Reflection on field research Worksheet

Date of interview: 11.09.2019

Name of the person you listened to: Peter Cooper

Position: Head of Commercial banking

Organization: Westpac, Gold Coast

Wordcount: 500
Workplace Reflection

Peter Cooper is head of commercial banking at Westpac in Gold Coast. He has a master’s in
management and a credit educative coach. He is working in the financial services, and that’s a
very broad business. They are doing a thing like retail, financial planning, accounting, etc, so
it´s a very broad industry. He has various roles and the company is interacting with many
different people and industries. They are also doing “Day-to-Day” interacting with other brands
as well.

Peter doesn’t have a typical day, because he has a business with around 30 people, so he is
making sure that he got through all the management disappoints that is required when you have
30 people in the business. That means he doesn’t have to do the same thing every day, and
something he is not sure what he can expect to do on his day at work. That is something I like
because then you have to challenge yourself all the time and just “jump” into the challenge. He
also says he works on making sure that they have resources to do the best thing for the
customers. Customer satisfaction is something I love, personally and respect, and that is
something I would love to do in the future.

According to Peter Cooper, he appreciates having varying work tasks which results is never
having similar working days. That makes the job special and interesting, since you will face
new or old different challenges every day, and you will never know what the job tasks
tomorrow will bring. And also, a combination of customer service and having control over the
business I kind of hard, but he still loves it. I think that is a very interesting job, where you
always have you be in touch with customers and satisfies them, but at the same time, you have
to satisfy your people. to keep a lot of ball in the air at the same time makes the job more
difficult, but also much more satisfying.

They have quite a lot of different customers, with special need and most of them don’t have
similar needs. That makes the job even harder for the company when people have different
goals, and also the people in his business had different strength and weaknesses. Peter says
“(…) understanding customers” (Cooper, 2019) is the best part about the job.

I think Peter Cooper has a cool job, and I would like to be in the same position as him one day.
Being the leader of a business, and also be in touch with a lot of customers all the time, is
something I like. I had said to myself that I believe that I can work with almost anything, as
long as I’m in contact with customers and people. However, I sometimes like to plan my days
or even weeks, but that is something he can´t do because he won't have a typical day, and it is
hard to see what’s coming, or what tomorrow will bring.

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Reference:

Cooper, P. Head of Commercial banking. Interviewed 11.09.2019