I recently attended the Local Government NSW Water Management Conference 2018, in the beautiful city of Armidale. As always, presenters provided plenty of food for thought and on the long drive back home one big question kept arising: What is so hard about water?
The water sector is filled with really smart people who between them could resolve just about any technical issue. Yet presenter after presenter talked about the struggles and challenges that confront the sector. If we are so clever, what makes water so hard?
Of course, we know that the hard thing about water is not the technical but the human elements. Some comments and observations from the conference include:
- “Water reform will always be parochial. The battle is to get people to take a Basin-wide view”.
- The different ideologies on display around privatisation. Some believe it’s part of the answer. Some feel it is part of the problem.
- Different attitudes to specific projects, along political lines.
- The need to improve regulation to ensure compliance and prevent ‘backsliding’ to old behaviours.
- Recommendations from various reports about the role of collaboration in a more efficient water sector.
- The ongoing need for governance reform.
- “To appreciate water we first have to appreciate us”.
These are people challenges. To resolve they require very sophisticated people skills such as curiosity about others’ positions, listening, inquiry, non-defensiveness, vulnerability, co-creation and collaboration, to name a few.
The water sector is rich in expertise, yet to successfully tackle the dilemmas we face together, it is essential we build our ‘collaborative muscles’. It is one thing to talk about the need for collaboration. What is needed now is to invest in building the necessary skills so that together we can tackle and resolve the challenges we face together.
Find out how Twyfords approaches the task of building ‘collaborative muscles’ in the water sector using Collaboration Builder. If you have questions please get in touch.