What is the way to accomplish all of this? I’ve found that with some things, going that extra mile translates as thinking laterally about a problem and being smart about its solution. What helps me enormously is that at the centre of this strategy, I have a clean and tidy desk each morning. There is something about turning up to work with a neat and organised selection of work to be completed in front of me instead of mess and clutter, which immediately enables me to feel ready for work rather than ready for a cup of coffee a sifting through process. I regularly clear away the clutter in my life. I tidy my desk, my office, my home and especially my car. They are all an extension of my personality and give me a very powerful insight into my thought patterns and behaviours.
I’m ruthless. I toss out. I rearrange. I clean and polish. I tidy. And I keep tidy. How can new ideas, new people, new beginnings occur if I don’t let my inner self know that I am ready? Things don’t change. They evolve.
Probably the most important key to success that I can offer you is that, successful people pay attention to detail. It’s the same as being an excellent host. Imagine a very, very important person is making a visit to my home or business. Imagine the running around and fussing that would take place over the way things look; the greeting process; the choice of the food and drinks for morning tea or lunch; the discussions between others and myself about how to do things best. Then when the VIP arrives the tension is probably greater. There is a constant checking and in my mind a timetable of events that will occur so that everyone is happy and comfortable.
Well, having a successful business and successful relationships is just like that too. The people who think ahead, plan well, ask for co-operation, have the flexibility to alter and reassess, watch other’s reactions and aim to please, will be the ones who live the success they desire.
Sometimes it is scary. As Tim Macartney-Snape conqueror of Everest, said: “It wouldn’t be a worthwhile mountain if you didn’t experience some fear”.
National Runner-Up
Else Shepherd
A pioneering electrical engineer; a founding director of a data communication firm, an educator and a mother, Else Shepherd combines the pragmatism of engineering with the aesthetics of music, holding formal qualifications in both disciplines.
She was the 1992 Queensland Executive Woman of the Year!
I’m an electrical engineer and director of an electronics company, Mosaic Electronics, which I established with a colleague in 1986. With a staff of twelve we design and manufacture specialist data communications products, and provide consulting in data communications, contract manufacturing and service. We don’t try to compete with the large national and multinational companies in the lucrative communications field with me-too products, but by identifying niches and using the very latest design techniques, we can provide a unique service. This has been recognised by Telecom, OTC and electricity authorities from whom we develop and manufacture new products, investigate future possibilities and present training courses.
My role in the company is changing. Like all the classic high-tech companies we started under my colleague’s house where I designed printed circuit boards, ordered components, soldered, tested, wrote manuals, chased debtors, kept the books, did the cleaning and tried to keep up with the latest design techniques. Soon we moved to a small office which we painted ourselves, employed another designer and a part-time bookkeeper, and started to learn from trial and error about the tough business world.
Now we’ve graduated to smarter premises with more staff, a manufacturing area and a general manager, which allows me to go back to being an engineer for a large part of the time. We tend to employ fresh young graduates straight out of University, still full of energy, who think they know everything and make me feel old, but who don’t realise how much guidance they need. I despair sometimes at the lack of responsibility of otherwise very intelligent young people. Even if wisdom doesn’t always come with age, a systems viewpoint and a sense of responsibility comes with the experience of years, and an insistence on doing the job properly the first time comes with having your own money on the line.
Apart from jointly running a business, I’m a part-time senior lecturer at the University of Queensland, and a member of: the Faculty Advisory Committee for Electrical Engineering at the Queensland University of Technology, the Engineering School Assessment Committee for the University of Southern Queensland, and the Advisory Board of the Technology Management Centre at the University of Queensland.
Sometimes I think all these committees just need the token woman and as there aren’t too many older female engineers around, I’m the one they ask. Wherever their agenda may or may not be I have my own unique perceptions and insights to offer and a genuine desire to contribute meaningfully to engineering education and to the development of excellence in universities. I suspect I’m not nearly as token as people might sometimes hope I will be.
Teaching has always been a special love and my business partner and I both try to have a teaching assignment each year. Nothing keeps you up to date more efficiently than having to satisfy a class of some of our best brains who may well know more than you do! At times I kick myself for taking on so much work, especially the night before an 8am lecture, but there is no doubt the close ties with universities give us fresh viewpoints and continuous exposure to the most appropriate new technology.
Last year I was appointed for a three year term to the Board of South East Queensland Electricity. I know Premier Goss was pushing for more women on boards, but his time I can’t claim to be the token woman because two women were appointed. I feel very honoured by the appointment and wonder how anyone can be expected to have adequate qualifications and experience for such a tough assignment. With corporatisation looming and talk of eventual privatisation of the electricity industry, this is proving to be extremely challenging.
These days I can happily admit to being an engineer without expecting an adverse reaction. How things have changed in the last 30 years! I used to shrink from telling casual enquirers what I do because it was likely to embarrass them. Dinner parties were certain to produce hurting wisecracks and worried wives with thoughtless discussions on the evils of feminism.
Back in 1962 when I entered the Queensland University as a first year engineering student, female engineers were virtually unheard of in Australia. With the benefit of a year’s schooling in Denmark (where female engineers were more common), supportive parents and just sufficient faith in my own academic abilities, I weathered the awful first year and went on to graduate with Honours. But the sheltered environment of a friendly University did nothing to prepare me for the hostile attitudes in North Queensland where I went to work after graduating.
Marrying a Mackay local made married life comfortable and easy. Working in my profession was more difficult as I was expected very quickly to settle down and become a home-maker. “You’ll soon stop all that working nonsense”, said my father-in-law very early in the piece.
But of course I didn’t stop all that nonsense and continued to work, full time until the first of my two children was born and then part time for some years.
Working when I didn’t need to financially, was bad enough, but being an engineer was beyond the pale. I can remember my surprise when a man attacked me at a party one evening, asking, “Aren’t you sorry for your husband?” Sorry for him because he had some sort of freak for a wife. For years I found it disconcerting to be considered by so many to be slightly strange or weird, when in fact I felt entirely ordinary. One year I was asked to give a talk on Women in Industry at a TAFE speech night. Preparing for the talk, I interviewed many people including a number of sugar mill managers. One instated he couldn’t have women working in his mill at night. I said, “I often work in your mill at night.” His reply, “You’re different.” So often this is the case, is it not, that black