Interviewer: So if we think ten years back to your first day in the current role while acknowledging that you were already working for Westpac, what advice would you have given yourself on that first day?
Rebecca Lim: A couple of things. The first is a lesson that I learned through an external partner, Sue Tomat, and that is when you’re giving advice, writing board or executive papers, or giving presentations, switch from what is called writer’s logic to reader’s logic. Writer’s logic is the way you think about things. Reader’s logic is putting yourself in the shoes of your reader. It’s a really good technique when you’re preparing advice or a presentation to sit down and go through the discipline of anticipating the areas of concern or questions from the board, for example, and making sure the content is framed around that, rather than, say, including a long section on the background of the issue.
It’s thinking very logically about how to cut right to the chase and addressing the critical issues. So I think that is actually a really neat way of reframing the perspective and it’s a very good way of helping yourself be more effective.