Blog

The recent local government elections in Queensland have continued the trend of increasing representation as women win more Mayoralties in the State’s municipal authorities. This has accompanied the continuing trend of high turnover in mayoral positions whereby only 40% of sitting Mayors were returned. Sitting Councillors fared better returning... Read more >

The Local Government elections 2024 are upon us. The quadrennial local government elections in Queensland always produce a period of uncertainty for Council organisations. Regardless of whether the previous four years has been highly collaborative or desperately tense, the unknown outcome of the new election poses its own conundrums particularly... Read more >

We often hear complaints in organisations about micromanagers. The inference is that this is not a good attribute for managers and supervisors to adopt. How important is managing micromanagers? There are many studies that confirm that this approach creates undesirable features in the workplace, including. Creating dependent, unengaged and... Read more >

Leading positive workplace culture and its effect on employee wellbeing is a growing focus for many organisations as the environment of where, how and when people work becomes increasingly complex. Ranging across the many aspects likely to influence any organisation’s working environment, is the overriding influence of leadership style and... Read more >

On many occasions during an organisational review I have been told that the office has a  “toxic culture”. The term is often used as  a description to invoke a sense of chaos and people being treated badly by their supervisors and peers. In many cases the actual environment is indeed a problem, but more often it is a failure of management to... Read more >

The risk environment involving access to information systems has escalated dramatically in recent months emphasising the need to be aware of cyber security and the new crime wave. The attack on Optus and Medibank Private were high-profile but only examples of the many incidents experienced by organisations and individuals on a regular basis. The... Read more >

A new focus has been brought to bear on Australian local governments and their response to climate change. The Federal Government has legislated a 43% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050 – placing increased responsibilities on public and private sectors– including Councils – to initiate and align policies and... Read more >

This is a memorable quote from Bill Murray’s character in the original Ghostbusters movie to describe a pending disaster of biblical proportions. For some Queensland local governments, it is the growing number of dogs and cats living at their animal pounds that represents impending doom… for those pets. Of all the many and varied functions of... Read more >

Having several decades exposure to local government audit and risk management committees both from the perspective of an officer reporting to Committees and as a member and Chair of Committees, I feel I can offer a few helpful tips to those following along that path, particularly on creating high performance in the functioning of Local... Read more >

Most organisations agree that a key ingredient of their success is the relationship they have with their stakeholders. But many do little thinking about stakeholder engagement. Others find their engagement is not working as they would like and this is often because they don't have a cogent and logical engagement strategy. In some cases there... Read more >