Creating an adaptive culture at Hydro Tasmania

10 October 2023

“With increasing uncertainty, the most underappreciated, yet critical, leadership competency in today’s world is adaptability” (John Kotter)

In life - and in business - change is the only constant. Yes, it’s a cliché – but for over two years at Hydro Tasmania group, Australia’s largest clean energy business, we’ve had a deep commitment to the evolution of our culture. Through our experience we’ve learnt this isn’t a linear process and takes everyone’s ongoing commitment and adaptability.

Hydro Tasmania group employs over 1,300 people across a diverse business portfolio. We generate enough renewable electricity to power over 900,000 Australian homes each year. Through our retailer Momentum Energy, we supply electricity and gas to customers in Victoria, NSW, South Australia and Queensland. And we share our specialist expertise in energy and water to help shape sustainable power generation around the world through our consulting arm, Entura.

We go about our business in the context of the massive transition that is underway in the energy sector as more renewables come online in an effort to reduce emissions to limit climate change and its impacts.

For over a century Hydro Tasmania has been generating electricity to power the Tasmanian economy that is clean, reliable, and affordable. Hydropower’s role in the energy system of the future cannot be understated, acting as a battery to firm increasing penetration of variable renewable energy.

We have a clear purpose to create renewable energy for generations and deliver sustainable value to Tasmania, the communities we operate in, our customer and clients. Our bold strategy centres around our role in accelerating the renewable energy transition. Our people are core to this, and we recognise that in order to succeed, we need to continue to change the way we operate from top to bottom to be more adaptive and inclusive.

What is an Adaptive Culture?

An adaptive culture is one that can constantly update itself, including its systems and processes – embracing change and responding quickly and effectively to external and internal challenges and opportunities.

While we know that cultivating an adaptive culture is crucial to success, it’s not without its challenges. It takes time, effort and an ongoing commitment across the business.

We’re about two years into our cultural evolution, a journey that is expected to take up to five years to realise – here are some of the things we’ve learned so far, and where we want to land:

Vision, purpose, and strategy.

Sometimes taking a long look in the mirror is a challenge. As we discovered more about how our business currently operates – it was pointed out that we were a bit like a Christmas tree.

Stay with me.

Over the years we’d layer on new projects, programs and change initiatives, like baubles on a tree, without removing the ones that came before.

We learned that having one overarching vision is imperative to successfully changing culture within a business. A single ‘light on the hill’ that doesn’t lessen the importance of the previous focal points but helps align each part of our organisation to work as a cohesive entity.

We’ve worked as a result to refresh our Vision, Purpose and Strategy and continue to work on how we prioritise at the whole of business level and in our business units. We’ve also worked to define our aspirational culture (which aligns to our Vision and Strategy) and built awareness and understanding of this as we move towards that aspiration.

Improve our leadership and leadership expertise.

Building an adaptive culture means that everyone sees themselves as a leader and that we see every interaction as a cultural contribution that can either improve or detract from our culture. We’ve built a Culture and Leadership program designed specifically for us with this in mind. These programs have become the engine room for change and for supporting people to see their role as a leader in our business.

We have also worked on improving alignment as an executive leadership team, recognising this is key to enabling the evolution of our culture.

Prioritising objectives, asking difficult questions of ourselves, and challenging our own assumptions and beliefs is work we have been progressing together. We’re seeing the benefits from this in how we operate as a team.

Trust, psychological safety, inclusion, and diversity.

A guiding principle we’ve used throughout this process is that change isn’t something that happens to people. It needs to happen with them.

We’re moving away from the traditional business model that leans heavily on hierarchy - where people wait for direction from the top – and everyone stays safe in their silo.

Instead, we’re designing a culture of collaboration and growth, where people feel supported and empowered to speak up, where we value diversity, challenge the status quo, embrace complexity, and encourage people to take agency in their role to make change.

"In our aspirational culture, everyone is a leader, and every interaction is an opportunity to contribute to our culture."

For businesses looking to become more adaptive, culture change is often the most challenging part of the transformation. I’m proud of the way we have embraced the need to change and continue to work towards achieving our vision.

But – isn't there always a but - our work is far from finished.

Despite making significant moves in the right direction – the truth of adaptive culture is that evolution never stops. It continues to change and evolve, to improve, and respond to the demands of the world around us.

Success then must be measured by an organisation's confidence leaning into complexity, and emerging from uncertainty stronger and more capable.

We’re seeing and hearing now stories of change happening across the business, people effecting change in relation to more effective meetings and meeting structures, improving our business planning processes, coming together to solve complex problems in more adaptive ways. It’s inspiring to see the way relationships and connections are evolving to help support each other and our business in becoming more adaptive.

"As our world and climate changes – and Australia’s transition to renewable energy ramps up – we are going to face problems that require sophisticated solutions."

I’m proud to say that the work within Hydro Tasmania to create an adaptive culture will enable us to tackle the energy industry’s biggest challenges head on, and help build an energy future that’s clean, reliable and affordable, creating renewable energy for generations.

- Ruth Groom, Executive General Manager, People, Culture & Engagement

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Creating an adaptive culture at Hydro Tasmania