Thriving in Uncertainty with Samantha Palmer
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.
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.
Listen to episode sixteen:
Also available through Apple Podcasts and Spotify:
Sam has over 35 years of diverse experience, with 25 years of those in senior executive service roles in the APS. She is a passionate advocate for having variety in your working career and how, from her personal experience, moving sideways into different roles and taking on new experiences through mobility opportunities has assisted her in seeing things from a different framing or mindset.
Sam provides excellent examples from throughout her career of how experiencing different contexts in departments has helped her transfer her learnings into other roles and how, in Austrade today, they also benefit from bringing in various people from other parts of the organisation into their division to give new insights and skills when Sam and her colleagues are acting in other positions.
In our discussion, Sam reflects on how championing diversity and inclusion has been one of the most rewarding parts of her career, and we also talk about the relationship between change and learning as Sam shares her time at the Australian Bureau of Statistics and involvement in the marriage equality survey and how the short turnaround time of just 99 days required the department to work with a different momentum and process to make it happen while also maintaining procurement requirements.
Another powerful part of our conversation is the role mentors and champions play in professional development. Sam shares a great metaphor of champions being like elephants: They have big ears to listen, big trunks to communicate and talk, big feet and bodies to make a path through barriers, and a caring nature that they work with heart. If you're thinking about taking on a new or different opportunity or how, as a leader, you can help your staff grow and develop, this is definitely an episode that you won't want to miss.
References from this episode:
APS Charter of Engagement and Partnerships including link to good practice guide
Report on the conduct of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey
Paper on measuring culture and leadership at the ABS during transformation
Find out more about this Trailblazer:
Samantha Palmer
General Manager
Visitor Economy and Client Programs Division
Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade)
Samantha Palmer is temporarily seconded from her position as General Manager of Austrade’s Visitor Economy and Client Programs Division to work with the Australian Public Service Commission as a Senior APS Reviewer on the Capability Review of the Australian Government Department of Education. She is also a Diversity and Inclusion Champion.
Samantha brings 35-plus years of diverse experience with more than 25 in senior executive service roles. She has led policy, programs and corporate transformations in the Queensland, WA and Commonwealth governments in many areas relevant to the visitor economy. These areas include fair trading and consumer protection, environmental protection and national parks, land transport and road safety, housing, disability, and Indigenous communities. She has also run businesses and worked in the arts, university and community sectors.
Career highlights include achieving a 79.5% response rate for the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey; leading the development of the 10-year Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan policy framework; and being appointed the ‘cleanskin’ inaugural Deputy Director General Governance, Integrity and Reform following Australia’s largest public service corruption incident at the WA Communities Department.
Samantha is a National Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA). She was one of the 2013 Australian Financial Review/Westpac 100 Women of Influence, and the 2013 Australian Human Resource Institute Diversity Champion of the Year (HR).
Samantha was elected Secretary of the National Institute of Public Administration Australia (the professional body for public servants) in 2024 having served on both National and ACT IPAA Councils for some time. She has a Master of Public Administration and a Bachelor of Business (Communication).
Tune in next time as we speak to a new trailblazer in another episode in our series on Thriving in Uncertainty.
Series three – Solving the Capability Gap – episode one
Listen in as Subho Banerjee, Deputy Commissioner of the Australian Public Service and Head of the APS Academy and Capability, joins Andy to discuss continuous learning, and provide his unique perspectives, drawing on his vast experience across the public and private sectors. In this episode, Subho explains what continuous learning looks like and outlines some of the fantastic learning opportunities he has experienced that have benefited his career. He also provides an overview of the components of the APS continuous learning model, the importance of building adaptability skills across all levels in the public sector, and how to overcome challenges he has seen in becoming a learning organisation.
Thanks for joining us as we kick off our third series of Trailblazing with CorbettPrice!
Our exciting new series explores critical dimensions of capability building across five insightful and thought-provoking episodes. This series is designed to help leaders instil continuous learning into their organisation’s DNA and develop high-performing workforces that are equipped and ready to embrace the future.
As the perfect start to our series on Solving the Capability Gap, Subho Banerjee, Deputy Commissioner of the Australian Public Service and Head of the APS Academy and Capability, joins Andy to discuss continuous learning.
Listen in as Subho provides his unique perspectives, drawing on his vast experience across the public and private sectors. In this episode, he explains what continuous learning looks like and outlines some of the fantastic learning opportunities he has experienced that have benefited his career. Subho also provides an overview of the components of the APS continuous learning model, the importance of building adaptability skills across all levels in the public sector, and how to overcome challenges he has seen in becoming a learning organisation.
Listen to episode one:
Also available through Apple podcasts and Spotify:
Download the full transcript of episode one:
Find out more about this Trailblazer:
Dr Subho Banerjee is the Deputy Commissioner, Head of APS Academy and Capability at the Australian Public Service Commission.
He has previously held Deputy Secretary roles in the Education, Industry and Climate Change portfolios, focusing on vocational education and skills, science and climate change adaptation and negotiations.
He has also been responsible for finance, human resources and governance functions in a number of departments, as well as contributing to whole-of-APS efforts on public service reform and Indigenous employment.
Subho has also worked in the private and not-for-profit sectors. Prior to his current role, he worked at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government on public sector reform issues at the intersection of practice and academia. He has also worked for a private sector management consultancy and an Indigenous policy think tank.
Subho’s initial disciplinary background was in physics, which he studied as an undergraduate and postgraduate at the ANU. He also holds qualifications in economic and social history, and environmental change and management, from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Tune in next week as we talk with Julie Tickle, Chief People Officer at TAFE NSW, as she provides her experience and perspectives on becoming a skills-based organisation, in our second episode in this series on Solving the Capability Gap.
Check out our full listing of episodes and trailblazers:
Embracing organisational change - episode four
We’re glad you could join us for another great episode in our series on embracing organisational change.
Our fourth episode focuses on the pivotal transformational change that organisations must embrace, which is playing the new talent game. This episode will dive into the essential factors in what it takes to attract, retain and reduce employee attrition in the public sector.
With more than a third of Australian Public Service employees reported as wanting to leave within the next two years, according to the June 2022 APS Census, one correlation you can draw is that leaders need to look for ways to bridge the gap between employee expectations and employer needs. In this episode, Andy talks with Tina McAllister, Acting Director of People and Culture at the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for the Queensland Government, as Tina provides her Queensland lens to questions on what it is that employees want, how leaders can respond, ways to to managing flexibility within the workforce, and the role that internal mobility plays for employee retention and ways of addressing it.
Listen to episode four:
Also available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts:
Download the full transcript of episode four:
Find out more about this Trailblazer:
Tina is Human Resource (HR) /People and Culture professional with 28 years of experience across an array of human resource focus areas. For the past two decades she has committed her energy to Public Service with Queensland Government and within that time she has served in HR leadership roles for over 15 years.
Tina is passionate about enabling organisational performance through the development of people at all levels via the creation and implementation of initiatives, processes, policies and frameworks that contribute to positive organisational culture, capability and employee experience.
Please tune in next week as we talk with Pia Andrews for the fifth and final episode in our series, which will be about adopting new technologies responsibly.
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Trailblazing with CorbettPrice Podcast - Episode 4
We hope that you are enjoying our Trailblazing with CorbettPrice podcast series on organisational health and the seven dimensions of wellness. In episode four, we dive deep into the fourth dimension which is occupational health and the employee experience. COVID pushed many organisations into different ways of thinking about how and where we work. With employee attrition being a key challenge that many organisations are facing worldwide; this may be the most fundamental component of organisational health in our series.
Listen to episode four:
Also available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts:
To help explain what design thinking is and how it can be used to design a good employee experience that engages and empowers an organisation's workforce, Rodger Watson joins us.
Rodger is the founding course director of the Master of Creative Intelligence and Strategic Innovation at the University of Technology in Sydney.
If you have always wanted to understand design thinking and hear an example of how it has been used to solve a key societal challenge, then you won’t want to miss this!
Download the full transcript of episode four (with references):
Find out more about this Trailblazer:
Rodger is an innovator for public good and has worked as a public servant, a strategic human centred design consultant, a bartender, a pizza kitchen-hand and deliverer, an emu farmhand, and the leader of a multi-award-winning academic research centre.
Rodger is the Founding Course Director of Creative Intelligence and Strategic Innovation at the UTS TD School and co-author of Creative Reboot; catalysing creative intelligence and Designing for the common good.
Rodger has an academic and practice background in Psychology, Criminology, and with his colleagues at the Designing Out Crime Research Centre pioneered the Designing for the Common Good approach to multi-stakeholder collaboration (2010-2018).
This body of work received many industry awards (including multiple Good Design Australia awards) and academic awards (UTS Vice Chancellor’s award for excellence in research collaboration). The work was assessed by the Australian Research Council as highly impactful.
In recent years Rodger has contributed to government strategy and policy across topics ranging from domestic and family violence, mental health, built environment, counter terrorism, night-time economy, waste & circular economy, environmental protection, cybercrime, transport innovation, and digital transformation.
Rodger’s UTS work is underpinned by a methodology developed under industry conditions, community engagement, and academic rigour since 2010. This body of work includes product, service and policy innovations that are experienced by millions of people each day in communities across the world.
Web: www.uts.edu.au/study/transdisciplinary-innovation/creative-intelligence-and-innovation
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rodger-watson/
Bispublishers: Creative Reboot; catalysing creative intelligence and