00:00:00:00 - 00:00:30:04
Daniel Franco
Hello Everyone. And welcome back so what is the first podcast of 2023. My name is Daniel Franco managing director of Synergy IQ and host of the Creating Synergy Podcast. And today's podcast is a journey like no other. This podcast has it all. There was laughter, there were heartstrings pulled, there were tears, there was suspense. There was, all in all, a story of resilience, perseverance and growth.

00:00:30:16 - 00:00:54:15
Daniel Franco
I was lucky enough to sit down with the amazing Claire Parkinson, a current member of the senior executive team at Oz Minerals. Claire's journey is truly inspiring, and at the age of 16 years old, Claire became a mother and was consequently kicked out of a home. It was here that she decided that packing your bags and heading for Turkey to become a holiday rep was her calling.

00:00:54:19 - 00:01:19:14
Daniel Franco
And this is where she describes her life as chaotic, immature and self-indulgent. Then one day, by a twist of fate, Claire landed work in a prison in London. And this is when she then truly began to flourish. Claire then overcame her early life challenges and went on to hold leadership roles in various sectors, including the prison, the governor and head of operations for all London prisons.

00:01:19:20 - 00:01:45:00
Daniel Franco
She also became a qualified hostage negotiator and shares with us a thrilling story about how she used her skills in a high stakes situation in whilst applying a change management lens on how communication, context and perspective underpin success in overcoming complex challenges. Claire was then headhunted to come over here to South Australia, where she picked up her young family and set sail from here.

00:01:45:01 - 00:02:16:04
Daniel Franco
She's led major reform across the justice sector in South Australia and has developed and executed ones of South Australia's largest infrastructure projects, the North-South interconnector. Claire's passion for change and innovation shines through as she talks about her experience in helping leaders create environments that strive for growth and enable complex change to such a riveting conversation. And one way Claire brings a wealth of knowledge and unique perspective on leadership, communication and conflict resolution.

00:02:16:14 - 00:02:32:09
Daniel Franco
So without further adieu, here is my conversation with Claire Parkinson. So welcome back to the Creating Synergy Podcast today. I have the amazing and wonderful Claire Parkinson on the show. Thank you for joining us.

00:02:33:03 - 00:02:43:17
Claire Parkinson
Pleasure to be here. Can I, can I just call out the Casual Friday? Like, why have you come in all dapper and looking all smart up in t shirt? James I didn't get the brief.

00:02:44:12 - 00:03:14:05
Daniel Franco
You look great. Don't worry about your attire. Thank you for coming on. I've been actually really excited about this. Your story is amazing. Your career is amazing, and you and your brain is amazing. So I'm really interested in unpacking all the above as a as a way of introduction for those who may may not know. Claire, She's the integration executive at Oz Minerals.

00:03:14:05 - 00:03:47:23
Daniel Franco
Previously the change execution Lead and head of Corporate affairs and head of Innovation, Cross Minerals. You've run your own consultancy firm for a while. In that you were strategic comms in the Transforming Whyalla Project for TFG. You ran and worked in various government contracts and responsible for the North South Interconnector, which was one of the biggest projects here in South Australia that we've done in a long, long time accountable for developing major reform across the Justice sector.

00:03:48:17 - 00:04:16:02
Daniel Franco
You've led South Australian flagship prisons, which is a world that we don't really hear much about. Director of external Affairs at the South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy, Head of business Performance at Bank, is a head of operations at Guard Dogs. And you ran the Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service where you had $1 billion contracts, led 9000 staff, 33,000 offenders.

00:04:16:05 - 00:04:17:07
Daniel Franco
Amazing story.

00:04:17:19 - 00:04:23:15
Claire Parkinson
So she sounds pretty cool when you summarize it like that. So it's not as cool as it sounds.

00:04:24:02 - 00:04:43:04
Daniel Franco
It is. It's an amazing career and it's so much to unpack. You're clearly making a difference in this world. So to understand you and to understand the trajectory of your life and how you've ended up sitting here today, what do we need to understand about your early context?

00:04:44:20 - 00:05:06:16
Claire Parkinson
Okay. So probably, probably best place to take me back to his 1970s. I'm not going to give you I'm not going to give you a year in the seventies, but it was in the seventies in case I'm not a baby boomer, just quite so. My formative years were spent in the seventies and Maggie Thatcher was prime minister and arguably she was the most powerful woman in the world.

00:05:06:16 - 00:05:27:10
Claire Parkinson
And probably to this point she is still remembered as the most powerful woman in the world. Love or hate as she was. And I used to watch on on the little black and white TV. And I think there is no way on this planet I want to have a job where I am in a position of power. I don't ever want to be the leader.

00:05:27:10 - 00:05:46:18
Claire Parkinson
I don't ever want to be a CEO. And by God, I don't ever want to be the prime minister. So I didn't really have many aspirations other than to not get too high in the ladder. I was quite happy living in my little social housing estate, had the best life ever done many houses. There was maybe a thousand houses, you know, didn't have to cross a road to get to school.

00:05:47:11 - 00:06:11:03
Claire Parkinson
It was pretty safe. You know, very, very working class. Yeah. And pretty much a good childhood. So that kind of like set the foundations of not really aspiring to do much, you know, if I'm honest. And then when I was about 14, my mum cleaned factory and she managed to persuade her boss to give me a job helping her out.

00:06:11:16 - 00:06:31:11
Claire Parkinson
And I used to clean a I always say 18 year urinals but I think I might be exaggerating. You know, there's it wasn't 18 was probably only about six. But let's just let's just go with the 18 because it sounds much more sexy and much more vivid. So there was a row of 18 urinals and I used to clean them every day between five and 6 p.m..

00:06:32:03 - 00:06:35:23
Daniel Franco
And it was often men's or women's urinal.

00:06:36:00 - 00:06:39:01
Claire Parkinson
Did you just ask me that what you saw? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

00:06:39:14 - 00:06:41:13
Daniel Franco
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, you're.

00:06:41:13 - 00:06:42:10
Claire Parkinson
Right. Yeah.

00:06:42:11 - 00:06:43:18
Daniel Franco
I was just thinking I was just thinking.

00:06:44:12 - 00:06:45:01
Claire Parkinson
Oh, forget it.

00:06:45:10 - 00:06:47:01
Daniel Franco
I was just thinking toilets. But, yeah.

00:06:47:02 - 00:06:49:24
Claire Parkinson
I forgive you. Is Friday. Yeah. Yeah. So.

00:06:50:01 - 00:06:51:01
Daniel Franco
Yeah, that sounds like so.

00:06:51:01 - 00:07:06:11
Claire Parkinson
I used to clean a lot of fun, and I wasn't. It was. Wasn't a lot of fun, but it was. There was a process. Yeah, I had to plan it. I had to strategically organize when I was going to do them because it was in a factory. Male dominated factory. In fact, I don't think there was any women, though, actually work there outside of admin.

00:07:06:23 - 00:07:21:15
Claire Parkinson
So I had to be really strategic about when I did it to get them all done in a row without anybody coming in. And I failed miserably because the guys would just come in and I just used to stand to one side and just like turn my eyes away and not look and not have a rubber gloves on them.

00:07:21:15 - 00:07:37:24
Claire Parkinson
My plate blocks. And I'd be like, Oh my God, like, this is so hard. Like, how do I plan? How do I do this? And that was my first taste of work. How old were you at that point? 14. 14. It was only like an hour a day, five days a week. Yeah. Yeah. That was my first kind of gig, and it was pretty tough, But I.

00:07:38:06 - 00:07:57:13
Claire Parkinson
I started to learn how to work in a male dominated environment, if you like, and how to navigate the the things that I could say, but I didn't want to say, Yeah. And how to work out how to get a solution in that hour knowing that my work was constantly being interrupted and constantly being soiled, if you like.

00:07:57:19 - 00:08:18:12
Claire Parkinson
And so yeah, that, that was kind of like my early start. And then, you know, I delivered Yellow Pages, became an Avon lady. I did any anything that gave me pocket money. Yeah. And then I did pretty much what most of the people that I knew and loved did in the eighties and thought, I know what I'll do.

00:08:18:12 - 00:08:41:14
Claire Parkinson
I'll have a baby. So I was pregnant very, very early on. I was pregnant 16. So thankfully my school career, I'd managed to sit my year 12 exams at 15 because I was pretty good at maths and English, so I've managed to get them out of the way before the interruption of being pregnant. Thank goodness at the time I didn't appreciate it.

00:08:41:15 - 00:08:46:01
Claire Parkinson
I was like, What do you mean I'm clever, I can do a year early like I am. But I did.

00:08:46:03 - 00:08:48:04
Daniel Franco
So it wasn't a planned pregnancy?

00:08:48:05 - 00:09:17:10
Claire Parkinson
No, it wasn't a plan pregnancy but I mean, you know, Captain Obvious in hindsight, you know, these things do happen if you don't. Unplanned. Yeah, correct. There's a certain there's a certain this is sent biology It's not rocket science but yeah, that's kind of that's kind of where my world fell at 16 and actually it was, you know, in my, in my immature brain at the time, it was kind of expected and kind of normal.

00:09:17:10 - 00:09:47:19
Claire Parkinson
And just what we did. And from that point on, you know, my life just pretty much spiraled and got a little bit out of control. And I just lost. I just lost whoever I was meant to be in that time. And actually, arguably, maybe I was meant to be that crazy young girl who was selfish and, you know, did whatever job, paid the bills, didn't worry about the future too much, and just literally lived, you know, cash handouts, cash handouts, cash handout.

00:09:47:21 - 00:10:01:18
Claire Parkinson
I didn't really think about home, didn't think about any of the relationships that I had in terms of my family. I was just self-indulgent, immature chaos. From that point onwards, I think it's fair to say.

00:10:02:16 - 00:10:19:12
Daniel Franco
Being a mother at that age can come with it. Some embarrassed can. It can come with some shame, right? Like it's obviously not planned. It's you talked about chaos. How did you manage the cocktail of emotions at that age?

00:10:20:23 - 00:10:42:23
Claire Parkinson
Oh, I was too immature to manage. Yeah, I probably wasn't aware of them. You know, It was. It was a very immature, superficial emotion. It was, you know, things like, you know, when am I going to be? I'd put my skinny jeans back on, you know, how am I going to go to a disco now? You know, where am I going to live?

00:10:44:00 - 00:11:19:04
Claire Parkinson
Just just stuff that I don't know. I don't even think I thought too deeply about any of it. I just needed. I just needed a job. It didn't matter what the job was. Anybody who would pay me as some small bit of cash to nanny their children, to do babysitting, to do their cleaning, for them to pick up their groceries from anything at all that would just pay for a new pair of sneakers for my son or myself or just, you know, pay for a nice new secondhand table for my new dining room, you know, or whatever it was.

00:11:19:13 - 00:11:26:12
Claire Parkinson
It was quite shallow. Yeah. And wasn't really future proofing anything I was doing. I was just surviving to survive.

00:11:26:18 - 00:11:31:12
Daniel Franco
And your parents, did they accept the situation?

00:11:32:05 - 00:11:53:20
Claire Parkinson
Oh, I mean, accept as a strong word. And I think I think the word I would probably use is it They were hurt and deeply disappointed. And, and it and it was pretty clear that, you know, I was not going to be able to stay with my parents when they found out.

00:11:53:23 - 00:11:55:20
Daniel Franco
Okay. So they kicked you out of home.

00:11:57:18 - 00:12:05:16
Claire Parkinson
So strong word. But I guess you could argue. Yes, I did not have anywhere to live at that point. Yeah, but so what.

00:12:05:16 - 00:12:07:20
Daniel Franco
Happened when the child came? Where were you?

00:12:08:13 - 00:12:09:20
Claire Parkinson
So when he came.

00:12:10:15 - 00:12:11:16
Daniel Franco
Out and he is what's.

00:12:12:04 - 00:12:16:04
Claire Parkinson
His name. Liam That's right. Yeah. He's 34 now. Yeah. Yeah.

00:12:16:04 - 00:12:17:12
Daniel Franco
So we can figure out your age.

00:12:17:13 - 00:12:29:17
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. Actually, I was like five yesterday for him. And. Yeah, you can figure out my age, Dan and I'm on camera. You can see me go red 50, 50 is a new for 40.

00:12:29:18 - 00:12:30:17
Daniel Franco
Yeah, Well done.

00:12:30:17 - 00:12:48:24
Claire Parkinson
Congrats. So so me and his dad were obviously both children. Yeah. So I just clarify that now. We were the same age. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You and his mum and dad owned a public house. A pub?

00:12:49:01 - 00:12:49:08
Daniel Franco
Yep.

00:12:49:17 - 00:13:16:06
Claire Parkinson
And eventually we were given a sheila a stain there. Not in the pub and she had like a, a house nearby that we eventually moved into and. Yeah. Yeah. But there was a, there was a void. Yeah. There was a void of, of, of unpleasantness where you know, I stayed wherever I could. Mm. Yeah. Which pretty dark, pretty dark times if you like.

00:13:16:06 - 00:13:24:23
Daniel Franco
If Claire Parkinson was standing in front of her 16 year old self today, what would you be saying?

00:13:24:23 - 00:13:38:09
Claire Parkinson
Oh, back herself. Trust your instincts. It's going to be a hell of a ride. Enjoy it.

00:13:38:09 - 00:13:40:05
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Is that pre-baby or.

00:13:40:10 - 00:13:46:13
Claire Parkinson
Or probably both. Yeah. Yeah, probably both. Yeah. I probably wouldn't change anything. Actually.

00:13:47:14 - 00:13:50:10
Daniel Franco
I mean, why would you? You. You got a beautiful young son.

00:13:50:21 - 00:14:22:01
Claire Parkinson
Oh, he's old. Yeah, well, yeah, he's got three kids of his own now. Yeah. Um, the old is old compared to my other child. Yeah, well, that's true. Yeah. You know, I probably. I mean, even even him aside, I probably wouldn't change any of it. Yeah, because it kind of instills the chaos and the immaturity and the unsurety of what tomorrow brings or what next week brings builds, build something that doesn't normally culminate with us.

00:14:22:02 - 00:14:39:15
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, it just it just build something you don't even know at the time. But I look back and I think, Ah, yeah, I get that. I now know why I do that. I now know, you know, if I, if there's issues that we all have as adults, you know, come back to my childhood or what have you, and you go, Oh, that's where that came from.

00:14:40:03 - 00:14:44:05
Claire Parkinson
That's what, that's what, that's my why. So I don't regret it. None of it.

00:14:44:14 - 00:15:12:07
Daniel Franco
No, I there's a podcast that I've listened to recently which is I was a guy by the name of Mike Gold that he's interviewed 12,000 people as part of his book research and 12,000 people. He asked them about trauma in their life. I'm not suggesting this was trauma, but it was about trauma in their life and saying if if you could, would you go back and change knowing that every lesson you learned along the way or every person you met would also be erased?

00:15:12:17 - 00:15:32:07
Daniel Franco
I think out of those 12,000 people, 99.9% said no, they wouldn't change anything. So we are as humans, we as things happen and as we make mistakes and as we but we learn from them, there is always a silver lining. So I think the beauty in that is as we're going through these tough times, think at some point we're going to look back and go what?

00:15:32:07 - 00:15:50:24
Daniel Franco
Or even think at that point. So say, what can we learn from this? What can we actually gain from this? And how is this helping me right now? So during that phase, when in some of our previous conversations, you've said what you learned most and what that era of your life taught you was resilience?

00:15:51:04 - 00:15:51:12
Claire Parkinson
Yes.

00:15:52:11 - 00:16:00:09
Daniel Franco
Can you explain to me how that attributes to your life today?

00:16:00:09 - 00:16:24:07
Claire Parkinson
So I love the word grit. Yeah. It's like, you know, I was reading an article recently about the new, you know, since Covid's hit the new number one skill that's required to be in the C-suite is grit. And then actually grit is the ability to have courage and be brave and continue on even in the most darkest of times.

00:16:25:17 - 00:16:51:06
Claire Parkinson
And I, I think that we all have we all have great to varying levels and we all have dark times in our lives. And we all have grief that comes with that. And I think that my journey isn't unique. It's unique to me, but it's not unique. There are people we fall far worse and far so much more tragedy.

00:16:52:12 - 00:17:14:16
Claire Parkinson
But every single person who has something in their life that doesn't go to plan that they get through, they get through with grit. They get through with courage to wake up the next day and get out of bed. They get through with you know, crying and saying, it's okay that actually I'm vulnerable. It's okay that I'm grieving, it's okay that I've lost the person I love.

00:17:15:02 - 00:17:34:09
Claire Parkinson
It's okay that actually I've got this illness and I've got to live with this for the rest of my life. And I don't know where it's going to go. And that's just my truth. That's great. So I think everything that's ever happened in my world has brought me to a point where I have a level of grit that I'm comfortable with.

00:17:34:09 - 00:17:54:14
Claire Parkinson
I'd like more. There are still days when I'm like, Oh my God, you know, Really? Is there anything else that can happen today? There are days like that, but of course there's always something else that can happen. Yeah, You know, I've woke up on the right side of the soil every single day, so I'm bloody grateful because there's a lot of people that didn't this morning, correct?

00:17:54:21 - 00:18:26:10
Daniel Franco
Yeah, it is one of our values here. It's Energy IQ. It's something that we hold very dear to our heart. And you're right, it is something any entrepreneur or any business leader, any C-suite, C-suite executive would understand that when you choose leadership or you choose entrepreneurship or you choose to lead business or in any way, shape or form, even if you choose to be a parent, right, you choose heartache, you choose stress, you choose ambiguity.

00:18:27:14 - 00:18:49:17
Daniel Franco
And grit is that thing that keeps you going. It's the thing that you you can turn to. There's a book called A Load A Road Less Traveled by Scott Park, and I remember I picked it up once to read it and someone bookshelf, but I've literally only ever read the first couple of lines of this book. And then I put it back on the shelf because it actually served its purpose, Purpose.

00:18:49:17 - 00:19:08:24
Daniel Franco
And the first few on say life is hard. And the quicker we realize that life is hard, the easier life becomes. And I was like, Yep, that's enough for me. I think I've I've take my lesson out of it because if we go in with the expectation that things is going, things are going to be easy, then we're setting ourselves up for failure, aren't we?

00:19:10:03 - 00:19:34:23
Daniel Franco
And it sounds to me that you've had a few lessons in your life which have really shaped you and made you the person who you are today. I want to ask you around the next phase so Liam's come along, you're bootstrapping, you're trying to make ends meet. Where does life take you at this point?

00:19:34:23 - 00:20:00:20
Claire Parkinson
So I would fast forward to 1996, so I was a bit wild Rice and Liam came along in 1988. I did any job that would just give me enough money to buy nappies. Yeah, to buy him his the sneakers he wanted. Whatever, whatever it was I made ends meet week to week. And in 1996 I went on holiday with a girlfriend.

00:20:01:05 - 00:20:26:14
Claire Parkinson
We did a week in Majorca and it opened up my world, you know, you know somebody who didn't travel abroad yet. And I was like, Here I was went to Magaluf with a girlfriend and it was young, single, beautiful people having a great time. And I was like, Oh my goodness, I've missed this. Like, Where has this been my life?

00:20:26:14 - 00:20:45:07
Claire Parkinson
This is not a this is not a universe that I've had any exposure to. And I decided at that point that one of our holiday reps had the coolest job and that I wanted to be a holiday rep and I got dammit, I was going to be a holiday, but I did not think about the consequences of anyone around me.

00:20:45:15 - 00:21:02:00
Claire Parkinson
I just wanted that person's job. His name was Matt to come in. We so name was, but he bleached his hair. He just stood out and I just thought, I want to be you when I grow up. Yeah, well, so I go back to go back to the UK and said to my parents, I'm going to be a holiday rep.

00:21:02:00 - 00:21:25:03
Claire Parkinson
And of course they just rolled their eyes. You're ridiculous. Yes, that may be. That may be, but I need to get off this merry go round of not owning a home, not owning a car and not having a life. I just I just need to figure out who I am because I just need to have a future. Of course, they just roll their eyes again because, you know, I said that.

00:21:25:03 - 00:21:26:22
Claire Parkinson
Really? Yeah. As as we do.

00:21:27:05 - 00:21:29:09
Daniel Franco
And so you're looking for a party.

00:21:29:09 - 00:21:51:21
Claire Parkinson
They just thought I was selfish, you know? And yes, I was. You know, I was being selfish. So. So after the job interview, in hindsight, it bombed. We went to Blackpool and the job interview was, you know, we had a stage, there was, you know, a few hundred people there and we all had to go on to stage work as a team and and deliver a presentation of sorts.

00:21:52:06 - 00:21:59:12
Claire Parkinson
And I had to sing Mustang Sally and I'm a really bad singer and even I even, I didn't.

00:21:59:13 - 00:22:00:17
Daniel Franco
Do a rendition. Yeah.

00:22:01:04 - 00:22:21:14
Claire Parkinson
No I don't like Mustang Sally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get, you get strikes where there's the 16 cats now outside the building waiting to come in and kill me. I've let them down so anyway, I sang a sit up on stage to sing my Mustang. Sally didn't really know the words, but it was just the song that came to my mind.

00:22:22:03 - 00:22:24:13
Daniel Franco
And also you weren't told That was just the.

00:22:24:13 - 00:22:32:05
Claire Parkinson
No, no, no. I just popped in. I have no idea where it came from, Right. It wasn't a song I listened to. Maybe the radio. I don't know. I just. I was under pressure.

00:22:32:07 - 00:22:34:04
Daniel Franco
Not the most flowing song you ever.

00:22:34:05 - 00:23:03:11
Claire Parkinson
No, definitely not. And I sang Mustang City, and everyone in the audience was shouting, and I thought they were shouting and whooping and clapping and waving because I was awesome. And I sang all the way through. And to be honest, the only two words I know is Mustang Sally. But I did. I got 50% of them wrong, so I was like, Mustang City did it, did you going to slow down Mustang sitting across.

00:23:03:20 - 00:23:23:03
Claire Parkinson
I thought I've done awesome right. I got off. I didn't know anyone thankfully got off the stage. And then that night the the managers for all the different countries came up to the people that they wanted to engage and employ. Yeah, no one came up to me. No. And I was like, Oh, I've even fired up about these things.

00:23:23:14 - 00:23:42:00
Claire Parkinson
Anyway, it turns out about a week later I get I get a letter because we didn't have email at the time, get a letter for the posts offering me a job in Turkey. It was like, poof, I'm going to Turkey. So I had to organize, you know, my son what was going to happen with him. So he was going to go and stay with his dad, which was fine.

00:23:42:00 - 00:24:04:08
Claire Parkinson
You know, we still had a friendly relationship. He married at that time. She was great. And so everything in that regard was perfect. And then it was just to tell my parents, I'm going to Turkey. So yeah, that went down like a lead balloon, as you can probably imagine. But I, I knew what I was doing. I was finding out who I was.

00:24:05:07 - 00:24:26:04
Claire Parkinson
I was going to develop skills that I had never developed, mature skills dealing with people and sales. My job was all commission. Yeah. So if I didn't sell, which meant if I didn't have relationships with people that I was only ever going to know for a maximum of two weeks, I didn't get paid and I didn't eat.

00:24:26:18 - 00:24:29:16
Daniel Franco
So there was no base salary. You took it on the back of me.

00:24:29:16 - 00:24:34:17
Claire Parkinson
Just I take it on the back of I've got this. Yeah, I've got this. Did you.

00:24:36:05 - 00:24:39:04
Daniel Franco
Did your parents think you were running away from your responsibility.

00:24:39:05 - 00:24:42:12
Claire Parkinson
100%. Yeah. 100%. 100%.

00:24:42:12 - 00:24:46:03
Daniel Franco
And you were actually saying, No, no, this is what's going to make this is vulnerable.

00:24:46:10 - 00:25:04:14
Claire Parkinson
This is this is. I couldn't articulate it and I can articulate it in hindsight, but at the time I couldn't articulate my why. It just looked like, you know, I was just chasing the dream. But not a dream. That was a single parent responsibility dream. It was a selfish 26 year old.

00:25:04:15 - 00:25:17:04
Daniel Franco
I want to ask you a question as a parent. Well, I mean, we're both parents, right? If your children decided to do something similar and in a similar situation where they have a young newborn.

00:25:17:05 - 00:25:17:13
Claire Parkinson
Yeah.

00:25:17:23 - 00:25:18:23
Daniel Franco
How would you react?

00:25:19:13 - 00:25:50:01
Claire Parkinson
Oh, I'd I'd have a complete to yeah, I would be irresponsible 110%. I mean at the time my son was eight so he wasn't baby, baby, baby, baby. But it was still you know, it was still I was the primary carer. Yeah. He saw his dad, but, you know, the responsibility was on me and I and I often reflect and think, okay, if the tape were turned and he did it, would we be having the same conversation?

00:25:50:19 - 00:26:01:09
Claire Parkinson
Because we probably wouldn't. He'd be sending his money home to his ex-wife or his ex-partner and he was doing the responsible thing. But when a woman does it and sends the money.

00:26:01:09 - 00:26:02:12
Daniel Franco
Home, yeah, it's, it's a bit different.

00:26:02:12 - 00:26:19:05
Claire Parkinson
You know, it's it's what it just is. It just is because we have this primary carer bias as humans that the mum well he came out, my brother brought him out so he came out to see me. Yeah. But yeah, I mean my heart bleeds a little bit thinking about you know.

00:26:20:03 - 00:26:21:03
Daniel Franco
How long were you before.

00:26:22:09 - 00:26:26:09
Claire Parkinson
I went in the May and then I came back in the September.

00:26:26:22 - 00:26:28:15
Daniel Franco
So five, six months?

00:26:28:15 - 00:26:49:02
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. And he was off school because the UK summer holidays for school July through September. So he'd come out in the school holidays but yeah. Was gone for a fair while. But I saved I was number one at sales. I was roofless because I needed to safe and I had a locker in my hotel reception. You know the old key?

00:26:49:02 - 00:27:08:04
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, swimming lockers. And I put my cash in there and I stored the whole season's cash earnings in that same well. And one of the bank at the time, we were advised not to put our money into the into the bank over there on Turkey.

00:27:08:04 - 00:27:08:11
Daniel Franco
Okay.

00:27:08:11 - 00:27:12:18
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. We were advised not to so yeah, I just took the advice. I didn't question.

00:27:12:22 - 00:27:13:08
Daniel Franco
Yeah.

00:27:13:08 - 00:27:24:08
Claire Parkinson
Okay. Yeah. And then I brought it home in my hand luggage, just hoping someone was looking. I think I'm a drug dealer. Yeah. Yeah. And I came home and had a deposit for my first home and bought a car.

00:27:25:05 - 00:27:26:11
Daniel Franco
So what did your parents say then?

00:27:27:21 - 00:27:30:07
Claire Parkinson
We didn't talk about it. We just didn't talk about it.

00:27:30:07 - 00:27:34:03
Daniel Franco
I'm proud that you saved and you done what you said you were going to do.

00:27:34:03 - 00:27:34:24
Claire Parkinson
No, no, no, of course not.

00:27:35:00 - 00:27:48:21
Daniel Franco
You scratch the itch and you learned back to me. Sales is probably, if anyone starting their career, it's probably the one where someone comes to me and says, Dan, what can I do? I don't know. My life. Just. Just go work in sales.

00:27:48:21 - 00:27:49:05
Claire Parkinson
Oh, yeah.

00:27:49:09 - 00:27:52:10
Daniel Franco
Talk to people, communicate, learn how to influence.

00:27:52:10 - 00:28:15:20
Claire Parkinson
Like Charlie's management. Yeah, It's changed marriages. Yeah. Yeah. Providing the context. So in the value, understand in their story and their why and how this contributes to their story. Yeah. And that's exactly what the sales was. Where I was. The reason you need to have this T-shirt is because you're going to be part of this community. This is a great community.

00:28:15:20 - 00:28:18:17
Claire Parkinson
We are going to have some fantastic days and nights out.

00:28:18:24 - 00:28:21:12
Daniel Franco
How do I get buying? Yeah.

00:28:21:24 - 00:28:25:05
Claire Parkinson
Where do you sign? Yeah, Yeah.

00:28:25:15 - 00:28:31:11
Daniel Franco
That skill set. What happens next? Where do you go from there? You learn sales, you come back, you buy a house.

00:28:31:11 - 00:28:33:05
Claire Parkinson
I went back the next. I went back the next year.

00:28:33:05 - 00:28:33:13
Daniel Franco
Are you.

00:28:34:05 - 00:28:50:15
Claire Parkinson
Okay? I wouldn't go to Turkey the second time I went to cos I didn't have to, I didn't have cocaine costs. KordaMentha in Greece. Okay. Greece. Yeah. Greek Island. Yeah. So I didn't have to interview again thankfully. Yeah. Because I would have had to rehearse and come up with something, you know, it's, you.

00:28:50:15 - 00:29:10:03
Daniel Franco
Know, it's funny, I was thinking of my mum. My mum, she was singing a song. It just made me laugh because we used to give it so much shit and you know, you did the same thing. So she was singing a song once and she was like, I'm your Venus Desire. And she thought the words literally, She's going to kill me for saying this.

00:29:10:10 - 00:29:16:00
Daniel Franco
She thought the words with George Cantor. Yeah, like on short skit.

00:29:16:00 - 00:29:19:13
Claire Parkinson
That's like your design is right. It's all about how.

00:29:19:24 - 00:29:22:16
Daniel Franco
We're sitting at home one day and she's singing I'm Your Venus.

00:29:22:16 - 00:29:26:16
Claire Parkinson
I'm her mum who's towards console. Yeah, that's the words I'm not.

00:29:26:16 - 00:29:28:08
Daniel Franco
No, it's your desire, you idiot.

00:29:28:09 - 00:29:38:07
Claire Parkinson
But you know what? You ruined her life. And in that moment that you ruined her. Happy? Yeah. Yeah. You. How dare you? Yeah, that was brilliant. Yeah.

00:29:38:08 - 00:29:53:03
Daniel Franco
So let's talk about the next phase. Yes. You've learned this new gift. You've built some confidence in your own ability to sell your saving. Yeah. Life's starting to take a turn, right? Shifting. You've turned the doll slightly.

00:29:53:03 - 00:29:56:21
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. I've not had a lot of fun. Yeah, don't get me wrong. There was a lot of pain. Yeah.

00:29:57:10 - 00:30:16:17
Daniel Franco
And you said that to me in a previous in a previous conversation that. Yeah, there was a part of your life which was the sex, drugs, rock and roll type. Yeah. And do you look back now and go that actually made me who I am or Yeah. Is that.

00:30:16:17 - 00:30:50:14
Claire Parkinson
Hundred percent. Yeah. Yep, 100%. Because, because like, I mean, we'll go into how I got into prison, right? Yeah. But what that did was that furnished everything I needed without judgment to do my job effectively because I'd walked a mile in their shoes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know it sounds like a cliche, but I had. Yeah. And I very easily, very easily could have gone on the wrong path had I not had that circuit breaker, which was absolutely going to Turkey and Greece.

00:30:50:14 - 00:31:03:22
Claire Parkinson
The circuit breaker that said I am worthy and I am more than just a Friday queue in the post office to collect my social benefit. Mm. That was my circuit breaker.

00:31:03:22 - 00:31:28:17
Daniel Franco
It's an amazing story because you learn this skill and I'm going to push this again, the sales element, the it's not just about selling and getting and making money, it's about knowing that you can influence other people in their way of thinking, right? You can help. You can make people see what you're seeing. Yeah. You know, you can change opinion.

00:31:28:17 - 00:31:41:12
Daniel Franco
You can chance that skill set alone has the ability to spark off so many different things. If I can do this, then I can do that, right? That's the yeah, the idea. So let's talk about how you got into prisons.

00:31:41:12 - 00:32:04:11
Claire Parkinson
Well, I came home from from Greece and it was a fateful day. My parents had given me my weekly call to say, grow up and get a real job, and which was pretty consistent. And to be honest, not not without cause. Yeah. And they rang me up and they said, grow up and get a real job. And in the UK we have letterboxes.

00:32:04:11 - 00:32:12:24
Claire Parkinson
I know you don't have them here. That was one of my biggest shots. Why you don't have letterboxes? Maybe because brown snakes can crawl in. I don't know what we.

00:32:13:01 - 00:32:15:19
Daniel Franco
What do we call them then. Well, I was a letter box to the front of my house.

00:32:16:00 - 00:32:21:08
Claire Parkinson
You have a mailbox to your front door. Oh, it's quite radical.

00:32:22:13 - 00:32:24:22
Daniel Franco
Not true. Like anyone. Just walk by and grab it like.

00:32:25:00 - 00:32:31:14
Claire Parkinson
But in the we have, like a little box in our door, embedded in our door. So was like, Oh, this is interesting.

00:32:32:10 - 00:32:37:02
Daniel Franco
Like, I don't know the UK demographic very well.

00:32:37:03 - 00:32:38:07
Claire Parkinson
Because we don't have gardens.

00:32:38:17 - 00:32:40:20
Daniel Franco
That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. Is that. Yeah.

00:32:40:21 - 00:32:42:04
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, probably. I don't know.

00:32:42:19 - 00:32:47:09
Daniel Franco
What about the big houses they would not have on their front door. That would be a gate at the front.

00:32:47:09 - 00:32:56:11
Claire Parkinson
But they have a gate. Yeah. Yeah. I mean how many of them, you know, most people like me wouldn't have a gate on the front house. Yeah. Unless you live in Mayfair or somewhere fancy.

00:32:57:05 - 00:32:59:00
Daniel Franco
But in Australia we.

00:32:59:00 - 00:33:00:03
Claire Parkinson
But you have them on everywhere.

00:33:00:06 - 00:33:04:15
Daniel Franco
We have a bigger like that. The land size is bigger.

00:33:04:15 - 00:33:07:01
Claire Parkinson
You think that's what it is or you might you have to guess.

00:33:07:01 - 00:33:08:24
Daniel Franco
One other bit of property I.

00:33:09:03 - 00:33:14:09
Claire Parkinson
Guess. Yeah. Right. So listeners, we need to do some research. Yeah, we need to know.

00:33:14:17 - 00:33:18:24
Daniel Franco
Yeah. I mean, who wants to walk all the way to the front door and this leave at the front? We're lazy here in history.

00:33:20:08 - 00:33:24:06
Claire Parkinson
I can't say that because I'm a palm. Okay? I'm not allowed to say that.

00:33:24:17 - 00:33:25:12
Daniel Franco
But we are bloody.

00:33:25:12 - 00:33:28:17
Claire Parkinson
Let's set it. You heard it here.

00:33:28:17 - 00:33:29:02
Daniel Franco
Anyway.

00:33:29:02 - 00:33:54:13
Claire Parkinson
We've digressed. Yeah. So, so, so yeah. This, this particular di and there's a reason I was talking about that that box is this particular day. Somebody put the Daily Mail through my letterbox in error. No, I couldn't afford to pay for news. Yeah, that's right. And somebody put what I consider I don't now, but in those days the Daily Mail was a paper I would have never bought if I was ever going to spend $0.20 on one.

00:33:54:13 - 00:34:17:03
Claire Parkinson
I would have always bought the sun because I like the pictures, right? Yeah. Somebody put the Daily Mail through a box in error and poor paper boy or girl would probably have got into trouble for that. So I lay on my floor. I vividly remember doing it. I had this like really thin office carpet that cost me like 70, $0.70 per a kilometer, pretty much.

00:34:17:03 - 00:34:23:20
Claire Parkinson
It was shite, quite frankly. Am I right? Sweat? Yes. Okay. Shot was with a knee, so that's not really okay. So that's a.

00:34:23:20 - 00:34:24:23
Daniel Franco
Fancy way of saying and.

00:34:24:23 - 00:34:41:22
Claire Parkinson
I love the floor. And it was it was like, you know, it was it's bad carpet you could feel your hips on. Anyway, I was lying front on the carpet. Great. And I was reading this Daily Mail and went to the job section. I was like, Oh, bloody show shower, get a real job. Oh, show him. And there was two adverts.

00:34:41:22 - 00:34:57:21
Claire Parkinson
There was Virgin Atlantic who were looking for air hostesses, and I was thinking, I can speak a bit of Turkish. Yeah, I could be an air hostess. It's all glamor, you know, all sexy, cool. You know, it was the days where you had to be a certain height. You had to be a certain white to even be shortlisted.

00:34:57:21 - 00:35:15:24
Claire Parkinson
I mean, I'd never get over it now, but in those days it was I met the criteria. I wouldn't now, but then maybe I would. Now they've changed it. But then I did. And there was also a job to be a prison officer. And I was like, I don't know anybody who's a prison officer or anybody in prison, but I reckon I could do that.

00:35:16:06 - 00:35:23:05
Claire Parkinson
I reckon I think that's like seven miles down the road. So also apply for that too. Anyway, I got both jobs.

00:35:23:08 - 00:35:24:20
Daniel Franco
Completely poles apart.

00:35:24:20 - 00:35:44:00
Claire Parkinson
In Oh, I just think it was just money. Yeah, I just there was, I had no aspirations. I didn't want to be Margaret Thatcher in the leader of anything because that otherwise seen, you know the way she was treated even in death was just horrific. And I didn't want to I didn't want to ever expose myself to that.

00:35:44:00 - 00:36:04:18
Claire Parkinson
I just wanted to just have an income and whatever, whatever came came. So I applied to for both one them both and decided that probably being an air hostess wasn't growing up and getting a proper real job because I was still the primary care of a child and who would look after him when I was away and my mum and dad would nag me.

00:36:05:07 - 00:36:24:23
Claire Parkinson
And then the prison officer job required me to travel for three months to do my training. And I was like, Well, how is that going to happen? But they changed the rules for me and they paid for my childcare while I went so I could study, which was the first time they'd ever done it. And I will be eternally grateful them for doing it.

00:36:26:04 - 00:36:50:16
Claire Parkinson
And they paid a thousand thousand pounds a year more. Why wouldn't you? So it was 14, £14,525 per year, maybe in 513, but £14,000 a year. And I got kicked at college. I was in college, it was like nine weeks. I was party girl, you know, had my stomach pumped out. Alcohol poisoning the night before I started celebrating, getting a proper job.

00:36:50:16 - 00:37:09:11
Claire Parkinson
I mean, I was I was, you know, struggling with the responsibility of growing up and getting a real job, it's fair to say. Yeah, well, and I got kicked out of college for being high jinks, you know, just a clown. I mean, I just was a clown. And then they decided that there was more to me than met the eye and they were going to continue on and fight for me.

00:37:09:17 - 00:37:33:19
Claire Parkinson
And then they sent me to a different college. And I did my last three weeks of training and I passed out. And when I say passed out, I mean fainted. Passed out means qualified. Yeah. And I became a prison officer. And 1997, 3rd of November, 1997, and bought my house at £23,328. Well, then, yes, for the house. Yes.

00:37:34:08 - 00:37:39:18
Claire Parkinson
So I was I was a I was a real boy at that point. Yeah. Yeah.

00:37:40:17 - 00:37:42:11
Daniel Franco
And then your career just took off.

00:37:42:11 - 00:38:14:01
Claire Parkinson
Yes. I mean who'd have thought. Right? So when I first started my first day, I was allocated personal officer to a lady called Myra Hindley, who was responsible. She was a Moors murderer, very infamous. Notorious, probably the most notorious in the UK, killed a number of children, horrific lay with her partner, and I became her personal officer. So my first day I walk in, you can just imagine.

00:38:14:01 - 00:38:33:24
Claire Parkinson
I mean, I'm like, I'm, you know, little bit, little bit lively and bright. I bushy tailed in my in my twenties, bounced in Myra Hindley. I'd seen her picture all over the telly for years. I'd grown up with this notorious monster of a woman. And there she is in her slippers, smoking a roll up, you know, leather friendship band.

00:38:33:24 - 00:39:11:06
Claire Parkinson
And I'm like, Oh, my God, Oh, my God, is that woman. And I thought to myself, you know, I'm going to I'm going to. I'm going to have to. I'm going to have to keep my sense of humor if I'm going to survive in this world, because I was allocated the segregation unit, which meant that the only people that came down there were those like Myra, who were vulnerable to being in real prison population or people that, you know, were awaiting mental transfer so dangerous to themselves or people that were refractory and violent that couldn't mix with mainstream population because they were having a period of their life where they were a risk to others.

00:39:11:19 - 00:39:35:16
Claire Parkinson
So I was in this really violent, psychologically challenging environment like and and had come from this world of all of the above, I think it's fair to say minus minus the the murdering of children. Obviously I didn't I didn't I didn't partake in any of that. And thankfully, no anyone else whole never I never thought cost money.

00:39:36:04 - 00:39:36:22
Daniel Franco
Inside of.

00:39:37:03 - 00:40:11:03
Claire Parkinson
Prison. So yeah so so yeah that that first year was my grow up point. That was where I faced a mirror of oh my God, this is how close I was. This is, this is the choice that so many of these beautiful, beautiful but now damaged humans had taken at 16, similar to me and had just for whatever reason, gone a different path.

00:40:12:01 - 00:40:38:17
Claire Parkinson
And I don't know what I don't know what the difference is because it wasn't a great path I was on. But somehow I had managed to get that circuit breaker, which was going to Turkey, away from my community, my projected life. Yeah. And circuit break and see this is never mind. Well, in hindsight I think it was in hindsight I think it was.

00:40:38:18 - 00:40:49:21
Daniel Franco
I'm really interested in the words that you just used then, which was these beautiful yet broken humans Did. You get a chance to know these people really well.

00:40:50:05 - 00:40:50:23
Claire Parkinson
Well, of course.

00:40:51:01 - 00:40:51:21
Daniel Franco
Moira is of.

00:40:51:21 - 00:41:17:16
Claire Parkinson
The world. Are there's a limit, right. So no people really Well when you when your married been in prison 30 years plus when I met her. Yeah. So you don't ever get to know someone really, really well unless you live with them and want to get to know them really well. And there was a, you know, a psychological barrier that you just didn't cross with prisoners.

00:41:18:00 - 00:41:40:01
Claire Parkinson
You know, I wasn't their friend, but by God, I was going to be respectful to them and I was going to treat them like a human regardless, regardless what they've done. Regardless because my job wasn't to judge that had already happened. My job was to keep them in custody, treat them fairly, get them home safely. If they were going to go home and make sure that they didn't harm themselves.

00:41:40:13 - 00:41:54:10
Claire Parkinson
You know, and there's no need to be anything other than human to human. There's none. So, no, I didn't get to know them because that would harm me. And you can't you can't do that.

00:41:55:00 - 00:42:26:03
Daniel Franco
The the word judgment that comes in, they you know, it's such a skill that you've learned on how to not judge. Right? Yeah. Especially when you know that these people have done some crimes that. Yeah. Have hurt others. How do you not judge in that situation? How do you hold yourself back or control your mind? Did you make a decision that these these people are criminals?

00:42:26:03 - 00:42:47:01
Daniel Franco
Yeah. There's some beauty in in what you're saying. And I'm just trying to unravel because the world right now is full of judgment, is full of hate, it's full of resentment. So much going on. People can't even walk down the street without being judged these days. And yet you're working in a in a prison where there are humans who have done bad things and you're withholding judgment.

00:42:47:01 - 00:42:53:08
Daniel Franco
Like, to me, that is just an amazing skill set that is almost unheard of.

00:42:53:08 - 00:43:17:09
Claire Parkinson
I think. I think I think it doesn't matter what your job you're in and in the role of being a prison officer, you the only way for me as a human to be effective in that role was to not understand the why they were there, but just to understand that they came from a point of equal, you know, from birth.

00:43:17:09 - 00:43:51:19
Claire Parkinson
I mean I mean and I don't mean equal. I mean, obviously some people were born and, you know, put into adoption or whatever, whatever their story is. We are all equal as a human, as a in in a single form. We're all equal. And to judge a path, a decision that somebody somebody is made, you do that if you read into their why and I didn't read into their why, I knew about Moira because she was so notorious.

00:43:51:19 - 00:44:19:18
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, you know, she was but you know, in in person she was just an old lady who was just institutionalized. She was never going to see daylight outside the prison, ever. She was never going home. She was a political prisoner. They were never going to let her go. Rightly or wrongly, it was never going to happen, ever. I mean, I think she missed she missed the death penalty by weeks.

00:44:20:01 - 00:44:37:00
Claire Parkinson
And she'd say all the time, you know, I, I wish I'd had it. I wish I wish I hadn't missed it. I wish I wish I'd had the death penalty. I wish I'd been hung or whatever it was at the time. I mean, I was in my twenties. I was like, you know, I don't even know what she's saying.

00:44:37:00 - 00:45:04:19
Claire Parkinson
But in hindsight, you know, she lost her liberty and she deserved to lose her liberty. But we became a judge beyond her loss of liberty. You know, she was a political prisoner and she died in custody. And and it's not my job to say if that was right or wrong. But there is a moral question to the way we conduct ourselves and the way we continue to judge outside of the courtroom, which I don't like.

00:45:05:14 - 00:45:19:05
Claire Parkinson
And I try and stop myself doing it. Of course, I have bias challenged myself and all the bloody time. It drives me nuts. When I came in today with your smart suit and made me casual Friday, I'm like, Really? Really? Yeah. What's that all about?

00:45:19:11 - 00:45:41:00
Daniel Franco
I mean, that judgment was probably more in your self, though, but the which is a one which is what we grapple with and which is probably the most damaging, right? Because with judgment of self comes comparison comes all the above. Do you how do you apply yourself in your work environment in these days? Do you do you control the judgment?

00:45:41:13 - 00:45:57:23
Daniel Franco
Do you see people for where they're where they're at? I mean, you know, change management, one or one, right? It's understanding all the different perspectives of those in the room or those who have a say or even those who don't have a say. Do you do you does that come in good stead for you in today's environment?

00:45:58:12 - 00:46:22:00
Claire Parkinson
It's definitely got better with age. Yeah. So I always struggled with, always struggled and it's something I own. It's not something anyone else's own owns. But I always struggled with, you know, mixing in the c-suites base and having, you know, no, no degrees, no university background, You know, it doesn't matter where I go. I get asked all the time, What's your background?

00:46:22:00 - 00:46:42:03
Claire Parkinson
And I always say criminal justice. And people always assume I've got a law degree and I don't say anything else. I you know, I had a I had a actually had a recent event where I went interstate and I was talking to some CEOs of other companies. And, you know, they were like, oh, what university did you go to?

00:46:42:13 - 00:47:05:22
Claire Parkinson
And, you know, and it's still now I still now find that hard to answer. And I'm like, I didn't. And it's a conversation killer because people are like, hmm, okay, that's strange. And maybe that's why I try not or didn't judge prisoners because it doesn't matter what your background is. Actually, it actually doesn't matter. Know what's important is what you do.

00:47:05:22 - 00:47:06:05
Claire Parkinson
Now.

00:47:07:13 - 00:47:13:02
Daniel Franco
I'm going to agree with you there because I'm the same good.

00:47:13:05 - 00:47:14:06
Claire Parkinson
I don't love that I.

00:47:14:06 - 00:47:20:16
Daniel Franco
Don't have a degree. I've done I started the MBA. I think I got my graduate certificate.

00:47:20:19 - 00:47:21:02
Claire Parkinson
Yeah.

00:47:21:11 - 00:47:48:01
Daniel Franco
But that was it. Like I was like not I'm not. I'm learning so much more in the job than what I've ever done. But yeah, I was straight out of school. Onto a forklift. Yeah. Lifting bags of cement to to now where I am today and managing director of a business. And I've learned but I've, I've spent a lot of money, probably more so on myself than what people have in their degrees through coaches, through mentoring, through whatever.

00:47:48:01 - 00:47:57:06
Daniel Franco
Have you like online. Like I've just taught myself, picked up a book, so I struggle with the same question. Yeah. People ask me what university I go to. I was like.

00:47:57:20 - 00:48:13:20
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, yeah, I think, I think so. So I think I don't know about you, but I, you know, the imposter syndrome, you know, I had my, I had my year end review of my boss yesterday and, you know, and it was still coming up, you know, it still comes up. And I don't know if you ever, ever lose that.

00:48:13:20 - 00:48:31:11
Claire Parkinson
And I think, you know, even people who do go to uni have it. You know, the snobbery about what uni and my daughter's now going through the do I go to University of Adelaide or do I go to Flinders and, and I listen to people advising her and they're talking about which ones. The best is a snobbery. Even in academia, it's just toxic.

00:48:31:11 - 00:48:36:07
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, it is. And none of it matters. None of it actually matters. It's just who you are.

00:48:36:09 - 00:48:41:17
Daniel Franco
You do you buy into the infinite universe? Infinite universe theory?

00:48:42:07 - 00:48:43:09
Claire Parkinson
I have no idea what that is.

00:48:43:10 - 00:49:02:11
Daniel Franco
Okay, so there's, there's a theory that there is an infinite amount of universes each which each have a different result. So for Shakespeare, there's a he wrote Hamlet, and he's got the full beautiful version of Hamlet. But there's another universe where there's one letter missing, and there's another universe where there's two letters means like is infinite, right? Yeah.

00:49:02:14 - 00:49:19:01
Daniel Franco
And so there's this theory that at any point we could just dial into the one that we choose, or that's called manifestation, and that's like, this is the one that we go to. There is a life where you can be a CEO of a business or a managing director. Where you don't have a degree like that is a possibility.

00:49:19:01 - 00:49:23:13
Daniel Franco
Yeah, there is no reason why it's not. And you and I just living in that universe, right? There are others.

00:49:23:13 - 00:49:39:17
Claire Parkinson
Who believe that. Yeah, my friends call it Parkland. He lives in a parallel universe. I swear to God. That's what they call it. I and you shift from line to line to have the outcome that for me, the outcome is what makes me happy. Yeah, whatever it is, 100%, whatever it is.

00:49:39:18 - 00:50:05:19
Daniel Franco
But this is the the whole point of, you know, there's this stigma around the power of positive thinking. And, you know, there's the secret, there's all this stuff. That guy naive, like you can't just think that there's going to be a car park and then you pull in and there's like, it doesn't work that way, right? You. But but if you can think of a universe that you want to deal into, then you just position everything in your life that goes to that direction.

00:50:05:19 - 00:50:27:01
Daniel Franco
I And that's the beauty of it. Yeah. And you and I have we've grown in our careers through like my, my, my friendship group all went to university, all of them as eight of us. And all of them went to university. They all had already had four years of work experience before that even started working in the in the real world.

00:50:27:03 - 00:50:32:13
Daniel Franco
Yeah. So in my head, I'm I'm in front of you. Like, I've learned so much in these four years.

00:50:32:13 - 00:50:35:00
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. So not that I know how babies.

00:50:35:01 - 00:50:36:03
Daniel Franco
Yeah. With you.

00:50:36:04 - 00:50:39:01
Claire Parkinson
Kids putting that out there I one the first thing I.

00:50:39:01 - 00:50:48:18
Daniel Franco
Think is really interesting because you don't education is absolutely important Let's not get there. But there is different ways in which one can learn.

00:50:48:21 - 00:50:51:09
Claire Parkinson
Yeah I agree.

00:50:51:09 - 00:51:10:05
Daniel Franco
Working in prisons is such a high stakes environment as well. What would that teach you about the art of communication, the ability to defuze conflict, all those sort of scenarios which we see in the office environment today. How is that? What did you learn in those?

00:51:10:05 - 00:51:42:09
Claire Parkinson
So the first year, the first year I learned a lot and probably probably the most profound thing in my first year wasn't Myra. Interestingly, there was a young lady, she wasn't from the UK, a tiny little slight lady. She had been maybe four foot six and tiny. And I remember opening her cell door and at the time we didn't have in-cell sanitation, so it was buckets, you know, and opening a cell door.

00:51:42:09 - 00:52:05:17
Claire Parkinson
And I'd got the mail trolley with me and she'd said to me, What's for dinner? And I'd said, Fish. And she said to me, What kind of fish? And this is a young girl who had the day before potted so far what the contents of her pot on the stove. So I responded in a really immature way and said, It's a fish with gills and a tail.

00:52:06:19 - 00:52:27:11
Claire Parkinson
So I wore the pot and I remember shutting the door and thinking, Hmm, that's not how you communicate, Claire. You're being a smart ass. And actually you're learning from people that you possibly shouldn't learn from on how to communicate with vulnerable people. So that was the biggest lesson I learned in my first year. Yeah. And I was I actually.

00:52:27:11 - 00:52:28:07
Daniel Franco
Had people saw a student.

00:52:28:11 - 00:52:49:17
Claire Parkinson
I literally had a pot thrown at me and I deserved it. Quite frankly. This was this was a young lady who was vulnerable, who had lost her liberty. And I was being a smart ass. And the last thing she needed when she was locked in a cell 23 hours a day was some smart ass who gets to go home every night and have a Chinese takeaway on a Friday night telling her a fish has got tails and gills.

00:52:50:03 - 00:53:14:03
Claire Parkinson
So I learned pretty quickly that I was being a douche and is an Australian term. Yeah, just because I teach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I learned then that that was not how I behaved and that was quite profound. I remember I can picture her vividly and I just hope she's alive still today because I suspect possibly not. But that's a whole nother story.

00:53:14:04 - 00:53:16:01
Daniel Franco
Which she still be in prison.

00:53:16:01 - 00:53:37:19
Claire Parkinson
I suspect she's dead. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Her life was pretty chaotic. Yeah. Yeah. Fingers crossed. I'm wrong. Right. Anyway, I then went at the end of the first year, I said to my parents, Right, I've got a mortgage, I've got a real job. I'm going to find a husband, I'm going to get married. So I'm going to go and work on the men's side of the change.

00:53:37:19 - 00:53:39:10
Daniel Franco
And then you're going into what is.

00:53:39:13 - 00:54:02:17
Claire Parkinson
Now I'm going to the next level up. Yeah, I'm changing my teacher. Yeah. So I went over to the men's side level up at the prison and I enjoyed working with male prisoners more than female prisoners, much less complex needs that less much fewer primary carers. And it was quite close to home. Being a primary carer. Working with female prisoners is around 200 of them.

00:54:03:15 - 00:54:28:19
Claire Parkinson
So that was quite close to home. I saw a lot of myself were in the men's side. I didn't see a lot of myself because they were guys and they had different needs, right? So I went to work with the men and that was where I started to get my mojo. That was where I realized that the power of influence and communication to make a difference in somebody's life is profound and actually significant.

00:54:29:09 - 00:54:45:01
Claire Parkinson
And as a result of my interest in those areas, I decided I was going to become a hostage negotiator. And they sent me away to train the psychological training around hostage negotiation. Best thing I ever did. Yeah. Changed my world.

00:54:45:01 - 00:54:46:07
Daniel Franco
I'm obsessed with that stuff.

00:54:46:14 - 00:54:47:24
Claire Parkinson
Changed my.

00:54:50:17 - 00:54:55:12
Daniel Franco
Think. Can you teach us some of those things? Like I'm like, Chris, do you not have heard of Chris Voss?

00:54:56:02 - 00:54:57:00
Claire Parkinson
I don't know anybody.

00:54:57:00 - 00:55:02:20
Daniel Franco
Oh, really? So Chris Voss is like one of the most famous hostage negotiators. He's written a book called.

00:55:02:23 - 00:55:03:19
Claire Parkinson
Me That Famous and.

00:55:04:03 - 00:55:13:05
Daniel Franco
Well, he's written a book called Nervous Googling. He's written a book called Never Split the Difference. It's literally one of my favorite sales books, but it's on hostage negotiation now.

00:55:13:05 - 00:55:25:04
Claire Parkinson
I k anyway. Do you feel inadequate? No, no, no, no. Who cares? Yana Christie kinds of barbecue. Yeah, that's. Yeah, Yeah, he's great. Brown hair. Yeah, that's one I think he's got no hair now they right.

00:55:25:05 - 00:55:27:05
Daniel Franco
It nice shorter but it's a big.

00:55:28:09 - 00:55:40:04
Claire Parkinson
Message to him so yeah it's it hostage negotiation So pearls of wisdom from hostage negotiation The minute you say yes or no you are no longer negotiating. It's done.

00:55:40:12 - 00:55:40:23
Daniel Franco
Really?

00:55:40:24 - 00:55:41:09
Claire Parkinson
Yes.

00:55:43:01 - 00:55:43:22
Daniel Franco
It's just my You said yes.

00:55:44:17 - 00:55:45:24
Claire Parkinson
It's over. The conversations over.

00:55:46:03 - 00:55:52:12
Daniel Franco
So. So is what is the aim of the hostage negotiator to get them to say yes or no?

00:55:53:06 - 00:56:19:22
Claire Parkinson
Is that the. No, no. The aim of the negotiator is to keep people alive. Yeah. Yeah. My, my, my job is to de-escalate defuze the risk. And once the perpetrator is ready, then it's the people that the team that work behind the hostage negotiator. So. So if you imagine the scene and I did a lot of hostage negotiation scenarios, a lot.

00:56:20:18 - 00:56:44:11
Claire Parkinson
So if you imagine the scene we've got, whether it be a rooftop or a cell and largely a rooftop, small in cells. So if we imagine we've got a cell and there's two prisoners in the cell, one against their will, one perpetrator So the hostage negotiator would go and talk outside the cell to an area that had been cordoned off.

00:56:44:11 - 00:57:08:02
Claire Parkinson
So that you're just talking to the negotiator. You're human, you take off your epaulets. I would no longer have a rank or signature. I would just be clear. So I'd be talking to the negotiator. My job is to build a rapport with that individual and listen and and listen a lot more than I'm talking. Because the more he's talking and he's going through the flight, what was he at the time?

00:57:08:02 - 00:57:31:19
Claire Parkinson
A Could be a female, of course, but it's the same male prison. Yeah. Yeah. He's going for the fight. Flight or flight or fight mode. And so he's going high and low and high and low. And my job is to just keep him talking while the team that are behind me. So when I say team, we would mobilize a command suite the same as the police would.

00:57:32:00 - 00:57:51:09
Claire Parkinson
We'd have like bronze, silver or gold command and they would be working out what. The plan is So let's assume the hostage gets their throat cut. What are we going to do? Then? We'll mobilize people to go in and take them out and reduce harm and whatever else. What are we going to allow Claire to carry on talking for 12 hours If he's calm?

00:57:51:14 - 00:58:07:21
Claire Parkinson
Are we just going to let this run by? They do the strategy and the tactical. My job is to keep people alive and talking, simple as that. So I don't have the gift of yes or no. Yeah. Because I don't have the power to authorize any of that. But do you.

00:58:07:21 - 00:58:15:09
Daniel Franco
Get a say in the going in You have make sure that your gut feel and this conversation would be.

00:58:15:23 - 00:58:37:15
Claire Parkinson
What happens. What happens is there'll be there'll be like just say for argument's sake, three hostage negotiators, right? There'll be one that's doing the talking, there'll be somebody that will be within earshot that will be taking the notes. Yeah. And then there'll be somebody who takes the notes from number two to the gold Command suite. So what I'm doing is I'm furnishing their narrative.

00:58:38:10 - 00:59:11:01
Claire Parkinson
So I might. I might have for example, I'll give you an example. We had a probably the one probably the one that sits with me the most to this day we had is Christmas in the UK. Cold, snowy, miserable, and we had a family member turn up to visit a young man. He would have been around 24 and she'd brought him some cannabis in for Christmas and he had some drug debts as well that he had to pay.

00:59:11:01 - 00:59:30:23
Claire Parkinson
So arguably his life depended on him having this cannabis, right. So to him, his story, it was a really big deal. We couldn't possibly understand that because we're not walking a mile in his shoes, right? So she's turned up the dog prison dog has indicated on her and we found the drugs. So the visit was stopped. She was arrested.

00:59:31:13 - 00:59:50:15
Claire Parkinson
So this young man sitting in the visitor waiting to see his wife and kids, 20 whatever, years old, thinking he's going to pay his debts, thinking he's going to get stoned and forget the pain of not being with his family at Christmas. Rightly or wrongly, that's his world. And then he realizes quite quickly that actually she's not visiting.

00:59:51:04 - 01:00:11:11
Claire Parkinson
So he gets really angry because he knows she's been caught and he knows the consequences of her being bought means that his court means his children will be in foster care at Christmas. So his levels of anxiety, he can't pay his debts. He's lives at risk. He can transfer to another prison, but he'll always be someone who doesn't pay his debts.

01:00:11:11 - 01:00:30:18
Claire Parkinson
And it's a very small world. So he gets really angry. He's very young and he's emotional. Regulation is unable to be controlled, so he gets into a position where he's unable to do anything. So he goes on the roof, climbs on the roof, and he just sits there figuring out what the hell, what the hell is he going to do next?

01:00:30:18 - 01:00:49:01
Claire Parkinson
He doesn't know. It's a bit like me with the having a baby at the 16. What else do you do? There's no there's nobody else providing you any solution. So he goes on the roof. It's complete fight mode. So called a hostage negotiator gets called out because we can't send people up there to go and get him down.

01:00:49:05 - 01:01:07:14
Claire Parkinson
He's going to jump. There's going to be a fine. Maybe our staff will get hurt, maybe he'll die. It's snowing, The roof is icy, it's dangerous. So they send in the negotiators. And I was called on this. I think it's Christmas Eve. I was called. And I remember standing there like and he was sat on the corner of the roof talking to me.

01:01:08:01 - 01:01:10:00
Claire Parkinson
And he was pretty angry up.

01:01:10:00 - 01:01:10:24
Daniel Franco
There on the roof with him or.

01:01:11:01 - 01:01:32:08
Claire Parkinson
No, no, no. He was on the roof. It would have been maybe maybe 16 foot high. Yeah. And all this just all was just standing in a courtyard, you know, Just me. Just me and him. And we were talking. Obviously, he was angry and he was crying and, you know, he was ripping tiles off the roof and he wanted to free them in a black and white uniform because it was our fault.

01:01:32:14 - 01:01:39:12
Claire Parkinson
That's his reality. We we all it was our fault, you know, And in his world.

01:01:39:14 - 01:01:40:10
Daniel Franco
That's his perspective.

01:01:40:12 - 01:02:05:12
Claire Parkinson
That's his perspective, Right. In his world, he's right. And just because I think I'm right doesn't mean he's wrong. So, yeah, me and him were talking for hours and all behind me, the prison staff were queuing up and they weren't allowed out the gate because this was happening at the gate house, which means if we open the gate and staff come past, you know, they're at risk of missiles being thrown from the roof.

01:02:05:20 - 01:02:26:00
Claire Parkinson
So they're at risk. So we've got this workforce who are not hostage negotiator trained. So just think, for God's sake, just go up there, use force, get him down, and they're heckling him. You know, it's a course every time someone walks past and like, I want to go home to my family mate, go down. That's their reality. They're not wrong either.

01:02:26:00 - 01:02:45:24
Claire Parkinson
And I'm Switzerland. My job is to just ignore them and keep him alive and stop them getting harmed. If that's if that's the outcome of what I'm doing with him. And it's not for them to understand my role anyway. I reckon it was probably four or 5 hours we got let out like we weren't allowed to go home that night.

01:02:46:00 - 01:03:05:16
Claire Parkinson
It was pretty ordinary for everybody, me included, and particularly for the young man James. His name was particularly for him. And we developed a bond, if you like. I knew his kids names by the end of it, You know, I hadn't committed anything to him because I couldn't I wasn't in charge of how he was going to come off the roof.

01:03:06:00 - 01:03:25:11
Claire Parkinson
I just wanted him to come off the roof safely. And he got to a point where it was getting dark and it was no longer safe for him to be up there. So they were mobilizing a team to go up and get him a cherry picker, and hopefully that wasn't going to result in restraint. So I then had to share with him.

01:03:25:11 - 01:03:41:06
Claire Parkinson
The note came to me to say, We're going up, we're going to get him. And I was like, I've just spent four years telling him we're not 4 hours telling him we're not going to come and get him. So of course then I'm like, makes me look like a liar. I'm like, you know, the best thing we can do is change management.

01:03:41:06 - 01:04:03:21
Claire Parkinson
What I want is provide transparent communications so that he comes to the alignment with our storyboard. So I then had to reverse engineer it back and go back to him and say, okay, we're the coming up to get you. James. Now, there's two ways you can go with this. You can fire us and there's a huge risk to you.

01:04:04:05 - 01:04:24:21
Claire Parkinson
You know, you're going to be moved to another prison. You know, you're probably going to be recategorized because now you're a risk to us. You're probably going to go to a higher category prison. Now you can have assault of a member of staff, which means you're going to do more time in custody and you could jump off the roof and potentially kill yourself or be permanently disabled.

01:04:24:21 - 01:04:48:02
Claire Parkinson
And your parents children don't have a father anymore, or you can just go with them calmly. And we put you in the segregation unit and I'll come and see you tomorrow. And he looked at me and he sat there and I was like, These go for the latter. And he they went up on the roof and he did not take his eyes off me the whole time.

01:04:48:13 - 01:05:24:02
Claire Parkinson
They cuffed him and he was just looking at me and I was just miming to him and sticking my thumb up. And he came down. He got in the cherry picker and he looked at me and he mimed, I'm going to cry. Yes, sorry. That's okay. It just said, Thank you, Miss Parkinson changed my life. Yeah. He was a human.

01:05:24:02 - 01:05:58:13
Claire Parkinson
He was human. Yeah. That moment. He's probably dead now, too. But it changed my life because the people around me couldn't possibly understand what I was doing because they hadn't walked the path I walked and they couldn't possibly understand what he was doing as nor could I, because I hadn't walked his path. But at that moment on that cherry picker, the change management had aligned and we connected on a level that saved his life and changed mine forever.

01:05:59:09 - 01:06:03:24
Claire Parkinson
And that's change management. MM hmm. Yeah.

01:06:04:03 - 01:06:17:24
Daniel Franco
When you say it changed yours forever, and what do you mean by that? I mean, it's. It's such a powerful story and a powerful moment. What happened in your life from that point? That was changed.

01:06:18:06 - 01:06:52:23
Claire Parkinson
Everyone was equal. Mm. Yeah, everyone's equal. Some of us have more money than others, but we all have a path and we all take our own journeys. And you can never judge somebody else's journey unless you've walked in. And at different times, our lives, our orbits connect. And you know this I think you put say on LinkedIn the other day saying we're one decision away from something that would change our life forever.

01:06:53:00 - 01:07:06:07
Claire Parkinson
You know? And that was my one decision away. I watched it play out and I'd never seen it all that before. Yeah, Yeah. I just hope he's okay. Mm hmm.

01:07:07:21 - 01:07:08:19
Daniel Franco
Thank you for sharing.

01:07:09:03 - 01:07:09:13
Claire Parkinson
Yeah.

01:07:09:21 - 01:07:10:04
Daniel Franco
That's.

01:07:10:13 - 01:07:24:11
Claire Parkinson
I've never cried telling that story before. Never. But it was profound. Yeah, it was profound moment. I was very proud. That was the moment I knew I was good at that job. You were? Yeah.

01:07:24:23 - 01:07:46:15
Daniel Franco
You literally saved someone's life. Do you. Have you ever. I like I'm referring to a lot of books here, but Man Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is by far and away my favorite book. And it's a it's the story of a psychotherapist who went to Auschwitz like it was in World War Two and with the gas chambers and all the above.

01:07:47:22 - 01:08:11:18
Daniel Franco
And there's a part in the book, and it just reminded me when you were talking then I thought little thought bubble went off in my head. And there's a point in there where they were stripped of all their clothing and all their possessions as they went into the concentration camp. And he wrote in, he's in this in the in his in his book.

01:08:11:18 - 01:08:29:01
Daniel Franco
And he said it was that point was the first ever realization that when everyone's sitting there naked with nothing but their skin and no possessions to hold on, the only thing we have is this body which makes us all equal, right? So yeah, it's just such a yeah.

01:08:29:08 - 01:08:48:11
Claire Parkinson
It's just what we do with it, right Yeah. There's no price to kindness or respect. Mm. But we lose it so often. Yeah. Bekind always, you know.

01:08:48:11 - 01:09:09:11
Daniel Franco
The, these situations pop up a lot and I do want to sort of bring this into a learning perspective from a business because so, like, I mean, this story is such a, an amazing story. And you talk, you talk change management throughout. We are a business that works in change. We work in complex change. Nothing like that. Right?

01:09:09:11 - 01:09:40:17
Daniel Franco
That hostage negotiation is is the most complex that you can get. But as you traveled through your career and you and you saw these change moments pop up over and over again, what's one thing from the learning of the hostage from your experience, that when dealing with a complex change, what is one thing that you always turn to, one thing that you will always hold as true when managing through change and dealing with complex people?

01:09:42:11 - 01:10:21:10
Claire Parkinson
Context? Mhm. People we've, we as humans, we're always time poor, particularly in the corporate environment and we're really quick to send out an email or change a policy, you know, whatever it is that we do in our workplace, we go for the, you know, the least path of resistance and it's normally click send or hold a town hall and say, Oh by the way, with change, changing your work conditions, spoken to the unions and this is what we're doing.

01:10:21:19 - 01:10:43:01
Claire Parkinson
And then we wonder why six months down the line we've got people that are still not coming in on the new Time roster. We've got people that are still still not following policy because we haven't provided the context. People haven't understood the why, the reason why we're doing it. So we haven't actually looked at what their reality is.

01:10:43:01 - 01:11:05:22
Claire Parkinson
Right? So when I when I talked to James, I knew he's reality. The people on the roof that went up to get him didn't know his reality. That wasn't his day job. Their job was to get him off the roof. Yeah, my job was to get off the roof safely. Yeah. So I had to know the context. And without the context, he wouldn't have come off the roof safely here.

01:11:05:22 - 01:11:28:18
Claire Parkinson
Had just some people coming up, men coming up in black camouflage outfits with CS gas or whatever you call it here. Pepper spray, capsicum spray. Yeah. He'd had been hit for for his for his reality. He needed to understand it's Christmas Day. James. We've got to get you down. It's snowing. The snow's going to turn to ice. You're at risk.

01:11:30:10 - 01:11:56:17
Claire Parkinson
You've got options. These are your options. And then what you do is you build your tribe, you have your stakeholders, you have your champions around you who are going to communicate that message for you can't win on an island. You can't do all this on your own. So I think the where we go wrong with change is we don't understand the recipients world and what their hotspots are.

01:11:56:17 - 01:12:30:21
Claire Parkinson
We don't seek to listen enough so that we can align where there's friction or hotspots. We don't do that well. We're not good at identifying who our stakeholder groups who are the people that are going to guide this work and and get the message across. So that they are able to provide context to. And I think that's that probably the two fundamentals around change that I think I see go wrong, you know, in all aspects of my life over my my career journey.

01:12:31:06 - 01:12:48:05
Claire Parkinson
I'm listening is key If you don't listen and that's that's that's that's why I'm eternally grateful to hostage negotiation because you listen and you can't say yes or no, which means you have to listen because you can't close out.

01:12:48:05 - 01:12:51:23
Daniel Franco
Conversation two is in one mouth is the.

01:12:52:04 - 01:12:52:16
Claire Parkinson
Yeah.

01:12:53:14 - 01:12:55:02
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Double the amount of listening.

01:12:55:03 - 01:12:57:06
Claire Parkinson
Deaf and some Yeah, yeah.

01:12:57:17 - 01:13:25:05
Daniel Franco
Yeah I, I love I love what you've the way you've just explained context and listening and how it all comes into what is actually a really beautiful ecosystem when managing change we, we work to a model which we call BCP and I'm happy to share this with anyone because it's ready for anyone to use its boundaries, context, impact perspectives.

01:13:25:17 - 01:13:31:03
Daniel Franco
So one of the boundaries of what's in, what's out, how we managing this, what is the context?

01:13:31:03 - 01:13:31:10
Claire Parkinson
Yeah.

01:13:32:00 - 01:14:07:22
Daniel Franco
What's the impact that it has on everyone? Yep. They're not going home for Christmas. The kids that. Yeah. All the different scenarios. Yeah. And then what are the perspectives and and I want to add to the context point. We use a model what we just call it the street corner model. It's nothing like really out there. It's pretty straightforward and I've spoken it about a few times on this on the podcast previously, but if you and I are standing at an intersection and there is a car crash in the middle of the intersection and we're in different corners, we see the exact same car crash bit differently.

01:14:07:22 - 01:14:11:15
Daniel Franco
None of us are right. Sorry, none of us are wrong. We are both right.

01:14:12:09 - 01:14:13:01
Claire Parkinson
100%.

01:14:13:05 - 01:14:31:06
Daniel Franco
And and I think what I'm hearing in that in your in your hostage negotiation with James on the roof is I'm looking at street corner perspective and I'm trying to get him down off that roof.

01:14:31:06 - 01:14:31:13
Claire Parkinson
Yeah.

01:14:32:01 - 01:14:57:12
Daniel Franco
But everyone else. But whilst I'm doing that I'm looking at the people who are not getting home to their families on Christmas Day. I'm looking at my own context of I'm standing out in the bloody cold for 4 hours, right? So you can get impatient from that alone. So it is just such an amazing skill that you've learned and you've been able to obviously, um, save someone's life in such a high stakes environment.

01:14:57:12 - 01:14:59:03
Daniel Franco
So thank you for sharing that story.

01:14:59:13 - 01:15:13:20
Claire Parkinson
It's a pleasure. I feel privileged that I joined the prison service. Yeah, and I did that. They put you on That course changed my world. I use it every day. Mm hmm. Not quite. You know.

01:15:13:24 - 01:15:15:06
Daniel Franco
In that in that data.

01:15:15:09 - 01:15:19:06
Claire Parkinson
Not really. Yeah, but I do find myself using it every day.

01:15:19:08 - 01:15:22:00
Daniel Franco
Yeah. We don't want people on any rooves, no roofs.

01:15:22:00 - 01:15:30:06
Claire Parkinson
I definitely don't want. I've had knives to throats, I've had poo thrown at me. Mean you name it. Yeah. It's been, it's been definitely well used.

01:15:31:01 - 01:15:43:06
Daniel Franco
So you've moved up the ranks. You've gone into leadership roles. Yes. And then you've moved, you've been poached or you've been headhunted and, and wanted to come over here into Australia. Yes. Set up a life.

01:15:43:07 - 01:15:59:22
Claire Parkinson
So I had to like it was. You had to wait five years before you're able to set the supervisor exam. It was just kind of the way it was. I don't think it's like that now, but it was then, so I had to wait four years so I could sit the exam and then another year until I could sit the second part of the exam.

01:15:59:22 - 01:16:22:11
Claire Parkinson
And of course I passed, which I was never bloody going to fail, let me tell you, I just would never have forgiven myself. So I became a supervisor. And then from from that point on, there was no restrictions other than, you know, I obviously had to apply for a job and I had to sit a couple of to become, you know, certain command level and not.

01:16:22:11 - 01:16:46:03
Claire Parkinson
No longer be a hostage negotiator and then moved to the command suite. I had to sit certain exams and stuff, but it was quite meteoric from that point on. So once the five Right. Five years had passed, you know, I got my principal officer within the year. Then I became a prison governor within the year and I moved around quite a lot because generally I certainly was in those days.

01:16:46:03 - 01:17:05:17
Claire Parkinson
Generally when you got promoted, you moved, you moved to a different establishments. I moved house quite a bit, which was great for me because my first house of £23,000 was getting better. Every time I moved, I got a better home, so my son had a better life. It moved to a different socio economic world and my life was shifting.

01:17:06:00 - 01:17:15:00
Claire Parkinson
I was shifting the dial on where I'd come from. Not that I'm not proud of it because I very am proud of it, but I was shifting the dial. My life was changing.

01:17:15:01 - 01:17:16:17
Daniel Franco
You were choosing in the universe for you.

01:17:16:17 - 01:17:33:11
Claire Parkinson
So I was. Yeah. I was moving in a different orbit and I loved my job. I mean, it was the best job on the planet. I was happy. It got me out of bed every day. I loved it. And I moved into London and I got head of Operations, which was a massive job as a chief of staff type role.

01:17:33:11 - 01:17:53:16
Claire Parkinson
They called it head of operations. The first time they moved it into that space. But and the guy I worked for was a tremendous human being. And we had the ten London prisons and we were in the middle of privatizing and, you know, we'd hit the GFC. So the world as we knew it in the public sector had fundamentally shifted.

01:17:54:00 - 01:18:22:03
Claire Parkinson
We were off the back of, you know, the 77 bombings. You know, terrorism was becoming homegrown. We were having radicalization in our prisons. So everything from a change management perspective in the in the socio economic you know, we were in this micro column of society and our society had shifted hugely. So there was no chance on any any level I was ever going to get bored.

01:18:22:03 - 01:18:40:06
Claire Parkinson
Change was every single minute of every single day. I didn't know what I was going to get and I bloody loved it. It was awesome. And I was in London for about three years in this role, which was a stretch role for me. There's no question. I lived in Oxfordshire at the time I was commuting 4 hours a day.

01:18:41:02 - 01:19:00:09
Claire Parkinson
I had a six month old baby when I first went back into that role, so I literally was dropping her off for getting the 5 a.m. train into London and I was getting home at 7 p.m., so she was in full time childcare. What's in it? Abby might. So somebody else saw her walk for the first time. You know, somebody else.

01:19:00:09 - 01:19:20:10
Claire Parkinson
You know, I missed all of that stuff, although they were very polite about it and they said that she hadn't. What I know she got first steps in nursery, but that was that was the sacrifice I made. So she had a better life than my son had. And, you know, I shifted her universe to something better than I'd had.

01:19:20:21 - 01:19:42:22
Claire Parkinson
Now, that was my gift. But it didn't come with that cost, of course. And then I moved to I got offered a promotion about three years into the London gig, and I went up and managed one of the private prisons on behalf of Ministry of Justice. A big, big contractor. And that was that was a new stream of work for me.

01:19:42:22 - 01:20:00:24
Claire Parkinson
It was it took me into the commercial world. I'd only ever been public server, so I was a service. I was only ever not for profit. Arguably, I'd gone into a world where it was a 9% profit, you know, minimum, which which compromised me a little bit because I was like, Hang on a minute, how are we making profit out of prisoners?

01:20:00:24 - 01:20:16:21
Claire Parkinson
But of course, you know, that was just because it was new to me. I now understand it doesn't mean the level of service is better, worse. It's just what it is. It's just a commercial model of caring for people, which of course we have here in our in our aged care communities. So it's it was just new to me.

01:20:16:21 - 01:20:36:10
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. And then I got a call out of the blue about would you consider coming to Australia? And I was like someone in the lounge said to the hubby some random dudes just messaged me, I reckon he might be a Roman. And he, and he said to me, Well how about you googling it? Sure. So I googled him.

01:20:36:10 - 01:20:58:17
Claire Parkinson
I'll go back. I went, Oh my God, he's the CEO, he said. And I said, Oh, what do you reckon? So should go to Australia. He went, Yeah, let's do it. And then two, two weeks later I was in Singapore having a job interview and, and while I was there they offered me the job and I rang up the hubby and said, right, there's two envelopes on top of the microwave in the kitchen.

01:20:59:06 - 01:21:24:06
Claire Parkinson
The first envelope is your resignation and the second envelope is mine. Can you post them? I'll be home in a couple of days and I could hear him physically shaking and he said, You said you're mad. I went, Yeah, I know but we're going to get sunshine, We're going to get sunshine in our lives. And we literally I reckon it was it would have been about nine weeks later.

01:21:24:06 - 01:21:31:17
Claire Parkinson
I'd sold my house. I'd quit my job, my job of 15 years. I loved my job, but I always know I could go back. So you're.

01:21:31:17 - 01:21:32:03
Daniel Franco
Just all.

01:21:32:03 - 01:21:56:19
Claire Parkinson
In. So we just rocked up with three suitcases. I didn't know anybody. Anybody. We got off the plane and I cried for about three days. I was like, The rubbish is $7, no pork sausages. I'll find an Indian restaurant. I was just I was broke. And he was he loved it. He lands and he went, Oh, I mean, I am an Australian, but me, I was like, Oh my God, you know everything I thought I knew and loved what it was.

01:21:56:19 - 01:21:58:13
Daniel Franco
This again, it was 2011.

01:21:58:13 - 01:22:13:17
Claire Parkinson
We landed on New Year's Eve, 2011 and yeah, it took me a long time, a long time to come to terms with. Everything was different. I just assumed because you all spoke English like that and it was a sad little.

01:22:13:18 - 01:22:14:10
Daniel Franco
Convex, right?

01:22:14:10 - 01:22:39:18
Claire Parkinson
Like I didn't I didn't even know by that how all I knew was it was sunshiny. Although. Although when you look at the last few weeks, I think I need a refund. And it's true. Yeah, but like, I had no idea. I had not anticipated the level of personal change and the impact of that change on me. And the reason I had no context, it was just it was just Claire's.

01:22:40:15 - 01:22:48:24
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, I can do that. I can that. I hadn't researched. I hadn't. I hadn't done it. I just did it for the moment. It was a spur of the moment journey.

01:22:49:00 - 01:22:50:03
Daniel Franco
The best decisions and what.

01:22:50:04 - 01:23:14:22
Claire Parkinson
They would is in hindsight. I mean, I love it. I'm Australian. That's it for me. Yeah, but in hindsight, um, that there was a missing piece in my life that took me two years to reverse back and fill the change management around it from. Claire's perspective Claire didn't do good at Yeah, she didn't do good. She learned the hard way.

01:23:14:22 - 01:23:17:21
Claire Parkinson
She had a death of a thousand cuts in terms of grieving.

01:23:17:21 - 01:23:29:17
Daniel Franco
I mean, this is look, I guess is what I'm hearing years. We work in change, right? And so we get called in so many times after the fact that we have to then go back to the and figure out. So this is exactly.

01:23:29:19 - 01:23:35:07
Claire Parkinson
Exactly what happened. It took two years for me to figure that out, that I've done it all wrong. I've done it all.

01:23:35:07 - 01:23:37:07
Daniel Franco
So Liam came with.

01:23:37:07 - 01:23:57:24
Claire Parkinson
No, he didn't. No, no, no. He he partner two had first child yet mortgage. He works in Oxfordshire, is still there. He's still there and he loves it. And, you know, despite my best endeavors, yeah, he has a way of coming to Australia. Yeah I think. Yeah. He, he's living the dream, he loves it.

01:23:57:24 - 01:23:58:22
Daniel Franco
They're very good.

01:23:58:24 - 01:23:59:12
Claire Parkinson
Yeah.

01:24:00:17 - 01:24:01:20
Daniel Franco
We'll get him here one day.

01:24:02:04 - 01:24:04:22
Claire Parkinson
I think so. I think so is children are still there.

01:24:04:22 - 01:24:08:00
Daniel Franco
I'll just go outside 30 outside so I know.

01:24:08:00 - 01:24:17:14
Claire Parkinson
Right. No. Yesterday or the day before yesterday I would have. They had to sell it, right? No, no, he's still there. My daughter's here of his labor. So he started where in Australia.

01:24:17:14 - 01:24:20:04
Daniel Franco
What was your first job? It was in the justice system. Still?

01:24:20:04 - 01:24:41:19
Claire Parkinson
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I ran in Mobile Long prison. Yes, yes. And yes, I came over. It was like. It was like him. It's only small. It's like 320 prisoners. So we had like just for context, I think in South Australia we have around 2100 prisoners and that's still the number. But it was around that, you know, in London where I had the ten prisons, we had 33,000.

01:24:41:19 - 01:24:48:08
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. So just, you know, so, so it was, it was, it was small.

01:24:49:12 - 01:24:50:23
Daniel Franco
Yeah. You put your feet up.

01:24:51:11 - 01:25:13:09
Claire Parkinson
Well I definitely didn't pull it off because there was a lot lot that needed to change but it was a it was the culture piece for me that I had some shifting to do. Yeah, I hadn't anticipated. As I said, you know, we're two different countries. I mean, obviously I knew that, but I had not anticipated the difference.

01:25:13:22 - 01:25:16:15
Claire Parkinson
So, so I had to grow up. Yes. Again, so.

01:25:16:20 - 01:25:21:17
Daniel Franco
Cultural meaning from a nationality standpoint, not from a.

01:25:21:21 - 01:25:46:18
Claire Parkinson
Person is is so nice. Yes. What the hell? I could not believe it. You know, they would be like, Morning, miss. I'm like, What? Who are you? We just saw Australian and so bloody nice. I just had I'd come from the back of the GFC, the back of 911, the back of 77, you know, homegirl thrown terrorists. Yeah.

01:25:46:19 - 01:26:00:23
Claire Parkinson
Radicalization in our prisons, violence to the level I couldn't imagine that had come in from some of our Eastern European gangs. And I come to my long prison. I was like, wow, like, whoa. So I had to these.

01:26:00:23 - 01:26:02:06
Daniel Franco
People wouldn't even make prison.

01:26:02:06 - 01:26:08:20
Claire Parkinson
You know, they would they wouldn't be coming to mine for a barbecue. They generally good reasons. Um, we've had, we've had.

01:26:08:20 - 01:26:16:18
Daniel Franco
Grant Stevens on the show, the police commissioner in South Australia and he said similar. We've got a very nice state.

01:26:16:21 - 01:26:38:00
Claire Parkinson
We have, we have. He's quite beautiful. So I was like what the actual like how is possible? I couldn't believe I'd go to work in the morning and I drive all the way up to Murray Bridge and the radio would tell me how many people had on our roads in the last 12 months. And I was like, Wow, I am in such a safe community.

01:26:38:08 - 01:27:04:22
Claire Parkinson
You know? We only talk about how many people have been stabbed to death in this particular postcode in the last day. Yeah, you know, I was just like this. I knew I'd made the decision that my child, she was four at the time we won. When I got the cold call, we were going through this horrible period in the UK, which was just indiscriminate violence.

01:27:04:24 - 01:27:30:16
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, there were riots everywhere. I can't remember. I think it was I, it was off the back of a shooting of a black youth. I think it was an America might've got that wrong and but there had been these youth riots that were just burning down residential properties just because it was just I think, we had like thousands of maybe 8000 people coming custody overnight as a result.

01:27:30:16 - 01:27:42:10
Claire Parkinson
I mean, it just and I remember going home and saying she's four. I think it's time to go. And we come here and I'm like, we did the right thing. Yeah, we did the right thing. She's safe.

01:27:42:10 - 01:27:43:21
Daniel Franco
Gabrielle is from Brazil.

01:27:44:03 - 01:27:44:18
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, well.

01:27:44:18 - 01:27:45:06
Daniel Franco
And we would.

01:27:45:06 - 01:27:50:17
Claire Parkinson
Talk. I mean, England's nothing on Brazil. Yes, you guys have it much harder, but yeah, you understand.

01:27:50:17 - 01:27:54:23
Daniel Franco
We were actually talking about yesterday. There's parts of Brazil in which they didn't even slow down at the stoplights.

01:27:54:23 - 01:27:57:00
Claire Parkinson
100%.

01:27:57:00 - 01:28:03:24
Daniel Franco
And we are very lucky. So I've only ever lived in Australia. And in fact, I'm probably I'm not well-traveled at all. I haven't been.

01:28:03:24 - 01:28:06:06
Claire Parkinson
It's a beautiful place. Yeah, it's beautiful.

01:28:06:07 - 01:28:07:08
Daniel Franco
Yeah, very lucky.

01:28:07:10 - 01:28:12:12
Claire Parkinson
Oh, we make our own luck. Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah.

01:28:13:21 - 01:28:28:24
Daniel Franco
I want to talk about. I mean, I'm conscious of your time because we're talking die. We could literally talk about. I feel like I want to, but I think we got to make sure that we keep with some sort of time.

01:28:29:10 - 01:28:32:09
Claire Parkinson
But I say that to all the girls.

01:28:34:03 - 01:28:37:19
Daniel Franco
Escaping through the main cave.

01:28:37:19 - 01:28:40:15
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Time's up. God.

01:28:42:22 - 01:29:09:00
Daniel Franco
I. I really. I've got so many questions, and I haven't even wondering when you've even touched the surface of what? These are half the questions that I've got written down, which is just a testament to you and your story. But I want to touch just a little bit more on the change aspect. And we spoke previously, um, around your learnings and experiences through the justice system.

01:29:09:07 - 01:29:33:00
Daniel Franco
And before we move on to your next phase of life, I want to eat. We spoke briefly today around the macro change that significantly shifted the way the workforce people did their job. And you gave me a 911 example or can you dive into that for us, please? So macro change, that significantly changed the way people in the workforce did their job.

01:29:33:11 - 01:30:05:09
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. So, so if we were to take from an obviously 911 shocked the world, the world stood still. Yeah it changed the face of what we be like saying, you know, some of us have crimes that we consider acceptable like and there are crimes where, you know, it's the same in prison, right? If you're if you're a sex offender, you generally have to go to a prison where you're protected because other criminals don't tolerate that kind of behavior.

01:30:05:09 - 01:30:32:07
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, we saw you do the same. Yeah. Then we had 911 happen and we all sat down in just shock and saw the planes fly into the World Trade Center. And as a result of that, that shifted the paradigm of who we have in prison. Now, if you imagine the scene, we have a large cohort of people that have lost their liberty, right?

01:30:32:16 - 01:30:54:20
Claire Parkinson
They are locked up for many hours a day, some 23, some more than 23 hours a day, not not necessarily in our England prisons, but in some places in the world. They probably don't get out their cell very much at all, if at all. So we've got a collective audience. We've got people in our prisons who are vulnerable and, looking for their tribe.

01:30:55:07 - 01:31:37:24
Claire Parkinson
They're looking for that community. They've never fit in any kind of gang. They've never been part of a functional family. And we have this world stopping event that has made everybody pay attention. So we have our opportunity in prisons for people that are there to take advantage of vulnerable people and recruit people who are happy to slit the throat of a prison officer, to take a hostage, to put a bomb in their shoes, to strap a bomb around their waist, to kill a child, to drive a truck into a group of schoolchildren.

01:31:38:09 - 01:32:09:00
Claire Parkinson
Whatever it is, we have this captive audience. So straightaway we've got a whole new dynamic to how we do our work. Now, don't get me wrong, we've always had terrorism, and terrorism isn't linked to just one religion or faith. It comes in all shapes and sizes. Disaffected people, whether it be gangs that operate in a way that they class shootings gangland activity, when actually it's an act of terrorism, whether it be Ireland and the I.R.A. or whatever the religious belief is.

01:32:09:00 - 01:32:36:13
Claire Parkinson
We also have a system that largely world over isn't a political seat. We're not so one. There's an election the police get the money, prisons never get the money. So what we do is we put more police on the streets to keep our streets safe. But what we do is we put more people in prison. So we recommend stack them, which means our resources get thinner.

01:32:36:17 - 01:33:09:20
Claire Parkinson
So our ability to see all of this stuff happening is getting weaker and weaker. And we don't provide enough religious services to represent all of the faiths we normally just stick to the Christianity and the ones that are what we consider very, very white community because that's what we've always done. So we've got this group of very young, very vulnerable people that have now got something to aspire to because they just want to be part a community.

01:33:10:06 - 01:33:44:04
Claire Parkinson
So literally overnight, literally overnight, we had to change the way we communicate. Not only change the way we communicate with the prisoners, but change the way we communicate about the prisoners. So everything became top secret. You know, we had high net worth terrorism activities happening in the UK and around the world, hugely funded, so we could no longer communicate by traditional methods, we'd have to use secret squirrel stuff and supercross straight in stuff because.

01:33:44:08 - 01:34:10:00
Claire Parkinson
But find out who our grass are. So we have covert human intelligence sources who tell us, you know, this lawyer is a terrorist and they are funding and aiding and abetting terrorism to everything. Everything changed overnight from the safety of our people, the way our prisoners played and what the way they operated, the way we communicated, the way the world saw us.

01:34:10:10 - 01:34:41:13
Claire Parkinson
But yet nothing changed. We had no extra money. We had no different training because we it was new. There was no there was no scientific evidence that was shaping the way we were delivering our work. So we had to rapidly evolve is probably the the biggest shift. You haven't experienced that to the same level in Australia, thankfully. Doesn't mean you won't know and you're aware and you know, you are doing work in that space that is relevant to your jurisdiction.

01:34:41:13 - 01:34:49:13
Claire Parkinson
But it was full on. It was really full on. Yeah, I grew up again and I'm 903.

01:34:51:01 - 01:34:58:24
Daniel Franco
How do you compartmentalize in a world like that? How do you go home to your daughter?

01:34:58:24 - 01:35:31:23
Claire Parkinson
It's not personal. It's not personal. It's like, I don't know. I guess I have been asked that a lot, actually. I used to sit in sex offender treatment program works and have heard things that, you know, I try and laugh about it. I'm not you know, I try and make humor out of it. You know, particularly some stories involving some animals like, you know, like you, because you kind of have to you kind of have to think of the I can't make light of some of the stuff I've heard, but I don't know.

01:35:31:23 - 01:36:02:05
Claire Parkinson
I don't know. How do you how do you compartmentalize it? You take you take from it the things that you can make humorous and the things that are so dark. You just don't go the depths that you just don't go into the depths. It's going to harm you. And, you know, we had like you'd get like critical incident debriefing, so you'd have psychological debrief so you could take it off your back and say, you know, today was really hard.

01:36:02:15 - 01:36:23:11
Claire Parkinson
You know, I saw someone had their throat cut. It was a bit too much for me today, and you'd had that briefing, you know, a bit like if you do family liaison roles, you know, and you have to go and tell people that, you know, their loved ones died or whatever it is. You just you just have the debrief and then you just let it go.

01:36:23:17 - 01:36:43:09
Claire Parkinson
Occasionally I'll think back, you know, sometimes I'll on anniversaries and stuff, I'll think about some of the messages I've had to convey to loved ones when they have lost people. You know, sometimes if it's on a like a milestone day, like a Christmas Day or something. I'll think, Well, now they're going. But it's fleeting. Yeah, because it has to be.

01:36:43:22 - 01:36:52:21
Claire Parkinson
It has to be. I don't know how do that. I don't. I don't. I have to survive. So there is no option for me. Yeah, I have to. Do you.

01:36:54:02 - 01:37:24:15
Daniel Franco
You've seen like that in that macro change. No doubt. You just saw a series of events that just played out in ways that probably, like you said, you grew up again and your life changed yet again. Do you do you look at change in organizations now and people's reactions and privilege and just shake your head and go, you have no idea around what happening?

01:37:24:15 - 01:37:26:21
Daniel Franco
Or is it is that not the right context?

01:37:27:12 - 01:37:49:12
Claire Parkinson
I don't know. I mean, you know, my my, my daughter was I was chatting away to my daughter the other day and I was like, oh, you know, poor me. And she oh, listen to you, you Karen, She said, you white privileged woman who haven't got a gardener anymore. And he just put it put it right back home.

01:37:49:12 - 01:38:11:04
Claire Parkinson
And I was like, Oh my God, listen To me, yeah, but my problems are my own and they're real to me, the same as everybody else. So I don't think I don't want one way affect in change where it doesn't matter what the business is or who the individual is, their story is their story, and they're going through their grief journey and they own it.

01:38:11:10 - 01:38:31:21
Claire Parkinson
And it's not any more or any less than the person who lives on the street or the person that was in prison and lost their liberty. It's just different. But in their world, it's all that matters. And as long as you accept that every single one of them is unique and no one of them is better or worse than the other, it makes it easier.

01:38:33:14 - 01:38:51:21
Claire Parkinson
I never kind of look, you know, and actually sometimes if I get really nervous, which I do, if I've got publicly speak or something and I know kind of like I'll do myself a little pep talk when I walk on and I always say, Claire, are you going to get covered in shit or someone going to throw shit passes at you?

01:38:51:22 - 01:39:08:22
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. Or are you going to get spat at or you're going to get stabbed with a pencil or are you going to get taken hostage? No, you're not, you silly girl. Pop, you big go pants. Yeah. Get on the stage and rock it and then throw off in the toilet afterwards. It's all good. It's all good. So. But that's my context.

01:39:08:22 - 01:39:20:11
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. And it would be wrong of me to apply that same to other people because theirs would be very different. You know, their anxiety would be real in their way, and I wouldn't understand it. I wouldn't understand it because I haven't worked it.

01:39:20:21 - 01:39:54:23
Daniel Franco
No. Yeah. And understanding everyone's context and levels of of like I everyone asked me, you know, were you scared? Were you concerned when you went out and started your own business and you walk away from a well-paid job and excuse me and my thought process at the time, which is from a very privileged point of view of what is the worst that can happen, I lose and move back in with my mum and dad who live it down at Grange Grange Beach.

01:39:54:24 - 01:39:55:08
Daniel Franco
Right.

01:39:55:08 - 01:39:57:15
Claire Parkinson
That sounds horrible. It sounds horrible. Good.

01:39:57:17 - 01:40:17:20
Daniel Franco
You know what I mean? Like I and that was kind of it's like I have no choice now but to do is if that is the worst case scenario that I am still in the top 1% in the world. Right. From a from a being in a privileged lucky position. So, yeah, context is is definitely everything. We can't talk about this.

01:40:18:00 - 01:40:43:11
Daniel Franco
We can't go through this conversation without talking about all those minerals and how you ended up in an executive role there. Andrew Cole is being touted as a visionary and, you know, like an amazing CEO. I've met him a couple of times, always great things. I'm really interested in how you ended up there. I do know the story and I know it's an amazing story.

01:40:43:11 - 01:40:47:02
Daniel Franco
Can you share with us how you ended up in your roles?

01:40:47:13 - 01:41:11:08
Claire Parkinson
Yes, I can. So way back when, 2015 and I hadn't long left government, I had had a little bit of a dabble in the commercial world, you know, set my own company and tried to do the consulting thing and always want to get mining. You know, when I think about working in Australia, when I was in the UK, I think mining, I was like, I'm never going to get in mining.

01:41:11:08 - 01:41:29:06
Claire Parkinson
I'm not an engineer, I don't know anybody you are. Anyway, long story short, I remember reading another newspaper article, another one of those to find in moments. It wasn't The Daily Mail, I think it was Advertiser. And I remember reading an article about this mining company called Oz Minerals that had moved its office from Melbourne to be based in Adelaide.

01:41:29:18 - 01:41:45:12
Claire Parkinson
And I remember reading this story about this new young CEO once a young same age as me, so was really young. And I remember reading this story about this person thinking he sounds like a great human. So I did a bit of stalking on LinkedIn, as we all know, and as people listening all know, we all do it.

01:41:45:12 - 01:41:55:16
Claire Parkinson
Who's viewed you hasn't. Yeah, he hadn't viewed me, but I had absolutely stalked him and said, I think we need to meet for coffee. You need to know me and Andrew being.

01:41:56:03 - 01:41:56:16
Daniel Franco
You know.

01:41:57:09 - 01:42:06:12
Claire Parkinson
I probably. Yeah, I kind of like that. You know who doesn't like that, right? It doesn't like that unless you get 600 a day and then it's not so cool. But I don't. So keep coming. Well, I.

01:42:06:12 - 01:42:08:12
Daniel Franco
Think the idea don't try to sell anyone anything.

01:42:08:12 - 01:42:24:10
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. 100% or add you and then send you a great big cut and pay for it. Stop with that shit. Anyway, so I messaged him and said, you need to. I don't remember the exact words. It would have been clear words and you know, probably would have involved Indian curry or something or other about what I was doing on a Friday night.

01:42:24:19 - 01:42:43:11
Claire Parkinson
Anyway, I messaged him and said, We need to meet a coffee. And to my surprise he said Yes. So okay, I have no idea what I'm going to say to him, none whatsoever. So I went along and just kind of sat there and tried to play it cool, like, you know, ex-government ex-prisoners, like, you know, how do I translate?

01:42:43:12 - 01:43:16:02
Claire Parkinson
How do I translate my whole working life into something that's going to be useful to him? And I couldn't, quite frankly. But Andrew, being Andrew, he saw that I had I wanted to invest in his company. I wanted to invest whatever it was that I had or whatever My worth professionally was his company. And after me harassing him for quite a few months, he said, okay, I'll send you out Prominent Hill.

01:43:16:16 - 01:43:34:22
Claire Parkinson
And the only brief you have is go out there for the day and then report back to me what you see as right. So I said right, He's my one chance. It's essentially a job interview, right? So I go out prominent here. I didn't know anybody. I'd never been to a mine, so I was just blown away as my camera was, you know, I was like, oh my God, look at that.

01:43:35:04 - 01:43:56:20
Claire Parkinson
It's possible. Anyway, So only there for a few hours. By the time I'd got the flight back the same day and I thought, Right, okay, I got my scribble notes, you know, I knew how to talk to people, so I knew that that was the only way because I wasn't an engineer, the only way I was going to find out the dirt literally wrote all my notes down and got back and thought, Shit, I've got to make this look good.

01:43:56:20 - 01:44:18:16
Claire Parkinson
I've got to do something on a page because I've got one more chance. I've got to get in front of him and I've got to blow him away. Right with this non-mining background, one pager. So I got this one page done and it was really, really cool. I've still got out my phone. It's like I, love it. So I thought I'd done this thing, I got this thing and I called it the Opportunity Road map.

01:44:18:21 - 01:44:41:18
Claire Parkinson
Right, right. And what I did was an opportunity to improve the business through people empowerment. And I did it all on a page. It was pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty and pretty spec. Anyway, I met with him and I just got a printout on a three shiny glossy paper and I just sat there and I just passed it across the table and he just sat there and he didn't say a word.

01:44:41:20 - 01:45:04:24
Claire Parkinson
And I was like, All right, now I've blown it. And I said, You've got nothing to say. You know, I was kind of like, What come of an insight into this? It's like to be perfectly honest, I'm a bit blown away with what you've observed in 4 hours as I Yeah, even. Yeah. He said. I don't know what to say as I will just say I'm going to give you a job.

01:45:05:16 - 01:45:15:10
Claire Parkinson
And he just went, I'll get back to you. This is like the second time. And then the next time I heard from him he said, We're having an offsite.

01:45:15:11 - 01:45:16:23
Daniel Franco
How long? How long after?

01:45:17:01 - 01:45:18:16
Claire Parkinson
Oh, maybe a month.

01:45:18:21 - 01:45:19:21
Daniel Franco
Okay, So pretty.

01:45:19:22 - 01:45:40:20
Claire Parkinson
He said we're having an an executive offsite. He said, I'd like you to come along and join us for the day. And I was like, Great, great. I'll go. Didn't know anyone. I didn't really know him. I just talked him for a bit, didn't know him. So I went along to the executive die when I got there, enrolled, you know, some of the big four consulting firms present in how they would deliver innovation right?

01:45:40:20 - 01:46:05:10
Claire Parkinson
So there's lots of pitches happening, lots of people I didn't know. Important people are just coming in, coming and covering. Well, probably, probably really. And I just sat there observing it, thinking, this is fun, but I have no idea. And then at the end of it, he says, okay, Clare, how would you deliver innovation of minerals? And I was like, Fuck, I don't know, I don't know.

01:46:06:00 - 01:46:24:21
Claire Parkinson
So anyway, I stood up and I thought, You know what? I can talk in front of a group of strangers. And essentially innovation in my, in my world isn't about, you know, the new, the latest iPhone or the latest underground automated machine. Whilst that plays a part of it, it's about the people that design it. It's about the people.

01:46:24:21 - 01:46:35:15
Claire Parkinson
I think it yeah, it's, it's, it's about the people. So I thought, okay, I'll just do what I, what I know, which is how to innovate through people. So I did I did did a people pitch. Yeah.

01:46:36:00 - 01:46:37:19
Daniel Franco
And give us a little bit of that pitch now.

01:46:38:12 - 01:46:59:20
Claire Parkinson
It was about listening to improve actually it was about a big organizational change program that I'd left led for the South East of England when I was on maternity leave because I couldn't go into prisons because I was, you know, a big wading whale waddling around. It was not so much the prisoners. It was more for my safety because I was huge.

01:46:59:20 - 01:47:23:06
Claire Parkinson
And as as as part of that process, I'd gone to Bulgaria. They sent me to Bulgaria to do reform in the Bulgarian prison system, which is about incentive and erm privileges scheme. So basically being a human to prisoners and I brought that work back and we'd got this thing called listen to improve which is basically business planning through people motivation.

01:47:23:08 - 01:47:48:12
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. So what people want to improve our performance. So I basically reiterated the work we've done in the south east of England which was around 10,000 people and had shifted the dial on, on how we write our prisons in term. You know, the inspector of prisons had right at various levels. We had this thing called investment in people, which was an independent body that would come in and say how good we were to our people.

01:47:48:21 - 01:48:11:23
Claire Parkinson
And this program aims to raise our level of accreditation and investors and people, and we got it in the south east of England, which we'd never done before. So I thought, you know what, this stuff works. Treating people properly works. And as a result of people coming to work and getting joy out of what they do, we get better at what we do and the outcomes speak for themselves.

01:48:11:23 - 01:48:25:23
Claire Parkinson
So I basically did that pitch, but it was pretty it was pretty basic. I was pretty rubbish. I think I was was unprepared, totally unprepared. Although Andrew Andrew would argue that I was prepared. Maybe I was. I just didn't listen.

01:48:26:05 - 01:48:27:15
Daniel Franco
You could turn it into a keynote now.

01:48:27:16 - 01:49:06:11
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, I, I obviously wasn't paying attention. You know he's, he's a fabulous human. And then, and then what happened was he said, okay, do you want to come be a head of innovation? And I was like, Sure. And I did. And then I was there a couple of weeks and head of corporate affairs role come up. And I remember sitting there saying to him, Oh, I don't really know much about investor relations, but I know about I know about public relations and I know about media, because, you know, I was on the UK's London media circuit because of the role I had think I could do that job.

01:49:07:01 - 01:49:31:05
Claire Parkinson
It's like, okay, let's give it a go. And then we had 12 days in South Australia of no power. And I was like, really Really? Really. Who wants to be head of corporate affairs for an ASX company when you have no power for 12 days? So it was another learning curve in my life and Osma was is a very special place, a very special place where I have grown.

01:49:31:19 - 01:49:36:20
Claire Parkinson
I have learned and I love what I do. Yeah, yeah.

01:49:37:03 - 01:49:38:02
Daniel Franco
Yeah. That's amazing.

01:49:39:10 - 01:49:51:08
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. And he is a visionary. He saw something in me that I didn't see myself and he backed. He backed this horse. Yeah.

01:49:51:08 - 01:50:06:01
Daniel Franco
I mean, like your background, your experience, your learnings, the various and such. Nothing like the standard deviation of the type of work you've done is so far and wide. Like it's.

01:50:06:03 - 01:50:08:00
Claire Parkinson
I'm a generalist. Yeah. Proud of it.

01:50:08:03 - 01:50:17:08
Daniel Franco
It's amazing. And you should be very proud. Now we're almost approaching the two hour mark and we I've got two pages, two pages left.

01:50:17:08 - 01:50:19:14
Claire Parkinson
The questions, good goodness. Sorry.

01:50:19:23 - 01:50:21:05
Daniel Franco
No, don't be sorry. It's.

01:50:21:09 - 01:50:22:09
Claire Parkinson
But you can always get me back.

01:50:22:09 - 01:50:37:20
Daniel Franco
Yeah, 100%. It's going to have to be around to survive. I am going to start thinking about the wrapping up of of the podcast now, but I do want to just ask you a couple of questions, probably on a personal note of of about. Claire.

01:50:37:24 - 01:50:38:19
Claire Parkinson
Okay.

01:50:38:19 - 01:50:39:15
Daniel Franco
What are you bad at.

01:50:47:11 - 01:51:18:10
Claire Parkinson
Trust in my intuition and yeah, I don't make decisions fast in some aspects of my life. Yeah I, I'm, I'm a, I'm a saver. So I, I show my love by service and that sometimes takes a lot of my life when it's actually something I should probably walk away from. Yeah. So I hope.

01:51:18:10 - 01:51:24:21
Daniel Franco
Your intuition played out really well when you're dealing with James on the rooftop, though.

01:51:25:02 - 01:51:28:05
Claire Parkinson
Yes, professionally, I've got it now.

01:51:28:06 - 01:51:28:16
Daniel Franco
Okay.

01:51:29:05 - 01:51:57:08
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, almost in my personal life, it's. I've had a colorful life. Yeah, I've had a colorful lot and I think that's probably why I am so, you know, my professional life is one of my children and and I, I'm probably I probably lean towards working way too many hours and always have because it's easier than holding the mirror up to oneself.

01:51:57:21 - 01:51:58:04
Claire Parkinson
Yeah.

01:51:59:05 - 01:52:02:15
Daniel Franco
To, you know, like what you see in the mirror or is it like.

01:52:02:16 - 01:52:12:19
Claire Parkinson
Cause I'm getting older I don't like on a Friday I dawn sometimes on a Tuesday I'll look okay. It depends how how many days before I've watched and strained the hair.

01:52:12:19 - 01:52:23:05
Daniel Franco
The context was needed in that question. Do you when you talk of when you say I treat my work life is one of my babies?

01:52:23:05 - 01:52:23:15
Claire Parkinson
Yes.

01:52:24:11 - 01:52:51:15
Daniel Franco
It tells me that, you know, I'm a parent, an old parents would put more care into their children than themselves. But we need to learn to put the mask on ourselves first in the context of. An airplane right where the the masks come down and we put ourselves first. Is that your biggest struggle and does that affect you from a mental health perspective, or do you have that COVID?

01:52:51:15 - 01:53:18:13
Claire Parkinson
Oh, I'm mad as a box of rocks. No, no, no, no, no. Thankfully, thankfully. I think my mental health has always been pretty sound. Yeah, maybe it's not. Maybe there's some psychiatrist that listening going. She is mad. I think, you know, my my, my struggle has always been and it's things that you carry from events in your childhood, Right.

01:53:18:13 - 01:53:40:00
Claire Parkinson
So I struggle with and knowing my worth, I, you know, there isn't a day go by where someone doesn't say, no, you're worse, you know, back yourself. Clare Parkinson Yeah, you know, And when, when I came in here and you said, oh this is Clare Parkinson from Oz Minerals, I was like, No, no, no, no, no. Well somebody else doesn't define me.

01:53:40:08 - 01:54:07:24
Claire Parkinson
Parkinson defines me. Yeah, you know, that's just a facade. You know the truth. The truth is, you know, the whole worse, you know? So when I look in the mirror, what do I see? You know, I see somebody who's just figuring what she wants to do when she grows up. And I don't know if my personality type is, I will always be looking, always be looking for, you know, the adventure, the what's to keep me motivated, what's going to keep me awake at night.

01:54:08:21 - 01:54:15:02
Claire Parkinson
But as I get older, I'm like, these are like some peace, you know, I'd just like some peace in my world. Yeah.

01:54:16:06 - 01:54:18:12
Daniel Franco
Slowing down helps with the pace, isn't it?

01:54:18:19 - 01:54:26:20
Claire Parkinson
I know. I don't seem to be doing any of that any time soon. I think I need to move into a house with that bloody big garden that snakes in it. I mean, that would help.

01:54:27:16 - 01:54:30:06
Daniel Franco
So if happiness was a concoction.

01:54:30:06 - 01:54:30:17
Claire Parkinson
Yes.

01:54:31:23 - 01:54:36:10
Daniel Franco
And, you know, different ingredients varying volumes.

01:54:36:12 - 01:54:36:20
Claire Parkinson
Yep.

01:54:37:21 - 01:54:41:23
Daniel Franco
What behaviors do you see as making the best recipe.

01:54:47:20 - 01:55:05:12
Claire Parkinson
Behaviors active listening? Mm hmm. Listening to hear? Definitely laughter.

01:55:05:12 - 01:55:06:18
Daniel Franco
There's laughter, behavior.

01:55:08:06 - 01:55:42:14
Claire Parkinson
Now, what people give to make you laugh is. Yeah. Yeah. The openness to the openness. Yeah. Togetherness. Like surrounding yourself with people who are peaceful ones are peaceful. That doesn't mean not have an extroverts in your life who, like I do, but just are together and peaceful and good harmony. Does it. That's it. I think that's it.

01:55:43:05 - 01:55:43:19
Daniel Franco
It really is.

01:55:44:04 - 01:55:44:15
Claire Parkinson
Yeah.

01:55:45:06 - 01:55:53:14
Daniel Franco
And it's funny, I like asking that question because it always just comes back to people. It doesn't matter. And money, it like none of that matters.

01:55:54:04 - 01:55:55:08
Claire Parkinson
I think we can't take it with us.

01:55:55:09 - 01:56:03:18
Daniel Franco
We can't. Yeah there's no I go to there's a butcher down the road from me. I can't believe he's getting a mention because he's a bit of a twat, but he.

01:56:04:03 - 01:56:06:17
Claire Parkinson
Oh, my God. He's going to know who you're talking about.

01:56:06:17 - 01:56:18:24
Daniel Franco
He won't listen to this. He doesn't know I even exist. But the. He said something once that's absolutely stuck with me, mate. There's no trailer on the back of the hearse. And I just went, It's brilliant.

01:56:18:24 - 01:56:21:01
Claire Parkinson
It's. Yes, it is very.

01:56:21:04 - 01:56:22:12
Daniel Franco
Good to just enjoy.

01:56:22:20 - 01:56:23:03
Claire Parkinson
Yeah.

01:56:23:04 - 01:56:24:22
Daniel Franco
What you've got with what you've got.

01:56:25:01 - 01:56:39:01
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. You're not going to lie on your deathbed. You know, I always say if I get hit by a car, I'm not going to lay there and go, Oh, my jeans are a bit tight. I wish I had not that cake. You know, you're not going to lay there and do that stuff, right? It doesn't mean I'm going to stop dying or running about.

01:56:39:01 - 01:56:42:23
Daniel Franco
The the things that you didn't say or the things that you did say.

01:56:43:00 - 01:57:08:10
Claire Parkinson
I'd rather regret something I have said. Yeah. Than something I haven't. Yeah. And and, you know, back, back to your point about, you know, the things that, you know, I would change, you know, I'd probably have said those things earlier because time for no one. Mm. No one. And if you made the decisions earlier then I wouldn't be 51, you know, grumbling on about what's it done.

01:57:08:22 - 01:57:16:22
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. We've done that professionally. I wouldn't change a thing. Wouldn't change a thing. That's been one thing I wouldn't change. And my children of course.

01:57:16:22 - 01:57:28:05
Daniel Franco
Yeah no doubt. Right. We're going to move into quickfire questions, I reckon we've just ticked over the two hour mark, which is an epic conversation. So what are you reading right now?

01:57:28:05 - 01:57:56:09
Claire Parkinson
So my ex gave me a book as a parting gift, not a not a negative parting gift, but he gave me a book on I called and I've written down the name because I couldn't remember Dr. Levine and Rachel Heller. Yeah, it's the science of adulting, really. It turns out I'm an avoidant attached to. So basically I just avoid commitment, which is obvious.

01:57:56:09 - 01:58:07:05
Claire Parkinson
Yes, attachment. So I'm reading that just to understand I'm okay. There's nothing wrong. There's no wrong attachment style. But yeah, I'm a commitment phobe, which is okay.

01:58:07:05 - 01:58:12:00
Daniel Franco
Very good attachment. The art of the art of adulting is that this is a science about old.

01:58:12:06 - 01:58:21:16
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. I'm only like two pages. Yeah. Be honest. I tend to read the news when I go to bed. Yeah, And not really a big book person. No, because I'm hyperactive.

01:58:21:16 - 01:58:22:09
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Yeah.

01:58:22:10 - 01:58:24:03
Claire Parkinson
I would normally catch on fire.

01:58:24:09 - 01:58:39:09
Daniel Franco
Was there anything that you do from a self development pace or anything that stands out from the crowd in that space. Something that you might have recommended you turn to?

01:58:39:21 - 01:59:03:10
Claire Parkinson
No I like I like I like quarters late stages and change. Yeah, I use that. I don't use the same words as as they do, but I'm Yeah, that's kind of that's kind of my go to it makes sense whether it be prison hostage negotiation you know in the boardroom working in the banks it actually doesn't matter is the change are actually those eight stages you might just call them something different.

01:59:04:01 - 01:59:08:15
Claire Parkinson
So yeah that's kind of my go to brilliant. Yes.

01:59:08:15 - 01:59:11:17
Daniel Franco
What's one lesson that's taking the longest to learn?

01:59:12:09 - 01:59:17:16
Claire Parkinson
Trust my intuition. Yeah. Instinct. Yeah. Always. Right. It's always bloody right.

01:59:17:16 - 01:59:18:10
Daniel Franco
So it is.

01:59:18:15 - 01:59:20:16
Claire Parkinson
Trust it, Execute it fast.

01:59:21:11 - 01:59:25:02
Daniel Franco
Yeah. If you can invite three people for dinner, who would they be?

01:59:25:04 - 01:59:33:00
Claire Parkinson
Oh, I thought about this one. So, Ricky Gervais. Oh, he cracks me. Oh, oh. Cracks me up quite literally.

01:59:33:00 - 01:59:33:22
Daniel Franco
My favorite company.

01:59:33:24 - 01:59:36:16
Claire Parkinson
In the world said he would have to come to the party because I am.

01:59:37:02 - 01:59:42:23
Daniel Franco
Not only just a comedian. No, Like such a deep thinker. Smart as.

01:59:43:04 - 01:59:44:03
Claire Parkinson
David Attenborough.

01:59:44:11 - 01:59:44:24
Daniel Franco
Huge.

01:59:45:10 - 02:00:01:12
Claire Parkinson
He's just like, mean, you know, I'm. I think he's like, is he like 100? Yes, exactly. And it just I could just close my eyes and fall asleep to him and the learning and just remarkable. One of the UK's biggest treasures of all time along with the queen.

02:00:01:18 - 02:00:02:03
Daniel Franco
Yeah.

02:00:02:13 - 02:00:05:01
Claire Parkinson
So he would definitely be there and.

02:00:05:16 - 02:00:10:15
Daniel Franco
Can I just on that, Ginger, do you think Brian Cox is going to be the new David Attenborough? Do you know Brian Cox's?

02:00:10:16 - 02:00:11:16
Claire Parkinson
No, I guess there's.

02:00:11:16 - 02:00:12:22
Daniel Franco
No there's no, no.

02:00:13:12 - 02:00:15:02
Claire Parkinson
No, no. Let's go. Sir.

02:00:15:24 - 02:00:41:15
Daniel Franco
David's book is The Game Changer. The just the years thing that he did in his book. Did you read his book? No. He's basically talked about the the pollution and the like over the years. What that what those metrics have been. Yeah. In his career over the every decade in his career. Yeah. And you can just see that like climate deniers cannot better cannot challenge it because it's just based on data.

02:00:41:20 - 02:00:44:00
Claire Parkinson
Yeah yeah he's pretty special.

02:00:44:00 - 02:00:44:20
Daniel Franco
Sorry. Next person.

02:00:44:23 - 02:00:45:21
Claire Parkinson
Henry Cavill.

02:00:46:03 - 02:00:48:14
Daniel Franco
Oh yeah. The Superman. Yeah, I wouldn't. Yeah.

02:00:49:10 - 02:00:50:19
Claire Parkinson
So I've got a crush.

02:00:50:19 - 02:00:51:12
Daniel Franco
On that guy. Yeah.

02:00:52:14 - 02:01:03:15
Claire Parkinson
Well, he got the company out, you know, he's just a very good distraction. So if we have any uncomfortable pauses. Yeah. I won't be comfortable with you.

02:01:03:15 - 02:01:05:06
Daniel Franco
You never know when you need a superman.

02:01:05:07 - 02:01:08:17
Claire Parkinson
Oh, my goodness. Isn't he?

02:01:08:17 - 02:01:14:06
Daniel Franco
Um. Well, some of the best advice that you've ever received.

02:01:14:06 - 02:01:48:00
Claire Parkinson
Don't drink yellow snow day, and probably on your strategy, which was. Andrew actually. Andrew Cole Yeah, yeah. Only a strategy. And actually that was one other from another CEO who once said to me, he said, Claire, once you lose your integrity, you can never take it to bed again. And that actually that one statement, I don't think he realizes how profound it was actually made that one hard decision that changed my life.

02:01:48:00 - 02:02:06:20
Claire Parkinson
Yeah. Yeah. Just, just by saying once you compromise that you'll never get it back and you can never invited back. It's done. Yeah, it's lost and lost forever. Integrity is a gift that you can just invite in and out. You ever have it? You don't know. And I was like, Whoa, Profound. So yes, there's a.

02:02:06:20 - 02:02:07:23
Daniel Franco
Joke on that. Have you heard.

02:02:07:23 - 02:02:09:01
Claire Parkinson
That? Oh, gosh, go on.

02:02:10:05 - 02:02:11:21
Daniel Franco
Oh, it's. It's quite so.

02:02:11:21 - 02:02:13:03
Claire Parkinson
It is. It is inappropriate.

02:02:13:04 - 02:02:13:21
Daniel Franco
It's kind of.

02:02:14:10 - 02:02:16:17
Claire Parkinson
But I'm not sure you can cut it now. You like.

02:02:17:12 - 02:02:36:02
Daniel Franco
So as an ethnic person, I won't go into nationalities because people know it's the joke I know is is a Greek could be Italian could be whatever right. Yeah. Walking down the street, walking with his nephews to see that bridge over there. I built that bridge, but they don't remember me as con the bridge builder. See that house over there?

02:02:36:11 - 02:02:53:19
Daniel Franco
I built that house. They don't remember me as con the builder. The house builder. See that church over there? I built that church. But they don't remember me as con the church builder. But you sleep with one. Go.

02:02:53:19 - 02:02:54:22
Claire Parkinson
I don't get that. Well, yeah.

02:02:55:13 - 02:03:03:15
Daniel Franco
So is Judge were the words are you f one go. So now he's known as con the something. Yeah.

02:03:03:20 - 02:03:06:24
Claire Parkinson
So is there a tumbleweed. Do you get that.

02:03:07:18 - 02:03:13:04
Daniel Franco
He's known as con the goat ever.

02:03:13:04 - 02:03:19:06
Claire Parkinson
Oh yes. I see. It takes me a week. Takes you. Well, it's like me. Well, basically.

02:03:19:06 - 02:03:35:19
Daniel Franco
What I'm saying is you can do all this. What joke is supposed to say is you can do all this good and it takes one act for that to be tarnished, and you'll be seen in a different line. So it's it's a it's a pretty profound lesson anyway. So it's just it's a crude joke and we could add it that.

02:03:36:18 - 02:03:41:02
Claire Parkinson
Yeah, I can I can I can I give you a joke? Yeah. I wrote it down.

02:03:41:02 - 02:03:41:22
Daniel Franco
Oh, this is your dad.

02:03:42:03 - 02:03:52:03
Claire Parkinson
This is my dad. Joke. Ready? Yes. I don't trust stairs. They're always up to something, but.

02:03:53:13 - 02:03:58:07
Daniel Franco
Really? Well, we're going to leave it on that note. Thank you very much for your time today.

02:03:58:08 - 02:03:59:21
Claire Parkinson
I didn't use my notes like that.

02:03:59:21 - 02:04:29:15
Daniel Franco
No, didn't need to you. It's all up in your head that it's and it's an amazing story. Kudos to you and your life, your career, everything that you've gone through, the resilience, the grit, the determination and everything that you've achieved and everything that you're positively contributing towards organizations here in South Australia and Australia and your ideas on change, which we are so very aligned with, which is why I really wanted to get you on the show and talk to you about that.

02:04:29:15 - 02:04:38:20
Daniel Franco
And so learning from your experiences and learning from your understandings and the things that you've done I think will be profound for anyone listening. And so thank you so much.

02:04:38:20 - 02:04:39:13
Claire Parkinson
A pleasure.

02:04:40:15 - 02:05:03:20
Daniel Franco
Brilliant. Well, that's it from us, everyone. Thanks again. We'll catch you next time. Thanks for listening to the podcast. So you can check out the show notes. There was anything of interest to you and find out more about us at Synergy IQ dot com. So w I am going to ask though if you did like the podcast, you would absolutely mean the world to me if you could subscribe, write and review and if you didn't like it, that's alright too.

02:05:04:01 - 02:05:13:14
Daniel Franco
There's no need to do anything. Thank you guys. All the best best.