My Journey

In Episode #1 of the JD's Journal, here's a little of my life's journey, some of the good fortune, setbacks, and the valuable lesson's I've learned along the way. 

Enjoy, and let me know what you think! 

Transcript

Hey welcome to episode 1 of JD's Journal! All the planning, preparation, palpitations and ok quite a bit of procrastination are over and I'm so excited to be here and to have you listening in.  

Given this is the first episode of the podcast, and being very aware that for you I may be a complete stranger, I'm going to dedicate this episode to sharing a little of my own story.  

If you're like most people, including me, you just hate talking about yourself. Most of us would rather have a root canal than introduce themselves, so although I think it's the polite and proper thing to do, I'm looking forward to getting this episode in the can and out of the way so we can focus on far more important topics. Feel free to skip this one if that's your preference… I promise I won't be offended in any way. 

I also do want to warn you up front, that I will be talking about some potentially triggering topics in this episode, including death, so if this isn't a good time for you to be exposed to triggers you might want to skip the episode. 

For those who are curious enough to stay, here we go. 

Born in 1962 in a relatively small town in NSW Australia called, Taree, named by the indigenous Biripi people for the great fig trees that grow along the bank of the Manning river. Taree is about 300km or 200mi North of Sydney, and while it's not on the coast, it's close enough to be considered a coastal town, and most families spent considerable time on the beautiful beaches at Saltwater and Old Bar. When I lived there the town had a population of around 11,000, and given the bypass now diverts the traffic between Sydney and Brisbane around the town, it hasn't grown much beyond 20,000 today.  

Sadly, this was also my first exposure to how have failed to harmonise with our first nations peoples who've owned and cared for our land for the past 50,000 years. During my early years in Taree, I observed that the original owners of the land had been largely relegated to living in a settlement outside of Taree called Purfleet. When it was first established as a mission called Sunrise Station in 1903 and until 1952, the indigenous residents weren't permitted go to town without permission. As children, we engaged with our indigenous brothers and sisters at school and sports, but for the adults the divide seemed significant. It's worth mentioning Patricia Davis-Hurst, or Aunty Pat as she was fondly known, went from being an indigenous health worker at the Purfleet Baby Clinic to being globally renowned for her work promoting awareness of reconciliation, Indigenous culture and history, and land rights; and by advising, mentoring and assisting Indigenous people, receiving the Order of Australia and having one of her books, Sunrise Station Revisited which she gifted to President Obama is on display in the Smithsonian.  

Living in a country town on a river provided a great environment for adventure, and in those early years I learned to love the forest or the bush as we call it down under, or being out on the river with my canoe. My best friend since day care, Tony, and I were like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, adventuring around the local creek. To this day I still get a lot of my energy from being out in the wild, though I'm a lot less adventurous these days.  

I moved to Sydney at the age of twelve and did my best to adjust to life in the big city, though I have to admit that my preference for less crowded environments has never changed. The move wasn't an easy time for our family, as my alcoholic, overbearing, demeaning and sometimes violent father had gone his own way and left my mother and siblings to deal with an awful financial situation, and the toll of years of emotional and physical trauma. My mother, as she did all of her life, was unwaveringly committed to her family, and had be working multiple jobs while doing her best to care for her kids and her ailing mother. The move to the big smoke was the final step in separating the four siblings, with just mum and I living together in an apartment in Western Sydney. 

 To put the record straight on my father. He was horrible during our childhood, and to the end he denied any recollection of his behaviour. He definitely had his demons and I've come to understand that the booze and anger were his coping mechanisms. At the same time he was a very highly regarded electrical construction foreman, and when the city of Darwin was flattened by cyclone Tracy back in 1974, he headed up there to help rebuild it. While there he found and married a wonderful and righteous lady, found god, gave up the booze and tried his best to reconnect with his family. Further, in his retirement, he redeemed himself by leading the construction of the new Lutheran school there, and became a beloved friend of the local indigenous community. He stayed in Darwin for the rest of his life, and I like think left this world a better place in his own way.  

I didn't adapt very well to the rough environment of the boys high school either, and I did everything I could to avoid going to school, pretending to go but instead hiding out around the neighbourhood. In 1977 at the age of 14 years and nine months, I dropped out of school and started as an apprenticeship as a clicker or saddle maker. This was a huge turning point in my life as I found passion in the craft of hand cutting, shaping and stitching leather goods. The smell and feel of freshly tanned leather, and the fact that now I could contribute financially.  

In late 1983, the of a hobby developing databases on a games console coincided with the need to escape once again, this time from a bad manager. A totally unexpected opportunity which allowed me to become a part of the rapidly emerging PC industry. In those days the IBM PC AT and Apple II PC's were bringing affordable compute capabilities to small and medium businesses, schools and home hobbyist. Having the opportunity to be a part of this revolution was transformational for me. In reality, I had resigned from the factory without a plan, and on reaching out to one of the computer stores I used to hang out at for a reference, they instead offered me a job. I guess the fact that I had been helping some of their customers as I was finding excuses to loiter in the store playing with the new software and hardware that kept arriving had impressed them.  

This is probably a good time to talk about Peter. I met Peter through the era of the citizen's band radio fad, when like social media today, people of all ages were connecting with friends and strangers over the airwaves. During a particularly challenging time in my life that I won't expand on now, Peter and I met and immediately clicked. Although it was probably six months before we met in person, rarely did a day go by where we didn't talk to each other. Over the seven years that followed, Peter and I became like brothers. We shared a love for music, motorcycles, and Peter shared his passion for emerging technologies, particularly CB radio, games consoles and communications. What I learned from Peter in those years was the foundation for so much of what enabled the career I've had since.  

On a pretty normal Sunday afternoon in 1983, I received a phone call that would forever change my life. There had been an accident, Peter's motorcycle has collided with a car just a few blocks from his home, and he has died at the scene. This wasn’t possible, it had to be a mistake, I told myself as I drove to the scene of the accident, and then to Peter's father's house, trying to see the road through the tears that were streaming down my face. Looking back, it's clear that I went through the typical phases of grief - denial, anger, despair, and then into a very dark cave where I selfishly shut the world out and moped around in isolation, with disregard for my wife, my family and friends. This was my first experience of the death of someone I loved, and I wasn't handling it well at all. How was it possible that after all the crazy high speed riding Peter I had done, him on his Kawasaki Z1R and me on the Honda 900CBR, that his life could be taken as he made the short trip to put fuel in his tank ready for the week ahead. It just didn't make sense.  

After a few months another close friend, Alex, intervened and physically slapped me and told me to grow up. The slap and the realisation of my selfish behaviour both really stung, but as the fog of Peter's death lifted, and I regained my perspective, I felt a burning compulsion that to honour his life I needed to do something more with mine, and while I wasn't conscious of it at the time, I'm convinced that was the catalyst for my leaving the factory the way that I did. 

Sadly, Alex, the friend who took the action to shake me out of my funk succumbed to his own demons in the years that followed, and despite having a wonderful wife and two gorgeous twin daughters, he tragically took his own life. I had spoken to Alex and his wife just days before his suicide, and it's impossible to rationalise how effectively he was hiding the inner dialogue he must have been having that led to his decision to end his life. If only we had known, but it's an all too common scenario, particularly for men who are conditioned that to show emotions is a sign of weakness. As a parent, I'm convinced we owe it to our kids to help them be comfortable to express their emotions and to never be ashamed to ask for support.  

Ok I don't want to bring you down in my first episode so let's bring this back to my career journey, which a much happier topic. I had mentioned that having suddenly quit my role at the factory, I joined the retail team at Direct Computer Services in Hurstville. There I learned how to sell PC computer packages to students, teachers and small businesses. It is astonishing to recall that a small business computing package back then was around $15k, and included a PC with 385kb of memory, at 10 megabyte hard drive, a dot matrix printer, and a monochrome monitor. Well it was a colour monitor, either Amber or Green. Beyond the selling part, which was not great at to be honest, I learned how to configure PC based accounting systems, to write moderately complex scripts, and perhaps my favourite experience, developing and delivering evening training classes on PC computing.  

From the retail store, I transitioned to the headquarters in the Ultimo in the city where I continued to expand my technical skills to include repairing Apple and IBM PC systems. I also began getting involved the marketing and user group activities. I was a nervous wreck when it came to public speaking, and on a recommendation from a workmate I took on an afterhours role as a mobile disc jockey. Talk about trial by fire. After shadowing a couple of gigs, I was called in to cover for a DJ who failed to show for an event. Facing a crowd of a couple of hundred folk who were peeved about the DJ not showing, I stumbled my way through my first five hour gig. I actually continued to DJ for a few years, towing a trailer with turntables, speakers and lights around Sydney three days a week. The additional cash was useful, my confidence with crowds was increasing, and I'd quickly learned to love the wedding receptions, birthdays, school dances and fashion parades. This was the disco era and my milk crates full of "12 vinyl albums and long play singles was packed with the music I loved, along with party favourites like Nut Bush City Limits, the Electric Slide, the Hokey Pokey and of course the Chicken Dance. 

 As the PC craze slowed down, many of the companies that had seized the opportunity to monetize this new industry struggled through the transition and DCS closed it's doors declaring bankruptcy. I continued to independently sell small business PC accounting solutions for a while, with my beautiful mother lending a hand cold calling potential customers and helping me coordinate sales events at hotels across the Sydney suburbs, but as I mentioned before I was a big fail at closing deals and needed something more stable to support my growing family. 

 In 1987 I landed a role with the largest PC software distributor in Australia, Imagineering. Yes the same name as the innovation team at Disney, but that’s where the similarities ended, beyond CEO Jodee Rich's aspiration to make the impossible possible. The Imagineering role quickly became a supervisory position for a customer support team and represented my first experience in coordinating and managing the performance of teams of people. The company was quite successful for a time and I loved the experience in the call centre and the great people there, many who are still friends to this day. 

 I had developed a passion for PC database systems, and at that time the industry standard was dBase III, from a Los Angeles company, Ashton Tate. I'd formed a relationship with that company and when they decided to launch an Australian subsidiary in 1989, I was offered the role to lead the establishment of their local IT infrastructure and their Customer Service team. I'd never built anything like this before, and the experience was daunting, it scared the crap out of me, but it was also incredibly exciting. Being MIS and Customer Service Manager was my first formal management role and also my first introduction to working for US based companies. These were still the days of dial up internet connections, and I can still recall coming into the office early in the morning and initiating the connection to the internet so the email that had been sent by the US teams overnight could download to the Banyan Vines system while I had my first coffee of the day. 

 Wind the clock forward to 1991, Ashton Tate was being acquired by another software company, Borland, and I was once again gifted with a life changing opportunity, to join Microsoft as they embarked on their mission to put a PC on every desktop. Initially leading a team of technical support engineers supporting customers with Office products, then 1993 leading the Information Technology team for Australia and New Zealand. I then had a five year stint in Seattle, my first international assignment, in a variety of IT and technology roles, and finally a wonderful three years in Dublin Ireland, where was so fortunate to lead the data centre infrastructure operations teams across Europe and Asia. At the time Microsoft was investing billions of dollars to establish the infrastructure to support their Office 365 and Azure cloud platform across the globe. 

 18 years is a long time and with the fear of being institutionalised, in 2010 was presented with an opportunity to move to Nokia in Bristol in the UK, as they were trying to transform their company and platform to be able to compete with the new killer iPhone. They had been caught by surprise by the emergence of the smartphone, and rapidly declined from being the leader with 41% of the market. As Nokia later segregated it's business divisions I opted to be a part of the geo-navigational HERE organisation, and with that I relocated once again, this time to Berlin Germany. Berlin was a risky move for us as it was our first non-English speaking country, and we had been told that it wasn't a friendly environment and the food was terrible. How wrong that was. We absolutely loved our Berlin experience, fell in love with the people, the culture, the food and of course the beer. If it hadn't been for the arrival of grandchildren back in Australia and feeling the need to reconnect with family and friends, we'd probably still be there. 

 But, yearning for home, in 2014, after 12 years abroad, I finally returned home to Australia and assumed that our international adventure had finally come to an end. Well it had, for a while. 

 Now I'd had an epiphany back in 2010. Although I'd been telling myself that technology was my motivation, I had a realisation that it was people that put the fire in my belly. Although I'd had some success in leading moderately large and culturally diverse teams for two decades, I was convinced I needed to formalise my leadership toolbelt. Initially, beyond reading many books, I completed some correspondence based diplomas in life coaching and Neuro Linguistic Programming or NLP, but these weren't satisfying my need for practical learning. So when I came back to Oz I decided to take a year out to complete my Master Practitioner and Certified Trainer in NLP and Matrix Therapies, as well as a bunch of supporting frameworks such as eDISC, Mbraining and a little bit of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Positive Psychology. To further support my development goals I established a coaching practice and also developed and facilitated workshops for a few large Australian companies. 

 Having achieved my goal of validating the merits of a future dedicated to coaching, training and facilitation, I returned to full time employment, a few short term assignments with Microsoft and First Data before joining Amazon Web Services in 2017. I'd heard terrible things about the toxic culture at Amazon, and had never considered working there, but my initial conversations with the head-hunter and then the hiring manager were really positive. As it turned out I interviewed for a Product Management role at Microsoft the same week I interviewed for the role at Amazon, and after seven pretty intense interviews with the Amazon team I decided they were the more attractive option, having a culture that felt like Microsoft had in the early 90s. Amazon talked about having a set of leadership principles, and unlike most companies I'd dealt with, they seemed to have successfully integrated these into their DNA. My initially leading infrastructure operations for Australia was tremendously rewarding and then in November 2020, tempted by the prospect of leading a region again, I took a leap across to physical security and theft prevention across the Asia Pacific, Japan and China. Another role I was completely unqualified for. 

 To be closer to my teams across the region, my wife and I, empty nesting by this stage, packed up our stuff yet again and moved to Singapore, our sixth country so far. The Singapore experience has been everything we have hoped for, despite the travel limitations that the Covid pandemic imposed initially, Jo and I have taken every opportunity to explore this wonderful country and culture, and over the past 18 months I've been able to visit my teams across China & Hong Kong, India, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, and of course Australia and New Zealand. 

 It never fails to be incredulous to me that from that little factory in Canterbury in Sydney, with literally zero formal qualifications, I've had this remarkable experience that has taken me around the world, multiple times, and granted me the opportunity to work and play with such a diverse group of the best humans you could meet. It's fair to say that the voice of the imposter has been quite loud on my shoulder as a constant companion, but at this late stage in my career I've largely been able to shut it down. We’ll definitely be talk about that in later episodes of this podcast.

 If you've had the patience and tenacity to stay with me at this point, you may be thinking "so what?". Well maybe not a lot to be honest, except that it provides some context behind the learning journey that I've been on so far. There's not a lot that I would change to be honest. I've gained my experience through the school of hard knocks and being willing to be the dumbest guy in the room, often stumbling through the learning process for each different role I've taken on. In reality, I attribute any success I've had to the wisdom, patience and generosity of the various leaders I've worked with and of course the amazing teams I've had the privilege to lead. 

 I can say with humility that I have been blessed to lead and work with so many remarkable achievers, who are also just good people, and so many of them remain cherished friends and colleagues. I've also had the joy of seeing them grow their careers, and their families, and I've also been there for their setbacks and even their personal tragedies. I've learned there are so many real parallels in parenting and management, the elation that comes when they have their achievements, the intense frustration when you can't protect them from stumbling, and the heart ache when bad stuff happens to them. 

 I'm probably biased given my lack of tertiary education, but it's my firm believe that the highest quality of learning comes from real world experiences, not lectures or text books, and so my sole motivation for this podcast is to attempt to share what I've learned with my listeners. I've also made many mistakes along the path so far, and I'm convinced the best life lessons come not from our successes but instead our failures, provided we have the conviction and the vulnerability to accept the failure and the authentic curiosity to learn from them.

 Over the next couple of episodes, I'm going to share some of the vital lessons I've learned through my journey, specifically dealing with Imposter Syndrome, establishing and maintaining a Growth Mindset and my personal experiences of how sometimes the most positive outcomes are born out of what appears to be a disaster.