How Astrud Burgess Stays One Step Ahead By Fostering Curiosity and Trust

It’s all well and good throwing around big talk about taking risks and plunging into the unknown, but when you’re leading the charge within a highly regulated industry and are trusted to look after people’s well-earned cash, staying one step ahead involves good judgement, strong relationships and bravery.

Astrud Burgess is chief marketing officer at ANZ Group, an Australian banking giant. She’s the latest expert sharing her insights with Omnicom Advertising CEO Troy Ruhanen for his interview series, One Step Ahead. For Astrud, trust and empathy are the foundations of innovation.

“I think culture's a game that you're always playing, right, and we're really working on that with the team now. You won't succeed in this environment without curiosity. And that is the most important thing that we're trying to build. You've got to make people feel safe, but you also have to make them feel driven and it's a difficult balance, right? People are worried about their jobs, they don't know what the future holds. How do you make them curious about that and not scared? And it's an ongoing challenge, I think, in every business at the moment.”

Just as Astrud endeavours to foster an environment where people feel safe to have brave conversations and escalate challenging ideas to her, she also reveals that she draws a lot from her people too, particularly energy and inspiration.

“If I have a day when I'm not spending time with my team, then it's a day without energy,” she says.

One tool that helps Astrud unlock innovation is the strategic reshuffle. “Every time people get a new portfolio, they bring new ideas to it. And also, they haven't learned all the no's. So in our business, it's a game of trying to get work out without it getting stopped, and people get bruised by that. Put them in a new thing, new ambition, new optimism, and they just fly, and that's incredible to see.”

Currently Astrud and the team are working to create ANZ’s AI future, where Astrud believes the bank can ‘democratise financial information’. Between this and harnessing innovation to solve business problems, Astrud reveals that the fundamentals of brand, of trusted partnerships and team culture are more important than ever.

She says it’s ANZ Group’s agency relationships that allow the team to stay ahead of change, rather than being purely reactive. And the depth of trust within these relationships allows them to take risks and ‘break process’ when the time calls for it.
And that trust goes all the way to the top. “We're so lucky in that we have an organisation that believes in what we do. So all we need to do is find a teeny bit of courage and go for it.”

View the full interview here.