An Opportunity for Physics

A W Butterfield
Assistant Commissioner for Taxation (Small Business)

Tony Butterfield received a PhD in physics from Adelaide University in 1969 for a thesis which studied the thermoluminescent properties of crystals. He then joined DSTO, was Senior Research Scientist at the RAAF Aircraft Research and Development Unit (after embarking on an MBA at Melbourne to find out how to manage) and ended up a Director in the head office in Canberra. He later spent a number of years as a Director of the ACT Schools Authority, and was Associate Director of ACT TAFE. He finally joined the Australian Taxation Office as an Assistant Commissioner, initially managing a major computer project, but then had responsibility for infrastructure, management of withholding and indirect taxes and later debt management. This article is written from his perspective of a "lapsed physicist", and is extracted from and article in the March/April 2001 issue of 'The Physicist', published by the Australian Institute of Physics.

When I completed my PhD in the late 1960's, man had just landed on the moon, we had the International Geophysical Year, technology was leading the charge into the future and all was rosy in the world of physics. Physics was a highly regarded discipline studied by the best and brightest — it was even an asset for chatting up girls....

[Unfortunately, times have changed. Dr Butterfield moves to look at ...]
where all the extensively educated physicists have gone, and what they have achieved — and there are plenty of examples. Probably the Australian physicist best known to the community is Dr Ziggy Switkowski, former Chief Executive of Telstra.

Dr Switkowski is simply one who has clearly reached the very top in the business world, but there are disproportionately large numbers of physicists in the layers of management just below the top in almost every large organisation. The Australian Taxation Office, where I am currently an Assistant Commissioner, is not unexpectedly dominated by lawyers and accountants, yet of the five senior executives with PhDs, there are two physicists, an engineer, and a mathematical/computer scientist! This is not atypical. The PhDs are only the most visible (they have the title!). When you get to know people in management it invariably turns out that a surprisingly large number have scientific qualifications, often at the honours or masters level.

Why are they so successful?
If one asks 'Why is it so?' the answer becomes readily evident and very obvious. People trained in the physical sciences (especially at postgraduate level) are generally:

• highly numerate
• good at problem solving
• logical thinkers
• capable of learning quickly
• analytical thinkers
• innovative
• etc etc

These skills are regarded as extremely valuable in the community and the commercial world, and those who possess them can expect to be sought after and well remunerated.

These skills and characteristics, which are so valuable, and which are well developed in physical scientists, are to some extent independent of the subject matter which was the medium used to acquire them.

There are certainly many senior managers who are aware that physicists and like graduates have these skills and are actually keen to employ them, but I am sure that many are unaware of the valuable and marketable skills which are abundant in physics departments.

What else do they need?

Obviously a physicist cannot simply walk into a reasonably senior management position — if they could physics departments would be overflowing with the best and brightest of our youths desperately competing for entry.

What I find disappointing is that our young graduates do not know what else they need, and can only find out (like I did) by trial and error and a modicum of good luck. (I went to a university open day to find out how the woefully managed laboratory in which I worked could be better run, and ended up enrolling for a Master in Business Administration).

The additional skills can be found in most business and management courses.

Accounting and financial management skills are essential in almost any professional career. They are relatively easy to learn and are a breeze to any one who can understand calculus, matrices etc. Much of accounting can be treated as a very simple branch of mathematics. A highly numerate graduate will find financial analysis both interesting and challenging. It is widely believed in some sectors of the financial services industry that a Ph.D. in science is essential for serious investment risk analysis.

Project management is similarly essential whenever there are projects to be managed, which is pretty well everywhere that something must be designed and built to meet defined needs, budgets and timeframes. The "something" may be a technological device, a building or even a piece of legislation. This is another straightforward skill commonly supported by intuitive computer programs.

As most work is not done within a single organization, contract management skills are essential.

An understanding of law is not difficult for a physicist, who is usually able to distil the principles and not get bogged down in the superabundant detail. (Two years after taking responsibility for legal management of insolvency and debt collection I was not only speaking at, but also chairing, national conferences.)

Wherever one works outside the academic world, it will be most likely as part of a team, and often the professional will soon be in a supervisory or managerial position. This can present a real challenge to any technology graduate, as we often think quite differently from much of the population, and more seriously, we do not really understand human differences. As a group we tend to be swayed more by logic, and less by feelings, than are many of our peers. I can recall being described as one who could batter others into submission with powerful logic, but who would never win their hearts! This was certainly not intended as a compliment! Similarly we respond more to sensate evidence than to intuition, and prefer to bring matters to closure and move on to the next challenge, rather than to keep our options open for as long as possible. If you are to persuade and convince others you really do need to understand how both your and their minds work, and how to best convey a message. People will only truly work with and for you if they are persuaded, not if they are simply ordered. An understanding of psychology and human behaviour is easy to learn, but generally a little more difficult to put into practice.

Communication skills are essential. Many scientists have these, Carl Sagan being a classic example. Others would be terrified to face a large and possibly hostile crowd, a press conference, a court or a parliamentary enquiry. Concise and above all, persuasive writing, is indispensable.

One might ask how one can acquire such diverse skills.

In most positions outside the academic or laboratory environments, there are many opportunities for learning on the job, and generally employers who think you are giving them good value will be eager to send you on suitable training programs, seminars and conferences — at their expense and in paid work time. This is a lifelong journey and after about thirty years in the workforce, mostly in senior positions, I still put my hand up for training opportunities, as well as learning much from others at events where I am a speaker, and I expect to do this for many more years. All you have to do is be the volunteer when new programs are offered or new tasks or challenges are available; after all you only have to be the least unsuitable person and you will get the job or opportunity.

The real opportunity

There are abundant opportunities for the physics profession to enhance its relevance, prestige and position in society.

I'd like to suggest that rather than selling physics courses as an opportunity to enter the exciting but possibly diminishing world of physics, there is a much greater potential to sell it as a very valuable path into a wider range of careers, building on the intellectual and learning skills inherent in physics training.

In other words, physics can be sold as an education rather than as training.

This is not a novel idea, as the law faculties have been very successfully selling their studies as an entry into the business world, with enrolments outstripping demand for practising lawyers by a huge margin for many years. There is some irony in this, as law is primarily based on history and precedent, and would seem to be providing precisely the wrong skills for innovative problem solving senior management in a high technology world. (hence all the lawyer jokes such as "you can always tell a lawyer, but generally not very much".)

Approaching local organisations which might employ graduates, and selling the concept to them as a solution to the scarcity of skilled professional staff might help. The engineering profession does this. Obviously this presents some challenges (and would take some people outside their comfort zones), but I suspect there are many grateful lapsed physicists out there in the community who could lend a hand.

There is also a need to sell the profession to students. Potential students of physics should be made aware that once they have graduated, their career opportunities are not limited to physics, and current students need to be exposed to those outside the academia and the laboratory who have based diverse, successful and challenging careers on a foundation of physics.

Physics is very saleable as a useful knowledge base for a great diversity of application. In doing this we must be very aware that the mental skills and techniques which have to be acquired by physicists are far more valuable than the subject matter. New subject matter (be it debt management or demography) can be picked up in a few months by a professional who has been trained to learn — the mental skills of problem solving, innovative thinking etc are the really valuable assets.

A few years in physics at university is a great springboard, not a life sentence (you don't even get life for murder!).

....To paraphrase the atrocious lawyer joke above — "you can always tell a lapsed physicist — he's the one in the well cut suit sitting in first class on the plane!"