NEW DIRECTION

⚪️🔴🟠🟡🟢🔵🟣⚫️ NEW DIRECTION Ed. No. 123 - A SUCCESS BIGGER THAN BEN HUR

WINNING (Really?)

PIC: Still from the famous chariot scene from the hugely successful (1959) version of BEN HUR (MGM) / Director:William Wyler

The biggest worldly success in my life came through achievement in a work environment.

I’d like to tell you my story of winning.

It was bigger than Ben Hur.

I do have tenacity. That is true.

And tenacity is one of the things you need to be successful in life. Some good talent helps too. I have learned though that real leaders also have strength, capacity and resilience of which I find I am wanting.

I would say that I have elements of being pioneering but real leadership and real leaders are a minority breed that I take my hat off to particularly in these confused and fractious times. People don’t know who they are any more (if they ever did) and all too often people blame their leaders for their own shortcomings. Our mirrors are dirty and need a good clean.

Anyways being the young energy filled bright eyed optimist that I have been my natural ambition early in my career was to bite off the biggest challenge on which to chew.

I looked after exhibitions and displays and trained in graphic design at the Bank of New South Wales in the 1970’s and into the 80’s. Generally I’m pretty good with anything of a visual nature if I put my focus to it. I was around 22 years of age when I started my quest.

I am also a naturally curious person and so I questioned what this design stuff was really all about which sooner or later led down a path towards the field of Corporate Identity.

In a sentence Corporate Identity is the study of the motivations and values of organisations (The guts of who they are) and how this is reflected in the way they present themselves. Said differently the way we present ourselves to the world is a reflection of what makes us tick. What are we in essence??? The same principles apply to any group, government, nation, or even on an individual or world level.

It is a fascinating area to study. After all these years you develop a skill to sum up where things are at just by looking at them and listening to them. I’ve got a pretty good idea these days of organisations that aren’t going to survive ten years from now. “Stupid is as stupid does” according to Forrest Gump. You better believe it. Three organisations I deal with days are numbered. They’re doing it to themselves.

I set out back then to convince a corporation that the way they presented themselves was as important a consideration as anything else they did. When you adopt the principles of corporate identity you are consciously creating the way you want to be seen. In the ideal this is fine but in reality humans tend to get lost. More on that later.

So I started agitating and agitating and agitating. Whomever would listen in whatever area of the organisation I would harangue them. I was way out my depth. But it was fun then if not exhausting. And the further you get into it all the more demanding it became.

Amongst many others I spoke to Senior Management at various levels including General Managers, Chief Managers, Premises Managers, State Advertising and Public Relations Managers, utilising any ways that could be employed (e.g. formal presentations, phone calls, face to face), of the need for the conscious application organisation wide of the principles of Corporate Design and Corporate Identity.

This went on for years.

And you know sometimes in life the tumblers just roll around and bang you hit pay dirt.

The Bank of New South Wales and the Commercial Bank of Australia decided to merge.

The chap at the desk next to me in Head Office (60 Martin Place - Level 17, Development & Marketing Division) was working with the top team responsible for the merger.

From memory he had asked to borrow a book I'd been waving around like the Bible. It was called “The Corporate Personality” by Wally Olins an authority on the subject of corporate identity and my colleague then passed it on to a key figure who happened to get sick. While he was in bed he took the opportunity to read the book. It influenced in no small way the direction of the new corporation. Just to example the name Westpac Banking Corporation might not have become Westpac had that book not been read by the influencer. It might have ended up being a hybrid name. That by the way would have been the wrong way to go holding onto the separate pasts of the Wales and the CBA. Unity is what's important.

Look, in my position all I could do was agitate. I am a good agitator. And before we go any further let’s clear this up. I am not a stirrer. Stirrers are bastards with a bastard’s motivation. Plenty of them around. But an agitator constantly holds up a mirror to the truth. We can certainly be confronting us agitators but with the motivation to create rather than to destroy. So a person who is an agitator needs to keep checking that they are coming from the right place. If you become a stirrer you are just adding to the mess…and an out and out bastard like so many others.

It’s hard work unless you love what you are doing. Remember that statement.

These days I'm tired of trying to communicate with those who either won't or can't listen.

That's another thing humans have forgotten how to do . . . listen.

My focus has always been on projects rather than people. For God’s sake I’m an artist we make our own path. And generally walk it alone. It’s not that I don’t understand the importance of people but mostly I’m just not interested in people.

People are so silly particularly in these times.

Earlier I gave a shorthand description of what Corporate Identity was about.

The trouble with human beings is we can and do get stuck on creating an illusion. Reality is much much harder to bring about. Much of humanity is in trouble at the moment because we got stuck on the illusion rather than understand that an aspirational goal is not real it has to be made real. It is something to work towards and it is hard work from a lot of people. But of course we all want to be seen in the best light possible. It’s easier to create a fantasy until the bubble bursts. It’s happening now just look at the mess everywhere.

Too many wrong choices. There is no easy way.

Nature is giving us a wake up call presently. We are taking ourselves to the edge of a precipice with our imagined entitlements, rights and fanciful ideas about what we “think” we deserve. We don’t actually. We’re gifted to have a breath coming in and going out of us. We’ve lost sight of our true size.

But yes the success of achievement is satisfying for a while but it eventually fades.

Even a success as big as Ben Hur.

All very temporary. Sadly lasting happiness wasn't to be found in worldly achievement.

I left Westpac shortly after this success as one of their golden haired boys and dived straight into the completely different world of the Design for theatre at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art). What followed was 10 years of massive, unrelenting, grinding, tortuous, soul crushing, depression. How truly stupid we can become.

I’ve now moved onto the biggest possible challenge and that is to “Know thyself” to quote Socrates. It’s challenging work ... finding and enjoying yourself and at the same time leaving this world behind while living in it. I need and want "connection" to the thing that lasts forever. That's why we're here. To experience that and not to get lost in "disconnection" like we're doing presently.

But then it seems I am not too successful at all that at the present time. Sheesh! Why are we so scared of the good stuff?

I'm certainly though far, far happier these days. More accepting of myself and others.

I’m only human as well and silly too at times.

Others seem to have it easier but for me it’s all something of a steep learning curve. - Neville

FOOTNOTE

In putting together this blog I was reminded that the story of Judah Ben Hur is an insufferable story of pain, misery and revenge albeit with a golden ending. And I’ve had enough of all of that in my life. I’d like a golden experience if I could in every waking moment and do understand that is entirely up to me. I only have a desire now to retire to lovely New Zealand (when my Mum sadly passes) and make some beautiful paintings.

I want it all to be simple and we have made it all so very complicated.

Some relevant papers validating my story here follows.

I have had the great privilege to have worked with so many wonderful people over the years.

The Late Tony Westgarth below was one of them. A real leader.