580 words (6 minutes reading time) by Lancing Farrell
I recently completed a training course in the work of W. Edwards Deming. At the end of the course, one of the participants said they felt as though they now had the knowledge to become an architect in their work and cease being a fire fighter.
It made me think about how it is that leaders become fire fighters. It is a common complaint from executives in local government who are being exhausted on a treadmill of frantic and stressful activity.
I recently saw this piece on LinkedIn by Simon Dodds, a Health Care Engineer at SAASoft Ltd. I have reproduced it in full because it eloquently describes from a health care perspective, the same series of events that shifts managers and directors on the council treadmill from walking speed to sprinting. Here it is.
2000 words (18 minutes reading time) by Lancing Farrell
I might be drawing a long bow, but I think the Abundance agenda presents a fundamental challenge for those councils trying to find a way forward that is financially sustainable in a rate capped environment. It opens the door to reviewing regulatory and other service design to make savings and support economic growth.
Let me start at the beginning.
On 19 June 2025, in an article about a speech by Jim Chalmers, the Australian Treasurer, he was quoted as saying that left-leaning governments (as we currently have in Australia) are “strangling their own good intentions with bureaucracy”. He is asking regulators across the nation to identify regulations that can be axed or simplified to reduce compliance costs and increase the pace of economic growth. It is part of delivering a supply-side solution to the nation’s housing and energy problems by removing government-imposed impediments to production of goods and services.
2000 words (20 minutes reading time) by Lancing Farrell
Introduction
Is the challenge that councils face insufficient revenue to cover costs? Or is it that they are providing services outside their remit? Or is it waste and inefficiency in their operations? Is it all of the above? And, if it is, where do you start to address it?
When you look at the different things councils are doing to respond to the rate cap – arguing for its removal or modification to enable higher rate increases, cutting services and service levels, shaving 10% off every budget to force savings, or implementing an ‘efficiency dividend’ through successive budgets – you could be forgiven for wondering if councils are trying to solve the same problem.
Having a common view of the problem to be solved is a start to genuine and effective action across the sector.
I have been thinking about a simple re-framing of the problem councils need to solve in a rate capped environment.
850 words (10 minutes reading time) by Colin Weatherby and ChatGPT
A passage from The Book of Local Government:
“And lo, the Local Government was filled with aspirations for the community. But when the State government imposed a rate cap, limiting their capabilities, the leaders knew they must align their aspirations with their limitations through strategy. And Richard Rumelt, a wise strategist, spoke unto them saying “A good strategy addresses the most important and high stakes challenges through a coherent set of analyses, concepts, policies, arguments, and actions.” But many Local Governments strayed from this path, with strategies that lacked a clear central idea and failed to address important problems or opportunities. And Rumelt warned them “If thou fail to identify and analyze the obstacles, thou doth not have a strategy, but instead a stretch goal, a budget or a list of things thou wish would happen.” And the leaders heeded his words, and developed a good strategy to overcome their challenges.”
Source: ChatGPT
I have been inspired for the title of this post by John Lewis Gaddis, who says strategy is necessary for ‘the alignment of potentially unlimited aspirations with necessarily limited capabilities’. It is strategy that aligns our most important aspirations with our capabilities so that we can achieve them. It is especially important when capabilities are being limited.
Local government is full of aspirations. We deliberately ask the community what they want to create a list of things to do. We don’t wait for them to tell us. Our workers are expert at identifying new needs. We like to say that we really understand community needs and expectations. I suppose, this is where the problem starts when a State government disagrees and decides that people are being charged too much for councils to meet their needs and they introduce a rate cap.
Worse still, is when the State thinks some of those needs should not be met by the council at all or they are being met in ways that are inefficient or frivolous.
“The days of ratepayers footing the bill for Arnold Swarzeneggar impersonators are over.”
Labor leader, Daniel Andrews, 2014
I have recently re-read Richard Rumelt’s book ‘Good Strategy/Bad Strategy’. It is over 10 years old now and remains a classic on strategy. I also read his new book, ‘The Crux’. He has recently described his ideas about strategy as ‘challenge-based strategy’, which is useful when thinking about them in the context of local government. We have challenges.
1600 words (15 minutes reading time) by Colin Weatherby
Great post by Lancing Farrell. I like the link to the creative and enduring solutions people have devised in response to food scarcity. Human ingenuity can be a marvellous thing.
The impact of declining financial sustainability on asset management is disturbing. As anyone directly responsible for council assets knows, for many years the biggest challenge for local government in Victoria has been the cost of caring for assets. The Institute of Public Works Engineers (IPWEA) has been advocating for better asset management for years. I would argue that the principal council service is to own and care for assets on behalf of the ‘community. The rate cap has rapidly made this much more difficult, and as Lancing showed, the challenge is not spread evenly across councils.
What can councils do in response to funding scarcity? Will our commitment and creativity help us find new ways to provide the services the community needs and expects? Our own il comune povero.
Raffaella Sadun, Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen have written an interesting article (Why Do We Undervalue Competent Management?) that explores a deep and persistent problem in organisations across the world. This problem also manifests itself in local government.
The article is based on research over the past 16 years in 34 countries involving 12,000 organisations and 20,000 interviews (see more at http://worldmanagementsurvey.org). A strong evidence base is used in providing some clear insights into a problem that is disturbingly common.
The fundamental premise is that competent management practices make a difference to the productivity, profitability, growth and longevity of organisations.
This seems like such an obvious thing to say or write. Of course, the quality of management is critical to the performance of an organisation. After all, aren’t we are all managers and doing something that makes a positive contribution? This is where the story starts to get interesting. Continue reading →
I was talking to a colleague who recently attended a well organised and highly informative national conference on asset management. It was a pity that only three people of the three hundred attending came from local government. The rest were from sugar refineries, steel mills, manufacturing, energy supply, defence, food production, mining, ports, railways, airlines, telephony and numerous other organisations from across Australia. Apparently there was a lot to be learned. So why was local government absent?
Part of the explanation lies in the competing asset management conference run annually by the sector in Victoria. They are well attended by staff from many councils as part of their professional development and to support a sector initiative. I suppose councils don’t see any value in sending staff to a conference that doesn’t focus specifically on local government assets or the way councils have chosen to manage their assets.
A conference theme was disruption. Often it is outsiders who create disruption because they see things differently. Sometimes it happens when insiders are frustrated by the status quo and they venture outside the organisation’s comfort zone. Unfortunately, many organisations and industries are incapable of disrupting themselves. Attending conferences run by your industry is much more comfortable.
It was interesting to hear from my colleague about how other industries view their assets and what they expect from them in the way they are managed. One key difference is that private sector has productive assets that are owned and managed to create shareholder value (i.e. make profits). The value created by those assets is captured by the organisation that owns them. It is different for most public sector assets. Continue reading →
This is a forthright and practical book full of inconvenient truths for local government. I suppose its relevance to local government depends on whether or not you believe that becoming an outstanding organisation is either possible or desirable. Karen Martin says that people know excellence when they see it and they know when they are not excellent. But do our leaders in local government?
This is another book (and I am repeating myself here) that everyone reading it who works in local government will wish they had read years ago. The key idea is that it is chaos that prevents organisations from becoming excellent. Martin says that managers and workers often don’t see the chaos or its causes. In many cases the behaviour causing the chaos is habitual and invisible. Typically, she says organisations respond to chaos by:
Becoming accustomed to it so that they think it is normal.
Recognising it but thinking that there is nothing that can be done about it.
Embracing it as a good thing and developing skills in coping with it.
Value is often mentioned in local government when talking about services, particularly ‘best value’. However, there is often inadequate understanding about the different types of value, the difference between private and public value, and how value is actually created and managed by an organisation. Sometimes there is the assumption that because we have been busy, that we must have created something worthwhile.
This essay brings together ideas from several earlier posts and is constructed around four hypotheses:
That there are different types of value created by organisations and for local government public value is the most important.
Public value is the primary value that must be understood and delivered if councils are to deliver what is expected by the community.
Value-led management is a way of managing that could transform local government and make it more responsive and effective in serving the community.
There are simple and effective tools that can be used to improve value creation in local government.
Hypothesis 1: There are different types of value and public value is the most important for local government.
Private value
In a metaphorical sense the value that you add is what you ‘bring to the party’. This is determined by what other people think you have contributed and by thinking about what the party would have been like if you hadn’t arrived.
There are different types of value and it is worth briefly considering the difference between private value and public value. Public value is the collective view of the public or community about what they regard as valuable, especially with regard to the use of public money and authority. Moore describes this as occurring along a spectrum from value that is obtained from public services that is essentially private value, similar to the concept of customer value, to public value that reflects the aggregate value expectations of citizens.
At the private value end of the spectrum, the focus is on the individual service recipient and delivering value that satisfies their expectations. At the public value end of the continuum, the focus is on achieving the social outcomes sought by the community or public. Continue reading →
Customer service is, and should be, a major concern for local government. After all, councils are service organisations. Sometimes there is confusion about exactly what customer service means, how it relates to public service delivery, and what aspects of service are most important to get right in local government.
This essay focuses on three hypotheses:
That ‘customers’ in local government are different to the customers described in most customer service literature and encountered by most service organisations.
There are six main opportunities for local government to improve service to customers.
There are simple tools available that can assist councils in getting service delivery and customer service right.
Local Government Utopia 