Drew: Careers often end up in a different place from where they started. Few though, would be as tangential as going from years in a dance studio to working on the Hunter Class Frigate Program. G’day, I’m Drew Radford and this is actually the career of Sonja, whose job as Technical Governance Lead actually depends heavily on skills she developed as an artist. To discuss this unique crossover, she joins us for this Beneath the Deck podcast. Sonja, thanks for your time.
Sonja: Thanks for having me.
Drew: Sonja, you’ve got a really varied career – you’ve worked in the oil and gas industry, and now BAE Systems Australia. But when you left school to go to uni, you studied in an area that was totally unrelated. What was that?
Sonja: Yeah, so I did a Bachelor of Performance Arts, and I was majoring in contemporary choreography.
Drew: A dancer by trade, for want of a better description.
Sonja: Yes, yeah.
Drew: I would imagine that’s quite a demanding course on your body, to say the least.
Sonja: Yeah, it was very physically and psychologically demanding, but worth every minute of it. Three years of a very hard slog, but loved it.
Drew: Loved it and the hard slog, and then out of it though I’d imagine it’s a pretty competitive space to try and find a career following on from that.
Sonja: Yeah, especially in Australia it is a very specialised area, and you have to be the best of the best to have a consistent career in that industry, so it was very difficult to try and make a mark post getting my Bachelor’s degree, but I learnt a lot from it and I wouldn’t trade that degree for the world.
Drew: In terms of learning a lot from it, you work in a very technical area now – it says it in your job title – but doing that degree and what you focused on, you mentioned there “psychologically demanding” and also, I’m guessing, about communication as well. So, there’s a lot of intensity going on there – focus.
Sonja: Yeah, yeah, so from a psychological perspective, one of my aims as a contemporary choreographer was to try and communicate issues and I guess, more taboo things that the human experience goes through. So, researching issues that some people face, like drug addiction and the like, it can be quite confronting, and trying to work out a way to communicate that through choreography, through music, through costuming, lighting, staging, anything and everything that goes into a show. Trying to communicate that so people would understand and connect with it on a different level that what they normally would if it was just brought up in conversation. It was very rewarding, but it was a lot of effort that goes into communicate and express things. I think that’s the most beautiful thing about art is that that’s what, at its core, it’s trying to do.
Drew: It is, and you’ve described that really, really well. And in terms of that communication, I’m guessing that’s something that’s been central to your career from then on. But also, that attention to detail.
Sonja: Yeah, so absolutely. Communication and attention to detail are probably the most valuable skills I have, and I’ve taken those through every role that I’ve had since leaving uni, and they’ve served me extremely well.
Drew: Well, they have served you extremely well. And I want to talk about that career path a little bit, because there’s those two themes that are central to what you’ve been doing. The other one seems to be water. You’ve worked organisations around water but when you worked out that, maybe, you couldn’t pursue a future in dance, you seemed to leave the water behind in a fairly drastic way – where did you go?
Sonja: Yeah, I, through a series of events, landed in Tenant Creek in the middle of the Northern Territory, so it was quite the sea change from the coast of Australia to the middle. But, it turned out that that was a great move for me and my career, because I landed working in an organisation called Julalikari Council Aboriginal Corporation, and there was a gentleman there who was the director of community services, and he took me under his wing and he let me learn quite a bit from him with regards to what was happening in that space and I assisted him with pulling together some events around some of the Indigenous community. It was really eye-opening.
Drew: I imagine, too, that there was again a lot of attention to detail and administrative stuff that you started to learn that you’ve carried forward.
Sonja: Yes, that’s kind of when I started dabbling in the administrative side of things – sitting in an office. Very different to choreographing and being under a lot of physical demand, but I found that very intellectually interesting, and that kind of started to spark an interest in the business world.
Drew: It did, because from there you headed north.
Sonja: Yes.
Drew: To a diving company.
Sonja: Yes.
Drew: But this wasn’t recreational diving by any stretch of the imagination from what I understand.
Sonja: No, recreational diving in Darwin is a little bit hazardous, given that you’ve got a lot of crocodiles up there.
Drew: Fairly dangerous.
Sonja: Yeah, it was for a commercial diving company.
Drew: What do they do?
Sonja: They do a lot of hull inspections for vessels, they also did quite a bit on clearing unexploded ordinance that’s in the harbour in Darwin. I guess the bulk of it was doing inspections on hulls and anodes and the like on vessels that were docked in Darwin getting their maintenance done.
Drew: The maritime journey begins really, for you.
Sonja: Absolutely, I fell in love with it and a lot of the team up there, they started to teach me about all the different things, deshackles and anodes and what happens and stuff like that. And I started helping them with writing reports and I went on to become the document controller for the whole business unit, which is across the country, there’s a few bases for them. Onshore works only though, I wasn’t part of the offshore works. And they also invested in me and helped me get my Cert IV in Workplace Health and Safety, and became the Darwin site Health Safety Environment and Quality representative.
Drew: I’d imagine throughout your career you’ve had to do quite a bit of up-skilling, to say the least.
Sonja: Yeah, but I think that’s great – I think that’s something people should do their entire career, is continue to grow and learn, and push themselves.
Drew: I’m going to follow the maritime theme for you because you ended up in Adelaide with the submarine corporation, so I’m imaging that there’s a whole lot of stuff that you learnt in Darwin that gave you some sort of insight and understanding that was transferrable.
Sonja: Yeah, I think that was kind of my 'in', if I can put it like that. When I first started, I took a role as a document controller in the CM/DM team, which is configuration management/data management. And fortunately for me, they saw that because I had previous history with the marine oil and gas industry, and document control history, that I could transfer those skills over and become a valued part of the team. And luckily for me, CM/DM was actually part of the engineering department, so it was a great introduction.
Drew: Okay, so you’re sort of moving upwards and sideways along the way, and getting closer and closer to engineering – does that require more education?
Sonja: Yeah, it does, and once again I was very blessed to be taken under the wing of an engineering manager in platform systems on the Air Warfare Destroyer program. And he asked me if I wanted to become a back-up for the cataloguing officer in engineering, and I jumped at the opportunity, and was fascinated with NATO stock numbers, which is a bit geeky, I guess. But whilst I was there, there were a couple of key engineers that I was working with and helping out, that just tried to impart as much knowledge as possible to me, because they could see that I wanted to learn. And they taught me things about how to read diagrams and engineering drawings, and they taught me about system readiness reviews, and the background and foundations of what I was actually doing, as opposed to just giving me a task and saying “just do this, don’t worry about what it means” – I was very blessed.
Drew: In terms of what it means, I’m guessing you’re saying ‘right, well this job is important because you’re keeping people safe or that piece of equipment won’t fail’. Is that kind of what you were being given insight into?
Sonja: Yeah, absolutely. I wasn’t just being taught about mechanics of the equipment that we were designing and building. I was also being taught about how that fits into the bigger picture. The fact that the company isn’t just providing a piece of equipment to a company and that’s it – we’re actually helping to provide the best equipment possible for the men and women that serve our country and enable them to do their best job. They literally put their life on the line for us, and it’s important that we are providing them with equipment that works properly and is safe and allows them to focus on the job at hand and not worry about the equipment that they’re having to use.
Drew: I think that’s a remarkable description that really encapsulates the role of so many people that support the pointy end.
Sonja: Yes, yeah absolutely. I think people sometimes lose focus of that. Work gets really bust and you get really down in the weeds of the tasks that you’ve got to do, but I think it’s important to, every now and then, take a step back and look at the bigger picture – the fact that you’re part of something bigger than yourself.
Drew: You think that helps make you good at your job? In terms of seeing the bigger picture, or is it the fine detail or is it both?
Sonja: It’s both. Absolutely it’s both, you have to be able to get into the weeds, but you have to also remember to take a step back and look at how your piece fits into the puzzle. You can’t have a full picture without everybody putting in their piece, but if you’re only focusing on your piece and you don’t take into account that you’re one piece in a thousand piece puzzle, then you run the risk of not working very well with others and not actually providing what is needed.
Drew: That’s a good description, because you are working in a thousand piece puzzle and we’ll get to that in a moment. I’d say it’s probably about a 30-40 thousand piece puzzle. It’s very, very big. But you’re very positive about your career today. There must have been some challenges along the way. And I’d imagine leaving the performing arts would have been the first and biggest hurdle.
Sonja: That was very challenging, I had a bit of a crisis of personality I guess. It made me question who I am and my place in the world and my passions and that was very tough. But over time, I came to realise that you can be more than one thing, and change is inevitable – every life goes through change and morphs and grows, and coming to accept that and enjoy it, really, enjoy the fact that you kind of morph through your experiences. Coming to that place was really helpful.
Drew: Morphing is a good way of describing your career path, I’d argue, because now you’re Technical Governance Lead on the Hunter program with BAE Systems Australia. I’ve got to be honest: what does the title of ‘Technical Governance Lead’ mean?
Sonja: Yeah, when I first got the job – when I was hired by this incredible man named Robin, he explained my role to me as the ‘glue’ and I was like “okay, what do you mean?” I’m the glue? And he expressed the role as one that brings people together and helps translate the information that is needing to be passed between departments and the like. He also explained to me that what is needed when you’re building something so complex and has quite a lot of risks around it, and needing to make sure that it’s safe, legal, and compliant – whether it be compliant with the requirements of the design, or compliant with legislation, regulation, that sort of thing, is we have to make sure we check ourselves at the appropriate times and we’re honest and take a good look at what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and if it is the most efficient, effective, valuable way of designing and building a ship. And so, I kind of took that and went “alright, I’m glue and I make sure that we are having the right checks in place at the right time”. I guess you can kind of sum up my role like that. It’s much more complicated and technical, but you can kind of sum it in that way.
Drew: I think you summed it up pretty well, and I’ve got a reasonable idea of what’s going on there and the ‘glue’ role sounds like you’re drawing heavily, again, on communication and technical skills.
Sonja: Yes, yeah I have to be able to sit down with a software engineer or a weapons engineer and listen to them, listen to understand is key, and then be able to take that information and explain it to someone in, say, supply chain, or someone in quality, or HR, or even our Customer, and vice versa. So, it’s really about listening to understand and then being able to translate that information to whichever stakeholder I happen to be needing to engage with.
Drew: I reckon my head would explode at the end of the day. You’re constantly learning and trying to be on top of something totally new quite often, I’d imagine.
Sonja: Yeah, but that’s the beauty of it – I’m never bored!
Drew: No, I’d imagine not, but again you’re having to up-skill and re-skill I mean you’re talking to software engineers a second ago and you’ve been talking about, you know, marine engineers and whoever else. They’re different languages.
Sonja: Absolutely, I am doing a Diploma of Digital Technology, but aside from formal education, I find one of the best ways to learn is asking questions to the people that are subject matter experts. So, I ask and sometimes people can get a little bit annoyed, but they know it’s all in good spirit. I ask a lot of questions, and I try very hard to listen to what they’re saying and if I don’t understand something, I ask and I don’t worry about whether it’s perceived to be a dumb question or not, the only way you’re going to learn is by asking questions and engaging with people and watching them do what they do, and when you get the opportunity to do something you jump at it.
Drew: You said there a second ago, people sometimes get a bit annoyed because of constantly asking questions – is that part of maybe a misconception about your role, that they don’t fully understand where you fit, or is it just people are busy?
Sonja: I think it could sometimes be a little bit of both. When I’m starting a relationship with someone at work, they generally don’t too much of an idea about what a Technical Governance Lead does and I don’t hold that against them at all. It can be a bit confusing and the title doesn’t exactly say ‘this is what I do’ so it can be a little bit confusing straight off the bat, but once you generate that relationship and you have conversations and you get to know each other and you get to know what each other does, it more comes down to being busy. But at the end of the day, everybody just has patience with each other. We all understand that we’re all just trying to do our best and do the job that we’ve got and we all need to work together in order for the big picture to come together.
Drew: What do you like about working with Defence?
Sonja: I like the fact that it is something bigger than me. There’s a motivational speaker – his name’s Simon Sinek – I find him extremely knowledgeable and something that he talks about is having a ‘just cause’ and a ‘why’ that you work towards. And for me, I love working in Defence because the Defence industry is made up of people that risk their lives and they do everything they can to, not only protect the people of this country, but also help people in times of need. It’s a good reason ‘why’ it’s a ‘just cause’, it’s something that I feel I can get behind and is worth the sacrifice of my time, or whatever it may be, but it’s worthy. Does that make sense?
Drew: It makes perfect sense. You’ve mentioned a few times you’ve had, been fortunate to have people take you under their wing and that’s been really important in your career path. What do you reckon the best career advice is you’ve received along the way?
Sonja: One would be ‘listen to understand’, not listen to respond. It sounds logical, but you find that a lot of people in everyday life will just be listening to what you’re saying just to respond and keep the conversation going as opposed to listening to understand what you are genuinely trying to say. So, I think that’s probably one piece of advice that I would offer everybody. And I think the other thing is it’s okay to ask for help. Don’t try and solve everything yourself. Surround yourself with people that are smarter than you, know different things to you, and build that intellectual diversity so that you’re constantly intellectually challenging yourself and others.
Drew: Lastly Sonja, what advice would you have for anyone considering a career in Defence?
Sonja: Do it. You will love it. I have never looked back, I think it’s the most rewarding job I’ve had because it’s not really a job – you’re part of a team, you’re part of a family, and at the end of the day you’re helping.
Drew: Well Sonja, it sounds like you are doing a remarkable job of helping and your career just seems to go from strength to strength. You gave me some amazing insights and all the best through your career from here on in. But Sonja, Technical Governance Lead on the Hunter program, thank you for joining me for this Beneath the Deck podcast.
Sonja: Thank you so much for having me, it’s been wonderful.