theceomagazine.com.au The CEO Magazine - June 2015 63.

In The OfficeEXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

UNDER NEW

With a new CEO, new executive team, and new vision for the future, Gosford City Council is reinvigorating the city and making the changes the community needs.

Images by David Benson

When Paul Anderson took the reins at Gosford City Council, he had

a challenge on his hands. The council didn’t have the best reputation in the community, and the staff culture was not what was desired. Having spent his entire career in local government, Paul was up to the task. “I’ve been in local government for 27 years,” he says.

“I started off as a trainee building surveyor and then worked my way through management levels to director and then general manager roles. This is my third full-time role as a local government general manager or CEO in New South Wales. Prior to that, I had director roles and acting general manager roles. My last stop before Gosford was at

Eurobodalla Shire Council, which is on the south coast of New South Wales.”

Coming into the council, Paul set to work nailing down the issues at hand, which was a challenge in itself. “The process when I started was to pick up an organisation that had some issues with responsibility within the community. It had some community concerns about unethical behaviour as well as a lack of appreciation and reliability among the community, and was seen as a bit of a hindrance to local economic development.

“My role over the past two years has been to turn the council around, rebuild community confidence, and look at how we can improve the ethical operation of the organisation. We had to make some hard decisions with respect to internal investigations

into some behaviours of staff, and also turning the finances of the organisation around.”

It wasn’t an overnight job. Paul wanted to ensure the community knew things were going to change, and to make an effort to listen to them first so he could be sure he was in tune with their needs. “The first thing that we did was we went out openly and declared to the community that we were open for business and under new management. It was a team approach of saying to the community, ‘Look, we have a new council, a new CEO, a new leadership team, and collectively we want to make some differences to the community’.

“We were saying, ‘We want to listen to you. We want to provide you the services and facilities that you want at a level that you want’. We hung a big banner at the front

“My role over the past two years has been to turn the council around, rebuild community confidence, and look at how we can improve the ethical operation of the organisation.” - Paul Anderson

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theceomagazine.com.au The CEO Magazine - June 2015 65.

of the building saying ‘Open for business. Under new management’. It was a bit of a ploy to say to people that things are going to change in Gosford. That was how we started the process.”

The council went about reviewing every aspect of what it does, ensuring inefficiency was eliminated. “We worked through a program of reviewing every single function and activity that we do as an organisation to make sure we are doing it for the right reasons and we are doing it as efficiently and effectively as we can,” Paul says.

As a result of the earlier work done by Paul and his team listening to community concerns, it meant they had a good understanding of what needed to change. “When I arrived here, one of the undertakings I gave to the organisation and to the community was that I would use the first 12 months as a bit of a listening tool. I found out what the lay of the land was and what people saw as

the good, the bad, and the ugly of the organisation and what we did.

“Because of this, we know who our customers are. We know what our customers are looking for with a particular facility or service, and we know where our shortcomings and liabilities lie so that we can then work on fixing those through a process of continuous business improvement programs.

“I came to council with a proposed and fairly major organisational transformation in mind. I wanted to make sure the organisation was structured so that all our services and facilities were aligned in a delivery model that allows our community to see the whole service and its value from beginning to end.”

To achieve the goals of the council, Paul had to change the culture of the organisation internally as well as send an external message. “We have a program of staff awards and rewards. Staff are asked to nominate,

or the community can nominate, somebody for a reward or an award where they have demonstrated good acceptance of our values and good practice of these values. All of those things I mentioned, coupled together, have now started to lead towards that facilitation of a new culture.”

The restructure and the cultural change have had positive impacts already. Not only is the community happier with the service provided, but Paul has turned around the council’s budget. “Last year, we turned a fairly modest surplus of $12 million when we were looking at a deficit at budget preparation time of about $4 million,” Paul says.

“In the past 12 months, the ratio of letters that have come into the organisation complaining about staff and activities compared to those that are coming in that are complimenting staff and activities has turned around. I now get many, many more compliments for the actions of staff and the services and facilities that the council is providing than complaints. So we have done a lot of work to change the way that we do our business and the way that we deal and become more customer focused with our community.”

One of those tangible achievements that Paul and the community are proud of includes a renewed focus on infrastructure. “We have now been able to put more money into our local infrastructure. We had a lot of projects that have been hanging around on the edges of council’s long-term infrastructure priorities list that we haven’t quite been able to get over the line to fund.

“Over the past two years, we actually have been able to knock a lot of those off—things like the foreshore works that we have done down in Ettalong Beach, where we reclaimed the whole foreshore and created a community focal point that wasn’t there in the past. We have completed a major cycleway, and we have been able to complete some important roadworks on some of our major arterial roads.”

Another major project Paul has undertaken is the revitalisation of the city’s CBD. After some years of neglect, the ‘Our City, Our Destiny’ master plan was developed. “The big ticket that we have been working on is the revitalisation of the Gosford CBD and the redevelopment of Gosford as the Central Coast’s capital,” Paul says.

“The exciting part is that in August last year we had $500 million worth of development lodged for the CBD, and then in January this year we had another $250 million. That’s three quarters of a billion dollars worth of development proposed in the Gosford CBD in under 12 months, and we are now working through the process of getting those approved and out the door so people can start building.”

Paul and the council have also had a focus on creating new jobs in Gosford. “We also want to create employment opportunities in and around the city so that people can make the choice about being employed here and coming to work on the Central Coast rather than having to commute to Sydney, which is what a lot of our community have to do at the moment.”

Ultimately, Paul’s goal is to make Gosford the best city it can be. He

wants to make it the regional centre of the Central Coast and attract more people into the community. “The vision that we have is making Gosford a first choice for people to work, to live, and to play. We’d like people to start to think of Gosford as a first choice for where they would like to relocate with their family—not because they can’t afford to purchase real estate in Sydney, but because they want the lifestyle that we can offer them.

“We also want people to think of us as their recreational playground. We’ve got some of the best beaches in New South Wales, and we are in pretty close proximity with Sydney, Newcastle, and the central west of New South Wales. We are saying, ‘This is where you should come and spend your holidays and play’.

“We want to turn Gosford into the regional capital of the Central Coast. We want to create a modern, vibrant city that has people living in it but which also provides services and facilities to a broader community and becomes a focal point. We want to create a community that says we are proud to be the Central Coast and we are proud to be Gosford. We are proud to be living in a jewel in Australia’s crown.”

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“The vision that we have is making Gosford a first choice for people to work, to live, and to play.” - Paul Anderson

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