Sydney Water Transformation

Quick facts.

Sydney Water provides water, wastewater and some stormwater services to about 4.6 million people in Sydney, the Illawarra and the Blue Mountains.  It buys bulk water for its customers from the Sydney Catchment Authority, which manages the dams and catchments, and when required from Sydney Desalination Plant Pty Limited (SDP) which manages the desalination plant.   

Sydney Water’s ambition as an organisation is to meet changing market drivers and positively impact on people’s lives.

Sydney Water is a State Owned Corporation. It is governed by a Board of Directors and managed by an Executive team that demand any third party cost bears strategic and operational value.

While customer and employee experience and insights can spark excitement and positive feedback, it does not bring the organisation any closer to executing a cohesive and focussed message internally or externally. This requires significant management participation and a dedicated team to manage and align the complex web of interdependent activities, brand assets, systems, processes and priorities. And according to research, Sydney Water’s existing standing amongst customers is undefined and lack potent meaning.

Musubi set out to establish a transformation project to help with increased productivity, laser focus on the new brand purpose, then shape and prepare brand message clarity and a scalable brand idea.

Our approach was to define Sydney Water’s authentic foundations and unlock the latent power of Sydney Water. Nothing is worse than trying to impose a brand idea into an organisation. We co-created with Sydney Water to establish an authentic, fact base, and deeply meaningful Brand Idea and Brand Positioning. The result of establishing a clearly memorable definition of the brand from within the organisation ensures fidelity and a sense of truth to decision-making.

Musubi translated the different parts of the organisation into a set of brand tools and strategic resources that can be executed consistently and flexibly. Ultimately the approach is to shape the strategic framework, recommendations and directions to provide Sydney Water with the readiness and ability to manage reputation building programs.

The scale of the project.

Sydney Water’s water network has an operating capacity of over 4 billion litres per day.  More than 4.6 million customers are supplied with water through more than 21,000 kilometres of water mains, 251 service reservoirs and 164 water pumping stations.

More than 1.3 billion litres of water is supplied to over 1.8 million homes and businesses each day. Annually, Sydney Water supplies just under 500 billion litres.

Sydney Water operates 24 separate wastewater systems with 16 wastewater treatment plants, incorporating over 24,000 kilometres of mains and 675 wastewater pumping stations.  Wastewater services are available to over four million people. Sydney Water treats more than 1.6 billion litres of wastewater a day.

There are 539 kilometres of recycled water mains in Sydney Water’s area of operations. Sydney Water recycles about 125 million litres of wastewater a day for home use, irrigation, agriculture and industry. 69,440 people are supplied with recycled water services.

Although most stormwater systems are the responsibility of local councils, Sydney Water has over 442 kilometres of stormwater channels under its control, serving over 525,000 properties.

Musubi worked alongside Sydney Water’s dedicated Workforce of around 2,500 staff.

About 1,350 staff are in head office at One Smith Street, Parramatta. The remainder of staff are located at an operational headquarters at Potts Hill, laboratories at West Ryde and plants and depots.

The Challenge.

How to attract a new generation of staff that will work together to triumph over time and build long-term sustained performance that can be engineered into Sydney Water’s DNA. How can Musubi transition them from a good organisation to achieve enduring greatness? What are the characteristics that we can unearth and cause Sydney Water to go from good to great?

With a collective leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, The Comparisons: The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings: The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.

The Hedgehog Concept: (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Defining the organisation.

Central organising idea

Organisational Culture and Anthropology.

Developed a culture book educating onboarding staff of the diverse range of people that work across the organisation from indigenous, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Atheists, Jewish, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Maps of local places of worship, closest shops post offices dry cleaners cafes, doctors and chemists. Types of social clubs and events across Sydney Water

Sydney Water’s brand is more than just its logo and how it’s used. It’s about the space we occupy in the hearts and minds of our customers, staff and stakeholders. But what space do we want to own? Does our brand reflect what our customers and stakeholders want us to be? Is it being used as a powerful lever to inform government policy? What story do we want to tell? What do we take forward? What do we leave behind? And what do we need to add?

Corporate Public Affairs and branding firm, Musubi Brand Agency have recently undertaken work to assess the existing effectiveness of our brand and its role in strengthening Sydney Water’s reputation, therefore improving the organisation’s ability to create its own destiny. We wanted to find out what our brand currently stands for? Do our employees, stakeholders and customers give the same answer?

The latest Consumer Sentiment Monitor tells us that 1 in 3 customers don’t know who we are, what we do and what we stand for.

To assist our effectiveness with our brand positioning and messaging (to staff, customers and stakeholders) we believe it’s vital our brand be defined with one clear, defendable and powerful core idea and brand truth. This reflects the reality that brand is not the logo but is the connection between a corporate culture, customers and commercial/social imperatives.

We’ve held internal workshops involving representatives from across the organisation and we’ve reviewed relevant existing customer and stakeholder research to assess existing organisational strengths and capabilities. We’ve contrasted this with Sydney Water’s reputation in the market place across different customer and stakeholder groups.

This work has helped to clearly define what customers and stakeholders value from Sydney Water and their expectations of the role that it plays. It has highlighted the key issues and the things that matter in assessing the role the brand plays. We also wanted to ensure clarity and alignment around the authentic foundations of the Sydney Water brand.

At Thursday’s meeting Catherine Payne, Peter Witts and branding advisors, Simon Morris  will share the work that’s been done to understand and define the supporting brand pillars that bring the brand to life. We propose to spend 30 minutes seeking the views of the Executive to:

• assist with defining possible alternative brand positioning platforms that express the different roles Sydney Water plays in customer and stakeholder lives; and to

• bring to life Sydney Water’s relevant strengths and capabilities through a visual representation of the brand.

A clearly defined brand and a crisp, compelling message paves the way for seamless engagement throughout the organisation and it will help- guide our communications to make them more effective and impactful. It will also help to provide clarity scalability in articulating the organisation to customers and stakeholders and supports our objective of enhancing Sydney Water’s brand and reputation.

Take the first step towards a powerful brand transformation and contact us today to unlock your brand's true potential. Partner with us for unbiased expertise, fresh perspectives, and optimised resource utilisation. Elevate your reputation, mitigate risks, and make informed decisions to position your organisation correctly.