“I achieved consistently excellent results when I was a Senior Analyst at the Australian
Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
In this role I planned and lead compliance ‘surveillances’ with up to four colleagues.
Surveillances involved visiting financial services licensees at their offices, meeting senior
executives and then reviewing their compliance documents (such as minutes of meetings and
internal reports) and systems.
When planning surveillances, part of my job was to assign tasks to other team members. It’s my
observation that not every manger of people does this particularly well. When I assigned tasks, I
did so based on my assessment of their individual strengths and weaknesses, so that tasks
played to their strengths. I always made an effort to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the
people around me. Some team members were better at analysis for example, while others
were better at interviewing executives.
The planning of surveillances required me to establish clear timeframes for how they would be
implemented. However, plans could change. For example I led a compliance surveillance on a
stockbroking firm during the onset of the global financial crisis. Although initially it looked like
there was nothing of concern in their operations, the situation rapidly changed when it was
reported in the media that the company was in danger of going into receivership. Overnight my
and I team threw out our original surveillance plan and devised a new and much more in-depth
one with an entirely new set of objectives. The implementation of this plan gave ASIC crucial
information about the company and in the long run prevented a lot of people from losing their
life savings.
At the conclusion of surveillance and after debriefing my superiors I received a personal
telephone call from ASIC’s chairman thanking me for a job well done. I was extremely pleased
with this result, but not altogether surprised, as I knew that my team and I had achieved the
necessary results.