Andy Magee is the Chief Information Officer at Geocon Group, one of Australia’s largest mixed-use property developers, where he also oversees technology across the company’s nine-property Iconic Hotels portfolio. With over 20 years of experience spanning desktop support through to executive leadership, Andy has built his career on a customer-first approach and a willingness to stay hands-on. He is equally comfortable setting enterprise AI strategy as he is building the solutions himself, and is a recognised voice on AI adoption and digital transformation in the Australian property sector.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with CIO Magazine, Andy shared insights into his journey from state-level basketball and retail into IT leadership, where he now drives technology and digital transformation. He sees AI agents becoming true team members by 2030, reshaping org charts and pushing strategy cycles from three years down to 12-18 months. Looking ahead, his goal is to lead transformation in the property sector and rebuild how people buy, sell and interact with property. His advice to aspiring leaders: technical skill is the foundation, but understanding people, communicating clearly, and being customer-driven is what actually defines leadership. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Andy. You’ve spent 20+ years in IT leadership driving strategy and digital transformation. What first sparked your passion for using technology to solve business problems?
My path into technology wasn’t a traditional one. Before my IT career, I was a state and rep level basketball player. Playing at that level taught me things that no certification or degree ever could – the value of teamwork, the discipline of high performance, and the understanding that your individual role only matters in the context of the collective. I was a small forward, which is the most versatile position on the court. Your job is to do a bit of everything and make the people around you better. That mentality has defined my entire career.
My first job was in retail, and what I quickly discovered was that I thrived when I was helping the customer. It didn’t matter what the product was, what energised me was understanding what someone needed and finding the right solution. When I moved into IT, starting in desktop support, I realised I was doing the exact same work. The customer was different, the tools were different, but the core of the work was identical – understand the problem, find the fix, make someone’s day easier. That’s what sparked it. I’m a problem solver at heart, and technology just happens to be the arena I found myself in.
You’re passionate about propelling organizations to new heights through technology. What part of that mission energizes you most in your current role?
What energises me most is that I get to operate across both sides of leadership , from strategy to execution. I’m not the kind of CIO who sits back and delegates everything. My background is on the tools, and I’m not afraid to still be there. In any given week I might be presenting an AI strategy to the executive team and then building the solution myself the next day. At Geocon, I lead a small team across both a major property development business and a nine-property hotel portfolio, which means there’s no room to be a single-dimension leader. You have to be a generalist and willing to do whatever the team needs to move forward.
What I love about this moment in particular is that the pace of both our industry and technology more broadly is creating opportunities to affect genuine change. Whether it’s designing solutions that improve how our customers interact with us or building internal tools that make our people’s jobs easier, I get to see the direct impact of the work every day. That’s what gets me out of bed.
Digital transformation has moved from “nice to have” to “survival.” What’s the biggest shift you expect in how organizations approach transformation by 2030?
The biggest shift I see by 2030 is that the organisational chart as we know it will fundamentally change. AI agents won’t just be tools that sit alongside your workforce, they’ll be embedded members of teams, with defined roles, performance metrics, and governance frameworks just like any other employee. Leaders and managers will be accountable for their AI agents’ output in the same way they’re accountable for their people. This isn’t theoretical, we’re already deploying AI agents at Geocon that operate as part of our sales function, with real accountability around how they perform.
The flow-on effect of this shift is that the traditional three year strategic plan is becoming obsolete. When the capabilities of your workforce, (both human and AI) are evolving this rapidly, organisations need to think in 12 to 18 month cycles at most. The businesses that are building this muscle now, treating AI as a genuine part of their operating model rather than a side experiment, will see compounding productivity gains. Those still waiting for the “right time” to start may find the gap is already too wide to close.
Cybersecurity and risk management are now board-level topics. What emerging threat should every leader prioritize that most are still underestimating?
The threat most leaders are underestimating isn’t just what attackers are doing with AI, it’s the attack surface we’re creating ourselves. Every organisation right now is encouraging employees to experiment with AI, and rightly so. But governance at that scale is extraordinarily difficult. Employees are connecting AI tools to company data, feeding sensitive information into platforms their IT teams don’t even know about, and building workflows with no security review. Even large enterprises with dedicated security teams are openly promoting this “experiment first” approach without fully appreciating what it means for their risk posture.
At the same time, AI is accelerating the capability of the average threat actor dramatically. Sophisticated social engineering, convincing phishing at scale, faster exploitation of vulnerabilities. Attacks that once required nation-state resources are now within reach of far less skilled operators. When you combine that external acceleration with an expanding internal attack surface driven by well-intentioned AI adoption, you have a compounding risk that most boards haven’t fully grasped yet.
You work across AI/ML, cloud, cybersecurity, and data. Which one technology topic do you personally find most fascinating right now and why?
Agentic AI fascinates me more than any other area of technology right now, specifically its ability to fundamentally reshape customer experience. What excites me isn’t the automation itself, it’s what it does for the humans on both sides of the interaction.
We’ve deployed an AI SDR agent at Geocon that handles inbound property enquiries. It does the leg work, understanding a purchaser’s preferences, timeframes, budget, all while simultaneously helping them with questions about the product, the buying process, and even Canberra as a place to live. What it’s really doing is bridging the gap that normally exists between a lead coming in and a human agent making that first call. By the time the sales team picks up the phone, they have genuine context, and the customer already feels heard. That first human conversation becomes significantly more meaningful because neither party is starting from zero.
This is what I think many businesses will get wrong. The temptation is to automate everything and reduce headcount. I believe the real opportunity is the opposite – use AI to remove the parts of the job that humans find draining, like generic lead qualification, and elevate the moments where humility, compassion and genuine understanding matter. We’re in a position to give people the context, time and headspace to make those interactions count. The businesses that recognise this will build lasting customer relationships. The ones chasing pure efficiency will lose something they can’t easily get back.
IT leadership demands constant learning and pressure. What’s your favorite way to reset and recharge outside of work?
I have identical twin boys who are eight and incredibly sporty, so a lot of my time outside work revolves around them. I’ve taken up golf as I’ve gotten older as it still gives me that competitive outlet but is a lot kinder on the body. My boys have started playing too, which has been a great way to share something together. The real highlight though has been getting back into the basketball stadium. I’m coaching both my boys now, and it’s completely reignited my passion for the game. There’s something about being back on the court, passing on what I learned as a player, that brings everything full circle. Between that and making sure I genuinely switch off and recover each week, I find the balance I need to keep performing at work.
Books and ideas shape great leaders. What’s one book, podcast, or talk you recommend most to aspiring tech leaders?
The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett. I find it to be the single most valuable source of leadership thinking I’ve come across. The topics are always current and the guests consistently challenge how I think about both technology and leadership. The episode with Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI” particularly stuck with me. When someone at that level of influence is being that candid about where AI is heading and what it means for society, it forces you to think beyond your own organisation and consider the broader responsibility that comes with deploying this technology. For anyone in a leadership role right now, especially in technology, I’d say it’s essential listening.
What is your biggest goal? Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?
My biggest goal is to be at the forefront of digital transformation in the Australian property industry. Property is one of the last sectors still running on fundamentally old and clunky processes, and I think the opportunity to reshape how Australians buy, sell and interact with property is enormous. The traditional real estate model is already shifting, and the acceleration of AI is opening doors that simply didn’t exist two years ago — the ability to build solutions we could only have dreamed of, to create efficiencies that weren’t possible, and to genuinely transform how an entire industry operates.
Where I want to be in five years is leading that charge. We’re at a unique moment in technology where the leaders willing to lean in now will define how their industries work for the next decade. I want to be one of those leaders, someone who didn’t just adopt the technology but used it to fundamentally change how business is done at an industry level.
Aspiring IT professionals often ask how to break into leadership. What’s the first skill or mindset you’d tell them to build?
The first thing I’d tell any aspiring IT leader is that your career won’t be defined by your technical ability. It will be defined by your ability to understand people, communicate clearly, and build relationships. The best technologist in the room rarely becomes the leader. The person who can listen to a business problem, translate it into a solution, and bring people along with them does.
I learned this early, long before my IT career. Basketball taught me that individual talent means nothing without the ability to make the people around you better. Working in retail taught me that everything starts with the customer. Those lessons have carried me further than any technical skill I’ve ever developed. Be customer-driven, invest in how you communicate, and never underestimate the value of genuine relationships. The technical knowledge matters, but it’s the foundation, not the differentiator.