After 40 years making tough decisions, Professor John Patterson is retiring from the University of Wollongong, writes JODIE DUFFY.
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Light floods Professor John Patterson's office and a smooth spotted gum frames the wall-length window.
The corner office is one of power. Hard decisions have been made here, crossroads met and lives changed, but the gum brings an ever-constant calm and beauty.
A dreamcatcher hangs in a corner, a gift from someone given a leg up from the senior deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Wollongong.
But there have also been enemies, of that Patterson has no doubt, some of them still walking about on campus. Evidence that Patterson is not afraid to make the tough calls for the sake of the corpus.
"I like people who think big, who don't get bogged down in the minuscule. I like people who get out of bed, come to work and have fun."
"There would be people out there who, if I fell out of a life raft and they had a jacket, they wouldn't throw it to me," says Patterson. "But in the main, there wouldn't be a lot of them."
On Christmas Eve Patterson will retire from a career that spans four decades at UOW.
"I've spent my career being a backroom boy," he grumbles. "I don't need publicity one minute to midnight."
Still, he is gracious, open, even entertaining as he describes his contribution to one of the world's top 300 universities as placed by the Times Higher Education ranking.
Patterson is philosophical as he's about to turn out the lights. On the whiteboard are reminders to himself and messages to those who will come after him. Mantras for the modern leader, like "Think big, get stuff done and have fun", "Don't take it personally" and "If you can't say something good, don't say nothing at all".
The last one he wrote five months ago as a reminder to himself as he began the countdown and found himself occasionally stealing a glance "through the rear vision mirror".
"It's just a reminder to me to see the positives and not to get bogged down in the moment," he explains. "Higher education is in pretty diabolical circumstances in terms of what the challenges are. It's a highly competitive space and it's easy to become negative."
Not that he has shirked a challenge.
"If you truly enjoy leading, if you truly enjoy thinking about strategies and thinking about directions and problem-solving, sometimes the hardest times are the best times to do it in," he says. "It's easy being a leader and a planner when everything is going your way. It's a lot tougher when times are hard. That's when you find out about yourself and little bit about the organisation and its resilience and potential."
The university, he says, is about to face its biggest challenges to date.
"This is a pivotal time for higher education," he says. "Make no mistake about it. The competition for students is fierce. There's nothing stopping a student sitting anywhere in the world and doing a university course online anywhere in the world. Wollongong is not the epicentre of the world so for us to compete is an extraordinarily tough and sophisticated situation."
Patterson describes himself as the former vice-chancellor Gerard Sutton's "toe-cutter" and nods when asked if he was the one to carry out the "dirty work".
"That was my job, as deputy, to be there for the vice-chancellor," he says. "It was my job to make him look good. His vision was my mission. But in the past few years my job has been to set up teams within the university, to cut the barbed wire for them to get on with their work and to make myself redundant."
The university plans to hold off replacing Patterson in the short term.
"I think if you're a good leader, you eventually work your way out of a job."
Patterson is known as a tough boss. It's a skill he learnt in the '70s when, as a football coach for a local rugby team, he had to pull one of his mates from playing in the grand final.
"I dropped him," he says. "He cried, I cried but it was the best decision for the team.
"In football, you either succeed or don't succeed. You can't hide from it. Here at the university I have had to take hard decisions about people's performances and the direction of the organisation. It's what I'm paid to do. I'd be taking money immorally if I didn't do it. If I couldn't do it. Provided I firmly believe it's in the best interests of the university, I have no problem with it. That's why I say 'don't take it personally'. I'm saying 'no' to them, but I'm not saying they are not a worthwhile person. I'm not saying I don't love them. I'm saying they haven't met the standards."
Patterson deals with those difficult situations by being honest.
"When you're in a position like this you have positional power. That's the minimal level of power. But at the end of the day the power that's worthwhile is the power of respect and you've got to develop that," he says.
Just as there are enemies, there are also people who support him, which is evident in the hundreds of farewell cards and emails, many thanking him for his guidance and advice of the years.
"My job is to do things for people. That's what power is about," he says. "It's not about getting up the ladder and pulling it up after you. The more people you can pull up the ladder with you, the better. No matter where they are on the food chain."
Also on the whiteboard are pearls of wisdom in the words - vision, priorities, alignment and sustainability.
"As I'm leaving the people I'm responsible for, I want them to have touchstones. I don't expect them to think about me but I expect them to think about things that drive them," he says.
"You can buy really thick books on how to plan for organisations, but that's it in a nutshell. If you get the people right, their mindset and skill set right, the rest flows. You can then handle as an organisation any wave or tsunami that comes your way."
Patterson is a deep, philosophical thinker who likes to think big.
"I like to go in hard," he says. "I like people who think big, who don't get bogged down in the minuscule. I like people who get out of bed, come to work and have fun."
There are many examples of Patterson thinking big and having fun throughout his long career at UOW. He's not above making a fool of himself. For the university's annual pink breakfast for breast cancer, he has dressed up as the biker in the YMCA and on another occasion in hot pink lycra - all to raise money for a good cause. He's also known to think big in his personal life and just three weeks ago attempted to superglue his own tooth back into his mouth after it fell out while he was trekking in the Himalayas.
"The superglue didn't work," he said. "I had to turn around and come back down a few days from finishing the trek. But I gave it a go."
Patterson's career at UOW began in 1982, when the Institute of Education merged with the university. His rise from lecturer, to dean of four faculties to senior deputy vice-chancellor he says has been one of good luck, karma and being in the right place at the right time. That and education, Patterson having completed his PhD early on in his academic career, after working out that it was the way ahead if you were going to work in a university.
"I've had some extraordinarily good mentors along the way," he says. "I've gone from telegram boy to postmaster general."
Patterson hails from a working-class suburb of Sydney, the only child of a father who worked as a cleaner and mother who worked behind the counter of a butcher shop. The rest he says was happenstance. From a selective high school, he found himself at university studying education.
"For me, it's always been about education," he says. "It still is. This [career] has been a wondrous adventure. I haven't had a job, I've had a privilege.
"It was even a privilege lecturing students not just because you are providing knowledge, because knowledge is passing, but because you are trying to influence their attitudes and behaviour.
"Education for me has quite a deep, philosophical meaning."