How to combat global forces that impact local government

Increased demands on local councils as a result of globalisation

It seems the pace of change is continuing to accelerate, year after year, month after month. The macro-economic environment is experiencing a collision of global forces that are impacting nations, regions, organisations, and individuals down to a localised context. With no shelter from these forces, organisations are facing the imperatives to become more adaptable and resilient, changing the expectations placed on both the systems/platforms and the leaders charged with delivering the outcomes demanded with respect to IT and ICT solutions.

As a result, organisations today are demanding a lot from their IT investments, such as operational and technology changes to deliver:

• Mobile access to applications and communications
• Better collaboration and information sharing
• Support for hybrid working
• Enhanced customer experiences
• Digital service management
• Workflows and process automation
• Data analytics and AI to guide decisions

Challenges raised by global impacts

Unfortunately for many councils, these goals remain nothing more than distant aspirations in the face of:

• rising technology costs
• rising operating costs
• tightening budgets
• labour shortages – skilled and otherwise
• supply chain disruptions
• changes in technology model to consumption-based
• ever-increasing cyber security threats

Often we think about how we can combat these forces – as I stated in my article title – to get our desired outcome. How do we fight it? How do we get ahead before xyz … ? How can we afford abc inspite of mno … ?

However, this approach comes from a basis of fear and worry – which is understandable, don’t get me wrong. But if we are constantly operating from a place of fear, will we ever truly get ahead? Innovate? Move forward?

I’m proposing we look at these forces in a different light.  Not how we fight challenges or obstacles, but how we ROLL with them. Moving with the challenges and taking them in stride that takes a mindset shift around the experiences we have, the feedback we get, and being prepared for anything with a strategy that allows for those inevitable changes.  And all of that?  Is best accompanied by expert advisory support.

Mindset shift – global change is inevitable

Global change is nothing new. In fact, I’d argue that we’ve never experienced anything different! If you’ve read our recent whitepaper on how to thrive as an organisation, you’ll know that what is newest and likely most confronting is not necessarily the change itself, but rather the RATE of change – and that’s why we need to work with – not combat – change.

It’s irrefutable that some of these changes have had destructive effects on many people, and the effects we are experiencing now will continue to affect our children and our children’s children. But can we control them? In most cases, no. We can have minute effects on our immediate circle, and make ripples, but on a global level, probably not. But that doesn’t mean that we stop trying. We can learn from our experiences, and move forward, and work to make sure we don’t follow the same path.

Experience is your best teacher

By consistently reviewing both your strategy and any in-progress projects, and making micro-shifts to ensure that you stay on track, you will soon get into a mode of adaptability that will seem second nature. The days of setting a 2- or 3-year goal to get from point A to point B and getting there in a perfectly straight line are gone – and that’s okay!

As we shift, we learn.  We pick up different points that educate our future decisions, so we need to take it all in, and understand the most important part: what can we learn from this?

But not just YOUR experience

Whatever you do, when you are reviewing, don’t do your review in a vacuum – get feedback! From your end users (employees) and your residents, your stakeholders. How are you tracking? You may have one view, another department another view, and your residents other views yet again. Bear in mind that your lens of your project and strategy is but one lens.

No one wants to hear that the systems or projects they are responsbile are for are not fit-for-purpose or not meeting the organisation’s needs.  Feedback can be hard to take when it is being given from a place of frustration or annoyance.  But remove the emotion and look at nothing but the facts – what happened, why did it happen, and how can we avoid this, or fix it?

Preparation is key

An agile and flexible, scalable and future-proofed roadmap is the ticket. A key part of how you formulate your transformational strategy needs to be ensuring that the path that you’ve worked out has been done so by asking the ‘what ifs?’ that we are now so familiar with. By always working from the position that changes and shifts will inevitably occur, you will be prepared and ready to roll with whatever punches the market, the environment, the planet, throw your way.

Objective, Expert, Advisory Support

You are an expert in local government – I would bet that you’re passionate about it. And you shouldn’t have to know everything about everything in order to best serve your community. So leaning on others to complement your own strengths is how you can achieve more with less. The top leaders in the world all say that the best thing any leader can have around them is like-minded people aligned to the same goals, and advisors or mentors who have walked the path before. So that support needed can look different for every organisation, depending on resources (staff hours), skillsets (in your team), budgets, and desired outcomes.

Support? Nexon is your Partner-of-Choice

Leading organisations demanding the attainment of their transformative initiatives to grow and thrive realise that it is next to impossible to achieve progressive outcomes from within a “business-as-usual” paradigm. Instead, they seek strategic partners with whom they can achieve their evolutionary goals, while minimising disruptions to current activities. Partners with expanded specialised skillsets in areas such as sustainability, smart cities, and technology. In our case, we are a partner with deep experience across critical lines of technology, we are ahead of the prevailing trends, we embed security into the DNA of our solutions and services, and with over 80 councils across Australia that count on us as their strategic partner-of-choice, we know local government.

At Nexon, we provide the advisory, project and managed services to deliver the technology change and continuous security that secures your information assets, to face the challenges of today and be ready for the opportunities of tomorrow. So, regardless of whether it is migrating to SaaS and cloud-based services, transforming your CX, enabling the modern or hybrid workplace, improving insights and processes, or ensuring Governance, Risk and Compliance is maintained across your new environment, Nexon is YOUR strategic technology partner.

Learn more about the outcomes we drive for over 80 Australian councils on our Local Government page. Or, to have a conversation, reach out to me via LinkedIn, via phone on 1300 800 000, or on our Contact Us page.