Creative Bureaucracy: What works?

Learning from experience

Not one of the panelists said innovating from within the public services was easy, everyone agreed it was necessary. All of the panellists had some track record of making new and different things happen - but not necessarily things you’d know about. Everyone we asked to participate said yes, this would be a rare opportunity to explore such an important and underexplored subject. It’s not something they were used to talking about. 

We learnt how even when the public service has embraced a rhetoric about innovation the conditions for doing it can be harsh. “We say it’s safe to fail, but it’s not. It’s not even safe to believe that it’s safe to fail,” said one panelist. “It’s all about navigating risk and power - particularly when people stand to lose out,” said another. 

The role of the media as a dampener of creativity came up repeatedly. “The media plays a huge role in how risk-averse governments become,” one speaker noted, “it crushes innovation.”  And more worryingly concerns about the media interrupting the ability to understand if something works or not in the first place, “We don’t even collect data on performance, because then we might find out it didn’t work and that would not be a good look”. 

So what can we learn from our experienced innovators who’ve navigated these challenges? We asked them two questions. What advice would they give to their fellow creative, or creatively curious bureaucrats? And, if they had a magic wand, one wish and infinite resources, what would they do to amplify innovation in the bureaucracy. 

How to be a creative bureaucrat

So what should you do if you’re a public servant pursuing an innovation agenda? This is what our panelists had to say:

• Look after yourself – Creative bureaucrats are only as effective as the energy they can sustain. Given this is a space where pace, power, politics and public accountability combine, look after your health and “get that extra massage if you need it”.  This work asks a lot - empathy, intellect, time, courage. And sometimes, the personal toll can be invisible. 

• Be social - Don’t do it on your own, nurture a community around you, listen to their perspectives. Find your champions and call on them.

• Challenge your bias – Be okay with yourself for being wrong. Have robust conversations, seek frank and fearless advice and have proper debates, where you are careful about what you defend. Check who you are really listening to, orient yourself to the people and orient your shoulder at the goal. 

• Challenge power - Many of the creative bureaucrats we spoke to deliberately introduce the voices of people with lived experience to disrupt the inertia of default, top-down decision making. By centering community perspectives, they create space to challenge traditional power structures and ensure decisions better reflect the realities of those most affected.

• Keep learning - Maintain a learning mindset, give yourself space to try things. Turn rage into momentum, help others orientate to learning too. 

• Timing matters – “Sometimes your idea isn’t the cause of the day,” one panelist reflected. “Put it in the drawer — it’s not you.” reflected another referring to the ‘drawer of possibility’ where creative bureaucrats keep ideas in readiness for windows for change  Creative bureaucrats learn to separate themselves from their ideas, to play the long game, and to map their work against the cycles and seasons of government. It’s not just about being ready, it’s about knowing when the system is. One participant talked about ‘the gift of the commission’, how a Royal Commission suddenly created the context for change.

• Persistence pays – Staying the course despite setbacks is key, and if you build a track record things do get easier with time. As one speaker put it, “It’s like walking through a jungle, you can’t always see the way forward, but you can look back and see the trail you’ve made”. Change is rarely immediate, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Another panelist reflected, “Be ok with being wrong, have a cry and move on”.

• Authorisation counts – Creative bureaucrats know how to find or create authorising environments - for themselves, for their teams, with the public. One panelist described the importance of knowing your structure, your champions, your accountabilities and fighting for change in a way that doesn’t “spook the horses”. Another panelist talked about indicators that an authorising environment needed more work, “If you find yourself talking about method you haven’t talked enough about purpose”.

• Work with constraints -  “Conflict, constraints and competition can be friends of innovation." said one panelist. “The best innovation I’ve been part of was on a shoe string coupled with a desperation to change things” said another.  Constraints—whether of time, resources, or support—can sharpen focus, fuel creativity, and drive urgency. Know your boundaries and take accountability within those. 

• Be careful what you wish for – While organisational buy-in and time are valuable, too much can create drag. “You may think innovation is easier when you’ve got the organisation behind you, but when you’re trying to do something different the last thing you want is everyone looking over your shoulder,” cautioned one panelist. Innovation needs just enough space to breathe without being smothered by oversight or prolonged deliberation, as one panelist put it: "Resource of time - too much can be detrimental, not enough stifles creativity".

• Build bridges – Understand the motivations and interests of people around you. What they stand to gain, but more importantly lose and offer them a safe and dignified path forward. Ask - Who has the most to lose when things go wrong? Be thoughtful - engage with people expressing risk - learn from them, then - recast risk as the creative endeavour. One panelist told us how Sun Tzu's concept of constructing a ‘golden bridge’, from the book The Art of War, had served her well through the decades. 

• Focus on the outcomes – Creative bureaucrats anchor to what matters: not the process, not the politics, but the real-world change they’re trying to create. One described it simply, “I always ask myself, what would the community want me to do right now?” In fact it was notable how many of the creative bureaucrats on our panels had started their career on the front lines of change. They included people who had started their career as a youth worker, a psychologist in corrections and a social worker in a hospital.

How to build a creative bureaucracy

And what if you are a senior leader with a remit to develop creativity and innovation across your team, agency, state or nationally? Well here is some creative inspiration for you:

• Mandatory community service for bureaucrats: One panelist proposed a bold idea: mandatory community service for bureaucrats. “Decentralise to give people a chance to embed themselves in community each year — out in the world, seeing the realities of the communities they fund and commission.”

• Standardise evidence and inclusion: One panelist proposed:, “Government has to unilaterally adopt the international standard for quality management systems (ISO 9000).” These standards would then help the government reliably include the voices of community and other stakeholders, while making decisions only on evidence and using that to promote continuous improvement.

• An independent Evaluator-General: One panelist wanted to drive demand for more creativity through the creation of an independent Evaluator-General function to undertake evidence-based evaluations of government programs, reporting directly to parliament, just like the auditor-general. An idea also promoted by former TACSI Chair Nicholas Gruen.

• Tell the stories: Several panelists made the argument for better storytelling around government innovation, change and success - helping to establish a more helpful dynamic with the media. One participant even gave an example of the media having been integral to supporting a creative innovation process.  There were more ambitious ideas too, another panelist proposed a counterpoint to the ABC series Utopia: “Make a really sexy film about creative bureaucracy, with sexy actors.”

• Fund the middle: One participant noted that funding for new ideas was relatively  easy to come by, however there was a big gap when it came to developing promising early stage innovations into something that was effective at scale. 

• Fund glue: Creative bureaucracy grows through alliances, across departments, communities and disciplines. This takes investing in relational infrastructure: the brokers, connectors, sense-makers and translators who help good ideas move through complex systems. It also means resourcing collaboration, not just delivery. What if the public service funded the glue to happen - the interstitial spaces where people and organisations connect and ideas often emerge. One participant, noting that ideas people and implementation people are rarely the same person, suggested something akin to an in-government dating program that would support people to find their creative partner. 

With thanks

Thanks to everyone who joined the conversation. You reminded us that creativity in government isn’t just possible — it’s happening!

Thanks to our speakers who shared their wisdom at the events and helped create this article: Gemma Baxter, Kate Callaghan, Richard Denning, Judy Halliday, Will Hartigan, Trevor Hunt, Lauren Kerr, Katherine Hawkins, Phillip Gould, Lee O'Dowd Austen, Jeannette Walters, Simone Walker.

Thanks to venue and event hosts and sponsors: Stone and Chalk and Department for State Development, The Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation, ANU School of Cybernetics and Heaps Normal, Paul Ramsay Foundation, Yirranma Place and Two Good Co.

Thanks to the Creative Bureaucracy Festival Hub ANZ 2025 organisers: Margie Caust, Amber Guette, Kate Spencer and Robbie Slape. 

And extra special thanks to Bonnie Shaw for organising and co-hosting the event in Canberra.

Find out more about The Creative Beauraucracy Festival Hub ANZ.