University of Canterbury Graduation Speech - 17 December 2014
NAUMAI, HAERE MAI
E TE MANAHIRI TUARANGI,
HAERE MAI MO TENEI HUI,
MO TENEI KAUPAPA O TE RA,
NO REIRA, TENA KOUTOU, TENA KOUTOU,
TENA KOUTOU KATOA.
Welcome,
Visitors from afar
Welcome to this day of great importance
And greetings to you all
Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, distinguished Guests,
Graduates, Families and Friends
Today is a very special day for you all and I am
extremely honoured to be part of it. It
is a day that you will all remember for the rest of your lives and for that
reason alone I encourage you to make the most of it.
The Graduates that are here today are a special breed.
You have had your own unique set of challenges:
- You have been victims of seriousl seismic disruption
- You have had to camp out in temporary buildings
- You have had to be extraordinarily adaptable and tolerant as you have been moved from one place to anther in the context of a rebuild zone, and
- You have had to do what you have done in the context of your university education in an environment of continuous disruption and sub-optimal learning conditions.
The fact that you are here today is testament to your perseverance
and tenacity. It is likely that you are the better for it. You will be a little
edgy, a little entrepreneurial, have a high capacity for risk taking and be
experienced in more disruption than most, which in the volatile environment you
are all about to enter into, will certainly stand you in good stead.
The University of Canterbury is an extremely proud
institution. It has a long and distinguished heritage and an extraordinarily influential
alumni. You are now about to enter that alumni and I know that you will be
making your own significant and distinguished contributions to our community
and beyond.
I would like to recognise Richard Ballantyne, a life
member of the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce, who is being honoured
today. Thank you Richard for what you have done for our community.
In my experience there are four fundamental benefits of
attending university.
The first is that you develop new social contacts that
will remain with you for the rest of your life. You have been thrown into an
environment sprinkled with new people, new behaviours and new challenges. Mark
my words, the people you have come through university with will remain friends
and colleagues for as long as you live. Many will remain very special people in
your lives.
The second benefit from attending university is that you
have probably learned how to learn. I remember when I attended secondary school
in Rotorua my headmaster informed me as I left school in my reference that I
had been indolent and would be well served to seek a useful apprenticeship. At
secondary school I was lazy and I had not learned how to learn. In the university environment where there was no-one forcing me to do anything it
suddenly dawned upon me that if I was to succeed, I needed to apply myself.
No-one else as going to do that on my behalf. I have no doubt that many of you
in this room have learned just that.
The third benefit from attending university is that you
have qualified with a degree that will assist you in specialist fields of activity.
Many of you, however, will not pursue specialist areas directly related to your
qualification and you will forget most of what you have learned. However, you
will know where to go to find out relevant information should you need it. I
can vouch for that as a graduate majoring in Zoology and spending my whole life
in commerce.
Having a degree will also assist you in obtaining
employment. But the significance of your degree will fade over time as your
experience in the workplace increases in value.
Of course you are going into a completely different world
that I entered into after my graduation in the 1970s. Once I had graduated I
determined a job that would suit me, in my case it was export marketing, and I have
more or less stayed in that field for the rest of my life, in one form or
another. In your situation your career path is not so much a path as crazy
paving. Most of you will have several changes in career and be involved in a
relatively restless career path. You will jump from one career pursuit to
another. That is just the way things are these days and it will provide you
with a varied and rewarding pathway through life.
As graduates most of you will end up as leaders in your
respective communities. I have a theory which I have applied throughout my
working career which I call the “partial vacuum theory of management”. It is
your responsibility as leaders to do whatever you can, with the people you work
with, to create a partial vacuum in front of them, to encourage them into new
areas of activity, to encourage them to take risks, and to encourage them to go
where they might not have gone without your leadership influence. It is really
about empowerment. But it is more than that – its empowerment with some subtle direction
into new challenges.
In my opinion we all have almost unlimited potential. Unfortunately
for most of us that potential is never fully realised. If we are put in an
environment where we are encouraged to take new risks, where we can make
mistakes without blame, and can learn from them, where we can work on results
rather than processes, and where we can be responsible for setting our own
performance criteria, we will be able to realise much more potential than we knew
we had.
In a strange way the events of 4 September 2010
and 22 February 2011, together with the 53 aftershocks of over 5 on the richter
scale and 11,000 aftershocks over 3, which we all remember.
In a strange way the events of 4 September 2010 and 22
February 2011, together with the 53 aftershocks of over 5 on the richter scale
and 11,000 aftershocks over 3, which we all remember well, have created a
unique set of circumstances for us. With all the tragedy aside, as terrible as
that was, we have become a unique enclave of people. We have had to deal with
absolutely unprecedented circumstances, with chaos we didn’t think was
possible, with human responses that have been unexpected and extraordinary,
with material destruction that is unprecedented in the history of this country,
and with social consequences that are still playing out. It is very clear to me
that some of us are still suffering from fatigue because of the enormity of the
event we have been through. We with the various psychological phases that we
have gone through since that event have now reached the stage where every cell
in our body is tired. I have heard it called cellular fatigue. It becomes
particularly prevalent around Christmas and given we are just one week away, I
am amazed that you are not all nodding off out there!
However, the opportunity the natural disaster has put
before us is extraordinary. We have the opportunity to participate in the
rebuild of a city. I am reminded of a quotation by Dutch Leonard, the Professor
of Public Affairs from Harvard University, who has been in Christchurch several
times since the earthquakes and deals in post disaster community issues. One of
his statements which I will remember for as long as I live is “as you create Christchurch you must re-create
it to ride the great tail winds of our time, not the tail winds of yesterday”.
That is more profound then it sounds and certainly something that provides
enormous opportunity for us. Having thought about it often over the last 2.5
years it is something of course we should be doing all of the time. You need to
concentrate on how you, as graduates of the University of Canterbury, learn to
ride the great tail winds of your time and not concentrate on riding the tail winds
of yesterday.
We found new ways to do things in Christchurch
because we had to and that has had a marked
impact on productivity, economic activity and exciting
new business models. It has put many of us into environments that we never
expected to be in. Environments where we can indeed explore the boundaries of
our potential.
I remind you to think about the partial vacuum theory of
management and how this current environment pre-disposes itself to encouraging
everyone to be drawn into new and exciting opportunity.
As many of you get into leadership positions as
graduates from the University, whether or not you remain in Christchurch, think
from time to time about the partial vacuum theory and how you can apply it. If
we do not realise our full potential that is a real shame and a real waste. For
me it is pretty much summed up in all of us developing an aspiration which will
enable us at the end of our careers to say “wow
what a ride”. The other option is “was
that it” and I fear that many of us might feel under-fulfilled and
under-done because we have not explored our full potential, because we have not
been put in unique situations, because we have not be subjected to the partial
vacuum theory of management, and because we have been indolent. Right now I
have no time for indolence and I would encourage everyone of you to work
actively towards getting to a position where one day you can say with pride “wow what a ride”.
NO REIRA, TENA KOUTOU, TENA KOUTOU,
TENA KOUTOU KATOA
