The annual Local Government Managers Australia (LGMA) National Management Challenge was held in regions across Australia and New Zealand in March 2014. With over 110 teams participating, this challenging professional development exercise involves careful team working under pressure to complete a number of tasks relating to a central challenge theme. The theme for this year's Challenge was 'Productive Communities', and team participants were asked to explore this theme through the completion of a range of tasks, including the completion of a pre-challenge task which required councils to make a short video presentation outlining the 'productive community' theme as it relates to council. Another of the tasks involved writing a piece for the ACELG Town Crier blog that described their own, plus a fellow council's experience and approach to this pre-challenge task. Here we have a sample from across the span of the participating teams.

Bankstown City Council: Breaking Bankstown

The LGMA Management Challenge is an intensive program aiming to increase the expertise, skills and abilities of council staff, and includes a pre-challenge task and a challenge day.

Bankstown City Council had a dynamite six-person team, each from different areas across Council. We were excited but apprehensive, with only one of us having any experience with the challenge, and who had been ribbing us with terrifying stories about it. On the challenge day, we sat next to Gwydir 'Good Life' and compared our experiences.

All councils were given the theme of 'productive communities', and asked to make a four minute video on this subject for the pre-challenge task. The theme made both councils scratch their heads and head straight to Google (thank God for Google!). 

For the 'Breaking Bankstown' Team, the first order of business was defining 'productive' and 'communities'. We met with key personnel within Council and investigated specific examples of productive communities in Bankstown, and researched current literature on productivity. 

We then brainstormed a number of different areas where Council supported a 'productive community', with effective building development assessment, learn to swim programs, the Bankstown Business Advisory Service, and the 'Wheelie Good' program being shortlisted. At this stage, both Breaking Bankstown and Gwydir Good Life had taken similar approaches. From this point, however, the teams‘ approaches diverged to create a final product. 

Breaking Bankstown chose a single idea, the Wheelie Good program, and developed a detailed exploration of the program and how it demonstrated a productive council and productive community. The Wheelie Good program is a best practice model for garden waste recycling. We engaged a video production agency from the Bankstown area to assist us in delivering a final product. We decided to create a video that would be appropriate to the challenge task, but would also be useful for ongoing community education. 

Gwydir Good Life created an impressive in-house video that linked unique community programs under three banners – education, registered training organisations and social services – to illustrate how councils could contribute to a productive community. The team drew from the creative skills across Council to produce a song about the region, which they will continue to use as promotional material and as an engaging production. 

Both teams met at least once a week. At Bankstown, these meetings were facilitated by agreed team rules and M&Ms. 

A key learning of this exercise for both councils was that everyone needed to be involved. Both Breaking Bankstown and Gwydir Good Life identified the skill sets, including strengths and weaknesses, of the team in the initial meeting. Breaking Bankstown did this through a team personality and skills test which was facilitated by our team mentor. The diversity of challenge tasks meant that each member could work to their identified strengths, while challenging themselves to develop new skills. 

Both teams also learnt about completing a challenging group project within a short timeframe. Gwydir Good Life noted they had to learn not to be too precious, and Breaking Bankstown agreed that the task required an acute awareness of priorities. Working with tight resources, including money and time, meant that both teams learnt to be direct and decisive.

Both teams focused on productivity in their process as well as their outcomes, and had produced resources that could be ‘reused‘. Every team involved in the Management Challenge has worked exceptionally hard to investigate opportunities for productivity in their councils and their communities. Breaking Bankstown is especially proud of our third place result.

Walking out of the challenge day we planned to a) have a drink together and b) report back to our senior management team and executive leadership team on the key findings from the Management Challenge tasks. We met, debriefed on what we learnt and what we can improve for next year, where Bankstown will be excited to compete again for the top place. Bring it on!

This blog was prepared by the 2014 Management Challenge Team of Bankstown City Council.

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Darwin City Council: (electri)City of Darwin

It was with a sense of excitement and trepidation that we received our confirmation as members of the 2014 City of Darwin LGMA Management Challenge team. We turned up at our first meeting to discover members from all manner of departments. Planning and finance on the same team – ahhhhh!!!! We soon learned, however, that we all had skills and virtues to bring to the table, and we soon learned how valuable each and every one of us is (even the person from finance). 

Tasked with developing a movie about productivity as part of the pre-challenge task, we had only one person on the team who knew anything at all about filmmaking. This should have put us at a slight advantage over Alice Springs Town Council, who relied on tutoring and help from outside their team. This young man (the only one on the team) proved so incompetent though that any advantage was ultimately illusory (he can't even type this properly). 

At the start of the pre-challenge task we, along with the Alice Springs Council, started with a brainstorming session – an activity designed to start the flow of ideas and to encourage contributions from all team members. Both teams were confronted by the enormity of the pre-challenge task and all the components it included. We were both aware from the outset how precious time would be, and how important time management would become. All of our expectations proved true.

Alice Springs commenced by developing a storyboard and script to start with. The importance of getting the script right at the start was demonstrated when they were forced to make some last minute changes which proved difficult to implement. We also discovered the importance of starting with a script when we discovered all too late that parts of our script bore no conceptual connection to our footage. So much for the guy who knew about film making.

Both teams found that a lot of the work for the pre challenge task could not be completed during work hours. Lots of late nights and weekend work was put in by both teams. We all deserve a free trip to Melbourne for our efforts. Maybe Central Desert can fund it?

The fact that so few of us had any experience in film or video making demanded that we work and communicate exceptionally well as a team to make up for our lack of knowledge in the specific area in which we were working. The process of working together on this task developed skills in all of us which can be used in diverse areas in the future. 

By engaging in creative tasks with fellow staff outside our own siloed departments, staff from both Councils broadened their knowledge of the programs and services provided to our communities, whilst also developing inter-departmental ties that will flourish into the future.

We realised, along with Alice Springs Council, that we are all far more capable of achieving results in areas beyond our comfort zones than we previously gave ourselves credit for. This will give us all a new sense of confidence going into any task that we face in the future.

Another lesson learnt along the way was the importance of identifying and utilising team members' strengths, and to be realistic about their weaknesses. Both teams learned to have fun in the pre-challenge task and discovered that, more often than not, a positive team outlook is a surer key to success than any individual skill set.

At the end of the day we only have three minutes left to type this, so like the pre-challenge task it will end with some loosely related footage that bears little connection to the task at hand. But hey…let it never be said that the City of Darwin or Alice Springs Town Council don't meet our deadlines: we always do!!!

This blog was prepared by the 2014 Management Challenge Team of the City of Darwin.

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West Torrens Council: Prepare to be challenged...and a whole heap of other stuff

A week before Christmas the posters went up and the email was delivered that we should 'Prepare to be challenged!!!' It was an invitation to take part in the 2014 LGMA Challenge! Most of our team took an extra prompt from a follow up email, but all decided to try something new. The day soon arrived and our pre-challenge task was delivered – make a video and write a report on 'Productive Communities'.

A collective groan went up in the group - no one was keen to star in a video that would one day be put on YouTube. But as we were here to be challenged, we powered on.

To the whiteboard we went; a collective fart from everyone's brain written in text that soon needed to be narrowed down. What does 'productive' mean? What is a 'community'? So we decided to hit the corridors of West Torrens Council to find out what our colleagues thought. We loved mapping our minds, and quizzing our colleagues proved to be interesting and very insightful. It seemed as though this was definitely the way to work out what was important and unique to our Council, and what 'productive communities' meant to us.

But the process was too fruitful; we now had too much information to work with! So, instead of a top-down view of productive communities, we decided to pick one specific topic. Having learnt from discussions with our colleagues that we already had completed projects that highlighted productive communities, we decided not to reinvent the wheel, but instead showcase what was already in our own backyard. We quickly decided on the '$ave Heap$' campaign on illegal dumping that had proven social, financial and environmental results.

Now…what type of video? Many ideas were thrown around the table and the first one that got everyone excited was using children as the actors. The 'never-work-with-children-or-animals' mantra came up, so we upped it to a silent movie!

Many a storyboard were written, then trashed. But after some toil we found a narrative we loved and the final storyboard stuck. We sent out an email asking to use our colleagues' children in the film and settled on details like the film's location and props. Unlike other councils that we talked with about our experiences, we decided to outsource the filming of the production. Our first lesson was learnt; the rules around procurement of external services for use by Council are extensive!

We decided to work with a 'film guy' from a production company named Dave. After meeting with Dave we were full of confidence. He was just as excited about our idea as we were. After hours we met and we filmed. We set up props, directed traffic, fed the children, and shot take after take. The children were troopers and filming was wrapped up after two sessions. Funnily enough the adults were more of a pain than the children!

Finally it was done, the email was sent and the video was on YouTube. What had we learnt? Most of us now had a much broader understanding of the organisation we actually worked for. We had psychological tools that told us the type of person we all were and how we interacted with our team mates. Relationships with colleagues were forged and improved, and we learnt that it is nearly always a good idea to ask for help from experts in their areas. We learnt about the rules and regulations which outline the way things must be done at Council: yes, you need staff to be trained in Child Safe Environments; yes, you need to fill out Risk Assessments and Job Safety and Environmental Analyses: yes, you need to raise Purchase Orders.

The pre-challenge task was an awesome experience for all of us. We got to know our own organisation and the community we all serve. We examined and analysed the idea of 'productive communities' and were able to crystalise our understanding of it, which would help us enormously on Challenge Day. We bonded as a team and realised that not only do we work well together but that we actually enjoy it! And, most importantly, we had an awesome film at the end of it all, of which we were very proud.

This blog was prepared by the 2014 Management Challenge Team of West Torrens Council.

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