5 common themes in Water Company AMP plans

Over the past week or so I've spent a fair bit of time delving into water companies annual reports and 25-30 business plans. After a while they all seem to merge into one another. It would be no surprise that a lot of what is laid out is very similar, after all we are in the same country, same government, same regulator, same climate challenges, same supply chain etc.

On review though I do wonder if some of the common themes are actually understood as I struggled to see evidence in any of the reviews or plans I read through. Here's some thoughts on those similarities: ?

1. No surprise, everyone is going to be putting up water bills

There is a common thread then around 'value for money'. Obviously this is open to interpretation. What I deem as value for money will be different than you BUT all companies seem to have gone into great detail to speak with and understand their customers, and they all say similar things.

The age old idea of value is what the customer would pay for and everything else is waste springs to mind.

Given what I have seen working in and around the sector for the past 8 years, there is a lot of activity that I as a customer wouldn’t want to pay for. Immediate thoughts around short term thinking causing more cost over the long term OR interventions aimed at change and improvement that do not sustain because of how they are done.

I think water leaders need to get better at decision making around what will be create value.

Do you know how much opportunity currently sits in your operations from non-value activity? An easy way might be to count the number of contacts into your contact centre and start from there.

2. Digital transformation is across everything. It's bound to be.

What I can’t see is how water companies are going to make sure they fully leverage this. I'm not sure if I expected this to be in any of the plans but they are very detailed so why not.

You can have all the tech in the world but if you don’t create the right environments for people to leverage it then you will have great tech but not optimised performance. This is very true in any sector of course but given the investment going into this next AMP I would expect a huge amount to be in this space.

Don’t forget you need to operationalise great tech and that doesn’t just happen when you drop it in.

How are you thinking about the change aspect of any digital transformation so that your people can get the best out of it?

3.?Improvements in Customer Experience/Service is a huge part of the narrative for all companies.

This links to digitisation in a way but again, I don’t think technology is going to make the biggest difference with this.

Why not? I'm convinced that the biggest difference to this will be made by how water leaders think about how they structure work. If they can think differently around how to do good work that positively shapes customer experience day after day, this will matter.

Technology should be an enabler for good work, not the sole solution. I think we forget this sometimes and in water, quite often.

How are you thinking around helping your resources to come together in more effective ways to better impact customer experience?

4.?Everyone is stating that people are at the foundation of their strategies

If this wasn't the case I would be very worried given how many people are employed and their ability to impact performance. I am surprised however, to see the engagement scores in some of the reports. Not all reports have them. The ones that did, they aren’t great.

I can’t agree more this is a foundational element and would argue that the plans won’t be hit if this isn’t taken seriously.

I would expect to see more clarity in plans then around how this foundational piece will be tackled, given that scores aren’t currently great.

I couldn’t find any how's. Again, maybe just not for these reports.

One thing I do know is that a culture programme, driven from the top and through HR has, in all cases I've seen, not changed the dial on that foundational piece. Nor has doing an engagement survey every 6 months and showing some actions.

How are you thinking about making sure as many people are fully engaged as possible, every day, as you're going to need them to make the difference??

5. Leadership Development programmes seem to be a common activity flagged as complete, in progress or going to undertake.

An extensive programme, linked to the objectives of those plans, that helps leaders to change themselves and create the right environments is always going to be of huge value and importance.

Too many times though I have seen these programmes not follow through and embed learning that is aligned to the context of what the org needs. Outcomes should be connected to where we want to go so that new behaviours are the right ones.

If these programmes are effective then challenge number 4 will take care of itself. Assuming that leadership styles developed lend themselves to highly engaged functions.

How are you making sure that outcomes relating to engagement are embedded and aligned for leaders?

There are more than 5 but we'll stop here, for now at least.

Hopefully that gives water leaders something to think around when firming up the 'how's' for all of those 'what's' detailed in those AMP8 plans.

Enjoy the rest of Feb

Jason

We've looked to bring about more understanding of what we do and how we do it when helping support the water sector.

This month then, we've dropped a link to our latest brochure that hopefully helps bring some of this to life.

Take a look and let us know what you think

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