How First Nation values can inform the management of a modern water utility, with Shaun Cumming, MD, Barwon Water, Australia

How First Nation values can inform the management of a modern water utility, with Shaun Cumming, MD, Barwon Water, Australia
[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange 15 minute podcast, in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, educate, and inform other water sector leaders around the globe. My name is Piers Clark and my guest today is Shaun Cumming, managing director for Barwon Water in Australia. Our topic today is all around how do First Nations values inform leadership of a modern water utility?
[00:00:24] Piers Clark: But as always, before we get to that, let's learn a little bit more about our speaker today, Shaun, wonderful for you to join us.
[00:00:32] Shaun Cumming: Hi everyone, and thanks for having me on, Piers.
[00:00:35] Piers Clark: Great, let's get into your background. Tell me how did you get into the role that you are into today?
[00:00:41] Shaun Cumming: Well, I started in the water sector. I actually won a work experience prize when I was in my third year at university. And I know it was a tough call whether to spend a summer surfing or take up the work experience prize with a water utility. I took it up and I've actually never looked back or left the sector since then.
[00:00:59] Shaun Cumming: It's such a privilege to work in the sector where you can be both creative and commercial, all on the aid of benefiting our customers community and environment. That's really struck a chord with my values and what I wanna do in terms of making a difference in the world.
[00:01:13] Piers Clark: Excellent. And how are your surfing skills?
[00:01:17] Shaun Cumming: They're probably stagnated and hopefully my leadership skills have continued to build more than my surfing skills. But yeah, I mean, in the water sector I've gone from being deeply into biology and chemistry of water treatment processes.
[00:01:32] Shaun Cumming: So then the opportunity to build those water treatment plants and then get the opportunity to think about what are the commercial deals that really support those commercial plants. And then in my latest evolution, really understanding how it's people culture, economic impact that really bring those to life.
[00:01:47] Piers Clark: Excellent. Well, we're going to come to all of those values in a second, but before we do, let's now talk about Barwon Water. Where is it? How many people do you serve? What sort of activities do you do?
[00:01:59] Shaun Cumming: Yeah, so Barwon Water provides water, wastewater and recycled water services to about 370,000 people over an 8,000 square kilometer area, about an hour south of Melbourne in Victoria on the southern part of Australia. It's a beautiful spot in the world, in terms of we've got the Great Ocean Road, we've got the Outway Rainforest, and we've got the Ballerina Peninsula.
[00:02:21] Shaun Cumming: So what we find, because it is such a beautiful spot over summer of our population more than doubles.
[00:02:26] Piers Clark: You are a holiday destination, not just for Australians, but for also foreigners, or is it mostly an Australian destination?
[00:02:32] Shaun Cumming: Yeah, Australians and foreigners. There's three key reasons that foreigners visit Australia: the rock, the road, and the reef. The three Rs.
[00:02:40] Piers Clark: I love it. I hadn't heard that phrase before. Now, this is an audio podcast, so listeners won't be able to see you, but I'm looking at Shaun and he's wearing this very vividly colored shirt. It looks absolutely spectacular. It's very dynamic, and it links to the topic we're going to be talking about today, which is how First Nations values inform modern day leadership.
[00:03:03] Piers Clark: Shaun, explain the shirt that you are wearing.
[00:03:05] Shaun Cumming: Yeah, this shirt was designed by one of our staff members, Shu Brown. And what it represents is the waterways that flow through our region. And it really reminds us as we work at Barwon Water that the water that our customers and community really depend on flows of Wadawurrung, Eastern Maar and Wurundjeri country and we continue to pay our respects to their elders past, present, emerging. In particular, when we do that, we really reflect on the knowledge and wisdom that traditional custodians have around, managing water as a responsibility, not a right, and also the understanding that if our waterways are healthy, so are we, and taking care of waterways in that perspective as well.
[00:03:45] Shaun Cumming: So you can see the shirt represents very vibrant, lively, healthy waterways and people as a result.
[00:03:51] Piers Clark: We need to find a way of getting that picture on, shared with this podcast. Now, anyone who's ever been to a conference in Australia will note and recognize some of the language you just used in that it is almost every presentation that's given.
[00:04:04] Piers Clark: Every meeting that I've attended starts with someone acknowledging and thanking the ancestors who own the land. It's an incredibly respectful way of acknowledging the heritage. And I think where we're going to go today is that there's more than just acknowledging that heritage. There's actually building upon it. So take me through why this is important to you and some of the case studies maybe of how you've taken that learning into your day-to-day management practices.
[00:04:32] Shaun Cumming: It is about respect, but it's also a moment of mindfulness where you actually connect with the country that you are working on or making decisions with or the relationships of the people that you are working with as well.
[00:04:43] Shaun Cumming: In terms of our region that I've just described, it also faces significant challenges in terms of growth, climate change and equity divide. So we are the fastest growing region in Australia and we also are facing a drying climate where the inflows through our reservoirs have halved over the last 20 years and are forecast to halve again.
[00:05:04] Shaun Cumming: And within that declining water inflows, we're seeing extremes like we've never seen before. Literally two years ago we were dealing with floods. This year we're dealing with record dry conditions. And then within that we've got a population. We've got the most disadvantaged suburb in the state and the most affluent suburb in the state.
[00:05:23] Piers Clark: That's what you mean when you say the equity divide.
[00:05:25] Shaun Cumming: Yeah. We've gone on a journey as a business in embedding First Nations values in the way we do business.
[00:05:30] Shaun Cumming: So anyone who joins Barwon Water has the opportunity to undertake cultural awareness training and understand some of the principles that we've been talking to today. Our executive leadership team have done a "Leading through a cultural lens" program where we've really had the opportunity to explore First Nations values and what they mean for modern leadership.
[00:05:52] Shaun Cumming: We refer to our caring for country principles as we develop business cases. And look, that's seen a number of initiatives which I'll share today, but it has also support us developing really deep partnerships with the traditional custodians in our region and forming a journey of ongoing learning, listening and learning.
[00:06:11] Piers Clark: I love the fact that this is deliberate. This is something you have deliberately, consciously chosen to say, this is how we're going to differentiate, how we do things in Barwon Water to how other organizations might do things.
[00:06:23] Piers Clark: We are acknowledging what the First Nations principles and values are and how those are going to shape our business. Now, let's talk a bit about some of the case studies.
[00:06:33] Shaun Cumming: The first one I'll share relates to cultural flows. So 97% of our customers want us to enhance waterways and catchments through collaboration and partnerships.
[00:06:44] Shaun Cumming: And for a very long time, we've been releasing environmental flows and investing in waterway rehabilitation. But over the last two summers, we've partnered with Wadawurrung traditional custodians on returning environmental flows to the Moorabool River, which is one of the most flow stress rivers in our region.
[00:07:02] Shaun Cumming: And using Wadawurrung knowledge, based on a real sort of place-based and totemic species-based knowledge as to where flows best go, when flows best go there, and how much flows. And with that knowledge, we've diverted 50 million liters over the two summers, it's 0.1% of the annual water consumption of the region that we serve, to an area that once was a wetland, and that has just transformed that space from deathly silence to not being able to hear yourself think due to birds, frogs, insects. And we've done the sums, if everyone in our region would have a shower that is two second shorter, we would be able to do that every year.
[00:07:47] Piers Clark: I can imagine how the dawn chorus has changed when you go there now and you can hear it. The bit that I have to cling to is 97% of the population wanted you to do this, 3% that didn't. What's wrong with them?
[00:08:00] Shaun Cumming: The stories like this probably, will help everyone see, oh wow, these amazing things can happen. And that fact that it's only a two second less shower makes you realize I can support this with little skin off my nose.
[00:08:11] Shaun Cumming: Another example is our projects. We apply our caring for country principles on our business cases now, and that really takes us through a process which we call gut, heart, head, hand. And so that's about spending time and letting your gut feel what's going on country, spending time building relationships with people that understand country and that's your heart piece. Then thinking through the design through your head and then going to the delivery through your hand.
[00:08:40] Shaun Cumming: What we find is traditionally we would do head hand and then find out that, gosh, we really should have listened to our gut and connected with our heart.
[00:08:47] Shaun Cumming: With that, our designers and delivery team members spending time on country, they get to understand, what is the geotechnical environment on the country? How do our best assets best interact with country? We truly believe over long term this will save us money.
[00:09:02] Shaun Cumming: So, we are less likely to come across environmental approval issues. We are less likely to come up with geotech surprises once we get into the works. And I think also in the future, we'll start challenging whether we need to build the asset in the first place and can we get more out of existing assets as well.
[00:09:20] Shaun Cumming: There's more to come as we build the case studies but I think it's an exciting space in terms of not only delivering benefits to the environment and community and traditional kind custodians but making good business sense as well.
[00:09:33] Piers Clark: When you said "gut, heart, head, hand" you actually went through a physical activity there it was a very deliberate action that you did, and I can imagine that that is adopted within project team meetings, you know, as people will be saying, right, okay, let's have a "gut, heart, head, hand" moment. You used the word mindfulness earlier. It is about pausing to think about why are we doing this and are we actually making the right decision or are we locked ourselves into an engineering solution that actually we didn't need to do.
[00:10:02] Shaun Cumming: Yeah, and it's not a new term or phrase, but it's really interesting. So I've used it in the safety space for a long time, and it's always been head, heart, gut, and it's just the other way around.
[00:10:13] Piers Clark: Okay, so we've got it in First Nation knowledge to inform the environmental flows. We've got it on projects. Is there more? Are there other ways?
[00:10:21] Shaun Cumming: There is the circular economy, Piers, which is I know something close to your heart and that's all about really looking at systems-based thinking, interconnectedness and collaborating across silos.
[00:10:33] Shaun Cumming: Just by taking that view, we have so many exciting opportunities in the circular economy, anything from hydrogen to reusing oxygen, to generating energy from heat and sewer and gases and the likes as well to generating biochar. And it all comes back from looking at sort of holistic value chains and looking where value flows rather than just acting within your existing silo. So, that broader systemic view is curating so many opportunities.
[00:11:01] Shaun Cumming: And I guess while I'm talking about opportunities, one of the exciting challenging spaces that we're all leaning into now is what does AI mean for us? and what does it mean for our businesses? What does it mean for our teams?
[00:11:12] Shaun Cumming: And I think it's a time of extreme change and I feel like some of these First Nations values that we are learning will help us get through change.
[00:11:21] Shaun Cumming: We've learned about the fact that we all have three fires. We've got a spiritual fire, a practical fire and a physical fire. And it's that practical and physical fire, the tools that we can use and the business environment we work on, that's changing all the time. And it's our spiritual fires where we remain connected, remain grounded and will help us navigate that change all the way through. Spiritual fire means different things to a whole lot of different people. For me, it's about going out for a run and connecting with country. Being immersing myself in nature. It can be different things for all different people, but it's all kind of source of grounding through all this change.
[00:11:57] Shaun Cumming: The other aspect is around dealing with complexity, letting things and systems evolve and learning, seeing, doing as they do enables you to deal with complexity without making it complicated as well.
[00:12:10] Piers Clark: It's absolutely incredible and I love how you've described that learning in four areas on the environmental flows, on how you approach projects, breaking that traditional model on the circular economy, and then coming full circle to look at the challenges of the future and how we adopt AI and just address things like climate change. It's incredibly bold and brave leadership that you are adopting that is consciously and deliberately flying in the face of some more traditional management techniques.
[00:12:44] Piers Clark: I know having been to Barwon, I've been able to see firsthand the benefits of how your style of leadership is helping lift the people that you work with up. Do you worry that things could slide backwards or do you think you are establishing a permanent change here in how Barwon operates?
[00:13:01] Shaun Cumming: By embedding it in our business processes, it becomes the way we do business. Enterprise project management office, they're one of the tools that everyone works to is those caring for country principles get pulled off the shelf just like they do in terms of a net present value analysis, risk management assessment and the likes as well.
[00:13:20] Shaun Cumming: So, we as an executive leadership team, have redefined our values, the same values that we've always had just the definition of them have changed. So, an example is one of our values is accountability. We now understand that accountability not only refers to the targets of today, but accountability to our children's children's children in terms of the decisions we are making, the plans we're putting in place.
[00:13:43] Shaun Cumming: So, it can be part of your everyday business processes and I think the onus is on us to show that it actually makes really good business sense.
[00:13:53] Piers Clark: Coming, unfortunately, to the end of our time together, Shaun, I could spend hours hearing about this management style. It's just incredible and I absolutely applaud you on what you've done. We've done 35 of these podcasts, and we usually ask people, what advice would you give your younger self? But with you, I'm gonna ask a much more personal question. I want to know Shaun Cumming, MD of Barwon Water, when was the last time you cried?
[00:14:18] Shaun Cumming: It's actually not that long ago. We've just come off the weekend here and this weekend we traditionally go to one of our close by national parks and camp. There's this run that I do every year and it's just a bit of, sort of a life benchmark I think, in terms of how did I go up that hill? Was I faster, slower than last year? But there's a spot that I stopped that is on the peak of the mountain range and looks over the whole valley.
[00:14:42] Shaun Cumming: And yeah, look, I got a bit emotional this year when I got up there. Just, I don't know, it's a special spot that I've returned to every year and you just sort of check in on what's happened over the last 12 months? How am I going? And I think just that moment of thinking and caring for yourself brought up some emotions.
[00:14:57] Piers Clark: Brilliant. You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Shaun Cumming, managing director for Barwon Water. We've been talking about how do First Nations values inform leadership of a modern water utility.
[00:15:00] Piers Clark: I hope you can join us next time. Thank you.