How your university experience will shape your future life and career

While education in the classroom is important, much of the learning at a university takes place outside the classroom

(pages 44-47 of printed journal)

Education is a passion of mine. One of the advantages of addressing you on this occasion is the opportunity to reflect on my own university experiences and to share some of the lessons that enabled me to pursue a fulfilling career and life.

A confession

It also gives me an opportunity to clear my conscience and to make a confession: I was a member of the 'Otway Ranges Appreciation League'. Alas, at the time, issues such as environ-mental responsibility or climate change were not on my agenda.

Some of my friends discovered that University money was available for clubs and societies with worthy objects, provided they had a constitution, held an annual general meeting and issued financial reports. In consequence, as an enterprising Commerce/Law student, I joined the Otway Ranges Appreciation League or 'ORAL' as it came to be known at the University. We were given a grant of $1,500; an enormous sum of money for impoverished students in those days. Most of this grant was consumed at a celebratory lunch at the nearby Clyde Hotel, where we plotted how to use the balance of our funds - for an annual Melbourne Cup Day BBQ and an annual tennis tournament.

With our first AGM looming, we discovered to our consternation that a professor from the Arts Faculty wished to address the Otway Ranges Appreciation League on some of the environ-mental challenges facing our wonderful ecosystem. It proved very challenging to get a quorum and to listen to what was a very technical and turgid presentation. However, it did make an impression on us. We now knew where the Otway Ranges were; and we decided to hold our next picnic at the Lorne Pub rather than the Clyde.

An auditor today, examining how the $1,500 was spent, would regard it as the worst example of misuse of university funds. But was it? Let us look at it more closely.

The lessons learnt

Core competency development

KPMG employs 750 graduates every year - 550 positions in Australia and 200 positions in Asia. While academic results are important, the core competencies that we look for in our graduates are: an ability to build relationships with people; lateral thinking; analytical skills; resilience; presentation skills; and the ability to work in a team.

While education in the classroom is important, much of the learning at a university takes place outside the classroom. I have seen many brilliant people with outstanding examination results; yet their lack of personality, and their inability to relate to people or think laterally, have impaired their future leadership prospects. On the other hand, by taking initiative, thinking laterally, and forming networks, ORAL was one of the best tutorials we ever attended at the University.

Relationships

My time at the University not only gave me the opportunity to meet my wife, my present network drawn from those years include two managing partners of major national legal firms, two judges, two magistrates, senior public servants and other captains of industry, and CEOs of not-for-profit organisations. The point I make is that the relationships that have influenced my life and my career were very much formed as part of the University experience and indeed through ORAL. Melbourne is a very relationship-driven city, and the relationships you start at university are a key success factor moving forward.

When I visit our offices in Shanghai, Mumbai, Ho Chi Min or Kuala Lumpur, I see that University of Melbourne students now hold important roles in our Asian offices. Make sure that you maintain contact with your tutorial groups or syndicates - by email, Facebook or in other ways - as one day, when you travel to cities such as Beijing, Singapore or Taipei, those contacts will be very valuable.

Thinking globally

My second great education lesson was when I moved to Amsterdam to run KPMG's Global Tax Centre. I visited 50 countries in two years, some of these ten times. I wrote the strategy for the rise of the Asia Pacific economies and had responsibility for opening our offices in Central and Eastern Europe. I witnessed the opening of the European Market in 1992. Not only did my geography expand, it was an unprecedented personal development opportunity to be isolated from my friends and family in a foreign country. What did I learn from that experience?

Asia Pacific century - location, location, location

Any economist or demographer will tell you that this is the Asia Pacific century, which will see the rise of emerging markets of the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China. You probably witnessed the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August. If you read Goldman Sachs' G11 report, the next emerging countries are Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile and Mexico. As the industrial revolution takes place, there will be enormous appetite for the skills and commodities that we are celebrating today and that you will continue to consolidate in the coming years.

At University, I benefited from Geoffrey Blainey's wonderful lectures about the tyranny of distance, which told us that our remoteness in the world was a curse. Increasingly, it is a blessing in an age when technology removes the impediments of geographic disadvantage. While cost and speed to market become the key international differentiators, we are in the right place in the world. Issues such as bio-security, terrorism and carbon pollution reduction favour island nations. Australia will become more and more attractive for populations, investment and geographic diversification. In addition, we must be a technology-led country that is able to deliver its service offerings through the Internet, social networks and regular cultural exchange.

So I ask myself: should students spend two years serving in the bars of London's Earls Court or schmoozing on Wall Street? As an employer, I would place less value on these experiences. Instead, you should test yourself in the great Asian, Middle Eastern or South American cities - Santiago, Beijing, Jakarta, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. These are where future job and economic opportunities lie - not to mention the places for optimum personal development - and where the next set of relationships will be formed.

We are a region, not a country

Melbourne was built during the gold rushes of the 1860s. If you walk up the Paris end of Collins Street and look at our state's institutions - the libraries, museums, Parliament House and the Exhibition Building - they are all dividends of the time when Melbourne was close to being the richest city in the world. That legacy has endured over the years as the head offices of our major mining companies, agricultural businesses and banks have settled in Melbourne.

It is fair to say that the most recent 'gold rush', the phenomenal commodities boom, is currently faltering. If this current market turmoil has taught us anything, it is that we can no longer think of Australia as a quarry and a farm. We also need to recognise that our destiny lies in our services sector, our engineering skills, metallurgy, education, medicine. Our future is very much linked to the countries in these emerging regions. Even an accounting practice such as ours needs to view intellectual property and resources as a supplied commodity. This view prompted us to merge with nine of our Asian practices during the year, in order to gain access to those fast growing markets overseas and reflect the way our customers operate. Can KPMG write the banking regulations in Indonesia, do a treasury review in Korea or conduct due diligence in Japan? The business model that will evolve is not based on geographic boundaries but on fast, agile organisations which operate across our region. It is a challenge also for universities to operate this way.

Domestic agenda

When I lived in the Netherlands, I always remarked that the first seven pages of the newspapers dealt with international news, while Dutch news was to be found on page eight. In Australia, the first and second pages are generally related to football, political and human interest stories, with international news not appearing until about page eight. There are some major historic trends happening in our region - the tension between Japan and China, governance reform taking place in Indonesia, the inflationary problems in Vietnam, social tensions in the Chinese provinces. Yet these issues simply do not rate a mention in our news, and we have to remind ourselves constantly that we are part of an increasingly global world that is linked to these problems. Who would have thought that the housing problem in the US would flow through to such catastrophic international consequences? The CEO of the future will have had five overseas postings and will need to focus on regional and global trends, not local football results. 'Global Vision' will differentiate business leaders, and you should invest your time to think this way.

Tradition is a disadvantage

There is a 'can-do' mentality in Australia. We have always shown a great capacity for innovation. It is part of our young history; we are not steeped in tradition. We tend to challenge existing orders and are prepared to ask the hard, direct questions that others may find politically or socially offensive. For four years in the Netherlands, I was continually met by those wonderful Dutch words 'it's not possible'. To get a driver's licence online, to go to the doctor without a letter of referral - it's not possible. Can I restructure or reposition our workforce? It's not possible. The ability to constantly look at new business and social models is a key to moving forward successfully. We have to be flexible thinkers, avoiding bureaucracy, processes and methodologies that stifle the development of new and emerging ideas and techniques.

Neutrality

Sitting on KPMG's global Board, I am amazed at how often I am asked to mediate in disputes and resolve issues, simply because Australia is regarded as a neutral country with a great sense of fairness and objectivity. We are not aligned to the European bloc, the American bloc or, culturally, even to the Asian bloc. We listen, we speak our mind and we have a great sense of fairness. We have earned our reputation for giving people a 'fair go'.

Every year at KPMG, we roll out our strategic plan and budget to staff. This year we decided to do separate sessions with our junior staff to get them more involved. Our first session was in Brisbane and, frankly, it was not going well until a new graduate got up and said:

I've only been here six weeks - it's like working for a communist organisation. I don't have any authority to do anything for the IT systems. They are old generation, you don't reward individual achievement. What are you going to do about it?

Confronted with such an intelligent Generation Y, we had an hour of the most productive and constructive feedback. It showed that we had a cultural problem in our organisation. It revised our strategy to focus, simplify, empower and engage our organisation at different levels. With your fresh, bright young minds, you will see things that people entrenched in standard processes miss. Your views and feedback are important. Try and add value to your organisation and do not just become one of the mob.

Social inclusion

However, there is more to life than you or your employer. True leadership shows thinking and actions around the disadvantaged and other problems in our society. At KPMG, it is compulsory for every partner to set up a philanthropic or not for profit board and contribute to the betterment of our society. It is part of our ethos and superb leadership training. I am currently tackling the problems of Indigenous education and employment through various partnerships with communities. I recently launched a disabled employment project, sponsored research into women's diabetes, helped to expand the Prahran Mission for the homeless, and raised funds for new cancer centres. It is heartening to see the increased awareness of social issues among our graduates who want to address issues such as climate change, Indigenous development and social inclusion - far more than the Otway Ranges Appreciation League ever did. I wish I had become more involved with these important social issues at an earlier age.

Liveability versus growth

Everyone talks about our city's wonderful liveability. It is what keeps and attracts most of us here. It is fascinating to me to watch debates around issues such as channel deepening or the Eddington Infrastructure Report, or to listen to complaints about public transport and road congestion.

Yet to maintain liveability it is necessary to invest in future resources and infrastructure. I am not critical of the Government, because I do not think most people could have anticipated all the issues arising from the growth in our city and economy. However, the matter is in our hands. We could say: 'We don't need this, we are content with the size of our city.' But, frankly, this will undermine the city's liveability in the future. You should contribute ideas and be an ambassador for the world's most liveable city. Further, you should also think of Melbourne as one of the world's great university cities. Education is our third largest export. It should be better understood that this city's educational and research facilities are important not only to its local population but also to the external markets to which I have referred.

Entrepreneurs

The Business Council has a vision for Australia as the best country in which to live, learn and work. It strives to be one of the world's top five economies, even with such a small population.

If there was one particular concern I have with this, it is our inability to applaud and assist entrepreneurial talent. This University produces an incredible volume of research and good ideas. Yet our ability to take these through to the marketplace is significantly handicapped by a shortage of people capable of managing and exploiting businesses. There is no shortage of capital - be it venture capital, superannuation money or equity markets - to support good ideas. Invariably, however, the person that makes the scientific break through lacks the ability to take it to the marketplace. Equally, some of our entrepreneurs do not really recognise the real potential of the technology and ideas, or the patent problems, access to market and other related problems. This is an issue that really concerns me - whether we have the right environment here to reward, train and develop entrepreneurial talent. I very much hope that I am addressing that potential talent today.

Conclusion

If I were sitting in your seat, I would want to feel that I was part of the top five nations in the world, one that performs considerably above its weight by population, by GDP or by size. It does so. It is a country with intellectual capacity and the ability of its citizens to understand where they are in a global world; a country that leverages the skills and talent promoted by its education system to benefit this nation; and a country that tries out new ideas and creates an economic dividend for the benefit of all society.

I have been very fortunate to have had a career that has taken me to 90 countries around the world and to accept a leadership position in private, government and philanthropic enterprises. Whether it was studying the Otway Ranges, living in a foreign country or contributing to this city, my university experience was the foundation for my life. Please take the time to reflect on your education and how it places you to benefit not only your own life, but also the city and country in which you live.

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An edited version of his Occasional Address delivered at the graduation on 15 December 2008.

Mr Michael Andrew is Australian Chairman of KPMG. He is a member of the Business Council of Australia's Task Force on education and he co-chaired the Committee for Melbourne's Task Force into Higher Education. He was Chairman of Lauriston, one of Melbourne's leading girls schools, for many years.

Volume 5 APRIL 2009