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The Royal Australian Navy provides maritime forces to defend Australia and protect its national interests. It required a major cultural and behavioural shift in the face of recruitment and retention challenges, as well as external pressures to improve efficiencies and increase accountability among its leadership.
How do you transform an entire branch of the Defence Force?
Our approach was to work with the Navy to co-design the New Generation Navy (NGN) strategy, a major cultural transformation program designed to modernise the Navy’s then 14,000-strong workforce. The impact of the NGN was intended to be far-reaching, touching every aspect of the Navy’s operations. Co-designing the strategy allowed our consultants to coach Navy team members in consulting skills while simultaneously drawing on their knowledge of their own organisation.
“Given that Australia is an island, a high-functioning Navy is essential to our security in an increasingly volatile geopolitical world,” says Nous Group CEO and Managing Principal Tim Orton. “This was an opportunity to effect the most profound change in the Navy’s operating model in its 110-year history.”
The strategy we landed upon was based around three pillars of change:
- cultural change, to reinforce the Navy’s signature behaviours and build a culture that supported people and empowered them to make a respected contribution;
- structural change, to streamline accountability and focus on building the Navy’s capability; and
- change at the level of leadership and ethics development, to ensure that the Navy’s leaders operate with integrity, moral courage, and loyalty.
The initial strategy was developed using a range of research and evidence including qualitative and quantitative analysis of existing reviews and documentation, surveys and metrics, quantitative surveys, and a range of focus groups, interviews, and workshops. Nous consultants engaged more than 50 key stakeholders within the Navy and Defence and met with over 500 people throughout Australia to promote the change and seek their input.
The Navy also required an effective and co-ordinated communications strategy, which constituted the strategy’s fourth pillar. A series of workshop-based campaigns were delivered across the force, building awareness of the NGN reform program, fostering deeper understanding of Navy values and behaviours, and encouraging all Navy people to display these behaviours and play a part in driving cultural reform.
Translating strategy into action
The Navy next engaged Nous to support the implementation of this ambitious change agenda. The joint Nous-Navy team:
- designed and facilitated a series of change workshops, 360-degree feedback sessions, and debrief sessions for the senior leadership group;
- designed and implemented tailored engagement activities, including cascading change programmes for leaders within the Navy;
- guided the implementation of the dedicated culture projects to address key cultural issues;
- supported the establishment of the PMO and provided project management training for team members;
- developed and supported the communication strategy;
- developed and supported the benefits and reporting strategy and associated plan; and
- supported implementation of a detailed organisational structure.
We supported the implementation process with project management skills, governance expertise, and our deep understanding of organisational transformation. The complementary capabilities of the combined Nous-Navy team, not to mention joint ownership of the project’s outcomes, were the foundation of the NGN’s success.
Monitoring, evaluation, and continual improvement
Our work with the Navy renewed the force’s focus on its people and led it to change its tendency to make short-term decisions that had long-impacts on its people and capability. The NGN saw in improvements in recruitment, retention, training and capability, including a reduced separation rate, resulting in 21 per cent more operational days across the force.
Behavioural standards also improved, with 23 per cent fewer incidents of unacceptable behaviour and 58 per cent fewer incidents of reported sexual offences over the initial five years of the program’s operation. The Navy further reported that its leaders better understood values-based leadership, the need for change, and their responsibility to drive it. At the end of our engagement, the Navy was well on its way towards the place it wanted to be, though its leaders recognised that this was and should be a long-term commitment. Most cultural change is.
“We valued the opportunity to work closely with three successive Chiefs of Navy,” Orton says. “Our work helped ensure that Navy was working from a strong foundation as it entered the decades ahead.”
What you can learn from our work with the Royal Australian Navy
A robust communications strategy can imbue staff with a clear understanding of acceptable behaviours while generating buy-in for cultural change.
It is often important to streamline accountability for structural change in order to enable cultural change.
It is crucial to instil leaders with a sense of their responsibility for and ownership of change in order to generate their capacity to drive it.