Background

Sententia Consulting was tasked to develop a performance measurement framework with our client the Centre for Property Acquisition (CPA), an operational centre for excellence within the land acquisition ecosystem. CPA was established to improve the acquisition experience for landowners and other relevant interest holders while it also provides advisory support to Acquiring Authorities across whole-of-government. However, it does not have legislated authority. This makes their task of developing and driving performance in their industry difficult. Further, the industry is highly scrutinised and often has audits, government hearings and media attention.

The key problem

What was obvious from commencing the project was that CPA and the Acquiring Authorities had differing perceptions of the industry and other stakeholders.

1. Many stakeholders required guidance but felt CPA was only placing demands on them.
2. With no legislated requirements for data sharing and little value they could see in the performance measurement framework, stakeholders were not prepared to share data.

The Ask

Co-design a performance measurement framework with the Land Acquisition ecosystem stakeholders to be measured while supporting development of the relationship between our client and their stakeholders.

The solution

Our deliverables set the foundation for CPA’s performance measurement journey. This included collaboratively creating a one sentence tag line with CPA Leadership – a framework that supports stakeholders by giving them data to defend themselves against scrutiny. This enabled CPA to effectively communicate to stakeholders, who were initially quite resistant to the project, on why the project was important and the value it offers them. Our stakeholders could then buy into the final solution we built together and have robust discussions about specific measures and performance indicators.

In developing our core deliverable of the performance measurement framework, we tempered good practice with the scale of maturity of stakeholder relationships, availability of data and the systems and processes for data collation. This took a longer-term view to performance improvement through building capacity and capability, both within the client and with the stakeholder group. The approach we outlined recognised the need for greater visibility of key issues within the industry to allow for CPA to be able to support the government in achieving its key commitments to the community in terms of transparency, fairness and accountability. This tailored, phased approach allowed for stakeholder buy-in on the framework.

The impact

Our co-designed performance framework was broadly accepted and enables the CPA to track and measure the industry. This included some contentious metrics for evidence-based changes to legislation and regulation.

Critical to the success of the framework, we upskilled CPA’s understanding of implementing strategy, performance measurement and data collection through action and effective stakeholder engagement.

Finally, our project had a huge impact on our stakeholders developing their understanding on the challenges of our client and the industry as well as opportunities to make effective changes. Through workshops we held, stakeholders were able to network, sharing learnings and resources. Our work raised awareness of why the performance measurement framework supported them and can bring about changes to address challenges faced by the industry.