Am I managing?

Open the door to bold thinking

Our regular columnist Natalie Barker, Head of Transformation at Southern Cross Health Insurance, looks at how bold thinking plays out at her home and her work.

The back door to my house is falling apart. It’s a beautiful old door, but the panels are coming apart and the stained glass is rattling in its frame. Every winter the wood swells and the door gets stuck – so, of course, we force it open, weakening it even further. I’d feel sad to replace it; I’m pretty sure it’s an original feature of our 1920s bungalow, but the door is getting worse every season.

Last weekend my husband and I had a talk about what we should do. My suggestion was to glue and clamp the door to get it functional again. My husband’s idea was to landscape the backyard and create an outdoor entertaining area covered above by a massive deck, which would shelter the door from wind and rain and protect it from damage in the future.

At the time, I found his line of thinking decidedly unhelpful. We don’t have the time or the means for such a bold undertaking – and probably the lion’s share of the work would fall to me – but on

reflection, I do admire his vision. While I was looking for a practical and immediate fix, he was asking what an exceptional outcome would look like. While I was thinking about ‘right now’, he was describing where we want to be in a few years’ time, without limiting his aspiration by today’s constraints.

I’d like to bring a bit more of that bold thinking to my role as a leader. I think it’s a critical capability for all leaders, not just the CEO. The way we have led – ourselves, our teams and our organisations – in the past won’t serve us in the future. With the pace of change continuing to accelerate, we won’t keep up if we’re anchored by how we do things now. Strong leaders need to think beyond what’s possible, or even imaginable, today.

The leaders I admire are unapologetically aspirational. They aren’t scared to nudge the people around them past the point they feel comfortable, inspiring them to reconsider what’s achievable. If I am to have the greatest impact, that’s the type of leader I strive to be. Tomorrow’s leaders won’t be satisfied with small steps. They’ll help their teams and their organisations take giant leaps forward – just as our customers and our people will expect of us.

At Southern Cross Health Insurance, we’ve recently refreshed our strategy. One of our strategic priorities is to be the healthiest high-performance workplace in Aotearoa – no small feat. I’ve been blown away by how readily our people have leaned into this bold goal. It makes me feel proud and excited for the future of work.

In the meantime, I can start with my door. I’ll be calling in a carpenter to do some remedial work, but I might just ask what it would take to build a timber awning over the door. The kind that might one day double as framing for a deck off the living rooms above.

Natalie Barker is Head of Transformation at Southern Cross Health Insurance. She has been leading people for 15 years and believes that leveraging people’s strengths and passions is the best way to drive engagement and get stuff done.