Interview: How David Tudehope Leads With Strengths
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About the Leader
David Tudehope CEO, Macquarie Technology Group
- Achiever®
- Competition®
- Individualization®
- Context®
- Deliberative®
David is the Chief Executive and co-founder of Macquarie Technology Group and has been a director since July 16, 1992. He is responsible for overseeing the general management and strategic direction of the Group and is actively involved in the Group's participation in regulatory issues. He is a member of the Australian School of Business Advisory Council at the University of NSW and was a member of the Australian Government's B20 Leadership Group. David is a member of the Australian Government's Cyber Security Industry Advisory Committee. He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of NSW. In 2018, David was named Australian Communications Ambassador at the 12th Annual ACOMM Awards. In 2020, David was named CEO of the Year at the World Communications Awards in London. In 2023, he was awarded the Pearcey Medal, the Australian ICT industry's highest award.
Tudehope wants to know whether his organization is succeeding. He prefers a straightforward set of metrics to evaluate organizational thriving, especially to measure intangibles, like purpose, customer loyalty and engagement.
As a natural Achiever, Tudehope gets a lot done. Yet he finds that while it can be satisfying to complete task after task, to be most effective, he must intentionally direct his efforts only toward actions that have the greatest impact throughout the business.
Some organizations, Tudehope explains, blame their tools of measurement when they paint the organization in an unflattering light. He, however, trusts his Deliberative strength to help him adopt the right metric in the first place, thereby allowing him to trust the measurement tools and improve the scores they produce.
Tudehope finds that clear, centralized metrics for measuring success help to prevent conflict by creating a shared program of accomplishment. When conflict does arise, he often redirects the opposing parties' attention back to their shared goals and metrics.
The natural pairing of Individualization with Context leads Tudehope to derive pleasure and instruction from reading biographies, especially of great leaders who adapt to uncommon change. Such stories inform his daily life as a leader, as he and his company face ceaseless change.