ROD SHEPHARD

Principal

A wealth of international business, strategy and implementation experience.

Rod has worked across five continents, in multiple functions and business roles, most recently six years running a circa $AUD200m revenue Asia Pacific healthcare business. Rod has a track record of quickly getting to the heart of complex situations, the business acumen and creativity to set the right direction, and the leadership to drive implementation to results.

Successful strategy development and implementation has been a cornerstone of Rod’s career, with many examples such as:
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    Business strategy

    Completed the first regional Asia Pacific Healthcare business strategy, with detailed strategies in twelve countries. The same global trends evident in each market (such as ageing populations and pressure on public healthcare budgets) play out in very different ways due to local differences (particularly in the level and sources of healthcare funding, and the level and enforcement of regulations). The challenge was finding the right balance of global leverage and consistency with local flexibility and responsiveness.

  • Functional strategies

    Examples include an Operations strategy for the UK business and a QRA strategy for the China business.  These functional strategies strengthened their respective business strategies, balanced priorities and resources, and delivered greater speed and effectiveness from tighter internal alignment. The process of explicitly aligning business and functional strategies also led to a sustained improvement in the level and quality of dialogue between internal functions.

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    Global Healthcare strategy

    As a member of the Global Healthcare Management team, Rod personally led strategic reviews of major aspects of the global healthcare strategy, including the approach to the hospital sector, and the strategic implications of experiences building businesses in the BRIC countries. Rod’s particular focus was to test global hypotheses against local experience, and feed the insights back into the central strategy. The results were a more nuanced strategy, expressed in a language more relevant to the local businesses charged with implementing it, without diluting the fundamental global drivers of success.

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Qualifications

Rod has a first class honours engineering degree and an MBA with distinction.

In most cases the strategies Rod developed were for businesses or functions he personally managed, providing invaluable experience in effective implementation. Among many examples, Rod:

  • delivered a rapid turnaround for a BU, diagnosing, restructuring, and refocusing the business to reverse share loss and accelerate growth from -5% p.a. to +10% p.a. in two years
  • defended or acquired hundreds of million $AUD of tender business, delivering increased share and margins and key strategic objectives such as incorporation of new offers in tender documents

Strategy development and implementation increasingly demands cross-cultural capabilities, a skill set that has underpinned Rod’s highly international career.

To give just one example:

  • After acquisition of the parent company, Rod successfully developed, integrated and led a large Asia Pacific healthcare organisation, delivering synergies and maintaining focus on the business.