Organisational Context – Central Highlands Water
Central Highlands Water (CHW) plays a crucial role in the provision of essential water and wastewater services to over 187,000 people across the Central Highlands region of Victoria, Australia. As a regional water corporation, CHW is responsible for ensuring the sustainable management of water resources, providing reliable and high-quality water supply, and treating wastewater effectively to protect the environment and public health. Serving a substantial community across eight local government areas, and including both residential and commercial customers, CHW is committed to meeting the diverse needs of its service area.
The organisation’s operations are extensive and include water collection, treatment and distribution, as well as wastewater collection, treatment and disposal. By focusing on innovation and customer service, CHW strives to provide its community with sustainable services that support both current and future needs by embedding climate change resilience into its planning, fostering economic growth and enhancing the quality of life in the region.
CHW’s Partner – TMS Consulting
TMS Consulting (TMS) was founded in 2006 and is known for its expertise in organisational strategy, leadership development, and high-performance cultures. Positioned to assist both public and private sectors, TMS offers tailored solutions that focus on strengthening workplace culture, improving leadership capabilities, and enhancing organisational performance.
TMS has a strong appreciation of the challenges in leading and managing successful organisations in a climate of constant change. It helps organisations enhance how they operate, ensuring alignment between their strategy and ways of working. This enables organisations to be future focussed, agile, and resilient to proactively respond to changes in the macro and internal environments. TMS services are designed to support clients in achieving not only immediate improvements but also long-term transformation, making TMS a trusted partner in organisational success.
The Challenge
In 2019 CHW identified the need for a transformative approach to leadership within the organisation to support it delivering on its strategic objectives. This included creating a more resilient leadership culture that was strategic, collaborative and adaptive, to drive the organisation towards its long-term goals. CHW identified that everyone across the organisation is a leader, regardless of their level of authority or role. CHW acknowledged the need for all team members to demonstrate initiative, think strategically, identify opportunities for business improvement, and influence others through collective empowerment.
The Way Forward
CHW in partnership with TMS, initiated the Learn, Lead, Grow (LLG) program, aiming to cultivate a robust personal leadership framework that supports personal accountability. LLG is a program aimed at bringing key concepts to life in people’s day-to-day work and behaviours. It needed to support and drive transformation in the organisation. To ensure alignment and consistency of the required behaviours at various leadership levels at CHW, a co-design approach was utilised. CHW and TMS worked closely together to regularly review and adjust to business needs, with leadership development best practice insights incorporated into the design and delivery of essential aspects of the program.
As partners in LLG the key objective was to continue to develop, implement and embed a strong leadership culture within the organisation to ensure the long-term success of the business from the development of its staff. CHW recognised that people are critical to the realisation of its strategic direction, and quality leadership was essential to engage and empower individuals and teams to deliver over and above the traditional norm. TMS was chosen as the ideal partner to assist CHW in developing its leadership capability, given TMS’ belief that All Organisations are Human™. This belief underpins TMS’ approach as a management consultancy to support and enable clients to reach higher levels of performance through a range of areas related to people and how organisations work.
The LLG Program
LLG was an organisation-wide initiative focused on developing personal leadership. It was a multi- tiered program, encouraging all team members across CHW to develop key capabilities that enable them to take personal accountability, adopt a growth and learning mindset, and engage with others in a constructive way. These capabilities are integral to the creation of a psychological safe environment in which everyone can thrive and foster innovation, collaboration and organisational growth.
The overall approach of LLG was informed by the following principles:
- Developing leadership capability across CHW, both collectively and individually targeted to the various levels of authority, influence and accountability.
- Bringing contemporary leadership concepts, thinking and strategies into the organisation that expand, innovate and proactively assist it to meet its key priorities.
- Improving the way that CHW communicates with its people and across the
- Leading change through being agile and
- Driving innovation and growth by showing courage and being
- Having meaningful metrics that can measure individual and collective leadership growth and development longitudinally over time.
- Ensuring that there is a high level of proactive engagement in LLG across all levels of the
- Assisting CHW to be an organisation that leads and is truly reflective of the community it
The implementation of the LLG program was extensive and methodical, consisting of several phases that included initial consultations, program co-design and preparation, and continuous adaptive engagement to meet emerging organisational needs. One of the notable challenges during the implementation phase was the global COVID-19 pandemic, which required the program to be flexible and responsive to new realities, demonstrating CHW’s resilience and commitment to leadership development during crisis conditions. This included supporting the organisation to optimise performance during the pandemic, the emerging necessity to work in a hybrid setting, and to support staff in changed work practices as they navigated challenges in their work and personal lives.
“Managing during the COVID-19 pandemic gave us all a rare insight into our business, our customers and ourselves. Together, we achieved things we didn’t think were possible. There’s no doubt our Learn Lead Grow leadership program was a key reason for our organisational and personal resilience during this difficult period.”
Jeff Haydon, CHW Managing Director
During the LLG delivery period, TMS facilitated over 180 workshops, 44 individual coaching sessions and eight group coaching sessions with team members and people leaders across CHW. The three main streams of Lead Organisation, Lead People and Lead Yourself was well attended, with over 2,250 attendees across the suite of workshops. Further engagement was undertaken with the Executive Leadership Team (ELT), Senior Management Team (SMT), identified teams and annual sessions with all new recruits.
TMS worked extensively with the senior leadership cohort as part of LLG. This has included working with ELT on a range of initiatives, such as developing productive relationships based on trust, effective communication and shared accountability. A key focus of TMS’ work with ELT was establishing their working rhythm and enhancing their ‘First Team’ approach. This ensured an aligned view of their leadership and organisational vision. TMS’ work with the SMT included a series of workshops and group coaching sessions, aimed at strengthening the cohort’s ability to ensure effective decision-making and empowerment across the business. The SMT focused on their role as change champions within the organisation to improve connection and realisation of CHW’s strategic intention.
Sustaining Performance at CHW
Effective performance is one cornerstone of the long-term sustainability of an organisation as it enables reinvestment and growth. The second cornerstone of sustainability is a positive organisational culture characterised by high morale, psychological safety, engagement and trust. Effective organisational performance and a positive climate depend on the alignment between purpose, values, and the rational (process, systems, structure) and non-rational (relationships, information, identity) levers.
Concurrent to LLG, CHW undertook a cultural assessment to evaluate the organisation’s existing culture and identify areas for enhancement. The Culture Assessment Project aimed to align CHW’s organisational culture with its newly developed 2040 strategy ‘More than Water’. CHW undertook the Culture Assessment Project to understand how the learned behaviours and capabilities from LLG could be further embedded within the organisational fabric and ultimately achieve ‘More than Water’.
“Leaders have the greatest impact on the culture of an organisation, and by them actively engaging and modelling ‘Learn Lead Grow’ it has sent a powerful message to all team members”
Jeff Haydon, CHW Managing Director
In partnership with CHW, TMS used the Culture15 tool to define and measure CHW’s culture and facilitated conversations about both the current and desired states. CHW’s Target Culture is characterised by two anchor behaviours: Accountability and Information-Exchange. An organisation with a culture anchored in these behaviours will see its members consistently take ownership of their actions, proactively seek solutions, and follow through on their commitments whilst operating on the basis of openly shared information across the organisation. As such, follow- through and consistent information-sharing would be the most evident, widespread, and frequent behaviours to be observed in the CHW target culture.
Figure 1: An example of one of the simple but effective tools to help enhance accountability.
The Target culture of CHW was defined as harmonious, yet open to challenge when necessary, fostering a positive and collegiate atmosphere that also focuses on results and testing ideas. There is a strong focus on collective operation, with energy being directed toward ambitious goals and calculated risk-taking to achieve the best outcomes. Balancing both an external and internal focus, learning is highly valued as are transparency and access to information. As such, information sharing is prioritised, and communication structured to a degree. Active listening is an important aspect of communication in the target state so that all voices are heard and valued. Decision- making combines democratic engagement with a focus on results, ensuring inclusivity without compromising progress. Execution is a blend of rationality and empathy, promoting innovation with a careful consideration of risks and the impact of decisions or processes on people.
Figure 2: A Snapshot of CHW’s Target Culture.
“In order to successfully deliver on our 2040 Business Strategy, CHW realised the importance of creating the right culture and the identification and focus of the two anchor behaviours has been fundamental in our cultural transformation journey thus far.”
Alisha Bedggood, CHW General Manager People, Culture and Safety
The Outcome
The capabilities developed throughout LLG has positioned CHW to effectively shift to a collective leadership approach where they can challenge one another in the context of psychological safety, within a culture of high accountability combined with trust and empowerment. In line with its organisational transformation and dedication to various initiatives, CHW has evolved from a ‘planned’ approach to a ‘proactive’ stance in leadership cultural maturity.
Through a collaborative effort with TMS, LLG successfully assisted CHW in establishing a common language and fostering a climate of collaboration between its various teams. Participants engaged with a variety of topics, leadership models and activities to build capability. There were high levels of engagement by participants across all streams of the program. The workshop and coaching activities supported participants to self-reflect while learning from one another in a cross- organisational setting. While the workshop format was a key component of LLG, participants were encouraged to embed their learning by taking ownership and accountability to actively practice their skills in the workplace.
The success of the LLG program has positioned CHW to continue its journey toward developing a resilient leadership culture. The capabilities built through this program have not only supported immediate organisational needs but have also laid a foundation for long-term cultural and operational benefits. The continuation of this transformation requires ongoing commitment to the principles established by LLG, ensuring that leadership development remains a central component of CHW’s strategic framework.
As CHW moves forward with its culture journey, the foundations laid by the LLG program will continue to play a crucial role in its success, supporting the realisation of the More than Water 2040 strategy. This commitment to leadership and cultural excellence is what will sustain CHW’s position as a leader in the water industry, a dedicated service provider to the community, and ensuring it remains at the forefront of innovation and service excellence in the water sector.
Key Leadership Models and Conversations
A sample of the models and conversations that resonated strongly with team members throughout the LLG program is included below.
