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Transcript of Gill Savage’s Gala Dinner Presentation to the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers on 17 August 2023

Good evening, it is an absolute honour to be here as your dinner speaker.

I wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of these lands, and I also acknowledge the custodians of the lands from which we all come.

The line up of speakers and the diversity of the organisations represented at this conference is a statement of the important contribution intelligence professionals make across all sectors. It’s also a statement of the challenge in keeping up to date with a complex and dynamic operating environment.

A big thanks to the AIPIO organising committee for this great conference. As a former AIPIO board member I know the incredible effort that goes into this conference so, congratulations. I also acknowledge the conference sponsors and exhibitors for their generosity and support.

And thank you to Allan for the work of White Ribbon.

Tonight, I’m going to talk about the future and what’s required for you to be ready.

If I can leave you with one message it is this; its time to make the future personal. The contribution that this group of people can have on ensuring a better future is immense and it starts with the words and actions of us all.

John F. Kennedy said:

In the last few decades we’ve experienced significant change, good and bad.

So, where are we today?

• We can buy almost anything online and get it delivered within days.
• We can even get a hot coffee delivered by a drone within 30 minutes.
• A 2019 US study found that 92% of toddlers had a digital footprint.
• Thanks to social media everyone can be an expert, an author and apparently, even a journalist.
• Billionaires are not only funding mega solar power farms, they’re also in the space race.
• In the last 12 months, the data of millions of Aussies has been stolen from public and private organisations and is available on the dark web. And that’s just what we know about!
• Local communities are struggling to deal with the impacts of consecutive, cascading and compounding natural disasters.
• Some people think that ChatGPT has the answer to every question while others think legislation is the solution to every problem.
• Who would have guessed that the road to net zero emissions is through the mining of critical minerals?
• And who would have thought the nation would get behind women’s football the way we have with the Matildas?

Of course, let’s not forget the Covid pandemic though I’m sure many would like to. Some will remember all those pandemic tabletop exercises a decade or more ago, but many didn’t take them seriously.

Today there is much more complexity and pace to our modern world. We face cost of living and housing affordability challenges. We’re living within an uncertain geostrategic region. Our infrastructure, particularly in regional and remote areas, isn’t fit for purpose. Our local communities are bombarded by a relentless series of natural disasters.

Sadly, some things never change. On average each week in Australia a woman is killed by her current or former intimate partner. And closing the gap on indigenous disadvantage continues to allude us.

The uptake of AI and generative AI is accelerating and underpins many everyday tasks. We need to leverage this opportunity to a greater extent and its important that we don’t approach AI from a perspective of fear. While technology is becoming commonplace in our modern lives, we need to remember that technology is a tool for US to use and control rather than a determinant of our future.

In the immortal words of Mr Spock:

In any conversation about the future, its important to seek out authoritative advice. I didn’t do as Adam Bandt suggested and ‘Google it mate.’ And I didn’t consult the current expert on everything; ChatGPT.

Instead, I asked someone who has a vested in interest in our long-term future – a 12-year-old.

So, when I asked about today’s world, they said, and these are their words so strap in:

• We are divided by race more than ever before.
• Our education system is letting down neurodivergent kids.
• Adults are greedy and have exploited our natural resources.
• To afford health care you have to be rich.
• Mums or dads can’t stay at home to raise kids because if they do the banks won’t let them have a home.

They did say that it was good that each generation learns from the one before – they won’t smoke because they’re watching grandparents die from lung cancer and they put on sunscreen because their Oma didn’t.

They thinks kids need to join the guides or scouts to learn how to be future leaders.

And when asked where we will be in 2040, I was politely told I will be in a nursing home! Thanks for that.

I’ve heard similar observations from young adults – about the state of the world not about me in a nursing home – but not from someone so young. We wrongly assume that kids don’t understand but they’re watching, and they don’t like what they see.

There is much to sort. We need to fix today’s problems AND in parallel, we need to create a better future.

If ‘pivot’ and ‘unprecedented’ were the most-used words during the Covid years, today’s most used word has to be ‘resilience’.

But what is it?

Resilience is the ability to withstand disruption, recover quickly having created a better foundation from which to face the next challenge.

Australians proudly display their resilience when they band together during a crisis and then stoically move on. In rural and remote communities, resilience is a required and highly prized commodity.

But the foundations for resilience derive from economically prosperous communities, that have fit for purpose physical and social infrastructure, and that are also socially cohesive.

Resilience applies to nations, organisations, communities and importantly, people. The more our world changes, the better at enhancing our resilience we need to be.

There are lots of ideas about how we should address these challenges today for a better and more resilient future. Governments at all levels are investing heavily but I think we need to first focus on some basics given our public and private institutions have been found lacking.

Some of our organisations seem unable to operate lawfully. Some struggle with being ethical and others have lost their moral compass. There are more examples than we would like to admit, and I won’t mention the recent ones here, but the thing we need to remember is that organisations aren’t living entities; there are created and sustained by people. So, if we want resilient and sustainable organisations that contribute in a positive way to resilience in communities, then we need to focus on ensuring the people within those organisations are lawful, ethical and guided by a moral compass.

Those three things provide the foundation for resilience. They establish the basis for and guide the execution of every idea and action. Most organisations have a value statement that describes the culture and the behaviours needed to achieve its objectives. For a long time now, we have suspected this was window dressing – recent very public examples have proven that to be the case.

So how can YOU contribute to the resilience of our nation and communities?

We need to acknowledge that everything we did and didn’t think, and everything we did and didn’t do, led us here. We were contributors whether we realised it or not, but we can shape the future just as we shaped the past.

I’m conscious I’m here with a very smart, knowledgeable and capable group of people who already contribute so much to society and a better world. As confronting as this may sound, we need more from groups like this one BECAUSE you are smart, knowledgeable, capable and importantly, committed.

However, we need to be resilient and that starts with understanding what is within our sphere of control and what is within our sphere of influence, both in our personal and professional lives. With that understanding we will be able to face these challenges more effectively.

Added to this I think there are four key capabilities that underpin resilience:

• Knowledge
• Courage
• Empathy, and
• Creativity.

Knowledge. You’re at this conference enhancing, gaining and sharing your knowledge. TICK. But an interconnected complex world requires knowledge that goes beyond our expert domain.

We need knowledge to explore things that we KNOW we might not agree with and to quote Lola from the movie Kinky Boots, you need to be willing to ‘change your mind about someone’ and I would add, you need to be willing to change your mind about SOMETHING.

Courage. When I talk about courage I’m talking about the everyday kind. This relates to being willing to pursue a different course, adopt a different posture or propose an alternate view. Sometimes courage is about letting go and trusting others to lead.

The once in a lifetime courage required to expose serious wrongdoing within corporates or governments is something I hope no one has to experience – the impact on individuals is often devastating; our whistleblower provisions are not fit for a modern world where the desire to ‘protect the organisation at any cost’ becomes the primary goal.

Courage is different for us all. Comedian Lucille Ball once said, ‘I’m not funny. What I am is brave.’ So, what I may think is brave may not be the same for others.

Empathy. While we all understand the importance of what we do, we also need to understand those around us and what’s important for them.

Empathy is at the core of doing any job well and is part of the package of expertise often referred to as ‘soft skills’ – deceptive labelling for expertise that is so difficult to master. If you start with a sense of appreciation for others, you’ll be on the path to enhancing your expertise in empathy.

Creativity. And I mean creativity rather than innovation because creativity is an innate human characteristic whereas innovation has been confused by process and frameworks.

Henri Matisse said that ‘Creativity takes courage’ which focuses on the action that you may need to take. De Bono represented creativity by the green hat in his Six Thinking Hats and placed emphasis on exploring ideas.

There are many examples of creative thinking but the one I like is when UK surgeons applied Formula 1 pit crew practices and data analysis to dramatically improve operating theatre outcomes. It also highlights that the answers to challenging questions can sometimes be found outside your sector or industry.

But how can you think creatively? Well, the good news is, if creativity isn’t your thing, it will be the THING of someone in your team.

But its important to remember that national, regional and local resilience starts, and finishes, with people applying their collective capabilities to the world we want.

Be lawful, ethical and moral. Understand what you can control and what you can influence. And apply your knowledge, courage, empathy and creativity.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed but if each of us focuses on those things within our personal and professional spheres of control and influence, the impact will be significant.

But it’s time to get personal about the future and not as author Peter Hendy warns, ‘sleepwalk into the future.’

So, are you ready for the future and I’ll add, are you ready for the role YOU need to play?

Thank you.