Ian Stewart On Leadership, Purpose-Led Public Administration & Making A Difference
Ian Stewart was the 19th Commissioner of the Queensland Police Service from 2012 until his retirement in 2019. Mr Stewart was a career police officer with over 45 years of service having joined the Queensland Police in 1973.
At the time of his retirement the Queensland Police department had an annual budget in excess of A$2bn, over 400 establishments and more than 15000 staff. As Commissioner, Mr. Stewart led the largest renewal and restructure program of the Queensland Police in over 30 years. He was responsible for the successful security arrangements of the 2014 G20 Leaders Summit meetings, and the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
He was the inaugural State Disaster Coordinator in Queensland successfully responding to the unprecedented disaster season in 2010/11. As Commissioner he was responsible for the police response to a range of natural disasters. Mr. Stewart has been recognised by a range of awards for his policing service. In 2020 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for his services to Policing and the community.
Mr. Stewart is the recipient of Honorary Doctorates from the University of Southern Queensland, Griffith University and Charles Sturt University. He holds a Master of Public Policy and Administration and a Bachelor of Business qualifications and is a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia. He is an adjunct Professor at Griffith University. In September 2019, Mr. Stewart was appointed by the Premier of Queensland as the State Recovery Coordinator for the Southern and Eastern Queensland Bushfires, a role he completed with the publishing of the State Recovery Plan in March 2020.
He is the current President of the Institute of Public Administration Australia, Queensland Division, and a member of several boards.
Ian discusses how the public sector can interact within business ecosystems to create widespread social change.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Tom Allen] - I'm curious to hear more about your background and what led to your passion and lifelong experience in serving the community?
[Ian Stewart] - It started with a wonderful family upbringing. I grew up in rural Queensland in a place called Toowoomba. My farming family had a great basis in service, in a sense of a duty to both the community and to our very broad and large family. I must admit I wasn't an excellent student, but I loved team sports. I also love testing boundaries at all times, so that really gave me a great start in life. I learned very early in life that as one door closes, another one opens, and I took advantage of that many times. I wanted a life that challenged me, and ultimately the police service was a very good fit. It allowed me to serve in different places, to do different things every day, it supported me while I learned the trade of policing [or the profession of policing] and it paid relatively quite well for a person just starting out in life. I suppose I saw the best and worst of life, I found it very easy to help people and was often conflicted by the limited views of others that I met, both inside and outside of policing. I rode the wave of change in Queensland post our anti-corruption inquiry in the late 1980s, and I saw personal development as a way forward. I pursued both formal and informal studies and experience in my career.
I realised the need for diversity of thought and action, and I'm always striving for world's best practice, not just local or state best practice or even national best practice, but world's best practice.
I saw the positives in what we call consensual policing, meaning policing where the community has confidence and respect for their police agency and work with them, not against them, so that ultimately, we have a safer society. I realised early on that respect is very much earned and is a fragile thing to be valued. I became focused on the future of law enforcement, technological and societal change, and the need to act cooperatively to achieve positive outcomes for all. I really saw my life and my role as a privilege to serve and ultimately, that will never change.
As the President at IPAA Queensland, can you please tell us a little bit more about this organisation's purpose and its future plans?
The Institute of Public Administration Australia, and more specifically the Queensland branch, is what I am the President of. It is an independent and therefore apolitical not-for-profit professional association. We're part of a national federation, and we've been around for a very long time. In fact, I've been a member of IPAA for well over 30 years and have enjoyed every moment of it. It's been a real strength to me because the mission has basically not changed in a long time.
Our mission is to advance the capability, integrity, and professionalism of public administration, and to promote pride in service.
In Queensland, we do this through a strategic program of thought leadership events, and certainly curated digital content has been seminal, particularly in the last year and a half to being able to do that. This is bearing in mind that we like most other agencies and organisations have had to move into the technological world in providing our services to our members. We certainly provide opportunities for professional development and enhance the positive reputation of public purpose effort by ensuring that we show we work in a safe and trusted place for robust, honest and courageous discussions. This comes down to the basic premise of public servants who are able to give courageous, honest advice to others, no matter what the outcome is. We certainly acknowledge and have been acknowledged for the strengths of our partnerships and capacity for bringing together the public purpose ecosystem. We've recognised that working with and those partner agencies, whether that's in the private sector, other government agencies or the educational system [particularly tertiary institutions], together with the not-for-profit together to achieve our purposes and be of value to their purpose is crucial. Of course, we do this through growing our membership.
We engage individuals and organisations across all of those parts of the ecosystem of the business world. Certainly, that is fundamental to us sharing our knowledge and experience with others and learning from them at the same time.
We've got a number of upcoming activities for instance. White Box Enterprises is co-hosting the Social Enterprise World Forum next year, and in mid-November, we will be hosting a round table of government leaders on social procurement along with White Box Enterprises. We are hosting a webinar on leadership in late November in partnership with Ernst and Young and a very notable Australian leader, Angus Houston. At the end of November, we also have the privilege of hosting the national IPAA conference in Brisbane. It's a 2021 national conference, and certainly it will be a wonderful event that's looking at service transformation and delivering positive change to clients and communities. Certainly, as a way of challenging thinking and keeping people informed. Lastly, in early December, [we are hosting] a webinar on changing the design and delivery of health services in partnership with Deloitte as part of a future of government series that we conduct.
We're not sitting on our hands, and we certainly are a very busy branch of IPAA in Australia.
We work collaboratively with all of the other jurisdictions across Australia to provide this wonderful information and experience for our public purpose work.
Ian Stewart with (L-R) Camille Socquet-Clerc, William Smith Stubbs, Sabrina Chakori, Taj Pabari and Tom Allen at the CEO and Young Professionals Breakfast.
Earlier this year, IPAA held the CEO and Young Professionals Breakfast. There was a really strong panel of young social entrepreneurs, who shared their experience and insights into shaping public policy and leading with purpose. What for you were some of the key takeaways at that particular event around youth social enterprise and social innovation?
Thank you, and this is a really great question, because our CEO and Young Professional Breakfast is one of our signature events each year. We consistently 'pack the hall' so to speak in terms of conducting this wonderful event. I think the key to it is that it allows our CEOs, not just government CEOs, but our CEOs from partner agencies to come together, particularly with up-and-coming young professionals in their organisations to sit around and listen to speakers from a really diverse range of backgrounds and with a very diverse range of messages. This year in early 2021 we featured Camille Socquet-Clerc Founder of Bloom Impact Investing, William Smith-Stubbs Co-Founder of spur, Sabrina Chakori the Founder of the Brisbane Tool Library and Taj Pabari who is the Founder and CEO of The Australian School of Entrepreneurship.
If there's one single takeaway from this event this year, it's that anyone regardless of age or background can make a difference, because certainly these four outstanding young Australians have been able to do that.
Their stories encompass financial investing to save the planet, a deeply personal story of tackling mental health and the wellbeing of young people including suicide, libraries for sharing and reusing items in support of a circular economy and programs to foster the imagination and entrepreneurial skills of young people for a future world. I think it was just an outstanding event, and very well curated I must admit as well. We always find people who do a wonderful job in that regard, and it's ultimately a terrific reminder that we're all in this together.
There are some fantastic opportunities for the public sector to really better respond to the planet’s most pressing issues. Where do you personally see some of these opportunities arising right now?
I think that the simple question is where do you start? I think perhaps in a general sense, it's all about changing the way we think about providing services to our communities, and I am talking about the minds of public purpose workers. I think we all agree that addressing some of society's most pressing needs cannot be achieved with a silo mentality, the idea that one agency or even one government can fix some of these absolutely complex issues. We can think of things like climate change, social disadvantages, basic human rights, overpopulation, the plight of our First Nations people, poverty, and even believe it or not pandemics and how they affect different parts of our community. I think we're on the journey, I really do. I think within public purpose work, we're seeing new ways of thinking, inclusiveness and diversity as part of the answer.
We're seeing a different way of engaging across the entire ecosystem of our communities, providing an authorising environment that allows new ideas to be trialled and accepted.
Certainly, an understanding that others have different ways of doing business that can be better is occurring, and we've got to recognise and acknowledge that. I think that we as a public purpose conglomerate can certainly show that we're open to these relationships, that we can put a plan together and that all those who wish to have a stake in it can work to and be aligned in their efforts. Ultimately, I think that what people are looking for are role models and I'm sure that's an area that public purpose workers can really demonstrate and take a lead in.
What have you observed to be some of the fundamental qualities of successful leaders?
It's a subject that we can talk about all day, but the reality is without a doubt in my mind…
integrity and role modelling are at the very top of the list of qualities that I expect in a leader, and I see them in leaders who really shine above others.
Other tenets or qualities of these leaders include a vision and currency of ideas. They know how their systems and business operate and how they fit into the broader ecosystem. They're supportive and without exception are focused on diversity, inclusion and supporting people. They're compassionate and accept failure knowing that we learn more from failure than we ever will from success. They're motivators, always stretching themselves and others.
They're risk takers, they accept that not every decision will be a positive one, but they're prepared to learn from that. More than anything else, they're also developers of leaders. They spend significant effort on providing opportunities for future leaders to grow.
I would hope that's something that IPAA renowned for, that we continue to provide opportunities for future leaders to develop.
Ian, you've come across many different projects and inspiring initiatives, but what projects have you come across recently which you believe are creating some fantastic, positive social change?
I'm actually going to reach back a couple of years for this example, because I think it's really seminal. When Queensland hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2018, it became very well-known right from the start in the development of the plans for the Games that our governments certainly require that the procurement of services and goods for the conducting of the Games had to include a target percentage of services and goods from enterprises owned and operated by Australia's First Nations people. This was probably one of the great wake up calls of that experience for those involved in that event.
People realised that this was a wonderful thing to do, and it certainly added to the tone and the flavour of the Games, bearing in mind that many of the agencies and enterprises that fit the social enterprise and social entrepreneurs’ definition.
It proved that these opportunities, and certainly government-led opportunities can have a very positive effect in the mainstream. Following on from that, we have now got the time to put the infrastructure and processes in place to ensure this occurs to a much higher degree than what we even saw at the Commonwealth Games in the upcoming 2032 Brisbane Paralympic and Olympic Games. There are plenty of other more recent examples that I could give, and even one of my local community organisation Sandbag out of Sandgate, which is a social enterprise that provides park maintenance. It's an award-winning program that's been going on for a number of years very quietly and unobtrusively, but it works. Certainly, there are inclusive employment opportunities across the spectrum.
What books or other resources would you recommend to our listeners?
One of the things that you realise in life is that you learn something new every day. There's just one book I'm going to mention, because I think the fact that people are prepared to listen to new ideas is really important.
For instance, I hope that many people will listen to this interview. Not to judge, but to think about what's being said, and to allow that little thought to creep in and perhaps be the kernel of a great idea down the track.
There is a very well-known international economist by the name of Mariana Mazzucato, and she's just finished another book. In fact, it was published in February of this year, and it’s called Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, and it's really saying as many other economists say that we've got to rethink our international economy. We've got to rethink the role of government at that level, and we've got to put public purpose and solving the problems that matter to people first. That's fundamentally what her book is about. She's very entertaining, and I would certainly recommend it to all of your listeners.
Initiatives, resources and people mentioned on the podcast
Recommended books
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism by Mariana Mazzucato
