“After years of global volatility, black swan events continue to upend the world as we know it, yet leaders are finding their toolboxes offer limited options to thrive amid the upheaval”. Accenture, Life Centricity Playbook, July 2022.
We don’t need to look further than our own shores in terms of the Grey Rhinos (known unknowns) and Black Swans (unknown unknowns) events we’ve witnessed in recent years. These events, including flooding and bushfires, the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions and the rise in geopolitical tensions, continue to put us on a high alert as we navigate, and respond to constant uncertainty.
We are faced with the new reality that natural disasters will continue to occur with projections by the CSIRO indicating this could cost Australia $39.3billion per year by 2050, according to their Our Future World Report. The recently released Federal Budget October 2022-23 has the key message of “building a stronger, more resilient economy” with key actions on climate change, protecting the environment and building disaster resilience and preparedness.
Look through other recent political commentary, research and reports globally, and you’ll notice the strong theme of building resiliency in regards to many other known ‘wicked’ problems globally. As The Mandarin eloquently puts it “Just how many shocks can the system stand?”
Reducing vulnerability into the future - moving from crisis response to future readiness
“The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the importance of government resilience – the capacity to absorb shocks, adapt, and then quickly thrive in an altered environment.” Building a Resilient Government, BCG
As the rate of shocks grow in numbers and complexity, governments must focus beyond crisis responses to building resilience by anticipating and planning for more frequent crises in the future that are more disruptive and long-lasting.
Taking action to creating a resilient ‘future-fit’ government
"Australia is at a pivotal point. There is a tidal wave of disruption on the way, and it’s critical we take steps now to get ahead of it." CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall, Our Future World Report.
So what are the likely crises we will face in the future? The CSIRO recently released Our Future World, a report on the 7 identified global megatrends that will impact the way we live over the next few decades.
CSIRO Global megatrends:
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The need to adopt new ways of operating in the face of continuing extreme weather events.
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The drive for achieving a more sustainable future and the role that science, technology and innovation plays in helping organisations to achieve this.
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How we can use preventive health and precision health as health challenges emerge to supporting better citizen outcomes.
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Understanding the long term impacts of current and emerging geopolitical shifts to science, technology, supply chains and trade and defence strategy.
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The continuing and rapid adoption of digital and data technologies and the opportunities that they enable.
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The growing role of AI and related capabilities in solving challenges and the responsible use and considerations of these developments.
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Changing citizen needs and the increasing need for transparency to maintain trust.
It’s essential that governments evolve the way they plan and prepare for such events. It’s paramount to restoring the trust lost in recent years from citizens as they seek security in the face of uncertainty and have increased expectations of governments to act swiftly and effectively to crises now and to lessen their impact in the future.
An operating model approach helps to build resilient, future-fit governments through:
Taking an outcomes- based approach.
In the past, governments have focused more on measuring outputs rather than looking at the outcome and value that they are created for citizens. In order to restore trust and in line with the APS Reform Agenda, people have to be at the centre of the policies and services the APS provides. In our article: Finding the way forward – agility at scale within Government, we discuss how governments should transform through an agile operating model approach. By definition, an agile enterprise is an adaptive and responsive organisation that’s characterised by a network of teams that are unified with a common purpose and configured around delivering outcomes.
Why is this important?
In terms of crises and disruptions, citizens want the reassurance that governments have their best interests in mind and are working to deliver the best outcomes possible. McKinsey’s Global Survey showed that highly successful agile transformations resulted in a 30% increase in customer satisfaction and operational decision making whilst the speed of decision making increased by five-to-tenfold. But the link to successful customer satisfaction is the shift in delivering the outcome and value to customers.
Gaining a clear view of all elements across the value chain and understand how they interact with each other.
When facing with multiple disruptions in a short space of time, governments may face bandwidth restraints to create new solutions, weigh up the consequences of taking alternative approaches or measure the effectiveness of their responses. Whilst there are many factors to consider, a clear benefit of an operating model is having an understanding of how all the moving parts fit together across your value chain, and transparency into the subtle interactions between them. This can help leaders to make effective changes without causing unintended consequences.
Why is this important?
Citizens look to the government to make fast, effective decisions and take appropriate action in times of uncertainty. They also expect that the government will do this with the minimal amount of disruption to their everyday lives.
Managing and reducing risk responsibly.
“We cannot predict what the future will hold, but scenario planning helps us prepare for it by pushing thinking beyond immediate problems”. Thodey Review, 2019.
In the independent review of the APS in 2019, dubbed as The Thodey Review, research was commissioned into the exploration of global trends that were likely to affect the APS in the coming decades. This was then used for scenario planning showing what potential environments could look like and helped shift thinking, and planning, from immediate challenges to what the future could hold. In an operating model approach, iterative piloting, scenario testing, modifications and buffers are essential to ensuring identified areas that would need improvements over time are planned for.
Why is this important?
In times of crisis, such as key flooding events over the past few years, many communities can find themselves without essential supplies. Scenario planning for these events, which are predicted to increase in frequency, can allow governments to have better responsive and preventive plans in place.
Clearly defined roles that enable effective and efficient collaboration.
A key step in designing an operating model is working in collaboration with teams to understand their daily work, and analyse performance across the end-to-end value chain to identify unnecessary waste. This involves assessing an agency’s capability against other similar functions across government to gather insights for potential improvements. The outcome of taking this co-design approach is that roles and accountibilities are clarified, which enables effective collaboration, and tasks can be consolidated, simplified and allocated, resulting in greater efficiency and higher-performing teams.
Why is this important?
Complex challenges take whole of government approaches that involve all levels, and require collaboration with those who sit outside of government. To enable collaboration, silos must be broken down and capabilities deployed where necessary. Having an agile operating model acts as the mechanism to enable information, resources, and teams to be deployed quickly around a cluster of needs to drive outcomes for citizens, businesses and the greater community at large.
Empowering teams and strengthening workplace culture.
There has been much focus on culture and capability in the APS with many reviews, initiatives and changes outlined in the APS Reform Agenda. In continuing times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), significant changes to the way we work and respond are constant. When implementing changes like reconfiguring teams, and decentralising decision-making, leaders can be faced with the barrier of overcoming the cultural mindset, a key factor that can make or break transformations which we covered in our article: Finding the way forward – agility at scale within Government An operating model acts as a blueprint, bringing clarity across key factors including purpose, the workplace environment, governance and leadership.
Why is this important?
When employees are united with a common purpose and are striving for delivering valuable outcomes to those they serve, they have increased engagement which results in a stronger and more positive workplace culture.
Helping regional towns recover through
an operating model approach
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To support the economy of regional towns that were impacted by the 2019-20 bushfires and COVID-19 pandemic, a government agency engaged CorbettPrice as part of a multi-million dollar visitor infrastructure program to help design and deliver exceptional nature-based experiences to return and increase tourism to the regions.
This project required a place-based approach which spanned across multiple teams in several government agencies as well as other stakeholder groups which included local businesses and tourism bodies.
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Focusing on the outcome with initiative alignment
Our task was to design this agency’s operating model to define their role in increasing regional tourism and supporting the economy of regional towns. This involved a realignment of priorities through validating existing initiatives and dropping others that didn’t align.
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Understanding the bigger picture with clarity on critical partnerships
Forming a design team of representatives from each stakeholder group, we held workshops to define visitor personas and map their journey. This process helped teams to visualise the experience in the eyes of their visitors, taking a customer-centric approach to identify challenges with the current operating model and appreciate the critical role that local businesses and other parties play in defining the visitor experience to then direct improvement efforts accordingly.
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Future-fit roles and responsibilities
Through our approach, we defined the role of agency teams in the future, including an accountability framework that spanned internal and external stakeholders.
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Guiding teams and strengthening outcomes
We developed a roadmap of initiatives required to transform the operating model, helping them to define how they will deliver the objectives of their major infrastructure projects. This framework acted as the North Star to guide staff on the direction of the program.
Future-fitting your agency
With increasing Grey Rhino and Black Swan events now and into the future, the only certainty we face is that organisations need to be resilient and future-fit. This can be difficult for organisations to do successfully when they are unsure of the underlying root causes that are preventing them from moving forward.
In our experience, public sector organisations that are ‘stuck’ and unable to move forward usually have the following symptoms:
Low customer and stakeholder satisfaction with service delivery
Low PMES results in their teams
Inability or difficulty in meeting statutory timeframes
Poor internal and/or external team collaboration
Mental health decline in teams with increased burnout and feelings of being overwhelmed
Recent restructures and investments that are failing to produce results
If your organisation is experiencing any of these, we can offer you a way out. Our highly experienced team can help organisations to get to the bottom of the problem, prescribe a solution and then provide an actionable, long-term plan that enables effective change. Reach out to us if you would like to know how to get started.
