My experience.

A medium-sized Christchurch manufacturing company asked me to conduct a health check on their business. 

Before going above and beyond you need to understand all that’s come before. Working closely with the management team I undertook an extensive examination of business operations past and present.

Multi-year analysis of staff, turnover and profit demonstrated they were now experiencing diminishing marginal returns. Analysis of both their key customers and the wider market indicated that efficiencies would need to be made in order to reduce complexity and return to optimum profitability. 

The outcome was a business change proposal that allowed the company to identify the optimum staffing profile to meet existing and future customer demands while ensuring they can realise business opportunities. This approach created a more agile and resilient workforce by broadening the focus of roles through upskilling and cross-skilling, allowing the company to change and adapt to the needs of our customers and markets.

Ensuring everything could be actioned quickly and efficiently was a primary focus too. To ease the pressure I created the restructure documentation, restructure plans and timelines, and drafted all employee correspondence including emails and formal letters.

I was asked to assume a departmental head role, with five direct and 50 indirect staff, for the last six months of the financial year.

The brief was clear: use this limited time to turn around results in staff recovery income and, as we were accountable for generating 75% of the unit’s income, reduce operating costs also. 

Working closely with the management accountant we developed reporting that enabled me to identify and take action to improve every metric during the remaining six months of the financial year; the variance of actual staff cost vs. plan reduced by 48%, the ratio of spend on contractors vs. permanent staff reduced from 87% to 54% and my department achieved 75% of the unit’s total income with a variance of 0.015%.

During my contract at Christchurch City Council I was asked to build their innovation capability from scratch. It was a big picture / small details project – one that would cover an impressive amount of ground in the rapidly changing post-quake city.

I developed the Smart Christchurch programme to trial technology and approaches that promoted Christchurch as an exemplar open and connected city. 

This was achieved through developing the vision, strategy, values and programme of work. Strategic alignment with existing agencies was vital, as was establishing an expert delivery team, clear policies and processes and strong relationships with external partners, agencies, stakeholders, and politicians. 

The programme delivered Internet of Things (IOT) projects, seismic resilience initiatives, catalysed innovation and growth for local companies, provided solutions for persistent community issues (mobility parking & overflowing rubbish complaints a highlight), delivered Christchurch SmartView (a data aggregation app), identified the building blocks for a consistent city-wide digital experience and created the Smart Christchurch Innovation Expo.

In doing this, and more, the Smart Christchurch programme became an integral part of the council organisation and holdings companies, the city innovation sector and the wider New Zealand innovation landscape.

A short-term contract gave me responsibility for managing and prioritising IT demand and investments. 

The first priority was to gain suitable clarity of information to ensure well-informed decisions could be made. Within three months I had developed a benefit realisation tool with a 5-year horizon. This tool was approved by the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and implemented that year to recover the organisational savings target of 7.5% on the IT capital investment. 

After reviewing the projects implemented in the previous financial year I also identified the need to recover operational increases that were a consequence of IT capital delivery – an initiative that was successfully achieved.

A number of my roles have been focused on culture change, where central and local government organisations have used my services to lead teams and increase engagement. 

Two examples illustrate different challenges faced when working for such organisations.

‘Team A’ were an extremely committed group of highly skilled staff who felt undervalued and overworked. I implemented various initiatives that built a strong sense of camaraderie within the team and recognition of their value and contribution to the organisation. The number of engaged staff increased from 6% to 45%, the number of ambivalent staff reduced from 87% to 55%, and the number of disengaged staff was eliminated completely.

‘Team B’ were a disparate, largely neglected group within a large unit. Using strong team-building initiatives and transparent communication (including implementing visual management techniques that were subsequently showcased at a national business improvement conference), the team’s mana increased significantly both within the department, among management and for customers. This was a key part of a meteoric rise in staff engagement for the wider department placing us in the high performance / best employer range.

I was brought in for the last six months of the financial year as an IT Project Management Team Leader responsible for two delivery programmes.

In my team I had twelve permanent roles and a range of contract Project Managers, Project Coordinators, Business Analysts and Agile Coaches. Together we had to ensure that the combined $12 million of the two projects provided the right result. 

Only 27% of the planned initiatives had been completed in the first six months. At the end of the programme we had ensured 73% were completed.

Prior to my arrival the programmes were forecast to meet budget however, after analysis of the finances, I forecast a more accurate (but unfavourable) 30% variance to budget.

From there we could make the necessary adjustments over the next six months and met KPIs with less than 1% variance to budget for both programmes – and 85% of the projects delivered on time and to scope.

Yes, good things take time – but so too is there great risk of stationary stones gathering moss. 

I picked up a project that had been wallowing in the requirements gathering / solution analysis phase for two years. With a (somewhat justified) lack of confidence and scepticism from the project sponsor there was a very small window to turn things around. 

After a review process I ascertained that a previously rejected solution held the greatest likelihood of successfully delivering the business benefits within the budget and time constraints. 

I then worked quickly to overcome the myriad of objections and obstacles for implementing the organisation’s first SaaS solution and compressed a typically protracted procurement process into several weeks (including international vendor contract negotiations). The project was transformed into an award-winning success for the organisation.

It would be easy to list a myriad of projects that I’ve successfully delivered to time, cost, and scope. However I am just as proud of the projects I haven’t delivered.

I’m not employed by my clients to be a yes-woman. Sometimes the boat needs to be rocked. And I’m also not an ‘Employee of the Yeah’. I won’t get things done at all costs. Passion is important. But so too is pragmatism. 

That’s why my experience and confidence is so valuable to these clients, particularly when I will have to recommend closure of projects that are not viable within the available time and resources. At these times I ensure everything is done with as much grace, dignity and common sense as possible. No stakeholder needs to lose face with these changes in circumstance.