In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 46, our guest is Shamubeel Eaqub, Chief Economist at Simplicity.

Shamubeel Eaqub came to prominence in New Zealand as a sought-after economist explaining his complicated world in simple terms to readers and viewers through the New Zealand media. At the time he was the Principal Economist at the NZ Institute of Economic Research.

How he came to that position, from an immigrant boy at age 10 is a worthy story in itself. But this discussion is so much more. A typical Kiwi upbringing followed his arrival, and as a soccer mad kid he found his way quickly. He studied economics at Lincoln University in Canterbury and then launched a career that has seen this passionate economist make a massive contribution to his adopted country.

During the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, Shamubeel talks to Bruce Cotterill about his journey, new jobs in foreign cities and eventually success.

But it is the study of the local and global economy that makes this story compulsive listening. The conversation covers topics as broad as local school funding and global military spending.

Eaqub says that there is no question that New Zealand’s post covid recovery has been slower than other countries, and he cites our low productivity, slowing migration and fiscal weakness as key causes. And having researched and written extensively on New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit, it is this topic that makes for a most interesting discussion.

But there are plenty of positives too. And in a world threatened by war and America’s tariffs, he cites the unique strength of our relationships around the world and the value we can provide to other countries as the platform from which our recovery can develop. 

This is a highly informative and entertaining conversation about New Zealand’s challenges and it’s opportunities, between two people who think and care about the future of New Zealand.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 45, our guest is Andrew Stone, former CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand and one of New Zealand’s most influential advisors to CEOs.

Andrew Stone is steeped in advertising. He makes it his business to understand businesses and the consumers they seek to attract. And he’s good at doing so.

So much so, he’s led some of New Zealand’s most influential advertising agencies at a time when they’ve been at their peak, with some of our biggest companies and even bigger campaigns.

He cut his teeth in the advertising business with some of the best advertising agencies of the time. He learned the trade with Colenso in New Zealand and Saatchi & Saatchi in London before returning to New Zealand and eventually leading Saatchi’s in his home country.

Along the way there’s been plenty of lessons; lessons that he proudly shares with experienced CEO’s and young people starting out. There’s a family man in there too, and you sense that the dinner table conversations over the years have left his two sons well equipped for their own future.

In the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, Andrew speaks to Bruce Cotterill about some of the big brands, and big personalities, he’s worked with. There’s some reminiscing about campaigns for Lion, Toyota, ASB Bank and others from the heyday of the industry in New Zealand. But there’s room for a thoughtful discussion on the impact of Artificial Intelligence on consumer behaviours and the advertising industry that will drive that behaviour.

In his post advertising life, Andrew Stone has re-imagined himself as a consultant to CEO’s and Boards, helping to lead major transformation projects across rapidly changing industries. So there’s a great discussion about Telecom’s transition to Spark and many years later, Vodafone’s move to One NZ. Again, it’s the people who make the difference.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 44, our guest is Dr. David Teece, one of New Zealand’s most successful entrepreneurs and a highly decorated university academic.

David Teece left New Zealand as a young man having completed his Master’s degree at the University of Canterbury. His destination was the University of Pennsylvania where he would study for a second Master's degree and ultimately a PhD in Economics.

That was the start of an amazing career in academia, one which included some of the top universities in the world. He taught at Pennsylvania and then Oxford and Stanford, before a professorship at the age of just 32 took him to University of California, Berkeley.

That career has seen David Teece ranked as the worlds most cited scholar in the combined fields of business and management and Accenture’s list of the world’s Top 50 business intellectuals.

But his career as an entrepreneur, managed in parallel with his academic career is where his success and influence are equally prevalent. He has built not one, but two global consulting firms specialising in the provision of economic, business, and financial consulting services to businesses and governments around the world.

Along the way, he’s maintained his links to New Zealand. He participated in the Knowledgewave conference in 2001 and worked with Sir Stephen Tindall in the creation of KEA – Kiwi Expatriates Abroad – to leverage the networks, experiences and talents of the more than one million Kiwis who live overseas. And his extensive interests in farming and winemaking in the South Island keep him attached to his original roots.

In the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, Bruce Cotterill speaks to David Teece about his unique and fascinating career, one which has earned him Royal honours in the form of a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. And there is also plenty of discussion about the importance of good leadership from one of the world’s leading management thinkers, and some commentary on New Zealand’s place in the world, the current state of Donald Trump’s USA, and his thoughts on a troubled world.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 43, our guest is the CEO of the Breast Cancer Foundation of New Zealand, Ah-Leen Rayner.

It would seem that a career in the creative arts would suit the skills and interests of Ah-Leen Rayner. And indeed she headed off, after what she admits was an unspectacular school life, to pursue an Arts degree.

But it was anthropology, the study of humanity, that captured her attention. You get the sense that it still does.

That study led to an early career in sales, selling to supermarkets. But that was before she was captured by global conglomerate 3M, a company she worked with for 17 years. Her tenure there included a period during which she was responsible for one of the Company’s biggest products. The Post It Note.

Next came a six-year stint in the blokey environment of Kiwirail, where she was responsible for creating tourism opportunities out of what was predominantly a freight network. She calls it ‘creating an asset that connected our scenery with an international audience.’ That’s how creativity is applied to business.

But as Covid came and went, she wanted to do something that aligned with her strong purpose orientation, something that did good for the community. About that time, the Breast Cancer Foundation was looking for a new CEO. The rest is history.

In our latest Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, Ah-Leen Rayner speaks to Bruce Cotterill about that leadership journey and her four years at the helm of one of our largest, and most important, charities.

The messages are well known. The importance of breast screening, mammograms and early detection. But there is more to the Breast Cancer story and we learn of the never-ending battle for funding, the unwillingness of consecutive governments to invest in the best drugs available, and the good news, the new initiatives and technologies being introduced.

With our host calling the Breast Cancer Foundation as “by women, for women” we also get plenty of insight for how we can get men taking their own health as effectively as the women do. And here’s a hint, we blokes need those women to help us.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 42, our guest is Distinguished Professor Emeritus Paul Spoonley, of Massey University.

Paul Spoonley is a career academic with a remarkable ability to explain complex matters in very straight-forward terms.

But that straight forward manner is less surprising when we hear about someone who spent five years working in the freezing works,and later started writing his PhD thesis on that topic before abandoning it under pressure from the industry.

And so a career in academia followed, and the independent thinker shows through in Spoonley’s discussion and in his attitude to the future of the country. If only the politicians would listen.

Drawing heavily from his recent presentation entitled “The future of New Zealand: Demography as Desitny” Professor Spoonley conducts a wide-ranging discussion on the make-up of New Zealand and the challenges for our growing population.

We learn that Auckland’s population is set to grow by up to 700,000 people in the next 13 years, and we discuss the implications of that growth for infrastructure, health services and education. Professor Spoonley discusses the reasons behind the most rapidly growing regions in the country. And we hear about how an ageing population at a time of declining fertility rates threatens the way of life we have come to enjoy.

But there are solutions too, and plenty of advice for governments around the world who are grappling with immigration issues. Education, in particular, could become more relevant if greater access to apprenticeships was available and digital literacy more widely taught.

This is a fascinating discussion, filled with insights from a man who has made the make-up of our societies his life’s work.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 41, our guest is real estate’s Martin Cooper, the principal of Harcourts Cooper & Co.

Most will know him as the man on television shouting “the North Shore, what a great place to live.” But Martin Cooper’s story started in Queenstown where he grew up and where he admits to taking the magnificent landscape around him for granted. He was not the most committed student, but he enjoyed sports and the outdoors adventures that his natural surroundings offered.

His father was a cabinet minister, and his work saw the family move to Mosgiel in Dunedin while Martin was at high school. Upon finishing school, and a couple of jobs that saw him away from home a lot, his desire to play senior rugby resulted in him returning to Dunedin and looking for a regular and local job.

That search led him to real estate, a business naturally suited to his energetic and charismatic personality. He found it tough at first, but after three years, he decided it was to be his career.

Despite the recession of the early 1990’s he established his own real estate business and, after a few tough years, learned that he was suited to recruiting, motivating and developing great people.

Success followed in the Dunedin market, but Martin soon found it hard to resist the opportunities afforded by a bigger market and he moved to Auckland, intent on establishing himself and his business on the North Shore. Again, he found the early going tough, but he’d been there before.

The result is Harcourts Cooper & Co, a 20 office, 480 person real estate business and a personal profile to match.

Martin Cooper’s journey is an inspirational leadership story. On the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, he talks to Bruce Cotterill about building resilience through the tough times, the importance of good people, and of putting a little bit of Disneyland into the aspirations of his team. He speaks openly about the pressures of keeping his business going through the Covid lockdowns and the toll of a recent complaints process.

But the real value is in his view of how to be successful in a business that rewards success well. And of course, there’s plenty of advice on the state of the real estate market, and what lays ahead for first home buyers.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 40, our guest is Lawyer turned Novelist, Rachel Paris.

Success is a recurring theme in the life of Rachel Paris. With degrees from Auckland University in Economics and Law, and the Law Society’s prize for the top law student under her wing, she joined one of the country’s most prestigious law firms, Bell Gully.

A spectacular law career in New Zealand and around the world followed. Along the way she completed her Master of Law degree at one of the world’s most prestigious law schools, Harvard Law. Her dissertation there was cited as ‘influential’ by the Wall Street Journal.

After her Kiwi OE via a law firm in London, she returned to New Zealand, quickly becoming a Partner back at Bell Gully where, she became an expert in Banking and Finance law in the free lending days before the GFC, and she oversaw much of the post-crash restructuring that became the aftermath of those heady days.

Uniquely, she put that career aside and left the law partnership, as her family moved to London, following husband Jason’s career at Vodafone. There, she created her own boutique law firm specialising in Blockchain technologies and supporting her global client base part time while organising a growing family in a new part of the world.

But, having returned to New Zealand, it is her latest adventure that is the most fascinating. A masters degree in creative writing back at her old stomping ground at Auckland University and now a new book. And not a book about the law or even blockchain. But a novel, a twisting turning thriller about toxic rich people behaving badly!

The book, published in New Zealand and Australia, is called “See How They Fall” and has already attained Number 1 Bestseller status, while a Hollywood production company has optioned the rights for the big screen.

During the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast Rachel Paris talks about her amazing career and the lessons in leadership she has learned along the way. We learn more about Bitcoin, Harvard Law School, and the importance of making an impact, while balancing a family with three busy children and a CEO husband.

And, as you might expect, there is both support and strongly worded advice for a government with plenty on its plate.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 39, our guest is the brains behind the four day week, and Founder of Perpetual Guardian, Andrew Barnes.

Andrew Barnes survived the hurly burly of London’s investment banking world in the 1980’s, the result of which saw him sent to Australia to manage the exposures held downunder by his banking masters in the UK. He moved to Australia for a month and stayed for twenty years.

After returning briefly to the UK in the mid 2000’s, the GFC saw him head to New Zealand and a unique opportunity with the business that became Perpetual Guardian.

During the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast Andrew Barnes speaks to Bruce Cotterill about the lessons he’s learned from a highly varied career and how re-defining risk led to his ability to make better investment decisions.

Barnes came to prominence a few years back when his book, “The Four Day Week”, was launched during the covid lockdowns. Born of an article in the Economist, and time to think on a long flight, the concept of a four day working week and resultant improvements in productivity has been adopted by companies and countries around the world. His view that people can be more productive in four days than in five makes for a compelling conversation.

Barnes, who these days splits his days between the UK and New Zealand also offers his thoughts on the different challenges being faced by each country. He cites the failure of politicians pursuing a change agenda to “take the people along with them” as a primary reason for the unravelling of our once cohesive culture.

As for what he would do if he was Prime Minister for a day, his answer should be compulsory listening for every parliamentary MP.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 38, our guest is the Executive Director of the New Zealand Initiative, Dr Oliver Hartwich.

Oliver Hartwich was born in West Germany and talks of growing up in the 1980’s in a country shaped by the two World Wars that had until that point defined it. As Europe reshapes its defence strategies in response to the Ukraine crisis, his surprisingly frank conversation about his youth offers a stark reminder of the long-term impacts of war.

But it is as an economist, specialising in thinking about government strategy, that he has made his career. That career has seen him working in the House of Lords and in think tanks in the UK, Australia, and ultimately, for the last twelve years, in his adopted home in New Zealand.

During the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast Dr Hartwich speaks to Bruce Cotterill about the state of New Zealand, a country which he says has so much going in its favour, and yet continuously fails to live up to its potential.

Using the extensive research base of the NZ Initiative as his base, he discusses the state of our housing market and explains in a simple and no-nonsense manner the reasons why such a small country at the end of the world has some of the world’s highest house process.

And while on the local themes, his insights regarding our education system, excessive centralisation, infrastructure and the opportunity for direct foreign investment are as refreshing as they are direct.

Dr Hartwich has made quite a name for himself as an international columnist, and his comments about the current state of the USA, Europe and the UK are so insightful that they should be regarded as compulsory listening for the millions who are relatively uninformed on matters of international geopolitics.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 37, our guest is Emeritus Professor of Health at Auckland University Medical School, Des Gorman. 

An Otahuhu schoolboy who applied to enrol at Auckland Medical School, because his friend was applying, turned that accidental decision into one of the most distinguished medical careers in New Zealand.

That medical career nearly went off the rails when his disillusionment resulted in a change of career and a change of life, leading to seven years in the Australian navy. He credits those years in the military with the development of leadership and people skills, valuable capabilities that many in the medical sector don’t develop, and that he says added greatly to his career when he later returned to medicine.

Ultimately Professor Des Gorman became the Head of the Auckland University Medical School and he was enlisted to multiple government appointments where he has been an instrumental member of the various teams working to improve our health system, including ten years as the Executive Chair of the Health Workforce Review and 6 years as a Director of ACC.

But it is his desire to challenge the things that don’t make sense that is a feature of his medical research into brain injuries and which overlaps into his critique of the health service that New Zealanders rely on.

He came to greater prominence as one of the few outspoken commentators concerned about the manner in which we were managing the Covid 19 pandemic.

During the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast Professor Gorman speaks to Bruce Cotterill at length about our Covid response, the cruel constraints on our way of life and how they could have, and should have been avoided. And he discusses the current state of the health system, the issues around Maori health, and his view on Robert F Kennedy’s appointment as Health Secretary in the USA.

And what would Professor Des Gorman do if he was Prime Minister for a day? His answer will make you wish he was appointed for a full term.

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