“Can I call you back in ten minutes? I just have to do something quickly.”

Essendon Football Club’s recently appointed Chief Executive, Xavier Campbell, is, as you would expect, pretty busy on a Friday afternoon.

He’s not too busy though to free up some of his valuable time to speak with someone from his old university – even if he has to duck and dive a bit to take the call.

Sure enough, ten minutes later (OK, fifteen, but who’s counting when you’ve got the CEO of one of the biggest clubs in the AFL on the line), the phone rings and he’s back.

“So, where were we?,” he says.

Maybe it’s a generational thing – at 34, Mr Campbell is the youngest CEO in the AFL by a fair margin – but the self-confessed “country boy” from Echuca on the Victoria/New South Wales border is remarkably open and friendly given the seniority of his role.

Or maybe it’s a product of the six years he spent as a young SANFL player in Adelaide, where he won a Premiership with Sturt back in 2002.

After all, when you’ve been on both sides of the fence, as a player far from home, and as a senior Essendon executive during some tumultuous times, it’s reasonable to think that you might develop a special appreciation of good people, and of doing business the ‘nice’ way.

Whatever it is, it’s refreshing, and when Mr Campbell begins to talk about his belief in the importance of relationships, a positive work environment and an open door policy at all levels, he has already given some pretty strong indications that he truly walks the talk.

“There are plenty of things you can’t control, so controlling the things you can is vitally important,” he says. “The way we do business, the way we serve our members, it’s all vitally important, and it’s all a reflection on me, so I can’t turn a blind eye to anything.”

While Mr Campbell doesn’t give the impression that he is one of those infuriating micro managers who needs to control everything, he does exude an air of authenticity when he says he believes the small things in business are sometimes as important as the big ones.

“You really do want to get those small things right,” he says. “That’s especially true when it comes to maintaining a professional environment for the team.

“Everyone sees the glamour, and the big crowds, and the winning, but I’ve also found myself doing things like re-sticking signage on changing room doors because it’s fallen down.

“So, as much as you might see that glamour, the business is much bigger – and also smaller – than that, and you need to remember at all times that it is actually a business.”

When he reflects on his time at Flinders, where he studied Economics, the importance of relationships comes up as a recurring theme throughout Mr Campbell’s life.

“I’ve got really fond memories of Flinders and really enjoyed my time there.

“I was part of small but quite close-knit group, and I had a really good relationship with Professor Don Fuller, who was a big Sturt Fan.

“I didn’t spend a great deal of time on campus because I was working at the Department of Human Services and playing for Sturt as well, but Professor Fuller really helped me stay up to speed with the things I needed to at Flinders.

“I like to imagine he looks at what I’m doing now and has a bit of a chuckle about it.”

Although he came to Adelaide to play football and not to study, Mr Campbell’s decisions during that time suggest he has always had a pretty strategic approach to life.

“I came to South Australia hoping to be drafted into the AFL, but I also had a passion to work in the business of sport, so I made sure that I studied quite generically knowing that the end game might be sports business and not a career as a player.

“In the end I didn’t get drafted, so those choices turned out to be the right ones.”

Asked if he could turn back the clock and choose between the path of being drafted to the AFL or the career he has now at Essendon, Mr Campbell is philosophical but sure.

“To be honest, if I had the chance to choose, then I’d feel lucky to be able to choose this career path,” he says.

“There’s a saying in sport that ‘the harder you work, the luckier you get’, and I believe that’s true. Being a professional athlete is an incredibly difficult job, the career often doesn’t last very long, and they have to work exceptionally hard to master their craft.”

He also has some general advice for current Flinders University students who might facing some of the choices he faced. Not surprisingly, it involves relationships.

“If I’ve learned anything over the past 15 years, it’s the importance of those key relationships,” he says.

“Looking back, I think I was learning almost sub consciously the benefits of being able to communicate effectively and work in partnership with people.

“That’s maybe one of the key lessons I learnt from working with my lecturers at Flinders.”

And what are his hopes for the future, given that, in spite of his high level position, he is still very much in the early stages of his own career?

“I know that there are CEOs and then there are good CEOs, and I want to be remembered as the second kind,” he says. “That’s the real challenge for me.”

So … the next time you see someone fiddling with the changing room signs down your local AFL club, maybe you should take a closer look.

You never know, it might just be the Chief Executive …