Lynne Gallucci has been training for her current role her entire life. As Chief Operating Officer of VetPartners, she brings together decades of experience spanning community pharmacy, funeral services, and now veterinary care – industries connected by their foundation in trusted community relationships and vocational commitment.

Placed with VetPartners in 2025 by James Curtis, Practice Lead at Allura Partners, Lynne has embraced the challenge of leading operations for a network of over 300 veterinary clinics across Australia.

A Foundation Built on Influence and People

Lynne’s path to executive leadership began in the 1980s with what she describes as a compromise – a double degree in accounting and arts. “I liked people, and I liked numbers, and my dad suggested combining them. At the time, I wasn't grateful, but I'm forever grateful now,” she said. The combination equipped her with both commercial acumen through her formal studies in accounting and people skills through communication and psychology.

Ever since commencing her career with ExxonMobil’s graduate program nearly 30 years ago, Lynne has been making deliberate choices to test herself. While her peers gravitated towards retail and metro assignments, she chose wholesale and country postings. “What it did was test my ability to influence in challenging and complex environments,” she explained. That exposure to stakeholder management and influence have become a cornerstone of her leadership approach.

Understanding Operational Excellence

While Lynne has held operational leadership roles under various titles, her ambition has remained constant. “I’ve never ever wanted to be a CEO; I wanted to be the person that supported the team to deliver the work.”

Her advice to emerging leaders: “Focus on the characteristics of the role and the work you want to do, not the title. Organisations change titles at the drop of a hat.”

For her, operational excellence hinges on three principles: providing clarity, creating momentum, and reducing roadblocks.

“People need to know what they're doing, why they’re doing it, and who they are doing it for. So, to keep everyone connected and motivated, we need to simplify processes to ensure consistent messages, we reinforce and reflect on the benefits of what we’re aiming to achieve, and we reduce the roadblocks and the friction.”

The First 100 Days: Building Trust as Currency

When Lynne joined VetPartners, she drew on Stephen Covey’s principle of leading at the speed of trust. “If you can build trust as a currency – and you do that by two things, character and competence – you can lead at the speed of trust,” she explained. She focused her first 30 to 45 days on demonstrating both: showing she was trustworthy in her commitments and bringing transferable knowledge that would make the connection between the Transformation activities and BAU easier and clearer.

She also introduced the concept of a “trust account”.

“Some people give you their trust, and some people make you earn it. My preference is to give you my trust – it’s yours to do what you like with it”. She said this approach has encouraged team members to feel confident in bringing forward challenges they might be reluctant to discuss.

Opportunities and Challenges of Distributed Networks

Having previously led Retail Operations for Priceline Pharmacy and grown its retail footprint significantly, Lynne said she “loves distributed networks” and the opportunities they present.

“We are to enable frontline leaders by providing the efficiencies of national infrastructure while also allowing them to implement campaigns to meet the specific needs of their community,” she said, adding that “pet parents are very different across the different states, cities, and regions of Australia”.

However, distributed networks can present a unique set of challenges. At VetPartners, the legacy of a roll-up acquisition strategy is multiple practice management systems and processes across the 300 practices. This makes administration complex, especially for vets and the support team who move between clinics.

“A major aim of our transformation strategy is to move all practices to one practice management system; we also want to streamline processes,” Lynne explained. Doing so will allow team members to spend more time with their patients and pet parents.

To bring all team members together on this transformational journey, Lynne has returned to her three principles of operational excellence – providing clarity, creating momentum, and reducing roadblocks.

To make adopting the new PMS as palatable as possible, she highlighted the similarities with systems already in use. To build momentum, she showcased the benefits enjoyed by early adopters.

“If you promise something and then you deliver it, momentum grows. While people recognise that work is needed, they say okay, the outcome is worth the effort to get there.”

Purpose-Led Leadership

One distinctive aspect of VetPartners is its strong sense of purpose. “We are filled with people who make a difference to pets’ and pet parents’ lives every day,” Lynne observed. However, commercial success and genuine care for animals must coexist, and so, “the tension around the commercial and the care has to be handled and navigated with a lot of respect.”

Having worked within private equity-backed organisations (as well as ASX-listed companies and corporations), Lynne said, commercial outcomes are often the priority in PE. However, EQT Group, which owns VetPartners, has been “exemplary in the way they balance their responsibilities to the world, to local communities, and to the people within the company.”

That said, the fundamental expectations remain consistent. “Their expectation is that I bring discipline around execution, clear accountability, and a strong cadence. Maybe the speed is different, but the expectation of excellence is the same.”

A Desire to Make Life Better

In what she describes as “a last chapter of my professional working life,” Lynne is clear about her motivations: by implementing operational excellence, “I just want to make our team’s life better. I want everyone to go home stronger from working at VetPartners than when they came in in the morning.”

When asked what advice she’d give emerging COOs and operational leaders, Lynne offers both practical and philosophical guidance:

First of all, she addresses a common misunderstanding about strategy and operations. I believe the role of operations is to deliver excellence in execution; to translate strategy into disciplined, repeatable execution—connecting daily decisions (operational tactics) to long-term intent (strategy).

Once you’ve made the commitment, she advises to lead with your whole heart. “Put your whole self into it and let people see you’re really committed. If you believe, it’s easier for people to come along.”

And invest in continuous learning. Lynne advocates for layered development – combining formal qualifications with mentorship and coaching to bridge the gap between learning and application. “It’s about developing your whole person.”

Allura Partners specialises in executive search for CEO, COO, CFO, and other C-suite positions across ASX-listed, private equity-backed, and privately owned firms. If you’re seeking to build your executive team or advance your career, contact us to discuss how we can support your goals.