like government ministers, managing directors and partners, people who are obviously very busy, managing considerable workloads and pressure – I try to ask myself what I can do to make their lives easier.
A low-level example, but when I was working for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, one of my responsibilities was organising the logistics around his overseas tours. I got to understand his preferences – what airlines he preferred, what departure times, what type of aircraft, what kind of seat – so the proposed itineraries I took to him would reflect all of that. I was doing my job by taking care of the little rocks so he could focus on the big rocks.
Likewise in consulting, you learn to know when to pull in the partners and how. If you’re stuck on a problem that you end up having to escalate – you don’t take forward the problem, you take forward your proposed solution to the problem. It shows you’ve thought about it, you’re not trying to hand the problem over, and I think that helps to gives senior stakeholders the confidence that you can drive your own work.
What types of quantitative work have you done? What kind of models have you built?
- One of the major models I built was one that was used to size a long list of strategic initiatives to a major telco company.
- I started with a top-down analysis, evaluating each initiative for feasibility, then categorized them by business area, e.g., B2C, B2B, NewCo, etc.
- Next, I estimated the potential value pool for each initiative – for example, one B2C initiative was around channel steering customers online, and the value pool was based on savings on commission spend, while accounting for some reduction in sales made in-store.
- From there, I calculated the expected opex and capex required, then accounted for D&A and tax to work out the net profit after tax – which I then used to calculated share price impact.
- I did that for about 30 initiatives. In some cases, I used comps – one initiative was around introducing a loyalty play, so I used the Qantas Loyalty program as an analogy to articulate the EBITDA uplift the client might have been able to expect.
Why Affinity?
Firstly, one of the largest independent PE firms in the Asia Pacific region – and with that comes an established track record, expertise, and scale that you’re unlikely to see at a newer or smaller firm.
I’m also very interested in Affinity’s focus on Asia-Pacific – geographically, it’s an exciting space to be in, with a lot of opportunity beyond just Australia.
I think some of the deals that Affinity has been involved in in recent years underscores this – I was reading about how Affinity grew TEG from what was essentially a ticketing business that had probably reached the limits of its growth, and expanded it into the actual entertainment and events business. And I’m sure part of that was aided by Affinity’s global reach.
Similarly, what Affinity did with Velocity: taking a multi-faceted approach that went beyond just the financials and incorporated new approaches to human capital, culture, ESG – and operational improvements with data analytics – it seemed clear to me that firm takes a very active role to drive meaningful post-investment value creation.
