The Clean Energy Regulator (CER) certainly has a large and growing remit of work. As they administer Australia’s climate change mitigation laws, CER not only serves as a regulator but also as a carbon markets agency, acting like a bank due to the carbon units and certificates it issues.

Speaking with Mark Williamson, the Executive General Manager, who has been at CER for thirteen years on the topic of navigating change, it’s clear that as an organisation, they have had to get very good at managing ongoing change at pace, which is highly aligned to their purpose of accelerating carbon abatement for Australia and how from doing this, adaptability to change has become a permanent part of their organisational DNA.

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This episode is an excellent example of an organisation that prides itself on being open, transparent, and collaborative in how it navigates and manages change. With a pragmatic approach to actively managing change — “don’t admire it, just get on with it” —they have helped create a workplace culture that is practical, grounded, quick, and commercially savvy in how they manage risk and support one another in meeting legislative requirements and deadlines.

Mark talks about how foundationally, it comes down to creating and maintaining strong stakeholder relationships that are open and transparent, regularly scanning the environment for what’s happening in their space, being focussed on their purpose and engaging sensibly with risk and not avoiding it, stressing the importance of employees being transparent on where their projects are at and if they are falling behind.

Of course, Mark acknowledges that growth and change inevitably bring challenges along the way. With regular changes to schemes, CER must adapt the way it works and apply a project management lens, enabling its workforce to be agile, open, and supported in completing the workload at hand, which often involves ending and building new programs.

Mark also shares the digital transformation journey that CER has been on over the past few years in modernising their architecture to operate in a much more ecosystem approach with far more market interoperability. He explains how this transformation has resulted in a new online services transactional platform featuring approximately 50 smart forms, a new reporting system, and a blockchain registry.

We also talk further about managing risk and how, from a senior leadership standpoint, CER has always been very strong about engaging with risk, with a clear escalation framework that focuses on sharing the problem and sharing it up, and by doing that, their workforce will get the help that they need to resolve it.

Mark leaves us with a great AFL analogy from his fellow Executive General Manager on dealing and managing change, which is: “Kick the football as far down the field as you can, and then run hard after it.”

Find out more about this Trailblazer:

Mark Williamson

Executive General Manager
Clean Energy Regulator (CER)

Mark Williamson reports to the Chair/Chief Executive of the Clean Energy Regulator. In his 12 years at the Regulator, Mark has successfully led many major initiatives including the Regulator’s role in Australia meeting its Renewable Energy Target.

Mark had extensive senior executive experience in the private sector and state and local in government prior to joining the Commonwealth 2012.

Mr Williamson has tertiary qualifications in applied science and postgraduate qualifications in management.

Tune in next week as we speak to a new trailblazer in another episode in our series on Thriving in Uncertainty.

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