Episode 35: Leading through change with Emma Connell

As a people and culture leader, Emma Connell has seen and experienced both sides of organisational change, including when it’s managed well and when it’s not. Emma is the Executive Director of People and Culture at the Aged Care Quality Safety Commission. She joins us in our latest episode to share her experiences and offer her advice in leading and supporting people through change, whether it be internal changes within an organisation’s control, or external changes in response to changes to acts, standards, and regulations.

Listen to episode thirty-five:

Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify:

About this episode:

This episode offers practical advice on managing organisational change well through putting your people first, sharing the ‘why’ early, and providing ways for engaging your workforce from the get-go in contributing to what the change may look like to them. It also provides the difference between communication done well and when it isn’t, and emphasises the importance of everyone having leadership skills, regardless of their role, in how they support, collaborate, and learn from what others are doing around them.

Emma shares her experiences based on what’s been happening at the commission over the past few years, specifically in response to capability reviews and significant legislative changes, and while the type of change may alter how you respond, how you support people through it remains very similar. Emma takes us through the similarities including how leaders need to be very clear on explaining the “why” and how essential it is for people to be at the forefront of decision-making with leaders needing to put themselves in the shoes of the people who the change will impact, and the importance of people being involved in contributing to what a job might look like as a result of the change.

Emma also stresses how crucial it is to keep your workforce engaged early and informed throughout the process, and how communication done well is when information is intentional, genuine, meaningful in that it’s hitting the things people want to hear about, and delivered through a mix of channels that people respond well to. Leaders also need to be true to their word, meaning if they said they would communicate every fortnight, they must stick to that commitment, even if all they communicate is that there is nothing new to report.

Emma also shares how adaptability, agility, innovation, creativity, curiosity, and digital literacy are essential skills that today’s workforce needs to possess in order to deal with change and uncertainty, and how specific leadership traits, such as empathy and authenticity, have inspired her throughout her career. 

Find out more about this Trailblazer:

Emma Connell

Executive Director of People and Culture

Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission

Emma Connell is the Executive Director of People and Culture at the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. She joined the Commission in December 2024. Prior to joining the Commission Emma was the Assistant Secretary People, Strategy and Safety Branch at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. 

Emma has led and delivered complex and multi-faceted HR reform projects to improve and enhance workforce capability related to culture, workforce planning, data insights, organisation re-design, corporate learning and development and recruitment. Emma is a people focused leader who values the importance of good change management practices while building a well-supported, highly capable, diverse workforce that works together to fulfill the Commission’s vision.

Emma holds a Master of Business Administration (Human Resource Management) and is a Certified Practitioner Human Resources (CPHR) with AHRI. 

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

Thriving in Uncertainty with David MacLennan

Our next trailblazer, David MacLennan, has had an interesting career. He started out working in the Commonwealth Government, mainly in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra and then overseas, before joining the Western Australian State Government in the Department of Planning and now as the CEO of the City of Vincent. David joins us in our latest episode to talk about his journey as a CEO in improving organisational performance.

Listen to episode seventeen now:

Also available through Apple Podcasts and Spotify:

About this episode:

Serving as a diplomat in Mexico City, Lima in Peru, and London, David MacLennan describes himself as a student of cities, and that interest was deepened in joining the Western Australian Department of Planning and being involved in the planning of metropolitan projects. Serving as CEO of the City of Vincent for the past five years, David has come full circle, being directly responsible for delivering projects on the ground that directly impact the community.

We often talk about leaders inheriting existing work cultures, but for many CEOs coming into an existing organisation, they also inherit existing ‘to-do lists’ as well as projects and processes on service delivery too. David shares his journey of learning how he got comfortable in his new role, how important it was in determining priorities and what to tackle first, and how he developed a structured way to allocate his time and energy to deliver on what his stakeholders wanted, and what he needed to improve internally with his workforce to do it.

Listen as David shares how he deeply engaged with his team to look at how they could improve processes, policies, and systems in how they worked together and how they delivered services, and how he then drew conclusions on what the most significant pain points were and what he could influence as the CEO to take out the inefficiencies quickly to start improving their processes and capability across the organisation’s 14 different areas.

David also talks about how he gave his teams extreme accountability by empowering staff to make changes internally without needing to ask permission so that they could reorientate the way they delivered services through a Service Delivery Review Program. David’s unique perspective on innovation and how budget and staff restraints can drive it instead of impede it are refreshing, as is his view on keeping good ideas alive and being ready to seize the moment when that window or door opens.

We hope that you enjoy listening to David’s advice on improving organisational performance and that you can apply his many insights to your organisation today.

• Service Delivery Review Program Case Study

  Giving accountability to your team to self-improve their maturity year-on-year across service delivery, project management, and running programs.

  The challenge:

  Many organisations face a challenge when a valued and experienced team member leaves, leaving a huge skills and capability gap that can’t be filled quickly or easily. This often results in the inconsistent delivery of key services.

  The City of Vincent was no exception, having undertaken a self-assessment of the level of maturity in how their different services were being delivered, rating this on a capability matrix of 1 to 5. The initial results revealed that while they had diligent and good staff in their roles of delivering services, there was no backup or redundancy if that staff member left or was sick or away. The organisation needed to build up a level of maturity within their teams so that there was consistent service delivery, regardless of who was delivering it. 

  The solution:

  The City of Vincent, in collaboration with CorbettPrice, developed a Strategic Planning Program for each of its 14 different areas, which run distinctive services and businesses. The program enables each team to improve its maturity in service delivery, project management, and program management year on year.

  The process:

  The process started with a self-assessment of the maturity level in how different services were delivered as a council and rating those on a capability matrix of 1 to 5. Maturity levels: 1—ad hoc, 2—getting there, 3—managed, 4—much higher levels of performance.

  The CEO set the goal for all teams to be at least at level 3. All teams then engaged in service delivery planning to put short-, medium-, and long-term business plans in place to improve maturity in a scaled way that avoided the often painful change management endured through external and large consultancies.

  Outcomes:

  • Improved service delivery year-on-year.

  • An ability to demonstrate to the council how resources are allocated.

  • Team resilience is strengthened by the ability to survive big disruptions, which was tested with COVID-19, staffing, or other shocks.

  • Improved engagement through extreme accountability for each team to self-manage and lead their own performance journey.

  • Completed internally at the team level, where managers engage with staff and staff then understand their role in delivering team outcomes.

  • Improved collaboration.

  • Improved innovation.

Find out more about this Trailblazer:

David MacLennan

Chief Executive Officer

City of Vincent

David MacLennan is the CEO of the City of Vincent and Chair of the Australian Urban Design Research Centre at the University of Western Australia.

He has extensive public policy and strategy experience at local, state, federal and international levels.

David was previously Assistant Director General at the Department of Planning.

He is a former diplomat with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with overseas posting experience in the UK, Peru, Mexico and Papua New Guinea.

David is a graduate of UWA and has a Masters of Management from ANU.

His passions are family and fitness.

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