Ajay Bhatia, Managing Director of Carsales on Authentic Leadership & The Migrant Experience | HR Think Tank #14

I came to Australia in December of 1992. And I guess the story starts with a little bit of luck. I didn’t actually come here just as a student – my mum and dad got permanent residence as part of the skilled migration scheme. Australia needed teachers, maths teachers in particular, and my mum was a math teacher – so I came along with my mum and sister.  My dad followed a little bit later. 

So I didn’t make the decision, my dad made the decision, and that was the reason we came here.  

Upon arriving here, I did year 11 and year 12 in one year at a tech school – not a regular school, because a tech allowed me to do it in one year. I had done some of the content in India, but I had to repeat some of it because it’s just what you do when you’re a migrant.  

I remember I used to live in a place called Ashfield in Sydney, and the tech school that I studied at was Dover Heights. But I didn’t have a car. So I had to take a train from Ashfield to Central, then a train from Central to Bondi Junction and then a bus from Bondi Junction to Dover heights. This all took about one and a half hours. The classes were from 09h00 to 21h00, which meant that I left home at 07h30 and got home at 10h30. And on Saturdays, I worked in Pizza Hut.   

So that was my first year in Australia. It was a good thing to have had to work so hard in my first because everything just seemed easy afterwards. 

Look, you are dealt a hand when you’re born in terms of how intelligent or not intelligent you are, whether it’s your IQ, or EQ or anything. Sure, you can do a few things to improve it, but essentially it comes down to a lot of hard work.  

Many migrants share similar stories in that they don’t come here in very privileged circumstances, or you don’t start in very privileged circumstances – which means you do things that you wouldn’t necessarily have done in your home country. It’s almost like you feel obliged to work harder than everyone else. Well, that was my premise – I knew I would have to work harder than everyone else. And I think I did do that. 

The other thing that I learnt was persistence. If I believe in something, I persist, and the persistence genuinely has paid off for me. Throughout my life, hard work and persistence are probably two things that have impacted my approach to entrepreneurship and leadership.  

Sure. One of the things was my choice of university.  The University of Technology in Sydney (UTS) pretty much ticked the box for me, what they used to call the ‘Sandwich Course.’ Of course, it wasn’t really about sandwich-making skills – it was about work and study sandwiched together.  

In my first year, I studied full time and experienced the pretty standard uni life type stuff. I got a bit distracted and often used to play pool in the basement of UT Main Broadway building. But then, over time, I met some really interesting friends, and we all started to attend computer networking events that were happening all around us. I think this was in 1994, and computer networking was starting to become the thing.  

One of the guys said, “I know how to do computer networking; let’s form a company and go and find some business.”  So four of us joined together, and we started a company called AI Systems. I did some of the software writing, and I still remember that my first-year earnings were $44,000. So that was the start of thinking in a more entrepreneurial sense for me – right at the start of university.  

In my second year, I got an internship at Telstra, at their Paramount office, writing some software for the rollout of SMS into Australia. It was really interesting – we used to go into this fascinating room filled with cutting edge engineering devices that Telstra had imported from the US.  So it was quite a privilege to work on it. That sort of got me hooked, and I was thinking about maybe working full time instead of studying full time.  

So, I changed my studies to part-time and started working full-time. It took me longer to graduate from university as a result, but I had five years of software development work experience under my belt at that stage. 

One of the jobs that I did alongside UTS was working at a railway infrastructure corporation. And I was doing some programming for them – essentially trying to bring their old systems into the web. And then, I was a contractor there, and the manager encouraged me to do a little bit of project management on the side as well. So I just started doing a little bit of that.  

It was shortly after that that I realised that I needed a full-time job. So I approached a company called Aspect Computing and ended up working there for five years. For a while, I was a Microsoft-certified trainer, and I used to train other people how to program. They also used to put me on consulting gigs and sent me out to companies where I did work for various companies. So I did a mix of training, software development and project management.  

I eventually got sick of being contracted out and not building a team because there was just something inside me that missed the continuity of a team. And that’s when I applied to work at Fairfax Digital, where I eventually spent five years.  

I started as a technology manager for Drive.com.au – which was a division of Fairfax Digital. And that was my first management job. Within a year of me being there, the Product Director left to work somewhere else. So, I approached the General Manager and said, “Michael, why don’t you just give me a chance- let me do the product management together with the technology management. And if it doesn’t work out, you can hire someone else.” I told him that he didn’t have to pay me anything because I wasn’t after money; I just wanted to contribute to the product development.  

So I made it a no brainer for him, and he took a risk on me. And that’s, by the way, one of my lessons- when the opportunity arises, don’t focus on the short term. So I got that opportunity and focused on product and tech.  

Fairfax also owned a business called Country Cars, which at the time wasn’t doing as well as they hoped. They needed someone to fix it, so I put my hand up again. I said, “Well, give me a chance.” And I spent a bit of time in Orange, which is west of Sydney, past the Blue Mountains, and managed to turn that business out from a loss to a profit. And that was my first commercial role.  

Eventually, another opportunity came around, and they needed someone to champion what is known as display sales for that business. So I said, “Why don’t you try me.” They did, and I worked in that role for a year. My target was to make $6,5 million in sales, and I made $7 million of sales –  so I beat it by half a million dollars. 

After all of these opportunities, I ended up with experience in general management, product management, technology management and sales management. I also started to experience all the leadership challenges that everyone experienced and started to question myself on how to work through those challenges. That requires quite a bit of mentoring, which I got from books and various leadership courses. 

The next part of my journey involved joining a start-up called Carsales. Greg Roebuck, who was the founder of the business, wanted to strengthen the executive team before he listed it. So I came in as part of that and became the COO of the company. The company was fairly small back then, compared to what it is today – it was probably worth around $100 million. Now it’s worth $7,5 billion.  

So, it’s been a really good journey. And over the last 12 years in Carsales, again, I have had four different positions – I’ve literally changed job roles every three years. 

Look, there’s a couple of things. For starters, a little bit of luck always plays a role. And luck is a variable you can’t control. The variable that you can control is hard work and persistence, which is, in my case, the two things that have worked in my favour. You also need a bit of inspiration because without inspiration, pulling off the hard work and persistence can be pretty hard.  

There were also a couple of people who were instrumental in my journey. My mum was very hands-on involved with what I did at school and how I did it. So, she always had high expectations of me, and that meant that I wanted to fulfil those expectations – which created drive.  

And then, when I was doing MCT training and consulting, I got comfortable. I earned a reasonable wage, drove a beautiful car and had a nice house – what was the point of changing anything? And then my wife came along, and she told me that she believed I had more potential than this. And I listened to her – which changed my life. So that was the one inspirational moment.  

Now, I don’t enjoy being boxed into something that just doesn’t give me job satisfaction. So I’ve always wanted to learn different areas of business, whether it’s sales, product development, technology or just general management.  

One of the lessons for me has always been to operate at a level higher than where you are. This basically means, if you are my boss, I want to see the world the way you see the world. And then make decisions in their shoes. I would ask myself, “What would (my manager) do?”  

Look, you have to be careful not to step on people’s toes when you do that – it requires a fine balance. In my experience, that balance got better as I matured. But yeah, thinking a level up has been a real key in terms of my career development. 

I think it’s immense. You know, a lot of people say this, and I’m going to repeat it because I believe in it: you go to university to learn how to learn. And that’s what university teaches you. But, learning on the job and from your peers is really important. I still learn a lot from the people around me. 

I have a number of direct reports, and I could tell you something that I’ve learned from each one of them because they each bring something unique to the table. You have to be a sponge because if you limit your opportunities to just learning through courses and stuff like that, you won’t reach your full potential.  

One other thing is leadership is not just about work. Leadership is at work but also at home and in the community. Leadership is about what you do, how you behave, what your ethics are and what you stand for. 

One of the hires I made was our Chief Technology Officer (CTO). They originally came from the energy industry, and as a digital company hiring someone from the energy industry, it was a bit strange. And, in fact, the recruiter said, “We’re looking for a CTO; where should I fish? Do I go to Realestate.com? Do I go to Seek? Do I look into the digital industry?”  

And I said, “Why would you? I mean, what you basically said was that rather than having 1000 options, I have five options. But why wouldn’t you go with the 1000 options and pick the best of the best.”  

There always needs to be a balance between bringing in external talent and promoting internal talent. So, one of the things we do is train our people for the next step in their careers. And around every quarter of the year, we promote our staff based on that training – it is so good to see how many promotions we do every quarter. And I think everyone looks at that and goes, “Yeah, this is the sort of company I want to work for. Because this is where I have the opportunity to grow as an individual.” 

So it’s really good for retention as well.  

At the end of the day, it all comes down to potential. Sure, you can hire someone externally who has the skillset and is ready to go. But on the other hand, you have a different candidate from inside your business who has great potential, but you just need to give them a little bit of training and mentorship, and you can get them there.  

There is a balance, though – I do not want to say that you can do everything internally. You do need to bring external people in as well because that also helps your internal team grow and develop.  

Look, I mean there are lots, and we could do hours on this topic.  But I will say that staying connected is really important, especially in times of COVID. People will relate to you more if they mean something to you.  

One of the things I do is note everyone’s birthday in my calendar and then wish everyone a happy birthday. Now the numbers have gone berserk. So I have a smaller number of people on my calendar, and I wish them happy birthday. But it gives me a chance to interact with them during that time and show them that I genuinely care. So, I think everyone uses different techniques to do this.  

But it’s really important as a leader that you are connected to your team. And it’s not just about me being connected to them; it’s also about your team being connected to each other as well. Carsales does this thing called Donut Catch Ups. So effectively, the system randomly picks two people every fortnight, pairs them up, and sends them a Slack message that says, “Please get connected; you’ve been chosen randomly.” So that just creates connections in the company.  

A better-connected company will always create a more trusting environment for people to thrive.  

I can only describe it through an example. About ten years ago, someone did a 360-degree review on me, and I took all of the comments that were given very, very seriously. Now, ten years later, I think I’ve improved on some things quite a lot. But there are other things that are only improved by 50%, but not all the way. I don’t believe you can achieve perfection in everything – you are never going to be great at everything. 

But, one of the things people say about me is that I can often get distracted easily. And I actually agree with that. So, now I know it is a problem and something I need to fix. So, I continue to work on it. I think it’s really important to have an understanding of yourself and make sure that there’s an opportunity for people to give you feedback.  

If you’re not authentic and humble, you won’t have these breakthrough leadership moments. But, if you are authentic and humble, you put yourself in a position where you can keep learning, which will essentially lead to these breakthrough moments.  

Being alumni of Harvard Business School has really been helpful for me because they give you access to mentoring. So, there have been times when I’ve been a bit confused, and I’ve reached out to those mentors to help me navigate what I am struggling with.  

For me, trust is simply about authenticity. It’s not about pretending to be someone that you’re not. And I feel that over a period of time, I’ve gotten a lot better at that. If the general leadership in your company gives you the space to be more authentic, you will end up with a more authentic workforce. And if you don’t have authenticity in leadership, you won’t have authenticity in the company either.  

If the leader is always pretending and leading by fear, then authenticity gets lost. And I think it feeds directly into people’s engagement in ELA scores. At the end of the day, we’re all human beings. Everyone expects us to be human beings. So there is nothing wrong with showing our true self and saying, “Yeah, I’m good at this. And I’m not good at this. And please help me with this.”  

I don’t know if you saw there was another article I wrote on vulnerability, and I say somewhere in there that part of being an authentic leader has moments where you, you can be vulnerable, and people can see that.  

So, to me, authenticity is the key to building trust. 

Q: Before we wrap up, we’ve got Fast Five Questions 

• What was your first job? Pizza Hut 
• What’s something interesting that is not on your CV? I ran marathons 

• What advice would you give your eighteen-year-old self? I would just say, “have a bit more fun.” 
• What book is a must-read, or what movie is a must-watch? Delivering Happiness by Tony Shea is a must-read for any business leader. And, The Intern is a really good movie because it really resonated with me around age diversity. 
• What’s a job for the future that doesn’t exist today? A drone navigator.