As Australia waits to see what our political leaders come up with to boost the nation’s flagging productivity at Canberra’s Economic Reform Roundtable, one leader who should be looked to as an inspiration is the CEO of the Australian Rugby Union, Phil Waugh.

In case you missed it, the Wallabies beat South Africa 38-22 at Eden Park on the weekend. The result was in part linked to some great leadership and risk-taking by Waugh.

But his bold decisions must have looked worth it when

Joseph Suali, his million-dollar recruit from rugby league, took the intercept that meant the Aussie team registered their first win at Eden Park in 62 years.

As my eyes could hardly believe this looming victory, I reflected on what John Eales, a rugby legend, once told me when I interviewed him on my old Talking Business program, that I started and hosted on Qantas flights for 10 years.

The man in question was a modest champion and captain of the Wallabies for 60 games, who teammates nicknamed “Nobody”. Why? Because those who played with him said “Nobody’s PERFECT!”

Eales finished his career and was the highest scoring forward in Test rugby history, and, as of November 2015, only one of seven forwards to have surpassed 100 points in Test rugby.

While all this is remarkable what I remember most about Eales happened in 2000, when Australia was awarded a penalty to win the game against the great All Blacks, whose man mountain winger, Jonah Lomu, had made his team nearly unbeatable.

With both of his kickers i.e. Stirling Mortlock and Joe Roff injured, Eales stepped up and calmy slotted the goal from the sideline. The sporting channel ESPN called it a miracle goal, while the BBC led with “Nobody’s Perfect Kick!”

While interviewing him for a book he wrote on leaders titled Learning from Legends, Eales said something I’ve never forgotten it was “legends leave clues”.

So, it’s not surprising that another legend of the Wallabies, Phil Waugh, who also captained Australia and was a winner of the John Eales Medal in 2003 as the Wallabies best and fairest player, worked leadership magic to turn around a sporting body and its team that has been going downhill for more years than I care to count!

In taking over a side and business that was nosediving, Waugh recruited a Kiwi, Joe Schmidt, to coach the side.

Showing he knew what was needed to win and change our results, Waugh went after someone who’d won three Six Nations titles as coach of Ireland and was the 2018 World Rugby Coach of the Year.

A legend had recruited a legend! The expectation that good results would follow was clearly Waugh’s game plan.

Then he made a multi-million gamble on luring Joseph Suali from the Roosters in the NRL to be the marquee player that would help lift confidence and the results of the national side.

This was a $1.6 million deal. There were many whinging critics who claimed Waugh had made a bad and costly decision. However, given the past three games, where the Wallabies were arguably robbed in the second game against the Lions, they then won their third encounter and walloped the Springboks in South Africa. It looks like a legendary Wallaby has looked for clues from legends on coaches and players. One day Phil Waugh might become known for being a legendary CEO.

The Waugh critics were often great players but not great coaches or leaders. People like Waugh are role models and remind me of the leaders that the legendary business thinker Jim Rohn would talk of when he’d say: “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.”

Leaders are always committed to self-improvement that sets them aside from followers and low achievers.

I remember when Joe Hockey left politics and he copped a few barbs from ‘expert’ journalists who often find it hard to lead themselves, let alone others.

I wished him luck in the future and that wish didn’t hurt Hockey, as he soon created a successful lobbying business based in Washington DC called Bondi Partners. As his website tells us, the operation “…was born to help elevate the trade and investment partnership between Australia and the United States to the next level”.

When Hockey thanked me, he sent through one of my favourite quotes from one of the best US Presidents ever: Teddy Roosevelt. This is what Roosevelt said: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

The great pay-off when people like Waugh and Eales step up as leaders and take the risk of stepping into the public arena to have a go, is that the rest of us luckily get to go along for the ride. Better still, some of us will be inspired to make bold decisions that could leave us legends as well. Or if not that, at least a lot of us will try harder to be better, which is a fantastic dividend from being led and influenced by great leaders and people.

The value of this productivity roundtable must be assessed in terms of the great game-changing decisions that come out of this important event for the economy. But the big question is: will our leaders be remembered as legends or losers? History will be their judge.