Some early insights from Michael Walsh
IPAA Queensland took a few moments to chat with Director-General of Queensland Health, Michael Walsh in the lead up to him taking to the couch with IPAA Queensland President, Deidre Mulkerin. In the questions below, we sought to dig a bit deeper into his experience, life, and background to give those attending the event on 27th August a taste of what to expect.
IPAA Queensland members can watch the entire event recording on the members portal.
We invite you to #keepinformed about the thoughts, expertise and insights from one of the Queensland public sector’s most experienced senior leaders.
What are the qualities and capabilities you see as being most important for younger public purpose workers to develop?
Being a public sector worker is one of the most privileged and rewarding jobs you can do because you can improve people’s lives and make lasting improvements to public value. To do this, you have to navigate interactions with politicians, interested stakeholders, the general public and colleagues. It is my experience that to be successful at building public value while navigating these interactions, you need to be willing and able to put the issue at hand first, and yourself second.
When providing advice to Ministers or senior executives, I have found it is important to present your advice in a way that makes it most likely that the person will fully consider it. The best advice is not just expert and impartial, but is communicated with the listener in mind.
Solving problems is core to the work of public sector employees and usually requires working across multiple areas of a department or organisation. I have always tried to work with my colleagues in a way that helps them solve problems, while at the same time solving those for which I am responsible. Being a collaborative colleague is essential.
What are the leading priorities for your department, and why? What does success look like?
Queensland Health strives to provide great healthcare for people, delivered by great healthcare people. This simple phrase is the reason for the organisations existence. Our patients and consumers, along with their families and carers, are at the centre of everything we do. Our employees are what makes Queensland Health one of the best healthcare providers in the country. Our priorities are our patients and our people.
Success is when we use the best available evidence to deliver healthcare in a safe, timely, caring and culturally safe way, and the patient’s experience and outcomes are good. Success is also openly spending time looking at things when they go wrong, making changes and doing better next time.
What career advice would you tell your 25 year old self?
I got a lot of good career advice when I was 25 – most of which I didn’t appreciate, didn’t understand, didn’t think I needed, or dismissed because of my biased opinion of the source of advice. Good advice can come from anywhere and at any time, and the best advice is ageless. So things I wish I knew and understood at 25 include:
- Be kind and generous to others and when you have to be tough, be kind and generous at the same time.
- Your contribution is more valuable and effective when you deliver it humbly and confidently.
- Speak less and say more.
- Choose work that interests and challenges you, and always be open to new opportunities to develop.
- Spend time understanding the world and yourself, put that understanding into practice, and remain curious.
What do you do to attend to your health and wellbeing?
Balancing my work and home life is challenging but essential. To achieve this, I find that it helps to make the decision about how I will spend my time, ahead of the time the decision is required. For example, I set a time each day when I will leave work and I try to manage my time to leave at that time. I plan and work towards keeping weekends free of work. I try to watch what I eat but I go through periods where I am not as good as other times. I regularly exercise with walking, hiking and going to the gym. I try to remain open to doing new things, such as recently learning to scuba dive. Every now and then I have periods where I take up running or bike riding. When I do this, I find it is good to have a goal that I am working towards. It is these times when I feel I am doing better at balancing the demands.
What do you believe to be the most rewarding part of being a public servant?
It is a much-used term, but I enjoy being a public servant because I feel like I am making a difference. I feel good about some of the things I have contributed to that make people’s lives better and are still in place or have grown and become better over time. I have also benefitted from working across multiple agencies and in both social and economic portfolios. I would encourage everyone to be open to the variety of interesting work you can do as a public sector employee.
On a day-to-day basis, I find it most rewarding when I am working in a team of people who are energetic, supportive of each other, and focused on the challenge at hand. I have found that when the job is done in this way, everyone benefits – the members of the team, the public, and the rest of the organisation.
ABOUT THE STEWARDS ON THE COUCH SERIES
Stewards on the Couch is a regular and highly popular feature of IPAA’s annual event program, where one or more chief executives is joined by a respected journalist or facilitator ‘on the couch’ for an informal, conversation-style interview.
These events provide the IPAA community an opportunity to learn more about the influences, priorities, and core values of stewards leading public purpose work along with the key challenges and opportunities facing their organisation and/or sector. Guests are invited to stay for networking and refreshments after the interview.