For a strong and vibrant VET sector, leaders are needed who have a clear vision and innovative strategies. One such national VET leader is Malcolm Goff, Managing Director of Challenger TAFE in Western Australia, whom I interviewed recently for my ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review, 5 October 2005.  Following is an excerpt from the interview.

Does Challenger aspire to high-performance?

High-performance is embedded in our culture. We committed ourselves to it some six years ago because we recognised that even with public funding there are no guarantees these days. Our public funded activities depended on our performance in the marketplace and of course increasingly our income is depended on our commercial work. Increasingly public money is being put out through competitive processes.

Is Challenger future-oriented?

Our vision is to be a high-performing, visionary organisation and that is reflected in our strategic and business planning processes. We are always thinking about futures. Yes we learn from experience and so forth but we are focused on positioning, repositioning and positioning ourselves. We live in a changing world and we need to be a changing and a dynamic organisation.

What are the leadership principles within Challenger?

Leadership can’t be formula-driven, but it goes something like this. It’s about understanding the policy directions of government. It’s about understanding the needs of your clients, be they individuals or industry, and positioning your organisation to deliver against those. And most importantly communicating and discussing those directions within your organisation, and in so doing empowering staff to deliver against the needs of clients. It is not about directing. Yes of course, there are certain checks and balances that every agency has to have in place, but within those parameters it is about an individual staff member seeing an opportunity that is part of core business and knowing they can go for that opportunity and it is the right thing to do.

Is leadership at Challenger a team effort?

No one person can have all the knowledge or all the skills and therefore your executive team is a very important part of the ultimate performance of the organisation. We as a team spend a considerable amount of time in any one year in discussing and debating environmental issues then coming to a consensus about what are the key strategies and business actions we need to take to take into account in this environmental analysis. It is not just a one-off: it is a continual and ongoing activity.

What is your greatest satisfaction as Challenger’s managing director?

Leading an organisation to where we have today, where people are initiating, and creating and achieving without any direct involvement of myself.

What will a large TAFE college look like in the future?

If you can conceptualise a large TAFE college of the future as one that is built around having big campuses, then that’s a mistake. The future is about de-institutionalising. It’s about looking for industry partnerships, and they will manifest themselves in different ways: it must not be a one-size fits all. A very one-dimensional view of an RTO-industry partnership is that the RTO offers training to the industry. An RTO-industry partnership is about joint ownership, it’s about sharing, it’s about jointly contributing.