Mine Hunter Coastal Capability Improvement Project (MHCCIP)

Client: Royal Australian Navy (RAN)
Period: 2010
Collaboration: Strategy& (formerly Booz & Co.)
Focus: Systems analysis, cultural change and change management

IGOR supported the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) in 2010 on the Mine Hunter Coastal Capability Improvement Project (MHCCIP), the Navy’s first Strategic Reform Program initiative of this kind. Working in collaboration with Strategy& (formerly Booz & Co.), IGOR provided the scope for the cultural change and change management plan required to support the improvement of the capability over the longer term.

The project presented a fundamentally different challenge from a conventional organisational change program. The Mine Hunter capability could not be understood simply as the vessels themselves, or as the people who operated them. The capability depended on a complex network of interacting systems: vessels and their technical systems; crews and specialist personnel; training and workforce development; engineering and maintenance; operational support; command and coordination; surveillance and information systems; and other Defence capabilities contributing to the overall mission.

The vessels themselves were only one component of the capability. Personnel required extensive training and experience to operate, maintain and support the different elements of the system, while the platforms moved through continuing cycles of operation, maintenance, engineering modification and upgrade. Other Defence organisations and capabilities also interacted with the Mine Hunter capability to produce the operational outcome. The resulting capability was therefore an emergent property of multiple interconnected systems, rather than something contained within a single platform or organisation.

This systems perspective was fundamental to developing the change management approach. A change to one element of the capability could produce consequences elsewhere: a change in technology could alter training requirements; changes to operating procedures could affect workforce structures; maintenance arrangements could affect platform availability; changes to one supporting capability could create dependencies elsewhere in the system. The change program therefore needed to understand these relationships and account for them over time.

IGOR’s role was to bring this systems perspective to the human and organisational dimensions of capability improvement. Rather than treating cultural change as a communications exercise or assuming that a new vision would translate automatically into new behaviour, the work examined how people, structures, processes, technologies and existing ways of working interacted to sustain the current system.

The resulting approach recognised that meaningful cultural change would emerge through changes in the behaviours and conditions that shaped how the organisation operated. This meant considering not only what people were being asked to do differently, but whether the surrounding systems — including training, incentives, processes, leadership, technology, information and organisational interfaces — supported those behaviours.

The change management challenge was also necessarily long-term. Capability improvement of this nature does not occur through a single intervention. It unfolds through successive changes to people, technology, platforms, processes and supporting organisations over many years. The plan therefore needed to provide a framework capable of managing change across a six- to ten-year horizon, while recognising that the system itself would continue to evolve during that period.

IGOR’s contribution was consequently not simply to produce a conventional change management plan. It was to establish a way of thinking about change that reflected the complexity of the capability being changed: multiple interacting systems, multiple organisations, long workforce and technology lifecycles, and behaviours that emerge from the system as a whole.

The project demonstrated IGOR’s ability to apply systems thinking to Defence capability transformation, ensuring that cultural and organisational change were considered as integral components of capability — rather than as activities that could be added after the technical solution had been designed.

IGOR helped the Navy approach capability improvement as a systems problem: understanding that sustainable change depends on simultaneously addressing the relationships between people, technology, training, platforms, processes and supporting organisations across the life of the capability.