Managing Director, Investment Banking, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
BE (UTS), MBA (Macq), DBA (UniSA), CPEng, EngExec, FIEAust, FAICD

Michael Myers addressed graduates from the Faculty of Eningineering and Information Technology in the Great Hall, University of Technology, Sydney on Thursday 9 May 2013, 2.00pm.

Our speaker today is Dr Michael Myers.

In 1983, Michael established his own Engineering consulting practice, CONCENTRIC, which was involved in implementing high-end engineering technology into the Automotive, Aerospace, Defence and Manufacturing industries across the Asia Pacific region.

Michael has been deeply involved in Australian engineering and was awarded the Warren Centre Medal for his Contribution to the field, as well as being involved in various Government advisory panels on Engineering and Education.

In 1998, Michael founded the Re-Engineering Australia Foundation, which was established to inspire younger Australians to take up careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. This year, Re-Engineering Australia will engage with over 35,000 students across Australia, and since its inception, over 500,000 students have been through Re-Engineering Australia’s programs.

Michael is currently a UTS foundation luminary and has just completed his Doctorate on “the Motivational Drivers of Children’s Career Decision Choices.”

It gives me great pleasure to invite Dr Michael Myers to deliver the occasional address.

Speech

Graduands, Chancellor, Vice- Chancellor, members of the council and university, ladies and gentlemen, family and friends.

Good afternoon. It is a great pleasure and privilege to be here today to talk to you about the future, a subject I’m passionate about, and most importantly, to talk about your future.

My journey into the world of engineering started in these hallways, and my memories of those early days are still fresh in my mind. The smell, the feel and the essence of UTS has not changed. It will not leave you during your life and remain as you journey into the future.

The traditions of this university, and of this event, provide you with a doorway, a rite of passage to the future, and highlight the importance of recognising and learning from the past.

Each step in your journey of learning from here forward will be another door into the future. You can choose to continue learning, continue stepping further into the future, or you can pull up a chair and rest on our laurels, this is your choice.

I have four daughters. The youngest, Sophie, is now 12. When Sophie was four she came home from pre-school with a painting. Normally she is a brilliant drawer who takes after her dad, but on this day my wife Toni couldn't make head or tails of her painting it was all sorts of blobs.

'What’s this Soph? 'Toni asked.

Sophie calmly walked over, had a look at the picture and said 'Mum that's a retrospective sculpture' and calmly walked away.

That's coming from a FOUR year old!

So be warned, if you choose to rest on your laurels there is a generation on the way that will walk all over you.

If there were three pieces of advice I could offer to help you navigate the world out there, they would revolve around the following: Onions, Heroes and Black Holes.

The world is not black and white, and neither will be your path to success. The world is like an onion; multi layered with each layer influencing and interaction with the next. Everything you do will have an impact on many layers of this onion, and all your decisions must be formulated on an understanding of the impact your decisions will have on the other layers.

I am certain that peeling a passage through this onion will at times bring tears to your eyes. It will take patience, politics and passion to navigate, as well as the passion to overcome the inertia of those around you and passion to overcome those who are stuck in the past. So my first piece of advice … is to keep peeling no matter how many tears.

Secondly, you need to start acting like heroes now, and I don't mean like Spiderman.

You need to choose to be heroes for the next generation, and you need to start doing this today.

In my generation, we tended to be left to our own devices as we grew up and thus got to set fire to the neighbourhood, along the way realising that matches can be dangerous.

This generation and the next will not have the luxury of having so much fun while learning. They will need your help and guidance to inspire them in the right direction.

You need to choose to be heroes, choose to be leaders, not know-it-all’s. Leaders listen. You need to continuously interact with those around you personally, not through Facebook. You need to inspire the next generation of students to all become engineers, of course.

I mention the third point as black holes, not because they represent a point of singularity or something to be scared of, but rather because they represent the unknown, and a huge source of energy you can draw upon.

As I have said I have four daughters, and when number three went to High School, I felt guilty. I hadn't done much around the school, so I went up and spoke to the headmaster and he told me about a group of kids building Mileage Marathon cars on Monday nights he thought I could help. I walked away thinking 15 year old kids, billy carts… This is going to be easy. I'm an Engineer, and I will blow these kids out of the water.

I turned up that first Monday night, and these kids rolled out a carbon-fibre, Monique car. They held the world record at 3,200 MPG, and I was blown away.

I turned to one of the students and asked, 'How did you get to build such a brilliant piece of equipment?' The response I received was, 'No one said we couldn't'.

These words now guide everything that I do in my life, and they should also guide you. You must never let society or the environment take away your ability or passion to create your own destiny. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't.

This is not about bucking the system or tradition; it’s about having a go, being fearless as you walk into the unknown black hole, and drawing on the energy of your instincts.

A great man, Bruce Garnsey, once said to me, “Believe in yourself. Trust your instincts and your ability to succeed.”

I congratulate you all on getting this far. My demand of you today is you to go forward and take on this world of onions, be heroes, and never loose sight of the spirit of no one said you couldn’t.

Good Luck