At 140 years old, Stats NZ was held back by legacy processes and thinking. The traditional statistics shop was missing the power and credibility it could have around the use of data. In conjunction with the launch of a new organisation strategy, Stats NZ is now on a journey towards focusing on the value it can provide instead of simply serving up data and widgets.

Chris Buxton, CDO, recognised that the organisation was set up as an in-house constrained environment which would not cope if exposed to third parties. Also, the company had limited previous success in changing its culture. Chris developed a new operating model for technology. The model was built around being customer centric, aligned to the company's objectives and promoted IT as a service. He restructured his teams based around the DevOps model. Chris' area was no longer known as 'IT', now it was 'Digital Business Services'.

The team has used modularisation to enable third party access to Stats NZ data with standard web interfaces. This third party access enables the use, innovation and monetisation of data to meet Stats NZ's vision of unleashing the power of data to change lives. Chris says, "We need to create the opportunities for people to do things differently".

With the pace of change, leaders need to build resilience back up in their teams. One way Stats NZ has been building resilience is with 'Focus Fridays', where teams are given the latitude to solve a problem of their choosing. His department also partnered with the business to do a hackathon at Te Papa Museum's innovation space. A key objective was to build relationships, to get people out of the confines of 'statistics' and see the opportunities data provides.

Chris says that collaboration is a key theme of the transformation and that the external customers - which could be anything from central government right down to individual citizens - were the key relationship.

David Kennedy, Group CIO, has created a high performing set of IT teams across TSG's five 'payment processor' brands. TSG's differentiator is providing a full payments transactions service model, including debt collection as a service. It transacts around $2 billion per year in payments, from clients that include gyms, golf courses and theme parks.

David delivered a compelling yet simple six-word strategy. "Kill Complexity. Create Time. Think Big". These anchoring principles have been used in transformational projects to remove complexity in systems and processes, create time through process re-engineering and thinking big as a complete group.

Thousands of hours have been saved in the business, for example aggregating disparate data to save teams preparing manual information for customer reviews. David got buy in by explaining that if you feel like you are doing a commodity piece of work then it can probably be automated. He encouraged teams to automate commodity work by demonstrating their newly freed up time could be used to work on more exciting projects. Several 'think big' group led projects have been delivered which were conceived through a common need across the group. This includes deploying a single workforce management tool, a single sales process technology and the creation of a Group IT Summit to foster relationships and share experiences.

David also serves on several advisory boards for companies in New Zealand and Australia and describes himself as a change agent and someone who acts as a growth technology executive. David is driven by a desire to truly help customers, businesses and people.

Quin Carver, CIO, inherited three technology functions each with their own management challenges. He has fused these groups into a highly engaged and performing team.

Land Information New Zealand is an information agency with a goal to grow the value created for New Zealand using geographic information. Quin created a new IS strategy to support the company goal. He involved his team in creating the strategic themes to encourage their buy in to the strategy.

Quin has adopted the saying "If we were new, what would we do?" which he says is a great way to get behind innovative thinking and avoid being hamstrung by legacy. This shifts the thinking but doesn't mean the organisation must do everything like a start-up.

Quin combated low team morale by setting the strategic direction and providing context and clarity about how everyone's post-restructure roles fit into the company goals. He actively celebrates team success. Staff feel empowered by team created value statements such as "We speak up". Quin has found creative ways to reward and value staff, such as executive signed thank you letters and training opportunities via industry conferences. He says that recognition is far more important than reward. Quin's area now has the lowest churn within the corporate group at LINZ.

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise's (NZTE) strategy is to grow companies bigger, better and faster for the benefit of New Zealand. With 53 locations globally, its ICT strategy needs to allow NZTE to run at pace.

When Richard Kay, CIO, arrived at NZTE, the ICT department's NPS score was -15, with low engagement and morale. A year and a half later NPS sits at +80 and the team is winning internal awards and gaining performance recognition.

Richard started by fixing the smaller problems that frustrated people but were quick wins to resolve. He evolved the service desk to a follow the sun model. The tactics cut down the noise from the business. Then, at a more strategic level, Richard replaced his leadership group with leaders with the right attitude to role model the NZTE values. He developed the 'Way we Work' philosophy, designed via a collaborative process which includes new ways of working and thinking such as 'We say yes', 'We find a way' and 'We keep people informed'.

From a systems perspective, in just 16 months Richard and his teams have migrated practically every system into the cloud, with the focus on creating a knowledge environment. Incredibly, these changes have been made without impact to budgets.

He says the secret to success was having full support from the leadership team and the board. They gave him free reign and trust to make broad reaching changes. It is also important to create a new fun culture; move away from a 'permissions based culture' and instead focus on letting people make their own decisions and feel OK about making their own mistakes.

Wellington based portfolio management company GMI has $4 billion funds under management and around 140 staff. As infrastructure manager, Craig Ward has stepped up as an emerging leader by using a business crisis to change the company's ways of working.

Post Kaikoura earthquake in 2016 Craig stood up the call centre in an empty room within 24 hours, and since then has stood up another 5 temporary offices. Challenged with this unanticipated project, a lack of clear timeframes and constant change, Craig has focused on building team resilience.

The post-earthquake environment created a sense of urgency and an opportunity to do things differently. The team now has more stand up meetings than one on ones, keeping morale and resiliency up in the team is the new normal. Craig is more interested in getting the right team fit than worrying about technical skills.

Craig says his role Is already becoming less about physical infrastructure and more about leadership which is being fostered in his role as 2IC for the CTO. He's passionate about being able to lead and influence people over quite an aggressive technology roadmap.

Auckland based law firm MinterEllisonRuddWatts has a vision to become a digitally enabled market disrupter. Nick Whitehouse is the company's CDO, having secured his role at the law firm after a successful and award winning career as a digital specialist at Spark Digital. Nick has been instrumental in making MinterEllisonRuddWatts' vision become a reality, leading several engaging and challenging technology initiatives.

His biggest achievement has been the official launch of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) joint venture between the law firm and big-business investors, Goat Ventures. Whitehouse is acting as CEO of the joint venture. The venture aims to deliver an agnostic legal AI that can explain legal recommendations and tactics to customers. Convincing a traditional law firm to invest into a disruptive approach was what Nick described as the hardest thing he's ever done.

Whitehouse led the creation of an innovation culture at MinterEllisonRuddWatts. He introduced an innovation fund, an innovation lab and an innovation café. Whitehouse says that informal innovation labs, or 'bite sized' labs work better in his environment. Formal innovation labs run the risk of becoming officious and protected but less formal working groups create innovation from the ground up. Whitehouse uses a mix of formal and informal communication channels to grow and sustain engagement. You could find him in a cross functional engagement meeting where members of technology participate in partner meetings or equally at a relaxed coffee meeting with partners.

The key to success is to never talk about technology; focus on business problems. IT should not be a separate function but part of the core of the firm. He says that your title doesn't matter when it comes to leadership, it's about your people having a clear message and a narrow focus.

From a project coordinator to an enterprise wide transformation lead in two years, Saba Tavakolinejad is not afraid of being thrown in at the deep end. Westpac is undergoing a large scale technology transformation project driven by employee ideas for improvements to the business. As the workstream lead, Saba has utilised ideation sessions and a hackathon style problem solving event to drive the collection of ideas. Her secret to hackathon success is including business stakeholders in the room as well as technology teams.

During Westpac's transformational programme Saba focussed on team work, rather than individual work. Her focus with her direct reports is to teach them how to learn rather than teach specific skills. She set up a safe, 'no blame' environment within the team and led a change in culture from a permissions based culture to a fail fast, learn fast culture.

Saba displays a high level of tenacity, determination and passion for ICT. She is involved in promoting both the use of ICT and employment in ICT by running problem solving events, involvement in women in technology forums and reverse mentoring. She has also recently taken up the role of Chairperson of the Westpac Youth Network. Saba is an unstoppable force for the future.

In 2015, Fletcher Building began a company-wide transformation programme to change the way technology is organised and delivered, and to enable business units to embrace digital and technology as a key enabler of business growth. Prior to the transformation many of the 36 Business Units had their own IT team, technology was fragmented and underinvested in and digital maturity was very low. The transformation is now well underway and while not complete, benefits are already clear with consolidation of technology platforms creating alignment group-wide.

Digital Innovation Labs were the catalyst for a broad mind-set shift within the company with the introduction of new lean, agile and customer centric ways of working and the use of customer centric methods to drive investment prioritisation. The business has woken up to the power of digital, both to improve operations and to help enable growth.

In just two years the Innovation Lab has delivered over 24 digital solutions and generated an incremental $6.45M EBIT. The company also setup a learning council that aimed to support employees with targeted training and coaching to embrace the mind-set shift and encourage a growth-mind set.

While digital innovation is a key factor in the ongoing transformation taking place at Fletcher, the real strength in approach has been taking a people first approach. By empowering people within Group Technology to drive the changes that were required, the company has achieved buy in across the group, ensuring that any change was sustainable and supported. Fletcher has followed a clear path in the transformation project and looks set to achieve and exceed initial objectives.

Valocity have created a technology platform that utilises existing data, advanced analytics and technology to create an ecosystem that has transformed the mortgage lending process in New Zealand to deliver customer centricity in financial institutions in parallel with regulatory compliance.

Today used by the majority of major New Zealand banks, the Valocity platform allows users to access information on any address in real-time to make informed lending decisions. The platform generates various customisable reports, including a computer-generated automated valuation, streamlining information that previously had to be searched in multiple places.

The success of the application is clear in the adoption to date as numerous banks, valuers, brokers and consumers utilise the platform. While many industries are facing disruption, the financial industry has been cautious to change in the face of increasing regulation and compliance. Valocity have produced a platform that takes advantage of this compliance and streamlines processes around it.

The company have utilised a winning culture and talented people as well as technology and analytics to produce a simple yet effective solution that continues to transform how banks operate. The platform has continued to evolve to support financial institutions, valuers, brokers and consumers in innovative ways.

Valocity have shown the ability to not only transform their own business to the changing needs of their customers but also to disrupt an entire industry. The platform has revolutionized how lenders operate and produced a range of benefits for the wider mortgage lending ecosystem.

Westpac is a 200 year old organisation facing competitive pressures and changing customer expectations that required significant transformation. In 2015, the bank established an aggressive transformation programme to deliver leading customer experience, digitally enabled, everywhere, all the time. The company has seen success in the new Technology and Business delivery model introduced as well as delivering Digital Innovation at speed, resulting in a shift in how the company measures both internal and external performance. A cultural shift was the key ingredient in the transformation being successful.

Technology has transformed from a traditional, waterfall-style, heavily governed IT shop, into a lean and nimble, customer value-stream driven outcomes machine. Culture has altered considerably as innovation and experimentation are now core ideas across the company. This is clear from the activities that have taken place with hackathon-style events, innovation days and a digital ventures team being formed that have a ‘Graveyard’ to celebrate ideas that have been killed or failed.

Numerous initiatives have come about as part of the transformation. CashNav is the standout example; an app that lets customers track and manage their spending habits without being time intensive. The app turns customer’s raw transaction data into valuable insights around their spending behavior. Other examples include; Westpac’s new Financial Transaction Hub, a dynamic real-time lending pricing engine, and the introduction of Te Reo Māori as a language option on 600 ATMs to celebrate Māori language week in 2016 -taking only 23 days from idea to delivery.

Westpac are half way through a 3-year transformation initiative and already clear results are showing success. Agile delivery methods, and digital first methodologies are allowing the company to be more nimble in the market and execute faster. Market share is increasing in key markets and most importantly customers and employees are happier with satisfaction scores increasing in key areas.

Air New Zealand’s purpose to “Supercharge New Zealand’s Success” is reflected in how the company engages youth in ICT. The level of commitment goes beyond simply benefiting the organisation and has clear benefits for the wider ICT ecosystem in New Zealand. The company has taken a broad focus across school, university and community that succeeds in not only providing future talent for the business but in generating interest in young people to learn about and successfully pursue careers in information technology.

A core part of this engagement is the collaboration with Auckland University Business School, where Air New Zealand run an annual design challenge. There was clear benefit for the students as they were exposed to real business problems while Air New Zealand benefited from the fresh perspective students brought to each task. Air New Zealand also ran an internship program for aspiring digital leaders and has since offered full and part time employment to all 11 interns that took part.

Air New Zealand showed that engaging youth starts before university, hosting teachers from intermediate and secondary schools, where the different roles and career paths for students in digital were outlined with an emphasis on the non-traditional journeys that can lead to IT careers. The company also partnered with Mindlab to co-design an app aimed at students, hosted Shadow tech – aimed at inspiring women in IT and strengthening diversity in digital talent, and mentored, judged and sponsored JHACK to encourage programming in a fun environment.

While many organisations offer internship programs, Air New Zealand has shown commitment and innovation in its approach to youth in ICT by the wide-ranging focus and emphasis on community. The company supported several events that encourage youth engagement in ICT such as Wynyard Innovation Neighbourhood (WIN), GovHack and the Future Leaders Initiative. Overall Air New Zealand has shown that a wider approach can deliver diverse results and allow the company to benefit from everything New Zealand has to offer while adding to New Zealand’s potential in the process.

Code Avengers (CA) have developed a solution that seeks to change how young people interact with ICT from an early age. The program takes a gamified approach to teaching students how to code and has seen uptake by both secondary and tertiary organisations. The company have used NZ as the test bed for the solution but have already adapted the program for adoption in other countries.

1.5 million students and/or adult learners have registered and completed lessons on the CA platform since starting in 2012. Half of the NZ High Schools use CA in their Digital Technologies programmes, and in the NZ tertiary sector 2,500 business students per year at the University of Auckland alone over the last 3 years have used CA lessons in the 1st year business course.

The company also organizes code camps to connect with local schools and communities acting as a stimulus to interest more non-tech individuals to get involved with ICT. Code Avengers place a key focus on diversity as they design course material to engage with all types of people. Code Avengers have designed a program with the potential to have a huge impact on New Zealand youth. The company’s ambition to have all schools using CA as a resource will dramatically lift New Zealand student’s coding capabilities if successful. The solution presented is both innovative in design and technical approach and has already had a considerable influence on NZ youth to date.

MYOB are a standout example of how to engage with youth as their programs go far beyond simple recruitment activities and focus on investing into the community. The approach taken has multiple facets without over extending the program’s reach and in each area they have developed strong links with clear paths for development.

The flagship event run by MYOB in the area of youth engagement is the MYOB IT Challenge. The challenge began in 2015 at the University of Auckland and has grown to a nationwide competition involving eight universities around New Zealand with over 60 teams expected to take part in 2017. MYOB relies on a strong relationship with universities and management consulting clubs to grow awareness of the challenge. What stands out about the IT challenge is its open nature, with MYOB actively seeking to promote the challenge to those outside of technical areas, focussing on the development of business and collaboration skills.

While MYOB do have an internship program, run office tours, and support numerous local events such as the TechHub in Schools program, Summer of Tech, Shadow Tech Day and ASB Bright Sparks, the area that stands out in MYOB’s approach to youth engagement is the commitment and sustainable approach the company has shown. In 2015 MYOB employed a full-time Education Account Manager and has supported the position with significant budget to drive stronger engagement within the tertiary sector.

The success of MYOB’s approach is evident in how the company continues to invest and how the Australian arm of MYOB has taken note. The engagement to date has highlighted the level of talent in New Zealand and led MYOB to create an NZ based talent advisor position. The success of the MYOB IT challenge means it is likely to be rolled out to Australia next year. Overall it is clear that MYOB have taken youth engagement to heart as a key corporate value and continually increase engagement and investment in this area for the benefit of the company and New Zealand.

At a time when there is a talent shortage across a wide range of industries Snapper have implemented a unique program that develops the talent needed internally. The creative solution to a problem many organisations face provides a clear path to solving issues with skill shortage in niche industries or highly sought after roles. The solution stood out not only because of its innovative nature but in how it adds to the local talent pool on a whole.

Snapper have shown that adjusting the typical internship model from individual to team focused with an emphasis on collaboration allows an organisation to overcome the apparent lack of ‘suitable’ people. Rather than looking for one employee with competencies in a number of areas Snapper found a team of individuals who together can produce a greater result. The key challenge for the organisation was not finding the right talent but re focussing existing senior team members away from software development to leadership and coaching.

The key advantage of the program is that it does not rely on typical profiles as interns. Instead, as it seeks to find complementary roles to create a successful team it can look to different disciplines and skill sets that together form a unique solution. This engages a wider profile of students and graduates without an IT background to take an interest in an IT career.

The program has been running for almost three years and the results clearly show a successful program in place. Today around 85% of all artefacts produced by Snapper’s business improvement teams are generated by interns. While the program does provide a talent base for future roles in the NZ ICT ecosystem what is truly beneficial for the NZ ICT ecosystem is that the program is so repeatable across organisations that this unique approach can aid many firms to move beyond the obstacle of skill shortage.

BNZ understands that to enable and grow high achieving New Zealand communities it needs to operate in those same environments. Technology at BNZ is not just an IT shop but an integral part of how the bank works and BNZ identifies the technology team as a 'core enabler' of the bank's strategy. The team supports the wider business models, focussed on enabling its 5,000 staff through continual improvement and tech innovation.

BNZ now supports its people with flexible working options, external training, breakfast sessions with leadership, and an anonymous 'burning questions' board. The technology team restructured into teams that collaborate to make the most of skillsets across the team. It uses DevOps, agile approaches, and automation to get things done faster than before.

These changes in culture have been tested; via large scale organisational structure changes, the introduction of new ways of working, and the earthquake driven relocation. The Kaikoura earthquake caused large scale disruption, with 1,500 staff unable to work from their Wellington office. The technology team had critical teams operating out of alternative sites within 24 hours and was the first bank to get banking and ATM services up in Kaikoura. The technology team secured and enabled eight alternative sites for BNZ staff where they remain today.

The team said the key attributes for the earthquake recovery in its team were resilience, drive, honesty and comradery. Keeping the customer front of mind is also key and the technology team now talk about what outages mean for customers instead of what outages mean for technology. This has enabled the technology teams to empathise with customer stories.

Inland Revenue desires to be a customer centric, agile, intelligence led organisation. The Technology Strategy & Operations (TS&O) team recognised that its biggest challenge wouldn't be technology but the cultural change required to transform. Employee feedback indicated TS&O needed to focus on setting a clear direction, improving communication, simplifying process and empowering employees in decision making.

The team developed the TS&O Direction which sets out the priorities and the value TS&O provides to its customers. Teams use The Direction to set meeting agendas, for performance development discussions and as a basis for rewards and recognition schemes. Initiatives to improve engagement include regular CTO updates, town halls, leadership teleconferences and providing opportunities for staff to try the latest technology and devices.

The technology team used the new ways of working to achieve an outstanding result for a project which sought to replace its integration layer, which housed hundreds of individual interfaces. The project was likened to changing the tyres while driving down the motorway. Analysis had indicated that it would take several years to complete the project using traditional methods. The team implemented an accelerated approach including:
 • Setting a specific performance objective for the project around a positive culture. The team acted on this with morning teas, hero of the week awards and by developing a set of shared values.
 • Challenging old ways of working. The project team said that new ways of working made them feel that they were delivering together as a single team.
 • Adopting a Devops approach to testing. This gave a higher quality delivery, with defects found early and more tasks able to be run in parallel.
 • Using visual management, daily stand up meetings and lean governance.

As a result, the project was successfully completed in 18 months with no business interruption. The IR story is a great example of how a customer focussed, collaborative team culture underpins a successful outcome.

The stand out facet of the team at The Instillery is how it uses its own high performing culture to shift the culture of its clients. The Instillery began its cloud service consultancy servicing small to medium business clients. Now, enterprise clients use The Instillery to gain a new perspective.

The Instillery's competitive advantage is its fresh thinking and a lack of constrained thought from legacy environments. It doesn't have legacy revenues to protect, doesn't have any tin or hardware, and takes a data led approach to talk about its offerings in transparent terms.

It is a young company; the average age of its employees is 27 years old. It looks for team members who are transparent and honest, but who also don't take themselves too seriously. The tone at the top of the company is all about being passionate and this flows down through its people. The team is open and friendly yet autonomous and well supported.

To maintain its competitive advantage and 'fresh' brand the Instillery says it must never become hierarchical, it must continually refresh its thinking, give people flexibility, time to innovate and support them to develop personally.

Valocity says its biggest assets are its people and its culture. The online valuations and data analysis company asked itself "what makes a good team?" and created a play book of values and behaviours to help its people align to its strategy.

Valocity, combined with its sister company Data Insight, has grown rapidly over the last four years and now has a team of over 70 people. The culture in the organisation is conscious and leadership empowers the team to communicate and achieve. With fortnightly sprint cycles, collaboration and open communication is critical for celebrating success, ongoing iteration and improvement. The culture of agility means that the organisation can pivot if it realises it could be on the wrong track.

Because the team are all passionate about creating value, it is helpful to have forums in place specifically for innovation. CEO Carmen Vicelich has found that adding structure and putting cultural practices into place, such as Friday afternoon hackathons, gives people the time to innovate and experiment. Vicelich says the company culture is transparent and authentic. They respect the differences between people and acknowledge that 'makers' and 'managers' work differently. The judges were impressed with the team's passion and enthusiasm.