Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Lisa Paul

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change. The good, the bad and everything in between because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 2 of the Change Happens podcast where we continue to have conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learnt along the way. Now today I’m joined by Lisa Paul who is so many things. She’s a company director of a number of listed and private companies and not for profit organisations. She’s the Chair of headspace. She was a secretary or a Chief Executive equivalent in the Australian Federal Government from 2004 to 2016. She’s served under five prime ministers and nine cabinet ministers. She held national responsibility for many of our nation’s most important areas: education, vocational training, youth transitions, research, science, employment, job creation, workforce and workplace relations, social security payments. Now in 2003, she was awarded a public service medal for leading the Australian Government’s domestic response to the Bali bombings. In 2011, Lisa was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to public sector leadership and she received the Australian Chartered Accountants Federal Government Leader of the Year award. Adding to the award list: 2015, she was recognised in the Knowledge 100 Australian Thought Leaders and Lisa, fairly recently, stepped out of the role of Coordinator for BizRebuild, which is a business led initiative developed by the Business Council of Australia to provide practical and on-the-ground assistance to small and local businesses that were left devastated by the bush fires. So many things to explore here, so let’s jump into it. Lisa, how are you?

Lisa: I’m really great Jenelle, thank you so much and thank you for this invitation, so kind.

Jenelle: I’m delighted that you can join me for this chat. Now, where to start … you’re no stranger to managing crises. I’ve listed several in there. Certainly no stranger to being in unexpected situations which we will get into during the course of this conversation but how has the last past 18 months been for you during the pandemic.

Lisa: Do you know what. I love the pandemic lifestyle as long as I don’t get the pandemic [laugh].

Jenelle: Okay.

Lisa: Its actually changed our lives. I realised I hadn’t really been home for 35 years and suddenly I was at home and its fantastic. Not travelling. Its absolutely brilliant. The Zoom lifestyle – I love it, I’m there.

Jenelle: You’re into it, you’re here for it.

Lisa: I’m so there I’m so there. So I’m actually starting to finish things and spend mor time doing things like with my hands, not just with my head and very life changing.

Jenelle: I might actually just start with and I’m trying to understand what is it that drives you. There’s just so much that’s been going on and, you know, call it purpose or call it change of gender. What is it that you are seeking to achieve or drive.

Lisa: It’s a great question. I think I’d say what I stand for, if that’s a way of putting it, would be firstly and always helping people reach their full potential. I think that’s something that’s kind of driven me ever since I was a child. My Mum and Dad gave me an amazing role modelling on helping people who need help to reach their full potential. They were both educators. Everything I do actually is about helping people reach their full potential, whether its through great schooling or through getting unemployed people jobs or through offering great childcare or through trying to get homeless people housed and now of course, chairing headspace the national youth mental health foundation. That’s all about helping young people mentally healthy. So yeah, and then I reckon the second one, I think I’d say helping the people I work with have the best day at work they could have every day. So it’s the leadership …

Jenelle: Oh that’s so nice.

Lisa: … yeah, I just, you know, really care about that because people spend more time at work than anywhere else, don’t they and if as a leader, particularly when I was a CEO, if I can help give people the best experience they could have every day, well you know, how awesome is that.

Jenelle: Pretty damn awesome I’ve got to say. You mentioned that your parents were both educators. Is it a coincidence that you ended up as the most senior public servant in education and training or was that by design.

Lisa: [laugh], well I wish I could say it was by design but I think my entire career was an accident [laugh]. It was definitely a complete coincidence but it was pretty exciting cos clearly Mum and Dad saw education as their vocation and their value set and mine is about social justice, as I say, you know, helping people reach their potential and so when I was made Secretary or CEO of the Education Department in Federal Government, I rang them up, you know, very proud obviously and said “I think I’ve finally joined the family business” [laugh].

Jenelle: [laugh], love it. You’re a big advocate for the role of vocational education and creating a resilient workforce. You often speak about the importance of the collaborated tertiary sector which offers students, you know, continuous experience between vocational education and training and higher education. Have you helped make that change and what do we need to do to make that change happen.

Lisa: I would love to see vocational education be higher status. As we speak Jenelle, we’re having our roof ripped off our house to try to find a leak and I was talking to the roofers this morning and they say we’re just not getting the apprentices through any more. Skills shortages in this country are more likely to be in occupations that require a vocational qualification than occupations that target University qualification and so I personally have got this dream for a start-up where you just go onto a platform and even do some psychometrics to work out what you really care about and what you’re really good and what you’re interested in and then the platform would actually throw up every single choice, maybe international even, of what's available to learn that thing. So would be accredited, some would unaccredited, some would be in the vocational sphere, some would be in the University sphere, whatever and then what if you could then choose on the basis of whatever was important to you, is it near me or can I do it online and then enrol all on the same platform. So if anyone wants to join me [laugh].

Jenelle: Oh my gosh, just listening to this, there is someone I need to introduce you to. Its … I interviewed him recently, Adam Jacobs. He’s the co-founder of the Iconic but also he has co-founded Hatch, which is an online platform which matches the underlying skills and passions and attitudes of students with meaningful work experiences. I think I need to get you two to meet each other. It is complete alignment of interest here, so let me just say this podcast can make change happen.

Lisa: [laugh].

Jenelle: [laugh].

Lisa: I’m loving that, I’m loving that. I’d love to meet with him and that would be awesome.

Jenelle: That’s my “to-do” after this discussion. Now you said that your public service career, in fact your entire career was an accidental one. Tell me, lets take a step back. How did you end up in public service.

Lisa: So when I … so I grew up in Adelaide. Well actually I’m American by birth, I’m a migrant but I grew up in Adelaide and my parents, both being kind of American educators. You know, how America kids go to college and they always go away from home. So I think they thought, they thought [00.07.34] is a chance, you know, for Lisa to go away [laugh]. They strongly recommended the ANU, then after I finished my degree … look my mates were just applying to join the public service and in those days when there was much more public service employment to be had, I guess, we’d all trip off to a high school, sit at desks and do an exam to enter the pubic service. So we’re all [00.07.56] from Campbell High School in Canberra and the chap next to me fell asleep and I thought “I’m in with a chance” [laugh]. I got in as a graduate. Rather than choose, you know, prime minister and cabinet or foreign affairs or whatever, I choose to go to what is now the ACT Government and actually work in the housing commission and the first thing I did, I was out at the Long Stake event park where people live in the caravan park long term who otherwise would face homelessness and I was reviewing an audit that had been done and that was like on day two and I was hooked. I was just hooked because I could see the difference you could make.

Jenelle: And so the portfolio that’s you then moved through from, you know, housing, social housing. Where to after that.

Lisa: I’ve basically worked in every single human services department of the Federal Government as well as working for the ACT Government in the same domain: health, aged care, family and community services, social security and then of course education, employment, workplace relations, science. I’ve think I’ve negotiated every commonwealth state agreement there is to be had in the human services side of the house except for health [laugh]. Yeah but its been … it was marvellous. It was fantastic.

Jenelle: Incredibly important portfolios. Not an easy thing to be navigating – right. There’s a whole lot of complexity and stakeholders and red tape. What did you learn about driving change across those respective portfolios. Were there some common themes to getting successful outcomes.

Lisa: Absolutely. So, in particular in terms of organisational change. You know, in the private sector if you’re going to plan for some M&A activity, you know, you’ve got a project plan, you’ve got money dedicated to it, you bring in your advisors, blah blah blah. In the public sector, I reckon we do M&A type activity, what would be called machinery of government change like every six months. Its completely unfunded. You can’t predict it. You have to effect it literally overnight with no planning and off we go. We’re actually really good at it [laugh]. I think the most challenging leadership role I had was in 2007, a change of government to the Labour Government from the Howard Government where I didn’t know what I would end up running, if anything, and ended up running a mega department under Julia Gillard as Deputy Prime Minister that brought together two whole departments and a large part of a third. I think it’s the largest complete merger in public sector history as far as I could work out because when I went …

Jenelle: Is that right?

Lisa: … cos it was two complete departments and as I say, and a large part of a third. It cost us $80m just to do remuneration and IT alignment alone and completely unfunded and indeed, government took a dividend on the grounds that, you know, there would be a confidence of scale and so its hard. Its really hard and it had to be, you know, had to be completely seamless to all of our stakeholders and to government of course, our number one stakeholder. I actually went out and sought a leadership role model who had been through a similar sized merger in the … in a public sector and the only one I could find was a CEO in New Zealand and he said to me “it would take five years for the culture to settle” and that’s absolutely true, it was very interesting and at the end of five years, the place was abolished with incoming government [laugh] and it demerged into about five directions.

Jenelle: Just on that, like you led a complex merger, five years and then a demerger probably equally as complex in some ways, happened in 2013. As I understand it, you maintained top quartile staff engagement over that period of time. How! What were you doing there to make that work, it’s a very complex landscape.

Lisa: Yes it is. So the mega department, which was education, employment, workplace relations had about six and a half thousand people that administered $46 billion a year and was located across 52 locations internationally because we had international education. So how did I do it? Well it wasn’t just me of course but for a massive change like that merger, I would always take a very very full on internal communications approach. I believe strongly that anyone in an organisation needs to hear things in multiple ways out from the centre and needs to have multiple avenues to be heard and I also remember reading a piece of organisational literature once that said people need to heard something four times to hear it and six times to believe it [laugh] …

Jenelle: [laugh].

Lisa: … and so you know, it’s a bit of “well lets just say this again” principle as well but in that instance I had a dedicated task force of people just on that merger. I had formal communications approach that … where we all had our own roles, you know, there was me doing the state of the nation thing and getting out and meeting the people I didn’t know before but then in terms of anyone in the organisation being able to be heard, you know, not only did we have frequently asked questions, not only do we have newsletters, not only did we have all sorts of other things, but we also had, for example, an anonymous phone line where if someone really had an anxiety, they could ring this number and their voice would be recorded and only I would hear it.

Jenelle: It’s a safe zone you’ve created then.

Lisa: Yeah that’s exactly right. So everyone knew they had a way of being heard. I also have always used approaches like lots and lots of stuff, surveys of course, but also tools like manager one removed. So because your own manager, you know, has a conflict of interest in terms of wanting to keep you probably, then having a formal relationship with your manager one removed means you’ve got someone built in who will be less conflicted about letting you go, letting you be developed and so on. I’ve always used 360 degree feedback. I just think there are many many metrics for trying to get a high floor of leadership and I also, in the day that we had performance pay availability, it would be the equivalent of a short term incentive in the private sector. I would rate my senior executive cohort and C-suite people 50% on business outcomes and 50% on leadership and I am absolutely positive that that approach raised the floor calibre of leadership across the organisation.

Jenelle: I love the … the quote around “four times to hear it, six times to believe it”.

Lisa: [laugh].

Jenelle: When you’re thinking about that complex merger, what did you want people to believe.

Lisa: I wanted them to understand the “why” because its really interesting. In the private sector, if you think of M&A activity in private sector, the “why” will be completely clear, you know, it’s a commercial “why” always. In the public sector, why has this department been created, why does the government want this type of structure, the “why” is much more ambiguous and so the CEO must be able to explain why are we now doing this, because people are frightened of changes, you know. So there’s got to be a good rationale for it. Not only the “why” of change but what's in it for them, you know, what's the advantage of this change for them.

Jenelle: And back to that sort of point around the repetition of a message.

Lisa: Oh sure.

Jenelle: I did notice that no matter what portfolio you moved into, you’ve had a real repeat opening and I’m sure its not because you couldn’t think of another one, you sort of started with indigenous businesses, everyone’s business in the department of and then insert whatever department you are in. Why is that a statement that you opened with every time you spoke at a public event.

Lisa: Thanks for that question because it really means a lot to me and I care deeply about it. In all of the portfolios that I have run, getting the business right for aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples means the business probably is right. In my view, we try to get the business right for aboriginal and Torres Islander people, for good business reasons. Not just for kind of social justice reasons because it’s, you know, there are issues there which are at the crux of our identity as Australians but for business reasons as well in government and so I would start and I also believe that a CEO should stand for one thing. Everyone knew that I stood for indigenous people and therefore I would start every speech with the phrase “indigenous business is everyone’s business in the department of education etc. What that meant in practice was every area of the department would need to think through “how can we advance the outcomes for aboriginals Torres Island people”. So international education could look for scholarships for aboriginal Australians to go and study overseas. Science could look at the realms between, say traditional medicine and western medicine and so on. That wasn’t of course the only thing I did in this regard. I also believed when a CEO stands for something, you have to … and you’re trying to change things for the better, you have to do multiple things all at once, all of the time and so you know, we didn’t just have that opening line of every speech but we also had … I had an indigenous leader who was always the most senior aboriginal person in the department who worked directly to me, in that role, we had a reconciliation action plan. We were quite ahead of most on this. We had really clear recruitment and retention strategies. We had a network for our aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people. We did a co-mentoring approach where C-suite people would mentor an aboriginal staff member but they would mentor us in return. You know, I’m very proud to say I never have had the title “aboriginal affairs” in the name of my department and yet, at various points, we’ve had to 6% employment of aboriginal people in the department.

Jenelle: Fantastic. Clearly, I mean your passion for and commitment to the portfolios that you ran and the outcomes that you were seeking to drive for citizens, students etc, is really clear but as I said in the opening, you worked under five prime ministers and nine cabinet ministers so I would imagine that that would have introduced a whole lot of stop/start/restart/rebuild which possibly gets in the way of getting the outcomes that you were seeking. Tell me how you weathered that and, I guess, some of the challenges and opportunities maybe, that that level of constant change brought.

Lisa: Yeah see I don’t think of it as weathering, being weathered, you know. I think of it as … I don’t think of it as a challenge. I think of it as an honour and people would say to me “doesn’t it drive you crazy if a new government comes in and they change programmes and walk away from certain things” and I would always say “absolutely not, they’re elected and I am not” and I have an enormous regard for people who put themselves forward for election time and time again and every cabinet minister I’ve worked for and indeed prime minister, has got themselves into politics because they wanted to make a difference. Yes they come from different value sets. They come with different approaches to that question. They come with different personal philosophies because of, you know, which is how they express that through their politics but they come to want to make a difference. So I just am full of respect. Yes we’d have to change things and do things differently but that’s the point. They’ve been elected so off you go and do that and on a personal level, I’m very proud to have been trusted by both sides of politics, still am probably and that was kind of my thing, you know, my own brand I guess is genuinely working as a professional for the government of the day and making sure that I build trust. Trust is everything in that very close relationship between a secretary and a minister and that the department can be trusted and, you know, will serve a minister well and all of those ministers were loyal to me and my department and I will say that, what … one of the, you know, like in private sector, what's the worse thing you can do, lose shareholder value etc [laugh]. In government it’s, you know, leaking [laugh]. Leaking would be a very bad thing in my department. Never had any … because it means people are unhappy. Never had any leaks, ever, not ever in the 12 years.

Jenelle: Speaking on a personal level, I guess you were first out secretary since the federation as I understand it. What was it like coming out for you. Did you feel it changed things, whether positively or negatively.

Lisa: Well because I’d come out a long time before being made a secretary but was never really in people’s faces about it and never really have been. I think there may be things that were harder at the various points. I can’t really pinpoint that but there probably were. I’m very very grateful for having been appointment secretary because I think, you know, that it would have been potentially a barrier. Of course it shouldn’t be but you know, it could have been. I think … I think without a doubt, what its done isn’t so much for me but its made it easier for people that came after me. So I know when I finished, for example, had a farewell, a couple of the other secretaries, again lesbian secretaries, said you know, “thanks, its made a difference”. It did make a difference and I know I also heard that because I was “out” it made it easier for gay/lesbian and other people inside the department. You know, they’d made it a safe place for them, they felt. So clearly without kind of actively role modelling it, you know, I wasn’t the champion of the pride network etc, that fell to one of my deputies. Nonetheless, the word gets out, you know…

Jenelle: Absolutely.

Lisa: … and gets out in a good way, so yah … yah me, you know [laugh]. I didn’t really intend it to be like that but hey, you know.

Jenelle: Yah you indeed Lisa, on many many levels. So look, changing course a little bit here but you know, within this period of time, for many Australians the announcement of the Bali bombings was a day we can all remember. Actually I find it staggering it was almost 19 years ago, I think to be honest.

Lisa: Yeah yeah.

Jenelle: What was that day like for you. What do you remember around hearing about it then.

Lisa: So the Bali bombings happened on Saturday the 12th of October 2002 near midnight and so we woke up to the news on Sunday the 13th of October which happens to be my Mum’s birthday. So it was a funny feeling because other than 911 which had happened the year before, that level of terrorism hadn’t … well it just hadn’t happened that close to home and we know now, more Australians were killed or injured than any other nationality in the Bali bombings and because of the position I held at the time which was a Deputy Secretary in the Department of Family Community Services, I knew that we would probably be involved in some way and so we were. That Department traditionally, in that particular position, traditionally takes a role with coordinating with the, kind of, family support in a domestic crisis. So they … that position would be switched on in that regard for say bush fires or the Port Arthur shootings. What had never happened before was something which was both international and domestic. So for international crises like 911, [00.24.09] things that might involve Australians, department of foreign affairs and trade would take the key running. In this one we had both of … for the first time ever, so we had to … we had to do what I called and what I’ve called for the bush fires work I did last year “making it up as we go along” …

Jenelle: [laugh], I’m really familiar with that technique [laugh].

Lisa: Yeah yeah, it’s a very technical technique and that’s pretty well what we were doing so a wonderful man at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was kind of … chaired the international hub which had many spokes and I chaired the domestic hub, if you like, and it had many spokes and so it was kind of like a Venn diagram, it was an intersecting set. So he would chair/liaise with the police, the intelligence agencies, the people who were helping the people up in Bali, the consular people obviously and their department, the people doing positive victim identification and I should say trigger warning on the conversation we are having now and I did … I chaired the domestic side so I had every department that would help support the affected families, whether they … we were trying to get them travelling to Bali. We were trying to get them travelling to Perth to the burns unit to support their loved one and just giving them information. That’s what I had. So I had agencies like Immigration and Centrelink and then I had some overlapping agencies as well and the way … because I thought “well, you know, these things are … they’re crises, they’re intense, they’re incredibly sad” but you don’t want to blunder. I actually use, in a leadership sense, I used a brainstorming technique and got as many of the agencies I could ever think of that might be relevant to help support the families together and we literally brainstormed an issues register which we then stuck to and that issues register went from “how do we get people to Bali today” through to “how do we deal with the potential rise of anti Moslem sentiment in Australia” and you know, it worked a treat actually and certainly a lot of lessons were learned but the 88 people who died and their families, of course, will never recover from it.

Jenelle: No, that’s right. It’s, I mean, I understand that you, you know, you don’t want to blunder and you would have been moving forward professionally with the things that you needed to do but there’s no denying the horror of what happened and you would have seen first hand the impact on families etc. How did you take care of yourself. What kind of toll did it have on you personally and how did you look after yourself through that period of time.

Lisa: Hmm … really good question. You do need professional debriefing. So you need critical incident stress debriefing. I’m a big fan of that. Of course all of our first responders like the police, ambos etc always … always do this nowadays and we did this in many ways and then Emergency Management Australia who do … who are experts in dealing with these things also did a professional debriefing where we all came together and talked about what would have worked better at, you know, what we hadn’t anticipated and so that was a really good thing too but I’m all for, you know, I’m all for anything you can do to look after yourselves professionally is very very important.

Jenelle: You said that, you know, obviously through this process, a lot of lessons that you learned, what were maybe several that really stand out for you that you have ensured that you took forward with you, say whether its been in the bush fire response or anything else since then, the must-have sort of lessons from that period of time.

Lisa: I think it helped me become … see I wasn’t a CEO when I was doing this and I think it helped me become as a CEO, what I call a culturist, not a structuralist. In other words, you can have the worse structure in the world but if you’ve got a great culture, you’ll get great things done. You can have the best structure in the world and if you’ve got a really really poor quality culture in the place, you’re just not going to get the outcomes and in this instance, with Bali, there was no structure really but my goodness, there was goodwill. Of course, there was and so how do you bottle that. How do you bottle the goodwill that comes from everyone in a crisis where they just want to help and some of the ways are rewarding that sort of behaviour for example. So in hierarchies and in any company, you know, we always talk about how do you work across siloes, how do you get jobs done that actually cross structural divides whether it’s a multi-disciplinary approach in medicine through to working across divisions in a company through to working across departments in government. How do you work across siloes and I think we learned a lot of lessons about how you work effectively across siloes and it comes to being really clear about roles, being clear about the culture you want, understanding the strengths of people in the team and then actually rewarding that behaviour, rewarding collaborative behaviour, not just getting the business outcomes.

Jenelle: Now you have been quoted as saying “change is always a scary thing”. You have said it often on this call as well. So to leave a successful career in the public service, particularly you know, the kind of change of you are effecting, the recognition you’re getting was a massive step, well I imagine it would have been a massive step, it feels like one to me. What led you to change directions, how did you know it was the right time. How did you manage that adjustment.

Lisa: Look, I could have … I could have stayed doing it, you know, which is marvellous. I could have done it for 15 years or 20 years but I got to a point where, and I guess any CEO, you know, a board would be looking at any CEO after 12 years, wouldn’t they and thinking. I got to a point where I just wanted to learn new things. You know, 12 years of being a CEO in Federal Government, every day is different. Every day is unpredictable. Every day is an honour and a privilege but by that stage I kind of knew how to do it. You know, how to approach a change of government. How to approach supporting a minister and so on and I got to a point where I just thought I just want to learn new things and then I started to get nibbles, realised that what I wanted to do was a portfolio career, not another executive career and almost immediately, like as soon as I announced I was leaving, I was getting … I was starting to get offers for boards and so on which is, you know, which is marvellous and yeah.

Jenelle: What's it been like to have a portfolio career? What skills do you … have you kind of called upon to be successful in it and maybe even developed since then.

Lisa: Well I love it actually because [laugh] …

Jenelle: I knew you were going to say that.

Lisa: [laugh].

Jenelle: The enthusiasm knows no bounds.

Lisa: [laugh] but a bit like you folk in professional services land. When you’re running a portfolio career, you learn so much because you see so many different companies and organisations and so on and I love that and that’s really what I was looking forward to and what I gained. The skills I’ve drawn on from my previous life seemed to be strategic skills and that’s the feedback I get, that former secretaries kind of bring this sense of strategic perspective and of course, I’ve brought “how does government actually work” because its … its arcane and a little bit mystifying unless you’ve actually been inside and then what I’ve learned, of course, is the commercial skills. So the three companies, two listed ones, one unlisted, that I’ve sat on the boards of have all sold successfully and, you know, that’s been a marvellous process to go through and I’m not chairing a not-for-profit and that’s, you know, that’s a different world again being a chair and having that relationship with the CEO [00.32.25].

Jenelle: Love it. Now lets move to BizRebuild. Can you tell me a bit about that. What it is and how it came to be that you had the role that you had in it.

Lisa: Love to. So, in January 2020 at the height of the terrible terrible summer bush fires, the Business Council of Australia which as you know represents Australia’s largest employer company, set up a not-for-profit … two not-for-profit initiatives to help communities recover from the bush files. One I’m on the Board of and that’s called the Australian Volunteers Support Trust and it is a tax deductible trust fund of up to $25m to support long term the needs of children of volunteers who have died in the line of volunteering. The second initiative was called the Community Rebuilding Initiative, now called BizRebuild and it was a much more kind of immediate approach to response and recovery. Its chaired by Sir Peter Cosgrove and I was asked to be the executive coordinator of it. I guess because of the Bali experience and, you know, just the range and experience. So I actually did take an executive role for 2020 and it was absolutely fantastic and the beautiful thing about what we were doing which was for the first time ever, a national focal point to link the deep generosity of BCA member companies with the needs of fire affected businesses in particular and fire affected communities and the way we went about it was also great because I decided we will have no red tape.

Jenelle: I like that.

Lisa: So we would basically just go into a community and ask them “well what do you need” and try to deliver it. So we were delivering, for example, you know we might think of them as small $500 or $2,000 vouchers for people to either seek local advice to get their business back on track or to retool themselves if they’d lost their tools of trade. So we, you know, we didn’t have any application forms. We did have a grant rounds. We didn’t require submissions. Nobody had to fill in a form. We just went and worked with people. We’ve done big projects and small projects.

Jenelle: Tell me about some of those, whether it was in, you know, Kangaroo Island or Mogo. Tell me about that.

Lisa: Well first of all, put it this way. So I get the job. Once again I’m thinking “oh my god, I’m making this up as I go along” [laugh].

Jenelle: Yep, don’t go to the playbook!

Lisa: What's the best way of finding out what the needs are because it was such a massive impact. You know, you couldn’t possibly … it wasn’t just one community. You couldn’t possibly know. Twelve million hectares were burnt and that’s before you get to the impact on every single business burnt or unburnt in their peak period during the summer suddenly not having any revenue. So I figured the only thing we could do was to get out there, which of course is the most powerful anyway. So we hop out into the South Coast and one of the first communities we visited was Mogo which is ten minutes south on Batemans Bay on the Princes Highway in New South Wales. Quite a small village but about 25% of businesses had been burnt to the ground and many other … many other houses and so on as well. Very deeply scarred community. We sat down with community leaders and I call out Richard Adams, the head of the local chamber who was just extraordinary. His own place had burnt and faced great tragedy in his life but he was organising everybody and we sat down with him and at one stage said “look, would it help you guys to get back to trading if we were to set up a temporary mall for you, in effect”. They said “sure”. So ATCO is a member of the VCA. They deliver demountables as their business. We had … we hired a trucking company so we paid for haulage and craneage and so on and on, I think, the 15th of Feb, 13 trucks rolled into Mogo, each with a demountable on their back to much fanfare and by the end of the afternoon, basically there was a building that these traders, about 8 traders, could start to work from and so we then paid through the trust fund, through the very generous donations to the fund, for a big deck and the stairs and so on and in fact, we helped the stair company from Batemans Bay that had burnt down altogether. With Bunnings, had developed nine sets of … full sets of carpentry tools with 24 hours through our work to this stair company. So they built the stairs in Mogo at cost, you know, it’s a very very virtuous thing goes on and so all these traders, many of whom quite frankly, still have empty sites now, more than a year on, just because of the time that insurance and all that sort of thing takes, clearing site. They were trading by March 2020 which is absolutely incredible so just a couple of weeks after the fire and that’s the sort of stuff we … we just love to do, just get in there and help people. The other thing we found was lots of local … you know all the festivals that happen. So for example, the Narooma Oyster Festival or, you know, every community has got their own festival. It turns out those festivals are usually sponsored by local small businesses and every small business in all of these fire affected communities had lost their summer trading. Some of them had lost … that means they had lost between … usually between 30% and 90% of annual take.

Jenelle: Gosh!

Lisa: And of course they may have lost their stock as well but anyway, they’d lost their main revenue and so they couldn’t support these local festivals and so on which are actually big revenue raisers for communities and so we stepped in for some of those too.

Jenelle: And there’s quite a large indigenous community in Mogo, am I right?

Lisa: Yes absolutely Jenelle and the local Mogo, local aboriginal land council building from which they sold beautiful art and run a whole lot of training courses for the employment o young aboriginal people was completely burnt to the ground. Even though it was a brick building - dreadful, so actually a BizRebuild has also set them up with a whole new, one again demountable structure, really really nice space so they’re up and going again, being able to sell their art and run their programmes. We’re very proud of that too.

Jenelle: Its amazing Lisa and I … certainly one of the themes that’s come through loud and clear with many of the guests that I’ve spoken to over the course of these podcast series is the power of story-telling and story-telling to effect change. It has been an incredibly powerful lever. No doubt stories like those have really helped shift community sentiment, perhaps its helped shift business and government perspectives on what needs to happen. Is that something that you have consciously sought to use to drive change.

Lisa: Absolutely, absolutely. In my former public sector career, stories are incredibly powerful because it’s how politicians work. Politicians represent at least … usually MPs, also senators though, represent people. They represent a constituency and so they actually literally think of their world and, you know, a gross generalisation but they really really do care about the stories of everyone in their electorate or constituency. So stories to me have always been powerful and I’ll tell you one that really made a difference to how we approach this ready build. So we’re in Mogo and there’s a lady and her husband and she won’t mind me naming her, she’s a hero, Lorena Granados and her husband. So Mogo is on the Princes Highway, so its busy and the last town not to be bypassed, I think, and she was trading in front of her completely burnt out home and business on the edge of the Princes Highway in the gravel under a borrowed – one of those beach shelter things. She and her husband run a leather works business. So we wander over and they’re selling handbags which had been donated because, of course, their stock had been burnt and there she is, doing what she does, doing what she does. Her story was they stay, she showed me a video of the fire approaching and they had been told to leave and we’re not and having to escape and then coming back and finding complete devastation of their lives and livelihood and there she was, trading from the side of the road and not only did she tell me that whole story but she told me how, you know, they didn’t have any devices or access to anything and to fill in forms for assistance, they had to go to the recovery centre, so that’s Beaut but then the recovery centre, they couldn’t print things so they were told they had to go to the library. It was too much. It was just too much and it was that single story that got me absolutely obsesses with having no red tape in the way we approached things and so we didn’t … one of the traders who is still trading out of the temporary mall that we supported.

Jenelle: It really speaks to the power of actually just speaking to the people directly around what they need rather than sitting separately and devising some great …

Lisa: That’s right.

Jenelle: … architecturally brilliant plans that have no relationship with what’s actually needed on the ground. Its sounds so proximal. Sometimes smaller moves are just the ones that people need. They make all the difference.

Lisa: I still can’t work out why people don’t just ask. What do you need? Too often the people with the money or whatever will come in and say “this is what I think you need, here’s the solution, I’m offering this [00.42.08] programmes”. Well, no. Is that what’s actually necessary? The other thing I would say here is anyone who has been through a crisis like a natural disaster like a bush fire or whatever, really really need to tell their stories. Really need to tell their stories and so some of our earlier meetings, we never ever got to potential solutions. We just were listening to stories but even now, more than a year on, if I say … if I tell anyone really from a fire affected area what I was doing last year, then I will hear their story and so I just encourage anyone who meets anyone who has faced a traumatic event, just to ask, just to ask and just to listen in a really genuine way with whatever time it might take.

The last three … three fast questions on change to finish the podcast

Jenelle: What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?

Lisa: [laugh], I’ve just taken on sharing a review for the Minister of Education into initial teaching education and I’m reading up on initial teaching education [laugh]. I could just be reading a trashy magazine but no, right now I’m reading [00.43.13].

Jenelle: Fair enough. Now tell me, what is your super power. Now that could be something that’s additive to the world and we’ve heard lots of those things today or a useless party trick.

Lisa: I was trying to think of a useless party trick but I’m actually going to say being able to see another person’s point of view and that can be to my detriment.

Jenelle: I think it is your super power.

Lisa: I don’t know, it just seems to be a thing.

Jenelle: And if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be.

Lisa: “Be bold, be kind”.

Jenelle: I love that, I absolutely love that. Lisa, thank you for your time today and you know, if you … we started the conversation with, you know, why are you here on this planet or what are you seeking to drive and you said “helping people reach their full potential, helping people have the best day they can ever have every single day”. I feel like I get that. I really get that in listening to you. There’s a theme that has come through so strongly in speaking to you and that is your commitment to giving people a voice and I heard that in lots of different ways, whether that’s giving people direct channels to you or putting in managers one removed or 360 feedback or creating the psychological safety to allow people to admit a mistake or escalate a problem or giving people a voice in telling their story or giving people a voice in answering the question of what do you need. I saw that play out in every single example that you gave in heroing culture over structure, every day of the week and allowing the conditions to create and harness and bottle goodwill is nothing short of amazing and whether you know it or not, you use this word “marvellous” many times in our conversation. I was smiling to myself because that’s a word I don’t hear that often but I think, Lisa Paul, you are marvellous and thank you so much.

Lisa: You’re very very kind and it has been an absolute delight, thanks for the opportunity to help.

The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

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