AGP Ep 14: Peter Buckmaster—Transformational leaders provide vision and narrative

by Andrew Ramsden | Jan 3, 2017

Peter Buckmaster is the Director of Digital Services for the NSW Department of Education. Peter has had a varied career but there’s a consistent thread. Peter has always provided vision and narrative to lead the organisation forwards.

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"The technical side is less important. The most important thing is the problem that you're solving"—Peter Buckmaster

“One key to leadership is how you push society and people to change”—Peter Buckmaster

“Launch quickly, fail fast and fix it!”—Peter Buckmaster

Show notes

Peter Buckmaster’s blog
Since our discussion, Peter has kindly posted one of the videos he made for Woolworths to illustrate the sort of narrative he talks about in the episode.
Please subscribe, comment, share and review the episodes, it will make a big difference to our ability to continue with these. Thank you!

Credits

Music by David Cutter

Topics/Transcript

Topics discussed

Moving from Technical roles into leadership
Using storytelling to communicate technology and change
Role of leadership in changing mindset regarding change and failure

Questions asked

4:42 What attracted you to leadership as opposed to just the joy of technical problem solving?
19:55 What do you geek about these days?
24:25 Can you give us an example of a narrative to illustrate the relation between technology and storytelling?
32:34 What do you think the key challenges are for being a leader in the digital space?
33:43 How do you get the support when you fail?
37:40 So how do we make a shift in people’s mindset?
39:01 What drew you to speaking at conferences? How does it contribute to your leadership journey?

Quotable

4:19 “One key to leadership is how you push society and people to change”—Peter Buckmaster
19:27 “The higher up people go and more pure vision and strategy they become, the more disconnected from technology they become”—Peter Buckmaster
32:46 “As a leader, at times, you will let people down because you’re not gonna deliver, and you will make mistakes”—Peter Buckmaster
33:13 “Launch quickly, fail fast and fix it”—Peter Buckmaster
34:54 “One of the biggest objectives of leadership is to change culture to look at continuous improvement and continuous change”—Peter Buckmaster

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2 Comments

Chris Boyle on January 25, 2017 at 4:45 pm

Very insightful and enjoyable interview Andrew. Glad to hear there are people like Peter out there in government setting the vision and the narrative! Well done.
- Andrew Ramsden on January 30, 2017 at 6:51 pm
  
  Thank you Chris. Apologies for the delay in replying, still working out the kinks in the comments notifications.
  
  Really glad you enjoyed it. Peter’s an insightful guy.