Welcome to the For Love and Money podcast, the show where business and social purpose meet to inspire a movement for positive change. Here's your host, Carolyn Butler-Madden. In 2022, Woollahra Council's team finalised a piece of work that would underpin their strategy, transform their culture and guide their approach, reimagining their purpose.
Now, this work was started by Patricia Occelli in 2021, who had joined Woollahra Council as the Director of Community and Customer Experience, leading customer experience, communications, community engagement, cultural and arts initiatives, and Woollah Libraries. Her trigger for starting this work was a question to herself. How can I build an effective community and customer experience strategy without a clear, inspiring purpose statement to drive and shape it?
Woollahra Council's GM, Craig Swift-McNair, agreed. And they and their fellow directors and senior managers underwent a process that would transform not just their vision, mission and values, but also their strategy, culture, and how they approach their roles and responsibilities. So I'm really excited to interview first Patricia here and then in our next episode, Craig, and they're going to share their perspectives of the transformation journey and where it has brought them.
So first, Patricia, let me introduce Patricia. Patricia Ocelli is the Director of Community and Customer Experience at Woollahra Council. She leads customer experience, communications, community engagement, cultural and arts initiatives, and Willara libraries. With over 35 years of leadership in the human services sector, Patricia has driven transformation across local and state government and the for-purpose sector.
She is passionate about social justice and delivering high-quality services that make a real difference in people's lives. And her expertise spans service integration, cultural reform, customer-centric design and staff engagement. She has successfully led transformations, governance frameworks and operational efficiencies, all while fostering empowered employees and engaged communities. A strategic leader, Patricia is committed to shaping innovative, sustainable, and impactful services.
And I say this not just because it's on her bio, but I've known Patricia for quite a number of years now and worked with her, and I can attest to all of that and more. Patricia, welcome to the For Love and Money podcast. Thank you, Carolyn. That's very, very generous of you. And some intro. It's very true. And the big question we kick off every interview with is, what is your view on, is there a role for love in work? It's a really interesting question, and it's how you define love.
I have three children, so if I share this story with you, and I think when I was guiding my children through their career choices, I always said, do what you're passionate about. And therefore you will wake up each morning feeling happy and going, yay, I'm going to work. So I think there is very much a place for love and it's the love that inspires you to get up every morning. It's the love that inspires you to want to do good, that inspires you to want to deliver the best that you can.
I put it down to that. And for me, I talk about passion in my bio because it is that perspective about why do I do what I do? And I'm driven by desire to want to achieve better outcomes for people. And so I think that is driven by love, by love of humankind, I suppose. That's it, right? And it's no surprise that your three children have landed in very, very different careers but clearly they're careers that reflect their passions, which are?
Well, one is love for food. And he has had that love since he was tiny. You wouldn't say so by his size because he's very skinny, not a normal view of what a chef would look like. I have one who has love for teaching and that has been a profession that's been in our family for many years. So that love of education and supporting others to thrive. And my daughter is love for science. So she is becoming a doctor.
And that, again, driven not only by the curiosity of science, but how you can use that science problem solving to actually support others. And so I think they're all in some way in service. And I think that that is something that also I inspired in them. 100%. So it is passion, but it's more than that. It's caring about something deeply enough to pursue it. Thank you for sharing that.
Now, before we dive into the transformation work of Willara Council, can you share with us a little bit about your background and the key moments that have brought you to your current work today? Wow. Oh, okay. I think that when I think about my background, so I was born in South America, in Uruguay, and I'm a child of the late 60s, so I'll give it away my age.
And in the 70s, Uruguay, along with many other countries, went through fairly significant turmoil, and we had a number of dictatorships throughout South America. My family was affected by that in various ways. I had very beautiful, strong women who believed in social justice. And so I saw the injustices and I saw their passion and their strength.
That is something that has always stuck with me from a very very young age and so I was motivated to to be in service and I had a number of different experiences growing up as a child even school placement experiences where I was supporting somebody who was in need and being able to make a difference and actually seeing that so yeah so that led me to an interesting career. I initially went into devotional therapy and people go, what's that?
It's a therapy using recreation to engage people in either rehabilitation or in maintaining their skills or growing new skills. And then I realized that I couldn't survive on the wage of a devotional therapist, which is really sad but I also wanted to do more and so then went on to do a social work degree. So, those combined skills and experiences, because I was working while I was studying, led me to a whole variety of different areas from mental health, disability, employment services.
Migrant services, and then was really interested. So, I was always driven by how can you have the greatest impact. So, went into state government, particularly around policy, industry development and planning. So, looking at the bigger picture.
And then was able to work in the for-purpose sector as well, directing large teams of staff and programs, doing business development, looking at how to transform services to be efficient and actually customer-driven and customer-led and have had both that experience at a senior level in the for-purpose sector and then in state government, both in New South Wales and in Queensland. So, what brought me back to local government is really interesting.
And I'm going to say something controversial. Yay. But I was really digging deep and having a really philosophical question about the purpose of who or what I was working for. And I think there's been a huge transformation in the for-purpose sector. A lot of the for-purpose work is now being driven by private entities or very large organizations. And so I question, have they lost sight of their purpose? I know it's controversial. They would argue that probably not.
But I have quite a few examples of having seen that. And so I wanted to go back to where is a place where you can actually make a difference. And so local government is one of those places where you're very close. to the ground. And often local government goes unnoticed. People realise when something isn't there, but they don't really realise when things are there.
So when you go to your swimming centres or you're part of a cultural event in the community or you have a service or a support group or you're provided with information, education, when your potholes are, you know, outfield, when your garbage is collected. So there's many things that local government does that touches people every day, hopefully in a good way.
And so you can have a really strong impact on the community and the health and wellbeing of people feeling connected to the place that they're at and they live. That's why I ended up in local government. Yeah, brilliant. And in local government, from your perspective, why does purpose matter? Why does it matter that there is a clear, inspiring purpose? Well, people are very passionate about where they live.
It's very rare that somebody would just not be interested in what's going on in their local community, Whether it's the tree in front of your house, whether it's how you relate to your neighbours and your community, whether it's ensuring you've got enough infrastructure to support the types of, you know, things that you like to actually participate in or do.
Whether somebody's building a 20-storey building next to your little house and that's going to take away your happiness because you won't see the sun every day. And so the people who work in council, I think, are very much driven by wanting to make sure that they are delivering for that community. And there is a purpose, right?
There is a purpose in making sure that that community you're working with is happy, healthy, it's thriving, has those social connections that they need and feel heard, right? Don't feel that if they want to be heard, because sometimes people don't care, they don't, it's not that they don't care, they're just happy and they'll just get on with life and no issue to report on. But whether they are just happy and living a great life or they're not, they want to be heard.
And so our role is to understand that. Yeah. And I'd love you to share with our listeners what motivated you to take on that challenge of revisiting Woollahra's vision, mission, and values. I mean, I talked about it in the introduction, that question. Yeah, you did. You gave it away. But yeah, take us deeper on that. So, I was brought in to bring in what's called CX, customer experience within Woollahra.
And it's really interesting because when I came into the role, there was a lot of changes happening. It was during COVID, actually. My first day was in the second lockdown. That was really interesting, doing customer experience without even meeting anyone. And... And Craig, our GM, had a vision of what he wanted. He didn't quite know how he wanted to get there.
And so my first thing was to actually write a paper which said, if you want a customer experience, you've got to really start with a North Star. What is your ideal when you're talking about customer experience? You know, what holds us there? Interestingly, when I wrote the discussion paper, I felt like I had written it in Japanese because nobody understood what I was talking about.
Right. So the difference between customer service, customer experience, and the fact that customer experience is very complex, right? It's not just you just answer the call and have a nice voice and say, thank you very much. And how was that for you? That's not just customer experience. It's about the whole journey.
Yes. And so when you're trying to explain that concept to people and you say, this is why, this is why we do it, there was a very long document that was our vision and it sort of meandered and you ask people across the organization, well, what is it? Nobody quite knew it. They could potentially find a document that told you what it was. And when you ask people, you know, what it was, they would talk to you about
their role in council. That was their vision, their mission, but not that our, you know. And so, yeah, sort of there was something missing. Lots of good words, lots of good thoughts, but nothing that was uniting. And to be able to drive a strategy, particularly around customer experience, you've got to know, everybody's got to understand what we're talking about. Mm-hmm.
So, yeah, so that was the first thing that I realised, okay, it is a scaffolding of the work that we need to do and we need to start with the top, you know. What are we leading with? Yeah. What is that vision of the future that we want to work towards? And you touched on it, but how would you describe the state or the quality of the previous vision and mission in relation to the job you had to do, which was to, you know, build a strategy to bring it to life? It was, it wasn't clear.
There was a lot of words, but there were more actions rather than a vision statement. There was a lot of the things we try to do or are wanting to do or aiming to do, but not the why. You know, the why was missing. And you need a unified why as an organization. And when you ask staff, there was this sense of lack of connection with it as well. Yeah. And for council, having this vision, mission, values is actually part of our legislative requirements, right?
And it's not just an organisational vision. It's got to be a vision that your community connects with. Yes. And so it's a vision for the community, right? It's not my vision. or so it's a little bit different to how you might have a vision for an organisation that focuses on, well, it is and it isn't, but you might have a vision that's very specific about a client group, right? So our client group is the whole community and so can the community see itself in that and is it a shared vision?
And that's what council has to do is create a shared vision that everybody can hold on to, the community, the counsellors, the staff. And it was a very difficult to explain vision. So I don't know that, you could thread that through, you know, all the work that we do. So it gets a bit messy and a bit unfocused and then it's hard to drive change or to drive where you want to go to because people get lost in the journey.
And I'm going to ask you to share what the vision and the mission is in a moment. But before we get… Well, I'm glad you're not asking me what it was. I can't remember. I went back and had a look and what struck me, and I can't remember it off the top of my head, it was quite wordy, but it also felt quite passive. It felt like just preserving what we have currently rather than thinking about the future and future generations.
And it seemed kind of focused in, this is just my perspective, right, but it didn't seem to take on board lots of, you know, all stakeholders. So, yeah, but we won't go into that. But what I would love to hear from you on is what were the biggest challenges in rallying the organisation to actually get to the point where you did that work? To agree to do the work or? Yeah, I guess so. To get, yeah, to agree to it. Like were there any big bumps in the road that
you had to overcome or was it seeming, you know, was it reasonably easy to get there? No. No. That's why you were the woman for the job, Patricia. Maybe. Have you seen my grey hair? No, Craig had a vision of where he wanted to be but not how he wanted to get there. And local government is a beast. So we operate in a four-year cycle. And as I said, the vision is shared and owned by the councillors and the community.
So if you want to change that, it's not just a matter of a group of staff getting together and going, oh, that's a good idea, let's workshop it and let's devise a new vision. It has to be part of integrated planning and reporting process and that is a huge process that goes into a four-year cycle. So the first thing was to convince Craig. And to look at, well, then if we did this work, where was it going to be fitting? And potentially it was going to be fitting into a four-year cycle.
I could have started this work and delivered it four years later. Now, that's a bit disheartening considering in my previous role, I was CEO. I could make decisions, you know, put them to the board and pretty much move things rather quickly, right? So the idea that it could take two years to change a vision was quite challenging. The other was to convince that we should do the work. And so we had lots of discussions about how we were leading as a team.
Where did we want to go with a customer experience? Noting that a lot of the executive still didn't quite understand what I was talking about when we were talking customer experience. It was new to them, it was new to a whole, you know, the staff and so forth.
So that had to come in parallel, all the education and conversations about what are we talking about when we're talking customer experience and also the fact that customer experience, yes, was in my title, but ultimately it's a shared responsibility, right? Yes. So it's not just up to me to go, yeah, customer experience done. Yeah. Yeah. So, that took a while and I think it took, well, I started in 21, in June of 21. So, it took, when did we start? In November of 22 to do the work, I think.
I thought it was 21. I might be wrong. So, it took me six months. Wow. Looking back, it wasn't that bad. But it was, you know, acknowledging that the work needed to be done and that was pretty relentless and me sort of having ongoing conversations about, well, this is what I'm talking about and this is the way it's going to look like and this is why. So basically being a thorn in their side. Yes, but also a gentle thorn.
So, understanding that this was all new and providing those elements of education. So, we ran a number of workshops trying to explain customer experience. We started to develop some tools and resources around that as well. So, we were going at it from different angles too. And there were conversations about, you know, is this driving our culture? Is this driving the behaviours we want? And the GM wanted to see a change in that as well.
And we were going also through significant changes. We had financial issues we needed to address. That led to redundancies, restructures. You know, we needed to fix our financial positions. So we had special rate variation to be done. Like there was lots going on at the same time. So what we proposed was then to bring the group together.
And to what bringing the group together identified was that because we didn't have a shared vision, that –, what it showed to me was that people saw themselves within the organization not as the our, who are we, but more who am I. And so it was very interesting because when we brought that group together, Carolyn, we had 20 staff, executive, management and others.
And it was very clear at that point in time that there was two camps in council, one who saw it from an environmental perspective and one who saw it from a human perspective, like the people, the services. And it was really interesting, those conversations, because neither of them were wrong and neither of them were right. But it's like that brought it to the front that we're actually not talking about a we. We're talking about a me. Are you, you know?
And so even the words and how we condense that and the critical words, because you made us think about the critical words that were about the why. Made us then really condense that and say, look, is that a shared we? And I think the test in time has been that now we're going through a process again. So we had a, even though I've only been here four years, the council election was postponed, then a short period was held, and then we've now just had another council election.
So now that we've got a whole new group of councillors, when we showed them the vision and the respective mission and so forth, that they went, yep, that makes sense. And we're still working to that. Nobody went, oh, no, that's not right. We need to change our vision. Yeah. Did I answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you did. I think you did. And so just give us a sort of overview of the process that we went through. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And our process from doing the process to actually delivering an outcome, I think, took over a year. Yeah. So the process was you took us through a number of workshops where, I mean, I love your process. I've been through the process twice now in different contexts. And I think it's a great process to get people focused on the why. And the product that you end up with is very poignant, right? It speaks to whoever you're trying to describe why you're doing what you do.
Yeah. And I had a similar experience with you when I did this work for the other organization where we used to have, you know, you asked me, I remember in the first meeting, why do you exist? And I gave you 150 reasons why we existed. So the process, and this is a while ago now, was for us to think about key words about the why. And then we went through that process of refining that. And I think that's when we realized that there was this process of division.
And then you challenged us in that to keep refining that. One was, I think, which was very poignant, was about reducing the amount of words that we had. And you got us to really bring it down to things that were descriptive and that talked to both us but would talk to the community. And when you look at our vision now, it is a set of just key words, right, because we've got thriving, inclusive, sustainable, resilient community that will benefit future generations.
So we've stated the why we do the various things and you can fit anything that we do, not just because they're meaningless words, but because they're meaningful words, you can fit everything that we do into that, whether it's how we lead with strategy or how we lead operationally to deliver on these things.
You know, we deliver libraries because we support inclusivity, because we want the community to thrive and they thrive through education and resources and supports, you know, and it does benefit future generations because we're educating. And so whatever it is that we're doing leads all to that major vision. And it brought together those two camps, didn't it? And it did. It united us. It realized, you know, we were able to then realize that there was a united we.
And one of the visions of our general manager was this aspect of collaboration. So, it was a really great project to get us all to collaborate and work together and realize we had something to deliver on, which was for across council as well, which also modeled some of the work we have to do in customer experience, right? When somebody comes to counsel, often there's so many touch points in their experience.
And so you can't fix something or you can't address a concern of a counselor, a community member, without understanding that every point of interaction can either delight or frustrate. Yes. And if it's not all a delightful experience, then you end up with a frustrated customer regardless. So, yeah, so that was part of that process. It was getting a common understanding of the why.
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And I think the other thing you took us through that whole thing about looking at the vision and the purpose like why do we exist but you also wove in the conversation around the values which is the values it's the how right how do we deliver and how do we show up every day, And the interesting thing about that conversation was no one knew what they were. Yeah. You know? That's not unusual though, is it? No. No. I don't think there was anyone in that group could recite the values.
And so that meant that they weren't sticking. You know, they weren't sticky. Yeah. And you want values to be sticky because you want your values to be, or the organization's values, the things you live up to every day. You know, so when you're reviewing a decision or when you're thinking about how you are planning something or delivering on something, the value should be there, right? And you can question, are we delivering based on our values? Is this policy reflecting our values?
Is the way we've interacted with this customer reflecting our values? Is the way we're talking to each other reflecting our values? So they need to be more than just, A set of words that sit on a wall. On a page. That's our value. It's got to speak to people. Absolutely. So I want to go back to that vision first. So a thriving, inclusive, sustainable and resilient community that will benefit future generations. That's a beautiful vision. And I say that I've facilitated a process.
You guys came up with it, right? So it was true to you. What I'd want to ask you, Patricia, is what does that vision mean to you personally? It sort of inspires me, you know, and it inspires the work that we do. So, as you said, my portfolio isn't just customer experience, right? So, we need to understand our community. And in order to be able to deliver on a thriving, inclusive, sustainable, resilient community, that lays the foundation for future generations
as well. We're not just thinking about just the today. We're thinking about the tomorrow as well. Is that one of the things that I looked at in my portfolio, which was to do the community development work, was we had very little deep understanding of our community. So what does it mean to me was that in order to do this work, we needed to go and actually engage with our community more, have a deeper understanding of our community.
We have now quite a lot of strategies and plans that we're delivering on because of that, whether it's our arts and culture strategy, the children, youth and family strategy, the reconciliation action plan, disability inclusion action plan, all those things, or the customer experience strategy, all those things are about having a deeper understanding about what a community needs and wants from us and putting the stepping stones to get there.
Our community We could be frustrated that we're not delivering as quickly as they'd like us to, but I know that we are on the journey to get to that place. And so I can hold myself to that vision. And all our actions hold themselves against this, right?
So when we, I talked about library services, but say our sustainability team, they've got strategies to plant trees, to preserve our current environment because they want to influence what happens from a climate change perspective and they want to create a livable environment for our future that is potentially heating up. And we're doing some work around affordable housing because outsiders might say, oh, everybody in Wallara is rich and can afford to live there.
That's not the case, right? And there's many younger people who cannot live connected to their family, culture, religion, whatever it is, friends, because they can't afford to live here anymore. Yeah. So, what does council do to create that inclusive, sustainable community? And that's another area that we as council can influence. So, it is about linking it back to the reasons, the why we do a whole variety of things.
And so that vision inspired your mission, which is, you know, if that's the future that you want to contribute to, this is how we're going to go about and do that. Can you share that mission with us? So it's to lead climate action. Promote respectful connections between people and place so we can enhance, protect and celebrate Wulara's beauty, heritage and quality of life for the enjoyment of all.
And so what it talks to is the real values here, the wonderful things that Wulara has to offer for the community because we know why people want to live in Wulara and why they love Wulara. So heritage is a significant issue. The beauty, the greenery, the harbour are all things that people value and they enjoy as well and they want to continue to enjoy, but they're also concerned about the future of those places.
The the climate action the leading with climate action was really important for councillors because they're conscious of what a inner city environment can look like and how that can decimate the environment and they're very passionate about the environment because the environment creates quality right if you remove all your trees you end up in a heat trap you know And if you don't have enough parks for people to be able to celebrate or get out or enjoy company
with friends and family or for children to run around, they're all things that ultimately affect quality of life.
And we chose our words carefully about respectful connections between people and place because there is that connection between people and people and you need to create a place places where people can connect it's one of the things that has come up strongly with the consultation with staff with the community that staff have driven where they want to connect with each other and they want to have places.
Whether that's environment-friendly places or internal places where they can connect with each other and build relationships with one another. And that could be like a cafe or a mall or a shopping strip or a community centre or there's a whole variety of different ways that they can connect with each other. But the word enhance is also in there because we want to make things better, right? We just don't want to just maintain things. We want to maintain and enhance as well.
So these were carefully crafted and very thoughtful words. And I think they now filter through our strategies, our documents, our communication, you know, the way we talk to our customers as well. And that's the thing and that's why I wanted to get you and Craig to come on the show and share this because I may be wrong, I've not worked in local government, but I get the sense that often, you know, the work and the annual report, it's almost like, oh, yeah, what's the vision and mission?
Put that at the front of the document and then we do all of this.
But from the conversations we've had, you know, since you did that work, it seems to me that actually it's really driven you it it's so connected and it's driven your strategy it's driven your the culture it's it's driven how you see your roles and responsibilities which is exactly what it's supposed to do yeah but rarely does i think i think the other thing carolyn that you did was uh, You got us to look at our brand voice and you sent a questionnaire around and
we all answered it and then you collated that for us. And we came up as caregiver, the everyday guy. Oh, this is the brand archetype's work. Yeah, the brand archetype, sorry. Caregiver, the everyday guy with a little bit of the ruler. Yeah. What a mix, but it all made sense. It all made sense. It all made sense, right? We've got compliance. So the compliance guys, well, we're the ruler, right? That's what we exist for, to make rules.
And then the everyday guy was like, yeah, we're approachable. We're connected. We're everything. But then the caregiver was actually, we're here to care for our community. We're here to look after you, right? And even that was a really interesting conversation between the group because it sort of started challenging some beliefs of staff who were really driven by maybe what the driving force of their work was, right? But once we landed on caregiver, it changed the whole paradigm,
right? Because you can do compliance in a caring way. Yes. You can write a letter that says, what you did, Mr. Jones, isn't great. You know, you're going to get a fine because it wasn't good. And this is how you can do better next time or whatever, you know. Not, you're a horrible human being. We're going to take you to court because you're, you know. And these are letters that didn't need to be driven, written in that way.
But we had chosen to write them as a ruler, not a caregiver, not the why. We do this because we care for our environment, you know, and therefore what's happened is, you know, something that we will defend or whatever. So it started even impacting from a customer experience perspective, not just how we showed up in all our comms, because now if you look at our communications, it is a very mature caregiver. Because caregiver was the primary one, wasn't it?
Yeah, it was the primary one. Yeah. And so, you can, yeah, it sort of drives now how we show up in our communications, you know, who we are as a voice because we had many voices. Yeah. And then how do you refine some of your processes to ensure you've got the right voice and tone throughout it, you know, and those processes continue, right? But you've got something to base it on.
Whereas before it was based on a whole bunch of different voices that weren't necessarily then going to be great for the way that we showed up on our values or anything else. So I think that was a very important part of the process for us as well. Yeah, yeah. And so overall with the work that you did and, you know, it was about. You know, your purpose, your vision, your mission, your values, which is how you behave. And then we looked at, okay, once we've got that, how does this filter?
How does this drive, you know, your actual work? And we went down to that detail. But what impact have you seen internally? You know, you talked about needing something to unite people. So have you seen that impact internally, whether it's from leadership or to frontline teams? Well, yes, I think it has.
So one of the areas we didn't talk about was the values work and the values work was really interesting because we did the refining of our values together and then one of our staff went and consulted with 240 staff, which is huge, right?
And then with that we took those values to the counsellors and then the counsellors added a little bit more and then you know I make it sound really simple right but it took about a 12-month process yeah and then we we landed on on values that not only talk about what our values are but they also talk about the behaviours that you would see if you if you want to share do you want to share those values yeah so so we have respect open accountable responsive and excellence and each
one and i don't know if you want me to go through each one it's a bit too long okay yeah what what they have is they have an acronym we have an acronym called raw well rory but raw people know raw and they know the values. So, for example, with respect, it says people are at the heart of everything we do. Communicate with honesty and display empathy. Treat others as you would like
to be treated. Simple, right? Yep. Resonates with or displays the caregiver brand because that's, you know, what a caregiver should do. What we have done is those values are now embedded within the organization. We do an annual celebration of staff where we bring everybody together.
People can nominate their fellow colleagues for an award against and the values is one of them of those areas so each one of those values has a specific award and and also customer experience has a an award so those who've displayed you know excellence in that area they they drive all our documents, they're in our induction, in our training, in all our strategies as well, both the vision mission, you know, as well as the values.
They're shared between staff and counsellors. They're part of our performance, you know, in the way that we talk about the way we show up. So, they're starting to be or they are part of the everyday in our organization and an experience that I recently had. So, I put my hand up to support a group of staff who were involved in the organization,
It's called the Australasian Management Challenge. And one of the things that, you know, I had to sort of help them form as a group and things like that, this was people from all over the organization, six different areas. And we had to refine the group's values. And it's interesting. They said, well, hold on, we've got the organizational values.
And I think they're really good values. and then having further conversations with that group about the sense of ownership of those values, which I think in the past that would have never happened. But then they were able to refine the behaviours and what that meant for them as a group. So, you know, like that's just a prime example of people knowing what they are, knowing what it means to them and then being able to use that to go, actually, we're in this management challenge together.
What does that mean when we show up to each other or for each other? So, yeah, that's how you're seeing it every day. I don't have a cup with my values, you know, on them, nor do I have posters on the walls with the values. Thank goodness. It should be, yeah, people should feel them and know them and identify with them. That's the biggie, isn't it? It's identifying with them. Exactly.
Exactly. Now, this might be a tricky one, but I'm going to ask it anyway, because it's been quite some time now since you rolled out that work. Have you noticed a shift in how residents, how your community experience or perceive the council as a result? It's an interesting one because... Our community perceives council in many different ways. So they could be annoyed about a decision that's been made by council or they can be delighted by projects that's delivered by council.
One of the things, though, is that our engagement is up. So, we engage with the community on projects, on, you know, strategies, those sorts of things. And there is a higher engagement than there has been. So, there's been a really significant focus. And I think that's about the way we show up in the way we communicate and in the way we engage and the way we want to listen. So, the fact that we are living those values, right? Not everyone will be happy.
Sometimes people are happy on things that we don't have any control of. Yep. And sometimes people are unhappy about things we do have control of. But, you know, you get a small group who doesn't want us to pursue a particular thing. Yep. But generally, our customers are very delighted with us, generally, right? I'm not saying everybody. No. And we get lots of positive feedback where our customers will say, you know, that experience was really great. Thank you.
You went above and beyond. Or, you know, I'm really thankful for the service that has been delivered. Or this has really changed my life, you know, and we've had those sorts of conversations as well. So whether I don't know I haven't I haven't gone and asked the community about well actually I lie so recently when we were doing the work around the our community strategic plan we went out to the community with our vision and our mission and our values and said here they are,
And most people went great. Yep. I don't think there was anyone in those consultations that went, no. So I suppose in terms of that, they resonate. Yep. Because that's the process we've had to do to get to where we're going in the next four years. Yeah. So I suppose it went through that test and there was no particular feedback or there was no feedback to say you need to change them or they don't speak to me. or they're wrong.
That's interesting. And the engagement piece is also interesting because I guess it's a sense of trust almost. Like some communities just can't be bothered to engage because they have that feeling that, oh, nothing I do matters, you know. Yeah. It's going to happen the way it's going to happen anyway. So engagement. No, no, we hear from people if they're unhappy. Yeah. And we also hear from them if they want to support.
And we want to hear from more people, right? Because sometimes you don't hear from people enough. But then I think that's part of being happy is that sometimes we're happy to just be happy. And I mean, there's that side of it that you don't engage because, you know, you think that nothing's going to change. But the other side of it is you're just happy to get on with your life and you've got nothing to complain about. So everything's good. Actually, we have recently done a survey.
Our customer satisfaction survey, and I wish I had the statistics in front of me, but it is very high. It's over 90-something percent of our community is satisfied with council. There is some areas that obviously we can improve in, but our satisfaction rating is very high. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. I'm going to start winding this up because of time, but just a couple more questions. What are you most proud of from this work?
I think starting to now see the labour of the customer experience strategy, because that's what was driving this, right? How do we drive momentum to actually get the change we want? And we've been able to really tick very significant projects. And one of those has been every manager has been required to implement a customer experience project. And I remember at the beginning...
People going, oh, another performance, you know, whatever. But through this process of doing this work, managers are seeing the value of the work that they're doing and now starting to implement some of these things as permanent ways of looking at their business and being very curious about process improvement from a customer experience perspective. So I think that's a significant change in the organization.
Culturally, I think it needs a little bit more to actually, you know, I love 100% of staff knowing exactly what we're talking about when we're talking about customer experience. But knowing that this work, which started just about customer experience, has filtered through so many areas of council and is really driving the culture that we want to see, right? And I think that's a bit that I'm proud of, that it started from this perspective, but it's grown into this broader impact.
Beautiful. And you've championed that. So what words of wisdom do you have for other leaders, whether it's in government or organisations, who want to create meaningful change and positive impact?
You know from from what you've learned through this process is there any advice you'd have for them yeah i i think for me be clear on your north star like where is it you want to go and be very clear on what that looks like be patient you know you need to take people along with you and sometimes you need to go at it from different angles. I really used my team to test, test assumptions, test strategies, devise different strategies and sometimes you have to go at it from different angles.
So collect your allies, you know, that. Are going to both challenge but champion at the same time because sometimes you need to be challenged and somebody needs to say to you, but what is it that you're trying to do or where you want to head or why are you doing it this way? Have you thought of that instead? You know, yeah, and have perseverance but listen as well. Listen intently to what people are telling you and try, seek to understand because the more that you do that.
I think the more then you can work out which direction you need to take and don't be afraid to challenge as well. You know, sometimes you've got to go, well, actually, I need to challenge that. I need to challenge what you're telling me or I need to challenge why you think this is my responsibility and not yours, you know, or it's not a shared responsibility.
So that's wonderful advice clarity on on your north star patience in the process test different strategies angles find your allies listen intently and listen to understand and be prepared to challenge i think that's fabulous patricia thank you so much for joining us on the podcast, I would love to let you lead us out with any final words that you would like to share.
Oh gosh, that's a challenging one, except to say thank you because I think you have a magic touch in the way that you can bring people together and you can lead through a process. I'm very much a, you know. I think I would champion you anywhere in terms of doing this type of work because I have seen it work a number of times and in different contexts.
And the formula works, right? So thank you because without your leadership and support, maybe we would still be four years later and three councils in with the old vision and me still hitting my head against a wall or have quit. That's very kind of you, but knowing you as I do, that picture you just outlined would never happen because you would drive change or you would exit, I know.
And it's wonderful that you had the support of a leadership team who were prepared to go on that journey and take that journey and step into the unknown. So thank you so much and we'll look forward to interviewing Craig next, in the next episode. Thanks, Patricia. Thanks, Carolyn. Thanks for listening to this episode of the For Love and Money podcast. If you'd like to take a deeper dive into the purpose movement, visit us at thecauseeffect.com.au. And remember, doing good is
good for business. So if you're not doing good, then what are you doing?