New ATO boss wants staff to listen and learn
“If you see me around, please say hello (and please call me Rob).”
They say you should start as you mean to continue, and there could soon be fewer managerialist buzzwords and more frank questions permeating the corporate culture of the Australian Taxation Office if new commissioner of taxation Rob Heferen’s initial leadership note to staff is anything to go by.
In a pleasantly unvarnished introduction to staff, the new tax boss has outlined his passion for cogent tax policy and reform but also put staff on notice he values inquiring minds that ask the questions that count, saying he’s watched the “institution go from strength to strength” and intends to build on those strengths.
“I value curiosity, courage, and integrity. I value the ability to communicate, and the ability to Listen to Learn rather than Listen to Win,” Heferen told staff in his first “Commish Connect” communique, saying he intends to detail the use of listening modalities in the near future.
It’s an observation likely to prompt senior staff and suppliers scrambling to try and find the authoritative text on the matter, although we suspect it may be in the ‘leadership’ section of the many volumes of corporate behavioural therapy self-help books (rather than the ‘transformation’ section).
Institutional hardness of hearing has previously been a cultural issue in the APS.
Take the ATO’s most recent high-visibility challenges, which included a bruising (but impressive) performance at the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme and the somewhat perverse phenomenon of first-person refund fraud that spawned Operation Protego.
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