With this Anzac Day marking the centenary of the Gallipoli landings, CRN spoke to four business leaders who have moved into the IT channel after military service.
Army: John Walters
Founder and managing director, Nextgen Distribution
After attending Royal Military College, Duntroon, straight out of school, Nextgen Distribution managing director John Walters served 15 years in the army as an infantry officer. As a British grenadier guard in the late 1990s, he served two overseas assignments during a turbulent time in world history.
"I arrived in Germany in December 1989. The [Berlin] Wall had just come down in November. It was a time of peace and freedom – we had four-star Russian generals in our mess and I remember seeing Russian firepower demonstrations," Walters told CRN.
"Then six months later, I went to the first Gulf War. It was amazing to see the world go so quickly from peacetime to war. I served in an armoured unit at Kuwait."
As a fresh graduate from Duntroon, Walters' first boss made a lifelong impression on him.
"I worked with a lot of great leaders but Peter Cosgrove was my very first boss – now Governor-General, of course. He was 36 years old and I was a 21-year-old in Townsville in the first battalion," said the distie boss.
"It was quite clear then, even to a 21-year-old, that he was an exceptional leader of people, and obviously he's gone on to prove that… We still stay in touch."
Walters left the army in 1994, but has no doubt his memorable military experiences still shape how he carries himself in his civilian business career. "You learn such great leadership, people management skills, and how to make decisions under pressure. All the training from Duntroon was very applicable in the business world."
His first civilian role was with the well-known transport company TNT, which put Walters through an MBA program to fill the gap in knowledge that he couldn't get from the army. [The MBA] helped short-circuit the commercialisation expertise that I lacked. Eventually I turned around a team in TNT that was making a $100,000 loss every week."
Today Walters heads up the distribution company that he founded in 2011, but he still maintains a connection to his past as a director of the non-profit organisation Royal Australian Regiment Foundation.
"Anzac Day, to me, is remembering sacrifices. It is still very poignant and is still very relevant."
Next: Channel's air force ace
Did you serve in the military and now work in the IT channel? Share your story. Contact tyoo@techpartner.news
Air Force: Geoff Rohrsheim
Director, Kloud and Chamonix
Co-founder of Microsoft cloud specialist Kloud, Geoff Rohrsheim was in the very first class of the Australian Defence Force Academy back in 1986. While completing the three-year officer training at ADFA, he also completed an honours degree in Aerospace Engineering at RMIT in Melbourne.
Upon graduation in 1989, Rohrsheim became an engineering officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. "My first job was second-in-charge of the maintenance squadron at RAAF Base Edinburgh in Adelaide: three shifts running 24 hours supporting the P3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft. It was an amazing experience at age 21 to learn people and logistics management."
Rohrsheim then transitioned into managing computer systems for the air force while attending night school to attain a postgraduate degree in IT. After stints at DSTO and RAAF logisitics command, he left the force in 1995.
"I was fortunate that in the 10 years I was in the military I wasn't involved in any active service. My two younger brothers who followed me did see active duty," Rohrsheim said.
Along with the "excellent" technical and leadership knowledge, Rohrsheim said the two most important things he learnt from the air force were having a clear strategy and empowering people to do their work without micro-management.
"Think of those small teams of soldiers on patrol in Afghanistan while the generals are back in Canberra. The military does that really well," said Rohrsheim.
"Something that is often not understood about the military is that there is a perception that 'the orders come from above and you just do as you're told'. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It just wouldn’t work."
Next: Navy man's buoyant IT career
Navy: Chris Greatrex
Chief executive, Artis Group
Chris Greatrex enjoyed a 13-year career in the navy after graduating from the Australian Defence Force Academy in 1987. He remembers that he attended ADFA at the same time as Kloud's Geoff Rohrsheim and Citadel Group's Miles Jakeman.
After starting on patrol boats, Greatrex finished up with six years on submarines. The Navy paid for him to complete a Master of Business Administration degree.
Upon entering civilian life in 2000, he worked as a communications consultant on the Sydney Olympics, then spent six years in New York. Greatrex is now the head of Artis Group, a CRN Fast50 company.
Greatrex told CRN that the ADFA and the navy taught him skills that are invaluable in the business world. "You're trained to accept leadership, make sound and timely decisions. Defence guys are trained to make tough decisions earlier – after bringing together all the necessary information."
He said that military officers are also taught to "lead by example and lead to excel ", and people coming out of the defence forces have due humility.
"Defence guys don’t have egos that others might – a big ego doesn’t fit well into the [military] culture."
As a former submarine officer, Greatrex hoped that on this Anzac Day due recognition would come for the Australian submarine AE2, which served at Gallipoli. He told CRN that the sub successfully fought from the water well before the now-infamous landings.
"She was the first submarine to successfully navigate and penetrate the narrow and heavily fortified Dardanelles waterway, entering the enemy-occupied Sea of Marmara.
"With the now famous orders to 'run amok', AE2 continuously harassed the enemy, and without any battle casualties."
Next: Special operations
Special ops (SAS): Will Beaumont
Sales director, Avoka Technologies
Will Beaumont attained a bachelor of science at the Australian Defence Force Academy in 1994, completed officer training at Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1995, then went back to ADFA to do a class 1 honours degree in mathematics.
After graduation Beaumont joined the newly created Commando Battalion, but his most memorable assignments came after his entry into the Special Air Services Regiment – the elite unit more commonly known as the SAS.
"I did a couple of overseas posts – East Timor in 1999 then Afghanistan in 2001, within the SAS," Beaumont told CRN.
"SAS wasn't necessarily an ambition – I just applied for it in 1999 and got in. I was doing counter-terrorism for the first couple of years, then after September 11 broke I was taken to Afghanistan."
Beaumont left the armed forces in 2005 after reaching the rank of major.
"The move into IT wasn't planned. I just tried to find a job that taught me how to run a business and ended up as a project manager in a very technical environment. After a while I really wanted to move away from hardware into software and that's what eventually led me to Avoka," he said.
Beaumont said that he has noticed one major difference between the military world and the civilian world.
"A military team unifies behind a common understanding of what to do, and everyone is motivated for that goal – whether it'd be mission, peacekeeping, whatever," he said. "I always want to take this attitude across to the business world – unify everyone behind a common goal."
Beaumont said the army taught him accountability and leadership.
"People want to be led and people want leadership. They also want leaders to be accountable, for both good and bad. I know that the buck stops with me."
Did you serve in the military and now work in the IT channel? Share your story. Contact tyoo@techpartner.news
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