Leading Through Uncertainty: Adaptability, Integrity and Resilient Leadership

Government leaders are operating in environments where complexity is increasing, expectations are high and many of the decisions reaching senior levels are difficult precisely because there is no obvious answer.

For Jaala Hinchcliffe, Secretary, Department of Parliamentary Services, navigating that environment comes back to some enduring leadership principles: integrity, accountability, transparency, trust in the people around you and the ability to remain calm when information is incomplete.

Ahead of Digital Leadership Day Federal 2026, Public Sector Network spoke with Jaala about her approach to leadership, what adaptability looks like within an institution built around stability and convention, how she approaches difficult decisions and what government leaders can do to build teams capable of responding, recovering and continuing to deliver.

Jaala will continue the conversation in the panel “Leading Through Uncertainty: Navigating Change in an Increasingly Complex World”, alongside David Hazlehurst, Chief Executive Officer, Services Australia, Chris Crozier, Chief Information Officer, Department of Defence, and Elissa Walker, Deputy Secretary, Technology Group, Department of Home Affairs.

Explore the event: Digital Leadership Day overview | View the agenda

Q&A with Jaala Hinchcliffe

Public Sector Network: As Secretary, you lead an organisation supporting the work of Parliament, parliamentarians and Australian Parliament House. How do you approach leadership in an environment that is highly visible, complex and constantly changing?

Jaala Hinchcliffe:
I've thought about leadership a lot throughout my career, and I don't think the way that I approach leadership at DPS is different to the way I've approached it elsewhere, though it's built on various experiences I've had.

I am a relational leader by choice. That's my preferred style, and so that's what I bring to this role.

The other things that are really important to me in leadership are accountability, transparency and integrity.

For me, working in either the public service or the parliamentary service, the fact that we are services that are defined by our values is really important. It fits really nicely with the way that I like to do leadership and also the way that I consider how I serve the Australian public through my work.

The other thing I think about all the time is that the work that I do as a parliamentary service leader is work to support this incredible democracy that we have in Australia. By doing that, I'm serving the Australian people.

Every single thing that I do, I try and remember that I'm using taxpayers' money, which is a great way to keep in your mind: is this the right thing to be doing? Would I be satisfied as a taxpayer with the fact that this is how we're spending the money?

It also reminds us about the importance of being accountable and transparent about what we're doing.

I'm not doing any of these things because they're necessarily the things that Jaala Hinchcliffe wants to do. I'm doing them on behalf of the Australian public because they are looking for me to support this incredible democracy that we have by supporting parliamentarians and maintaining Parliament House.

Public Sector Network: Your upcoming panel at Digital Leadership Day explores shifting from control to adaptability. In a parliamentary environment where stability, trust and continuity are essential, what does adaptable leadership look like in practice?

Jaala Hinchcliffe:
It is such a stable environment. It's an environment that has a history that goes back to Westminster. It values convention and procedures, and it usually has one big change every three years with an election, which might result in a big change or not.

It is a very stable environment. That's the way Westminster parliaments work and that's the way that they have been so successful.

That environment and that systems view is something that you need to be aware of when you're working to support the Parliament and when you're working to support democracy.

I've worked not only in this parliamentary environment but also in and around law enforcement for a long time. I've seen lots of command-and-control types of leadership. I've seen lots of leadership which is based on having a leader who is the advice giver and directs how all the other work goes.

That's not my preferred style.

I would prefer having work done at the right levels, and I would prefer empowering my staff to make decisions.

The really great thing for me about DPS is that most of the jobs that my staff do, I can't do.

I'm not a tradesperson. I'm not a broadcast professional. I'm not a chef. I'm not a Hansard editor. I'm not a landscaper or a horticulturalist. I'm not an IT specialist. I'm not a librarian. I'm not a hairdresser.

None of those jobs can I do myself.

What I can bring to DPS is a strong authorising environment where those people get to do their jobs and serve the Parliament through the way that they do it.

That's what I think adaptability looks like in leadership: providing an environment where people feel like they can get on and do their jobs, provide the advice that they need to provide to help decision-makers make their decision, and feel enabled to innovate and take risks, but then move quickly if that doesn't work.

Public Sector Network: Government leaders are increasingly being asked to make decisions quickly while maintaining accountability. What helps you make confident decisions in fast-moving or uncertain situations?

Jaala Hinchcliffe:
I'll talk for myself rather than my team.

I think when you get to the point of being either the Secretary, the head of a division or the head of a branch, the easy decisions have all gone because the easy decisions have been made by somebody else.

The decisions that start to come to you are the hard decisions that people are really struggling to make.

Often it is in a quick timeframe because it's taken a while either to get to you, or people have thought about what they think the answer might be and haven't been able to find it. Or it's a crisis and it's suddenly the urgent thing that needs to be done.

For myself, the important part of all of that is remaining calm.

It might be urgent. You might need to do it immediately. But there is always time to take a breath and help yourself to calm, which enables you to start thinking properly rather than reacting.

For most of our decisions now, we will not have enough information. We will not have the evidence to make the perfect decision.

That has been challenging for me. I come from a criminal law background where painstakingly going through the evidence to make sure that you had everything you needed to support a particular charge was a really important step. I'm right up for the very detailed work.

But often you just don't have that.

So being able to take a moment, be calm, make a decision and then own it is important.

If you make the wrong one, fess up quickly, fix it and move on.

Public Sector Network: You've held senior roles across integrity, governance, oversight and parliamentary service environments. How has that experience shaped the way you lead through risk, scrutiny and change?

Jaala Hinchcliffe:
I'm always learning across all of my roles.

In those roles I've come across a range of challenges that I've had to face, but they've also reminded me of the things that we are capable of and the things we're able to work our way through.

One example was when I was the Integrity Commissioner and the head of a very small anti-corruption commission called ACLEI.

The idea of having the name Integrity Commissioner was really confronting for me. It made me think, what does integrity mean, and how am I meant to be the commissioner of it? How am I meant to display it?

That took me on a journey of thinking a lot about integrity and how we display integrity.

My role was actually as an anti-corruption commissioner, which is one part of integrity but is not the whole part. But it made me think a lot about the broader term integrity and how I lead with integrity.

That took me to thinking through the public service values and the fact that integrity is a key part of our public service values. It's who we are as public servants.

That's become a really important part of my leadership. It's thinking about: how do I do this? Not just do it fast, not just get to a decision, not just deliver, because I'm in a service delivery agency now, but do it the right way. Do it with integrity.

One of the things I really saw as Integrity Commissioner was the potential for people to get themselves into trouble when trying to deal with risk and difficult circumstances, where they made a mistake and then tried to hide it and hoped that it would go away.

I had a number of matters where the allegations were bad, it looked bad, and when we investigated it, it was actually just that someone had made a mistake and they didn't know how to, or chose not to, say, “I've made a mistake here. This will have consequences for me, but we need to fix it.”

The consequences at that point are probably going to be easier than the consequences when an anti-corruption commission starts to investigate you.

That's one example of how I've learnt about leadership through some of the work that I've done before.

Public Sector Network: Building resilient teams is a key theme of your upcoming panel. What behaviours or capabilities are most important for teams that need to respond, recover and continue delivering under pressure?

Jaala Hinchcliffe:
I thought this was a great question because we often think about this as “respond and continue to deliver”, and I love that the question says “respond, recover and continue to deliver”.

I think where we get ourselves into problems is often that we forget the recover part.

We just keep feeling like we need to keep delivering, keep delivering and keep responding.

The point that I'm thinking about quite a lot at the moment is: how do we recover, and how do we recover quickly in a way that enables us to continue to deliver?

I had a great conversation with someone recently who's also thought about this quite a bit, and she was talking about what we can learn from professional athletes in relation to recovery.

If you think about after they've had a big game, one of the things they immediately go and do is jump into the ice baths, or, if you're lucky enough to live near the beach, go and jump into the water.

The whole idea is that you get into that really cold water and it helps your body move straight into recovery. It helps to reset your nervous system.

We can use the same idea to help ourselves move from responding into recovery quickly.

I'm not suggesting that we all get ice baths put into our workplaces, but I am suggesting that we need to think seriously about how we move as teams into that recovery piece quickly.

What is the thing that moves you into recovery quickly?

For me, I know I'm in recovery when I'm reading books, because reading books is a real resetting thing for me.

Making sure that I'm reading helps me to know that I'm in recovery.

Having that conversation as a team is important as well, so we don't miss that vital step.

Public Sector Network: Data, foresight and scenario planning are becoming increasingly important leadership tools. How can they help public sector leaders anticipate change while staying grounded in public purpose and trust?

Jaala Hinchcliffe:
That all sounds to me like evidence.

Coming from my technical specialty, I'm all up for having evidence at our fingertips to work through what the best steps forward are.

All of that information is important for us to continue to be grounded in the work that we're meant to be doing because we're not relying on our own thoughts or views of what the answer might be. We're going back to the evidence and thinking it through.

The piece that I'm really interested in as well is scenario planning.

One of the things I thought about quite a bit as the Integrity Commissioner at ACLEI is how practice is really helpful for how you are going to react in the moment.

I can see that now across all of the jobs I've had and the job that I'm doing now.

We need to be ensuring that we are practising our behaviours, practising our reactions and practising for the situations that we think might apply so that, when it comes to the crunch where you have to take that deep breath and react and make the hard decision, you're ready to go.

That might be practising how to make a decision with integrity in a really hard situation.

How do you practise walking into the room for Senate Estimates? How do you practise the conversation you might have with your minister? How do you practise disaster recovery after a serious ICT incident?

How do you practise for each of those things so that you have the confidence to take a deep breath and then move into response?

Public Sector Network: Many challenges facing government are interconnected and require collaboration across agencies and institutions. What makes collaboration work well when expectations are high and different organisations bring their own responsibilities and priorities?

Jaala Hinchcliffe:
Most of the work that we do, we do through collaboration.

I actually think it's a skill that public servants and parliamentary servants are very good at because, to get real work done, you usually need to collaborate across teams, across agencies, across sectors or across different states and territories.

The thing I think is most important in that, and I learnt very early on when I was working as a criminal lawyer, is the importance of negotiation.

When I was prosecuting, the best lawyers that I saw were lawyers who would negotiate with the other side about the bounds of the case.

They got the best results for their clients. They were the ones who were able to move things more quickly through the system, and they were often the most skilled lawyers that I saw.

Often we think that the opposite is the way to go about things: to be standoffish, to not negotiate on anything, to hold your ground, to say, “It's my way or the highway.”

Those behaviours can feel like you're protecting your department, agency or team because you're holding the position.

In actual fact, if you don't go into a collaboration knowing the bounds that you have for negotiation and being willing to properly engage in that, then the outcomes are likely to be worse for your agency or department because you won't get to resolution.

Know what your negotiation position can be and be willing to go in there and have real conversations and to move.

If it starts to move out of the bounds of what you thought you had permission for, go and talk to your Deputy Secretary, Secretary, First Assistant Secretary or whoever it might be to work out whether the ground has changed.

Often, as you take that decision up in your agency, you'll find that your agency head is going to say, “Actually, I'm happy to move to this position because I want to get this done and I can still see strategically this is the best thing for what the Australian people are looking for us to do.”

So practise your negotiation and go in there really willing to have good collaborative conversations.

Public Sector Network: In the spirit of collaboration, how important is it for government leaders to come together at events like Digital Leadership Day, share what's working and avoid reinventing the wheel?

Jaala Hinchcliffe:
Really important.

There is an amazing importance in people being able to get themselves out of their everyday business and come and hear what else is happening and make those connections.

It turns out that the networks that we work in across the public sector are quite small, and the people that you will meet are going to be people who are able to help you with problems along the way.

That is always a great thing.

Leading Through Uncertainty

Jaala will bring these perspectives to Digital Leadership Day Federal 2026 as part of the panel:

Leading Through Uncertainty: Navigating Change in an Increasingly Complex World

The session will examine what leadership looks like when uncertainty becomes a constant rather than an exception.

Jaala will join David Hazlehurst, Chief Executive Officer, Services Australia, Chris Crozier, Chief Information Officer, Department of Defence, and Elissa Walker, Deputy Secretary, Technology Group, Department of Home Affairs, with Jennifer Mulveny, Director of Government Relations, Asia-Pacific, Adobe, moderating the discussion.

Together, the panel will consider:

• shifting from control towards adaptability
• balancing immediate pressures with longer-term priorities
• making confident decisions while maintaining accountability
• keeping critical services stable in fast-moving environments
• building teams capable of responding, recovering and continuing to deliver
• using data, foresight and scenario planning to navigate complexity
• strengthening collaboration across agency boundaries

The panel takes place from 9:55 AM to 10:30 AM on Wednesday, 21 October.

Leadership when there is no perfect answer

One idea running throughout Jaala's interview is that senior leadership rarely involves choosing between an obviously right and wrong answer.

As she puts it, by the time a decision reaches the Secretary, division head or branch head, “the easy decisions have all gone.”

Leaders increasingly need to make decisions without perfect information, recover quickly when circumstances change, and create environments in which the people closest to the work are trusted to use their expertise.

But adaptability does not mean abandoning accountability.

For Jaala, integrity, transparency and public purpose provide the foundation around which that flexibility can operate.

That combination of adaptability and accountability sits at the centre of Digital Leadership Day Federal 2026.

The program brings together senior public sector leaders to examine the practical leadership challenges shaping government today, from navigating uncertainty and creating more connected government to AI adoption, workforce capability, responsible innovation and cross-agency collaboration.

Alongside keynotes and executive panels, interactive roundtables give attendees the opportunity to discuss common challenges directly with peers and compare what is working across different parts of government.

For Jaala, those connections matter. Government's hardest challenges rarely sit neatly within one team or institution, and progress often depends on leaders being prepared to share experience, negotiate and work across traditional boundaries.

Digital Leadership Day Federal 2026 takes place on Wednesday, 21 October 2026 in Canberra and is designed for senior government executives. Attendance is by invitation, with expressions of interest subject to approval.

Explore the event: Digital Leadership Day overview | View the agenda