Bruce Ferguson

Managing Director, HELMSMAN International Group

Ceremony: 20 April 2016, 2.00pm

Speech

Hi Everybody. Thanks for the opportunity to speak to you lot. And I say you lot because I used to be in those same seats a number of years ago and I remember how much fun it was to get to this point. But I am going to talk a bit more seriously about the community you are going to be going to because I am from the business community, the community you will be going into. So I thought I would talk about a couple of things.

I want to talk about what your job really is in the community and how to do it really well. So I am going to spending a little bit of time on that but first I thought I would give you a bit of my background so you can understand what I am coming from.

I apologise upfront for my accent and the fact that I probably speak to fast. So if you have a problem understanding me, apologies but that is who I am. I actually grew up in Africa, in a tiny little country called Swaziland. Now I doubt if anybody has ever heard of it but if you have that is fantastic. The entire population of Swaziland is a million people. That’s the whole country. But our crowning achievement is the fact that we only have one traffic light and we are really please with that. We put it in, we had this one traffic light and the whole country turned out to celebrate it. So that’s where I started from. A really small country.

I got my degree in South Africa and decided I was going to go around the world. Pretty common thing when you are a student, you want to go and see the world and I started going around the world. Well, I have not finished the trip yet. The first place I went to was the deepest darkest America, and when I say deepest darkest America, I am talking about the Midwest of the United States. A little place called Minneapolis which is right smack in the middle of America. It is the coldest city in America and I had just come from South Africa. I thought that was pretty interesting going from, you know, our lovely sort of ten degree, twenty degree temperatures to minus forty. It was a bit of a shock to the system. But what really shocked me was their lack of awareness of African issues. The most common question I got was ‘Do you go to school on elephants’? Well that is what I was asked, so the obvious answer is ‘Of course! Of course we go to school on elephants.’ The problem is that parking meters need to be so high and there is a real problem with the number plates. We cannot really see them sometimes.  That is the sort of American experience.  So on my round the world trip, I was there on an exchange program, a 1 year program. Then eleven years later I went to Australia. That is how fast my round the world trip is going… Not very swift but I did pick up a wife on the way, so that sort of slowed me down!

 I came to Australia and one of the things that got my attention was the question, ‘Do you have a criminal record?’ I had thought the needing of a criminal record was no longer a pre-requisite to come to Australia, I thought that had stopped a while ago. But anyway they let me in and that was nearly twenty years ago.

On my journey I had started off as a very technical person. I obtained a degree in geology of studying rocks and what rocks did which was not move around a lot. So I moved into the oil industry and I started working business which is when I came into this space and I got my master’s degree in the business area. That is when things got a lot more serious for me and that is what I wanted to talk to you today about, on a serious note.

Your journey in the community of business people, now there are lots of negative criticisms about being in Business but I want to talk about two things; I want to talk about value and being mindful. Now you all know that what you deal with is the dollar. How many of you have actually thought about where the dollar comes from or what it does because your job is to maximise the return and the value for society that every dollar, you end up dealing with three and sometimes four major constituents. You have customers, shareholders and staff and the government. Every dollar you get, and this is what I want to say in our community of the good business people, we care about every dollar, every day because that dollar somebody gave to you is the world’s biggest vote. Every day people are voting with their dollars. That dollar they worked for. Your job is to take their dollar and guide it. Not just treat it with disrespect. So if you are going to join us, you lot, you join us, you care about that dollar because some person worked hard for that dollar. They have chosen to give it to you because you are going to create value for them. Then you have a shareholder. Your shareholders gave you their money. That money came from somebody else who worked very hard. I am sure there are some business people out there and other people who have put money into pension funds, superannuation. That is money people are going to be retiring on. Guard that money. Give them the return they deserve. So when you are out there, your job is to have that absolute urgency to look after every dollar. Do not waste it. It is people, real people that are giving you real money that they worked very hard for. Shareholders gave you to get return. Customers gave you money to get a good product and staff, staff work for you.

I hope you never end up where I have ended up many times where you got things wrong and you made bad decisions and you’ve got to lay off people. People have jobs, family. You were all probably in situations where you will need to do that. I hope that you will do one thing for me, you say to each person that you are firing personally that you made a bad decision. That you actually don’t just do an email or sms. You sit down in front to of that person and you look them in the eyes and you say ‘I apologise. Unfortunately we can no longer afford to keep you.’ Because that is being a true, honest person in business. Sit down and take it because you are accountable when you are in business for making decisions every day for your customers, staff, shareholders and every day you are going to be making these huge complex decisions when you are in a leadership position. That is what makes business people unique. Every day we have limited time and limited information to make very very critical decisions. Your degree here has started you on that journey. The rest of your career will be learning to make those decisions more and more carefully and if I can say one thing, be present. Always be present when you make a decision. Think about what it is you are doing. Don’t become lazy and slack and say ‘I have made this before.’ Every decision you make involves staff, customers, and your shareholders. That is your trust in the community, that you will do that to the best of your ability. So if I can ask you one thing, please be present, always, every day as a business person creating value.

Thank you and good luck. I would like to say one more thing; I look forward to seeing you out in the business world and enjoy. It is a great career.

About the Speaker

​Bruce Ferguson is the Managing Partner at Helmsman International Group. He has thirty years of experience in project delivery, support, and strategic implementation planning. He also has over fifteen years of experience researching project performance drivers, governance and organisational capability and leadership and direction.

Bruce specialises in driving operational change through executive leadership.

He is a sought after leadership coach for high-profile clients such as Walt Disney, ANZ, Yamaha, and the Australian Department of Defence.

Bruce is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Project Management and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

He holds a Bachelor of Science with Honours from Rhodes University, South Africa, as well as a Masters in Science from the University of California.