Andy Sheats

🎯 What They Do

Andy Sheats is an Australian specialist executive coach and mentor dedicated to empowering Chief Technology Officers (CTOs), Chief Information Officers (CIOs), and other senior technology leaders to enhance their leadership capabilities and drive transformative change within their organisations.

• ●He works with high-performing tech leaders across Australia, including those transitioning into new C-suite roles, aspiring executives, and established leaders seeking to refine their impact.
• ●His clientele extends to major Australian energy brands, Big Four spin-outs, and high-growth fintech startups.

📖 Their Story

Sheats brings over 30 years of extensive experience as a digital business leader to his coaching practice.

• ●His distinguished career includes roles as CEO, CTO, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Growth Officer, founder, investor, non-executive director, and Chairperson.
• ●Notably, he co-founded health.com.au, an endeavour where he successfully raised $85 million and rapidly scaled the company to $120 million in revenue.
• ●This achievement earned health.com.au recognition as the "most loved" insurance brand by customers, and Telstra awarded it "Best Start-Up in Australia," with Sheats himself named "Growth CEO of the Year" by AVCAL.
• ●At REA Group, he spearheaded a global growth strategy through mergers and acquisitions, resulting in expansion into a dozen countries and a tenfold increase in shareholder value.
• ●His tenure as Chief Technology Officer at Open Universities Australia saw him modernise the engineering culture and double the team's delivery throughput within 18 months.
• ●As Chief Growth Officer at the same organisation, he redefined sales strategies, re-platformed the sales and marketing technology stack, and significantly boosted employee Net Promoter Score from -30 to +70 by shifting incentives from transactional to purpose driven.
• ●Sheats transitioned to specialist coaching to support the next generation of Australian tech leaders, leveraging his deep operational expertise to foster positive team and organisational transformation.

⚡ What Sets Them Apart

What distinguishes Andy Sheats from many other executive coaches is his pragmatic, "from the trenches" approach.

• ●Unlike generalist coaches often from HR backgrounds, Sheats possesses direct, 30-year lived experience in technology leadership roles.
• ●This allows him to provide high-context mentoring, addressing the intricate "translation layer" between engineering teams and the boardroom.
• ●He focuses on real-world, high-stakes challenges faced by CTOs and CIOs daily, such as building productive engineering teams, cultivating strong engineering cultures, and navigating board expectations regarding AI strategy, data platforms, and cybersecurity.
• ●His methodology integrates data-driven insights from the Leadership Circle Profile, a 360-degree assessment tool he refers to as a "Leadership MRI," with a proprietary six-stage roadmap tailored for technology leaders.
• ●This diagnostic approach helps clients move beyond reactive patterns to embrace creative, strategic leadership.

🏆 Track Record

Sheats' coaching has led to significant client achievements, including successful platform transformations, adept navigation of organisational restructures, and the development of executive gravitas.

• ●He has guided leaders in transitioning from functional experts to strategic peers, enabling them to secure board trust and achieve career pivots, such as moving into Head of Growth roles.
• ●His leadership philosophy posits that leadership is a learnable system and process, not an inherent trait.
• ●He champions the Stakeholder Centred Leadership methodology, influenced by Peter Drucker and Marshall Goldsmith, which measures leadership effectiveness by the experience and accomplishments of key stakeholders.
• ●He believes true leadership is about working through people to achieve outcomes they could not reach alone, fostering conditions for others to succeed.
• ●Sheats is a Certified Coach accredited by the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership (which is recognised by the International Coaching Federation), an accredited Leadership Circle Profile practitioner, and is proficient in the Process Communication Model.
• ●He holds an MBA from Melbourne Business School, a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering, and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.