Neil Livingston – Chief Executive Officer at Kordia
In this episode host Paul Spain sits down with Neil Livingston, Chief Executive of Kordia, for an inspiring and insightful conversation about leadership, transformation, and the evolution of Kordia, one of New Zealand’s most critical communications companies. Neil Livingston shares stories of innovation, strategic thinking, and lessons learned from working with iconic brands and pioneering change in the tech sector. He also discusses building trust, embracing transparency, and fostering culture in organisations both large and small, while offering a behind-the-scenes look at Kordia’s rich heritage and its exciting vision for New Zealand’s future connectivity and security. This episode is packed with business wisdom, leadership anecdotes, and a passion for making a difference in New Zealand business.
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Episode Transcript (computer-generated)
Paul Spain:
Well, greetings and welcome to the New Zealand Business Podcast. I’m your host, Paul Spain, and a real privilege today to have Neil Livingston. Thank you. Join us. So thank you, Neil. Currently chief executive at Kordia for the last over two years now.
Neil Livingston:
It is just. Yes.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. So look, as usual, I like to kind of go back to the beginning. So tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what your childhood was like.
Neil Livingston:
Sure. So I was born in a small place called Pōrangahau, which is a tiny little village effectively a little bit south of Napier in Hawke’s Bay. The reason I was there is my father was a postmaster and he was early in his career. And in those days the way that you moved through the organization was that you filled the next role, wherever that might be. And I remember he used to have this book and used to be able to track all the different people, postmasters, where they were. And then when one person moved, you could work out where your next move was going to be.
Paul Spain:
Oh, fascinating.
Neil Livingston:
And hence we moved a lot as a family. And when I came along, he happened to be in Pōrangahau, which was his first actual postmaster posting. And then he went on from there.
Paul Spain:
Oh, fantastic. And you know, how did you enjoy that sort of lifestyle where you moved around a bit?
Neil Livingston:
It’s funny, I was thinking about this the other day. I actually really enjoyed it. I remember one time when my mum and dad told me that he had applied for a job. I can’t remember where it was, it was in Wellington or something. And he didn’t get it. And I was really disappointed because I was looking forward to the next move. So I actually got very used to moving and it’s really, I think it’s actually something that stood me in good stead because change is a constant. But also you had to rebuild your friends, your relationships, your community, everything, each time.
Neil Livingston:
And that became a skill set. And I think that’s actually one of the things that stood me in good stead.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, super helpful. And so during those years, what were the things that, when you look back, are maybe a little bit connected with career wise and what you’ve done from a leadership and of technology and so on perspectives.
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, it’s. I’ve always been inquisitive. I remember getting very severely told off for taking the family telephone apart to work out how it worked and having no idea how to put it back together again. Oh really?
Paul Spain:
Did it eventually get back together?
Neil Livingston:
No, no, had to get a new one. I pulled everything apart.
Paul Spain:
Brilliant.
Neil Livingston:
But that’s kind of how I’m wired. I like to understand things. I like to pull things apart and work out why it’s working or why it’s not working. And that’s just something innate in me. But there’s also sort of this. I’ve always had this natural affinity towards technology and it always interests me where it’s going, what it’s doing, and I just love being part of that. So I think those things actually have really helped have formulate me and who I am.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. Fascinating. And that pulling apart, does that also come into. When you go into an organisation that you like to like to understand the detail?
Neil Livingston:
Exactly. And I love really understanding businesses, even just Talking to other CEOs or other executives and other businesses. I love to really understand what the drivers are and really pull it apart, as you say. And that’s typically what I do when I come into an organization, sort of more metaphorically than actually physically, mind you, sometimes physically. But pull it apart because you need to really understand it and understand all the interdependencies. That’s massively important to me.
Paul Spain:
Yep. And I take it you got a bit better at pulling things apart.
Neil Livingston:
You didn’t.
Paul Spain:
You didn’t.
Neil Livingston:
I got better at putting them back together.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean.
Neil Livingston:
Yeah.
Paul Spain:
Oh, that’s fantastic. And where did you end up with your schooling? Did the moves kind of eventually slow down or.
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, so they did sort of in Auckland. So as I entered sort of into my sort of more serious schooling days, we were in Pakaranga College for most of it, living and first in how I can, then in Pamua, but always going to Pakaranga College, which was good. So that sort of formulated that.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, good. And what did sort of things look like post high school?
Neil Livingston:
Well, so I left on the sixth form, didn’t go to university, went straight into work and actually got a job. I was just saying to Sally, my colleague here, very close to here, just down Liverpool street.
Paul Spain:
Oh, I can.
Neil Livingston:
And fixing mechanical telex machines. So not just telex machines, which are old in themselves, but the mechanical versions of them, which were the first instance of it. And there was a great grounding and. And understanding a very, very complex machine and how to. What it does and how to understand it and how to put it apart, but also just actually at 16 years old, going into work life for the first time, it’s almost sort of. I felt like I almost grew up at that point.
Paul Spain:
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Neil Livingston:
And I still have long lifelong friends from there, so people I started work with there we still meet up regularly, mostly on Friday nights and have a beer together sort of 40, 50 years later.
Paul Spain:
That’s fantastic. And so how long did you stay in that environment? Was that part of telecom at the time?
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, so it was New Zealand post office?
Paul Spain:
Yes.
Neil Livingston:
Yeah. So pre telecom? Yeah, yeah. So I stayed there, I think it was for seven years and then with a group of friends, did your traditional OE through Asia and Australia and then to the uk and then actually got a sales job in the uk. And I’d never been in sales before in my life and I didn’t mind it. I wasn’t great at it, but I was a lot better than I thought I was going to be and that was interesting. And then one night I went out in London and bumped into a Swedish au pair and the rest, as they say, is history. And we’re still together today in New Zealand.
Paul Spain:
That’s cool. That’s cool. And so how long did you. Did you stick about on the other side of the planet before you came to Sweden?
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, so I was in London or the UK for I think it was about three years and then moved across to Sweden and lived, I think it was seven years in Sweden, six or seven years in Sweden. So stayed on that side of the planet for a reasonable amount of time.
Paul Spain:
And that’s where you joined Ericsson?
Neil Livingston:
That’s where I joined Ericsson, yeah, exactly. And that was a really interesting time for me because just at the time of my career when I was starting to understand what I wanted to do and sort of in leadership roles and being sort of immersed in the Swedish leadership culture and there was a lot of training that Eriksen did at that time. They sent you to various university courses as well. And there was a lot of investment in you as a leader. And just being immersed in how they do leadership has really formed actually a lot of my thoughts on leadership and how I do it.
Paul Spain:
So what would be the standouts around the things that you learned and that were part, I guess, of the culture and the approach that they took at Ericsson?
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, it’s a little hard to describe, but I’ll try. So one of the things that you see very quickly is it’s very non hierarchical, so very clear, distinct roles and responsibilities. But this idea of you can’t talk to someone, or you can’t bring an idea to someone because there’s several levels above you, or you can’t talk to someone that’s not quite at your level, just doesn’t exist in Sweden. It’s very, as you’d imagine it’s very equal. Their decision making process is also I found really interesting. A lot of people that see it for the first time think it’s very consensus based, but it’s actually, it’s not. What they do is they make sure that everybody around the table, their voice is heard and listened to, but then a decision’s made, but it’s not a consensus decision. They just make sure that all the points of view are put on the table.
Neil Livingston:
And there’s this word in Swedish which doesn’t exist in English, called melon. And it means just enough, not too much, not too little. And that’s kind of their style around leadership. So you try to create enough direction but not be overly directive. You try to create enough structure, but not overly. And that’s their style. But at the same time they’re very direct. So, you know, have no misunderstanding what the thoughts of somebody in a leadership position in Sweden thinks.
Neil Livingston:
But they’re very open, honest, transparent. It’s just factual. It’s not good, bad, indifferent. And a lot of those things I try to sort of model and I think they’ve kind of become ingrained in me in some respects.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. Fantastic. And the role that you were doing there, what did that look like? Was that an international sort of role that had you looking beyond Sweden?
Neil Livingston:
Well, originally I was out of work for six months in Sweden, which was a very expensive way to spend your life, to be honest. And basically everything I’d saved up to that point disappeared. So I found a role with Ericsson, being a project manager for a range of technology which effectively got my door into Ericsson. And then I moved quite quickly cause I found a position within the cellular division, the cellular infrastructure division. And the frankly, part of the shine of that role was one of its responsibilities was the New Zealand market. So then I had to go and visit New Zealand on a regular basis.
Paul Spain:
Oh, a hardship.
Neil Livingston:
Which is great. Got to come home on a regular basis. And that’s when I really started my leadership journey and I started leading a team of global account managers which looked after cellular infrastructure sales. I was very lucky. It was a time when cellular infrastructure was going crazy. Ericsson was by far the world leader. So it was very hard not to succeed, to be frank. So I was very lucky in that regard.
Neil Livingston:
But it was a great learning experience, a lot of travel, a lot of meeting of very interesting people. It was fascinating.
Paul Spain:
I’d like to drill a little bit more into that, but before we do, you mentioned this period of being out of work for six Months. It’s actually a reasonably big deal to be on the other side of the world, out of work and burning through your funds. I’m kind of keen for you to break that down a little bit. What was that period like?
Neil Livingston:
It was really hard. It was, yeah. So out of work, living in a pretty small apartment. My partner, she was studying, so sort of neither of us were bringing in money per se. Didn’t really know the language, didn’t really know the culture. We were in Stockholm. Her family was in a place near shipping, which is a little bit south of Stockholm. So there wasn’t sort of.
Neil Livingston:
There wasn’t a lot of interaction. So it was a hard time. But it’s one of those times where you learn a lot and you use that time to your benefit. And I spent a lot of time understanding the Swedish culture and what it’s like and trying to grow some friendships and become part of society.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. And I imagine you had to figure out how to be reasonably frugal.
Neil Livingston:
Oh, goodness, yes. Originally. No. Until reality starts hitting and then you’re going, now we need to be very frugal. Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Paul Spain:
So what did you normally eat there?
Neil Livingston:
Well, they have this, which I love the Swedish food, but they have this type of food called Husman’s Cost, which is like every man’s food. So it’s your typical stews and those kind of things. But, yeah, very, very simple food. But it was great. I mean, when you enjoy being part of a new culture, it’s all part of the. The learning.
Paul Spain:
And how did you go, language wise?
Neil Livingston:
Terribly. And if my wife, if she watches this, she will. She will tell you that I got to the point where I understood it pretty well, but talking just. I’m not a language guy. Just not me.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. I think I’d be in the same boat. So back to Ericsson. And, you know, you talked about it being a pretty good, you know, a pretty good time to be at Ericsson in terms of their success. This must have brought you into contact with quite a broad range of organizations around the world.
Neil Livingston:
Absolutely.
Paul Spain:
Who were, you know, I guess, making quite key and pivotal decisions in terms of their success. Things that sort of stick with you from, you know, from that period that sort of, you know, stood out around those that, you know, made maybe smarter decisions than others.
Neil Livingston:
Yeah. I spent quite a lot of time with AT&T in the US and it was at a time when they were really defining their mobile strategy and what they wanted to take and just. And I was privileged enough to spend time with their leadership team and just seeing how they approached decisions and how strategic they were. And that’s the thing that stuck out to me. They were incredibly strategic in the decisions that they took. Whereas you went and talked to other operators and it was a little bit more operational and transactional. But the other thing that actually stuck out to me, and not just because I’m a Kiwi, but was the interactions with the New Zealand entities as well. So Ericsson had done an extremely good job of really promoting New Zealand as an innovation hub for the rest of the world.
Neil Livingston:
So a lot of Ericsson technology would get brought to market here before it would in the rest of the world. And they used it as a test market because as Kiwis we’re reasonably tech savvy, we’ve got reasonable incomes, we’re at the bottom of the world. So if it goes horribly wrong, not too many people hear about it. And that was a really interesting learning for me. And I think I look at that and I look at us now and think somehow we’ve kind of lost that edge because we were the first to have eftpos. There’s a whole thing we were the first solves in the world technology wise and. And we don’t seem to be there at the moment. I’d love us to get back there.
Paul Spain:
And with that strategic approach that you saw from say at. Were there particular aspects that stuck with you in terms of how they were able to operate that way or any.
Neil Livingston:
It was their long term vision. That’s what really stood out for me. They weren’t trying to take decisions for the next five, even 10 years that they were talking about long term visions of how they needed. It wasn’t just a technology decision, it was decisions around the structure of the company, how it needed to be and really take that long term view, which I found really fascinating and not necessarily what you would have thought for an American company. It was quite interesting.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. Do you think that’s still relevant today where things are moving at an even faster.
Neil Livingston:
I think it’s even more important.
Paul Spain:
Faster pace.
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, I think it’s even more important if you think about sort of the speed that’s happening and the amount of change with AI and I think having clarity about your long term vision is even more important otherwise. It brings me back to when I was a kid in point seven, my back garden and I used to go out with a bit of bread and we had pukekos in the back and I’d throw a piece of bread down and just as the Pukeko’s about to get to that bit of bread. I’d throw another one and they’d leave that one and race the next one. And I keep doing this. It was a bit of a game, but it’s kind of. It feels a little bit like that. We kind of chase, but we never quite get there. But if you’ve got that long term vision, you stay a little bit true to your course.
Paul Spain:
That helps you kind of keep the focus. But I guess the pace of change has changed how you have to do that. So maybe we’ll delve into that a little bit later. You were at Erickson until end of 2005, I think, late 2005. And then what happened? Did you come back to New Zealand from there?
Neil Livingston:
No, I actually came back before this. I came back to New Zealand, moved to Wellington, looking after the telecom account. Loved my time in Wellington, but I really wanted to get back to Auckland. Cause that’s where I’d sort of spent a lot of my childhood. And I love the water and being by the ocean. And so I convinced the CEO of Ericsson to let me start a small operation in Auckland with the intention of attacking Vodafone because we didn’t have any business with Vodafone in New Zealand at that time. So he said, yes, I’ll give you a small team of people and a budget and a couple of years. And I went and saw the then newly crowned CEO of Vodafone, person by the name of Graham Maher.
Neil Livingston:
And just as I was about to walk in his door, he said, I just want to let you know before you sit down, it’ll be a cold day in hell before I buy anything from Ericsson. And I just convinced the CEO I’m coming up in my family. So we actually ended up being incredibly close friends and built a lot of business together. He had just been actually treated rather poorly by somebody and quite rightly wasn’t very impressed. But it was an interesting moment where you go, goodness, okay, so now I know what my challenge is, at least. It’s just quite a big challenge to move.
Paul Spain:
And so was he quite forthcoming around, you know, sharing?
Neil Livingston:
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Paul Spain:
Sharing.
Neil Livingston:
Very, very.
Paul Spain:
Why he was absolutely, yeah.
Neil Livingston:
But when I look back in my career, the people I’ve worked with, he’s another one that stands out. Just probably the most impactful leader I’ve ever known. And one of the things that he was, was incredibly transparent and open just with the staff, customers, partners. So, yeah, so he told me very clearly. And I thought about it really hard. And I went back to him and I said, the only way I can change your mind is by proving it. So give me a chance, any chance, at any time, doesn’t matter how small, and we’ll prove ourselves. And if we prove ourselves, give us another small chance, please.
Neil Livingston:
And we just built by that. And we’re just built by continuously proving ourselves and getting chances and proving ourselves even more.
Paul Spain:
What a great lesson. That’s fantastic. And how long did it take you to get the first chance?
Neil Livingston:
About six months.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, okay.
Neil Livingston:
A nervous six months.
Paul Spain:
And how much pressure were you under?
Neil Livingston:
No, not too bad at that time, but it was more personal pressure, to be fair. That’s kind of not the way Ericsson. Ericsson worked. They understood things take time.
Paul Spain:
And were there any big lessons that stayed with you around, whether it was looking at Graham’s approach or your own approach to getting that to be a solid relationship?
Neil Livingston:
Oh, no, absolutely. I mean, and I often reflect now. Cause Graham passed away, unfortunately, very, very suddenly, quite a few years ago now, just at the start line of a marathon. Just had a massive heart attack.
Paul Spain:
Oh, dear.
Neil Livingston:
But yeah, I often think back now, what. You know, sort of when I’m in challenging situations, how would he react? What would he do? And it was just the way that he had clarity. He was clearly the leader, but he was very empathetic. He understood everybody in the organization had absolute clarity of vision of where he was going. Very values based on. And a lot of that. And I kind of. And you look at that and you look at the Swedish sort of model, and there’s a lot of sort of similarities or overlapping and that kind of formulates a lot of how I act and do.
Paul Spain:
So moving on from there, you LED Modem Pack.
Neil Livingston:
Yes.
Paul Spain:
How did that change that ended up.
Neil Livingston:
I mean, modempak was great because it was my first role because I went from Ericsson as an executive, as a sort of a leader. But within a big machine and Modempak, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to run it. And for those that don’t know, Motor Pack, build computer cabinets for housing computer equipment and all the cooling that goes with it. So it was my first time running a company having to understand really what a balance sheet and a P and L looked like. Had to really. The buck stopped with me when it comes to personnel issues, all those challenges that you have. So that was a great learning experience for me.
Paul Spain:
Yep. And were there any kind of big things that stood out in terms of the learnings through that window?
Neil Livingston:
So one of the Things that I remember was the owners were very, very intelligent, smart owners and very good people.
Paul Spain:
This is locally owned business.
Neil Livingston:
This is locally owned business. Yes, exactly. And if you think about it, the business itself is a lot of engineering. Cause you’re engineering these big racks that hold millions of dollars worth of equipment. There’s a lot of building, there’s a lot of big metal materials. And they kept on talking to me quite earnestly about looking at China and getting China to do the design and manufacturing for us and removing costs. And I wasn’t that keen. And I kept on progressing down the New Zealand front.
Neil Livingston:
And then finally I did take my head of engineering, went over to China and we took about 40% of the cost of the product out sort of in a sort of two month time. And it’s just really reminded me to. You get these blinkers on sometimes and you’re just like saying, no, no, this is the way we do things. And looking outside. And that was a really important lesson for me and I should have listened to them earlier.
Paul Spain:
Interesting. And so you were there, what, couple of. Couple of years?
Neil Livingston:
Couple of years, yep.
Paul Spain:
And then Provenco. Cadmus.
Neil Livingston:
Provenco. Cadmus or Cadmus Provenco. So I went, I joined Cadmus. It was owned largely at the time by Sir Peter Meer, a great man. And Cadmus and Provenko joined. But it was almost a little bit like a reverse takeover. Cause most of the leadership team of Cadmus, even though much smaller, became the leadership team of Provenco. There’s a lot of hard lessons through that because through that merger there was a lot of duplicative roles.
Neil Livingston:
So I was a chief operating officer. So there was a lot of roles that we had to go through and choose and take hard decisions and say sort of sorry to quite a number of people, unfortunately, because it was quite.
Paul Spain:
A large business probably compared to Modempak.
Neil Livingston:
It was a very, very large business compared to Modempak. Exactly. And the then CEO, who’s still a very good friend, Julian Beavis, him and I worked really, really closely on that together. But that was my first experience also where the business got into trouble and unfortunately it, it folded in the end, which was a really hard lesson. And there was lots of learnings looking back on it. Nothing that I could have changed per se from an outcome perspective. But just the learnings and being a leader of people in the hundreds and then having to watch them all lose their jobs and unfortunately the way it happened as well went, meant a lot of people actually lost more than that. They lost a lot of leave that they had expenses that weren’t paid for overseas trips.
Neil Livingston:
There was a lot of pain that was gone through. So there was quite a hard time and a lot of scars from that.
Paul Spain:
And how did that happen in terms of over a period of time? Were there people that you were having to exit out of the business? And then you got to.
Neil Livingston:
It was kind of that you had that feeling that the ship is sinking and you’re bailing like crazy and you’re making the changes and you’re trying everything you can, but the ship’s still sinking and it’s still sinking and it’s still sinking. And then you sort of the realization, well, first of all, I guess probably you realize that the ship’s going slower and slower. Cause it’s taking on more and more water. But you don’t quite realise how dire it is. And I think that’s one of the learnings for me is I probably didn’t. I didn’t look deep enough. I took things that sort of. That I was being told for granted.
Neil Livingston:
Whereas I should have really gone with my gut more. Which is one of my learnings is really if your gut’s telling you something, just follow it for goodness sake. But that was hard. So there was restructures that were happening, there was parts of the business that weren’t performing that were trying to right size to help the business. But you look back at it and there was just so much water coming into that ship. There was no way it was going to survive.
Paul Spain:
And in terms of dealing with those challenges of people losing their work, how did you personally deal with that? What were the things that you came away with? Because that’s one of the hardest things to do as a leader is to see people losing their work.
Neil Livingston:
Even if you’re impacted yourself completely, it’s devastating. And all you can do is treat people as you want to be treated yourself, with respect, with open and honesty. That’s massively important, I think. And people, in my experience, if you’re open and honest and transparent, even if it’s a horrible situation, that goes a long way with people. And yeah, that was a very, very hard experience. And as I said, myself and Julian Beavis especially worked really hard side by side on that. And there was lots of other things that were happening, legal things and all the usual mess that goes with when things go horribly wrong.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah. And then after that you moved into another pretty technical company, Endace I did, yeah.
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, exactly. Which was. And that was a. Well, it is a fascinating company still here and going Very well. And Endace so they sell very high tech equipment and they have two typical markets. Either the spy agencies, MI6, MI5, US agencies or banks that do high frequency trading, as in very, very computer based trading of shares. So highly technical. And a company that was really starting to hit its trap when I joined.
Neil Livingston:
So I was very lucky. The then CEO Mike Riley, fantastic guy, he was really getting that company moving. I came in and what I did was took what was a very technical solution and productised it. So I learned a lot about how to create a product and what a product was and how to market it and how to put a whole of product together. Not just actually the physical thing but everything that goes with it. The marketing, the collateral, everything that’s needed. And that was a great learning experience for me and also just a fascinating journey and just some really interesting times things. When the first Christchurch earthquake hit, we had a lot of manufacturing down there.
Neil Livingston:
So we had to send a team of people down there in a car to literally get in before they red cross the building to get the equipment out and put it into the car so we could move the manufacturing. So a lot of that sort of just, just keep that business running kind of mentality.
Paul Spain:
And was there quite a significant risk you felt at that time around how the business could be impacted by the earthquakes?
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, no, definitely. And taking quite a lot of very strategic decisions about how to manufacture and where to manufacture to make sure there’s backups. And thank goodness we did. I think if we had just carried on trying to follow the lowest dollar we would have been in a lot of trouble.
Paul Spain:
Yeah.
Neil Livingston:
So I mean there was a few wobbles as there is for any company that’s still growing. But yeah, it was a wonderful time.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, interesting around, you know. Cause I’ve heard a bunch of these sort of stories around those who had things in their business premises that they needed to get out completely. And there was kind of a window of time.
Neil Livingston:
Completely. Exactly.
Paul Spain:
But you know, whether, whether you were supposed to or not was, was probably a little bit, you know, the lines were maybe a little bit blurry or you were given a little bit of a window and they said look, you can, you can duck in, you’ve got, you know, you’ve got an hour, get in, get out, 100 sort of thing.
Neil Livingston:
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Paul Spain:
So that it must have been a, a bit of a hard one to sort of make, make a call on. And.
Neil Livingston:
And it was. And because the products that Endace manufactured and still do manufacture are very, very high value. So Each product is worth hundreds and hundreds, sorry, thousands of dollars. So losing one or two products from a delivery perspective has a big impact. So, yeah, it was very important we got that equipment.
Paul Spain:
Yep. Now, before joining Kordia, you did a number of other roles, sort of in between. What are the things that sort of, you know, stood out in your other roles? Because you’ve had quite a variety, which is, I think, quite fascinating.
Neil Livingston:
It is. And it was a little bit, a little bit planned and a little bit sort of ad hoc. So what I ended up doing then was joining smaller companies and there was kind of a theme to them. They’re all companies that had been going for a reasonable amount of time, typically had a founder, but they’d hit a glass ceiling. The glass ceilings were at different levels, but they’d hit a glass ceiling because as we see often the founder is the only person that could actually get a company up and started and to that point. But they are the person stopping that company from going to the next level. And I went through a series of companies that were kind of in that stage and helped them to try to get to the next level. How do you break through that glass ceiling, put some sort of more experienced leadership effectively in place to be able to help those companies grow and sort of have real passion for New Zealand and New Zealand technology companies.
Neil Livingston:
So they’re all sort of had a New Zealand basis quite a lot, sort of in different types of AI areas. And yeah, it was fascinating.
Paul Spain:
That’s quite an interesting area because it’s probably quite common, but the approach to how those challenges of breaking through the glass ceiling can be addressed probably vary in every single situation. Right. Because it’s not just a cookie cutter approach of, oh yeah, there’s one way we do this and we do it the same every single time.
Neil Livingston:
No, not at all completely. And because they’re very founder led, which means it’s about people and people are always different. But it’s interesting, one of the founders who was the CEO at the time, before they asked me to step in, I thought quite wisely, said the only person that will appoint me as a CEO is me. And that’s only because I have to, because nobody else in the business has the experience. So it’s not that he’s a CEO, it’s just that he has to appoint somebody and he points himself. So he said, I need somebody that actually knows how to be a CEO to come in.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, fascinating. And any other things that stand out in terms of how you help nudge some of these founder led Businesses forward in different ways.
Neil Livingston:
It’s that balance between when you start a company, by definition to succeed you have to chase every dollar. In my experience, it gets to a point where chasing every dollar will kill you as a company or at least stop you growing. And it’s really bringing the company along that journey that you don’t have to chase every dollar. Some dollars are actually better than others and easier than others and some are fine to say no to and be a little bit more strategic about it. But you need to have a real trust in where you’re going and back to that sort of longer term view. You need to have that longer term view and go, this is where we’re going. So it’s okay to say no here, to get over there, that’s okay. But it’s a journey.
Paul Spain:
And any particular techniques in terms of helping the directors, the founder, the owner, you know, kind of come on these.
Neil Livingston:
Journeys just really talk from experience. So give examples of experience at a particular sort of instance and say let me tell you a story about X over here where we did it and really talk through that. That’s it. Other than that, back to that Graham Maas story. Just show by delivering, just do it and they will see. There’s nothing like seeing something really happen to believe it’s possible.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, I noticed that technique was one of the businesses you’re involved in and I’ve spoken with Ben Bodley a number of times over the years. I think we probably met at something like the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas and I remember bumping into him and I think in Taiwan as well for something, if I remember correctly. But you know, that makes sense. Quite an interesting Kiwi business that most people probably haven’t heard. Heard of anything you can share from that story?
Neil Livingston:
I mean he’s one of the most intelligent, almost genius category people I know and have had the privilege to work with. What, what he could do everything from customer relationship to sales to designing the product, which is a visual sort of AI camera, sort of AI on the edge kind of solution and operationally run the business. Phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. A true sort of hats off to him and, and the team for what they’ve achieved. Quite, quite incredible.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah. And yeah. Any other standouts before we delve into Kordia?
Neil Livingston:
I don’t think so. I mean it’s just interesting looking back at your career and going. And I guess the bit which is kind of in there as well with Kordia is sort of moving into a little bit of a governance role as well. So I’d taken a couple of governance positions and a lot of that is back to that part of me pulling that telephone apart, understanding businesses. And that’s kind of what governance to me is, is really understand the business and then try to provide help and guidance as to how it can be better.
Paul Spain:
Right.
Neil Livingston:
And that’s kind of the part of governance that I love, coming in and really understanding it, pulling it apart.
Paul Spain:
So you joined the board of Kordia, was it 2022 time frame? Yep.
Neil Livingston:
And it was a privilege to be asked. So through my career, through Ericsson, through other companies, I interacted with Kordia numerous times. I’d actually sold a reasonable amount of equipment to Kordia back in the day. So I’d seen Kordia and dealt with Kordia and always had a lot of respect for Kordia, the values that it holds, its heritage, what it’s done for New Zealand, the people. So when I interviewed Rashaud Sheridan Broadbent, who was the chair, who we also worked together at Ericsson together. It’s a small world in New Zealand. When she asked me if I’d like to put my name forward, it was really a privilege.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, that’s great. So for those who don’t, you know, don’t know too much about Kordia, maybe you can. You can, you know, I guess, break down the different parts of the business because, you know, Kordia has this incredible history. It does, you know, in New Zealand. And, you know, most of us have sort of seen broadcast, you know, towers and things as we’re driving around the country. But there’s so much infrastructure that makes a. Makes a country work and a lot of it you don’t necessarily see. But when it comes to, you know, communications and broadcast, you know, Kordia’s, you know, foundations were there dating back, what, 60 years, I think.
Neil Livingston:
Right, exactly, exactly. No, that’s a great description. And it is. It dates back 60 years to sort of the, you know, sort of well into the first TV broadcast. And that’s really where it came from. It came from Broadcast New Zealand, which was government department, and then bcl, which was sort of another government entity, and then eventually into Kordia and through that, excuse me, that broadcast heritage, but always a thread of breaking new ground, doing things that hadn’t been done before and that kind of remains Kordia. And some of our towers actually, and we’re. We’re doing some celebrations this year about our towers and the buildings attached to them, which are 60 years old.
Neil Livingston:
And these towers are 120, 150 metres tall on the tallest Mountains across New Zealand, pretty phenomenal. And it’s really interesting when you look at it, because those towers were built to broadcast tv, so that’s why they’re on the tallest points and they have the best coverage and they still do that today. So pretty essential infrastructure, isn’t it? Incredibly essential.
Paul Spain:
It needs to just work.
Neil Livingston:
Keeps falling. Exactly, exactly. And then we have fm, which is broadcast from those as well. So incredibly important infrastructure. When we just did a bit of a celebration for 60 years at Sugarloaf, which is our tower in Christchurch, and just looking back at the archives and what’s happened through Christchurch through the years, you know, it’s been through some pretty challenging times. You know, having that communications infrastructure that just keeps working, keeps broadcasting, keeps the people of Canterbury knowing what’s going on, keeps the rest of New Zealand knowing what’s going on and it doesn’t miss a beat. Is incredibly important.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. And that’s got to carry through whether it’s earthquakes or 100%, you know, whatever flooding, sort of ecological sort of issues.
Neil Livingston:
Exactly the same thing happened in Cyclone Gabriel and the Hawke’s Bay. You know, sort of our communications towers were the only ones still working, because one of the things we have, which is incredibly important, I believe, is you have all these towers around New Zealand. And then as well as broadcasting, they’re also all interconnected with a high capacity microwave network, which arguably is the most resilient communications network in New Zealand. And when everything else stops working, that still keeps working because it’s tower to tower, it’s microwave. And each of those towers, if we take Sugarloaf, for example, that’s got a month’s worth of diesel backup for electricity.
Paul Spain:
Prepare you for the apocalypse.
Neil Livingston:
Prepare for the apocalypse. Now, there’s a story when we’re down there, one of sort of one of the wonderful gentlemen who’s just retired actually, and who looked after that towers for many years. He tells a story of, I think it was 1992, the great snow of 1992. And he said he was outside and through a series of circumstances, the big diesel tanks had got contaminated. So he’s outside and his waste and snow and he’s hand pumping diesel to keep the transmission going. So everything still works. So that resiliency piece, so that’s at the essence of Kordia, that’s kind of part of what we do, but we also do quite a few other things that maybe people don’t know about. So one of the sort of things I find fascinating is that we look after just about a quarter of the world’s oceans from a safety of life perspective.
Neil Livingston:
So we have a contract with Maritime New Zealand and Maritime Australia and all the international waters that they look after all around them. We monitor and make sure that if there’s any safety of life issues, we have people 24, seven in operations centres waiting to take their calls and help them and talk them through and help coordinate rescues or whatever’s needed to be, which is again pretty amazing.
Paul Spain:
Well, is that something that you’ve done for a long period of time?
Neil Livingston:
Yeah. So we have long term contracts which we’ve just renewed actually with Maritime New Zealand and Maritime Australia because as you can imagine, the amount of infrastructure and frankly also training and just capability that you need, you can’t just spin up overnight.
Paul Spain:
Not if you want to protect people’s lives completely.
Neil Livingston:
Exactly. And there’s nothing more important. So we have a center in Avalon, a maritime operations centre there. Amazing team doing amazing work. And the same in Canberra in Australia. And yeah, it’s quite phenomenal. You go and see, it’s quite humbling when you go and see them and they play back some of the calls that they get and the amount of distress, as you can imagine, on the other end of the line you’ve got these people which they’re not always that old. It might be 3 o’ clock in the morning, two of them in there and the buck stops with them.
Neil Livingston:
They’ve got to help these people. So quite humbling, quite phenomenal.
Paul Spain:
Right, so these are sort of radio type communications that occur.
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, so radio type communications, but they also monitor EPIRBs. They monitor so the full gambit of all communication systems.
Paul Spain:
So Kordia’s got these, you know, parts of the business that have been around for a long time, but there’s also the newer parts of the business and you know, I guess this is something that we, yeah, we often see as older organizations can end up struggling with. Well, what does our future look like? And yeah, this has been something that Cordy has had to look at, but a number of acquisitions and so on that have then helped shape how the business looks today. Can you walk us through that side?
Neil Livingston:
Sure. So another part of our business, we’re looking for a better name, but it’s called Cyber Cloud and Connectivity at the moment, ccc, but I’ll take any input for a better name. We’re looking for it currently. But basically people send in your suggestions. Exactly, exactly. But basically through acquisitions and internal growth we’ve built a really state of the art cybersecurity team that these people both Provide services to help keep companies safe. They provide consultancy services to look at your systems and see are you safe and where are recommendations and also provide incident response. So sort of if or when you do get breached, we’re the people that come in and help you and have experience and know exactly what it is that you need to do.
Neil Livingston:
And not just at a technical level, because often the issues are not really a technical issue, although that’s the start of it. But it’s about protecting private information of people. It’s about sort of what legal consequences there may be. It’s about how do you manage your brand and the fallout from that and all these kind of pieces. And so we partner with various organizations as well and pull in a whole team that can really wrap around you as a CEO or board or whatever and really support you through that process. Unfortunately, that. Or unfortunately that team’s getting busier almost by the week. We’re seeing sort of an absolute huge spike in activity and we’re building that team out.
Neil Livingston:
We’re investing a lot in tools and AI to help us make sure that we have eyes on glass and can see absolutely everything that’s happening. Yeah, so that’s an incredibly important part. And then we’ve wrapped that together with a cloud piece where we have a cloud solution. We bought another or acquired another company which had high expertise in this area. So we’re putting those together and then we have a connectivity which is more your traditional telco connectivity piece, and we’re putting all those together. And really what we’re looking to do is put security across all of that. So it’s a security layer, sort of. The purpose that we’re working for in Korea is to keep New Zealand connected and safe.
Neil Livingston:
And they’re the two words, connected and safe. Safe from the safety of life, but safe also from a company. How do I keep myself safe from sort of foreign activists that are going to attack me? So, yeah, we’re putting a lot of effort into that area and it’s growing really, really strongly. And although at first blush it doesn’t look like it fits with Kordia, but the. The amount of overlap that we have and it’s just folding in beautifully. It’s really nice.
Paul Spain:
Now, tell us a little bit about that period. From joining the board to taking over as chief executive. I’m picking. That was a window of time you were able to get in and learn the business without actually working day to day in the business. How helpful was that for taking on the role of chief executive?
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, it was. I mean, the classic term that you use is as a board member, your nose is in, but hands out. And I had a big nose at that point. But it’s always hard because you’re always at arm’s length and you always, you don’t quite sort of see the whole picture and you only see really what, in some respects, the picture that’s been shown to you. So it was definitely helpful. I guess it gave me more of an idea of where areas that I really just, my spidey senses was telling me either there’s more opportunity or there’s areas we need to look at and to focus in on. But yeah, it, it probably reinforced to me how different it is, the view you get from being a board member to being sort of a chief executive or sort of any kind of executive in the company. It’s quite different.
Paul Spain:
And what’s that taught you from a governance perspective? Because when you’re on a board, as we’ve seen over the years with some quite high profile court cases, there’s a lot of responsibility on you. Right. From, from a legal perspective. But as you’ve just described you, yeah, you, you kind of, you know, you only get to see exactly so much. And, and you know, of course that’s, you know, that, that’s, that, that’s a natural part of it. But there must be some, some, some, some learnings that maybe, maybe at times you, you need to push a bit harder than.
Neil Livingston:
Probably the learnings are transparency and trust.
Paul Spain:
Yes.
Neil Livingston:
And this probably goes back a little bit to my DNA, but also to my learnings back in Ericsson. Just be completely transparent. And I am. With the board, there’s absolute transparency. And I think with that transparency, you build trust as well because you’re showing the cards as they are. And you’re not saying sort of the good or bad, you’re not trying to apportion blame, you’re just saying these are the cards we’ve got. So here’s my strategy. To work with this or to improve that or to double down on this, because I think there’s opportunity.
Neil Livingston:
So that transparency, I think is incredibly important. I was really lucky because I was on the board. I can actually absolutely recommend this to anyone. If you’re on a board and the board gets unwell, if you become CEO, that’s so good because you automatically have the trust of the board and vice versa because you’ve been together. So, I mean, one thing I didn’t have to worry about coming in as a CEO, which I’m so thankful for, and thank you to the board. And Sophie, my chair, is building that trust because that trust was there. And that is massively important because you start to lose that trust with the board and life gets very difficult. But being completely transparent is.
Neil Livingston:
Is, I think, incredibly important. And that’s what I’m like at work. I mean, one of the things I say to people when they join, sort of my mantra is, if you ask me a question and I know the answer and I’m allowed to tell you, I’ll tell you. If you ask me a question, I know the answer and I’m not allowed to tell you, I’m probably still going to tell you. So just ask me questions if you want to know something. And that’s how I run it. My thinking is you get a lot further by being transparent and open than trying to be clever and sort of play political games. That just doesn’t work.
Neil Livingston:
I’m not clever enough for that.
Paul Spain:
Kordia does have this long history and you’re a government entity, so I guess that also changes things a little bit when your shareholders are the government, which means that, effectively, your bosses kind of keep changing. Right. You know, government stays in for a period and then another one comes in which may have quite different and sometimes administers changing approaches. That’s it. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, what. What sort of has stuck out for you in terms of the things that you have to consider that are maybe different from, you know, a traditional sort of privately owned or publicly owned, you know, entity in terms of how you have to operate in that world.
Neil Livingston:
I mean, first of all, it’s actually one of the reasons I feel privileged and I love this role. I get to work in this absolute sweet spot for me, which is it’s highly commercial. We’re government owned, yes, but we get no funding from the government. The only way we get money from the government is if we’re good enough to sell them something, which we need to get better at, frankly. We need to convince them to buy more things from us. But. So we’re very commercial and you come into the offices, we’re very commercial. You wouldn’t know we’re government owned at all.
Neil Livingston:
But at the same time, being government owned means that you’ve got this part of you which means that you always want to do the right thing for New Zealand, so you’re always looking at NZ Inc and doing the right thing, so you won’t ever take a commercial decision which is not in the best interests of New Zealand. And that kind of scratches two itches for me, because where I Am in my sort of grey haired stage of life is that sort of. I’m still incredibly commercial and I love making companies successful and doing deals. But I want to do the right thing for New Zealand because I’m passionate about New Zealand and this role kind of lets me just scratch both those itches. As far as being a state owned enterprise, I wasn’t quite sure what sort of it was going to mean from a governance perspective. It’s really almost other than your bosses may change occasionally, which happens in private. Sort of that happens as well. It doesn’t change that much.
Neil Livingston:
If anything it’s probably a little bit simpler because the government has, I mean one thing I have learned through working a little bit with the government and the ministers is how hard, incredibly hard they work. Doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, the hours they do is crazy. So they’ve got a lot on their plate. So they’re not over worried about you as long as you are really performing. If you’re not performing, absolutely, you get the spotlight. But if you’re doing well and as a business being incredibly commercial and successful, then they tend to give you good license.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, that’s really interesting. Now taking on the leadership, you know, of Kordia as an organization that’s been around a long time, what did you have to sort of deal with in terms of, in terms of legacy things that have been around a long time, whether it’s culture or aspects of the business and so on. Because you know, from what I’ve picked up, you know, you like to look forward. You know, you were talking about ATT and them thinking decades ahead. So you know, what did, what did you pick up that you felt for, you know, for you to be you, that you had to, you know, you had to steer a bit differently?
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, it’s a really good question and it’s walking a balance because almost always organizationally or personally, your greatest strength is often also your greatest challenge. And I think that’s very true with Kordia. So one of our greatest strengths is our legacy is the people that have worked there for so long and now you cut their arm and they bleed. Kordia, it’s not a job for many people in Kordia. It’s a life they’ve had and they’re incredibly passionate about it. And it’s a privilege to be part of an organization with people like that. However, that also means you’ve got to bring in some fresh thinking and understanding what good looks like. And so we’re going through a pretty Large transformation.
Neil Livingston:
And it was really driven by. When I came in, one of the things myself and the board agreed with is we’d get a strategic review done. One of the reasons was so that I could get into the business and really understand it and we could get a separate entity to come in and do a real deep dive, not just externally but also internally and could really quickly understand sort of where opportunities and challenges and threats, et cetera were. And that was incredibly helpful. But one of the things that came out of that and was becoming very apparent to me was the way we were organised and structured was quite confusing for people in Kordia as much as anything, as well as our customers. So we needed to just become more clear, have a greater focus on what our purpose was, align the organization around that purpose. So we’ve restructured the company completely. It’s quite a simple structure now with three profit centers and four enabling functions.
Neil Livingston:
Are your typical matrix. Still working on it, still tuning it, but creating greater clarity and then also being able to really understand what are the parts of the business that are doing well, what products are doing well, what customers sort of really work for Kordia and really getting that clarity of understanding. And we’re spending a lot of time making the changes. We’re largely through a lot of that transformation now. It’s been a heck of a lot of work and thank you to everyone in Kordia that’s been part of it because it’s been hard. But we’re coming out the other side now and we’re starting to see the results.
Paul Spain:
What do you think have been the hardest bits of going through the hardest parts of going through those changes?
Neil Livingston:
It’s always around people and sort of you have to have some pretty hard conversations with some people, which is not easy for anyone. But it’s the right thing and it’s the right thing for the people and it’s the right thing for the company. You just have to keep on working with that mindset. It’s the right thing to do. But definitely one of the wonderful things when I came into Kordia, because often when you come in and you see a change is needed, the first thing you gotta do is create a case for change to rationalise everyone. Why we need to change didn’t have to do that in Kordia, people were saying to me, we need to change. Come on, Neil, what the heck are you doing? Let’s get on with it. That was more the sense.
Neil Livingston:
So there was this pent up sense that it’s not quite connecting all the elements are there it’s just not put together quite in the right way. And let’s get on and do that now.
Paul Spain:
One of the things that, that I noticed when we first met was that you’re very strategic. You like to move quite quickly. Some businesses will be, you know, they’ll be. They’ll get together maybe, you know, maybe once a year to, you know, set some strategic goals and so on. But you like to do this on a bit more of a regular cadence to, you know, to look at things. So what does your approach look like?
Neil Livingston:
So what we’ve done is we’ve implemented a quarterly rhythm within the organization and we’ve implemented a thing called OKRs, was objective and key results. And it’s been used a lot overseas. There are a lot of big companies, Google, intel, et cetera, very, very successfully. And I’ve used it before in various guises. And it’s a great way of creating alignment and purpose for a quarter about goals you want to achieve. One of the things I found, and we’re still getting better at this because there’s a lot to do, we’re kind of moving everything up an inch at the time, which means that you never really make any real progress. You’re working really hard because there’s 100 things in a line. You’re just moving them all an inch forward.
Neil Livingston:
So the whole idea with okrs is to try and pick a subset of those and go, okay, for this quarter, here’s the goal that we’re gonna move these to.
Paul Spain:
Yes.
Neil Livingston:
And you stretch yourself. So the idea is not to set up goals which you achieve. If you achieve 70%, that’s probably gold standard.
Paul Spain:
So you’re really trying to stretch everyone.
Neil Livingston:
You really try to stretch everyone. And again, that’s a little bit of a mind shift because sort of organizations that are used to KPIs and you either succeed or fail. This idea that you stretch yourself and if you can at 70%, that’s actually good because we’ve made a hell of a difference compared to where we were. And that’s the journey that we’re on. The other part of that, and we’re still on, the journey that we’re working through is rather than this all coming from the executive team, the executive team come up with the objectives. These are the things we want to achieve. But then we let the leadership team, which is sort of the next level down, decide what are the actual things that they want to move forward in that quarter. So there’s ownership.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. And had Kordia sort of started on the okr journey or was that something that you had to kind of build out from scratch?
Neil Livingston:
Yeah, and I built it out from scratch. We did it originally with the executives. So we set ourselves okrs. And one of the great things about okrs is you publish it to the whole organization so everybody knows. So we started off with the executives and said, here’s our okrs for next quarter. Sort of here they all are to everybody in the organization. And then tell them how we went, which ones we did hit as an executive team and which ones we didn’t hit. And now we’ve moved to that next stage, we’re actually rolling them out.
Neil Livingston:
So the projects that we’re working on through the organization on a quarterly basis are Right through the organization.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. Fantastic.
Neil Livingston:
Yeah.
Paul Spain:
For those who are. Who are. I think we’ve probably have talked about OKRs on, on a number of episodes, but Measure what Matters by John do exactly as the book to keep the Bible on on that one. So. Yeah. But yeah, I’m curious to drill into that a little bit. A little bit more. So having had that sort of prior experience.
Paul Spain:
Prior experience, did that make it a lot easier to get going? Because with an organization, what, you’re around 400 people. To get that across a whole team, that’s a reasonable sized endeavor.
Neil Livingston:
It’s still a evolving journey. We’re not at the end stage by any means, but it was, I mean, OKRs, like many things that you sort of implement within our organization. And I think you said it before, it’s not a cookie cutter. Cause it’s always different. And every time I’ve put it into an organization, be it in Vend, be it in Cadmus, it’s always different. So there’s a different flavour to it because it’s all about people and you need to tailor it for the people. So it’s a tool. And it’s not something that I kind of mandate.
Neil Livingston:
It’s something that I bring to the table in the true Swedish fashion. And we all put input into and collectively go, yep, this is a good thing. And how are we going to do it?
Paul Spain:
So I guess looking back across the different lessons, the things that you learned within the Ericsson world, clients and businesses you’ve interacted with around the world and at home in New Zealand. Are there some, I guess, some nihilisms that you’ve landed with? Some things that are kind of your, you know, your approach that you always like to, you know, sort of use to steer a business and to, you know, get the culture in a manner that you feel Pleased with in some way?
Neil Livingston:
It’s a really good question in some ways. I mean, transparency to me is really important, transparency. Because I think that breeds the right culture that removes hierarchy. It stops a command and control kind of way of working creeping in. It means that people feel involved and they don’t feel that there’s an agenda somewhere. And whenever there’s change, that’s the challenge. If people think there’s an agenda, then that’s not a good place. So transparency is absolutely key to me.
Neil Livingston:
I like to play things, I use this term a bit at work with a straight bat. And I like us to play it with a straight bat. Don’t try to outmaneuver or play games either internally or with customers or externally. Just do a good job, just deliver, be authentic, be real, and the results will come. You can build trust and confidence and you can build trust and confidence. If you don’t have that, if you don’t have a relationship and trust and confidence with the board, with customers, with staff, you’re never gonna succeed. And you need all of those. By the way, I spend a lot of my time talking to a lot of our customers and partners.
Neil Livingston:
Cause I think that’s incredible. And again, this is from Ericsson. It’s incredibly important and they need to know that they trust me personally as well as Claudia. So they can, if something goes wrong, they can call me and they know that I’ll have their back.
Paul Spain:
Now, you’ve been involved in quite a broad range of businesses, but I guess one thing I’ve noticed is that there’s often quite a technical, complex element to, to those organizations. Have you landed on a, you know, a particular approach of, you know, how you make that work, the sort of people that you, that you need? Because some, sometimes we see organizations that are, whether they’re, you know, heavily sort of tech oriented in the business or, you know, quite technical and the leadership, maybe the founder, varying levels. You have some really technical people, but you also have businesses that kind of, often lack that sort of technical depth at varying levels. Have you got some particular approach to that or does that vary a lot? In each case?
Neil Livingston:
It varies. In each case it really does. It’s going back to that, pulling it apart and understanding it and knowing what it needs. Personally, I don’t believe in the model of anybody walking in and going, this is what I’ve done before. It works. Here’s the cookie cutter I’m going to put it in. Because every organization has its nuances. It’s different.
Neil Livingston:
And as I said, it’s all about people. So it’s all about bringing the people along. I mean, I do worry when organizations focus on technology for technology’s sake. I love technology, but in a business sense, it has to deliver value, so I kind of lean on that side. But it really depends organization by organization.
Paul Spain:
Good. Anything else you’d like to close with or share? Whether it’s about where Cordy or headed or. Or anything else, there’s a lot that you’ve shared.
Neil Livingston:
Oh, yeah, no, I was going to say it feels like a therapy session, but I don’t charge too much. It’s all right, but it’s. Yeah. I’m just incredibly excited about Kordia and its future. One of our board members said this wonderful thing to me about almost six months ago now, which is. You don’t have to imagine the future, Neil. You can just go and visit it. Because if we look overseas, a lot of where we’re wanting to go as a country, and Kordia is being done in some way, shape or form around the world.
Neil Livingston:
So one of the things they’re really focusing us on is lifting our heads up and out and looking. So I’ve spent a lot of time talking to other courtiers around the world and what they’re doing, and there’s some pretty phenomenal things that companies are doing, because I have this vision in my mind where as technology evolves, connectivity is going to be at the very center of it. And having sort of ultra connectivity, as I call it, which is where you have connectivity everywhere across the country, is going to be absolutely key to the technology moving forward. And I think that’s where Kordia plays. Where smart cities go, where autonomous vehicles go, where or where technology takes us. I see Kordia can be right at the center of that. And that’s the same that I’m seeing in these other entities around the world that have the same asset base and heritage as Kordia, which is really exciting.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, that’s great. Excellent. Well, it’s been a real privilege to have you on the New Zealand business podcast. Thanks very much for joining us.
Neil Livingston:
Thank you, Paul. Enjoyed it.
Paul Spain:
All right, cheers.
