Episode 35, Shane Stacey, Finance Director & Shared Service Delivery Expert, WPP AUNZ

Shane Stacey is an experienced Finance Director and Shared Services expert. He currently works at WPP AUNZ, a global leading advertising and marketing organization. 

Shane is a qualified chartered accountant and an experienced regional finance director with a demonstrated value and history of working in various industries, including financial services, logistics and manufacturing, is skilled in managing large scale finance teams operations, process improvement by new selling blackbelt and shared services.

To contact Richard Holmes please call 0403 513 720 or reach out on richardh@hprconsulting.com. https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardholmesfinancerecruiter/

Transcript

Please note that this has been transcribed by AI/Bots so there may be typos and the occasional strange things happening.

Richard Holmes

0:03

Welcome to the numbers people Podcast where each week we're going to be speaking with some highly regarded senior finance professionals and career experts looking into the ins and outs of what makes finance people and their teams right. The podcast is proudly sponsored by HPR Consulting, a leading executive finance recruitment firm. I'm your host, Richard Holmes.

Richard Holmes

0:24

In today's episode, I'm talking with Shane Stacey from WPP, a global leading advertising and marketing organization. Shane is a qualified chartered accountant and an experienced regional finance director with a demonstrated value or the history of working in various industries, including financial services, logistics and manufacturing, is skilled in managing large scale finance teams operations, process improvement by new selling blackbelt and shared services.

Shane Stacey

0:57

Great to see you again, how have you been? This seems to be the way we catch up. It's been a long while since I've gotten to see you face to face. Just one of those bizarre things now, isn't it? This form of communication and being in our houses rather than offices that just become a norm over the last couple of years, but always a pleasure to be able to catch up with you so appreciate the invite to be able to probably three years ago, we caught up in person. isn't that scary? When's the last time so I've seen Mitch, the cover around the office at some point. But even that just seems a long, long time ago. So is there a facade that kind of like feeling that there's been a big focus on our company for a while going remote, but it's all the other parts of the network that have just become harder, I think to be able to manage and coordinate. So this is good to be able to catch up and always enjoy conversation with you. Let's recharge. I've known him for a few years now. And I think his background is really interesting. His work for multiple large corporates is what's in different countries, many a story to tell them hence, I invited you on the podcast. And Shane, would you like to tell the audience about your career? Yeah, I'd love to my son this year is going through year 12. And I got another in year 10. And those boys are just picking subjects that I can't like never saw. So I think when I was going through school, I can't like knew I was always going to do accounting, where have a look over time, perfect choice for me, I think I was lucky that we're ready to through my studies really helped bring a lot of value and enjoyment. I was no great academic. So I was never topping out the year 12 for universities, from academic performance. But I think in some ways, you can get lucky in your career, I probably started out with a small, kind of like the shareholders with the directors, small family companies got very fortunate to be able to get through the back door of GE, I probably always have the view that if I took my CV to HR, they would have said, didn't go to any of the big four accounting didn't go to Melbourne UDC don't quite fit our profile, which have. So I always feel very fortunate that I got into a large, large company through an acquisition. But from there, it's what you make of it. Yeah, I had 15 years within GE roles, as you said, starting in Australia, and what I really value was the ability to go and work overseas. But more importantly, I think I really valued working more through Asia, I always kept the view that the US and UK which were always big market for companies that I dealt with, but probably too similar to your colored baby out here. And that just like huge amount by being able to go into countries with language become a barrier. food culture is very different. And I think it also really just challenged, the way you perceive people I think was just brilliant for me that you just look at the teams that you were dealing with, regardle of the nationality that they were coming from, historically, where I was growing up, I could have really had a lot of challenges, but was around dealing with people from India, Asia, China, just maively fortunate to be able to deal with teams from those countries in those cultures for so long. And over time, you just look at the skill set of people, and you totally forget where you're working. And I think the other part very different to what historically probably saw in Australia, number of the Asian countries really had a lot more diversity in gender in senior finance roles. So probably when I grew up, it was very much male leadership's that heavily in a number of the Asian countries, some finance is probably a little bit more heavily geared to the female side rather than the male. It was that type of dynamic. I actually feels really good one that really helped me itself come back now to Australia. So a lot of time working within GE multiple parts of the organization, which was great. And that to me really just helped me have a skill and competency, but it didn't mean that it was stackin come like same thing

Shane Stacey

5:00

You know, it was all financial services I've worked in a logistic company got into shared service. And the shared service one can like, say from a sliding doors, it may overtime have maybe reduced the number of roles because shared service is probably not as prevalent as if you're out there kind of like being safe with the title CFO or financial controller. But in other ways, it just opened doors and opportunities. It's one of those if I had the chance to do it again and walk straight through the door and take the opportunity. And then yeah, I think by working from Australia, but with the Asian countries, it was always good when there was a role that become available for me to change companies work for Dentsu up in China's I had four years in China, a year in Singapore within media and advertising. That again was wonderful growth. Yeah, I really to a country with language was such a barrier, but thoroughly love that opportunity. So back in Australia, so I think I was lucky with the topic. So always timing is everything. So it's good being back in Australia with WPP up in Sydney, and now starting to enjoy beautiful Sydney and get an appreciation for the city that I've probably never had. It's just been a really good balance of work multiple roles. I'd probably always say that one of the things that GE really taught me it got my foundations right. And if you can get your foundations right, I think it really sets you up for the type of roles you can do throughout your career.

Richard Holmes

6:28

Just listening to you there with Dentsu, we were in Asia at the time when you got that role.

Shane Stacey

6:32

No, it was finished with GE, as I said, Yeah, she took us roles, probably as common down here in Melbourne. And yeah, it's just one of those bizarre things that you don't know how strong your networks are. Always remember walking along the streets of Melbourne down here in Melbourne, I got a phone call from a recruiter up in Hong Kong saying, Hey, we've got to your profiles come acro. Can we have a chat? There might be a roll out in Asia. And because I've had exposure to China, it was always one of those markets that fascinated me. So it's very different first time in working in media advertising in Dentsu, but skills and competencies are new financer was shared service function. That's what they were looking at. I think they were trying to say do we find some way of media advertising? Do we find someone from finance? Do we need someone that's got your language? I think they struggled to find that that they got me and also amazing five years,

Richard Holmes

7:32

I can imagine was part of it as well pushing it, it's about your comfort zone to take on a role like

Shane Stacey

7:37

that, all of a sudden, you can communicate with comic the senior leaders. So Dentsu was quite part of the organization as in was the world except for Japan. So Dentsu, Japan looked after Japan. And then there was something called the Dentsu Aegis network that looked after the rest of the world. So, you know, it was based in London. So a number of the leadership roles were clearly having individuals that had English and Mandarin, Yan was purely up there with it. So it's just one of those bizarre things where you'd have conversations at a certain level, and then you need the team to be able to fill you in on the gaps in the conversation, as you say, character building. And especially where you'd go into a different country, you're going into that environment. So I quickly learned I was the one that was needing to adjust and learn and effectively aimilate into it to make myself succeful, language was always going to be too hard for me. So my language was never something that I invested in. And it was always still focused around the role making the best of the barriers of language. And there was probably only a couple of times I really needed an interpreter in a room for a conversation. My funniest one was a member been up in Beijing. And there are a number of people there from China, from Japan and myself. So having a language that was could go from Mandarin into Japanese into English. So it was one of the most bizarre experiences I had. That's what half the fun is you go out there and you want experiences that a different, and that's where I feel that my career has definitely given me plenty of those over time.

Richard Holmes

9:17

And I love what you said earlier about the nature of your role chain that you realize it's just people doesn't matter where they're from, or what the background is. It's just about finding good people and getting the best out of them. And you touched on before as well. Like when you joined GE it was it was a bit lucky to a certain extent. But when you you were at that stage of your career, did you have a career plan or anything? Or did you aspire to be where you got to?

Shane Stacey

9:42

I come out of audit. So my financial control side was probably the strengthen like a career would be balanced out with a little bit more finance planning and analysis. Hopefully that gets you into the top the CFO roles what I've probably seen go through a few times. interviews but also some of the mentoring that I do with some of the teams at WPP, I always find that it can become really hard to move up in scales of organization. So once you've got really good solid breads, I can't look at the view that you'd really want to hold on to those type of organizations for as long as it suits you. Because large organizations also come with different demands and preures. They also come with some exceptional leadership, and come with some pretty average leadership. But they also do have probably greater talent development, career progreion, a number of times those agencies, whether they're global ones, or large organization out in Australia, they got Brandon an expectation that people have. So sometimes at the smaller, if it's an organization that people don't know, you may have to sell your skills and capability. I think sometimes when you're in large organizations, people have a bit of a view, and especially if you're lasting throughout time, because GE was, you know, 15 years, over multiple, multiple roles, there's an ability to survive those organizations. So I think that actually creates so I know that's one of the things I talked to a few of the people that I've mentored throughout WPP that have a look at the roles, be prepared to climate change acro agencies. So just don't get stuck, you've got skills, you've got competency, so you might not be media, creative, production, they're all different, but you're bringing a different skill set. Each of them have learning and can't pigeonhole yourself, if you've got the ability to continue to develop and grow, because I think as you go through your career, this is the pyramid down the bottom, you get your foundations, there's a lot of opportunities to develop your skills that you think are important for you. And then over time, you'll work out what you're good at, then your opportunities also start to restrict a little bit. As you just get more experienced, you start to go into probably more management type of roles. So just making sure you can't like in the area at that point that you're you're really paionate about, and you're in roles that you really want to do.

Richard Holmes

12:14

You've kind of answered the question we're just about to ask you, Shane, in terms of what advice would you give someone wanting to pursue a career like yours, we've touched on in two or three really good points.

Shane Stacey

12:23

The other one, just some that advice that I give people is, don't be afraid of the difficult roles. I know, I've had multiple challenging roles or areas where you actually had to whether it's built the culture built the skill set, establish the model, or well and truly learn a lot more by going into organizations that have been going through change, you know, the Dentsu one was purely all about going through change because they were taking an agency based finance model, and bringing it together. Now part of it was centralized part of it was also outsourcing similar to one of the roles did GE, the change management, your learnings coming out of it, I don't think you fail with your difficult roles. You just if you don't get it, right, you're just learning from it, you're just continue to evolve, whether it is the strategy, so the approach, because organizations will go through similar things Comelec, whether they are key strategies, but they all get delivered in a very, very different ways. So that's the other piece, focus on your skills, focus on your competencies, be prepared to take on the challenging ones, because you just kind of learn a lot more out of them about your skills, what you're capable of and about yourself than if you were just focusing purely on what I consider a safe role. I think it's a big logo while since I felt as if I've had a safe role. And I think by the time the rolls become stable, and your learning start to go away, then sometimes you're also ready to move on to your next challenge at that point in time.

Richard Holmes

14:03

Did you ever have a doubt when you took on one of those difficult roles? Was there that doubt of like, Oh, what am I doing? Can I do this or we just all like, let's give it a go and see how it goes. One of the

Shane Stacey

14:15

tougher ones that I went into was with GE commercial service, a lot of change happening there. A it was in an area that skills competency I had a lot of it comes down to I think the leadership that's out there, and what is the direction and the support they gonna give so with the strategies are tougher, or it's probably not as well defined and not as well supported from the top. They are really really hard because sometimes what you find is that regardle of the work you're doing, it's right properly structured. There's probably too many alternatives or or too many barriers to be able to get that change through to you really just got to to have strong stakeholder management to be able to get there. So the commercial roll was probably one of the harder rolls of overhead. But it also had the best leaders have ever had that part, I think if it didn't have the strength of the leaders, it just would have been comic, a brutal role. But because it had such exceptionally strong leaders, you're actually learning by being in the meeting, seeing that with the approach the communication, and just seeing how the the minds are working in an environment that was going through significant change,

Richard Holmes

15:32

talking about the leadership, and what's the best advice you've ever received,

Shane Stacey

15:36

it just come from a really bizarre source. So yeah, I've gone through a lot, a lot, a lot of really great training and, and again, probably got a lot out of GA with some of the company leaders that the best advice I ever got, or stuck with me actually came from David Parker, as the David Pakman was the cotton football coach using years ago, and this was just say, a seion that I went to. So it wasn't with a big company. So it was with one of the smaller one but paionate about often, which is my football club. And David played for a half on the night. So there was a training seion, or him speaking, as probably not training him speaking. And the thing that stuck out was that you got to treat yourself as a company, the comment was just stayed with me. So it's all around, go through in case of what you are today. If you're the same company, and you never evolve, you never invest, you never anticipate what the market needs, you might be succeful. But the only way if you don't change to become unsucceful or effectively become extinct. So so it's you've got to work out what you're good at. But obviously, you still have to constantly energize yourself become paionate, go through your research and development, kind of go through your marketing and marketing is probably as much around building your networks, or companies will also go through ups and downs. So how do you manage that? And it's just one of those what could have been a bit of a 1520 minute conversation that David, he could see why was a football coaches maively paionate in the way that he talked? And, yeah, I took that away. And that's probably been one of the things that it's just a with me. And as I've gone through roles, looked at my development, and companies do it in different way. Yeah. How do they develop? How do you have opportunities? Again, it's is my company rock solid? Is it still growing? Does it feel as if it's starting to lose a little bit of value? And what do I need to do to reinvest and recharge, I like

Richard Holmes

17:43

that a lot. It's sometimes showing just the simple things stick with it, string tight words, you could go on all these different courses and things, but it's just a few words, just as an aid only. What's the worst bit of advice you've ever received?

Shane Stacey

17:55

I realized, because of work, typically, in large companies, large companies will always continue your development. And you know, unlike have career progreion, just got to be careful. I think it's subtypes that with the company can have your career progreion, because they're only got certain type of roles. And as you go up and up and up those number of roles, sometimes you can get comic stuck. So it's called not worse advice. But probably born learnings with hindsight, getting roles overseas, especially out of Australia become really good for the roll out, the hard one is coming back. When you think your time is coming finished there, and you want to come back to Australia because a lot of these you you don't see yourself going into India or China or parts of Asia and you know, living there for the rest of your life. For me, it was always coming back. The challenge was, how do you influence that role when you come back also, in the slide companies, people that are stayed in Australia during the development, you know what I've probably found in a couple of ways coming back out of Asia into Australia, people kind of have the view that the role that you were doing over there is a bigger scale than what would be out here in the excise company. So in a sense, you've had some great growth up to a point. But you want to keep on growing. You can't put yourself in a position that you've got brilliant skills, if the driver is to come back here and people are bigger, quite sure. Hey, you gotta go. So that was a weird one, purely come out. So it wasn't bad advice. But sometimes you can through taking on different roles. You might not be as aware of the consequences until you come like wanting to make some different decisions and go gee, I'd love to be back in Australia and it's just harder than you originally think as you're packing your suitcase to take on the roles overseas and work overseas. It's perception,

Richard Holmes

19:56

isn't it working in the recruitment field like we pay for some companies Some hiring managers in the people have worked in multiple countries, they really appreciate anything called it's character building to a lot more different experiences. And some hiring managers just do not value it. They like Oh, they've worked in China, it's not the same as Australia must be different can conceptualize it. So just discounting,

Shane Stacey

20:17

I feel very fortunate that the group of God within WPP, it is so so multicultural. And I think the whole background that I've had, he said up front, you don't really notice the cultures, but also enjoy and embrace them, because there's so many other key festivals. And that's so relevant to people from other countries that it's a really good way of celebrating within the team environment. So we've lost that over the last couple of years. It's a brilliant way. And I've come I feel that that has helped me where I've looked at, you know, the team that I've got out here in Australia are currently seeing and toric. Also, with GE, there's a number of people that come out of Asia, great, great skills, great competencies, highly, highly educated, the first step is coming, they got to take two or three steps back, always viewed, the skill set is a lovely one to be picking up bringing into the team. So while some other companies might not see it as why you didn't grow up here, you weren't educated in either Melbourne, Sydney, wherever, there's got to be a different way and Hagar valuing that's going to come on in, we'll take the experience, we'll take the competency and, you know, if they got to convert it to the Australia do what you need to do, but you're probably getting a stronger skill set into your team.

Richard Holmes

21:33

And those that hire like, probably Ed Shane is that they are getting really good value in high caliber people just discounted. Everyone's got their own opinions. If we're if we're all the same, it'd be boring. You touched on earlier with some of the challenging difficult roles in terms of what hurdles have you faced in your career? And how did you overcome them?

Shane Stacey

21:54

The biggest one that definitely been out there is time away from family, a number of people that you talk to, that have traveled extensively with prior roles, I think the loving the fact that you know, organization throughout the going on, at this point in time, we have to do something different, we can put one plant you don't have to be out for 60 70% of the time. So time away from family has definitely been that the harder part, very lucky that very supported by my wife, and I think my kids, and now I don't and 16 I think they always we used to be traveling. So I always remember both of them kind of going well. I don't want to go into accounting, because all you seem to do was get on planes and go overseas. So again, perception, so that was probably the personal side. And then then it's also just balancing up. Yeah, my day because of timezone finish it at six, seven o'clock in, say Shanghai, which could be 10 o'clock here 10 Cos last time of the day that my family wanted to have a chat to me. So we're just getting the balance. And sometimes it was good, it was just acknowledging that just because I was available, doesn't mean that it was the right time. So a lot of those was just getting the balance around that. And then it just become different ways of communicating, engaging, you know, even COVID last year where else in Sydney family down here in Melbourne, what we're doing, but don't family game tonight on the iPad, so you just learn to adopt a lot more through technology, and then probably a little bit tougher for myself, but it just becomes second nature for the

Richard Holmes

23:35

kids, which could only be a good thing you've seen a lot in your career. Shane, what do you see the future of finance looking like?

Shane Stacey

23:41

This is going to be a tough one. If I have a look at our team. So it's a lot of what I consider core finance. I think the next couple of years in particular, it's going to be tight from a labor market. I am a little bit nervous around borders close. Yeah, a lot of our recruitment is probably taking the benefit of people that come out gone to the Sydney unis want to stay in Australia. So as I said, there's a large group that I have that have got backgrounds back in Asia. So I am just going to be a little bit nervous around the availability of people to come into the teams. I think it will also create some challenges where people are up there going Gee, I haven't seen family for so long. Do I want to stay in Australia or is now the time to permanently go back. The labor one little bit concerned about COVID is just force everything to become calm like onto soft copy. So we've now totally moved away from documents landing in mail rooms in envelopes been opened up. So that's probably the more exciting part probably gives us a better way that we could have a look at some technology. What I've also seen is that there's a real opportunity around how you may be able to use technology better but then that's got to be matched with the type of systems that your organization has, and around the strength of the procees. So there will always be core needs for finance, I think the ability for people to go more into the knowledge base roles, definition of commercial finance, as opposed to finance planning analysis, I think that area is still got a little bit more development around what really is commercial finance? And how do they have a really strong voice within the busine. But I can't like feel that that was always part of it. If I went back 510 15 years ago was all around well, how does finance have a stronger voice within the busine, so the whole impreion of finance as well in the future, just from a location perspective, we'll never be together five days a week. So we're now starting to see teams that we were only recruiting in Sydney, we're well on trolleys starting to see if there's good talent in Melbourne or other locations, because the need to be together every day has just permanently changed. I think the other part is certain roles were, again, we thought had to be there will be a hybrid model. And what it's going to do, I think it's going to work for some people. And then there'll be others. It's a case of now I want to go in, I want to be part of the organization, I want to be in the building, I want to kind of like feel the organization. So I'm not quite sure how this one's going to play out over time. But the recruitment and kind of how you go about aeing, who's going to be a good fit to your organization, the organization through the interviews, I think you're also going to have to be a lot more open and transparent around how they're really seeing the organization. Because if you get the wrong match between the two, and you got someone that wants to heavily be in the office every day, but two managers out there, that's just gonna fall apart very quickly.

Richard Holmes

27:01

Search Well, before we started recording the the episode show like, how can you have a culture? No one's ever in the office, it's extremely tricky, nearly impoible to have a culture just film a video. You can't think of a beer or wine or a video, it's just not the same. If if you're at home, though, is it? Talking about culture? What does culture mean to you? In the

Shane Stacey

27:20

organization? I think the one culture is the difference between what the pitch pace is as opposed to what the behavior is. So I won't really say there as we've gone through over the last couple of years. So part of it also comes back from whether it's feedback that the company's got, or feedback from the team. So a lot of that, to me is all around really strong and frequent communication, especially at the moment and just making sure that communication is linked to strategy purpose, what's the value of the organization, kind of like where I went and said, Well, what was some of my best advice in the treat yourself as a company? It's a case of well, with the shared service function that we're setting up, what is our value? What is the purpose? And how do we take on far more of the actual responsibility for the proce rather than the agency to always talk to my leads and go, we've got the knowledge, we've got the experience, we've got to be the experts in this area, we shouldn't have been part of the busine trying to take us away from an effective proce just because their procees overly effective. The so would a lot stronger around goals in objective settings with which it is part of the culture a lot more in the development of the teams around training, a lot more transparency into where opportunities are. So I think is some years ago, it was like a little bit selective, any of the roles whether they're within our team or within the group, there's a lot more awarene around that. So I think that transparency becomes really important. The other part is very much around the diversity within the company. We all live in large cities, which is where we're operating the you get a large employment base, there's got to be a maive amount of diversity within that group and coming out of multiple countries. So I genuinely value that. I think I was a little bit nervous that I may have come back into a very one dimensional solid team. So the diversity and just not talking about diversity. But just I've got a really strong mix of male female leadership roles, we've probably got a really good balance acro all our teams within diversity. And the last part of the culture from my side is heavily around the leadership if the visions is out there. And in our area of financial control, it really is an important one that we know the control environment, we know the right behavior, and you reinforce it. There's not special scenarios sometimes people communicate to certain people's They don't want to hear because it's going to impact the conversations they have. But it's probably one of the real strengths that I'm comment bringing into, I think the group very much got it from GE output is one. But the quality around how you go about that becomes really important. And that can only come from the top and be able to filter it down into your team. And just be very, very

Richard Holmes

30:23

consistent with that throughout time. Since I've known you Shang, you're always a happy character. I don't think I've ever seen you sad or miserable or quiet. What makes you happy?

Shane Stacey

30:36

Yeah, we're talking about what to buy really, really hard roles to do commercial, probably another best piece of advice I got from the CFO, it goes, you know, complex chain, doesn't matter how tough it is, as a leadership group, we have to present that we're on top of it. So that was probably one of the things that you got to project it, you're not always in control. But the way you present in the office clearly has a an impact on the team morale. But I can't say over time, I've just got a better balance, I think between work and life. And the thing is that work work out. But I've come like seen over time that you're weakened to your own. That was probably harder. Within GT because there were so many things from different time zones that would come through probably there was an expectation in the back company that things would still get answered on weekends you would go on leave, things would still get answered. So I've got a lot better. My weekend is my weekend, same time, my holidays and my holidays, not extra work time. Get that into the team. But I love exploring up in Sydney really made solid clearly in China. Whenever I've gone to other cities get out there, explore it as if you're never going to go back. And I've seen some stunning parts of Sydney had no idea how good the bushwalks were the coastal walks are some of the street art around New Town, you can always work out that you can be busy, whether it is work and home. And sometimes you just have to carve out some time. And the best way for me it's just going explore so locked down here in Melbourne was great when the five K's went to a tech cave where 250 K and just started to see and explore certain suburbs and the city like I've never done before. And it's just great to feel like you're a tourist within your own country and it's not expensive, didn't have to fly anyway don't have to stay in hotels. And it's just a really lovely way to get some balance.

Richard Holmes

32:32

Absolutely pleasure to have you on the show. And Shane, I think you've been a great guest and very insightful. Lots of wisdom in our conversation there in laquelle. We'll have to have you on the show again, in the future. Yeah, look forward to meeting in person when we can.

Shane Stacey

32:43

Fingers croed. That happens pretty early in 2022. And always a pleasure catching up with you and it really vated the chance to join your podcast. So I feel honored

Please note that this has been transcribed by AI/Bots so there may be typos and the occasional strange things happening.