Designing the Future of Mental Health Through Social Listening: A System Translator’s Role

There’s a difference between monitoring data and listening.

In health systems, we’re often great at the former, collecting data, tracking usage, measuring what can be measured. But true listening? That’s something else. It asks more of us. It requires us to not just hear but to interpret, translate, and then build systems that are both different and meaningful.

That’s the kind of work I do at Dialectical Consulting. I work as a system translator, sitting at the intersections where strategy, service design, and human experience meet. And I spend a lot of time thinking about how we bring real nuance, complexity, and care into systems that weren’t always designed to hold them.

So I’m pleased to share that I’ve been appointed to Medibank’s Mental Health Reference Group, a role that signals the organisation’s serious commitment to future-focused reform. Not just more of the same, but a genuine step toward rethinking how services, products, and programs are designed and delivered at scale.

My appointment, and that of my peers, reflects that intent, and I bring with me the tools and thinking that have always shaped and fuelled my work.

Two core frameworks I bring to systems work feel especially relevant right now: social listening and digital gardening.

Social listening, in the context of systems and services, isn’t about tracking sentiment. It’s about understanding what people are actually signalling through their choices, barriers, workarounds, and lived experiences. It’s the unspoken patterns. The human data gets missed when we only pay attention to what’s formally said or statistically visible.

Digital gardening is different again. It’s a mindset I borrow from digital culture—one that values evolving ideas, organic thinking, and the careful cultivation of knowledge over time. At Dialectical, I use it to inform how we think about strategic reform: as something that grows, that needs tending, and that doesn’t always benefit from being forced into a single, linear outcome.

These ways of thinking aren’t just philosophies but rather practical tools I bring to projects. They inform how I work with executive teams, how I help organisations think differently, and how I design systems that centre people first and improve access.

Being part of Medibank’s commitment to strengthening mental health services, products, and programs at scale is a privilege, and it’s a reflection of the kind of contribution I’m here to make.

To read more about Medibank’s Mental Health Reference Group - https://www.medibank.com.au/livebetter/newsroom/post/medibank-mental-health-reference-group