1. 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

2. 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 assumeall 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 than2 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.

3. 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 butgenerally 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, toa 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.

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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 allof 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.

8. For the council the focus was on building its brand of a family friendly city and in
order to combat the negative pressit took the decision to take a proactive response
and position on everyissue 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

9. 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‟sidentity 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 SouthEast 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,

10. 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.

11. 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 onthe 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

12. 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 astudy 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

13. 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 andissues 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.

14. 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 mystrong
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

15. 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 andin 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 amandate to make major change to protect the

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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 stillsaw 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.

19. 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 tosolve 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.

20. 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.

21. 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

22. 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.

23. 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

24. 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 councilmuch 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

25. 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

26. 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 FederalGovernment
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

27. 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

28. 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.