News

•  Amanda Glacken
•  30th Jul 2019

​A few months ago, we reached out to Victor Leung and asked him to share his journey to success and on Thursday 25th July, Victor was our speaker for our Story to Success event! Parity would like to thank Victor for sharing his story to success – it was a wonderful evening, full of insights and laughs.So, who is Victor Leung? Victor is the General Manager of Marketing and B2C Products at Equifax Australia, with over 20 years’ experience leading teams in Marketing and Product Management; as well as a lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School where he teaches both post graduate and undergraduate courses in Digital Marketing. Victor completed his MBA in 2006 – funnily enough his worst performing subject was marketing and favourite subject was leadership and finance! Victor shared that completing his MBA taught him how to look at things from different perspectives –“having that lens and having appreciation where different people are coming from helps you frame conversations.”Fun Facts:Sneaker Freak – Victor owns about 50 pairs of sneakers and the collection is still growing. His favourite pair are ones that Kobe Bryant wears!David Copperfield asked Victor on stage to help with a magic trick whilst on holidays in Las Vegas.Despite being a lecturer, Victor has a fear of presenting and public speaking – he still gets nervous before presentations/speaking events!How does Victor stay motivated?The Right Team To do list although he shared that sometimes he feels a sense of frustration at the end of the week when he sees the things he hasn’t ticked off).Challenge 3 Values Victor puts above all others:Trust Respect Resilience No matter how many times you bang your head against the wall, be resilient. You might be thinking to yourself: ‘how can they not see that’s how you do it?’ Pick yourself up when things aren’t going well – think about sports; when you’re winning, everything’s great, but it’s how you deal with things when you’re losing – pick your battles to win the war.”  Victors advice on what makes a good leader:What makes a good manager may not make a good leader – you can be great at managing tasks or projects, but when it comes to leadership, it can be harder.  Expose yourself to different kinds of leaders and “don’t do as I say, do as I do” – set a good example.A ‘leaders’ role is to help people navigate challenges and support them. It’s very easy to say “let me do it”, but this won’t help in the long-term or help you let go and delegate when you have more responsibilities.Engage as a leader; ask your team WHAT they think and WHY they think that way. Help them grow and develop, and let them step up into the situation. Create an environment that allows them to grow, make mistakes and feel safe while doing so. Seeing them grow is like a nurtured baby – it’s really fulfilling.Receiving feedback – Performance ReviewsVictor asks his team for feedback on what he can improve on and how he can help them. It gives him visibility to potential blind spots which he might not be aware of. Victor recently asked his team for a performance review and they came back and said ‘Victor doesn’t fight hard enough for us and for problems/issues.’After receiving the feedback, Victor held a debrief with his team and was told that although he most likely did fight for his team and/or issues and problems they were experiencing, he maybe didn’t always let them know he was doing it.  Victor now makes sure he tells his team, even if it’s a result they don’t like, but now they understand that he does back them up.“Fight for it and close the loop. Let them know what happened.”Our 3 Key Takeaways:Don’t be afraid to take on a challenge Manage your career Enjoy work Thank you to everyone who attended our Story to Success with Victor Leung and the team from Parity, and to Victor himself – we hope you walked away with some great takeaways and would love to hear back from you on what your highlight of the evening was!Keep up to date with future Parity Plus events by following Parity on LinkedIn! To get in contact with our team, email us at info@parityconsulting.com.au or give us a buzz on +61 2 8068 2016 or +61 3 9016 8606.We hope to see you at one of our next events!

•  Victoria Butt
•  20th Jul 2019

​Liza Agresta is the Director of Consumer Credit Product at Visa, an industry expert who has worked with product, CX and technology teams to develop customer focused solutions that deliver commercial outcomes, and one of our speakers at Product Lab 2019!  Liza believes in the power of consumer insights throughout the product design process to ensure delivery of viable solutions – with experience across marketing, product management and customer strategy.Liza believes that the approach to influencing internal stakeholders is critical to gaining the right level of support to deliver business solutions – good ideas aren’t enough; how you present the information can often be the main driver of the outcome.  We spoke to Liza in the lead-up to Product Lab 2019, keen to get to know her a little better as well as her thoughts on stakeholder management in the world of Product!Parity Consulting: At what point during your career did you realise the importance of influencing your stakeholders to achieve the best outcome?Liza: I don’t know if there was a specific point in my career however my first career, as a hairdresser many years ago, was all about influencing stakeholders – building trust and understanding people by listening, being curious and showing empathy was key to ensuring any advice I provided clients was well received.Parity Consulting: How did you master the art of stakeholder management? Did it come from your career, personal life or a bit of both?Liza: To be honest, I’m not sure you can ever be a master in stakeholder management. I still fail often, but where I have had success it has been by ensuring I follow a discipline of inclusiveness and knowing my audience.I’ve learnt (and I’m still learning) my stakeholder management skills through a combination of career and life experiences. One of the most important learnings I’ve had is realising that my priorities are not always as important to those I’m trying to influence as they may be to me.Often when you are asking for an outcome, the approach can be very internally focused. For example, you might say “I need to get agreement on this initiative because I have …….” a very one-sided approach. However, by thinking about your audience and what is important to THEM, you’re more likely to achieve your objective. So, using this example, it’d be better to change your language and approach to: “This initiative is important because……… and I need your support so we can.….’.Put yourself in your stakeholders’ shoes by thinking about:What am I asking of you?What do you need to know before making this decision?What might your objections be?Why, what and how will I need your support and how will it benefit you?These are the questions I ask myself when determining how I might influence an outcome.Personally, I have a beautiful 5-year-old who has some behavioural disabilities, one in particular called oppositional defiance disorder. Some things in his life are difficult to process, and he responds by throwing up resistance immediately. The key to helping him manage such situations is preparation. Preparation is key – I ask myself:What do we need to do?What might he object to and why?How can I create a story to prepare him for what’s about to happen?What do I want him to think or feel?Then before we do what we need to do, I spend time explaining the situation based on the above. This could be the day before, or at the time, but it immediately disarms him and he feels empowered to own the next step. I often find this to be basic fundamentals to stakeholder management – if you prepare yourself to prepare your stakeholders and overcome their objections before they occur, the outcome becomes more positive.Parity Consulting: What type of stakeholders are hardest to influence? Is it possible to influence all stakeholders positively?Liza: I think the hardest stakeholders to influence are those you haven’t built rapport with. It’s important in these situations to establish at least a basic level of rapport. Active listening and asking questions of the person you are interacting with and genuinely showing interest in their point of view, whether it’s personal or professional in nature.Of course, not all stakeholders can be influenced immediately, at the end of the day we are all humans and some of us just aren’t open to change. However, with patience, persistence and a genuine approach to creating a mutual benefit, over time even the most challenging stakeholders can become allies.For further information about our Parity Plus events, please contact us on +61 2 8068 2016 (Sydney), +61 3 9016 8606 (Melbourne) or events@parityconsulting.com.au.  Alternatively, if you are interested in participating as a speaker for our future events, please also feel free to drop us a line – we’d love to hear from you!

•  Victoria Butt
•  13th Jul 2019

​When my business started making higher revenue with less people and more part time staff, I realised I stumbled onto a good thing. That was 3 years ago now. I also had my first child at the time and realised firsthand the value of remote working and flexibility in general.I recently put out a survey asking for some data on the pros and cons of remote working with the aim of publishing a white paper to assist employees and employers with a best practice framework. The response was phenomenal and I have combined this with the results from our 2019 Product, Marketing & Digital Salary Survey which surveyed over 3,500 people.Turns out, the can of worms is open, and my white paper is currently 20 pages long and is still only 1/3 of the way completed. Remote working is heavily individualised and there is a real lack of credible data which will assist me in writing a thorough paper. That said, it will be completed, and I can assure you it will not be 20 pages long!In the meantime, here are some of the results to give you a flavour:51% of participants work 1-2 days a week remotely;42% requested working remotely for flexibility reasons and 24% requested it for lifestyle reasons;68% share the advantages of working remotely are down to increased productivity given reduced travel time, and that it allows them to work at times that suit them;37% say they are 11-30% more productive working remotely;17% are less productive working from home due to life admin/house chores and children;12% work remotely from a beach/pool/garden or boat.As we move into a period of unprecedented change in relation to the future of the workforce; attracting, retaining and engaging the best talent becomes critical, therefore business leaders & decision makers need to be across as much information as possible to provide a thriving work environment for their employees. I look to forward to releasing the best practice for remote working in September 2019.Victoria Butt is the Managing Director and Founder of Parity Consulting, recruitment experts in Product, Marketing, Communications and Digital – creating parity by investing in ALL relationships. An avid shark diver and lover of wine, professionally Victoria’s passionate about leadership, inclusion and diversity in the workplace and empowering women, in particular women looking to return to work after having children.For a confidential discussion, Victoria can be contacted via email on vbutt@parityconsulting.com.au or via phone +61 402 418 326

•  Victoria Butt
•  13th Jul 2019

​Laura is the ex-General Manager of Global Product Marketing at Xero, co-founder of Product Women Sydney as well as a Product Mentor and Leadership Coach. Laura believes that amazing things happen when you align different types of people to a common purpose. She wants to live in a world where vulnerability is celebrated and is passionate about building cultures and environments that encourage everybody to bring their whole-selves to the table.Laura is one of the speakers at Product Lab 2019 – here we get to know Laura a bit better in the lead-up to Product Lab being held on 12th September:Parity Consulting: What made you realise all teams need to work together to achieve the best customer experience?Laura Cardinal: I’m pretty sure there wasn’t just one big a-ha moment that led to a revelation here – but when I look back on past product releases over the years, those that truly delighted customers all had one thing in common – they were realised through collaboration with multiple functions and teams across the entire business.A few years ago, I attended a dinner with key Xero customers and I can still recall the look of surprise on one particular customers face when they found out a feature that they had been desperate for had existed in the product for several months already. Launching a product or feature smoothly to customers requires much more than simply building it and hoping that they will discover it on their own. The product team in this example could have worked much more closely with marketing or sales to ensure that the knowledge of this new feature reached the right customers and it could be adopted as per their expectations.Parity Consulting: As a customer yourself, is it noticeable when a company creates a product but does not align their teams? If so, what stands out for you?Laura Cardinal: When teams aren’t aligned it can become visible to the customer through a disjointed customer experience. A product landing page might promise something completely different to what the product delivers, or it could be something subtle like a lack of consistency in terminology or language throughout an experience which can become confusing.Parity Consulting: What is the biggest challenge when teams don’t work together?Laura Cardinal: As a product manager, your key role is to ensure the company you are working for gets the best possible return on their investment. Decisions and activities that impact success rely heavily on input and initiatives from experts across sales, marketing, research, design, legal and engineering (just to name a few).“When teams don’t collaborate and share expertise or insights, the customer experience risks being designed from a biased or limited perspective and opportunities may be missed.” For further information about our Parity Plus events, please contact us on +61 2 8068 2016 (Sydney), +61 3 9016 8606 (Melbourne) or events@parityconsulting.com.au.  Alternatively, if you are interested in participating as a speaker for our future events, please feel free to drop us a line – we’d love to hear from you!

•  Jayson Bricknell
•  6th Jul 2019

​Jayson Bricknell is the Director of Product and Service Development at Westpac and one of our speakers at Product Lab 2019, where he will share his insights on solving real customer problems. Jayson has always loved solving problems, starting back in high school when his love of all things mathematical began! Today we will share with you a snippet of Jayson’s customer problem solving insights – lessons from a large transformation program that you can apply in your day-to-day role as a Product professional!​Parity Consulting:What do you consider a “real” customer problem?​Jayson Bricknell: As product owners it’s important we are solving the right problem – the “real” customer problem. One thing I’m constantly faced with is people having opinions on what the customer problem is.​These opinions are based on their view of the world, but lack the support of real customer experience. Or even worse sometimes they are based purely on what the customer said they WANT without any thought on what they really NEED.​It’s a bit cliché (and also questionable as to whether he said it) but it’s the quote that has been attributed to Henry Ford – “If I had asked people what they wanted; they would have said faster horses.”​“True innovation comes from understanding the NEED”​Parity Consulting:At what point in your career did you come to this realisation? How did you know that you were able to apply it day-to-day?​Jayson Bricknell: I was first exposed to the concept of WANT vs NEED over 20 years ago – at the time it was pretty radical in its thinking; probably not so much today. Businesses were quite successful in delivering what the customer said they wanted – at least in the short term until they realised it’s more important to give customers what they need.​When I was first exposed to the concept, I decided to test it out. At the time I was leading a delivery team responsible for delivering product enhancements for Macquarie Bank’s market leading offerings – Wrap, CMT, Superannuation, Professional Series and Insurance. Once a month I’d go out and meet with financial advisers to understand what needs they had – notice I said NEEDS.​Little did I realise at the time, but what I was doing was teasing out pain points they had with the current solutions and then using my knowledge of the systems and processes to find quick solutions for those needs. Every meeting I’d walk away with at least one change we could make to improve things for our customers.​Parity Consulting: Have you used other methods to solve real customer problems? Is this the best solution for solving customer problems? If so, why?​Jayson Bricknell: Just like Victoria, I’m a bit of a Simon Sinek fan (I have to thank Vic for the chance Parity gave me to see him live last year – he was amazing!). As a product owner, the WHY of the things we are doing is the most important thing – without a clear WHY, the WHAT and the HOW aren’t going to hit the mark. So, understanding the WHY is another related solution which fundamentally aligns with getting behind the WANT to understand the NEED.​For further information about our Parity Plus events, please contact us on +61 2 8068 2016 (Sydney), +61 3 9016 8606 (Melbourne) or events@parityconsulting.com.au. Alternatively, if you are interested in participating as a speaker for our future events, please also feel free to drop us a line – we’d love to hear from you!