Daniel at Work

Mine was career where so many times luck and past contacts came from nowhere to point me in a new direction.

1974

 

Growing up

My teenage school holidays meant working on whatever building job my father, Ivan, had going at the time.  Actually this started when I was even younger, as my dad dragged me along to his very first building, a block of flats he decided to renovate in Frederick St, Ashfield in 1959.  At lunchtime Ivan would send me to the local store down the street to buy us both lunch. As I got older I was given various labouring or other odd jobs around the building site, although I don't think I was actually much help. I didn't enjoy the experience, as it involved hard physical work and long hours.  Most of the time it seemed that Ivan and I were doing jobs that a more experienced worker or tradesmen could have completed faster and better. But to be fair to my dad he had to be on the building sites anyway and so it made sense for him to pitch in in whatever way he could.

Actually my first real independent “job” came in the early 1960s, before Ivan turned full-time attention to building.  In those days my parents were still shopkeepers and owned a cafe located on the current Forum site on Pacific Highway at St Leonards.

Ivan would let me open the shop on my own from about 8am on Saturday mornings and let me keep whatever takings I made before he arrived a couple of hours later.  Looking back now it seems amazing to think that my dad would let a 10-year-old open and serve in the shop alone, but that never occurred to me at the time -- I just enjoyed the extra pocket money.

Later on I had many different vacation or part-time jobs.  I remember working as a delivery boy for the local chemist in Crows Nest about 1963.  For several Christmases in a row I got a job as a casual in the menswear department of Farmer Bros in the Sydney CBD (where Myers is now).  Then during university term breaks I worked first as a pastry assistant at a King's Cross bakery, owned by a friend of my father called Nino, then as a store man and packer at an Italian food importer in Haymarket.

Career, what career?

I cannot recall ever giving any serious consideration during the 1960s to what career path I might take.  My father’s own ethic was firmly based on working for yourself, not someone else.  But that did not really resonate with me.  By 1970 I still had no idea what I wanted to do so I majored in Economics at Sydney University, not because I was drawn to it as a career, but simply because it was the subject I had enjoyed most at school.

As late as my honours year at university in 1973 I still had no idea of what to do next.  I even toyed with going on to a master’s degree, essentially to put off the decision.  But not far into that year I went along to a “careers week” at the university where various companies and government departments ran stalls as part of a campaign to recruit impending graduates.  One of career stalls was from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Daniel, second from left, with fellow Sydney Uni Liberal Club members meeting then Prime Minister John Gorton, 1971

I had always had an interest in politics, and at university I had become involved in the Sydney University Liberal Club.  I also had a vague sense that being of migrant stock might be an asset with my application, although I wished I could boast about my foreign language skills, which unfortunately were precisely zero.  It sounded like a prestigious job, with lots of travel and meeting important people, so I applied.  I was fortunate that at this time the Australian Foreign Service was undergoing a dramatic expansion in the wake of the election of the Whitlam Government in 1972 so recruitment was at an all-time high.  But still there were only around 40 places available for foreign affairs “trainees” for which there were over a thousand hopeful applicants.

Soon thereafter the weeding out process began, but I somehow stayed in the race.  I was called to an interview in Sydney, then had to complete some additional paperwork, including security checks.  Then another set of interviews in Sydney before finally being sent to Canberra around September 1973 to participate in a final selection round of about 100 candidates.  I recall how each of us looked at the other potentials, figuring out that less than one in two was going to make it through.  I was fortunate that my best friend at university who was doing economics with me, also applied for Foreign Affairs.  He was a friendly face in Canberra during that final selection process.  Both of us were surprised and happy when we found out a few weeks later that we had been accepted.  Career problem solved!

I had also pursued fall-back employment options and just after accepting Foreign Affairs I was offered a job as an economist at the ACT Electricity Authority.  Of course I declined, but in later years I was to wonder how differently my life would have turned out if I had ended up in that job and not Foreign Affairs.

Foreign Affairs

January 1974 was a big month.  Margie and I married on the 5 January, we moved to Canberra (actually Queanbeyan as we could not find a flat in the national capital) a couple of weeks later and I started my Foreign Affairs training on the 31st.

Daniel and Margie in their first home together

Trinculo Place, Queanbeyan, 1974

The training course was a curious mixture of lectures on subjects like “The Role of a Third Secretary” and “Judging the economic performance of countries with a non-market economy”, travelling around Australia on “familiarisation trips” and practical training (of very limited value) in the department.  Within weeks trainees started to hear of the first posting assignments, each announcement met with gasps of jealousy (if the post was somewhere like Paris or Ottawa) and commiseration (for the unlucky trainees off to places like Port Moresby or Lagos).

Group photo of Foreign Affairs Australian and foreign trainees, Canberra Feb 1974.  I'm second from left, top row

By May I learnt that my posting would be Greece, which seemed a pretty reasonable outcome.  It was in Europe (well sort of) and sufficiently exotic to sound appealing without being a “hardship post”, as the really tough assignments were known.  Margie and I left for Athens in July 1974, less than five months after joining Foreign Affairs.  To that point Margie had never previously been overseas.

Daniel & Margie leaving for Athens, July 1974

Our journey was interrupted by political upheaval in Greece.  Just as we left the Greek military junta collapsed following their abortive coup in Cyprus and the subsequent Turkish invasion of the island.  We ended up travelling via Hong Kong, Bangkok and Rome.  In effect we had an extra honeymoon!  But eventually we arrived in Athens.

Margie wakes up to her first day in Athens, Acropolis in the background

I was a total greenhorn at my new job.  I have never forgotten the look of dismay on the Ambassador’s face as he came to terms with this raw, non-Greek speaking 22 year-old being assigned to him at a time of crisis.  But gradually I got the hang of the job and came to enjoy the unique elements that set it apart from what seemed to me to be other very mundane careers.  But some parts of the job did not appeal, especially “representation” (as diplomatic entertaining was called).

Meanwhile Margie was simultaneously coming to terms with married life, living overseas, being denied the opportunity to work and operating under rules and conditions set by Canberra-based bureaucrats.  Doubts were already there that life as a foreign affairs wife was not really for her.

We returned to Canberra in 1977 and a work jolt for me.  Just before leaving Athens my then Ambassador suggested that I consider taking a rotation in another government department to broaden my experience.  Through his contacts the Ambassador was able to arrange a position for me in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C).  This department had emerged as a centre of power under new Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, and I jumped at the chance.

My time in PM&C did have one highlight.  I was assigned to work on a special review set up by Prime Minister Fraser into the effectiveness of programs and services for migrants (the Galbally Review).  The report released in 1978 recognised for the first time the need for comprehensive data on the participation of migrants in all relevant programs as a prerequisite to monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of all Commonwealth programs and services used by migrants.  Mainly I did low level work but I did draft the section of the review on the need for multicultural radio stations to assist migrants adjust to their new country.  This formed the basis of the establishment of SBS radio and television services.

But this aside I mostly regretted the PM&C transfer.  I felt like a fish out of water and spent much of my time handling issues and dealing with people that were unfamiliar.  I especially found difficult the time I spent as part of a small group of econometricians working on modelling the federal budget to find savings.  The academic running the group treated me like a dunce when it came to complex statistics—and I proved him right most days.

Member, Australian Delegation at an ESCAP ministerial conference, 1983

I escaped back to Foreign Affairs in 1979 and a year later Margie and I (with daughter Yvette in tow) were off to Bangkok.  This was a very different posting to Athens as Australia was obviously a much bigger player in the Asian region and my role was also much different.  Bangkok was the regional headquarters for many United Nations bodies and I was sent as Australia’s Deputy Permanent Representative.

I spent much of my time attending UN meetings and negotiating with the representatives of other member countries as well as UN bureaucrats.  Overall Bangkok was a very happy posting.  We especially enjoyed the food and the lovely Thai people.  We returned to Australia in 1982 (with Gabrielle now also in the picture).

A third posting to New Delhi followed in 1985.  In many ways this was the best of my postings, at least in terms of the work.  But living conditions were tough (relative to Australia, of course, not to local Indians).  Margie, who had been very reluctant to go in the first place, tried hard to accept New Delhi but it became obvious that the cycle of postings and stints in Canberra were not for her.  She yearned to get back to Sydney and to be able to get a job.

I thought Margie was looking at life in Sydney through rose coloured glasses so I hatched a plan to temporarily leave Foreign Affairs.  I cut the posting short to take a job with the Export Finance Insurance Corporation (EFIC), an arm of the Department of Trade, located in Sydney.  I was sure that after a couple of years at most Margie would “come to her senses” and we could resume a diplomat’s life.

Work beyond DFAT

We got back to Sydney in November 1986, the first time we had lived in the city since getting married twelve years earlier.  I was convinced that Margie would find life in Sydney a disappointment, but I was the first to feel this way.

The EFIC job I had taken was truly awful and I had to drag myself into the office every day.  Margie was showing no sign of the disillusionment I had expected.  I started desperately looking for another job, even seriously considering employment with another government agency, the Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation in which I had no real interest -- but, I thought, at least it wasn't EFIC.

But not for the first time in my career luck was on my side.  Another foreign services officer who had been with me in Bangkok was now working for the Overseas Telecommunications Corporation, the then government-owned international telephone company.  OTC was busy trying to create new international business ventures, especially in Asia, and recruiting people with appropriate experience.  He asked whether I was interested in joining OTC.  I jumped at the chance to escape EFIC.

I was at OTC for almost 7 years.  I had many different roles.  Starting out with a vaguely defined business development role I spent time as a strategy guru to the Managing Director, acted as OTC’s public spokesman for a while before running my own small business unit offering low-rent, but highly profitable, international voice services like horoscopes and advice lines.

Overall my time at OTC was the most satisfying period in my career up to then.  Along the way the whole idea of returning to Foreign Affairs just faded away.  Years later, as I saw what it did to other people who joined with me, I was to realise that I would have hated spending my entire working life in the diplomatic service.  I really wasn’t cut out for it after all.

Switch to Financial Services

By 1995 OTC had been absorbed into Telstra and become a much less attractive work environment.  I was looking for a change and somehow got a left field job as the first CEO of a new start-up company.  InvestmentLink had been established by a group of Australian fund managers to provide electronic data links to the financial planners who sold their investment products.

Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 1995

But by 9am on the first day in this job I realised how tough it was going to be and that actually I had few of the necessary skills or industry experience.

The next two years were frustrating.  I did not appreciate at first that financial planners, the intended principal users of the data service this new company was establishing were deeply suspicious of the motives of the fud managers in promoting it.  The planners were concerned that it was a fund manager strategy to lock them into monopoly data provider.  As well the service, built on proprietary technology, was launched just as the open standards internet emerged.  Convincing people to take it up was a daily struggle.  I did, however, learn a huge amount about the financial services industry and the difficulty in getting people to adopt change in business.  Actually everything I was able to achieve later in my career was based on the foundation of my experience at InvestmentLink.

A (brief) tilt at Politics

Just as I was transitioning from Telstra to InvestmentLink I also had a brief tilt at entering politics.

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Pre-selection Candidate Brochure for North Sydney, 1995

In 1995 Margie was working for John Dowd, then Attorney-General in the (Liberal) NSW Government.  John encouraged me to enter the pre-selection race to be the Liberal candidate for the seat of North Sydney at the scheduled 1996 federal election.  For the next year I devoted a huge amount of energy to building my profile in the Liberal Party.

I made modest progress and learnt a lot about the political process, but when the pre-selection ballot came around I was eliminated early on in a Melbourne Cup field.  Joe Hockey won easily and was go onto to become a senior minister in successive Coalition governments.

Morphing into a consultant, then business and project management

By 1997 the frustrations of InvestmentLink were beginning to take their toll.  I began looking around for a new opportunity.  “eCommerce” was the new buzzword and Internet mania was in full swing.  KPMG, like other major consulting firms was looking to find ways to build its credentials in providing advice to its corporate clients on how best to ride the new Internet wave.  The Sydney KPMG office had brought over a young consultant from their California practice to drive their push into eCommerce consulting but decided they also needed someone older and with local knowledge to work with him to build the new practice.  I got the job!

KPMG was a real eye-opener.  I saw firsthand how big consulting firms operate and the challenge of servicing clients who were convinced they needed help – they just didn’t know what help and then how to implement the advice they had paid for. 

Back in InvestmentLink days I had made lots of financial industry contacts and in 1999 I was approached by one of those the CEO of Colonial First State, the largest Australian fund manager.  The CEO was a visionary CEO and was determined to lead the pack in introducing online services, like allowing clients to access and manage their own investment accounts online.

In those days that was revolutionary stuff and I jumped at the opportunity to lead this push.  Over the next four years I had a succession of jobs, including a 6-month “posting” in Edinburgh in late 2000 when the company acquired a local Scottish fund manager.

This CEO was also the one who recognised a talent for project management that I had not seen in myself.  After Edinburgh in 2001 he put me in charge of two massive internal projects which combined management, technical, financial and people challenges.  I was surprised to find I was good at this and took great satisfaction from the success of each of the projects thrown at me.

But by 2002 all was not going well for me at CFS.  I was never really part of the senior management “old boys club” and the future mapped out for me seemed to involve moving from one corporate project to another, but each time with less dedicated resources and independence.  I negotiated my way out of CFS in mid-2003, planning to take a year off while I figured out what to do next.  I thought it was quite possible that I would never work full-time again.

A post-career career

As had happened so many times earlier luck and past contacts came from nowhere to point me in a new direction.  The US consultant who had recruited me to KPMG 6 years earlier gave my name to M Squared, a boutique consulting company in San Francisco who were looking for someone to place in the Sydney office of one of their major clients, technology giant Cisco.  They gave me a call.  To my surprise I was back at work in August 2004, less than two months after leaving CFS.

Working for an American company as a remotely employed consultant was a completely new experience for me, but as before I eventually got the hang of it.

When I finished that first M Squared engagement in late 2004 I saw it as a one-off and considered my formal work career was probably over.  But two years later I got another unexpected call from M Squared, heading off to work for Cisco again, this time in Brussels.

A golden few years followed where I seemed to be able to take on consulting engagements as and when it suited me.  After Brussels these assignments were exclusively in Silicon Valley, California with both Cisco and later with M Squared itself.   Along the way Margie and I came to regard San Francisco as a second home as we spent months there at a time.

Both M Squared and Cisco had changed a lot over the years.  I haven’t worked on a full-scale consulting engagement since 2012.   This time it really does feel like the end of a career that has been unplanned and taken me down many different paths.