High-voltage projects: Helping an energy provider reorganise during a period of substantial growth

The transition to net zero is the biggest challenge of our time. This magnitude and complexity of change requires energy organisations to work and partner effectively. Decarbonising Australia’s energy generation relies on the delivery of a significant and growing pipeline of increasingly more complex and more uncertain projects. 

A leading provider of high-voltage electricity transmission services, which provides electricity to millions of Australians and hundreds of thousands of businesses, was undergoing significant growth and wanted to review its organisational design through this lens.

The business engaged us on two separate but connected projects. Having previously reviewed other branches within the organisation, clarifying how functions should be structured to best deliver on future needs, we were now asked to review the design of a project management office and a community engagement and social performance-focused team. 

Through these pieces of work, we looked at teams across the company’s project lifecycle, starting with planning and community consultation, and carrying all the way through to engineering and infrastructure delivery. 

“Australia’s energy transition is one of the biggest changes we’ll see in our lifetime,” says Project Manager Muskaan Garg. “It relies on the delivery of many new, large and complex projects. Our work represented an exciting opportunity to ensure teams continue to be well set up to deliver on both their current and growing future commitments”. 

It was our intention to leave decision-makers with defensible and implementable solutions that clearly addressed their strategic priorities. To achieve this, we worked collaboratively with the client teams to design their updated organisational structure, applying Nous’ proven six-step process:

1. Understand drivers for change, strategic direction, and current organisation design. By understanding the foundations, we were able to reimagine how the team might do its work, rather than simply rearranging the furniture.
2. Identify the current functions and what the future work of the teams will be. This step was critical in ensuring the structure could be adapted to meet upcoming needs and requirements.
3. Establish design principles to test organisation design options. These design principles were based on Goold and Campbell's Designing Effective Organizations and were further tailored for each piece of work. Design principles acted as a framework to assess potential changes systematically.  
4. Develop multiple structure options, each with a different focus and orientation. Being creative with our options allowed us to think outside the box, test the appetite for change, and agree the critical components required in all structure options.
5. Evaluate each structure option for strengths and weaknesses against the design principles. Our proposed structures were never going to solve all problems or perfectly address all priorities. The project decision-makers deeply considered each option, weighing the potential impacts of each. Relying on assessments against the design principles meant that decision-makers were left with robust and pragmatic solutions.
6. Refine the preferred option with stakeholders and identify key dependencies and enablers for change. This built buy-in and ensured teams were well set up to begin staff consultation and implementation. 

“Beginning reviews by talking about strategic priorities and the desired future state helps set the tone,” says Garg. “This approach not only addresses current pain points, but also seeks to future-proof teams against the ongoing and significant changes happening across the organisation and the energy sector.”

In-depth engagement allowed a range of stakeholders to shape our understanding of how the future of work was changing for the organisation, what’s working well and what can be improved, and the needs of internal customers and stakeholders. Allowing everyone’s voice to be heard was crucial in ensuring that the new structure gained support in the often-sensitive context of structural reviews. We gathered information through:

• Review of documents and data, allowing us to understand the organisation’s strategic priorities, current functions and priorities, and future priorities.
• Interviews with key internal stakeholders (executives, managers, team leaders, and others), who provided us with an understanding of future objectives and their connection to the various business areas. Further consultations were also conducted with some stakeholders to test and socialise the proposed options.
• Focus groups with staff, allowing us to understand the current pain points, opportunities, and changing priorities.
• Project team discussions, held on a weekly basis with the key decision-makers, which served as an opportunity to understand the nuanced context, test our insights, socialise recommendations, and agree decisions. 

“Engaging broadly allowed us to recommend changes that were robust and that people were genuinely invested in,” says Garg. “This inclusiveness turns potential resistance into support.” 

We ultimately delivered a revised team structure that allowed the organisation to better respond to growing demand and complexity. For example, key functions which became strategically more important were elevated to report directly to senior management. 

The structure was complemented by updated position descriptions for critical roles and a detailed implementation plan. We also provided enabling documentation deemed critical for the effective implementation of the new structure:  

• Recommendations on ways of working, collaboration mechanisms, system and processes adjustments to support implementation. Elements of the whole operating model were considered, along with structure, to ensure the organisation was well set up to deliver on its commitments.
• Definitions of the future structure’s functions, including the role of the team in the organisation, required functions and sub-functions, summary of changing needs of the organisation, and updated roles and responsibilities for selected impacted roles.
• Service Delivery Canvas to clearly define customer, service delivery, risks and performance considerations. For enabling functions, we took a customer-lens to focus on meeting the needs of internal stakeholders and understanding its core functions.  
• A roadmap to transition from a short-term structure to a medium- and long-term structure. We kept an eye towards long-term implementation planning, recognising the preferred interim and long-term structures may differ.

The organisation appreciated the new structure and enabling documents, underwent staff consultation, and interim structures have been implemented.

“Changing a structure without changing how the team works together and how they deliver value is rarely effective,” says Garg. “It is like buying a new car and expecting this to reduce the time spent in traffic. We often need to find new paths and sometime even build new roads to make a difference.”