As an experienced public servant, Martin Hehir, Deputy Secretary for the Governance and Corporate Group within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, has led teams in the Commonwealth and ACT governments. In this episode, he takes us back to the start of his senior leadership career by providing us with invaluable insights into how he has adapted his leadership style to take on a new role in a new department, and how the importance of communication helped him to navigate unfamiliar territory where his team increased by a factor of 20.Martin also shares the importance that a couple of mentors played at this time in his career in helping him to stay real and honest with himself, which are invaluable attributes today for leading authentically.
A lot has changed over the past ten years, and the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing is no exception! From the 2016 capability review, the COVID pandemic, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, and the second capability review in late 2022, DoHAC stands at a critical point in its history, having evolved considerably in how it approaches change and prepares itself for the future. Rachel Balmanno, First Assistant Secretary of the People, Communication, and Parliamentary Branch, at the department, joins us to discuss a future-oriented approach to change in our latest episode.
The Clean Energy Regulator (CER) certainly has a large and growing remit of work. As they administer Australia’s climate change mitigation laws, CER not only serves as a regulator but also as a carbon markets agency, acting like a bank due to the carbon units and certificates it issues.Speaking with Mark Williamson, the Executive General Manager, who has been at CER for thirteen years on the topic of navigating change, it’s clear that as an organisation, they have had to get very good at managing ongoing change at pace, which is highly aligned to their purpose of accelerating carbon abatement for Australia and how from doing this, adaptability to change has become a permanent part of their organisational DNA.
Imagine being a micro agency of nine people with a great ambition to make a real difference in addressing climate change for Australians. Then you get the green light to rapidly grow six times your size, budget, and remit. Exciting? Perhaps. Uncertain? Definitely. Brad Archer, Chief Executive Officer of the Climate Change Authority, joins us to discuss leading through significant and rapid growth, exploring the opportunities, challenges, and achievements it brings in our latest episode.This episode offers an honest reflection on leading and managing rapid organisational change, highlighting some of the challenges that arose from significant growth in recruiting a new workforce that had to come together quickly to start delivering on an expanded remit of work.
Saxon Rice, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA), joins us in our latest episode to discuss fostering adaptability in teams. This episode is an excellent reminder that while, for many leaders that are comfortable with change and may already be working in the future state that they’ve been part of designing, it can be easy to forget that others in the organisation may not be on the same page, and may see and experience change differently. Leaders who can ‘read the floor,’ translate that direction, and make the change journey meaningful to everyone can effectively foster adaptability in their team and achieve long-lasting change.
In our milestone thirtieth episode, we are joined by Carlyn Waters, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Operating Officer at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, as she brings a rare perspective of what it is like to be an Aboriginal person in 2025 and how having cultural traits of resilience, adaptability, curiosity, and humility encapsulate a growth mindset approach to change, and help her, and others, to sit in uncertainty and focus on the bigger purpose beyond just today, recognising that today is only a very small part in a much larger ecosystem.
The benefit of hindsight is that you can see how things from your past have carefully placed the pieces together to create the path that you’re on. Our next trailblazer, Sandy Pitcher, Chief Executive at the Department of Human Services for the South Australian Government, joins us in our latest episode to talk about this as she reflects on her career. Sandy shares her experiences in growing up in a small country town, how having the desire to change the world led her to the public service, how she rises to the task of many challenges she has been given, and the important lessons she has learned along the way in knowing what your strengths are, using them, and letting others step up in using their strengths towards a shared vision and authorising environment.This episode offers an honest reflection on how our values and aspirations, even from an early age, can guide us throughout our careers. It also demonstrates that knowing your strengths and recognising strengths in others around you can help you all work towards a shared vision with the authorising environment to achieve great outcomes.
Tania Rishniw, Deputy Secretary of Employment and Workforce at the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) joins us in our latest episode to talk about how failure can lead to your biggest success. This episode showcases an engaging and authentic leader whose experience in crises and uncertainty offers excellent advice on overcoming challenges, managing risk, innovating, and building resilience.
Having worked on several significant transformation projects across Queensland Health, eHealth Queensland, and Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service, Damian Green knows a thing (or ten) about what factors are critical in leading successful transformations and delivering them in uncertain times. Damian is currently the Deputy Director-General of Corporate Services at Queensland Health, and he joins us in our latest episode to discuss fostering adaptability in teams. This episode is a masterclass in leading transformations. It will provide any leader with expert advice on leading change, fostering agility and adaptability in teams, and delivering successfully.
Deb Jenkins, Deputy Secretary of Corporate Enabling Services and Chief Operating Officer for the Department of Employment and Workplace and Relations, joins us in our latest episode to talk about fostering adaptability in teams. This episode affirms that to create great teams, you have to work hard at it. Deb shares that the cornerstones of great teams are built on relationships, a clear and shared purpose, and a diverse makeup, and these factors will always be fundamental in leading high-performing teams now and in the future. Deb also discusses the pivotal role that recruitment plays in ensuring you have the right fit for your team and how evolving your hiring approach to recruit talent can help you succeed in filling key skills gaps.
Our next Trailblazer has over forty years of experience in information technology and digital media in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and Asia, leading companies such as IBM, Apple, Microsoft, ninemsn, and Xero, and as a result, has been on the frontline of every significant technological shift and economic shock since the 1980s. Steve Vamos, Global Executive, and former CEO, joins us in our latest episode to discuss this further as he reflects on his career and provides insights from his book, “Through Shifts and Shocks – Lessons from the Front Line of Technology and Change.”Steve’s experience on the frontline of uncertainty has provided him with a unique ability to get straight to the point of what leaders must do today: establish great teams, maximise the potential of individuals in their workforce, effectively achieve alignment of aspirations at every layer of the organisation, and approach challenges with the right mindset.
Amanda Cattermole, CEO of the Australian Digital Health Agency, is a leader who is passionate about creating an organisational culture that’s focussed on stewardship, built on deep collaboration, and comprised of leaders at every level who add to the culture by enabling stewardship and innovation and creating a convening role with the broader ecosystem. Amanda also shares a powerful message of the impact that leaders can have in seeing things and pathways for others that they can't necessarily see for themselves and how, with the right encouragement, it can profoundly impact their career journey in a really positive way.
When you've had a thirty-five-year-long career that spans industries and sectors as our next Trailblazer has, you have the benefit of seeing how organisational learning has changed and if it's changed for the better or worse. Tim Beresford, Chief Executive at the Australian Financial Security Authority, or AFSA, joins us to talk about this and much more in our latest episode on becoming a learning organisation.Tim dives into the key differences in how organisational learning has changed throughout his career, from focusing more on skillsets at the beginning in terms of what knowledge you could bring to an organisation to now being more focussed on mindsets and what you're willing to learn.This compelling episode offers great advice to other leaders on shifting from knowledge organisations to learning organisations and on how important it is to be open, adaptable, and resilient to foster a continuous learning mindset in your workforce.
What does learning look like in an organisation when a high proportion of your workforce is already doctorate-level educated, formally trained marine scientists and former teachers? Josh Thomas, Chief Executive Officer at the Reef Authority, talks about this and much more as he joins us to discuss becoming a learning organisation in our latest podcast episode. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has a critical job of being guardians and protectors of the Great Barrier Reef, a world heritage-listed coral reef, for future generations. With a high percentage of their workforce made up of marine scientists, their unique organisational DNA is centred on understanding the world around them and has a natural and instinctive curiosity-driven culture that helps fuel their courage to experiment and test ideas about tackling existing and emerging threats to the ecosystem.As CEO, Josh explains how risk is a key element that drives their organisational strategy and how they approach learning and development, as understanding risks in your environment is critical in understanding what you need to learn and lean into, and if an organisation is calibrated to understanding medium to long term risks, it will be more proactive in addressing challenges and returning value to stakeholders.
Our next Trailblazer’s interest in history and learning from it, particularly the history of labour movements and work, has been a common theme that has led her throughout her fascinating career. Marie Boland, Chief Executive Officer at Safe Work Australia, discusses this further in our latest episode on Taking the Path Less Travelled. Listen to Marie's story of growing up in Ireland and how her dad used to take them around to see the statues and tell the stories of famous people, including great union leaders, helped to fuel her interest in history. Marie talks about moving to Australia and how working in museums ultimately led her to study law and work in industrial relations. It's an episode that cements how your interests and passions can lead you to be on the path you're meant to be on, no matter which twists and turns it includes.
For many leaders in the public sector, there are very few times in your career when you have the opportunity to develop a new agency for a state government entity. Our next Trailblazer, Marina Bowshall, had the chance to do just that as she took on the Chief Executive of Preventive Health SA role in September of 2023. Marina joins us in our latest episode to talk about her experience in leading through a machinery of government change.
As an experienced leader who has worked across multiple industries and now is the Chief Executive Officer at the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Authority, our next guest Sue McCarrey, has certainly seen her share of times when things haven’t gone according to plan or achieved an unexpected outcome. Sue joins our latest podcast to discuss how challenges can lead to your biggest success.
Liz Tydd, the Australian Information Commissioner, joins us in this special broadcast of our podcast series on Thriving in Uncertainty to provide a regulator’s perspective in building capacity in agencies and industry.In this enlightening episode, you’ll learn the OAIC’s latest thinking on the eight key elements in ensuring there is a human-rights-centred approach in the AI space and how essential it is for their workforce to be committed to preserving human rights, be curious and work collegially, and how the organisation has developed four pillars to manifest in their culture and operations which are proactive, proportionate, purpose-driven, and people-focussed. Liz’s leadership approach of being open to change, developing the ability to respond effectively in a dynamic landscape, and taking a human-rights approach to designing for trust is a masterclass for any leader in leading through change and dealing with complexity in a dynamic environment.
Our next trailblazer, David MacLennan, has had an interesting career. He started out working in the Commonwealth Government, mainly in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra and then overseas, before joining the Western Australian State Government in the Department of Planning and now as the CEO of the City of Vincent. David joins us in our latest episode to talk about his journey as a CEO in improving organisational performance.
We know that there are many modes of learning. One that has been spoken about in recent episodes as critically important is on-the-job learning and how, knowledge sharing between peers, even from different areas of an organisation, can help fuel new ideas and ways of working. Another important learning and development opportunity in the APS is mobility. In our latest episode, Sam Palmer joins us to discuss this and so much more on the topic of learning organisations. Sam is Secretary and a Fellow of IPAA and currently serves as APS reviewer on the independent capability review of the Commonwealth Department of Education on secondment from Austrade.