How I went from a navy diver to KPMG partner

Meet Jonathon Peacock, 58, from Brisbane, a former Navy clearance diver who is now KPMG Australia’s power and utilities lead.

How old were you when you joined the Navy?

I was a West Australian boy who decided that he wanted to join the Navy and see the world. I left school at 17 and went straight to the Naval College in Jervis Bay, one of the most picturesque spots in Australia, but you don’t appreciate that when you’re training.

What did you do in the Navy?

In order to become a clearance diver, you need to spend time driving and navigating ships, which is what I did. As a clearance diving officer, I drove and navigated a range of warships. I did an exchange with the US Navy early on then decided to get into clearance diving in the late 80s.

Clearance diving is effectively the use of a variety of different diving equipment to get you into an environment where you can either clear the entry to a beach of unexploded ordnance, do underwater damage repair on ships, or clear an area of ordnance mines where ships and other vessels need to transit.

I learnt the arts of improvised explosive device disposal, explosive ordnance disposal, diving on a range of different gases, parachuting, and fast roping out of a helicopter.

It was a pretty physical activity and very adventurous, a lot different from standing around the ship at 12 knots.

Did anything ever explode when it wasn’t supposed to?

The problem was when things didn’t go off when they were planned to. We had a few instances where, as an officer, you had to go downrange to see why it hadn’t gone off.

We did have some grenades we launched when we were working with the US Navy SEALs that didn’t go off and we had to go and physically find out why. Luckily, we were able to put charges on them and blow them up separately because you couldn’t leave them out there.

At what point did you decide it was time to make a change?

I’d done it for a long time and it was the only thing I’d really done. I began to realise that I wanted to be challenged in a different way. Rather than being physically and mentally challenged in a military environment, I wanted to try a corporate environment.

I decided to transition by doing an MBA. I was fortunate that the Navy sent me to the Australian Graduate School of Management to study.

I had to take my books to sea and the jungles of Malaysia at one point. The heaviest thing in my pack was my corporate finance notes. I’d have a calculator, an eraser and a pencil, and I’d be sitting there doing my corporate finance assignment under a red torchlight in the jungle.

I leveraged the network I made during the MBA to get a consulting job with Deloitte. I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I finished the MBA but then consulting came up as a way of understanding how businesses worked.

Was there a pay cut going from the Navy to consulting?

No, I lifted my pay considerably. That wasn’t the main driver – I didn’t want to go backwards – we were reasonably paid but obviously, corporate environments tend to pay a little more over time.

Was there anything that struck you as unusual about the corporate world?

Recording my time. I’d never had to record my time, I just did what I thought was right, and all of a sudden I had to justify what I was doing.

I came from an environment where I had an office overlooking the water. In consulting, I didn’t have a desk, we were hot-desking. And I carried my laptop around with me. It was completely weird.

The first partner I had would take me for a beer every afternoon – just one – to explain consulting to me. He spent the first month educating me at [Sydney pub] Jackson’s on George.

There were things that were new to me, but there were also things that I could leverage having spent 20 years in the Navy, like how to lead people in challenging environments.

For example, the ability to develop a plan and execute it and how to deal with a crisis. The crises I dealt with in corporates, were nowhere near as challenging as crises I dealt with in the military.

Where have you landed today?

I’m the global head of oil and gas for KPMG and the national head of energy utilities for KPMG. I’ve moved into the energy space in a fairly significant way and I love that environment. It’s hugely diverse, probably the same things that made it interesting for me as a clearance diver. Unpredictable and diverse in terms of its challenges.

Was it the right choice?

I started out at Deloitte and then I went to Suncorp. Then I went into an IT start-up and that was definitely the wrong choice. It was just the wrong environment for me. I think I work well in an environment that has a degree of structure, but you’ve got freedom and flexibility to exercise judgment on where you spend your time.

Would you recommend Defence as a career path for a young person today?

Yes, absolutely. It was the best place for a 17-year-old who didn’t quite know what he wanted to do. It was the best place for me to go because it gave me a whole lot of structure, purpose and discipline that I lacked.

Any advice for future consultants?

Use your network to the best of your ability. That’s the one thing I’ve done really effectively. Network genuinely, I try to give a lot back to the people I interact with.

Don’t be afraid to take big steps. At times in your career you do get a step wrong. It’s not the end of the world, you learn from it and move on.

Meet Andrea Clarke, 48, a former war correspondent turned leadership coach, who lives in Sydney.

What did you start out doing?

My first job in television was at GWN in Kalgoorlie in outback WA. My round was about 500 square kilometres, covering open pit mine blasts to ocean rescues off Esperance.

I reported for Ten News in Sydney and Melbourne before moving to Washington, DC, in 2004 to freelance for Thomson Reuters, the Seven Network and Al Jazeera English. It was my dream to work on Capitol Hill since visiting on a family holiday in 1986. The assignments went global overnight, which was exactly what I was looking for.

Was there a particular moment that made you want to change careers?

My signal to leave journalism was loud and clear in 2009. I was walking to the bureau in Washington, DC, and instead of picking up a copy of the New York Times, I was reading news on my Blackberry. It was a painful realisation that the business model of news was changing, and if I was being paid to produce content that I wasn’t prepared to pay for then I had to make a change.

This was the finale in a series of small signals to shift gears. I loved everything about reporting, but I was heading for a burnout and felt it was time to let go. By the time I got to the bureau, I decided to resign.

Did you know what kind of job you wanted when you left journalism?

I wasn’t fixed on a specific job, but I knew it had to feel good and be aligned with my values around supporting the growth of others. After 15 years covering breaking news, I felt naturally wired to seek out projects that were high-pressure and demanding.

My first job post-newsroom was with an international relief & development organisation, helping to rebuild Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan & Georgia with funding from USAID & the US State Department.

I’ve gone through multiple micro-career pivots since then.

What changes did you make?

The first real transition to working for myself. I started out small with media training for leaders across ASX organisations. This slowly grew into running programs that supported the professional development of emerging (often female) leaders.

It’s taken a decade, but now, for example, I’m running leadership programs for hundreds of technical experts globally at Rio Tinto.

How did you go about it? How long did it take?

It took seven years between leaving journalism and feeling like ‘okay, what I’m doing is working and is making a difference’ because we had the data to show for our outcomes.

I basically built a small, but global, learning and development consultancy by trying to understand where I could contribute to the market with my core skills and finding incredibly talented people who I love working with.

Were there any specific books or courses that helped you make the change?

Undeniably, investing in face-to-face executive education programs has given me the most confidence to make a move in a certain direction.

Three programs have been profoundly energising: Women and Power at Harvard Kennedy School, Exponential Innovation at SingularityU in Palo Alto and most recently, Foresight Essentials with the Institute for the Future in Auckland.

My favourite all-time book is Tom Friedman’s Thank You for Being Late: an optimists guide to thriving in the age of accelerations.

Was there a pay cut?

Initially, there was no pay! The first two years of my start-up, I was borrowing grocery money from my best friend and my mother, assuring them I could pay them back. There’s a lot of hype around starting a business which needs to be addressed.

Did you make the right choice to change careers?

I’m so happy. All credit goes to the transferable skills from journalism for where I am today. Being part of an ultra-high performing news crew was a daily lesson in trust and exceptional teamwork.

What advice would you give someone thinking about doing the same thing?

I always encourage people to think about what success looks like now – this is the starting point. Then pay attention to the signals of change, and think about what’s no longer fit-for-purpose in your industry and life versus what is gaining relevance. And run experiments before you go all in on a change.

What are the small bets you can take in this long game that might reveal a new direction for you. Build your personal agency, and go for growth over perfection. Being perfect is so boring, don’t you think?

Have you made an interesting career change? We would love to hear your story. Email me: Tess.bennett@afr.com

Meet venture capitalist Solai Valliappan, aged 37, from Sydney.

What did you start out doing?

I was an actuarial analyst at an insurance company. It was extremely technical. I worked on two main areas over four years. One was pricing commercial insurance products and the other was reserving and valuations, which is bread and butter for a traditional actuary – you model how much funding should be kept aside for liabilities incurred.

When did you decide it wasn’t for you?

I was a traditional actuary for four years. It wasn’t that I decided that it wasn’t for me, it was this innate curiosity I had to be able to use the skill set of looking at data and risk assessment capabilities, and applying it to different areas.

After four years deep in spreadsheets, there was a chief of staff role open within the insurance company. I was able to take my skill set, work for a CEO and just have a broader appreciation for different parts of the business.

After taking the chief of staff role, what was the next change you decided to make?

The chief of staff role is transitional; you do it for a couple of years. You have so much exposure to different parts of the business that you can go into. I went into a part of the business which was about global underwriting.

After about eight years of working in insurance, I was just curious about what I should do next, and there were a few opportunities that came to me. One was to go internationally with the insurance company, another was to do an MBA, and then the third was to work for a start-up where I would be one of the first employees (at the time many of my friends were building start-ups).

At the time these were really bold moves, and they were also side steps. I picked the third option.

Did that involve taking a pay cut?

There definitely was a pay cut coming from corporate to the start-up ecosystem. But I was very conscious about making the lateral steps to acquire new skills and experiences.

The biggest hurdle was actually the discussion with my parents about taking that step because migrant parents are worried about the uncertainty. When I was working for the start-up I couldn’t even show them a website or any marketing collateral to give them a bit of comfort.

I reminded them they took the ultimate risk to move countries and just how many opportunities that had opened up for me, and it’s not that I could never be an actuary again. My parents hadn’t seen many examples of it, but they have been really supportive since.

So, how did you end up becoming an investor?

I was working on the finance side for the start-up, and we were setting up all the financial reporting and all the board reporting from scratch. I just wanted to understand from an investor perspective what is expected for an early-stage company, so I started going to some angel investor events to talk to investors to find out.

At these events, I realised that there was quite a neat tie in to my skill sets of looking at information, analysing data, looking at the risk – and then you make a call.

I had set aside some MBA money, so I put some of it towards investments. I thought it would give me a similar experience [as studying], I’d be learning new skills, I’d be expanding my network, and it would also help with what I was doing on the start-up side as well.

This was maybe seven years ago and there weren’t as many women angel investors as there are now. I did stick out fairly easily. Often people would assume I was the founder and asked how much money I would need.

Were there any courses you studied or books that helped you make the change?

I did a lot of writing. I did a lot of reading. I listened to a lot of podcasts.

Two books that I would recommend are Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and how to get it and Alpha girls: The women upstarts who took on Silicon Valley’s male culture and made the deals of a lifetime.

The podcasts I listen to are, Pivot, 50 things that made the modern economy, Startup Podcast and Connect to Capital by Scale investors.

I did eventually do a venture capital course through the Wade Institute based at Melbourne University and more recently I did the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) course.

Where have you landed today?

I am a partner at Scale Investors, an emerging fund focused on investing in women-led start-ups. I am really pleased to have landed here because after being dismissed as an investor – despite my experience and skill set – I want to invest in companies that have been overlooked but will outperform the market.

Was this the right choice for you?

Yes. I’m combining my actuarial skill set to a new industry of venture capital. No day is the same, but it’s similar in that I get to allocate capital and generate returns and make system change.

Any advice for someone thinking of making a similar move?

It’s just about experimenting and trying different things. Sometimes you don’t have to change your job whilst you’re learning. I think it’s really important to take ownership and accountability for your career trajectory.

Have you made an interesting career change? We would love to hear your story. Email me: Tess.bennett@afr.com