Quick Bite: From the Olympics to the boardroom–How Rob Scott handles pressure

Wesfarmers CEO Rob Scott has competed on the world stage. So what did elite sport teach him about running billion-dollar brands like Kmart and Bunnings?

Hear how Olympic discipline shaped his leadership style, why great teams (not great egos) matter most, and the investor advice he swears by: “When the horse is dead, get off.”

This clip is from our previous episode 'The investment giant behind Kmart and Bunnings–Wesfarmers'

Watch the full episode or catch more clips: http://linktr.ee/sharedlunch

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to a Shears These podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Let's chat about you. You're a dual Olympian, Silver mid middleist,
investment banker and now CEO. I want to Australian's largest companies.
What's your secret to thriving under these pressure cooker environments.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
The first thing you learned very quickly as a CEO
is really it's not about you, it's about everyone else
around you, right, So I think it's ensuring that you
have phenomenal people working with you. And I don't mean
good people, I mean phenomenal people. And you come back
to where we started, which is we want to deliver

(00:36):
a top quartile total shareholder return. We want to be
in the best twenty five percent of companies over the
long term. And if you have great people, then they
are going to be very capable of making the right decisions.
So as a leader, you just need to create the settings,
the culture of the environment and the support for them
to ultimately get on and make the right decisions.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
As there any listens that you've bought over from sporting
into business.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
When you're training with a group of people that every
day you get up and you're trying to be the
best in the world, and every single thing you do,
from what you eat for breakfast and your training session
to the stretching and the recovery and the planning all
and all of that is about being the best in
the world. There came a point in time where it

(01:22):
was very clear that physically I was not going to
be the best in the world in sport anymore. But
you know, I wanted to be part of a team
that shared a similar sense of ambition and that's what
I love about West Farmers. And for a business like
Bunnings to be successful or came out to be successful,
we genuinely have to be the best in the world.
Like we are fighting tooth and nail with companies like Amazon,

(01:45):
with Costco, with Audi that are really large international companies,
best in their class. So you know, that sense of
trying to be the best in the world I think
translates really well from sport to business.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
So before we reap, do you have a favorite quote
or piece of advice that you've picked up along the way.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
One of my favorite quotes is when the horse is dead,
get off, And I think that actually has a lot
of relevance in investing. So for your investors out there,
sometimes you need to know when to you know when
to get out right. Hopefully that won't be the case
with the West Farmers right. But look, if there is
a quote that I think is very inspiring and relevant,

(02:27):
it's that old Roosevelt quote the critic. It just talks
about how easy it is to be the critic. But
really what matters in life, it's the person in the
arena that's trying that failing, they're getting up, they're having
another go. And you know, in history, in life, in business,

(02:47):
in sport, it is those people that ultimately create value,
create change, do special things. And i'd like to think
that you know, in the West Farmers group, we have
far more people in the arena having a go than
we do critics sitting on the sideline commenting on things.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Investing involves the risk you might lose the money you
start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest.