CBA's $3 million man

Beverley Head
Friday, 16 September 2011 14:22

Michael Harte earns a little over $8,000 a day in return for running the systems and operations of the Commonwealth Bank. His mother thinks it's a disgraceful amount of money.

At 45 Harte is the poster boy for bank transformations worldwide, and while he acknowledges that sort of salary ($3 million plus by the time you add in super and bonus payments) seems like an awful lot of money for a bloke from Palmerston North, it can be reconciled because he and his operations and technology teams are delivering significant value to the bank's customers and shareholders.

'In many ways it's an obscene amount of money, way more money than I would ever have hoped to have earned as a child, but the magnitude of responsibility and the daily challenge as well as the ongoing need to stay well ahead of the competition and to lead in the industry requires a level of recognition.

'You have to be confident enough that you can meet the needs of shareholders. They want you to lead and stay ahead of competition and drive competitive advantage - and want to be the leader in delivery of the best services of anyone in the industry - simple, fast, convenient and for those services to be loved by your customers.

'And most powerful of all is sustaining the motivation and excitement of your staff who have to turn up every day and do the very best they can and feel they are making a difference because that's the competitive advantage. If you read all the literature from Harvard or MIT, competitive advantage is driven by assets you create and maintain that are sustainably differentiated from your competition and you can put a price on that stuff. 

'But the thing that differentiates you over the long term is making sure staff are committed to what they do, believe in what they do, are super motivated and excited so that they do their very best, and that's the hardest thing to do - you get rewarded for that,' says Harte who has the official title Group Executive, Enterprise Services and Chief Information Officer.

IT wasn't where he planned to make his mark though. Like many other boys in the 1960s Harte wanted to be an astronaut, only to be crushed when he learned New Zealand didn't have a space programme.

The seventh in a family of nine children, Harte was born in Palmerston North in New Zealand. His father was a primary school teacher, his mother a trained nurse - and young Michael was 'a bit naughty' with tendencies which nudged toward the misfit in his high school years.