You don't always get to choose when your good idea can be implemented, especially in local government, where there may be other external constraints at any given time. David MacLennan, CEO of the City of Vincent in WA, provides a lesson he has learned throughout his public sector career, in that a good idea should stand alone, and you should never kill a good idea on the basis that it may not work now. His advice is to keep working on that idea, innovation, or reform which you think will add value to the organisation or community so it's ready to go when the time is right, and the door of opportunity opens for it to see the light and grow. Listen to his episode here
Even with extensive experience in various management and executive roles throughout his career, David MacLennan's first challenge as the new CEO of the City of Vincent in WA was to learn how to become comfortable in this role and to figure out what his priorities were and what to start working on from the infinite number of demands that CEO's have on their time. Listen to David explain this further in this FAQ. Listen to his episode here
Listen in as David MacLennan shares one of his proudest achievements over the past five years as CEO of the City of Vincent in WA in this FAQ. David talks about how he was keen right from the beginning to put in place a strategic planning program for each of the 14 areas that run distinct businesses within the organisation that aimed at improving their maturity in terms of service delivery and project management year-on-year and how through a self-assessment that rated the levels of maturity on a capability matrix enables teams to put in place short, medium and long-term business plans in a scaled way without going through painful change management processes. Listen to his episode, and read the full case study here
David MacLennan, CEO of the City of Vincent in WA, talks through how they have developed their organisational performance program in this FAQ. David describes how he has given extreme accountability for each of the fourteen business areas to self-manage and lead their own performance journey and how the cohort of managers has embraced this decentralised approach, which is done at a team level. David shares the details of this program, and how he has set an organisation-wide goal for each team to work to a level of maturity of at least three, with one being adhoc to five being high-performing. Listen to his episode here
Listen in as David MacLennan, CEO of the City of Vincent in WA, shares his perspectives on the importance of continuing to talk with staff, getting their feedback, and figuring out the pain points regarding internal functions that can slow their work down. David shares how while they are on a path to improvement year after year and no organisation is perfect, by addressing the sources of most pain and inefficiency on a systematic process, things that were causing staff pain years ago when he first started have fallen off the list of things that needed to be addressed and how by staff continue to volunteer different things that need to be fixed is a good sign that they feel engaged, listened to, and can see how the organisation is responding to their needs and improving. Listen to his episode here
When David MacLennan started as a CEO for the City of Vincent, he received multiple lists from the council, mayor, and former mayor of externally focussed things to work on and improve. These included project management, community engagement, financial sustainability as an organisation, and dealing with aging assets. As many leaders would appreciate, you can't fix medium and long-term things in the short-term, so you need to set up a process of how you will improve as an organisation and have an agreed understanding of the issues you need to work on. Importantly, in tackling external problems, David also recognised the need to carve out enough time to work internally to improve the organisation's capability and performance all around. David shares his approach to doing this in this FAQ. Listen to his episode here
Listen as David MacLennan, Chief Executive Officer for the City of Vincent in WA, shares his perspectives on how budget constraints and limited resources can actually drive innovation and how that's certainly been the case for his organisation. David shares how these limitations can help staff stop doing things that are inefficient and ineffective and focus on reforming initiatives, and how by filling the gaps in internal governance functions like HR, finance, procurement, and technology support and deliver to people and their line function needs, it can improve the speed and performance of the organisation. Listen to his episode here
CEOs in local government act as the lynchpin between the council that they report upwards to and the organisation which they are responsible for leading, managing, and supporting. David MacLennan, CEO of the City of Vincent in WA, shares how the staff survey showed the pain points around systems, processes, policies, and procedures when he joined as CEO. He acknowledges that while you can't fix these overnight, he could help staff by determining what prickliness he could take out of the way in the short term to then set up systems and processes around how they could improve things over the longer term. Listen to his episode here