Borrowed Power and Purple People - Rafael Pasquet

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Rafael Pasquet sold a pair of single boxing gloves at 7 years old, at a flea market in Germany.

He'd bought them as a pair. He sold each one for the price he paid for both. His mother still tells the story.

Most recently, he's the CFO of Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Australia.

17 years at Mercedes-Benz across 6 countries. A graduate program that moved him through 4 roles in a single year.

He also took on one of his favourite roles of his career.

A Chief of Staff role supporting the Global CFO with a portfolio of a €130 billion in 40 countries.

Including building a custom iOS reporting app in 2014 that even now would still be ahead of its time.

Then he moved to Singapore, where he stepped into a Regional CFO role and unexpectedly inherited APAC responsibility when his boss left soon after he started.

Weeks later, while recovering in ICU, he helped lead the carve-out of China from the regional structure.

And before any of it, he paid his way through university as a paramedic, performing CPR hundreds of times before he ever completed a board pack.

This led him to be a NED at the Emergency Services Foundation, looking after mental health for the people who do the job he used to do.

This conversation is really about perspective and how a lifetime of varied experiences shapes the way you lead when the stakes are high.

Episode Highlights:

• The Sunday-night paramedic years that paid for his economics degree in Stuttgart, and the couple of hundred CPR calls he did before he ever sat in a CFO meeting
• The Mercedes management trainee programme: four roles in 12 months across Sao Paulo, Poland, Stuttgart and the finance transformation office
• "You're acting with a lot of borrowed power" — the line every Chief of Staff needs before they take the seat
• Building a custom iOS financial-reporting app in 2014 that moved Mercedes' 40-country financials onto an iPhone
• The discipline of the last 5% and the loneliness of being the only one in the room who cares about it
• The Purple People framework: blue technical skills, red emotional skills, finance teams that need both
• The non-executive director role at the Emergency Services Foundation, looking after mental health for paramedics, fire and police