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FIVE QUEST I ONS FOR . . .

FIVE QUEST I ONS FOR . . .

PATRICK

O’BRIEN

In 1996, following the completion of his MBA, Patrick O’Brien gave an interview to Aston Business School’s magazine, Network, about his move to New Zealand Telecom. Twentyfour years later, Aston in Touch caught up with Patrick (now based in Singapore) for a Zoom chat about Aston, soft skills, and introducing the Ninja Turtles to New Zealand.

4pm in Singapore, 9am in Brum: interview carried out via Zoom.

Words: Annette Rubery Aston in Touch: What took you to New Zealand after graduating from your MBA in 1989? Patrick O’Brien: I was head-hunted over to New Zealand on a two-week job. It took 12 years! That was back at the turn of the nineties, when deregulation was all the rage in this part of Asia. I was brought over as a senior manager to help move the business forward. So I built the network for New Zealand’s first privately owned television channel, TV3. I was the man that helped bring the Ninja Turtles to New Zealand. I moved on to manage the Maritime Distress and Safety Radio Service, a critical 24-hour infrastructure service providing coverage all the way down to the South Pole, and halfway to Chile. And then after that I became the regional director Asia Pacific, exploring cultures and doing large infrastructure projects in countries like Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. In the mid-nineties the internet came along. I was head-hunted to set up an internet start-up managing the New Zealand domain namespace, dot.nz. When I was at Telecom I’d done a lot of work on presenting in the region on mass conferences on infrastructure, so networking played an important part of my role. The Aston MBA at that time was really handy for me because it gave me a big portfolio of skills. The one thing it hadn’t given me, though, was in-depth legal knowledge. When you were thrown into the internet in those early days, you had to create the rules and defend them. Every day I’d receive a [legal] suit, but it was kind of fun, running things over there. AiT: Tell us about the company you set up in Singapore. PO’B: At the turn of 2000 I was invited to come and run another company in Singapore as the chief operating officer. It was 130-strong, so a much bigger company and venturecapital-funded out of the United States. As it was going to the next stage, it needed grey hair! But joining a company in 2000, 18 months before 9/11, was not so good. After September, all of the venture capital investors flew back to the States and there was turmoil in Asia. So Instead of growing the company, we shrunk it down to 20 people and sold it off. I thought, “What to do next?” The one thing I realised is that the culture over here is very different from what I was brought up with. Especially with the Confucian principles of perseverance, thrift, family values, and education. We had a very simple proposition: what if we could teach people to 'think' in a different way? It was bold but that was the seed for setting up a company [The Amanuenses Network Pte Ltd.] which dealt in soft skills. In 2003 it was a difficult sell because this part of the world was into manufacturing and technical skills, and orders were handed down via hierarchies. But we persevered and we have done quite well, helping people to grow. We conduct training programmes to help people learn about influencing, coaching others, thinking skills, confidence, even writing skills. AiT: How did you come to speak on cruise ships? PO’B: In 2008, with the global financial crisis, times were tough but in 2011 the cruise-ship market started to open up in Asia. A good friend of mine in Australia was launching a talent agency for speakers on ships and they chased me to get involved in the process. The one big attraction was that it took me from small-group training back to big-stage speaking, which I’d done a lot of in the nineties. And another thing: after the global financial crisis everyone had put their head to the grindstone so we hadn’t had a holiday for three years. We thought, “Cruise ship? Never been on one. Why not?” And we enjoyed it. When you talk to an audience on a cruise ship, you’re not necessarily trying to give them ideas for themselves. It’s more about passing on ideas vicariously, to their kids or their grandkids. It’s a very different way of talking to people. Subsequently we’ve gone a lot deeper, talking about thedestinations visited, including history, geography, culture, religions, philosophies, even the Silk Road. It forces us to keep learning.

Patrick and his wife Maureen on-board ship with the Mubarak Peace Bridge in the background.

AiT: Has the Covid-19 pandemic had an impact on your business? PO’B: From a business standpoint, yes, it is challenging. We had experience of SARS many years ago and that was pretty horrific. After the global financial crisis, cash and client retention were the main issues. But during recovery, everyone assumed that business would be the same afterwards and it pretty much was. Covid is different because it’s teaching us that with technology it’s possible to do things in a mediated way. But can we be agile enough? The technology over here is good; it’s fast. Working in soft-skills though, much of what we do is interpersonal. Therefore some of the kinaesthetic activities that we conduct with people can be a little bit problematic when performed in a mediated way. So, for instance, if we are running a programme on networking and culture we might be comparing the British handshake, the Japanese bow and the Thai wai – you really have to experience them and that’s difficult to get a feel for over a screen. But doing business face-to-face will be back. There’s no doubt about it because people like it, and in this part of the world, face-to-face also means a good lunch and community is part of the culture too! AiT: What’s your best memory of Aston? PO’B: The Pot of Beer [laughs]. Actually, two or three things really. I’m pretty much a generalist, so an MBA really hit the spot for me because it pushed me into areas of business that I hadn’t thought about. It also challenged me to consider things that I didn’t ordinarily know. I remember seeing marketing people arguing with engineers, HR people arguing with finance people. And I really hadn’t experienced clashes between different ways of thinking before. I volunteered to be on the student liaison committee, which was good for me because I got the chance to talk to the lecturers, and to meet a mix of part-time and full-time students. I was also networking, though I didn’t realise that at the time. But I guess the key thing was that when I went to university I’d spent my life saying “no” to most things. What Aston taught me was that I needed to get “no” out of my language. So it really changed me; it taught me to embrace ideas with a lot more confidence. What Aston gave me was a passport. It was a passport to go out there, not just to an exciting business career, but to some great life experiences. I’ve never looked back!