Policy Innovation & Strategy

Public policy – the ‘why and the what’ of central and local government actions – is a major shaper of your environment.
Whether you are a business or a community organisation (or even a council or a state owned entity) public policy is a major source of both opportunity and threat.

We are skilled in helping clients make the most of the public policy environment, seeking out and using the opportunities in existing and emerging policy settings or identifying and promoting policy changes that will help achieve your objectives. For a good example of what this looks like, see the report for Environment Bay of Plenty which made the public policy case for a substantial government contribution to the cost of remediating the water quality in the Rotorua Lakes.

More recently our work on policy innovation and strategy has focused on the implications of some of the major disruptive trends now impacting on New Zealand's communities including demographic change and the impact on labour markets of technological innovation. Looking elsewhere it's clear dealing with trends such as these will need a new understanding of the respective roles of local government and central government, and how best to create genuine partnership working at a community level.

In its simplest terms, strategy comes down to working out “where we want to go and how we want to get there”. In practice, it is one of the most challenging matters for any organisation to manage. It requires a mix of visionary leadership, strategic thinking and practical down-to-earth management. In our experience, strategy development in New Zealand too often results either in vision unconnected to reality, or an implementation focus that can crowd out the visionary aspect – reducing strategy to “business as usual”.

Sometimes, also, an organisation won’t have, in-house, the full breadth of knowledge of the wider environment to factor into strategy development. We are able to help clients understand the economic, political and social context in which their strategies will play out. That might include, for example, the degrees of freedom you have to pursue your chosen direction.
 

The benefits for you from working with us come from: 

• Our experience in taking strategy from vision to implementation, including linking organisational purpose to strategic direction.
• The alternative perspective needed to shift people out of a “business as usual” approach to strategy.
• Our understanding that strategy only works if people within organisations take ownership of it and believe it will add value to what they are seeking to achieve.
• Our emphasis on strategy as a living process, not a plan to file.

 

We can help you by:

• Making the relevant legislative and regulatory connections.
• Using our analytical and project management skills to take ideas from concept to implementation.
• Transferring knowledge. We pride ourselves on leaving clients with a good understanding of the work we have done for them , so they can carry it forward as part of their institutional knowledge.

• Ultimately, developing policy initiatives that work for you and your key stakeholders.