Frank Howarth PSM

Deputy Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Presiding Dean, University Secretary, members of the University Executive, Council and Academic Board, staff, family, graduate support groups amongst the family, friends, and most importantly, you graduates. May I begin by paying my respects to the traditional owners of this land we meet on, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging, people from whom I’ve learned a great deal in my long career. 

If you want to get a group of leading businesspeople to think differently, you’d take them to a zoo, wouldn’t you? And if you want to get an airline terminal better designed, you’d obviously employ a ballet choreographer. Does that make sense? I’ll come back to these two examples a little bit later and see if it does. 

So, how does a lapsed scientist who became a museum director end up speaking with you, future business leaders? Let me tell you a little bit more about what I’ve learned from a somewhat diverse career, as Attila set out, and it might make some more sense then. The things that have most motivated me have been people in all their diversity; a personal satisfaction from changing things to the better, at least in my opinion; and a desire to make the world a fairer place. 

I graduated from Macquarie University as a geologist and became more interested in why scientists do what they do, rather than the science itself. That got me into a Master of Science and Society at University of New South Wales, which looks at the interplay of science with the wider world. I also became particularly interested in why governments do what they do, sometimes well and sometimes – and it seems quite frequently just at the moment – not so well. That led me to an initial career in the 1980s in public policy in government, and policy follows a deceptively simple process, which in many ways has guided me forever after, and it goes something like this: where are we now, where do we want to be and how do we get there? And that can be applied in many, many situations. And I also have another maxim that’s been a guide to me, and that’s the one that says change the things you can; don’t try and change the things you can’t and have the wisdom to know the difference. I’ve also taken that change mantra into other realms. 

I strongly believe in being active in the wider community, as the Deputy Chancellor alluded to, outside work, particularly in celebrating diversity and reducing discrimination.  During the 1980s and 1990s, I was involved in leadership in Sydney’s gay and lesbian community and still am very proud of my involvement at that time. So, here I was happily working in transport policy but really wanting to make things better for the environment. I kept applying for senior executive roles in the then Environment Protection Authority and kept getting knocked back because I didn’t really have enough depth of experience in environment, but pester power is a really good thing, I found out, and having a good contact network helps enormously as well. 

One day I got a phone call from a ministerial staffer asking if I would like the opportunity to run a small environment agency for six months while a new CEO was found; that was the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, and I went there for six months and stayed for eight years and learned a huge amount in the process. The lesson out of all of that is, if you’re offered an opportunity, I really suggest you take this to heart. If you’re offered an opportunity and it broadly fits with where you want to go, then grab it. Don’t let those opportunities go past. 

I then had a short stint back in mainstream environment policy and government and then the opportunity to lead the Australian Museum for 10 years until 2014. Since leaving the museum, as Attila set out, I divide my time between consulting work, mainly in fundraising and strategy; being a member of various not-for-profit boards; and in one particular area of interest for me that led to this wonderful university, UTS. That interest is in innovation and in particular, how the creativity inherent in arts, design, culture more widely, can foster business innovation. 

My appointment as an adjunct professor in the business school here is enabling me to pursue this interest and I thank the university very much for that opportunity. And it just may be why I’m here today, a former museum leader talking to future business leaders, you people here. Your graduation today shows you’ve reached one key milestone in that leadership process. You’ll go onto careers in Australia and many other countries and parts of the world and during those careers you will be, or should be, focused on innovation in pretty much everything you do – on how to do things better, how to do new things, how to change things. 

Innovation is not just developing a new gadget or software package, setting up a start-up, finding venture capital, making your first billion. Unicorns are rare for a very good reason. That linear sense of innovation works occasionally, but the real world is much more complex. Doing something in a new and better way can and should happen in any part of the business, from the back of house to the customer-facing areas, and Australia is desperately in need of innovation in its business sector, particularly as we’ve become less dependent on extractive industries and hopefully on coal in particular. 

In addition to that, the tensions between China and the US risk Australia becoming collateral damage in a trade war and the more flexible and innovative we are, the better we’ll be able to manage through that. You’ll be aware that government has a great deal of faith, governments have a great deal of faith in the STEM sector – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – to foster innovation. STEM is indeed important, but a few of us feel that the creativity, the different way of seeing and doing, that is inherent in arts, design and the cultural sector, is at least as important as STEM to successful innovation. And that brings me back to the importance of zoos and airline terminals. 

Getting business leaders to shape their frame of reference, to think outside their normal constraints, to challenge their assumptions, is one key to innovation. So, if you have a group of business leaders in some sort of development program and you want to shake up their way of thinking, then put them somewhere that they’re not used to, even though they may think you’re mad at the time. Put them somewhere that challenges that way of thinking. Let them loose to wander around a zoo or an art gallery or indeed a museum for an hour. Don’t tell them why; just let them observe and see where that leads their trains of thought. 

With respect to the airline terminal, let’s say you’re a group of designers and architects and you want to build a new innovative airline terminal, and this is true; this was JetBlue and LaGuardia airport in New York in 2014. When it gets down to it, airline terminals are about two groups of people moving in opposite directions. How do you get them moving efficiently but also stopping when you want them to stop at key points? In the case of that JetBlue terminal at LaGuardia, the designers asked themselves: what type of person works in people movement but isn’t in the design or architecture sector? Who can we find who thinks about people movement differently from us? And the answer to that, in their case, was choreographers. Choreographers think about how people move around a stage, in particular. So, the designers hired two choreographers to work with them on the airline terminal. Choreographers can force them, or in that case, did force them, to think differently and to come up with a better, more innovative solution. 

My closing advice to you as future business leaders is to look at the ways you can think differently, to challenge your assumptions. When you have a problem at work that needs you to think differently, and I mean this quite seriously, go to somewhere different. Go to an art gallery or a museum or a rock concert. Get yourselves a partnership with an organisation in the arts, design or cultural sector and let them help you be more creative and innovative, and in turn, you can help them be more businesslike. 

Finally, I’m not a great believer in career plans. If someone says to me, as one of my mentors did a little while ago, mentees did a little while ago, if someone says to me, ‘I have my career plan laid out and this is exactly where I’m going to be in 10 years’ time,’ then I’m likely to run screaming from the room. The world simply doesn’t work like that, and nor should you. 

My advice is to keep a general idea of where you’d like to go but follow your interests and your instincts. Take opportunities where they present themselves and build as useful a contact network as you can to make sure you hear about those opportunities. You’re graduating from a very special university, one that celebrates creativity, innovation, a focus on the future and very importantly, diversity. Take those values to heart and apply them in all aspects of your lives, as the Deputy Chancellor said. Don’t plan your future to hard. Lead with your head and your heart, and most importantly, when the going gets tough, visit an art gallery or go to a concert or join a theatre company. You will see the world differently. Thank you.