Megan Motto: A vision splendid
Megan Motto
CEO
Governance Institute of Australia
Megan Motto is a delightful contradiction.
Equal parts rule-follower and rule-breaker, left brain firing as much as the right and always with a sharp strategic eye on a horizon many of her contemporaries don’t yet have in focus.
She is the structure-loving CEO of the Governance Institute of Australia and Director of Standards Australia who dislikes putting people in boxes and believes life’s no fun without taking risks.
She is the working-class girl from Sydney’s south-west who began careers in teaching and professional dancing before leaping into the corporate world and rocketing to CEO within six years.
She’s the passionate public policy advocate and member crusader who doesn’t believe her organisation has a unique value proposition. More on that later.
Early in life, Megan Motto harboured dreams of being a journalist but ended up enrolling in a teaching degree. She became an English teacher, but always had dance in the back of her mind.
She started ballet at the age of four, on doctor’s advice to correct pigeon toes, and developed both skill and passion for the creativity and discipline of the craft. She had been offered (and declined) previous offers to dance professionally, before making a don’t-die-wondering decision to take a year off teaching to do just that.
She returned to teaching but began wondering what else her professional life might offer.
“I started my Masters (in Communication Management), but it was really hard because people put people in boxes,” Megan says.
“I was told quite explicitly by a very senior person in the HR world that teachers like me who were trying to get out and do something in the corporate world were a dime a dozen and that I had no transferable skill sets. There's a lesson in there about putting people in boxes prematurely.
“Similarly, when I was edging towards the CEO position (at Consult Australia), I was told that if I was to have any credibility in Canberra, I had to stop wearing colour and I should get a black suit to look more like a bureaucrat.
“I said, ‘stuff that’ and went the other way.”
Megan trailblazed that other way, scoring her first corporate gig at the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia (ACEA) in 2000, propelling from communications coordinator to operations manager within a year, eventually becoming CEO of the rebranded entity, Consult Australia, in 2006.
She led that industry association for the engineering and technical services sector until 2018, simultaneously balancing Director commitments at the NSW Business Chamber, the Committee for Economic Development of Australia and the Australian Construction Industry Forum and the role of Treasurer of the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council for 13 years.
These days, she serves as Councillor on the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry along with her Governance Institute and Standards Australia leadership.
Having spent all of her life post-teaching in association roles, Megan reflects on a sector that she believes deserves both a shake-up and more respect.
“The narrative that you don’t see many association managers on serious boards or that association CEOs don’t have commercial sense is really flawed,” the former AFR/Westpac 100 Women of Influence recipient says.
“Our leadership skills are not valued in the commercial world, and I think that’s incredibly shameful, because we do everything that other commercial people do – just with less zeros.
“The sector needs an image makeover. Just in the same way that you should be able to step in and out from public sector to private sector roles, I think the same is true for the association sector; but we just don’t talk about it much. We need to value people moving in and out of associations.
“What really floats my boat, and the reason I have stayed in associations for so long, is that I’m shifting the shape of the Australian economy. That’s incredibly powerful to think about. I wake up every morning and go to work to make the world a better place because of our engagement in public policy.”
“The key to blurring those lines is associations seeing themselves as commercial entities, not sheltered workshops.
“We should be great places to work, not just because we’re flexible or we have good employee benefits, but because we learnt from brilliant leaders who taught us about strategy, growth and negotiating deals, delivering product and understanding our customer experience. Those are valuable skills, and these are the conversations good association leaders are having all the time, so I think we have to shift our own culture to acknowledge that we are more hard edged than we think.”
Megan says she draws her energy and enthusiasm for the sectors she’s led from a deep understanding of the value they bring.
“(In my current role), every day it’s about governance, ethics, trust and having solid institutions and geopolitical stability – it’s not just about writing minutes properly (although that’s important too). Governance is just a fancy word for a framework that you use to make good decisions.
“When you think about how associations fit into the Australian economy, we are the primary driver outside of government itself of public policy and we are the driving force of a lot of public sentiment on sectors and industries.”
For all her dynamism and courage, Megan admits to one issue in particular that keeps her up at night.
“How do you balance the trade-off between long-term strategy and infrastructure build with expectations around a short-term return on investment?
“This is what I am most concerned about because it has the biggest leverage over our ultimate success. How do you get a board to balance their ambition for bold strategy and disruption their inherent need for security?
“The answer is there should be competitive tension between the two. But is the board having really good and robust conversations about their risk appetite? Are they aware that those two counter-balancing forces are at play and are they very clear on instructions to management about how we walk the line?”
Ask 10 association members what they think a good CEO should do and you will likely get 10 different answers.
This viewpoint diversity is precisely why Megan believes there is no such thing as a single unique value proposition for her association.
“The reason we don’t have one is we don’t have a homogeneous membership. So how would we have a unique selling proposition when we deliver services to a broad range of professionals at different stages in their career trajectory?
“What my graduate members wants is very different to what my 50-year fellow wants. What is the one thing they will both be attracted to?
“The reality is, in this day and age and even moreso with technology, we expect hyper personalisation. There is no unique value proposition, we have multiple value propositions.
“We need to lean into a world where value is bespoke. In saying that, you can’t be all things to all people and that’s ok, membership is voluntary.”