Conference Paper

Communicating change.  Dealing with structural and cultural change

“Communicating change.  Dealing with structural and cultural change” presentation to cover the following:-

  Identifying potential challenges – issues management techniques.

  Community consultation processes

  Communication campaigns looking at internal & external audiences

  Branding – consultation process, new brand, communication of the brand, building of community (internal & external)

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests,

Thankyou for providing me with this opportunity to speak on a topic which has

long been a professional and personal passion of mine and that is undertaking

successful change management strategy in the workplace.

The role of the Communications Professional in a change management

environment is perhaps one of the most critical and yet one of the least valued

roles by organisations genuinely interested in undertaking sensitive long lasting

cultural and structural change in an organisation.

Over a thirty year career I have either driven, actively participated in or watched

with interest from the sideline as organisations I have been associated with have

engaged in major change initiatives. In the early part of my career, when I was

more likely a passenger or observer to the activity, it never ceased to amaze me

that many CEOs or executives would engage in a major change experience

without first consulting or involving their communications team. Let me tell you

that, in my experience over those thirty years, change programs which do that

are almost always destined to fail. Even when communications teams are called

in at some point in the project there is a greater chance that the project overall

will fail and the reason is simply this. It goes to the state of mind of the change

driver. Anyone who is genuinely committed to making lasting positive changes,

particularly in a major structural change initiative or behavioural change

initiative, will want to ensure that all of the stakeholders to the journey of change

are properly informed, consulted, considered and knowledgeable. Without those

elements, the change process will falter and managers who engage in change

before first considering the full communications suite are more likely not to take

those elements as seriously through the change process.

What I would like to share with you in this session, are some of my experiences

in driving major change programs which have either involved major behavioural

change or structural change, such as the forced amalgamations in Queensland in

2007/2008, with some reflection on the lessons I have learned over my more

than 30 years in doing this type of work. As I indicated previously, I have built a

career in managing the process of changing workplace environments and along

the way I have come to appreciate that a successful change process is almost

always dependent on the way in which people are managed and communicated

with. In short, managing effective change in an organisation requires a focus on

the people are going to be impacted by it with a genuine desire to make the

outcome better for them in the long run. Many change management

communications programs focus on the message but forget the audience or

concentrate on making the key representatives look good, rather than approach

change management with a key concern for the welfare of those affected by the

change process.

In the 14th century, an artist by the name of Michaelangelo Buornotti (1475), was

credited with writing that “the greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim

is too high and we miss the target but that our aim is too low and we hit it”.

The comment, whilst a product of the 14th century, nevertheless reflects a view

that, in this business at least, we cannot afford to settle for mediocre. The fact

is, too many change management programs, including the communications

process, follow a formula driven approach and assume all change processes are

the same. It remains one of the reasons so many programs fail.

Noted management author, Leslie Gaines- Ross wrote in CEO Capital, A guide to

Building CEO reputation and company success that more than 2 thirds of major

corporate change programs fail for lack of adequate and sustained execution,

attributed in most part to failed communication activity and the CEOs

commitment to the communications process.

As a former communications specialist (and I use the word former quite

deliberately), some of my lessons on good communication have been learned

through failure and so I will share some of those experiences with you today as

well.

Today the focus of my presentation will be on three topic areas, time permitting

  Identifying potential challenges – issues management techniques.

  Consultation processes

  Communication campaigns looking at internal & external audiences

We will also touch on the importance of brand but generally these comments will be woven into my general discussion.

,Now in order to add some context to my comments today, it is important to

remember these views have been formed over a long career in Executive

Leadership, communications and change management. It’s also important to

remember that the communications industry and Local Government generally

has changed significantly over the past thirty years, so in order to do my

comments justice, we perhaps have to look back a little at how things have

progressed.

When I first commenced work as a communications specialist, there were very

few communications experts working in the field of local government. In fact,

when I took up my first Local Government role as a Public Relations consultant

with the former Albert Shire in Queensland’s Gold Coast hinterland (Now better

known as the Gold Coast City) I was one of a rare bunch of people entering that

profession in local government. Communications was, to a large extent, the

domain of elected representatives. It could be anything from charismatic to

downright embarrassing to watch in action and consisted of a lot of parish pump

meeting style activity. Media training was very rare and the concept of staying

on message was as foreign as the idea of the role of communications being

something anyone would do for a living.

Computers were still in their relative infancy in the workplace and

communication was, to a larger degree controlled by mass media or letter box

drops for more intimate direct communication with customers or ratepayers,

supported by public meetings where reasonably large crowds would turn out to

debate the issues with the local councillor of the day. Even consultation was in a

relatively unsophisticated stage in the industry and there existed an

overwhelming belief that good consultation existed when our local councillors

met with their constituents at the local church, school or community fair. How

times have changed, for the better I might add.

In fact, change itself was something that happened a little less frequently and, in

local government at least, there was still the notion that people could and would

be loyal to an organisation, in many cases, for life. It was still fashionable to see

employees with strong organisational loyalty sticking with the council for the

duration of their working lives and Councils were seen to have a much greater

degree of control over the day to day life of families and communities (and

Councillors had much greater local influence). Today, the notion of a job for life

and, therefore loyalty to the organisation through life is much less prominent,

but it still occurs and poses interesting challenges for CEOs and communications

professionals when major change impacts on those persons who expect to see

their working life out in one organisation as well as those whose loyalties are not

so deep to an organisation and who will move on during structural change if the

organisation’s new direction doesn’t suit their personal values. The issue of a

lack of life long loyalty is an important issue for communications professionals.

The absence of brand loyalty on a grand scale means that the task of

communicating is significantly more difficult, the arguments must be more

convincing and, I believe, genuine and the message must be followed by action

that is consistent with the message.

Of note, our reform driven federal government today is faced with an enormous

credibility problem because the public utterances do not often gel with the

reality of action and this creates greater scepticism within the community which

is harder to work with in the future as new changes are made and

communications issued.

As communications professionals, your reputation is on the line in the messages

you formulate and the advice you provide.

During the forced amalgamations of 150 Local councils into 75 in Queensland in

2007, I was the CEO of Beaudesert Shire Council, a small but rapidly expanding

council south West of Brisbane. My council had just been abolished and I was

faced with the task of allocating staff to one of two councils that was to take over

the territory previously within Beaudesert’s jurisdiction.

In the course of meeting with all 600 staff, I was asked to meet with the

mechanical workshop staff, where there were two gentlemen who had each

served more than forty years with the one organisation. It was the first time

that, as a CEO I had to sit with two grown men who had broken down and, with

tears in their eyes were asking me what was going to happen to them now. The

concept for them, when they had worked in the one workshop in the same

organisation and at such a late stage in their lives, being moved to some other

operation was unthinkable and, even though both were close to retiring, neither

was ready to face that prospect. Communication during periods of significant

change can, and often will, be very personal, and successful communicators will

never forget that. Amidst the messages that need to be delivered, at the end of

the day, it is all about people’s lives and how your actions impact on them.

Thankfully in this case I was able to assure both gentlemen that, for them at

least, nothing would change and that they would continue to work out their

career in the same workshop. To my knowledge, one has now retired and the

other is still working in the same location, happily with the new council.

That particular episode reinforced two key messages to me at the time.

1. People deal with information in their own way and no amount of spinning

information will impact on that. People, based on their own life

experiences and personalities, tend to arrive at acceptance of difficult

messages in their own time. All change management communications

processes need to factor this important message into their programming

and it is a topic I will touch on shortly.

2. People have to be prepared to listen to the messages given and again, no

amount of changing the message will work if people aren’t listening or

taking the message on board. The two gentlemen in Beaudesert only

heard amalgamation initially and then started to worry about what it

meant for them rather than moving to seek new information to either

validate their fears or assist their own decisions. It took time to get the

message through and, in the end, whilst I doubt one of them ever got the

message, the reassurances we were able to provide for them gave them

an outcome that suited their purposes.

As communication technology has improved over the last twenty years or more,

so too has the demand for greater communication with local communities. To a

degree positions shifted in the 90’s when those amusing handbag styled mobile

phones of the early 90’s came onto the market place. In local government they

quickly became the domain of senior management and the ever increasing

number of public relations staff that were joining local government. Smart CEOs

and Councillors began to realise that news would travel faster and they could

take greater advantage of media to convey messages if they took on the new

technology. To a large degree the issue of consultation with the community was

still rather unsophisticated in its operation as Councillors considered their daily

interaction with constituents counted for consultation and the key aim of the

public relations departments in the 80s and early 90’s was to get the message

out either via electronic media, newsletters and the press.

Over a relatively few short years, times and expectations have changed and, not

only do communications teams within local government have a more

sophisticated approach compared to my early experiences, but the range and

skills sets of employees in the communications fields in local government, the

public and private sector generally has become more diverse and capable of

thinking outside of the box.

I have been asked to speak today on the topic of communicating change, with a

particular focus on structural and cultural change. Whilst I am a working

specialist in change management, I should perhaps note that I no longer

consider myself as an expert in communications in this arena. The world of

communications has become so complex that I, like many others come to

increasingly rely on technical experts to keep up to date with the ever changing

communications technologies and tools. However, change, in whatever form is

about people and today most of what I will talk about reflects almost exclusively

in that domain.

So, putting history to the side, let’s take a look at issues management in a

change environment. This is perhaps the most intense part of the

communications mix these days. The twenty four hour news cycle has

conditioned the way we operate today in both private and public sectors and

issues management, involves managing the issues of the moment. I am sure

there are any number of experts in this room who spend most of their working

day focussed on the day to day issues which consume the political and

organisational environment they operate in and that they can speak more

eloquently on that topic than I. Issues management at any time in the local

government arena requires those in communications roles to constantly scan the

horizon, be vigilant for elements of change in the community or issues which

might often have an instant or negative impact on the business. In the context

of managing change, issues management is critical for ensuring projects don’t

become derailed by mistakes, deviation from message, damaging information

coming into the public arena or disquiet within the organisation or wider

community. It is by nature very short term and immediate. Communications

professionals need to be able to separate out the long term strategic

communications endeavours in a major cultural and structural change process

from the issues management processes, which are a subset of the whole

equation.

In the early 1990s I took on the role of Manager for communications, marketing

and community affairs with Logan City Council. Logan city in the early 90’s was

an interesting experience for a communications specialist. It was a community

that had a split personality, in part shaped by the two major highways which split

the city at its east and western parts. Its reputation was largely as a lower socio

economic area, although there were wealthy suburbs within the boundary.

Logan, as a city just over ten years old hadn’t fully developed its own specific

character and so consequently it had a reputation built on the back of

progressive negative media. People were genuinely “embarrassed’ to be

associated with the city, due to its location and media profile centred around the

suburbs of Woodridge and Kingston and a large part of my task in those early

days was to get some recognition of the area in a more positive light, with a

particular focus on the people who actually deliberately or by circumstances

called Logan home. The council was developing its own culture of a city for

families work and play but it needed to convince the community and its own staff

that the brand was really representative of the region.

The region and, by its nature, the council was an issues rich environment, with

relatively high crime, low socio economic community reputation issues, a

number of major damaging events such as the Kingston Toxic waste event,

where gold tailings where found in the middle of a high density suburb causing

major relocations and dismantling of almost a third of the suburb to name a very

small number of constant issues always in play. Working in communications in

Logan provided a rare opportunity to practice all of the tried and true

communications techniques and invent new ways to get to communities and, for

me at least was an invaluable lesson in shaping my perceptions and education

about how to change workplace and community cultures.

For the council the focus was on building its brand of a family friendly city and in

order to combat the negative press it took the decision to take a proactive

response and position on every issue which had a public face in the city.

Consequently, our role became to brief the Mayor daily on any news that had a

Logan flavour, good or bad, chasing media for comment and never refusing a

media interview, no matter if it was about good or bad news. The issue for us

was in raising the profile of key people and making them available, gave us an

opportunity to sprinkle good news, even when the news was all bad. We

controlled who could speak, including restraining councillors on certain matters,

trained hard in media communications and generally prevented staff being able

to speak to the media (unless their expertise lent credibility to a story). Now

you can discuss the merit of the approach and there are certainly variations of

that approach, but we were largely able to get buy in because reputation for the

city, and by extension the council, was so bad that councillors wanted to do

something about it. It is interesting to note that over the past 10-15 years, the

process has assisted councillors because very few ever change in an election,

even during amalgamation time. Similarly, the city has continued to grow in its

reputation over the past twenty years.

A simple exercise, which came out of our issues management discussions

looking for some diversions on major topics, which took two years to convince

the television stations to take on board but which had a profoundly positive

effect on identity for the region, was in setting up a certified weather station in

Logan and getting the channel nine and seven news stations to put the location

as a separate weather report from Brisbane.

This simple step helped to create a separate identity for the region and gave

people an anchor on which to talk about Logan as a separate location rather than

it as a part of Brisbane. Having news crews set up in the city also meant that

they had to find positive stories as well as the negative to fill their day. This

gave us an inroad to keep pushing information and opportunity their way. These

types of actions, I believe, have been responsible for the eventual turnaround of

the city’s reputation. Of course there were other actions that lead with that

event, too numerous to mention here today and quite deliberately implemented

as part of a three year communications and brand strategy for the region to get

the media, more specifically, talking about Logan in more positive tones. It was

a fact that for the early part of Logan’s history media stations only mentioned

Logan when they were talking about negative news, such as the capture of

criminals who broke out of jail, thefts, fires etc and not to provide any positive

news. Media, in my view, subconsciously did this as a way of protecting

Brisbane’s identity on a wider scale, such was the parochial nature of local

media. At the same time we were able to convince media to run weather for the

city, we were also able to convince them to establish branch offices in Logan

which the community partially funded. This gave them an insight, and us a

regular contact to present more positive stories about the region. All of this was

invaluable in an era where the internet hadn’t yet been established as a wide

community tool for communicating and shaping influence over the region.

The lesson for me, in setting up the weather station to provide a diversion

discussion point for the community, was to look outside of the conventional

communication tools and focus on the big picture, even in managing issues of

the day. The great South East campaign, which has been running in South East

Queensland media for more than twenty years now, was created by a group in

which I was part of, to divert attention away from Brisbane and more onto the

satellite towns and cities of South East Queensland, such as Redcliffe, Ipswich,

Caboolture and even the sunshine coast. It was a major investment in time and

resources, but it has been an extremely successful campaign in opening up local

community understanding of what is offered outside of Brisbane in South East

Queensland and all at a local government driven focus. Whilst Logan has by no

means entirely escaped its lower socio tag, it has developed with a more positive

tag than would have been thought possible in the early days and the seeds had

to be planted some twenty years ago.

This brings me to the next point in communicating change, particularly where

culture change is the key outcome being sought, and that is that changing

behaviour requires sustained and continuous effort.

As I am sure all of you know, workplace cultural change cannot be achieved

over-night. A lot of the work that communications specialists do in politically

active organisations such as local government involves short sharp campaigns to

convey key messages, with some hope of community acceptance and change in

attitude or behaviour. In fact it is an ongoing process where the real changes

more often than not in a significant change effort take upward of three to five

years to achieve, both at a community level and within an organisation. It is

absolutely critical to have an appreciation of this and to work hard to ensure

those around you and whom you answer to realise this. Too often in my career I

have had to argue with Boards and elected councillors who often have a short-

term perspective, expecting major change to be effected in terms of

organisational and community behaviour on the back of a short run

communication campaign. It simply doesn’t happen and any perceived change,

without ongoing reinforcement will not be sustained.

I have recently been presented with another opportunity to demonstrate the

value of establishing a long term communication plan to deliver change and the

consequences of failing to do at.

My current employer CQUniversity is perhaps one of the truly national

universities in Australia. Whilst most Universities have upwards of 3-4

campuses, CQUniversity has eleven campuses, located from Mackay in North

Queensland to Adelaide in South Australia, and in every capital city in between.

The campuses outside of Queensland have been traditionally operated as

International campuses, with the vast majority of students being from outside

Australia as part of our international program. CQU operates these campuses

through a wholly owned Subsidiary company called C Management Services (Or

CMS as I will call them from this point).

When the company was bought and brought into the CQU family there was

absolutely no work carried out by the University in bringing the group culturally

under the fold of the University’s banner. Consequently, the Senior executive of

the company continued to inculcate the old culture of the business through its

employees. Those employees continued to see themselves not as a part of the

university but as a separate entity providing an independent service.

Over a ten year period, the degree of hostility between CQU employees and CMS

employees has grown. Standards are different, policy frameworks remain

different and there is constant tension between key players on both sides in

regards to performance issues and strategic direction to the point that the

relationship is predominantly run through the legal agreement that established

the company partnership.

Just over a month ago the Vice Chancellor of the University, a visionary leader

who has done much to turn around our business over the past two years,

terminated the employment of the two leading executives of the company and

we have commenced the long journey of bringing the company into the

CQUniversity fold.

I should note that there is a lot of goodwill among staff but from a management

perspective, the relationships and performance issues had deteriorated to a

point where the risks to the university were great. What makes the issue so dire

is that almost 40% of the University’s business lies in international business,

which as I said before was operated by our subsidiary company. For all of my

sins I have inherited, among my current role, the CEO role for CMS and the

responsibility for turning around the company over the next six to twelve

months.

The process of integrating the business fully into CQU’s operations has begun

and will require extensive and ongoing communication effort, with a focus on the

people who individually and as a group will make it a success. It will require

considerable investment in time, resources, new systems and policy work and a

clear strategic direction being set out for the group. Importantly, the journey of

change has commenced with full disclosure to the employees of CMS. Following

the termination of the CEO and CFO, I undertook a personal tour of all the

campuses, in Gold Coast, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, which are operated

by CMS to lay out the case for change to them. Nothing was hidden, questions

were answered frankly and commitments given (which to date remain honoured)

to keep staff fully informed as changes are made and to consult on those

changes. What we will be looking to do over the coming months is to ensure

that staff realize they are part of the CQU enterprise and not just a service

provider to the University.

We have commenced all of the standard communication practices, such as a

regular communique to staff, open access to the new CEO for questions, which

are responded to in an open forum and frankly. Key executives have formed a

new executive team and a core part of their responsibility is to shepherd staff

through the changes and to pay as much time and care to the people side of

change as the process and service delivery side.

The business also has a significant number of providers and agents in other

countries, such as India, China, Singapore, Korea and the USA. All of these

agents have to take on the new culture and standards that are being demanded

of CMS and so there have also been several trips to give people the messages in

a face to face manner.

For this business, the challenges are significant, largely driven by the distances

that have to be covered. Fortunately for us, we are able to use well developed

video conferencing technology set up across all of our business, but there is, in a

change environment, little substitute for face to face interaction in a constant

and regular manner so that people see your sincerity and come along on the

journey.

Of course in Local government amalgamations the distances are not always so

significant, but the commitment to move around the various former territories,

speaking regularly with staff and key customers shouldn’t be underestimated. It

requires careful planning and a reasonable amount of commitment and stamina,

but it will pay dividends. This was certainly a key element of communicating

change from my perspective in both the Beaudesert Council abolition in 2007

and the building of a new workplace culture at the Rockhampton Regional

Council following the amalgamations.

As the General Manager for Marketing and Customer Service for Brisbane Water,

I was responsible for introducing the marketing campaign to convert residents

from a rate based system to user pays principles in the late 90’s. The campaign,

which in those days cost more than $1 million dollars was an initial six month

campaign, but the ongoing campaign trail went on for two years beyond that

with further follow up consultation and communication with customers for a

number of years. The campaign initially was successful, more a consequence of

it being launched at the right time when people were looking for change, but its

real success was that the Brisbane community moved almost seamlessly to a

user pays system with very little resistance and widespread community

behaviour has well and truly adopted the user pays position in water delivery. Its

long term position had to be cemented by sustained effort and a commitment by

both sides of the Council to support user pays (a rarity in Brisbane City, even in

the late 90’s).

Dr Ken Grayson a post doctoral researcher last year completed a study of what

actions might be required to reposition the Gold Coast as a diversified business

destination in national and international markets. The study commenced prior to

the downturn in the Gold Coasts’ fortunes but has special resonance given its

economic slump of recent years courtesy of the GFC. It was for him a study on,

among other things, what marketing and communications efforts needed to be

undertaken to reposition the Gold Coast which has been seriously flagging in

terms of its growth and status as an international market place. His work, which

involved completing a comparison case study of seven global cities, came to the

conclusion that development of a city brand requires long term financial and

strategic commitment from Councils which are, it turns out, incompatible with

the short term imperatives of elected representatives.

Of course if you were to talk with most Council CEOs they might scratch their

heads, tell you they could have told you that and wonder why anyone would

bother to actually do serious Doctoral level research on it. In truth though,

among other research his work provides strong empirical evidence of the

difficulties communications and marketing specialists within Local government

will continuously face as they work to make sustainable change in the local

government arena.

Herein lies one of the major issues for managing change in the local government

environment or in government instrumentalities generally. Change of behaviour,

which is largely what represents cultural change, more often than not requires a

considerable effort over an extended period of time. In a political environment,

which is increasingly driven by shorter time frames and issues of a short term

nature, conducting long term communication programs which aim to deliver

major change can be more challenging for Communications teams who will be

distracted by other more immediate pressing issues.

The key to success in managing long term change programs and the

communications effort is in keeping a strong strategic focus on the outcomes

and the program required. Councils with larger budgets may be inclined to

employ resources which are more project related and which can lead change

communications projects over an extended period, but for many councils getting

additional budget for these types of projects will often be difficult and not

politically supported, therefore they must rely on management maintaining the

focus.

More often than not, getting changes in behaviour requires a constant and

persistent repetition of message (mixed with a constant testing and re testing of

the market place to monitor whether change is occurring). Repetition is even

more important in this technological age, where people are overwhelmed with

information flows and less likely to absorb information conveyed in shallow

bursts.

Neville Wran, former NSW Premier is noted for saying that in order to get people

to hear a message, you have to keep saying it again and again and again. When

you start to get sick of it, people are probably only starting to get it and you

need to keep saying it. This has, become part of the focus of a lot of media

strategy in government, where sound bites are repeated often in as many

forums as possible and, certainly in the political arena, by as many people within

the fold as possible.

Having undertaken a range of significant organisational restructures, one of

which was the winding up of the council at Beaudesert in South East Queensland

and the divesting of the business to two other councils who were to become

responsible for the territory, it has always been important to me to have the key

communications persons involved in the change process from the very

beginning. One of my strong management preferences has always been to have

the communications group report directly to my office. This is not just because

the person who controls communication in an organisation largely controls the

power base and environment, it is about ensuring you have a key advisor close

to you all the time working on ensuring that communications are being dealt with

constantly and from the earliest possible point.

In Local Government, it is often the case that elected members will want to, and

be able to use the services of the communications group. By having the group

as a direct control, it provides an additional insight into what people are trying to

push through the group and enables the CEO to keep the message focussed as

much as is humanely possible.

In a major organisational structural change, it is obviously critical to understand

the stakeholders and their role in the change. For instance, the community at

large (which should always be dissected closely along user groups, cultural

groups and vested interests) will be important stakeholders in being informed at

a high level in terms of ensuring continuity of service, and it will be critical to

consult with them and keep them informed through change processes, because

personnel and structure changes inevitably always bring some potential

disruption of change to service delivery. However, in many cases, the

communication program will often be more campaign focussed than consultative

with external groups for generalized change, though good service oriented

organisations will almost always take the opportunity to consult at these times to

look for service improvement opportunities. In addition, it is also critical that

there is some localised consultation with stakeholders, such as key service

providers (service contact points will inevitably change), and government

representatives (again, contact points inevitably shift and in that case, it

becomes critical).

For staff, on the other hand, those both directly and indirectly involved in the

structural changes need to be clearly understood, broken into relevant

consultation groups and, especially where structure change is major, such as an

amalgamation, consultation needs to be focussed and well disciplined.

In the early part of the past decade I was appointed to my first job as a CEO,

which was outside of the local government or water arena and, in fact outside of

government. The role was as CEO for the Victorian Farmers Federation, A

member organisation which was both a farmer service organisation and the

primary farm lobby organisation for the farming sector in Victoria.

The Federation, in part due to significant reform within the agriculture sector,

had seen a significant decline in membership and was trading at considerable

ongoing and unsustainable losses annually. The Board at the time was

concerned that the future of the organisation was in significant jeopardy if major

structural and operational change wasn’t undertaken in the short term. Enter

me as its new CEO with a brief to bring to the Board a major restructure plan

within one month, which I duly did. Now you have to remember this was my first

role as a CEO and so there is enormous enthusiasm in that for bringing major

change that can quickly demonstrate my wider industry credentials.

What, in fact, I paid insufficient attention to, in those early days, even with my

wealth of understanding of communications practice, was understanding all of

my stakeholders, including, most importantly, the Board of Management. What

they had said to me was that I had a mandate to make major change to protect

the long term interests of the organisation, which was a federation of eight

different commodity groups. What they hadn’t said, but in hindsight their body

language had conveyed was, they didn’t want too radical an approach. What, in

fact I gave them was a plan to reduce the workforce by more than 25%,

centralization of budget controls to reign in unruly and undisciplined behaviour of

some of the commodities, greater control for the Board and a centralized

management team (which they liked some of) and major review and reduction in

some services which had been unpopular and which were draining Federation

funds.

Whilst the plan was ultimately adopted, it wasn’t without considerable effort on

my part to convince the Board and then, over a three month period to go out and

convince the membership about the necessity of reform. This included holding

meetings where significant numbers of members of particular commodity

groups, such as Dairy came out to voice their opinions about the upstart who

was new to their industry intent on destroying it. One of those meetings

involved 500 plus angry farmers and so I learnt some very valuable lessons in

making sure you first understood the environment you were working within. This

brings me to my next lesson and that is that effective communications is not

always about the written or spoken word but all of the signals around those, such

as body language, group behaviour and cultural expectations.

Managing major change initiatives has taught me more about the value of face

to face interaction, even in this day of high technology communications with

stakeholders. Understanding People is the key to all major change and

communications and when the issue is important enough, they will almost

always prefer to be face to face with someone to see the whites of their eyes

when a message is being delivered and to have the opportunity to respond. It

adds enormous credibility to the message. For me, the fact that I was happy to

front up to meeting after meeting week in and out for months around country

Victoria, added enormously to the credibility I was able to gather in the early

days of the VFF’s transition, which enabled the group over time to become

perhaps the most prominent voice in the industry for a number of years.

Of course, what I had concentrated on and which gave me fewer problems, was

the staff involved. As the plan called for a reduction in staff by about 25%, there

was the inevitable nervousness from staff about their immediate and long term

future with the company. The first meeting was a high level meeting with all

staff together in one spot so that the same message was heard at the same time

(this stops the chinese whispers and miscommunication of message). There was

opportunity for staff to answer questions and, honest answers, however painful

were given. I also understood that this wasn’t the end of the message, which

was subsequently followed up by group management and staff meetings,

newsletters, some survey work to identify issues and a question and answer

forum on the internal web page so that staff could ask questions regularly and

anonymously and get quick answers that were shared with the whole

organisation. It was interesting that this forum wasn’t abused by staff or used to

try and ambush me with any campaign to destabilize my position.

What I did understand, in putting the communications program together with my

communications Manager was that, even though I had spoken to everyone at the

same time, not everyone would have come to understand or accept the message

universally at that point. In fact, people react in different ways to information,

especially when it is difficult news. There is generally a four step process which

assuming the message is understood includes, denial, anger, acceptance and

then action. People come to each of those positions at different times and with

different levels of intensity. For some the anger boils quickly and their

acceptance is short with a final action phase being hostile and poorly thought

out, whilst for others there is a considerable period of time in denial phase.

In understanding the chain of events, it is important to note that the

communicator can do little through the denial phase, other than to keep to

message and keep consistently putting it out there. As you observe individuals in

the interaction stage, understanding where they are at in the continuum enables

communicators and managers to create the best outcome by communicating to

the position. Of course this is a critical position for small groups and individuals

but can be less useful in mass communications. However, where it is important

in that context is in making sure that communicators keep checking the

environment to check that people generally have moved on to each phase. If

there remains mass denial of a message, well after the event, something is

wrong with both the message and the actions of the organisation to ensuring

people see things happening. For instance, at the VFF, the announcement was

made about the proposed changes one day after the Board presentation,

because staff were expecting something. Within a day after that, the wider

community consultation plan was announced so that staff saw movement in the

activity. Had they seen no evidence of wider consultation, many would have

been tempted to view, in light of the business’ history of inaction in this area,

that nothing was going to happen in the future.

By announcing and carrying out the wider consultation, staff saw real movement

and this pushed most beyond the denial point to both anger then acceptance.

For some, it lead to early departure or discussions about whether they should

contemplate staying on in the future.

Beyond that, other environmental issues to be considered was the wider

community and, in particular, the political environment. The VFF, as one might

expect, is largely a conservative organisation and the Bracks Labor Government

had recently taken over the reigns of government in Victoria. There was a

certain distrust of the organisation that been evident for some time and this

hadn’t been helped by a former VFF President going on to run for and get elected

to a conservative seat in the state Government.

Major restructuring was potentially seen as a sign of the VFF collapsing and so

considerable effort needed to be put into keeping the government informed and

in the loop so that they knew we still saw ourselves as the key farmer

representative group looking after the interests of farmers in Victoria. As a new

CEO, with some Public sector experience I was fortunate enough not to have the

usual baggage of the sector and so was able to quickly and meaningfully

establish a good rapport with key people in the Government Ministry.

Finally, the other key group of stakeholders to keep focus on was the large

number of sponsors, suppliers, and business contacts the VFF had. These were

critical to our business going forward and so a communication strategy

specifically to meet some of those diverse group needs had to be developed and

managed.

Now, as you can see, there were multiple strategies developed with multiple

stakeholders. The key role for Communications managers is to keep each of the

strategies operating effectively, delivering against the objectives, monitoring and

tweaking as required all in a project like way that delivers.

Of course, as each of you well knows, the art form in issues management is in

keeping the eyes, ears and intuition constantly primed looking for any leakage in

message, any deviation from the plan or issues arising which haven’t already

been foreseen. This is the art form of good issues management. Its success or

failure relies on the vigilance of the people managing the communications

processes and whilst some of the skills can be learned, in my experience, it is a

craft in itself where many mistakes are made on the journey to becoming highly

proficient in identifying quickly and effectively issues and dealing with them.

Political operatives live and die professionally on their ability to manage issues

before they become public issues and, judging by some of the issues which

seemed to have dominated the global media in recent years, it would often seem

too little attention is paid to this part of the communications cycle in an honest

way. A great issues manager will be constantly scanning the operating

environment, will look for changes in nuances of conversations, will be revisiting

strategy regularly and tactics and will also be constantly training their staff on

how to spot anomalies in the environment they operate in.

As I have previously stated, the world of local government is an issues rich

environment. It cannot help but be caught in the wider politics of State and

Federal governments (especially given that legislation is tied to the State and so

much funding driven from federal bases). Despite the long tenure of local

government, the public largely has less an understanding of the role of local

government than is often suggested. Even more so, the public often has a poor

grasp of the real level of political influence each councillor has on achieving

outcomes for them individually. This is where the role of the communications

staff becomes incredibly important.

I believe Local Government has never done itself any favours where councillors

convey, quite deliberately the impression they have the capacity to fix problems

by their influence, whereas in most cases they are but a player in the system. It

is the system we have in this country, but the consequences of this perception is

that individuals have long come to expect their local councillor to solve their

problems.

When State based legislation actually prevents that or the council operating

system imposes difficult restriction on that, the community perception continues

to be perpetuated of the council that is inefficient.

I spoke earlier on the focus on internal communications in managing structural

and cultural change. There is a distinct difference in the way private sector

organisations and public sector organisations approach communication with

communities where behavioural change is required. For better or worse,

communities have a stronger sense of ownership and entitlement attached to

their perceptions about the way in which public sector organisations should be

run. Witness the public uproar in Queensland where the State Government

undertook to sell off public companies. Even today, where the assets are no

longer in public hands, there remains a strong sense by the community that they

have an ownership stake in the company. This will dog the current and future

government for many years, as was the case in Victoria where the wider

community had the strong conviction that the water industry had been privatized

on the back of comments made by Jeff Kennett as an aspiration, even though

nothing of the sort had occurred. Water authorities quite often left the

community to believe this perception as they believed it worked in their

advantage in conveying a perception of being removed from government. In the

end it was the worst of both worlds with political masters dictating their moves

but with a community believing it was greedy private interests in many cases.

I wanted to spend a few moments talking about community consultation because

it forms an increasingly important part of the communications professional’s

world in local government. As local councils increasingly embrace the mantra of

being consultative and engaged with their local communities, PR and

communications departments are increasingly finding that any communications

campaign relating to change programs embrace some measure of ‘consultation’

with their local communities.

Now there are many forms of consultation, which range from information sharing

to full democratic influencing of outcomes (though this is rarely ever a measure

of the activity that communities go to, even though in States such as Queensland

the Local Government Act in Queensland specifies a greater degree of

community influence setting in the planning processes of councils).

Each level of consultation brings with it different expectations and is carried out

for a host of different reasons, which are important to note.

In the most austere version there is informing the community, where the

purpose is largely to give rather than receive information. For communications

professionals this process is often important where decisions have already been

set (such as State imposed legislation). It is important in these instances not to

raise expectations too high as unmet expectations breed dissatisfaction and

conflict.

The extension to this process is to also gather information from stakeholders to

assist in decision making. Quite often this is easily achieved through limited

surveys and specific stakeholder sampling. Targeted effort in this type of

consultation yields significantly better information than random survey and is

almost always recommended.

An alternative form of consultation is the sharing of information between

stakeholders. The use of this type of activity is largely in enabling stakeholders

to be better informed in the lead up to important votes or negotiations (good

example may be the referenda debates that occur from time to time).

Of course, one can go to the other end of the spectrum, where propositions are

put to the community and the community then gets actively involved in

supplying the information, alternate views and in ultimately voting on solutions.

Again, this practice is not widely used in a lot of government consultation as

government more often wishes to control the outcome and is seldom prepared to

invest in major community change driven initiative as opposed to tweaking

proposals for internally driven outcomes.

Of course, in major structural reform or in striving to get community change in

behaviour the outcome may be set by others but getting the community on

board requires varying degrees of consultation.

When the Queensland State Government announced the plans to amalgamate

157 odd councils into 73, it had already determined which councils would merge

with which other councils and which councils would disappear. It argued, rightly

I believe, that the community at large and councils in particular had had plenty

of opportunity to contemplate how they would become more sustainable over

time. Older communications and management professionals will remember the

PPP process that was enacted where neighbouring councils were supposed to

work with each other on developing shared services, better infrastructure

arrangements and community use of those services. Communities where not

well consulted through the process and many councillors and senior

management groups within local government held a mistaken believe that the

State Government wouldn’t act if they did token efforts or did not participate

actively in the review process.

To a very large degree, Council’s spent more time talking to their constituencies

about the unfairness of the proposals put forward by the State rather than

engaging honestly with their local communities about the services that were

wanted, needed and the options which might come from sharing.

When the amalgamations were announced firmly, most councils were stunned by

the news. Some, such as my council, had put enormous effort into shoring up

political support, thinking it would save them, which it inevitably didn’t.

Local communities were, in some cases faced with moving into communities

they didn’t want to be a part of, whilst others couldn’t wait. What happened,

almost universally across the State, is perhaps a good example of how politics

can get in the way of good communication strategy.

Most councils did very little consultation with their local communities to get a

sense of their thoughts about the amalgamation, with a particular emphasis on

getting community feedback on how the amalgamation could work more

effectively rather than complaining about it. Indeed, even post amalgamation

there was little community engagement about making the changes work well.

Councils, largely driven at a political level, found it hard to let go. Had they

genuinely undertaken this feedback, some may have concentrated more effort

on promoting the virtues rather than complaining bitterly to the end of the rough

treatment their region had received and the unfairness of the decision. A

consequence of that communication has been, I believe, that many communities

around the State moved to transition with unreal expectations of everything

being fixed (government pushed hard to counteract local government messages)

and so there was a loss of trust in the State and in new councils who couldn’t

realistically deliver against the State’s mantra. Shared engagement would have

worked well in bringing the communities closer together and focused on getting

better outcomes, when the focus became how badly off each local government

area was.

From early days it has been accepted that many mayors of amalgamated

councils will not survive into a second term. I believe that is true and will largely,

in hindsight be seen to be a consequence of the approach we took as an industry

in bringing the community together on the amalgamation issue. Councillors who

were faced with a fixed position, and the State would have been better served in

agreeing an industry message and in the consistent and sustained promotion of

that message. The message should have honestly reflected the need, the long

term nature of making the changes (Most council’s will realistically not see the

financial benefit of amalgamation for at least two to three terms but they will

occur).

I suspect, though the empirical evidence is not yet formed, that council’s who

have generally taken this approach and who have been honest in spelling out the

difficulties, necessity and benefits, will succeed in the long term, both politically

and in changing community service delivery.

Many councils chose to take the view of blaming government and then previous

pre-amalgamated councils. Some continue to do this, and it is disingenuous and

ignores the fact that the community is often a lot smarter than that and not as

interested in the machinations of local government until it impacts on them

directly.

Perhaps some of the empirical evidence can be found in a recent Neilson survey,

which was covered by the Australian Newspaper just before Christmas last year.

In that survey it rated communities’ perceptions of the most trusted and least

trusted group of people in the community. The survey was a credible research

result and not surprisingly, it rated management at a corporate level across

Australian quite highly in the 70+% range, whilst it rated politicians generally

(including local Government) among the least trusted group of people (around

31%, alongside, for the first time, the media (who were actually rated as less

trustworthy than politicians at around 17-23%). Trade Unions were rated at

about 27% whilst armed services were rated at 80% and, I am pleased to say,

Universities were rated at about 75% (the survey was taken after the UQ crisis).

This goes to the heart of my final points which relate to brand and

communication, which I will deal with shortly.

In the case of Queensland, the local government brand, which is of a local

council close to its community has been damaged in some ways by the

ownership of political message over genuine consultation to look at what the

community wanted from the reform process then a concerted effort to deliver

that aligned to the efficiencies of scale that the new amalgamated councils are

now able to offer.

When Jeff Kennett moved in overnight almost and sacked Councils across the

State of Victoria, replacing them with Commissioners for a period of time to

establish the new amalgamated entity, he gave communities an opportunity to

see councils in a new light. People who had previously expressed frustration in

dealing with the politics of councils often found their new council much easier to

deal with. Bureaucratic and political ones had disappeared and outcomes were

delivered with relative finality in a much more rapid way.

Many of you who were in Victoria at the time would recall some of the

community outcry when fresh elections were called for the first group of elected

members of the reformed councils. Communities had seen action and were

concerned a return to the democratic process would again slow down delivery.

The lesson to me from Victoria, in my perspective in Queensland at the time of

amalgamations was that, in order to convince the community that there will have

to be real benefits for them in the long term was to focus attention, not on the

decision or the fairness or otherwise of it, but to focus on the future. In fact, the

message for staff was relatively similar. For some staff in Beaudesert, they were

faced with a new employer for the first time in 30 or more years and the

prospect was frightening.

From my perspective as a CEO, the most important message to convey to staff

was that things were going to be fine, that life goes on. In fact, to get the

message across we brought in a motivational speaker whose key message is

“Get Over it, life goes on”. It was but one of a series of exercises we undertook

with staff to assure them that life would in fact go on for them and there were

also benefits to the move for them. This is not to say it was easy or always

convincing. Part of my role as the outgoing CEO was to allocate all staff to one

of two councils who were taking over responsibility for the region - Logan and a

newly formed council called Scenic Rim. For management and senior

professional staff there were concerns about being relocated to Logan, largely

because Logan was not technically an amalgamating council and so was not

obligated to spill and fill roles. In that sense any manager allocated to Logan

wouldn’t be assured of a similar level role and protection of salary for only a

period of time. The key, in this case was in being able to convey in many one on

one meetings, direct mail meetings and through workshops, that staff would

have much greater opportunity if they focussed on demonstrating their skills

when they moved, without giving too much of an impression of opportunity

which might not be realised. Importantly, the process, which included my

communications team and HR personnel required many one on one meetings

with staff and importantly an honest perspective when questions were asked.

This was a team that had been fired up prior to the amalgamation issue as it was

turned in to a pre-growth highly focussed unit, now having to consider moving to

a large, clumsy and poorly thought of council. It was also important to have

senior staff from the Logan council come down and speak positively about the

opportunities. It was important, though to keep it honest. In reality, within a

relatively short period of time, high performing professional staff moved on post

amalgamation and others sought to move back to the newly created smaller

council because reality didn’t always match for them with the messages

conveyed during the transition period. This highlights the importance in not

creating false impressions that disappoint down the line but recognising that

everyone is different and will respond differently to change.

Branding – consultation process, new brand, communication of the brand,

building of community (internal & external)

I would like to finish by commenting briefly on the importance of brand in the

communications during periods of change. In fact, it is an area I am often in two

minds about.

When you are engaged in managing the communication efforts associated with a

major structural change the integrity of your organisation is critical to the

success of your communication efforts. If you engage in a change program and

your brand is damaged or not well respected, the efforts that will be required will

be significantly greater than if your organisation’s brand is well liked and

respected. For that reason, Councils need to constantly work on ensuring their

reputation for being trustworthy is maintained.

The amalgamation process was an interesting exercise for many as brands were

different, some councils had been openly hostile with their neighbouring councils

and found themselves now part of the one council with a new brand to create

and develop. This provides additional challenges for communications people. In

the local government environment, reputations were often driven in the early

days by the squabbles, or the united effort of the newly elected councillors.

Communications departments found themselves having to work in unfamiliar

territory of creating a new vision, new values for the new council.

The amalgamations did give some councils an opportunity to create a new value

and a new brand. The new Moreton Shire, on the north side of the Brisbane,

which was created through an amalgamation of several councils, managed to

convey a new brand over time of a larger, more innovative and responsive

council. Redcliffe, which was once noted as a fully developed and sleepy seaside

township became part of a larger faster growing region with more opportunity.

Ipswich was able to recast itself as a truly progressive region, with a united

council behind a flamboyant mayor and a well disciplined corporate organisation.

It has lobbied successfully to get significant funding from State and Federal

Government and has managed to convey a wider picture of a community on the

move, a progressive hub which reinforced the notion that people should go west.

On the other hand the Rockhampton Regional council, which was an

amalgamation of four councils became so embroiled by the politics of two

previous councils, which had in the past so disliked each other, that the council

squabbled and conveyed a similar message to the community at large. As a

consequence the community at large has become distrustful of both the council

and the neighbouring regions.

The message in this is that communications teams in Government will always be,

in part a hostage to the political actions of their political masters. Unless these

can be brought to control and convinced of the value of the brand in a coherent

supportive message, much of the communications work will be issues based and

defensive in the future. Community and organisational change will be difficult

and will take considerably longer to achieve, if at all.

As a final point, sometimes when you are immersed in a change communications

program it becomes easy to forget that not everyone is as wedded to the change

program as yourself. With many years in local government, watching daily

media trends, working with interested communities and dealing with customer

and political complaints on a regular basis, I fell into the trap of believing for a

while that everyone was interested in what we did as a council. In truth, people

tend to think of council only when they are interested in issues which are driven

by council or heavily influenced by council. When the pot holes in roads get

larger after severe storms, when rubbish bins aren’t picked up, when rates rise,

these are the issues which drive people to think about their local council.

Beyond that, most residents seldom think about government in any real form at

all. Despite our best intentions over many years, there remains a poor

understanding among communities about the different role of councils, state

Government and federal Government.

This has a significant bearing on the way in which communications programs are

managed. Even staff within councils are often out of the communications loop

that communications staff often find themselves in so it is important to both

keep in perspective the privileged position of knowledge you have and keep

messages simple and honest so that you have a greater capacity to bring the

community along.

The reason in part that politicians are unpopular, as demonstrated in the neilson

poll I mentioned earlier is, in part a consequence not just their behaviour but in

the behaviour of the people who advise them and who drive the communications

message. Honesty in message is something that we should all strive for

continuously and we need to hold the line on as much as is practically possible.

Let me reiterate, in my closing moments, the key points that I hope you have

managed to drag out of my rambling dissertation.

1. Communication in Driving change needs to be planned and has to be

disciplined in its execution. Without it, most cultural change will fail.

2. Communication has to be repetitive and long term. Change doesn’t occur

on short messages but through repetition and time, even in a technology

and issues rich environment.

3. Good effective communication is not the sole domain of elected

representatives. In fact, driving change requires carefully planned

execution and is the work of professionals. Politicians can, however,

impact on it both positively and negatively

4. When dealing with difficult news remember that people come to

acceptance of the news in different ways and on different time scales.

Communications programs need to take account of this.

5. Even the best communication will fail if people don’t take it on board.

Make the most of changing technologies and be open to the endless

possibilities which come your way. Remember, communications continues

to be come more sophisticated and your need to keep up with the changes

in driving change.

6. Most importantly, communicating change is about people. Process is less

important. Communications should always be sensitive to the diverse

positions people find themselves in. Honesty is perhaps the greatest

virtue in driving a change program. It will build your brand and give you a

better chance of succeeding in your endeavours to make real change,

especially if it is realistic.

7. Keep your communications people close and involved in change programs

from the inception. There is nothing worse than recovering a situation

when you could have planned to avert it and that is the role of

communications professionals.

8. When consulting, know the outcome you are preparing for. Be realistic

about outcomes and if you are only seeking to inform, don’t establish

consultation which suggests that people will have an opportunity to

influence outcomes.

9. Know your stakeholders and be prepared to break them down as much as

is needed. We have passed the age where mass communications works

as well. People are accustomed to narrow casting and some messages

have to be targeted effectively.

10.Brand is important in change but it will only be delivered if there is a

loyalty to the brand and it is supported.