For over 25 years, people-centred David Oliver has achieved outstanding success as a commercial, finance and service executive in for-profit and not-for-profit organisations locally, and at an international level. He has brought world class strengths across three areas – all of which were crucial requirements to the strategic reform and transformative change goals for our client. These strengths are:
- his undisputed excellence across finance and business,
- a proven ability to introduce viable initiatives and drive change,
- and a caring, interpersonal approach that encourages others to follow his lead.
A change manager of exceptional capability, David has outstanding financial and business acumen – backed by advanced qualifications. These have empowered him to consistently deliver significant change, new scope and efficiencies, and have greatly improved the commercial results to the businesses he leads.
Whilst being an undisputed financial expert, David is also very creative in this approach. He has also shown, time and again, that he is an original thinker with an excellent knack for generating new, financially viable ideas and initiatives. With an ability to quickly adapt to new situations and identify their ‘trouble spots,’ David draws on his vision, skills and experience to find ways of bringing new life and purpose to businesses that are ailing or needing to transform.
And it’s this combination of entrepreneurial thinking and knowledge that David had been eager to invest in a worthy organisation.
It was clear that being able to live his high values through his work was vital to appease his strong social conscience and a driving desire “to leave things better then I find them.”
Since David brought such an impressive record of transformations, change and strategic reform, enabled by his exceptional financial grasp and business acumen, it was natural to think that these comprised of David’s entire claim to this CEO role.
However, this would be a serious under-estimation. What has shined so brightly all throughout his exceptional career – which has taken him through many different areas and scenarios – are David’s soft skills. David has a remarkable ability to find connection and build relationships with other people.
Transitioning from a financial role to an operational role within the shipping industry, David inherited a fractious, divided and under-performing team. Faced with the challenge of learning the operations of the business and searching for the essence of the operation, David’s strength and drive really shone through. The real achievement of this challenge – in everyone’s terms – was David’s success in ‘bringing the team along’. In the face of adversity, he rebuilt, fused and inspired a resilient, hopeful, tightly knit, hardworking group with a common purpose. That’s where his real magic lies.
David went into that role with no former knowledge of operations. He did what he always does: immediately set about building relationships and understanding everything he could about the business. Asking questions, seeking help and support from ‘the old hands’, he soon built a culture of trust. Then – with lots of willing support – he was able to turn the operation around to become a well-run concern that was adopted in its entirety when the company was taken over. And all of this happened in a very short time.
David is down-to-earth, unassuming, organised, efficient, and dedicated to contributing to team outcomes and ensuring that systems, processes, and procedures run effectively. He thrives under pressure: his equanimity and affability never falter as he consistently delivers quality results in complex and time-driven environments.
He fully appreciates the complexity of the NFP sector and has a strong understanding of NDIS and NCCD. This intelligence has been put to work through his leadership roles at Centacare – one of the largest, most intricate service providers in Southeast Queensland. When we asked him how he would feel coming from such a large organisation into a smaller operation, his response was characteristically simple and succinct. “I have 10 direct reports at Centacare. It really is no different to working in a smaller organisation as the required leadership and decision-making consequences are similar.” Typically, he brought what could have been a daunting obstruction down to common-sense, manageable proportions.
While David previously didn’t have any direct experience in the education sector, he has had a sterling record for going into unfamiliar enterprises, adapting speedily, learning what he needs to know, analysing the status quo and producing doable transformative plans in double quick time.
Professional to the core, David is client centric, warmly approachable, an extremely articulate communicator and a talented problem solver. He is an all-round caring person with inspiring leadership capability and a sterling record. With high emotional intelligence, David knows his worth and so is not threatened by anything or anyone.
