We recently completed a podcast series on organisational health and the seven dimensions of wellness. As we explored these dimensions with leading experts in their fields, themes of agility, resilience, adaptiveness, reframing, and purpose resonated throughout our conversations. As we drew conclusions and dived deeper, the underlying current for improving an organisation's overall wellness was the need for change.

Change in how we lead and empower others to create a positive workforce culture that makes people want to stay, and others want to be a part of. Change in how we view new technologies, the opportunities and pathways they create, and how we frame and structure resources across the value chain to realise efficiencies and boost productivity.

Change can be uncomfortable, but it is inevitable

“Particularly in the public service, a lot of our work is complex. Sometimes it’s a slow moving ship that needs to be steered at a minor adjustment… and then you come in a rush where you have to make fundamental change at significant pace”. Scott Johnston, Revenue NSW.

Organisational leaders worldwide have been leading teams through highly volatile and uncertain conditions, with business-as-usual becoming business-is-unusual. As discussed in our Operating Models – reimagine your future whitepaper, we quoted a PwC 2023 CEO Survey where 40% of global CEOs think that their organisation will no longer be economically viable in ten years if it continues on its current course.

Research conducted by McKinsey into the shifts transforming organisations showed that only half of 2,500 business leaders surveyed said their organisation was well prepared to anticipate and react to external shocks. Over two-thirds of these leaders also saw their organisation as overly complex and inefficient.

So we know that change is necessary and it’s constant. But how we approach and manage change needs a rethink. Traditional ways of managing change from the top down, where senior leaders create and communicate change, can no longer cut it. It can slow change and create a disconnect with the workforce leading to attrition. There has to be a better way forward.

Research conducted by Gartner of over 6,500 employees and 100 CHROs worldwide showed that the best organisations rely on their workforce, not just executives, to lead change. A more inclusive approach to engaging the workforce in the organisational strategy, empowering employees to be responsible for implementation, and having more open communication are principles that Gartner refers to as an open-source approach to change. And the results are compelling. Using open-source principles can increase change success from 34% to 58%, increase employee engagement by 38% and increase the intent to stay by 46%.

In our interview with Scott Johnston for episode two of our podcast on organisational health, Scott led us through how he and his team at Revenue NSW created a long-term vision. One of the key lessons that Scott spoke about learning earlier in his career was not engaging enough with his workforce. So when building Revenue NSW’s long-term vision, they collected over 900 pieces of feedback from staff so their vision could grow into something everyone could connect with. It sounded right. It felt right. And it created a sense of belonging.

What are the leading ‘uncomfortable’ changes that organisational leaders must embrace?

To explore this question, let’s look into five significant transformational ‘changes’ that organisations must embrace to succeed now and in the future.

These are:

Shifting mindsets and leading to empower employees – helping teams to become adaptive, responsive, and resilient.
Adopting new technologies responsibly.
Organisational structural changes and resource deployment to gain efficiency.
Realising diversity, equity, and inclusion aspirations.
Playing the new talent game – attraction, retention, and attrition.

Overcoming the mindset hurdle

In our article, Finding the way forward – agility at scale in government, we spoke about overcoming the cultural roadblock when implementing an operating model, especially when these changes result in new ways of working when the structure of working in a sector has been traditionally rigid in design and mindset. In an article written for McKinsey Quarterly, Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger state that the need to shift mind-sets is the biggest block to successful transformations with the key lying in making the shift both at an individual and institutional level at the same time.

In research that they conducted for their book Beyond Performance 2.0, they found that executives at companies that took the time to address mind-sets were four times more likely than those that didn’t to rate their change programs as at least ‘successful’.

Embracing a new type of leadership

Throughout our podcast series on organisational health, we spoke a lot about leadership and, more specifically, what attributes a leader must have today in continuing uncertainty.

When we spoke to Scott Johnston at Revenue NSW in episode two of our podcast, we asked him about how he leads in uncertain times and empowers his team to be more adaptive and responsive. His answer firstly acknowledged that it was hard for organisations to shift gears but that while a clear purpose was critical, you had to understand why and how an organisation is changing, what that means, and question if it stays true to the purpose your employees are connected to.

“We do a lot of belonging in our organisation… that word which probably a few years ago would have felt uncomfortable. But now for me, having a care and belonging strategy means that anyone at Revenue NSW feels connected to our purpose and feels like they can be their best”. Scott Johnston, Revenue NSW.

Belonging was also reinforced in our discussion with Cherie Canning in episode 5 of our podcast series on workplace culture. When we asked Cherie how you build a people-centric culture, she said that psychological safety was the starting point and provided us with the four stages of psychological safety:

Inclusion safety – I am worthy. I belong.
Learner safety – I’m growing. It’s safe to learn and not know all the answers.
Contribution safety – I’m making a difference, and it’s safe to share.
Challenge safety – It’s safe for me to challenge the status quo and fix what’s not working.

And lastly, in episode 6 of our podcast series with Pia Andrews, we spoke about organisational purpose and leadership. Pia reinforced how vital it is for leaders to serve their workforce and shift to empowering them:

“We need to get back to servant leadership. So rather than a lot of the traditional management culture which has come through over the last couple of decades, where managers see their job as managing the tasks and outputs and productivity of their staff, this shift to adaptive leadership to servant leadership is about shifting to empowering teams, delegating down to teams, trusting teams, buying into and understanding and valuing internal expertise and bringing it into the room.” Pia Andrews

Today’s leaders must change how they engage, empower and include their workforce in strategic decisions for their organisation.

The education system and teacher attrition in Australia

The state of the Teacher Workforce in Australia is dire, with 70% of teachers considering leaving their profession.

The Australian Government declared the teacher shortage an unprecedented challenge and developed a National Teacher Workforce Action Plan.

This plan highlights key priority areas: strengthening teacher education, keeping the teachers we have, elevating the profession, and better understanding future workforce needs. Moving any of these priority areas forward requires significant change.

Interestingly, the underlying current across these priorities is a shift in mindset and perceptions to elevate and empower teachers and prospective teachers into the workforce. In Monash University’s 2022 study on over 5,000 Australian Teachers’ perceptions of their work, many sentiments were centred on how teachers are led. Key perceptions from this report were more than just working conditions; they were also centred around respect and appreciation, satisfaction and belonging, and retention and attraction.

How can leaders adopt a different approach to addressing these challenges?

In episode 4 of our podcast series, we spoke with Rodger Watson, who led us through an example of how he used design thinking to reframe a key societal challenge in addressing the crime rate in Kings Cross. How can leaders use this approach to reframe the Teacher crisis in Australia?

Adopting new technologies responsibly

According to McKinsey's The State of Organizations 2023 report, more than half of their global survey respondents on AI said they had adopted AI in at least one of their business units, and nearly two-thirds expected that their companies' investments in AI would increase over the next few years.

Yet according to Boston Consulting Group, Australia lags behind global AI maturity with an average score of 3.5 versus 4.3 globally. The two human and organisational barriers BCG calls out that prevent faster adoption of AI globally are implementation challenges and risk aversion to data sensitivities.

"Australia is lagging global peers in addressing these barriers. Around 70% of Australian organizations have yet to succeed in delivering digital transformation, a critical first step to succeed in AI. In terms of AI maturity, BCG's 2022 data shows that a sample of Australian companies and government agencies self-score their AI maturity at an average of 3.5, lagging the global average of 4.3 out of 10. The Australian score corresponds to a description of "having developed scattered AI projects, with few that are successful, with some alignment between data experts and the business, and with limited value to date." Accelerating Australia's AI Adoption, MAY 11, 2023, By Patrick Forth, Michael Schniering, Andrew Arcuri, and Jonathan Lovelock.

Further to maturity, Australia's investment in AI is significantly lower. Australia only invests a sixth of what Israel invests in AI and a third of what Singapore and the US invest. This means we are ten times less innovative than Israel, five times less than Singapore, and three times less than the US.

So what's putting us behind?

The same BCG report suggests implementing, scaling, managing risk, and gaining customer trust with responsible AI. Propelling organisations forward in their AI aspirations involves having a commitment from resilient leaders to build these new capabilities, a clear, well-developed, and responsible AI (RAI) strategy that aligns with the organisation's purpose, and strategy, access to talent and agile government principles that drive cross-functional ways of working.

In our article, Finding the way forward – agility at scale in government, we listed five critical factors with leading questions for implementations to be successful in any transformation program. These are:

Be anchored in a common and agreed purpose – does your AI strategy align with your organisation's purpose? How does the AI strategy fit your operating model? Will it change or affect how existing people, processes, and technology work together? Will the strategy stay true to the purpose your employees are connected to?
Pilot and implement across the organisation – Have you developed a piloting phase with scenario testing to ensure that your AI strategy can be rolled out successfully across the organisation? Transformation can't be realised if an implementation is limited to parts of the organisation. Careful rollout and scaling across the organisation requires forward planning and adjustment along the way.
Experimentation – Be wary of having a rigid framework when implementing your AI strategy. The overall objectives of agile transformations, in general, are to achieve new ways of working by enabling innovation to deliver outcomes and experimenting whilst remaining mindful of AI-related risks and ethics is part of that.
Identify and align talent accordingly – agile government principles involve evaluating a team's strengths and then looking at how tasks could be consolidated, simplified, and effectively allocated. The same approach should be taken when implementing a Responsible AI (RAI) strategy. For organisations to be successful as they embrace new opportunities that AI offers, clearly defining roles and having the right AI specialists and staff support through the transformation transition is pivotal.
Your operating model is your blueprint. Follow it – Leaders must shift their mindset and be anchored in agreement about the way forward. To implement AI successfully, there needs to be a collective understanding of how AI is first integrated into the organisation and works with the other moving parts across your value chain. Understanding the subtle interactions that could be affected when your AI strategy is implemented is essential. Integrating your AI strategy within your agile operating model acts as the blueprint and will guide you and your team through the phases of the transformation.

Organisational structural changes and resource deployment

Gaining more efficiency is paramount in many organisations today, but how you approach this can mean the difference between making significant returns and alienating or losing staff.

Respondents in McKinsey's State of Organizations Report 2023, provided seven root causes of organisational inefficiency. These were complex structure (41%), unclear roles and responsibilities (40%), unwieldy governance model (34%), redundant activities (32%), unclear processes (28%), slow approval mechanisms (23%) and too many meetings; too much time spent on low-value activities (23%).

Even with the causes of organisational inefficiencies identified, reported challenges in the same report to overcoming these include insufficient resources to drive effort (41%), organisational resistance (39%), limited capacity and capabilities of HR team (37%), unclear number and priority of opportunities (31%) and lack of buy-in from senior managers (22%).

"There's a great book called Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal, and we use that a lot in our Master's program here at UTS. And it's the notion that if you establish multifunctional teams with different expertise from different areas of the organisation, and empower them with decision making in order to achieve their mission, then you're going to get much more adaptive." Rodger Watson, University of Technology, Sydney. Episode 4 of the podcast series on organisational health.

As leaders change their approach to empowering staff to create a greater connection to purpose, a sense of belonging in their organisation, and building trust through delegating down, the age-old dilemma of who is responsible and who is accountable must come into play when looking at gaining efficiency delicately. McKinsey reports that improving role clarity improves accountability, an outcome that's a critical component of organisational health. But with some organisations having as many as 12 layers between the CEO and front line, the approach needs to go deeper than just an organisational structure change. A clear picture of the physical operating environment is necessary, this is your operating model, and it serves as a foundational blueprint.

"An Op model design is all elements; it's all-encompassing, it's holistic, it's the structure, it's the accountabilities, it's governance behaviours, it's the integration of those people, processes, and technology to really support the strategy." Andy Corbett, CorbettPrice. Episode one of Trailblazing with CorbettPrice podcast series.

Case study - Improving application lead times by 33% by establishing an Agile Operating Model.

Being a government regulator is a difficult task that requires attention to detail, dedication to ethical principles, and extensive knowledge of the laws and regulations of a particular jurisdiction. Challenges for government regulators include addressing complex issues, dealing with conflicting interests, maintaining a political balance, and staying abreast of rapid changes in laws or regulations.

One government regulator was coming under the microscope due to their lagging lead times in meeting its statutory obligations. To address this issue, the agency hired us to identify improvements they could make to their operating model to improve lead times and deliver better customer service outcomes.

Our Process

Our first task was to better define the problem the agency was trying to solve. To do so, we took a holistic approach and looked at the issue from a customer and operational perspective. Stepping into each of the agency's customers' shoes allowed us to understand their experience with the regulator and identify where improvements could be made.

We ran a series of interviews and workshops to gain a deeper understanding of the regulator's operating model and compare it to industry standard practices. We explored how jobs were assigned, completed tasks implemented, and the impact technology had on aiding teams in their workflows.

Upon further analysis, we discovered that while pockets of the organisation undertook an agile approach, systemic inefficiencies were still getting in the way of achieving their desired outcome. Many processes and procedures within the regulator's operations were antiquated, leading to a slow bureaucratic workflow. This was further exacerbated by limited flexibility in resource allocation, lack of integration between IT systems, and little evidence of the use of technology to automate or augment tasks.

Having identified the root causes of the issue, we worked together to determine appropriate solutions. This included moving towards an Agile Operating Model to empower staff, improve the employee experience, and stimulate collaboration within and across functions.

Working with internal and external stakeholders, we co-designed an Agile Operating Model characterised by the following:

• A shared purpose and vision

• Flexible resource allocation

• Clear accountabilities

• Robust communities of practice

• Rapid decision and learning cycles

• Servant leadership

• Role mobility

The Results

The new Agile Operating Model was implemented in conjunction with the existing structure and has resulted in a 33% improvement in lead times. The agency has seen a marked improvement in customer satisfaction, increased staff engagement, and an accelerated cycle of learning and adaptation to meet rapidly changing needs. Furthermore, the improved operating model provides greater flexibility for allocating resources and responding to customer needs quickly.

As a result of the successful transformation, the agency can now more effectively manage its statutory responsibilities while also delivering improved outcomes for its customers. This approach provides a roadmap for other government regulators looking to improve their operating model in order to meet their statutory obligations more successfully.

Realising diversity, equity, and inclusion aspirations

“The APS needs diversity in the workforce to deliver innovative policy and services and to maintain the high regard for our integrity and citizen-centric focus.” Australian Public Service Commission’s 2022 Diversity and Inclusion Report.

One of the four key priorities set out in the APS Refo r m Agenda, was that the APS would be a model employer.

Two of the outcomes against this priority are:

Outcome 6 – The APS sets the standard for equity, inclusion and diversity with key initiatives to reduce the gender pay gap and report the progress on this publicly.
Outcome 7 – The APS sets the standard for First Nations employment and cultural competency by boosting First Nations employment in the APS to 5%.

“I think that leaders also need to really think about and be brave about trying to connect to country in different ways, understand learning about Aboriginal knowledge systems, history, context and bringing both a personal sense of connection to country. As well as a system sense of connection to country so that we can be more authentically engaged with the communities that we serve and the place that we serve them from.” Pia Andrews, Episode six of Trailblazing with CorbettPrice podcast series.

In the 2022 Australian Public Service Commission’s report on Diversity and Inclusion, employees from diversity groups were found to have a higher intention to leave their agency or had an increased rate of separation. The reasons for these are poorly understood, and there is a greater need to know why they are choosing to leave their organisations.

Key considerations discussed throughout our organisational health series include how we define and approach inclusive leadership and the psychological safety platform we lay for our workforce.

“Inclusion safety is when people go, I am worthy. I belong. It’s safe to be here. So from a practical sense, I think that’s when it’s about diversity, inclusion, and also it’s actually about just helping people understand their strengths… when people do personality profiling or thinking preferences and just understanding who they are and how they contribute.” Cherie Canning, Luminate Leadership. Episode five of Trailblazing with CorbettPrice podcast series.

Playing the new talent game - attraction, retention, and attrition

"Employees who quit (or who are "quiet quitting") say it isn't just money, work-life balance, professional development, or purpose that will bring them back to work in 2023: it's a combination of all those things." McKinsey State of the Organizations Report 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift in the overall mindset and attitudes of employees toward the focus that they placed on their careers and even their purpose in life. Across the world, high employee attrition rates are a crucial concern of organisational leaders. With the competitive talent landscape shifting power to workers, employers may need more answers to help solve this critical challenge.

In our whitepaper, Turning Attrition into Attraction, we reported that the June 2022 Australian Public Service (APS) census found that a third of APS employees were unhappy with their working conditions, with a reported 70% wanting to leave within the next two years. This report explored the link between employee experience and retention and identified six elements to help improve that experience: inclusivity, choice, purpose, incentives, and tools.

Organisations are taking a key approach in attracting and retaining their workforce by redefining and tailoring their employee value propositions to specific individual needs to bridge the gap between employer needs and employee expectations. Another pathway we discussed in episode seven of our podcast series on organisational health with David Powell was contribution agreements.

"I would also suggest they look at developing what I call contribution agreements, customer-focused contribution agreements. Both customers outside the organisation as well as people they serve or relate with inside the organisation. And a contribution agreement goes far beyond a job description because it articulates how the employee will contribute to the organisation's success, vision, and how the organisation will contribute to the employee's capabilities." David Powell

In David's book, Life Journey Skills, he outlines the five steps in developing such an agreement. These are:

Define their customers
Their customers' value criteria
Value criteria – gold medal performance standards
Work to be done
Two signatures – theirs and yours.

The outcome of such an agreement would be that everyone throughout the organisation knows what is expected of them, the criteria on which they will be judged, the work they need to do, and the expected performance standard.

Solve big problems with the leading specialists in business transformation for the public sector

Our mission at CorbettPrice is to revolutionise the way government organisations operate, making them agile, effective and ready for the challenges of the 21st century.

We have extensive expertise in operating model design and implementation, process improvements, digital transformation, and customer experience design for government agencies. Our team is proven to turn big, strategic problems into opportunities, preparing clients to thrive in today’s rapidly changing world.

If you are under pressure to change through a machinery of government decision, transform your processes, adopt agile and resilient ways of working, become more customer focussed, or empower your staff by connecting the work they do with the organisation they are a part of, our team can help.

With 20 years of experience, we have served over 50 clients and solved over 700 problems, averaging an ROI of 12X.

Speak to us