For its annual conference in February, Local Government Professionals (LGPro) chose the theme, Building Tomorrow’s Communities Today. With members across the Local Government professions in Victoria, once again the conference aimed to involve as many officers as possible through a series of streamed sessions and workshops.
LGPro President, Gavin Cator, said that this event together with the Awards for Excellence, presented at the conference dinner acknowledging the work of teams and individuals, are a vital part of professional development.
“We need to be checking ourselves against each other to ensure we are delivering for our communities,” he said. “This an other LGPro events staged during the year enable us to do this.” In opening the conference Victorian Minister for Local Government, Candy Broad, noted that all of the State’s 79 Councils had at least one delegate attending.
“The diversity of sessions running always reminds me of the broad level of involvement of Local Government in our daily lives,” the Minister said.
She said the conference theme dovetails with the Bracks Government’s current community building policies and actions.
“In building active, resilient and confident communities through the actions of State agencies, there are many more possibilities about strategies for Local Government,” she said.
The Minister listed various possibilities involving Councils including the following:
- A priority facilitation role placing Local Government at the centre of community strengthening.
- Town Hall information portals – information hubs for all spheres of government including the Federal Government.
- Setting up a community strengthening check list covering processes that have resulted in good outcomes for communities.
- Establishing protocols for developing local partnerships across local agencies.
Keynote speaker, Clem Sunter, international renown exponent of scenario planning who lives in South Africa, said it is vital as we plan that we have strategic conversations about the future.
“The key is conversation,” he said. “This is how you achieve strategies to go forward through face to face conversation.”
He said many organisations are like a rimless wagon wheel. The hub is the CEO and close confidantes and at the end of the spokes are the department heads who report to the ‘hub’.
“The problem is there is no rim to the wheel,” he said. The department heads report in but don’t talk to each other to develop policy. Strategy is not just the prerogative of the CEO, department heads must be included.”
He said that strategies set out the direction to go in, while tactics cover how to get there. However, most people concentrate too heavily on tactics rather than strategies.
He uses the analogy of a fox as against a hedgehog. Hedgehogs are the one idea, single path people, while foxes know that life is about balancing a number of ideas so their planning will cover various scenarios. In this way, they are much better prepared for the unexpected.
“Australia is a great place,” Clem Sunter said. “You don’t take yourselves too seriously, and there are certainly a lot of foxes in Australia.”
