David Harrison is CEO of the DG Murray Trust. We asked him to tell us about his journey – about the opportunities in his life that opened things up for him. He also spoke to us about what he looks for in (young) people when he recruits them and why.
“I have always had an interest in medicine – I grew up in a family where my parents were community activists, but I wanted to come at it from a health slant. There weren’t any doctors or medics in my family. I registered for medicine and really enjoyed it, although I found community medicine dull and boring. I did an internship at Groote Schuur and decided that I wanted to do public health differently. I pitched up at the door of Prof. Marian Jacobs and told her that I was interested in Child Health Policy. She spoke to someone at MRC, and I got a foot in the door. They gave me a six-month contract to help set up and plan for health services in Khayelitsha. It was a case of earning some stripes by working really hard and being immersed in real programmes on the ground.
For me, it was really helpful to understand the interface between the clinician and the health system. And that happens at the frontline. It helped me to understand service delivery. It also helped me to reframe what wasn’t working, as an opportunity. In the health and welfare sector, we often speak of need and problem, not opportunity. So seeking pinch points that, if we unlock, would get a far bigger effect – that became my interest.
A really useful comment someone made to me early on was that I had an instinct for public health and that I could see things differently. I didn’t realise that I could see things differently. That was really, really helpful – I guess I was a bit intimidated by the number of letters behind people’s names in terms of degrees and specialisations and here I was fresh out of medical school. What I realised – in time – was that relative inexperience was a blessing; it had worth. I could look at things through different eyes, I could really struggle to understand what was going on, instead of trying to locate it in a particular academic theory or what others had said about it.
That’s helped me as I have looked for people to work with in my career – I haven’t necessarily looked for people with many degrees behind their names. That’s why I have really enjoyed working with younger people – younger people who demonstrate big potential, but don’t necessarily have the experience under their belts. They are lean and hungry, and they want to explore ideas. That’s the reality I have found most useful to work with. I generally stay away from conferences – I don’t like the echo chambers. So I look for people who are willing to think differently, to look at a problem differently, and to carve out their own path. It stemmed from someone who looked at me and was willing to affirm what I was bringing to the table even though I didn’t have all the qualifications.
If you advertise a job, there will almost inevitably be 200 CVs to look at. The first thing I look for is who’s different, who stands out from the crowd, who’s sparky, who wears their heart on their sleeve and says what they believe in, and what they want to do with their life. They need to give you a sense of what they have done in life, not necessarily paid work, but where have they volunteered, been energetic, been active, tried things out – that’s what I really look for. And people who have this, get onto the shortlist. To get to that first step you have to be able to express spark.
My next opportunity in life came when the Kaiser Family Foundation was funding a book in South Africa, analysing health policy. They had completed most of the book but didn’t know what the concluding chapter should be. Michael Sinclair, from the Kaiser Foundation, was looking for someone who could bring a fresh approach – so he teamed me up with [Sociology Professor] Mike Savage and we wrote a really excellent final chapter. At the same time, the Health Systems Trust was being set up to plan for health services in South Africa. They were looking for someone to head it up – certainly not a young whipper snapper straight out of medical school! But they couldn’t find anyone to do all the legwork, all the administrative chores of setting up the trust, getting the bank accounts going, and starting the process of consultation around the country – so I did this, knowing that they’d look for a ‘heavy hitter’ after six months. At the end of six months, it was just me and someone else in the running – I got offered the job, even though I was the fallback!”
Weren’t you terrified? What kept you going? What made you feel, ‘I can do this’?
“Part of it was working in a new space in South Africa – everyone was new and inexperienced. There was a particular space. But having said that, I still think there are big spaces even today where there isn’t the knowledge or expertise – spaces for people to get involved, for young people to do things that haven’t been done before that can move things forward. That’s the lovely thing about this young democracy. If you try to do this in the [United] States, there is such a long pecking order, you’d be down at the bottom of the pile. It would take you 20 years to work into a position that I was thrust into overnight. So you need to be able to identify those spaces and those opportunities for rapid growth, if you are willing to put in the hard work.
It is also really helpful not to be too obsessed with a particular place you want to get to in your life. It is good to be open to the possibility of hand holds and directions that may open up other opportunities for you. For me, it’s been useful to frame my life not by saying ‘in 20 years I want to be the DG or a professor’ but rather to say, ‘in the next five years, what can I do that’s going to make a real difference?’. And in doing so, it has just kept on opening up possibilities for me.
The third key opportunity for me came while at the Health Systems Trust. I felt I needed to develop my own academic skills and so I did a research Masters at night. But I thought I needed to do a Masters in public health as well. Someone said: ‘Don’t be crazy – you know 90% of public health so you will only benefit from 10%. Go and do something you don’t know about. Do public policy of education, of gravel mining, of transport.’
For me, this was really helpful. It made me realise the limitations of linear paths of development, where you become increasingly specialised and go down a narrow path of development. If you want to contribute to the wicked problems of this country, to the multi-faceted problems, you need to have a horizon that is constantly expanding and you need to look for perspectives that are different. That’s why I have been so happy at DGMT – we deal with education, transport, technology – the neurons in our brains are buzzing!”
It sounds like you have constantly been unsettling yourself?
“Yes, I guess this is partly personality and partly cultivated. People must cultivate the ability to see opportunity in uncertainty – to understand that disruptive technologies are necessarily different to what we have at present. You have got to look for risk, and live in a state of uncertainty of outcomes. This requires developing a set of skills and attitudes to be able to deal with this.”
Any last advice for young people?
“It is important that when young people are mapping out their life, they mustn’t map it out with the destination in mind. But rather, they must ask: ‘What is the next harbour or station or place that I want to go to?’ The world is a big place, and you can’t visit it all. If you map it out too much, you may miss the unexplored stuff. And that for me has been the most exciting – to work in spaces that are relatively unexplored. For me, this opened up a range of possibilities which wouldn’t have been in place if had thought I was simply on a ladder to success.
So it’s good to see yourself as on a climbing wall, looking for the next handhold, looking for a lattice of opportunities. Some handholds will be very small and frail, and you’ll cling on with your fingertips. They won’t necessarily be the ones with the greatest status but you go there and do it, because it enables you to see the next opportunity, which may be more rewarding.”
