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Why money isnt everything: creating a civilised workplace

A paper presented at the National Local Government Managers Congress, Cairns,
May 2011 with a Postscript May 2013



Christopher Francis
Chief Executive Officer
Mornington Shire Council (2008-2014)
noosagard@aol.com

























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At the risk of irritating Premier Bailleu and Andrew Bolt, I acknowledge the traditional
custodians and elders of the land on which we meet today. I bring greetings from Mayor
Cecil Goodman and the Mornington Shire Council and I thank them for graciously
allowing me to talk to you today.

What we have achieved has been due to the effort of my colleagues. I want to thank my
Deputy Rob Cooper, and Steve Ferris, Stephen Rumens, Sharon Donald, Gillian Bann and
Bree Lloyd-Hannah for their patience, constructive inquisition of my ideas and proposals
and ultimately for their support.

Background

In 2006 Mornington Shire Council was in crisis. The Council had become so dysfunctional
that the then Minister for Local Government issued a Show Cause as to why the Council
should not be dismissed. Despite a comprehensively damning review the Council
remained in office, but in a greatly chastened mood and with severe restrictions placed
on it. With direct intervention by the Queensland Government the Council began to
recover.

By the time I arrived in March 2008 many fundamental improvements had been made
but there was much to do. I had no illusion about the challenge ahead. I was the
twentieth CEO in eight years. The outgoing interim CEO didnt stick around for a lengthy
hand-over or debrief. I still have the several pages of notes he left as he scrambled for
the plane.

It was clear to me that I had two inter-dependent goals, to establish trust and a positive
relationship with the newly-elected Council and with the staff and to have a stable
workforce. Within a couple of months I had a list of issues, some of which had already
been identified by the consultant in 2005:

1. There was a persistent unease, which sometimes blossomed into crisis and
chaos. There was an historical and cultural mis-trust of white administrators and
a belligerent attitude towards management. More than one white manager had
been threatened or assaulted over the years.

2. Council was unable to attract and retain skilled staff, particularly in key
corporate functions such as finance. These positions were and continue to be
filled mostly by non-locals. The turnover rate for non-local staff had hit a peak
at 60% in 2006.

3. There was no corporate culture, no sense of personal or corporate
responsibility and accountability.

4. There were two workforces, a local Indigenous one and a non-local, primarily
non-Indigenous one. Despite their commonalities, each workforce had
different needs, priorities and expectations.

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5. Human resource management was poorly-understood and poorly-executed.
Compliance and control with a dash of autocracy prevailed.

6. There was no attention paid to personal and corporate training and
development, or to employee assistance and welfare. Employees were left to
fend for themselves or flounder.

7. There was a culture of blaming.

8. Unacceptable workplace behaviour and non-performance was accepted as
the norm and was not dealt with fairly and firmly.

9. The Council was perceived by the Community and potential employees as an
undesirable place to work.

10. Lastly, it was not a civilised workplace. I realised this when Laureen, a local
employee, brought me some purchase orders to sign. After signing them I
thanked her and as I handed them back she paused and said, You know, you
say hello to us. The last one never even said hello.

Three years later I believe that we are on the right path. As you can see from Table 1, we
have reduced staff turnover to 23% overall and to 10% in the non-local workforce.

TABLE 1 Annual Staff Turnover Rate (%)

YEAR TOTAL LOCAL NON-LOCAL
2001 27.42 26.92 27.78
2002 34.38 33.33 35.14
2003 33.33 39.29 29.27
2004 44.71 21.43 56.14
2005 46.48 33.33 60.00
2006 33.33 32.35 34.78
2007 30.91 26.67 36.00
2008 21.43 13.79 26.93
2009 18.97 18.42 20.00
2010 23.21 36.37 10.00
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In Table 2 you can see that we have increased the length of employment in both the local
and non-local workforces to an average of more than four years.

TABLE 2 Annual Average Length of Service (Years)
YEAR TOTAL LOCAL NON-LOCAL
2001 2.14 3.07 1.47
2002 2.46 3.39 1.45
2003 2.41 3.49 1.67
2004 2.16 3.61 1.45
2005 2.56 3.31 1.78
2006 3.53 4.07 2.73
2007 3.85 4.73 2.80
2008 4.26 5.44 2.98
2009 4.91 4.83 5.08
2010 4.38 4.43 4.34

Furthermore, when we analyse the 36 terminations over the past three years we find
that there have been multiple reasons for the employee leaving.

Table 3
Retirement End of
Contract
Dismissal Medical Work Personal
TOTAL 3 3 4 1 4 21
LOCAL 2 0 4 1 0 15
NON 1 3 0 0 4 6

There are standard reasons such as retirement. Then there are personal reasons, such as
resigning to become a councillor, the employees partner leaving the Island, or the
employee disliking the restricted lifestyle of a Community.

In the case of local staff resignations tended to be due to broadly cultural reasons. For
Indigenous people the maintenance of relationships has priority over other activities or
obligations such as work. MacRae-Williams and others have noted that the distinction
between working for kin, that is maintaining relationships as a fully-engaging daily
activity, and working in the Mainstream sense are often synonymous for Indigenous
people.

This leaves dismissals and resignations due to work-related issues. Interestingly, all
those dismissed for poor performance were local staff (reasons ranging from dereliction
of duty to persistent alcohol-related offences and absenteeism); whereas all those who
resigned were non-local staff. These employees were either being performance-
managed or under disciplinary action, dis-satisfied with the workplace, be it who they
worked with, what they did, or how they were managed. In no resignation has money
been the issue.

There are obvious benefits of a stable workforce such as the reduced cost of
recruitment, reduced loss of productivity, minimal interruptions to business and greater
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regulatory compliance.

The non-financial benefits are perhaps more substantial. A stable workforce has given
the organisation a sense of identity, created a fresh corporate history, helped retain
corporate memory, provided the basis for continuous improvement, enabled people to
develop meaningful work relationships, promoted personal and family stability within
the community and enabled more effective corporate governance.

Are the staff happier now than they were three years ago? I cant say. As yet we have not
conducted the kind of employee survey that might elicit this information. Remember,
until 2010 we did not have a stable workforce from which to draw a valid baseline.
Nevertheless, I believe that there is a prima facie case to say that the staff are happier
now. So, what have we done?

Towards a Solution

The material well-being of employees (and people in general) is demonstrably greater
than ever before. As well, there is a comprehensive legal framework detailing the rights
and responsibilities of the employer and employee in occupational health and safety and
welfare and industrial relations. Despite this, the incidence of uncivil and criminal
behaviour, unhappiness and discontent in the workplace has not decreased. In fact, job
satisfaction and employee happiness is no greater than before.

This situation is paralleled in society itself. As Layard reports: Life may be better for
some, but the evidence is that for most types of people in the West, happiness has not
increased since 1950. Although our society is more affluent, people are no more
satisfied with life. Material gains have not given us the personal happiness that we
expected.

This is the starting-point. If we dont dispel the illusion that money alone will attract,
retain and motivate employees then we will never succeed. To do so we must
understand what gives us happiness and life satisfaction.

Once considered a problem for philosophy and religion, happiness was not seriously
studied by traditional psychology and psychiatry, which focussed on illness (neurosis)
rather than well-ness (happiness). Then, in the 1960s, the study of happiness and life
satisfaction began, perhaps not coincidentally during a time of great social upheaval
when traditional notions of the good life, of happiness being based on materialism were
being challenged.

With the development of the field of Positive Psychology in the 1990s the focus became
positive emotions, such as empathy and altruism, and questions such as what makes
people happy and why are some people happy and others not. So what does the
research say about money and happiness?

Today there is overwhelming cross-cultural evidence that once you have reached an
income level sufficient for your basic needs, happiness and life satisfaction are not
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increased by more wealth or material possessions. In fact the wealthy are only
marginally happier than the majority of the population. And those who value money and
materialism are not just less happy than those who dont, they are less satisfied with
their lives. This does not mean that there is no correlation between income, wealth and
happiness, only that having a 10% pay rise does not increase your happiness by 10%.

The notion that we are motivated by money is relatively new. In Frederick Taylors The
Principles of Scientific Management (1911), he wrote that the principal object of
management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled
with the maximum prosperity for each employee. For the employee this meant not
only higher wages than are usually received by men of his class, but also the maximum
development of the employees natural abilities. Taylor believed that this win-win
arrangement was founded on the fact that the employee most desires a high wage and
the employer most desires a low labour cost.

Taylors views were bolstered by the young science of psychology and, in particular,
Behaviourism. The logic went that the most effective way to get employees to do what
we want is either by punishing or rewarding them. Whilst corporal punishment was and
still is illegal and monetary punishments, such docking pay for errors, was discontinued
through union pressure, the use of incentives and rewards has continued.

The only problem with this model of human behaviour is that it is wrong.

Within a few years of Taylors book his theory had been disproved. Elton Mayos
experiments at the Hawthorne Plant revealed that the concept of the economically
motivated employee was inadequate to explain the variety of outcomes from changing
systems of work and thus productivity. By the 1930s, it had been confirmed that job
turnover and job dis-satisfaction are not directly linked with pay and monetary
compensation is not always effective in staff retention.

Since then research has identified factors such as having pleasant colleagues, the job
matching the employees abilities and the job allowing for achievement being ranked
higher than pay.

By the 1960s, following research by Maslow, Harlow, Macgregor and Deci, motivation
was conceptualised as being intrinsic and extrinsic. Human beings need to fill primary
needs, such as hunger or sleep, before they choose to fill needs of a higher order, such as
self-actualisation.

When employees have adequate remuneration, they are no longer motivated by primary
needs, but rather by higher order needs and these are intrinsic motivators. For this
reason historical antipathies between management and labour are becoming increasingly
irrelevant and employee unions struggle to maintain relevance when focussing primarily
on wages and conditions.

Also it has been conclusively shown that, not only does money not motivate employees,
performance-based pay and bonuses do not work either, being effective only in the
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short-term and with highly variable efficacy across the workforce. However, as Daniel
Pink observes, too many organisations still operate from assumptions about human
potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more
in folklore than in science.

So what kind of workplace does attract and retain peopl e? I submit that it is, in the
broadest sense, civilised, where the values of responsibility, respect and compassion are
the norms. In a nutshell what we are talking about is a preferred workplace culture.

That workplace culture is an instrumental determinant of both employee happiness and
optimal personal and organisational performance is hardly a new idea. In the late 1980s
Kotter and Hesketh were able to verify that certain kinds of corporate cultures help,
while others undermine, long-term economic performance. They distinguished between
adaptive and non-adaptive corporate cultures, the former exhibiting values such as
caring for the employee, customer and stockholder.

Another approach was taken by the psychologists Cook and Lafferty, who started
developing the organizational development framework known today as human
synergistics. This approach likewise focuses on behaviour. It has identified an optimal
kind of corporate culture which embodies positive and constructive values and
behaviours: achievement, self-actualisation, humanistic-encouragement and affiliation.

Having worked with the human synergistic approach at both Warringah and Ballarat I can
attest to its effectiveness. However, it requires considerable resources and ongoing
commitment over years, both of which were problematic for me.

Finally, in the last decade the field of Positive Organisational Scholarship has
incorporated the findings and insights of Positive Psychology to identify the constituents
of a positive workplace culture. This means positive outcomes, processes, and attributes
of organizations and their members. It focuses on dynamics such as excellence, thriving,
flourishing, abundance, resilience, or virtuousness. It emphasises the ideas of goodness
and positive human potential. It pays attention to the enablers (e.g., processes,
capabilities, structures, methods), the motivations (e.g., unselfish, altruistic, contribution
without regard to self), and the outcomes or effects (e.g., vitality, meaningfulness,
exhilaration, high quality relationships).

Towards a Civilised Workplace

I began to synthesise these ideas and practices, incorporating elements from my own
spiritual tradition, Buddhism. Not surprisingly I found synergies between these different
schools of thought and practices. Thus armed I started.

I set myself four tasks: 1. Do nothing. 2. Set the tone at the top. 3. Get the systems right.
4. Have the right people.

Over the course of the first few months I was often bluntly told by employees and
community members that I was just a whitefella there for the money, an opportunist, a
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carpetbagger. This was confronting but instructive. I asked questions, talked to people
and as I read through Council Minutes and reports I realised that my predecessors had
come in with all guns blazing, highlighting failure, non-compliance, poor performance,
apathy etc. Yes, they might have been correct but the effect was disastrous. They had
shamed and blamed.

So I set about doing nothing. Well actually positively nothing, meaning I did not re-
structure, sack people or launch a change management program. Whereas a textbook
approach would have required detailed planning, outputs, milestones and outcomes -
perhaps with slogans and the like - I did not believe this would work. Grand
pronouncements and vision statements would be regarded as so much bullshit.

My second task was to set the tone at the top. So I started by cleaning up the office, not
just my office, but the whole office. Why? I wanted the staff to see a physical expression
of two things: that change was happening and it started with small things like a tidy
office and that I was personally starting the change.

The act of cleaning is not just symbolic. I was able to cull nearly a tonne of irrelevant and
obsolete documents, find paper trails and explanations for various things, even an
important sub-lease came to light. I have never directed others to copy me and I have
never admonished others for not copying me. However the message has been clear.

This simple act was an expression of my commitment to be a role model by
demonstrating through action the values of responsibility, respect and compassion that I
wanted others to adopt and promulgate. At every opportunity, in every meeting or
conversation I have tried to communicate, demonstrate and practise these values. I took
literally the consultants recommendation in 2005: Council and senior staff must show
leadership and act in the manner that they would like to see their staff act.

My third task was to ensure basic systems and processes, such as payroll, functioned
properly and were fit for purpose. This would increase efficiency and effectiveness.
Employees can be easily discouraged and resentful if they are asked to do a job without
functioning equipment, insufficient resources or lack of training. Slogans for change are
meaningless if the basics dont work in the first place.

My fourth task was to ensure we had the right people, which meant the right values, the
right attitude and the right skills. This has involved two parallel processes: culling the
organisation of the wrong people and recruiting the right people.

Fundamental to keeping the right people is to cull the wrong people. To do so I have
applied the no arsehole rule, which is my Australian version of Bob Sutton's no asshole
rule. Sutton argues convincingly that we must rid workplaces of arseholes because they
dont just foment discontent and stifle productivity, they destroy people and even
organisations.


Arsehole behaviours can be personal insults, invading personal space, uninvited physical
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contact, verbal and non-verbal threats and intimidation, sarcastic jokes and teasing used
to insult, inappropriate use of email, status slaps intended to humiliate, public shaming
or status degradation rituals, rude interruptions, two-faced attacks, dirty looks, treating
people as if they are invisible. You will recognise immediately that these fall into the
categories of bullying, harassment and disrespect.

As we are all guilty at some time of this behaviour, what we are looking for is a persistent
pattern of behaviour which makes people feel humiliated, disrespected, oppressed, de-
motivated, put-down, worthless. Being cowards, they will target people less powerful
than themselves. They are finger-pointers and blamers.

Over the past three years we have said farewell to a couple of arseholes. Their behaviour
was treated as a performance management issue as the employee was incompetent and
a poor cultural fit, not a bad person. We hate the sin, not the sinner, as Christians say. It
was always clear that, unless there was positive change, termination was inevitable.
Moreover we had to ensure that the principles of natural justice were seen to apply to
everyone. The last outcome you want is to undermine the legitimacy of your actions by
not applying due process. An arsehole can quickly become a martyr if you are not seen to
treat them fairly.

We also needed to recruit the right people.

We had to face up to the fact that there is a skills shortage across remote Australia and
that we often cannot compete with wage rates in other sectors, such as mining.

We also knew that we had to improve basic amenities for staff, such as accommodation.
Once again, it is hard to attract and retain staff if they are living in a hovel. There are two
other complications it is ostensibly a dry community and this is a restriction that many
people baulk at; and it is an Indigenous community with the problems of such
communities. Some people just dont want to work in Indigenous communities.

To address these obstacles we implemented these initiatives:

1. Given the ubiquity of the Internet it makes sense to use online recruitment to
enable us to reach the widest possible pool of job seekers. We can reach
thousands of candidates quickly at a very low cost.

2. Our ads are honest. We say how challenging it is to work on Mornington. We also
tell people that we are a value-based organisation. We believe that people are
attracted to work that is challenging and that they want to work in a civilised
workplace.

3. We pay a little more than the average. We acknowledge that remote living is
difficult and being a dry community means that people have to do without. As
well we believe that, by paying a little more, we have a competitive edge.


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4. Although money isnt everything, it doesnt mean that it isnt important. Our
remuneration framework follows Daniel Pinks advice: Effective organizations
compensate people in amounts and in ways that allow individuals to mostly
forget about compensation and instead focus on the work itself.

So we provide a competitive Remuneration Package which includes subsidised
accommodation, six weeks leave, five return flights off the Island and professional
development of $3,000.

We also ensure internal and external fairness, which means not only
remunerating people commensurate with their skills, knowledge and experience
as an individual and with those at the same level, but by remunerating in line with
the local government and private sectors. We also ensure that internal relativities
between levels are fair.

5. Professional development is a priority. We provide as much technical training
(that is, training directly related to a persons job) as we can and this is identified
through annual performance reviews and ongoing consultation between
managers, staff and our HR Co-ordinator. Obviously this is a considerable
investment for us because we must either fly in a trainer or send people off the
Island.

6. Personal development is a priority. Every contract employee is given the
opportunity to have an annual $3,000 allowance to spend on personal
development. If they are studying we provide ten paid days for study leave. Not
every employee wants this its not forced on anyone. Award employees can also
apply for personal development and it is approved on a case by case basis.

7. Supporting our employees is a priority. Due to our remoteness this is difficult.
Nevertheless, we use a telephone counselling service based in Cairns and local
counselling services for short-term and crisis intervention.

But we still need to find the right people. Recruitment is an intense interaction between
people, more akin to finding the right partner than finding the right cog to fit into a
corporate machine. We look for organisational fit (the right skills and experience), value
fit (the right values) and cultural fit: Will this person fit into an Indigenous community?
Are they able to tolerate remote living, high levels of frustration and failure?

During recruitment we want to understand why someone wants to work with us. We
interrogate the person about their career, values, degree of self-insight and maturity,
problem-solving and inter-personal skills. To make such an assessment we use
behavioural questioning and scenarios. For example, we have asked: One of your
employees calls from Mt Isa (about 2 hrs flight from Mornington) to say he needs money
to fly back. What would you do?

Underpinning all that I have said is the idea of a civilised workplace, which has three core
values: responsibility, respect and compassion.
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The Values of a Civilised Workplace: Responsibility, Respect and Compassion

We want our staff to be responsible, but responsibility encompasses the good and the
bad. We discourage micro-management and encourage self-responsibility. When things
go well praise should be immediate and heart-felt. When things dont go well, we
support, we dont ever blame or find fault.

Blaming was endemic at Mornington when I arrived. The organisation had been chaotic
and crisis-ridden for so long employees regarded this as the natural state. As a learned
response to this employees avoided responsibility and blamed. They blamed managers,
they blamed each other, they blamed the government. The actual reasons might have
been legitimate, such as a lack of resources or poor and ineffective management, but no
thought was given to a solution.

Blaming creates victims and gives the illusion that the past could have been different.
Blaming focuses on the past, which can become an unhealthy habit of re-living the
mistake. When we blame we relinquish responsibility to others but leave our suffering
untouched and untreated.

So, to change this it was crucial to set a behavioural norm of non-blaming. People are
fallible. Mistakes and errors of judgement will happen. Our response is crucial. This
doesnt mean mouthing platitudes or Pollyanna slogans like, there are no problems, only
opportunities for success. We want employees to recognize and accept responsibility.
But to do this we must be respectful and help them, rather than be angry, disappointed,
belittling or humiliating.

Acknowledging a mistake or failure has occurred is the first step, acknowledging that
someone has been the agent of that failure is the second step, identifying the cause for
the failure is the third step and finding a solution is the tertiary step. When someone fails
our response should be, how do we fix it?

In a non-blaming workplace people are more likely to report problems than not because
they know that they will not be punished for speaking up. When we examine corporate
economic and physical disasters, such as the Global Financial Crisis or the BP oil disaster,
it is evident that employees and senior managers were afraid to speak up because of the
culture of blame. Indeed, I believe that there would be no need for whistleblower
legislation if workplaces were blame-free.

Non-blaming is also consistent with Total Quality Management, which has long
advocated that performance is inhibited by variation in process outcomes, be they
defects in a product, poor workmanship, failure to meet a customer request or poor
delivery of a service. TQM emphasises the fundamental role of the process, rather than
the employee. Between 80 and 85% of problems in most organisations are systemic and
between 15 and 20% are related to the employee. Even in this last case, poor
performance might be due to poor job fit, sub-optimal environmental conditions or
simply inadequate or poor training and education.

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If we truly want responsible employees then we care for them, listen deeply to what
they want, we train and develop them, give them the opportunity to learn and to fail and
when they fail, we help and offer encouragement.

Respect is one of the slipperiest ideas around. It seems to be a straightforward but it
isnt. Codes of Conduct invoke the principle of respect for the law, government and
people. We talk about mutual respect, professional respect, earn respect and
respect someones opinion.

Respect is an attitude of non-harm and recognition of value or worth in others. Self -
respect is not harming yourself and recognising the worth or value in yourself.
Furthermore, Sennett reminds us that respect is an expressive performance, that is
treating others with respect doesnt just happen, even with the best will in the world; to
convey respect means finding the words and gestures which make it felt and
convincing.

The words and gestures which convey respect and make it convincing cannot be
legislated or commanded. You cannot tell people to respect each other. However, you
can establish a behavioural norm which encourages and maintains respect through
desired behaviours such as:

1. Treat others the way you want to be treated, regardless of their status or
position.
2. Do not abuse your power. As Sutton reminds us, the difference between how
a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of
human character as I know.
3. Be kind, courteous and polite. Laureen regarded a simple hello as a defining
behaviour.
4. Listen attentively. Never speak over, butt in, or cut off another person.
5. Don't insult, disparage, make fun of, or call people names.
6. Don't bully or pick on others.
7. Don't be quick to judge.
8. Encourage people to express opinions and ideas.
9. Do not nit-pick, constantly criticise, belittle or patronize.
10. Recognise effort and contribution.

The third value is compassion, greatly mis-understood and undervalued. I believe that
compassion is one of the most effective and powerful tools in the managers skill-set and
should be encouraged throughout the organisation.

Compassion is not, as many believe, a warm and fuzzy feeling or patting someones
hand, a box of tissues at your side, while they talk about their problems. It is actively
striving to remove the suffering of another, not simply a passive recognition of their
suffering. Thich Naht Hanh describes compassion as deep concern, deep listening and
attentiveness to someone who is suffering.

You cannot be selectively compassionate, practising compassion with those you like and
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ignoring those you dont. The grieving parent, the woman with the broken marriage, the
employee with the poor performance all these people demand our compassion. You
cannot schedule compassion so that you practise it only when you have the time or are
feeling compassionate. Whenever someone requires our compassion we must respond.

Whereas responsibility and respect are familiar and widely-accepted values, compassion
rarely gets a mention. However, working in a remote community li ke Mornington it is
vital to practise compassion in order to deal with the issues we face, particularly with our
local staff: alcohol abuse, family pressure, unexpected deaths, chronic ill-health.

As well, non-local staff suffer culture shock and from the various pressures of remote
living, such as separation from partners and family, illness, racism and the cabin fever of
living in a small community where privacy can be a premium.

Compassion is a powerful tool in the workplace. We should be compassionate whenever
difficult tasks are required such as terminating, disciplining or counselling an employee.
Practicing compassion with an arsehole, an employee with a mental health issue, or
someone struggling with their job, is liberating for both parties. These people come to us
in a state of suffering. It can be expressed as anger, resentment, depression, grief or
deliberate avoidance. They are anxious, wary, argumentative, sullen and possibly prone
to violence.

When we are compassionate we can look beyond the emotion to the persons suffering.
In doing so we are able to speak honestly, help them to identify the cause of their
suffering, without pride or rancour, without false sympathy and without idiot
compassion.

Too often in the workplace managers believe that they are being compassionate when
they do not confront poor behaviour and poor performance. They believe that they are
somehow saving themselves or the employee from pain by not being honest about what
is wrong.

Conclusion

I appreciate that much of what I have said will seem warm and fuzzy, and perhaps overtly
spiritual. I make no apology for this. Indeed, I am convinced that the civilised workplace is
the key to employee happiness and job satisfaction.

These ideas and practices do not require expensive management gurus or organisational
change programs. All the material I have used is free or available from a bookstore. The
ideas are not difficult to understand. The practices can be learned.

This approach is not next practice but human practice, highlighting the fundamental and
constant values and practices that lead to happy and meaningful lives and to job
satisfaction. And it is testable. The Buddha said, Believe nothing, no matter where you
read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason
and your own common sense. So, try it and see for yourself whats stopping you?
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Thank you

POSTSCRIPT MAY 2013

It has been two years since I delivered this speech and the reader will ask whether things
have changed. Although the statistical evidence has not been updated there has been about
the same rate of turnover but length of service has increased. I am now the longest-serving
CEO in thirty years and my Deputy, Rob Cooper, would have outlasted nearly all other
managers. In key roles we have had two deaths which shook us greatly and two retirements.
Nevertheless we have, overall, maintained the direction we set out in 2008/2009.

However, the local government election in April 2012 brought with it a new council of which
four of the five councillors are new; and in December 2012 the new Queensland
Government brought in a new Local Government Act which changed key aspects of local
government governance.

Consequently the past year has been a very challenging. Not only are we working through
new relationships between Council and Administration, but we are working through the
practical changes brought about by the new Government. A primary issue has been a lack of
understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of elected members and public
servants, which has resulted in significant, sustained and often confronting discussion about
how the organisation should operate. Simply put, the Councillors believed that the new Act
would give them significantly more operational power than before (as suggested by both
Permier Newman and Minister for Local Government Crisafuli) and were, to be frank, very
disappointed when this was not forthcoming.

In conclusion, I am still confident that the direction I have outlined is empirically validated
and logically sound, as well as conforming to inviolable principles. Nevertheless, the
understanding and support of the Council as the collective decision-making and direction-
setting body is paramount and without this understanding and support the organisation
might not continue to improve. It is my mission to ensure that it does not through advocacy
and persistence. And significant amount of prayer.
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SUGGESTED READING LIST

Carroll, M 2006 Awake at work, Shambhala:Boston

Clarke, J 2005 Working with Monsters, Random House: Milsons point

Csikszentmihalyi, M 2008 Flow: The psychology of optimal experience, Harper Perennial:
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Dalai Lama 2001 An Open Heart: Practising Compassion in Everyday Life,
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