Ivory & Gecko acknowledges the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia, and we pay our respects to Elders past, present and future. Welcome to Hearts and Minds. Our podcast episodes feature conversations with highly accomplished mining executives and board directors. We'll explore critical themes relating to leadership, impact, staff engagement and culture development. So tune in, enjoy the conversations and prepare to be inspired. I'm Alana Bray-White, the Managing Director of Ivory & Gecko, and this is our podcast, Hearts and Minds.
The best board meetings I go to, they're at the beach. I am a surfer and a windsurfer, so my happy place is really either in the water or in the wind. That's where I like to go to decompress.
Our EVP for many senior executives is a little different than our peers. I mean, Westgold is a different business to some of our peers, and purposely so. We play to our strengths, and you know, we've got a different personality and persona than many of our peers, which appeals to some and doesn't appeal to many.
Our guest today is Wayne Bramwell, an accomplished executive and company director who has gained project and corporate development expertise across precious and base metal companies for nearly three decades. Since February 2020, Wayne has been the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Westgold Resources. Westgold is an innovative and progressive Western Australian gold producer operating six underground mines and five processing plants in the Murchison and Southern Goldfields regions of WA. The company is set to become a top five Australian gold producer following its recently completed $2.5 billion merger with TSX-listed Karora Resources. On each occasion that I have met with Wayne, he's been generous in sharing his thoughts and opinions. This conversation you're about to hear is no exception. In this episode, Wayne describes his approach to evaluating key managers and executives, and unusually for CEOs, he personally conducts first-round interviews to make a judgment on a candidate's personal values and whether they are fit to lean into the culture of Westgold. He talks about the top three qualities that Westgold executives must possess. He reflects on some of his mistakes and failures, and he tells us what really excites him. And you won't believe what his favourite movie is, but then again, we are talking with Wayne, so maybe you won't be surprised. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Wayne Bramwell. Thanks for tuning in.
Wayne, thanks for joining us in the studio.
Pleasure, David. That's an impressive bio. Wow, makes me sound ancient or vintage, one of the two.
And congratulations on the great work that you and your team have done in recent months to secure the Karora deal.
Oh look, full credit to the team there. That's transformational for Westgold.
Yeah, it's great, great news. Wayne, let's start with your backstory. What can you tell us about your early years and your family life? Where did you grow up and what was it like living there at the time?
Look, I'm born and bred in Western Australia. Grew up in Perth, public school boy, and in a family with no connections to the mining sector.
Cool. So how did the journey, why did you enter the mining industry, and what was it like then, and how different might it be today for someone entering the industry?
Look, it was really a happy accident based upon probably bad career advisory, but look, it's worked out okay. I think someone entering the sector today has far more information available to them about the careers that it can spawn.
I know you're fit and you're a keen surfer. In terms of your passions, when you're not around the board table at Westgold or visiting the operations, what do you do?
Look, the best board meetings I go to, David, are at the beach. I am a surfer and a windsurfer, so my happy place is really either in the water or in the wind. Yeah, that's where I like to go to decompress from my day job.
Yeah. Wayne, if I look at your career history, you've worked for small and mid-tier miners and also consultancies. How do you compare the value of the different experiences you've gained in those different environments?
Look, I've worked for private companies, public companies, small and large. I mean, each of those things have their own personality and challenges, and I think all of those things have fed into making me the leader that I'm aspiring to be today. So yeah, it's been great variety. And this sector is a fountain which runs deep, as you know.
This podcast is all about leadership and engagement and culture development within mining companies. We've had a number of guests on the show, and most of them have expressed the belief that leadership is a set of learned skills and behaviors that most people can acquire irrespective of their background and their position in the organization. What do you think? And if you agree with that, how did you acquire the skills and qualities of leadership?
Look, I would concur. I think leadership can be learned, and I see leadership as a journey. The approach that I've always taken was that you can learn something from everyone you work with, and some of the best learning experiences I've had have been from either the most painful or from the leaders which I think are challenged.
Yeah, you raise a good point there, and a lot of people would say that you learn more from your failures and mistakes than you do your successes. And we might come to that a little bit later. Wayne, it's been said that you can't win in the marketplace in terms of building a successful company until you've won in the workplace. I reckon you might know something about this because Westgold has a labour force of about 1,900 people, I believe, and over the past 12 months or so, your team has managed to reduce staff turnover by 40%. Now that's an impressive turnaround. What's the secret sauce? How did you do it?
Look, I'm not sure it's that much of a secret, David. I mean, these businesses, or mining is a high-tech business, but it is a business about people. You are reliant on the people, and we've got 1,900 in our workforce who are out there every day in our mines and in our processing plants trying to deliver the mission for the shareholders. If you can't get them engaged, you've got no chance of success here. So without people, there is no business.
So are you saying that the key to the turnaround, and it is, you know, it's a whopping difference, the key to the turnaround is getting those people engaged, inspiring them perhaps to lock their sights on a common mission and go for it?
Completely. I mean, the workforce we have now at Westgold is far more engaged. They believe in the mission, and the mission is very simple: it's safe and profitable. And it's getting them to buy into the cultural and the organizational transformation that we've done in the last two or three years has been absolutely critical to better performance. So for us, it was always about leadership drives culture, culture drives performance. I mean, people are the common thread in all those three metrics.
Yeah. Okay. Business strategy or culture, which one comes first?
Oh, I'd say strategy first, because really, again, but you can't deliver any strategy unless the culture's right. And I've seen it work in reverse. You can have great assets and a great operating team as individuals, but the culture's wrong, you don't get the performance. Where on the flip side, a really strong team with sort of some average assets, if the culture's right, can deliver the performance and a better outcome for the shareholders.
It's interesting you say that. In my experience working with a number of clients who have consummated mergers or acquisitions, I find that many of the board directors and the senior executives tend to focus very much on the physical assets, the mines, the processing plants, the infrastructure that goes with an operating asset. What perhaps they focus less on are the people, the culture, the systems and the processes that need to be carefully knitted together and integrated. And I think therein lies a trap for many companies that they don't realise the projected synergies and they don't leverage the full value of the merger.
Completely. Maybe that's a function that many companies, like our own, are run by engineers who understand the science and the engineering inputs and the physical assets. And most of my peers, myself included, you know, we've all grown up with a science or an engineering background. The important part about management and people is not something which I know I was taught about in my undergraduate degree. It's something which I've had to pursue in later life or through the school of hard knocks. And then once you understand the value of people, your approach to certainly M&A and growing companies changes.
Yeah. Are you able to share with us some of the challenges or even failures of your recent executive roles? What have you learned about yourself, and how has this helped you become a more effective leader?
Yeah, happy to share some of the failures. I'm just not sure how long this podcast is.
Okay, well, because that podcast could run for a week. But sort of recent failures, and I see failure as one of those potential outcomes of actually having a go. One I'm happy to share is about a more recent corporate turnaround I was asked to get involved in, and I didn't complete the mission there. And I think my failure there was not really understanding what the founders and the owners of the company really wanted. What they said they wanted, a turnaround, a restructure, actually was qualified. And my mistake was not understanding the unspoken qualifications of the sacred cows that weren't allowed to be touched. So I saw that as a weakness on my point, on maybe being too literal and saying, okay, you want to restructure this business, we can do that, and not being very clear about what were the things which were to be left untouched. If I had have understood that, I wouldn't have taken the job, because I was doomed to failure by not fully understanding that there were some sacred cows that were never allowed to be touched.
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And you know, of all the great leaders that I know, one of the common traits is the fact that they are prepared to reveal their vulnerabilities and their weaknesses. And I think by doing so, it encourages people to place trust in you because they don't see you as a person that has all the answers to everything. So it's a humility and transparency and vulnerability, I think, are key qualities in leadership. And those three traits you speak to there are probably not typically spoken about or considered in the stereotypical CEO who is the desk-punching, screaming, hard-charging CEO. It's some of those soft skills hugely undervalued. And when you get people to trust you and be vulnerable and, more importantly, ask them for their input, the outcome I rarely find is poor. Ego is a powerful thing in business, Wayne. So I'm wondering, are those qualities that we speak of, humility and being prepared to show your vulnerabilities, can they be cultivated? Can you get better at doing that, or are you destined to be the person that you are?
That's a great question. I think the humility piece is important. I mean, and ego, I mean, there's always egos in businesses. Maybe I'm just at the age now and I've had the journey where a lot of that's been kicked out of me, but or I've learned the hard way, or I've had good mentors who have said, hey, you need to focus on these things, put your ego to one side, look at what is good for the business, what is good for the shareholders, and that really starts to frame a different approach. Maybe it's an age thing, I don't know, but certainly I believe it's something that can be taught and probably is a function of having some of those failures along the way and going through some difficulties where you, whereby if you reflect, you go, wow, could have handled that better or could have done that differently if I'd taken a different perspective on it.
It's a good point, and you can't diminish the value of experience and hard knocks and the wisdom that you accumulate. It reminds me of a sporting analogy. I'm a keen AFL supporter, and I remember Scott Pendlebury, the Collingwood legend, who was never particularly fast or agile. And I think if the pros rated him on football skills, he wouldn't be anywhere near the top. But he was a brilliant player because at the age of 34, 35, he was still playing, and he could carve out time and space in a situation on the field simply through his football smarts. He could anticipate where faster, more skillful, more agile players were around him. And it always amazed me that at a relatively advanced age in the sport, he could mix it with the elite even though he wasn't as skillful.
Sure. Look, finding time and space in football or finding time and space in business, and particularly mining, is a critical, critical function. I mean, often, you know, this is a fast-paced business. Creating a scenario, and it's often through having the team around you to give you personally, for me to give me the time and space to think about things differently, always ends up in a better outcome, particularly when my team is involved in that decision. So look, I'm certainly not Scott Pendlebury, but I'm certainly not the fastest or most skillful player on the team.
Who's the surfing equivalent of Scott Pendlebury?
Oh, these days there's so many. There's so many. I mean, they're all fantastic athletes. Something I'll never be.
Yeah, it was Olympic sport, wasn't it?
Well, apparently. I mean, this is it. I mean, as was breakdancing, but you know, go figure.
Now let's talk a bit about engagement of staff, Wayne. As the CEO and MD of Westgold, how do you articulate your employer value proposition to key managers and executives that you're considering hiring, and how is your value proposition different from other mining companies who are chasing the same talented people?
Look, that's a fantastic question. With senior executives, basically I normally do, I always do the first interview, and that's really about cultural fit. I mean, if the individuals are getting to that position to be interviewed, pretty certain they've got the capability, but it's cultural fit. So in those interviews, I'm really trying to test what they're like as human beings, what drives them as leaders, and the things which they, the experiences they've had which have got them to that place. So the employee value proposition for me is about being very clear about the vision we have for Westgold, the things we stand by, our values, and the things that we will not tolerate. There are, again, shortcuts with safety would be that first point. And anyone who thinks that, who may not be aligned with our cultural values, specifically around safety, respect and value, those interviews are normally pretty short.
This is interesting. So are you saying that with key managers and executive level people, you get involved in the first round of interviews?
Well, that's not all that common.
No, and again, in some sense, it speaks to my dedication to try and build or advance the culture in our current business. I mean, a cultural change in my mind is a six-year journey. We're two years in. We're in a really good place. The trajectory of the business and the momentum is going really well. The pride I see in the workforce is a reflection of them leaning into the culture that we're building. Really easy to unwind that by bringing senior managers who are not aligned with the vision and the culture that we're trying to aspire to here. Hence, that's why I get involved very early.
Yeah, nice. We have a rule of thumb in our recruitment business, Wayne, that it's best to longlist a candidate on the basis of competencies. You then shortlist on the basis of evidence of relevant achievement, and then you hire on values. You know, and that just understates the critical importance of having people who are aligned with your philosophy in on life and the way that you conduct your business.
And jumping back to your point too, I mean, our EVP for many senior executives is a little different than our peers. I mean, Westgold is a different business to some of our peers, and purposely so. We play to our strengths, and you know, we've got a different personality and a persona than many of our peers, which appeals to some and doesn't appeal to many. In some sense, the ones who can see where we're going and appeal to a culture which is communicative and clear about where it wants to be, they're the people that we want involved.
If you had to rank the top three qualities that you look for in a mining executive, the top three personal qualities or traits that would give them a competitive and sustainable edge in your business, what would those qualities be?
I think being analytic, and when I say that, not in a technical basis, about asking the right questions. Being able to listen and ask good questions becomes more and more important the higher up the corporate ladder you go. You know, if you get to a senior role in these organizations, you've normally got there on the basis of your technical skills, but that gets you to a certain point. Going to higher levels in anyone's organization is about your management skills and your ability to influence people to deliver an outcome that is required. So key skills, I'd say humility is one, again, getting back to your point about ego. Humility is key, being able to question and challenge the status quo, and being able to listen. I mean, I know I speak too much and continually have to force myself to listen, because if I ask the workforce about questions about how to make the business better, if I give them the time to speak, they'll tell us the answer.
They know. They just need the opportunity to be given the opportunity to be heard.
And now we take a short break to acknowledge our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Halo Civil Engineering. Halo is a multi-discipline civil contractor that specializes in the delivery of complex civil projects across defence, infrastructure, energy and resources. A West Australian company committed to delivering dynamic solutions with a focus on zero harm while having a positive impact on their industry clients and the people they serve. For more information, search for Halo Civil Engineering on socials or visit halocivil.com. Ivory & Gecko is a leading talent and organizational consultancy dedicated to advising ASX small and mid-tier explorers, developers and producers in the gold and critical minerals industries. Our firm's purpose is to enrich people's careers and improve workplace cultures through supporting the development and execution of talent strategy.
I'm really pleased you mentioned the quality of listening. You and me too. I tend to overtalk and talk my way out of relationships occasionally with people, and it's frustrating. So I need to learn how to listen better. It seems to me that when two people are having a conversation, very often the person doing the listening is really not listening with the intent to understand the other person's point of view. He or she is listening basically to get ready for the next statement that's on their script. So they're thinking about their next question that they're not being informed from through the other person's response what their question will be.
Look, guilty as charged on that one, David. Absolutely. Eye to eye, try and watch the physical cues too. I'm a big believer in body language, where you know the words may be saying one thing, but the body language may be giving you a different signal.
Yeah, and I think good listening is an indicator of confidence, self-confidence and maturity. People who are nervous or perhaps defensive and doubting of themselves tend to fill the pauses very quickly with talk. Good quality leaders who are mature and self-confident and empathic are able to just listen, sit back and try and understand the point of view of the other person. Let's talk a bit more about cultural development. Wayne, everybody's got a different definition of culture. How do you define culture, and who is responsible for its development within a business?
