Sally Badcock - Acting Deputy Secretary for System Management and Reform

Note: Since recording, Policy, Purchasing, Performance and Reform and been renamed System Management and Reform.

In this episode of the One Health Podcast, Dorian Broomhall, Manager of Culture & Wellbeing, gets to know Sally Badcock, the Acting Deputy Secretary for Policy, Purchasing, Performance and Reform.

During our conversation, Sally speaks about growing up on the North West Coast and working in law in Paris and Brisbane.

She talks about the benefits of having people with both generalist and specialist skillsets on our teams, and the value that comes from developing, coaching, and mentoring staff.

She talks about how taking on challenges with the right amounts of stress and risk can drive us forward.

She also explains the function that Policy, Purchasing, Performance and Reform serves within Health.

Transcript

Dorian Broomhall:

Welcome to the One Health Podcast.

This episode was recorded on the land of the palawa people. I acknowledge and pay respect to all Tasmanian Aboriginal people and to their deep history of storytelling.

My name is Dorian Broomhall, Manager of Culture & Wellbeing for the Department of Health here in lutruwita/Tasmania.

For this episode, I got to know Sally Badcock, the Deputy Secretary for Policy, Purchasing, Performance and Reform.

In our conversation, Sally speaks about growing up in Penguin and moving into an international law career. She talks about the importance of having people with both generalist and specialist skillsets on our teams.

Sally speaks about the value in developing, coaching, and mentoring staff at all levels, and of allowing people opportunities for growth. Importantly, she explains the work that Policy, Purchasing, Performance and Reform does and the ways in which it operates. She also talks about the value in getting comfortable with the uncomfortable and taking on the right challenges with the right amounts of stress and risk. 

I start every conversation with the same question, so let’s get into it.

What did you want to be when you were in kindergarten?

Sally Badcock:

I wanted to be an Olympic swimmer.

Dorian Broomhall:

That's not trivial.

Sally Badcock:

Not at all. It's amusing now to reflect on that because I'm 5'0, so was really never in with much of a chance of doing that, but have always had a deep love of sport, as do my parents, particularly my dad. A lot of memories of watching Commonwealth Games, Olympic Games, and I grew up doing a lot of swimming and also surf life-saving, so it was a huge part of my childhood and certainly something that I really wanted to do as a kid that clearly didn't end up in the Olympics.

Dorian Broomhall:

We didn't know that. That was a spoiler. We could have found out that you actually got there, but nevertheless. Where were you when you were swimming and doing surf life-saving, were you in Tasmania or elsewhere?

Sally Badcock:

Yes, so I'm from the Northwest coast, from Penguin, so all of that was done in Penguin, in Ulverstone, so in the Ulverstone Surf Life Saving Club, Ulverstone swim team, and that was a huge part of my childhood and a deep love. I've always really loved being active and playing sport and something I still do now.

My dad, as I said before, was a huge part of that. He's still umpiring senior football in the Northwest at the age of 71, so a core part of who I am. I think too, reflecting on that has formed a lot of my values around teamwork and motivation, discipline, things like that. Always really loved playing sport.

Dorian Broomhall:

There's so much that can be taken from those childhood experiences that until you stop and think about we possibly don't realise how much of that really becomes embedded. You grew up on the Northwest coast, your family is still on the Northwest coast. As you got a little bit older, what else were you interested in other than swimming sports and these sorts of things? Were there other interests?

Sally Badcock:

Yes. I guess for me the other deep love was actually school. As nerdy as that sounds, I've always really enjoyed school, learning new things. As I progressed through high school and college, I went to Don College, developed a real love for I guess humanities based subjects. That, I guess was my pathway to my career into university and being aware that through the enjoyment of those subjects, that I could potentially have a career that was fulfilling and that you enjoy day to day. I ended up doing arts law at UTAS.

Also, I have very strong memories actually in primary school of deciding that I wanted to be a lawyer. God only knows why when you're 10, how you even know what that means but yeah, I have strong memories of that and then lo and behold, high school years 11 and 12, did really enjoy those sorts of subjects. I think as I said, deep love of learning, quite curious, and that has carried through both my degree and the jobs that I've had since then.

Dorian Broomhall:

Yeah, fascinating. That through line of a really early thought of going I'm really interested in... I'm going to be a lawyer, and then going where did that even come from? I have a similar memory of... And it was about law of all things, which is a bit odd now. I recently did a law subject as a part of some study that I'm doing and went no, I'm glad that I didn't persevere with this. It's really difficult.

Sally Badcock:

Yeah, it is. I think too though, what I came to understand fairly quickly was I really enjoyed the theory, enjoyed learning about the components of how the law works, but once I had graduated, I spent 12 months as a judge's associate in Launceston for Justice Ewan Crawford, and then worked in two or three different law firms and realised that I liked the theory, but I didn't really like the job. I didn't enjoy the way the day was broken down into the six-minute increments.

Also, to be honest, because they were commercial law firms, the focus on making money, it just felt a bit hollow and not really what I wanted long-term, so I was pretty quick to realise that wasn't for me. As I said, that was after a few stints in Melbourne. My now husband and I lived in London, I worked in a law firm over there.

Dorian Broomhall:

So you gave it a go for a while then?

Sally Badcock:

I did.

Dorian Broomhall:

I guess back a couple of steps was your initial exit from the Northwest to study? Did you leave the Northwest to study?

Sally Badcock:

Yes, I came to Hobart to go to UTAS and was there for about six or so years, which is the length of the law degree, and lived in Hobart for that time, then 12 months in Launceston working for Justice Crawford, but because his workload was across the three courts, so Launceston, Burnie, Hobart, that involved a lot of travelling, so I wasn't based in any one spot and then went overseas for a couple of years and worked in a French law firm, of all places, in London.

Dorian Broomhall:

How's your French?

Sally Badcock:

Not great. In fact, I'll never forget, I was in Paris because that's where the head firm was for work, and one of the partners said to me how disgraceful it was that I couldn't speak French very well, which I agree with. Nevertheless, I couldn't and wasn't employed for my ability to speak French either. That was interesting work. It was aviation law, so a lot of plane crashes and passenger personal injury claims and things like that, but I really enjoyed it because it was working with really big teams of people from all different countries. It was very enjoyable going to Paris for work every now and again. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.

As I said, when we got back to Australia, I did work at a couple of law firms in Brisbane, which we relocated to Brisbane, so one of those was Australian government solicitor, which does the government work for the Commonwealth. That was in the defence law team, so I did that for a period and then went to McCullough Robertson, which is one of the big firms in Brisbane.

Again, it was a crossroads in terms of do I continue with law and become a proper lawyer or do I want to do something else? I just had that strong awareness that it just wasn't for me. I'd tried it and I'd worked in a few different firms by that point and tried lots of different types of law as well, and it was at that point that I decided that I was going to go into legislative policy of all things. I don't even know how I decided that was a thing and a job came up at Queensland Health, so that was my pathway into government and the first time I'd worked in health as well.

Dorian Broomhall:

Having that law background, it almost sounds as versatile as something like nursing, which you can take in so many different directions. Even if then you go actually direct care nursing isn't something that I want to keep doing, you can build on it and take it into a different direction, whether that's policy or advocacy or so many different things. I think there's some parallels there that I hadn't really thought about before.

You find yourself in Queensland after being a well-travelled lass from the Northwest coast as the case may be, and into legislative policy position, which curiously, despite my challenge with law, that actually sounds quite interesting because I think that there's an opportunity to begin the process of change working in that space and to make things better. How did you find that experience and that move into a different world?

Sally Badcock:

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. You're right, I guess the focus in that team was on how do we turn the department's policy programme into legislation where that's appropriate? Because obviously legislation is one of many vehicles to give effect to policy. I really enjoyed, I think the deep thinking and analytical side of that work because it's, as I said, taking the pure policy proposal and turning that into law.

Is that appropriate? If so, how do you give effect to the feedback that you've received through a consultation process? Also depending on the type of legislation that you're using, how do we ensure that the law is flexible enough to ensure that the policy is given effect to in an appropriate way, but also being I guess, restrictive and having the penalties attached where that's appropriate. I really enjoyed that and a lot of my role was writing those drafting instructions to give to Parliamentary council to actually turn the instructions into legislation.

A lot of deep analysis, talking to different teams across Queensland Health, which I also really enjoyed. On reflection, that's something that's continued throughout the different roles that I've had because you said earlier, a law degree is actually quite generalist. You don't have to become a lawyer. That's what I've found through the various roles I've had that I have a generalist skill set. I'm not necessarily an expert on anything, but I know how to speak to the right people, ask the right questions.

I think at the heart of that is the desire to remain curious and understand other people's point of view, and that's a really important way of giving effect to any sort of reform agenda, whether it's at health or in a justice agency. I only stayed at Queensland Health I think for about 12 months, and then ended up in the justice world again for 10 years. I went to Premier and Cabinet in Brisbane in the law and justice policy team, and again, a similar role, but it was just a different viewpoint. Giving advice through to the premier and the cabinet on issues that were coming in through the justice portfolio, so police courts, corrections, but using the same skill set, essentially.

Dorian Broomhall:

It's interesting, often I talk about the distinction between process and content. The content that you might be talking about might be health policy or it might be justice policy, but the process by which you're going to go forth and analyse that or carry that forward is going to be quite separate, but you're going to be able to apply it to pretty much any bucket of content.

I think having the distinction between those two things, which you clearly do is very helpful when you realise that generalist skills are enormously useful. Sometimes we need experts, absolutely, but to be able to bring those experts together and get the best out of them, having those general skills I think is enormously helpful.

Something else in what you said there that strikes me is that even in relatively junior roles, or perhaps even more in junior roles when you're working in policy or anything in that regard, you can see the throughput of your work to a final product, possibly even more than when you're at a more senior level where you actually, you rarely touch a first draught, you don't see a blank piece of paper very often in that sort of senior role. That's quite interesting as well, I think. We think that the leaders do all that they're doing as-

Sally Badcock:

Oh, absolutely not. No. If anything, what I've learnt over the last few years is that developing your staff to do that, no matter how senior you are, is incredibly important because you do have a role in shaping what the advice looks like. I experienced that throughout the three main agencies that I've worked at, Queensland Health, Premiering Cabinet, and now Department of Health, that that's fundamental to the work we do, and that focus on developing and coaching and mentoring and putting the time in to do that is really, really important.

You can see the benefits of that fairly quickly. It can be time-consuming, but it really is worth it. I do see that fundamentally as a core part of my role, whether I'm a deputy secretary or a general manager or whatever the position is, it's really important.

Dorian Broomhall:

I think it's such a great reminder and easy to forget when we get busy. I'll bump that one-on-one with somebody because we just need to get this piece of work that's in front of us done. Sadly, that's a trap many fall into and it's very short term, and then we lose that long-term capability within a team, not to mention our relationships, especially with that view of curiosity that you've really nicely sprinkled in there. I think that's so important to remember quite timely for me in this conversation. Something we talked about a lot in the past, I probably haven't thought about very much recently, so it's lovely to have that reminder.

When did you then move back home to Tassie? If we can go Hobart home, it isn't the beauty of Penguin. We love both the Penguin and the Ulverstone Surf by Sailing Clubs. We use it for training because it's just got such beautiful views.

Sally Badcock:

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Dorian Broomhall:

It's just a great place to be.

Sally Badcock:

Yeah, it is. We spent 10 years in Brisbane and had our two kids there and then much like a lot of people, decided that we wanted to move home to be closer to family. That was towards the end of 2017. I applied for a position in the government relations and strategic policy team within PPPR, which is the division or the group that I'm in now.

Was successful in getting that role and that was as a ministerial council coordinator, so the gov relations team, that acronym is GRASP, so I'll call it that, leads the provision of advice to the minister and the secretary around a range of national reform work. In particular, there's a governance structure where you have your CEO meetings and national ministerial meetings, so they support all the work for that. I was leading that and spent five, six years I guess in GRASP and progressed from a band seven through to the general manager of that team.

Similar to the role that I had in policy division in Premier and Cabinet in Queensland, it's very much based on how do we draw in advice from across a very large agency, understand all the different perspectives and viewpoints, analyse risk implications, and put forward one department of health position. That is, in a very short sound bite, what GRASP does, and that's been my focus over the last five or so years. In September last year, I started acting as the deputy secretary for the overall group, which is policy purchasing, performance, and reform.

Dorian Broomhall:

A small perhaps detour that's fueling my own curiosity as someone who's doing some study in the policy space at the moment. Do you find that the work is dictated by the agenda that's set at the politician level and that your job is to inform and deliver that agenda, or is it more like they're curious about what we should do and therefore you help to shape the agenda and direction, or is it a blend of both? Is it policy or vision first, or how do you find that it works?

Sally Badcock:

It's a blend of both. I think it depends on the type of policy that you do. GRASP, part of the role of that team is intergovernmental relations. The agenda is often driven by what the Commonwealth wants to do, so you don't necessarily have a lot of control over that. If you look at it through the strategic policy lens, that is very much about giving effect to the vision of either your home department or from whole of government level.

Obviously, that's set by the particular government of the day and you'd be aware that obviously with the election commitments that have been generated through the last election, that essentially sets the policy agenda for the next term. In the background, we have our own strategic priorities for the Department of Health, which have been shaped through understanding what the particular pressures are of the health system and how we need to respond to those pressures through policy planning and things like that.

It's not cut and dried and clear, it's very grey. I think that's why I really love policy and why I didn't love pure law quite as much. Law felt very black and white, whereas policy is grey and you've got that flexibility to design policy to meet the needs of the community while also having that political and government interplay. I find that really interesting, doing the two at once.

Dorian Broomhall:

Yeah, I love it. If you really boil it down, law is coming up with yes or no, and so much of the work that you are talking about is going well, it's yes and no.

Sally Badcock:

Yes. And balance.

Dorian Broomhall:

How do we have both of that together and sit with that discomfort of different perspectives. Again, something that we talk about quite a lot is helping people get a bit more comfortable with multiple realities of the world or being correct. Just because we've got a different perspective doesn't mean either of us are right or wrong, possibly both, which is quite difficult when you're not used to sitting with that sort of perspective, I think.

PPPR then as a function sounds like it's got a few other components to it, the grasp work, I'm grasping so to speak. What other functions sit within your portfolio that you oversee now for those that might be curious?

Sally Badcock:

PPPR is made up of four teams, so GRASP, and we've got our monitoring reporting and analysis team, which produces the data and the analytics and reporting back to the department and the Tasmanian Health Service to how are we actually performing. We have our strategic purchasing and funding team, which plays a key role in that in terms of commissioning the services that we want to purchase from the THS. The best and neatest way to explain it is that the three teams outside of GRASP are the commissioning cycle for our health service.

We have the planning, which is done through health planning, the purchasing through strategic purchasing and funding, and then the data and reporting. That's the pure commissioning cycle. It's a really neat fit to have the four in the one group. I found that that works really, really well because essentially it's about how do we as a group manage system performance with the information that we have available and drive system improvement and reform across all four teams.

It's been designed beautifully, to be honest, and I think it works really well. I've had a wonderful time over the past 10 months acting as a deputy secretary because you get to see the four teams really working as one. Really enjoyed that. I guess the other thing too, much like a lot of our corporate groups, we're obviously a central group and provide advice across the entire department and the THS, whether that's advice or reform opportunity or whatever.

Dorian Broomhall:

Fascinating. You've explained that so beautifully well that I am with you now, and I think it starts to get into being able to provide maybe not the answer, but certainly an answer around the confusion that we have within our organisation about the Department of Health and the Tasmanian Health Service. Can you explain how that works any more than how you've just described how the PPPR process works then?

Sally Badcock:

Yeah. I guess probably the best way to think about it, and I'll steal one of the other health executives phrase which I really like is that we're the conscience for the THS. By that, I mean that you need teams that do sit independent of the health service to monitor and drive performance improvement. That's essentially what PPPR is designed to do through the four teams.

Absolutely, we work with the THS as well. It's not about slapping anyone over the hands or anything like that, but essentially that transparency and accountability around how we perform and function as a health service is delivered through PPPR. We do that through a few different mechanisms, but probably the key one is the service plan, the annual THS service plan, which sets out the services that we're purchasing for delivery over the next 12 months, and the KPIs that we measure performance against, and each of the teams within PPPR has a role in driving that system management and performance.

Dorian Broomhall:

The statewide services, such as the corporate services, I should say, such as people and culture, ICT, finance itself, you don't oversee or purchase services from them on behalf of the THS? How does that interact?

Sally Badcock:

From the other corporate services?

Dorian Broomhall:

Yeah.

Sally Badcock:

No.

Dorian Broomhall:

That's in part perhaps where that or departmental services, PPPR sit as one of them and then these other functions

Sally Badcock:

If anything, I'd say if you were looking at it through the lens of how does HR and budget and finance fit within that, in a traditional performance framework, they would partner with PPPR to help drive the performance. What are the components of performance of a particular service that needed improving? It might include things like your HR management, the management of your budget, and obviously a really big focus for the department at the moment is the performance around access and flow and driving that, and PPPR has a key role in helping to do that.

Dorian Broomhall:

Yeah, I love that. Again, the way you described it, but that idea that yes, some of the accountability, we will lead some of that accountability because we've got the information, we've got the data, and we're also making the purchase on the behalf of the taxpayer and the people of Tasmania.

You've also got that lens of excellence in there if we bring in that our values language presumably with compassion and respect along the way, and certainly in all of my interactions with people from PPPR generally, you see that, but to have that understanding that well actually our function is to ensure that service provision is done in the best way it possibly can, noting that of course, that's always going to be somewhat of a work in progress, right?

Sally Badcock:

Yes, that's right. That's why I really like the lens of continuous improvement and reform, which is part of our PPPR name. It's a two-fold process of system and performance management, but also how do we strive for improvement and excellence? I think that fits really well with the CARE Values and certainly something too, if I reflect on my own career journey, that I've really tried to focus on and drive that mentality through the teams that I've managed.

I think that lens of continuous improvement helps motivate people, helps ensure that you have an understanding of what people enjoy in their work. That's critical to me because I just think we spend so much time at work and knowing what you're good at, what you enjoy, but also where you can improve is fundamental to how do I grow, how do I get better, but also how do I enjoy my work day on day?

Dorian Broomhall:

Yeah, love it. We talk a lot through our programmes through One Health Building on the Radical Candour framework, a piece of work by Kim Scott that was actually originally introduced to me by Jordan Emery, the chief executive of Ambulance. Beautiful in its simplicity, and it's in part what you're talking about there, it's this balance of, in our language, compassion and accountability.

Often, we'll overdo one or the other and we think we'll just be really compassionate and that will be great because we'll all just get along beautifully, but people actually want to grow and develop. They want to improve, they want that accountability. They don't want to, again, to overbalance that over the compassion. We need to find a perfect harmony of that but I think the way you've articulated that's a really lovely way to consider it.

I suppose one of my last questions then is what's that for you? What are you focusing on for yourself in your role as deputy secretary now? What are you focusing on that you are looking to improve and work on? Coupled with that, what are you really enjoying?

Sally Badcock:

I'll start with the what am I really enjoying because I think it goes to what I've said before about the learning and the curiosity. It's that. Just the opportunity to see the issues and the challenges from a whole of group perspective and obviously participate through Health Executive and THS executive through my roles on both of those committees, I've just had honestly the best time learning about what the other parts of the department do in a deeper way than I had the opportunity to do through GRASP, particularly how services run and function. That's been incredibly enjoyable.

I think too, I was very aware and I can look back over the last 10, 15 years and have a really deep understanding of when at particular points in my career, I've started to feel less challenged. I think that's a really important thing to know and whether or not you know that within yourself or you have a coach or a mentor or those relationships that help you do that. I think I was definitely aware that it was time for something new and time to be challenged.

I really like sitting in the discomfort of that and knowing that there will be parts of the job that are new, things I haven't done before, but I'll grow and I'll learn. I find that really fun and it does stop the growth within the role that you're in. I think that's been the main opportunity for me and what I've enjoyed most.

Dorian Broomhall:

Just one brief aside on that because I think it's really timely. We've got some resources available for staff around well-being, and one of the six pillars of well-being that we talk about is stress regulation. So often, we talk about stress as being this thing that's undesirable and you need to regulate it backwards so you don't have too much.

Whilst that's entirely true, it's also true of the other side, which is perhaps what I might call boredom. If you're bored, you don't actually have enough stress, chances are you'll end up doing not very much, and you probably will be just as unfulfilled as you would be if you were on the frame of burnout of having too much to do. I've seen both, and a bit like you, I need to find that right balance. I know that if I haven't got the right amount to do, I won't do anything.

Again, times in life of going am I being challenged right now constructively, and if not, then that's actually just as an important thing to pay attention to as having too much to do and falling into that category of burnout. I think that you've articulated that really well. I think it's really important to remember because stress just gets seen as the enemy, so to speak.

Sally Badcock:

Yeah, I agree. Look, I see it too as being comfortable engaging with risk because there will often be in no matter what the role is, particularly if it's new and it is a step up, there's always going to be things that you don't know, you're not familiar with, new skills and new experience that you're going to have to be comfortable with, but that's not necessarily bad.

I think it's about balancing that mindset of how do I keep growing and keep challenging myself without burning myself out? Again, fundamental to that is having people around you that you can speak to and get that support from, including your own manager, but seeking that out from other parts of the department. I've always been really lucky in that I've had really great mentor relationships with other people, and that's really helped me grow and develop and also probably opened opportunities and doors that I otherwise wouldn't have had access to.

I've certainly been very lucky in that regard but I think too, very much enjoy getting uncomfortable trying new things. The benefit of that for me has been the learning, the growing, meeting, new people, new experiences, and it's opened doors that I really otherwise wouldn't have had access to. I've loved it.

Dorian Broomhall:

Yeah, great. There's some wonderful embedded advice in what you just said there. With that, we'll leave it there and say thank you so much, Sally, for the conversation. Fantastic. I personally got a heap out of it. Look forward to continuing the conversations with you around the traps.

Sally Badcock:

Thank you very much.

Dorian Broomhall:

Thanks to Sally Badcock, the Deputy Secretary for Policy, Purchasing, Performance and Reform, for taking time to speak with us, and to you for listening. I hope you found something in our conversation that you can take away into your own life.

Join me again for our next episode when I speak to Dinesh Arya our Chief Medical Officer, Chief Psychiatrist, and the Deputy Secretary for Clinical Quality, Regulation and Accreditation.