At just 18 years old, after six months of studying commerce/law at the University of Melbourne John McPhee (OM 1973) made a spontaneous decision to change his career path completely, opting to work in mining instead.
While studying intermittently for 7 years while labouring at iron ore, copper, silver/lead/zinc, coal and manganese mines across Australia, John eventually capitalised on his experience and earned an engineering degree. He then secured a position at Mount Isa, home to the world’s largest copper and silver/lead/zinc mine and, while there, completed an Applied Science postgraduate degree.
“It was extraordinary,” John says. “When I went there as a mining engineer, I spent the first 12 months 1,000m underground literally working at the face before working ‘in the office’ and it was through this role that I discovered my passion for supply chain management.”
Creating the dream job from scratch
John spent 12 years in the mining industry before setting out in yet another direction. After concurrently completing an MBA and a degree in economics at Stanford University, John worked in investment banking for eight years.
Then, 22 years ago, John was hired by Nike to work in supply chain management. “I had a good background in that, as well as finance and I had studied ‘business’, but for the life of me, I couldn’t understand how Nike worked.”
“Nike is a complex ever-changing machine. We have 23 different functions, we sell products in 192 countries around the world, and we have 251 factory partners who make our products,” he explains. “I liked working at Nike and I wanted to stay there, but I also wanted to understand what made us so successful and what made us unique.”
John created a live presentation to help him visualise how all the various teams worked together and planned, made, moved and sold four million units of product every single day across the world. Things escalated from there. “Others wanted to see the presentation and we realised there was a broader, deeper, more fundamental hunger for this knowledge,” he says.
John is now in a role he created—Global Program Lead for Nike’s Supply Chain University. And what does that even mean?
“For the past 10 years, I’ve been travelling to Nike offices across 24 countries to talk to our employees—or teammates—about how the work they do is connected to the company’s larger goals,” John explains. “These goals are about so much more than just making money. Nike works to enable the communities around us to be better, to make our teammates’ lives better, and to make the world a better place as a whole.”
“Whether I’m talking to one of the 18,000 teammates running our distributions centres or a company Vice President, we want to have our 76,000 global teammates be even better educated and even more inspired to come to work each day feeling grateful for the unique opportunity that each of us has to work at Nike,” John adds.
Learning to see potential and possibilities
When asked where his curiosity and optimism come from, John is emphatic about the influence of his time at Melbourne Grammar.
“I was unbelievably fortunate to come to the School on a scholarship and I had no idea how that would change my life,” he says. “This school gave me perspective, vision, and a recognition of the limitless possibilities that come from learning. I still remember the lessons I had on Chaucer in my English classes and all the other extraordinary teachers who opened my eyes to what was possible.”
John adds that today, his philosophy in both work and life is focused on a simple formula for happiness: gratitude, grit, and growth.
“Some people define happiness in traditional terms like what they have, but I don’t think that brings true happiness,” he explains. “I think happiness is the result of being grateful for what you have every day, and living with grit whatever you’re doing. That doesn’t mean you need to be the best, it means do what you do with fervour, determination, and inspiration. And, finally, happiness comes from having a growth mindset. Don’t be mired in a set of beliefs that who you are today is who you are forever. The real truth of life is we can be whoever we want to be.”
