S1W11: Some heavy hitting
This week has been super interesting as I’ve started to shift my focus the last few weeks to taking more proactive steps to building out my networks and actively work a way into the career opportunities I want. It’s also been a big week in terms of learning about community building and in some sense I’ve been dragged into understanding and learning about politics as well (politics really isn’t my bag).
The week started with a field trip to CSIRO which was an exercise in absolute frustration for me. I’ve seen the same people speak about their technology, their work, how they hope to engage with industry and 12 months on they are just as clueless and hopeless as they were before. Now I absolutely don’t doubt their capability, they are all actually brilliant in their fields of research but they are absolutely hopeless at understanding how to engage and communicate with industry, startups and the public in general. Now you could say that their funding has been cut etc etc but in reality they’re just not structured correctly and their priorities are all wrong to actually deliver meaningful innovation in a clearly structured way rather than by accident — like WiFi.
Most of that has to do with their backwards approach to engaging with industry. They expect startups or businesses to come to them with a way to use the technology they aren’t promoting or have a use case for and work on a consulting basis when in reality they should be doing the exact opposite and instead trying to find industries and businesses that can use their tech. A good example of this was that they had a table at a co-working space that was unmanned and had no specific purpose and expected that people in the co-working space would engage with the company. If I could give an award for the dumbest, laziest idea possible that would be right up there as one of them!
Later that night we had a ‘Town Hall’ meeting for the entire MCR where personal issues with the leadership of the MCRC had been simmering and had now boiled over and required addressing. Part of this related to the election of 6 male representatives to the MCRC which couldn’t possibly reflect the make up of the entire MCR which is on best guess 50/50 for women. There were also issues with resignations stemming from culture problems which were present prior to at least half of the panel being elected into it this year.
I’ve never been to a Town Hall, or an AGM or SGM for that matter. You would normally find me on the other side of the globe from attending one of these types of events simply because I can’t be bothered and I don’t care enough. In this case I definitely cared enough (despite being obligated to be there as part of the council) as the issues related to friends on both sides of the fence and even in a short period of time I’ve grown quite attached to the Ormond community and really enjoy the atmosphere that has welcomed me in with open arms.
As mentioned before the issues that were tabled for the meeting revolved around the lack of female representation, perceived and real culture issues that have occurred in the past and the feeling that the MCR was lacking enough events and wasn’t doing enough to keep people of all personalities involved. This went so far as to having a petition signed by various members of the MCR to potentially call for the resignation of the Chair and other measures so the feeling for various members of the council was quite fraught.
I personally didn’t share that sentiment that things were going to necessarily ‘explode’ out at the Town Hall as I wasn’t convinced based on my conversations with people that the majority of people cared enough about these issues to make it a big deal. Sure it wasn’t ideal but they personally hadn’t either seen or heard enough about the issues being whispered inside around those close to the MCRC to really care. But I wasn’t going to come in thinking that it was going to be a love fest either.
I came away from that Town Hall though incredibly impressed with the quality of the conversations and constructive nature and good will of the people in the room. Firstly the turn out was really good and we were able to hear from quite a few people in the MCR that I hadn’t met at all yet who were articulate, thoughtful and balanced. The topics brought up were all relevant, displayed a broad spectrum of opinions, thoughts and ideas, and whilst there was a fair bit of repetition I think the functioning of the meeting was pretty solid.
On the whole as a cohort I think we were able to identify the reasons why people were upset without getting personal, how we were/are looking to rectify the gaps in those areas (communication, events etc) and just generally getting people’s grievances out there so they could be dealt with and put to bed. Earlier I had spoken to people outside of the MCR to say that I was hoping that if anything was to happen that it happen now, so that we could deal with it completely and quickly rather than having them fester into the next semester. I think that we’ll be able to do that now.
Now it would be wrong for me to say that everyone got what they wanted out of the meeting, I’m sure there were people who came out of it disappointed that they didn’t get the outcomes they wanted coming in. However I think if they were to look at the broader goals they wanted fro the common room they succeeded in beginning a healthy dialogue that has the potential to translate to even better outcomes for everyone going forward even if the personal outcomes they wanted didn’t happen.
Speaking to one of the mentors in Wade later this week he suggested that we do a Company Directors Course through the AICD which I don’t think is a bad idea. It will firstly provide a solid grounding in modern governance but also equip us with a skillset that we can practice throughout the year in the MCRC. It’s uber expensive but we’ll see if we can pull it off and get some special deals being a NFP and if the College has some strings they can pull. The AICD seems to be coming up quite a bit in various discussions I’ve had with numerous people and they seem to be very highly thought of with members also highly sought after. So whether that’s the universe or otherwise telling me to go down that path I have no idea…I would really like to equip myself with some grounding in that area and we will be doing a legal class this week on the roles of directors etc with my sponsor Corrs. I know for Rozibaby we weren’t anywhere near what we could have been because we lacked the appropriate training and networks to create good governance practices throughout the business.
Which brings me to some really productive discussions I’ve had the last few weeks with the course co-ordinators and leadership around trying to figure out what future direction I want to head in with my experiences and internships etc. Broadly speaking I have a number of interests: entrepreneurial education and eco-system, technology and innovation in general both through corporate innovation as well as in startups and mentorship in general.
In particular I was a bit at a loss as to where I can go because what I’ve come to realise over the last few weeks is that I’m not just looking to work for a company doing interesting problem solving but it’s actually super critical for me now to work underneath a REALLY good manager or entrepreneur to learn from. And that is the hard part. Where can I slot in, into what kind of company and role that I can work underneath people who are proper experts in their field — not just trying to figure it out like I am — where I can have the capability to learn 10 years worth of knowledge in a compressed period of time?
The first place that comes to mind from the speakers we’ve had so far is Anthony Farah from Vivant who was probably the most impressive person I’ve ever met in this space. I put in an application to work under him and we’ll see where that goes but I know I’d learn a lot from him just by standing next to him for 2 weeks let alone working with/for him. Aside from that, I’d love to spend my time working in spaces like Google Ventures or X or IDEO because my skillsets are varied and I feel like my biggest strengths are in pulling together lots of different ideas from different spaces and putting them together in new spaces.
Rozibaby for instance was a confluence of ideas from motor industry, bikes, fashion and tech to come up with something truly innovative. I feel like I could do that everyday if given the opportunity and in the right space I could make innovation happen pretty much all the time with little effort (in that skillset alone). But where I want to be building out my capability and knowledge is in the nitty gritty, the metrics, the process and the team. I don’t have enough experience or knowledge or networks in this space to really be as impactful as I want to be. And that’s what I need. The question is how do I get it? The good thing is that through the course I’ve really got the support and backing of everyone in it and that’s really nice and comforting. So we’ll see where it goes…the upshot of the discussions I’ve had is that I can really go anywhere and people will value the skillsets I bring with me. I guess the problem I have is where do I find enough of these people!?
I’ve also been challenged to flex some intellectual muscle in class to prod guest speakers and to some extent teachers and peers with questions that are ‘not safe’. Questions that really challenge the person on the spot to get to an answer that’s not comfortable in order to get higher learning rather than sandbox type learning. We’ll see how that goes…depending obviously on the way I ask those types of questions that could either work out ok and no one is upset by it or absolutely horribly wrong and I could be seen as antagonistic and just an asshole.
Another thing that happened this week was another Wader and I were invited to a panel discussion even at Ducere where they were talking broadly about education and the future skills we’re not equiping our future students with. On the panel was Rufus Black (Wade/Ormond College), Jan Owen (CEO of FYA), Holly Ransom (a highly sought after young corporate executive) and one of the partners from PwC in the Digital space. One of the treats which we weren’t expecting at all was that Julia Gillard was moderating the panel (this was not in the promotional material at all) but I wasn’t that surprised as I knew she was chancellor for Ducere previously.
The discussion was of a really high quality and very productive and in contrast to the CSIRO discussion I wish it could continue for a week instead of the 1 hour discussion. In the ‘networking’ breakout sessions afterwards I was able to chat to Rufus for an extended period of time about a leadership forum that I am looking to build out with him for the MCR and update him on feedback I got from other students. I also go the chance to chat to Julia about Teach for Australia which Rufus is part of the Board for and which I had spoken about with him only a few days prior.
Julia was a consummate host, very engaging and honest, relaxed and interested in the people she was meeting and I had a good time chatting with her. I don’t really get intimidated by people of this kind of stature and I’ve met a lot of them in the past from Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank to Jack Ma of Alibaba. I think if I was going to be intimidated by anyone it would be someone like Obama or Oprah who I classify as real idols for me. It was wonderful to get the experience of talking with her in a casual setting without competing with a host of people to get her attention. I’m grateful for the opportunities that Wade provide in allowing us to do things like this that otherwise we wouldn’t necessarily have the privilege of being a part of.
I’m still trying to figure out how I can translate things like this into something more meaningful. I’ve had this discussion before where I can easily mix with people in C-suites and positions of power and keep up with discussions along a whole range of issues but then after that…then what? I’m not in a position to help them and they’re not really in a position to help me either in a meaningful away. Their contacts are too valuable and I’m not bringing a specialised skillset that’s easy to sell either…bleuuuhhhhh swings and roundabouts.
