Sustainable development on our island continent: How leaders can navigate Australia's unique conditions

More than ever before, Australia’s future living standards, and our global position, will be influenced by how we manage the blessings and challenges of our island continent. Businesses and governments face pressure to achieve and deliver more, and faster, in an environment where change is becoming ever more complex. Among the many questions raised, a vital one often overlooked is: What is required of leaders in both the corporate and public sectors to drive success?

Nous’ Sustainable Development sector – covering agriculture, energy and decarbonisation, environment, planning, resources, transport and infrastructure, and water – is focused on supporting businesses and government with the interconnected strategic questions raised by our geographic blessings and challenges.

Our Sustainable Development and Leadership teams recently came together to explore the specific leadership requirements needed to drive success. This article provides specific insights into agriculture, environment, water, and transport. It concludes with some broader lessons. A future article will focus on energy.

The context: Climate shifts, land degradation, and water scarcity are reshaping agricultural production landscapes, while urban expansion, food security concerns, and evolving consumer values are redefining societal expectations. Rising costs, market volatility, and limited investment in sustainability are challenging long-term viability. Addressing such factors demands much of leaders within individual businesses, and across commodities and regions. For example, the Australian sugarcane industry is diversifying into biofuel feedstocks and trialling an ESG on-farm framework to meet high sustainability standards and strengthen supply chain integration. 

The leadership challenge: Navigating the complexity and volatility of agriculture requires leadership that is both adaptive and strategic. Unpredictable weather, shifting market dynamics, and evolving regulations demand constant recalibration. The physical and emotional toll of agricultural work, compounded by growing mental health concerns, places workforce wellbeing at the heart of effective leadership. By cultivating emotional intelligence, fostering resilience, and empowering teams, agricultural leaders can drive innovation, sustain engagement, and lead with clarity in a sector where the pace of change is accelerating. 

Building leaders in practice: Nous collaborated with a global agricultural business to address leadership challenges amid a strategic overhaul. Facing a rapidly changing global market, the business aimed to simplify operations and focus on key sectors. The Global Senior Leaders Program has been designed to develop and embed adaptive leadership capabilities and practices, while fostering courageous leadership mindsets and behaviours among senior leaders. It is equipping leaders with practical skills to assess difficult situations, capitalise on opportunities, and create meaningful impact. The organisation will enhance its ability to navigate strategic changes with agility and confidence, setting a new standard for leadership excellence in the agriculture industry.

The context: Government agencies dedicated to environmental protection operate under pressing conditions marked by urgency, complexity, and political scrutiny. They are responsible for implementing large-scale reforms amid shifting mandates and rapid organisational growth. These challenges test their internal systems, workforce resilience, and delivery capabilities.

The leadership challenge: For leaders in environmental protection, the challenge is guiding their teams through ongoing change while staying focused on organisational goals. Middle managers must lean into frank conversations with a passionate, purpose-driven workforce to surface and navigate conflicting values, beliefs and priorities to make progress on significant reform. They must balance ambition with practicality, build trust in uncertain situations, and foster self and team resilience during the long hard work of reform.

Building leaders in practice: Nous is collaborating with a major environment department to enhance executive leadership capability. Leaders need to guide their teams through rapid growth due to significant reforms in areas such as energy, net zero, and climate change. We developed a program focused on leading through change, fostering collaboration, and maintaining resilience to drive system reform. The program supports leaders in enhancing their leadership impact, empowering their teams, cultivating networks and connecting individual leadership to organisational outcomes. The program prepares leaders to implement critical reforms with confidence, fostering collective ownership of system change. 

The context: The transport sector faces increasing demands due to population growth, urban expansion, complex industrial relations and the growing need to provide alternatives to car travel. This requires the delivery of large-scale and effective services. Transport projects, particularly linear infrastructure development, rank among the largest and most complex in the nation. They attract significant scrutiny and public attention owing to the substantial budgets they require and their impact on individuals' daily lives.

The leadership challenge: Transport sector leaders must pair significant technical expertise with the ability to convey this information strategically to decision-makers, stakeholders and, where required, the general public. The specialised nature and technical expertise required of many leadership roles can lead to siloed ways of working, as leaders naturally orient themselves to their areas of expertise and may feel they need to be the advocates for their function across the organisation. Effective delivery requires true enterprise leaders, who can drive collaboration and transformation across functions and business units to achieve technically excellent, budget-aligned, and stakeholder-centred transport programs. Alongside technical excellence, successful leadership in the transport sector requires collaborative ways of working, strong stakeholder engagement skills and ability to effectively engage and support staff while upholding core values and behaviours. 

Building leaders in practice: Nous has partnered with various transport agencies to enhance executive leadership capabilities. For a state-based transport agency, we equipped their people leadership team with skills and planning tools to execute their visionary people strategy. This involved rigorous prioritisation to meet their extensive mandate and guide workforce adaptation to change. We addressed existing challenges and opportunities, delivering a custom development program for the team to foster trust, reduce silos, and improve strategic decision-making. Acting as a critical friend, Nous supported leaders to apply these new ways of working in the development of an implementation plan. The program delivered considerable leadership growth, supported by survey data and team reflections.

The context: As the volume and complexity of capital delivery in the water sector increases, utilities and delivery partners are under pressure to meet performance targets across time, cost and quality. Many are working through joint venture models, which can present challenges in governance, coordination, and delivery accountability. These pressures are amplified by the need to demonstrate value and progress within short timeframes.

The leadership challenge: Leaders in these environments must operate with clear ownership, foster alignment across multiple partners and act quickly on emerging risks. Strong delivery leadership requires data-driven decision-making, clear roles and responsibilities, and trust-building, especially in joint ventures where delivery teams may be unfamiliar with consulting partners or lack a shared delivery culture.

Building leaders in practice: Nous partnered with a water infrastructure joint venture to improve performance within a joint venture of five partners. Facing challenges in timeliness, cost-effectiveness, and quality, we developed a clear diagnostic, leading to 11 actionable recommendations on leadership, governance, planning, resourcing, and delivery. A key focus area was on strengthening leadership capability, supporting technical experts to recognise the expectations of their role as leaders, including strategic decision making, governance and building high-performing teams. Tailored assessment and individual coaching are being rolled out to support leaders in the strategic and people-focussed aspects of their roles, uplifting overall performance and ultimately setting a new standard for effectiveness and teamwork.

Across Sustainable Development, the context may vary, but the demands on leaders are strikingly similar. Whether driving reform, restructuring operations or lifting delivery performance, leaders are expected to guide people through uncertainty, build alignment, and deliver outcomes in complex systems.

From our work, five leadership capabilities consistently matter most:

• Lead adaptively by responding to ambiguity with clarity, adjusting course when needed and taking action without waiting for perfect certainty.
• Stay strategically grounded by keeping a clear line of sight from ambition to execution and making decisions that drive delivery.
• Build emotional intelligence to support teams under pressure, lead with empathy and manage relationships in high-stakes or contested environments.
• Collaborate beyond boundaries by influencing across teams, organisations and partnerships, especially where authority is shared or diffuse.
• Embrace continuous learning by reflecting in action, seeking feedback and creating the conditions for sustained improvement.

These capabilities underpin the kind of leadership that drives real progress. They enable organisations not just to manage change, but to drive it.

Get in touch to discuss how sustainable development or leadership challenges are playing out in your organisation.

Prepared with input from Deborah Davis, Chantelle Ashby, Sally Higgins, and Anita Sarris.

Connect with Christie Allison and Simon Guttmann on LinkedIn.