About Graham Middleton

As a child Graham lived on a small, isolated farm off the electricity grid. Thanks to the efforts of a nun who taught him he was able to win a bursary to board at Holy Cross College in Sydney run by the Patrician Brothers a selfless group of men bound by a vow of poverty who in the days before government funding for independent schools managed to run a school with few resources through their efforts of each doing a number of jobs including teaching, supervising boarders, coaching rugby league teams, being officers of school cadets and school administration. The small number of Patricians have been succeeded by many more teachers and administrators and the college facilities are vastly improved. It ceased to be a boarding school many years ago.

Graham completed his NSW Leaving Certificate in 1963. After a brief period working in general insurance, he spent two years in Shell’s NSW office before entering the Australian Army as a National Serviceman.

After a period of training at the Army School of Signals he attended the Australian Army Officer Cadet School at Portsea and became a Regular Army Officer in the Royal Australian Corps of Signals, where he had a variety of postings in personnel management, training and command positions. He studied part time for a degree majoring in history and politics.

In 1985 he took leave from the army to further his Masters of Business Administration course at Monash University. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed Director, Human Resource Management of the Attorney General’s Department of Victoria and gained his MBA, majoring in Accounting, Finance and Economics electives. In 1987 he rejoined the private sector working as a financial advisor and consultant.

In 1994 he cofounded the Synstrat Group with Bill Dewez (now long retired).  The Group specialized in providing strategic business advice, accounting, practice performance benchmarking, practice valuations, financial advice, superannuation fund advice and administration to professional clients among whom dentists and dental specialists were the most numerous.

His authorship includes The Synstrat Guide to Practice Management, 50 Rules for Success as a Dentist, Buying and Selling General and Specialist Dental Practices and Synstrat Dental Stories, Strategic Thought and Business Tactics for Dentists. He has written a bi-monthly article for the Australasian Dental Practice Magazine since 1983.

This book is being provided to those who make an appropriate donation to the Delany Foundation, a registered charity established by the Patrician Brothers, which contributes to schools in Papua New Guinea, Kenya and Ghana.