AGP Ep 14: Peter Buckmaster—Transformational leaders provide vision and narrative
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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Alpha Geek Podcast
AGP Ep 14: Peter Buckmaster—Transformational leaders provide vision and narrative
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.
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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
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.
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.