Secretaries these days do have to spend more of their time managing external relationships. Even when they are not directly engaging with external organisations, they must oversee the relationships and ensure there is comfort at the ministerial level about the processes involved, that they support the government’s agenda and that the people involved can be trusted.

Managing the relationships requires effort to appreciate different cultures as well as different views and to help staff understand that in complex fields such as health it is not possible simply to direct. Often, success is reliant on influencing key players to cooperate even if they do not fully agree. In this context, the idea of ‘leadership’ encouraged by the APS Commission does indeed have real meaning and value.

In a similar vein, I learned to take a pragmatic approach to working with the states. Notwithstanding the benefits of clearly defined roles and responsibilities (which I still strongly advocate), there will always be many areas where one level of government wishes to influence another and these areas change from time to time. For these reasons, I thought in terms of ‘control, influence, appreciate’: try to clarify who controls what, identify and negotiate areas where one jurisdiction wishes to influence another and always appreciate the remaining areas under the others’ control, as some understanding of the issues and challenges can be important into the future.

I believe strongly that secretaries benefit from personal involvement in external networks, whether they are networks of academics or international experts or of experienced non-government players. These networks provide rare opportunities to look at the department, or the wider system in which it operates, from an external perspective. Such perspectives quite often lead to significant reassessment of strengths and weaknesses, and where effort needs to be placed in the medium to longer term.