Chapter Five: Enhancing capability and improving our performance
Achieving the goals and outcomes identified in this Statement of Intent will require a considerable shift in the way the Ministry works and further development of our capability.
Capability in this context is the ability to access and retain the right combination of people, develop strong relationships, and operate effective systems and appropriate structures.
From our assessment of the Ministry’s current capability, in order to achieve our goals we need to:
- improve our strategic direction setting and management capability
- increase our ability to influence decision making and the behaviour of others
- improve priority setting and responsiveness
- build and maintain strong relationships
- develop our staff capability with the new focus
- appropriately measure our achievements.
Capability in setting strategic direction
Environmental governance issues are complex. It is often difficult to determine the most effective points for government intervention and there are often no direct causal links between outputs and outcomes. This suggests a need to develop our capability to produce stronger mechanisms that will assist Ministers in prioritising activities so that they will make the greatest contribution to achieving the Government’s outcomes.
The development of this Statement of Intent has coincided with the re-focusing of the Ministry and has resulted in providing a clearer direction. Given the extent of change within the Ministry during the development of the Statement of Intent, it has been largely a top-down exercise. In the future, development of our Statement of Intent will be supported by a more integrated process of business planning and risk assessment in which greater emphasis will be given to planning to achieve outcomes. We need to do considerable work on evaluating our effectiveness and the value we deliver, to ensure our effort is correctly focused and to enable a lift in organisational performance.
Over the next three years we will focus on:
- aligning activities with outcomes
- aligning measuring and reporting to outcomes.
Increasing influence
Good governance of the environment requires the input, will and co-operation of many stakeholders. To guide the good governance of the environment, we must influence the approach and actions of stakeholders. We will do this through:
- the quality of advice we provide and the action we take
- the relevance of our advice and actions for the audience
- the nature of relationships
- being active
- getting results.
Strong relationships
We have stated that we share the environment stage with many others, each with their own charter and responsibilities. So working and communicating with them is a very high priority for us. We will exercise the leadership they want. This calls for the Ministry to strengthen its relationships with stakeholders and other government departments, while continuing to maintain traditional relationships with Ministers.
Our new structure, which aligns with the Ministry’s new directions, is designed to enable us to take a behavioural approach to achieving change in the environment. We will do this through working with key stakeholder groups. We will focus on how we can strengthen and maintain open lines of communication and develop working relationships with a broader range of stakeholders – particularly industry – and, in turn, develop common approaches to governance or interventions. This will be supported by the appointment of senior operators who have the specific role of leading development of relationships between the Ministry and other organisations. We will also have an ongoing focus on building staff skills to develop, maintain and enhance stakeholder relationships.
Develop our staff capability
The Ministry needs to have the necessary staff capability to achieve its goals and outcomes. To be recognised and respected sufficiently to influence the behaviour of others, we need to build our analytical capability while significantly developing our ability to build strong working relationships with a wide range of groups and organisations, both within and beyond the public sector.
Over the next three years we will develop a Human Resource Strategy designed to:
- continue to develop our leadership and management capability
- develop and recruit staff to provide operational and policy leadership
- enhance human resource management systems.
Measuring achievements
It is important for the Ministry to know how it is doing and to be able to demonstrate what difference it has made. Recently the Ministry has developed, and will continue to enhance, rigorous monthly reporting on all activities. We will monitor our organisational performance in terms of our strategic goals.
The focus of the organisational performance measurement will be on:
- achievement against planned targets
- maintaining and developing future capability
- meeting customer needs, particularly output delivery for Ministers
- the strength and quality of stakeholder relationships
- creating value in outcomes for stakeholders.
