Graham Catt: A change agent in good company
Graham Catt
CEO
Independent Schools Australia
Is there a greater test of leadership than a crisis? And has there been a greater crisis in recent history than COVID-19?
The answer to both questions is arguably no. And if you experienced – or know about – how tough it was to run a business during the pandemic, just imagine being the head of the organisation representing small and medium businesses – in the nation’s capital.
Graham Catt was that person, beginning his tenure as CEO of the Canberra Business Chamber in January of that memorable 2020.
Across three eventful years, he guided a shell-shocked business community through COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns, created a new strategic plan to increase influence and improve member value, contributed to a 20% growth in membership, elevated policy and advocacy to broaden the Chamber’s impact across various business issues, and featured in more than 250 interviews annually across radio, print and television.
“Everything was intensified during COVID,” Graham recalls. “Our focus at the Chamber was helping small-to-medium businesses adapt and respond to an environment that was all about change.
“One of the memorable moments for me was being able to get a restriction lifted three weeks earlier than the government was otherwise going to lift it, so some of our members could open their shops. Probably not earth-shattering in terms of overall legislative change, but it was significant for those owners.”
Graham recalls homeschooling their two children with his wife, while also working 14- or 15-hour days. “One of the things that kept us going was the wonderful sense of humanity and vulnerability across all of the people that we worked with,” he says. “You know, doing the Zoom call and having someone’s kid or cat wander past in the background. “It was a beautiful silver lining to the pandemic that I sense has disappeared again.
“When I left the Canberra Chamber, a lot of local media outlets covered the story and that really meant a lot. The great reward for me was the realisation all the time I had put into those relationships was being paid back by that respect. It was really lovely.
“From a member point of view, it was the realisation you led local businesses from Point A to Point B. Now, Point B might not be revolution, but when someone tells you that you got them through a challenging time, those are the moments that resonate the most.”
Challenge, change, turmoil, culture resets, restructure. Where many would run in the opposite direction, these have emerged as magnetic specialities for Graham, who celebrates 20 years in association leadership in 2024.
Having founded and later sold out of a communications company called Digital Eskimo, which featured Greenpeace and Bendigo Bank on its client list, Graham changed tack in 2004 to join the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) as NSW & ACT State Manager. It was a time of industry upheaval as general practices started becoming ‘corporatised’ and training programs were split from the RACGP and offered in a new, competitive market.
“The organisation really had to reinvent itself,” Graham recalls from his home in Canberra. “When you have that change in an association, you not only have to reinvent the member value proposition, you also have to look inwards and examine the people, the processes, the culture and the mentality. Quite often, they aren’t geared towards that new value proposition, so they have to change as well.
“I love building teams. If you enjoy leading and watching people grow and develop and do things they wouldn’t have thought they could do before, associations are incredibly rich places to find those opportunities.”
“But to see that happen (at RACGP) and be part of that process in a leadership role was really exciting. I saw how important it was for someone to provide that symbolic leadership in a time of crisis, someone people could get behind and follow.”
Graham’s RACGP experience would serve him well at his next post as CEO of the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA), which he led for 10 years from 2008.
“The (veterinary) industry was changing really rapidly,” he says. “ Again, corporatisation was part of that in the pet care space. The AVA had been through a bit of turmoil in bringing together lots of disparate groups with lots of different governance into one single entity.
“My role was to consider, ‘OK, it's one thing to legally be a single, national entity; but how do you make that work? How do you provide value? How do you change culture? How do you actually shift your thinking into looking after members?’
“We looked at how to put the systems in place to support that against the background of an industry that was changing very rapidly. Suddenly we had veterinarians who were business owners or employees of quite large corporations. We had to ask ourselves what that meant for our membership, what that meant for our relationships with those businesses and what it meant for the way we framed our thinking about the world.
“This was an organisation that had brought together 40 different groups into this one mega federation. We brought them into the discussions about what we proposed and how we were going to act and operate as one organisation. We brought them all into a room and we had a vote. And they all voted yes. That was a great moment.
“It proved that the key to overcoming the challenge of working with stakeholders to influence change or to lead people to something is to include and enable them. Collective agreement on a way forward is crucial; don’t ever force a change through.”
Graham’s 20 years of association experience has also included Board Chairman and President positions at the Australasian Society of Association Executives from 2016 to 2019, and advisory board or council positions at the Canberra Region Tourism Leaders Forum, the National Chamber of Commerce & Industry, St John Ambulance and the University of Canberra.
These days, he is CEO of Independent Schools Australia, the national peak body representing 1216 independent schools, 720,000 students and a 120,000-strong workforce.
It’s a role that draws on his skills and expertise in government relations, strategic advocacy, communications and planning. He also has a personal “skin in the game” connection, as his own children go to an independent school.
It’s probably not the CV Graham would have predicted for himself as a young man studying drama and English literature.
“When I left university, I set out to be a writer really,” he says. “People today often ask me if I still want to write, but you know, I've used all those skills more than I ever thought I would.
“The ability to stand in front of an audience, the ability to communicate verbally, the ability to write clearly to persuade people. That’s what drama and literature are all about … to be able to impart something and get other people to come along with it.”