Ruthless personal honesty

Graeme Wood, CEO of the latest Australian tech IPO sensation Wotif.com, was good enough to sit down for a yarn with yours truly for an article I’m preparing for AFR Boss.

He’s a rare animal among the bosses of ASX-listed Australian CEOs in that he speaks his mind, and doesn’t recite from memory carefully prepared remarks penned by PR people. In fact, on the two occasions we’ve talked so far, there wasn’t a PR person in sight, but I digress.

The subject was leadership, and taking a risk in business. How do you know if you’re making the right decision or not?

"It’s about ruthless personal honesty," he says. "If you are kidding yourself, you are gonna try and kid other people. If you are not kidding yourself you are off to a good start."

Obvious, perhaps. But very insightful considering he’s the boss of an internet company that doesn’t care about Web 2.0, SOA, XML, AJAX, blogs, or podcasts, or whatever’s big on Techmeme right now. The Internet is a delivery channel for his online accomodation business. The means to an end. Business before technology, not the other way around. And before you get too excited about that being an invalid opinion - consider that he personally banked $42 million from Wotif’s IPO.

Ruthless personal honesty. Dang, that’s just a refreshing perspective.