lighten my load, and that suited me just fine.
I asked one of my contacts at the University of Melbourne for advice regarding my PhD studies. He steered me in the direction of Melbourne Business School (MBS), where I presented my case to the Dean. I was eventually accepted as a part-time student, though there was no one on staff then who really had a background in what I wanted to do.
I learned many years later that my contact at the University of Melbourne also happened to be Chair of the Academic Board at the time. When he rang the Dean there, the assumption was that it would be a very good idea to accept me. Sometimes you can get lucky!
The day I received my acceptance papers from MBS was the same day that the Head called me in the evening to say that he had finally agreed to accept the role of Dean. All of us in the Department knew what that meant—whenever you lost your Head, you were without one for about eighteen months while someone conducted a review to see if the department and its programs were really needed.
So, when you are at your lowest ebb, without the most senior person, and most understaffed, you also have a very heavy review burden. Again, it was one of those decision points: should I apply for the Head’s role when it became available in about a year’s time? What would this mean for the PhD about which I had become very enthusiastic?
I did get a lot of encouragement from some unusual quarters—people I didn’t know well who were keen for me to go for it and in the end I did. But first I decided I should hand over the Acting Head role to another likely internal candidate so he could have the opportunity to demonstrate his approach.
Meanwhile, I started planning a sabbatical, as the only way to kick-start my doctorate. After all I was a trained librarian so I knew how to do a literature search, and I would just have to figure out how to get things done over time.
I have given many workshops on how to do a PhD part-time when you have a lot of other things going on in your life. The secret is of course to outsource what you don’t have to do, both at home and in your research.
But I have probably dissuaded, rather than persuaded, many people from doing a PhD, especially in what was the arcane British/Australian model. What I always looked for in a PhD student is a real passion to investigate an area, someone who has a very good dose of discipline, and might have a supportive (enough) partner or environment. Completing a PhD is not essentially about being a smart person. It is about being persistent, with dogged determination, and researching an area that is absolutely fascinating to the one person that matters—yourself!
Outsource what you can
In deciding to pursue my PhD and concurrently take on the Head of Department role, I knew I might have finally taken on just too much. It was a ridiculously busy time—heading a department going through major changes, working on my PhD, co-parenting our four children (aged nine to sixteen when I took on the Head role) and of course managing multiple other relationships.
Back then, the first part of any PhD required a substantial literature search, which was later synthesised to create a great topic—or something the student would be prepared to spend the next few years researching.
My studies were relevant to what we were doing in the department, but we did not have funds to pay a researcher to assist with the leg work. After agreeing to lead a series of workshops with the Australian Institute of Management on Strategic Information Services, I was given approval to use the payment for these workshops to fund my literature searching. (Remember this was still before the Internet.) I approached one of the really good students, Carey Butler, to see if she was prepared to be my paid research assistant, and, fortunately, she said yes. I did the conceptual work and initial literature searching then Carey followed up on these, found the relevant articles, helped index things and generally gave me great support.
I also set the expectation that I would work from home most of each Tuesday, and I did. Sometimes I did catch-up work for the department, and other times I worked on the PhD.
My kids knew too that if they needed something attended to, a parent permission form signed or anything else like that, then that should be done before 8.30pm. From about 9pm to 11pm many nights I was working on the doctoral work, or sometimes other Departmental work.
But I was not sequestered away—to this day, my study just has a light Japanese screen instead of a door and is next to the kitchen.
Making that decision to get some help, or to outsource, is hard, but most people do say that, with hindsight, they should have done it sooner.
Share your challenges and ask for help
Always be willing to talk about what you are doing with others, to share some of the challenges, as you never know what might eventuate.
I took a few months sabbatical in the first year of the doctorate to travel, met other researchers in the US, and participated in some conferences. My data gathering included interviewing dozens of senior executives in Australia’s major banks and it required some time to synthesise the findings. This led to the decision that I would need to take a few months off to complete the rest of the writing for the PhD. I was intending to take it as Leave Without Pay, which would also be a great incentive to get it done quickly.
However, one day I was discussing the timing dilemma with an acquaintance who had just been appointed to run a new commercially-focused research centre. He thought having me on his staff for a while would be a good thing as I understood what the centre was trying to achieve, had a relevant academic and professional background, and was part of a university with whom the centre was making linkages. We came to an agreement that I could spent eighty to eighty-five percent of my time on the PhD writing and about fifteen percent helping them get established. For that, he would pay almost my current salary. RMIT was happy about it as they had a link to the centre and so it was a bit of a win-win.
Getting the PhD done required discipline and drive. It also required an ability to compartmentalise what I was doing, which is something I have learned to do over time. It can be annoying to others as it means I might be overly focused and that level of persistence or focus can be off-putting or a bit of a mystery to others. People might call it selfish or self-centred, but I can live with that. After all, I had earlier supported Robert in many ways through his doctoral studies and, over many years, we have each supported each other to achieve what we wanted to do.
Many of the MBA students who have been in my classes have had similar experiences. If you have people to support and who need to support you, just figure out how you might get things done.
With open minds and wills it is amazing what can be jointly achieved.
3
Don’t be afraid to move out of your comfort zone
Inflection number three: Moving from a bureaucracy to entrepreneurship
As I was handing in swathes of my PhD thesis to Melbourne Business School, some of the MBS faculty started talking to me about possibly moving to join them. Technically, it would be a lower-level role than the one I had at RMIT, though the dollars would be similar. It would take me in quite a different direction but build on the doctoral work I was finishing.
It would be a big stretch again, as it would mean shifting my areas of teaching and taking on some new ones. At RMIT my major focus was teaching postgraduate students about management and leadership. At MBS it would be teaching MBA students about technology strategy and management. Also, MBS faculty were not offered tenure back then, which I had at RMIT. Instead, you were offered a two- or five-year contract. It tended to attract and build a cohort of academic staff who backed themselves and
