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| 10 January 2007 |
| Didier Elzinga |
IAN HENSCHKE: Well, Didier, thanks very much for your time. You're one of the youngest CEOs in Australia. You don't dress like a CEO. Do you feel like a CEO? DIDIER ELZINGER: Oh, I don't know. I don't know what other CEOs feel like. I wouldn't have thought I was one of the youngest. But I wouldn't know, actually - maybe I am. IAN HENSCHKE: You became chief executive officer of your company when you were...? Twenty-six, yeah. What did that feel like? DIDIER ELZINGER: Oh, good. I mean, there's a certain amount of pride that you take in going, "Oh, wow, I'm CEO at twenty-six." Going through that, though, you realise there are all sorts of different companies of different sizes. So to be CEO in a company depend... ..how important that is depends on a lot of other things. But it's still nice. It's a nice title to have. IAN HENSCHKE: How many staff do you have at the moment? DIDIER ELZINGER: One hundred and thirty two. Well, that's... IAN HENSCHKE: That's not a small company, is it? DIDIER ELZINGER: No. It's been growing fairly rapidly for the last eighteen months. IAN HENSCHKE: Why did you get involved in business? I mean, what was your background? DIDIER ELZINGER: My background was computer science. I studied that at university. Landed at Rising Sun Pictures just after I finished computer science. I think it was sort of a natural progression because a lot of the stuff that I liked in computer science and, once again, in visual effects and in doing what we did at Rising Sun, was solving problems. And it was a transition from understanding that solving problems wasn't just technology, it was actually people. And so I spent more and more time working with people, dealing with people, and sort of naturally ended up in management roles. And that's pretty much all I do now. IAN HENSCHKE: Managing people? DIDIER ELZINGER: Managing people. So is it fun? I love it. Absolutely love it. I mean, it's been so difficult growing to one-hundred- and-thirty-two people. Eighteen months ago, we were thirty-five. So we've added a lot of people and that's brought a lot of issues and there are a lot of things that aren't the way we'd like them to be. But, yeah, there's just so many interesting problems to solve and sort of get in there and tackle and try and make better. IAN HENSCHKE: What's the biggest problem you have when you're a CEO? Do you actually have to hire and fire people? DIDIER ELZINGER: Yes. I wouldn't say that's my biggest issue. Probably the biggest problem is learning how to achieve things at a distance - so, with other people. I mean, I can't be there in an instant... ..like, a personal relationship with absolutely everybody in the company. I know everyone in the company. I can talk to everyone in the company. But to be effective, I have to work out how to communicate with those people at a different level, and that's been one of the things that's taken a bit of getting used to. Some people say that the good managers, they walk around, they actually see people, and they don't hide in the office and send out emails. IAN HENSCHKE: What sort of a manager are you? DIDIER ELZINGER: I don't know if I'm a good manager. I'd hope to think I am. I don't really like email for that reason. I spend a lot of time on email because you have to, but, yeah, walking around talking to people is very important. We have an office in Adelaide and Sydney, so I try and spend time up in Sydney as well. But it's little things, like we have a rule in the company that whoever opens the dishwasher if it needs to be emptied, has to empty it. It doesn't matter who it is. And that's actually been an interesting thing. When people come in from overseas and come into the company and then they know who people are and they say, "Oh, wow, you're doing the dishes." "Well, why not? Everybody has to." But that's kind of where you actually talk to people, in those sorts of environments. In fact, that's probably the only place I can talk to lots of people because I don't interact with them on a daily basis. When you think about the film industry, and the sort of work you're doing, most people think it's glamorous. IAN HENSCHKE: It sounds more like it's a lot of hard work. DIDIER ELZINGER: It is. For anyone that's been on set, tried to make a film, it is a huge amount of hard work. It's very nice when you sit in the cinema and you watch the film and see the credits roll and you see your name in the credits. You know, that's the glamorous part. But the actual process of making something... I mean, we'll work on a show for eighteen months to produce two minutes worth of vision. And sometimes you just think, "That's a lot of work "to do something that small." IAN HENSCHKE: What are the major works you've created, then? Can you give us a short list? DIDIER ELZINGER: We worked on 'Harry Potter 4', 'Lord of the Rings: Return of the King', 'Last Samurai', 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' - so a range of big A-list American films. IAN HENSCHKE: And what do the Americans think when they find out that the bloke who runs the company is, you know... ..looks a bit like a very young man? DIDIER ELZINGER: It's an interesting thing. I'm very lucky that one of the founders of the company, Tony Clark... All of the founders of the company - Tony, Wayne and Gail - are all still in the business, and Tony does a lot of the development work in the US. So he's really the face of our company. IAN HENSCHKE: And how old's he? DIDIER ELZINGER: He'd be... Ooh, I have to be careful now! He's about ten years older than I am. So... You don't get sent on the missions to America? No, I tend to do a lot of the trips through Europe for various reasons - I have family there and I have a Dutch passport etc. People... There's a little bit of that about the age thing, but at the end of the day, the Hollywood system has people at all sorts of ages, and as long as you produce results, they don't care who you are or where you come from. IAN HENSCHKE: There is burn-out, though, in any job, isn't there? You were saying before we started the interview that you've worked up to a hundred hours straight when you were in your mad, young days. DIDIER ELZINGER: Yes. What have you learnt from that experience? To pace yourself now? Yeah. I think sometimes you have to do it because getting half a per cent more is worth spending three days straight. But it's not to fall into the trap of thinking that if you just work another twenty-four hours, you get another twenty-four hours worth of work done. You won't, and in fact, chances are you might even go backwards. So it's really just learning when... ..the right time to sit there and wait and do the whole thing through. But also, within the company, there's a big thing about not glorifying that. It's very easy when people do that work to, you know... They've worked so hard, they've put so much in you feel like you have to celebrate that. But that also gives rise to a culture where that becomes something that people see as being the thing to do. It's a culture of heroism, and in the long term, it's not sustainable. So it's taking the focus away from that and celebrating things that aren't being there at four in the morning, aren't working three days straight, not glorifying it and making it a wonderful thing. IAN HENSCHKE: Another success they say in business is if you can keep your staff and not have them wanting to go and join other companies. How successful have you been at doing that? DIDIER ELZINGER: Moderately. We have people that have been with us for quite a while and we've been able to attract people from all over the world. We've fourteen nationalities on the floor at the moment. But one of the keys to that is also not trying to hold onto people too tightly, so we have people that are out in the world working in London, working in the US. They'll come back, and we sort of see it like an extended family. We've got people out in orbit, and in a year or two, they'll come back with knowledge that is relevant to what we're doing. So I guess to the extent we've been able to keep people, it's actually that we've let them go as well. IAN HENSCHKE: Well, thank you very much for your time and thanks for giving us the insights into your company. DIDIER ELZINGER: My pleasure. |
