Lisa Gray - VFMC CEO on doing strategy in changing times and how to build a culture of innovation

Naked Ambition Podcast

Lisa Gray is the CEO of VFMC – the Victorian fund management corporation. Her career spans over 25 years predominantly in financial services having held various executive roles at NAB, MLC and Axa. Lisa is a winner of the Telstra Business Women’s Award for medium-sized enterprises and prestigious Rupert Murdoch Fellowship for Leadership and Management. This conversation covered so much of Lisa’s vast knowledge in leading for strong cultures and innovation including: • Her ‘on the couch’ technique of sharing teams backstories to create more connection while the team is distributed • Challenges and some success in creating an innovation culture (especially in financial services) an shares some ways leaders encourage creativity in their teams • Why she is re-thinking how they approach strategy at VFMC now – replacing the detailed roadmap with an agile strategic agenda (20 mins) • Beliefs about large scale transparency in organisations – offering everyone access to the same information (24 mins) and how we can make better decisions with limited information Lisa holds a Bachelor of Town & Regional Planning with Honours (University of Melbourne), Graduate Diploma in Management (RMIT), MBA (University of Melbourne / Columbia University) and AMP (INSEAD).