Managing Director, Google Australia & New Zealand
BBus (UTS)

Ms Maile Carnegie addressed graduates from the UTS Business School in the Great Hall, University of Technology, Sydney on Thursday 3 October 2013, 10.30am.

Our speaker today is Ms Maile Carnegie. 

Maile is Google’s Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand. She graduated from UTS with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in Finance, Economics and Marketing. In her last year at UTS she was awarded a scholarship with Procter & Gamble (P&G).

After graduating, Maile joined P&G and worked in the Australia/New Zealand Marketing team where she would become the Brand Manager for Olay and then the Associate Director for Vicks, Pringles and a number of other brands before being transferred to Cincinnati as the Marketing Director for the Tampax brand looking after the USA, Puerto Rico and Canada.

More recently Maile was based in Singapore where she ran P&G’s largest developing market beauty care business and was General Manager for Asia Strategy, Marketing & Design. She finished at P&G earlier this year as the Managing Director of Proctor & Gamble for Australia and New Zealand.

It gives me great pleasure to invite Ms Maile Carnegie to deliver the occasional address.

Speech

Chancellor Wilson, Vice Chancellor Booth, Dean Bajada, staff, distinguished guests, families, friends and more importantly graduates.

It’s an honour to be here today.

A lot has changed since I graduated from UTS 22 years ago.

As graduates you face a world of unprecedented change.

In three years there will be more smartphones than people in the world.

Same sex marriage is legal in 15 countries around the world. When I graduated it was just 1 - The Netherlands.

One in three babies in Australia is born outside of marriage, compared to just over one in ten, 22 years ago.

Choosing not to marry was less acceptable when I graduated - today, the fastest growing household in Australia is the single person household.

These are massive social challenges that will impact your life.

What do they mean? That nobody can chart your course.

No other generation will face the type of change that you will. More importantly, nobody will face the wonderful diversity of choices you have.

So despite the best intentions of people trying to help (including me), you are on your own to figure out how to make your lives and career work.

My hope is that you find things you love and keep you excited and curious for the next 60-70 years (because that’s how long many of you will work!).

So what advice can I give you? Especially as I’ve just admitted that your lives will be so different to mine.

I want to give you three things to think about:

The First One is to “Be a learner”

When I started my career at P&G, I was scared I was going to fail. How could I, a 22-year-old, compete with my new hire class most of who had previous work experience and MBAs from the most prestigious universities in the world?

I was so insecure about this that whenever I was asked to do something, I would run around asking people for their help and advice.

Shockingly (to me) I got a great first performance review.

This made me more confident—and I become like everybody else. I spent less time learning from others and more time talking about what I knew.

So it came as a rude shock that my second performance review was only OK.

I had stopped being a learner.

This was a painful to learn but with hindsight I’m incredibly happy I was forced to learn it so early in my career.

There is no doubt that UTS has given you many skills.

However I think the most important skill you have been taught is how to learn.

This skill, like any other, will wither if you don’t exercise it.

During your careers, you will need to constantly be in learning mode. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that you will have 11 different jobs over your lifetime, so keep learning.

My second piece of advice is to focus on Being Competent

Especially in the first, foundational part of your career - the first 5-10 years.

Not long ago I gave training in the US for some junior people, about 5 years into their careers - it started with everyone introducing themselves and what they were passionate about.

The first person talked about promoting African Americans in businesses. The next person it was Hispanics in business, then Women, then Gay, Lesbian and transgenders, and by the time the introductions were over, only five of the 30 participants were straight white men. They were almost the minority!

The interesting thing is that almost everybody was spending a significant chunk of their working time dedicated to their area of passion. It was interesting because the training I was giving them was because they were underperforming. They were at risk of losing their jobs.

Regardless of which minority you belong to or what your passion is, the most important thing you can do, especially in the beginning of your career is be the most competent person in the room.

I’m not saying that social contribution is unimportant. Just that there is a time and a place for it. In fact, even over the past week I have been called about helping with a couple if causes I’m really passionate about … and my response has been “call me back in six months, right now I need to focus on learning how to do my new job”.

Competence is the best contribution you can make to whatever your cause is.

My last piece of advice is “It will be harder for you to define success than achieve it”

You have so much greater diversity of options and opportunities to consider. That is really exciting, but also create a bit more work for you!

About a year ago I decided that I wanted to change my career. I had been in consumer packaged goods for over 20 years and I wanted to be in the middle of the innovation revolution.

Almost every person I spoke to told me that my career would be better if I stayed on my current path.

It took over a year and a lot of thinking to figure out what I really wanted to do, but eventually I found my way to Google and I could not be happier. If I had listened to other people and not defined success for myself, I guarantee you this would not have happened.

Spend time really understanding what you're excited about and defining what success means for you. Don’t waste time living somebody else’s life; they never had the opportunities that you have. Just like I did 22 years ago, you are going to walk off this stage and start the next exciting chapter of your lives. I know that it seems like the world is a little crazy at the moment, but the crumbling of old institutions is opening up cracks for new businesses and new dreamers.

Yes, you will have to chart your own course, but it is a course that has so many more possibilities and opportunities than I had.

So keep learning, focus on being the most competent person in the room, and figure out what is going to make you happy.

To the students, congratulations on graduating from such a wonderful institution. To friends and family who have come to celebrate (including my wonderful 2 sons), even if they forget to tell you, I’m sure it is very appreciated that you are here on such an important milestone.

Good luck charting your course.