Chapter 9:
Claire is sharing the reins
As Claire walked toward the meeting room, she ran through the key takeaways from this week’s course videos. The third module focused on leading more strategically, and she needed all the help she could get heading into the working group’s first meeting.
One: Leadership is influence, not authority. You can't do this alone, and no one is truly the boss—even the CEO reports to someone. Claire's experience was that it was often faster to do things herself, but she was off to this meeting to ‘consult.’
Two: Balance selfishness and selflessness. Don't be a martyr or a bully. Protect your own capacity while genuinely serving others. Yes…as long as those boundaries didn’t mean standards were allowed to slip.
Three: Create triple-wins that are sustainable. Outcomes that work for you, your team and the people you serve. That was Claire's MO, of course—the pursuit of excellence. We all win, right? Ideally, without burning everyone out in the process.
Claire walked into the meeting room determined to make this a successful workshop and stay ‘positive’, though she knew this would be a challenge in a room with Rob.
Claire had asked Quinn to send the agenda out well in advance of the workshop and see if Rob had any questions or concerns. She felt she was already on her way to being more collaborative.
When she arrived, Quinn was already there, the list of thirty recommendations projected onto the screen. Claire smiled and nodded. ‘So organised, Quinn. Thanks for setting this up.’ A small sense of achievement flickered through her. Verbalising praise didn't come naturally, but she was trying. It was one of her focus areas already in action.
Claire sat down and opened her laptop. She also had hard copies of the review report and the detailed agenda with her, so she could tick through them as the discussion progressed. She aligned the documents with the edge of the table.
At 10.10 am, Rob casually strolled in, followed by Gene. ‘Morning. I asked Gene to come along. I thought we could use his brilliant brain,’ Rob said, taking the seat directly across from Claire. Gene shot Rob a look of mild surprise, confirming Claire’s suspicion that Gene was a last-minute addition.
Claire felt the urge to raise the issue of ‘agreed attendees’ and ‘proper process’, but she checked herself. Influence, not authority. She forced a polite smile. ‘All good. Welcome, Gene. Glad to have you on board.’
She noticed Quinn adding Gene’s name to her copy of the agenda, under ‘Meeting participants’. At least there’s someone I can trust here to be thorough.
She knew Gene had a brilliant policy mind, but he was an administrative wildcard. She quickly decided he would be here for in-session input only; she couldn’t risk him becoming a bottleneck for the deliverables. They were on a tight schedule and had only one more meeting to pull together the presentation for the executive team, which was in two weeks’ time. There was no time for multiple follow-up attempts.
‘Gene, do you have the agenda Quinn sent out last week?’ Claire asked.
Gene looked puzzled. Quinn quickly slid a spare copy of the three-page agenda to Gene across the table.
Claire wanted to roll her eyes, annoyed by Rob’s lack of preparedness and communication. Instead, she took a breath and walked them through the agenda and the planned workshop format.
She was just about to dive into Recommendation 1 when Rob said, ‘Hold on.’
He was leaning back in his chair, arms relaxed on the armrests. ‘This prep is great, but we need to zoom out. I read the review report’s executive summary…’ Of course he only made it as far as the summary, Claire thought. ‘…and it seems these thirty points are really just three key problems. It makes sense to start there.’
Claire felt her blood pressure rise. She had built the agenda specifically to prevent Rob from ‘zooming out’ into vague generalities. But before she could argue, Gene leaned forward.
‘Rob’s right,’ Gene said, gesturing at the screen. ‘For example, look at Recommendations 4, 12 and 18. They aren’t three separate issues; they’re all symptoms of the same failure. If we solve the root cause, the other two vanish. We’re looking at thirty rows of symptoms, not the actual disease.’
Claire paused, annoyed with herself for missing the connection. Had she been too busy planning the details to notice the bigger picture? But it was a classic Gene move to roll things up and connect the dots in minutes.
Gene looked at Claire and said in a calm voice, ‘We can always cross-reference these against the detail later to make sure we have full coverage.’
Rob nodded, then said, ‘And we also shouldn’t just blindly accept all of the recommendations. I’m not saying they’re not good ideas, but we need to be realistic about what can be achieved in the next twelve months. The CEO wants to show the Minister the progress that can be made over the next year, and we can flag the rest for outer years with our justification. It’s better to commit to less and actually deliver than build an elaborate plan we may not be able to achieve.’
Claire tightened her jaw. This is not how she had envisioned the meeting going. This was exactly what she had been afraid of: Rob taking over the whole meeting and the entire planning process. And why she had built the detailed agenda with Quinn, to not give him any room for manoeuvring.
Her eyes darted to Quinn, who was now nodding at Rob, as if his points were landing. She was just going to have to be more convincing. Influence without authority, she reminded herself again.
‘I see where you’re coming from, Robert,’ Claire said. ‘My concern is that if we oversimplify, we may miss some of the risks. Also, the Minister wants real change, not just enhancements. We can’t have another service failure.’
Rob leaned forward in his chair, clasping his hands on the table. ‘I appreciate that, but there’s only so much more change the frontline can handle; we’re already stretched as it is. And isn’t increasing the autonomy of regional offices one of the expected solutions? We don’t want to be overly prescriptive at this early stage; it defeats the purpose. The regions can map this out on their own as implementation progresses.’
The room went quiet. Claire’s instinct was to bulldoze. I need to protect the agency. He’s being reckless.
‘Autonomy creates its own set of risks,’ Claire shot back. ‘The regions will need oversight to make sure the agency is protected.’
The tension was broken by Quinn. ‘Maybe there’s a middle ground.’
Everyone turned to look at Quinn. She looked nervous but held her ground. ‘We’re a people business. Why don’t we start with the people? In the “Back to basics” exercise last week, we mapped who we serve. Maybe we can use the stakeholder mapping tool from this week to flesh out and organise the plan.’
Quinn continued, her voice gaining confidence. ‘If we map the needs of the Minister, executives and staff across the key themes Rob and Gene mentioned, we can then cross-reference the thirty recommendations to make sure we haven’t missed anything.’
Gene’s eyes lit up as he nodded.
Rob relaxed his shoulders. ‘I like the people focus. As long as the frontline staff is its own category in the stakeholder map. They would have very different needs and concerns from the folks in head office.’ He looked at Claire, who was still processing the direction the workshop had taken.
Every part of her wanted to push back—this wasn't the plan. But Quinn's idea was sound and even through her frustration, Claire couldn’t find a reason to argue with it. She took a breath and let the agenda go.
‘All right,’ she said, regaining her composure. ‘Let’s trial the mapping for thirty minutes. If we can identify our key stakeholders, the themes will have a real foundation.’
The energy in the room shifted. They brainstormed for the next half hour, while Quinn captured notes on the whiteboard and facilitated the discussion. Claire found it useful to move past the review’s dry language and picture the people affected by implementation.
As they neared the end of the session, Gene jumped up and joined Quinn at the whiteboard, grouping similar ideas and suggesting titles for the key themes. The group landed on three pillars for the response plan.
‘Okay, we have our pillars,’ Claire announced. ‘But we’ll need more substance for our presentation to the executive team. Rob and Gene—did you want to tackle the first pillar? It’s the meatiest and relates to the core business, so more your territory. Quinn and I can work on the other two. That should speed things up.’
‘Let’s try to work out both actions and risks for each. We can bring them back to the group to test at the next meeting,’ Claire added.
Rob and Gene looked at each other and Gene nodded. ‘Sure,’ Rob said. ‘Gene, I’ll have a go at this first, then run it by you. I know you’re swamped at the moment.’
As Rob and Gene walked out, Claire heard them arranging to meet on Friday morning to discuss Rob’s draft. When the door clicked shut, she turned to Quinn, who was packing up. ‘That was a good save. If you hadn’t spoken up, I might have thrown something at him.’
Quinn laughed. ‘No worries. I’m just glad it worked.’
‘It was a great move,’ Claire said, and she meant it. She felt strangely relieved. She hadn’t been the ‘boss’ of the meeting, but for the first time, she was glad she didn’t have to do everything herself.