Webinars

A Journey from Apprentice to General Manager

Christian Morris: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Careers at Council Talent Attraction ‘What do you do at Council?’ webinar series. 

My name is Christian Morrison, I’ll be your host today.
We are excited to have you join us for hopefully an insightful and engaging session.
Please note that your mic and cameras are turned off to avoid any background noise.
Before we begin our webinar, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and all the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet today and my respects to Elders past, present and future.
Our webinar today is focusing on promoting a career journey from apprentice to general manager and we are pleased to welcome our guest speaker Peter Gainsford, the General Manager at Inner West Council.
Peter’s expertise and insights will undoubtedly provide us with a deeper understanding of the career journey in the local government sector.
Before we start, I will just give a brief rundown on Careers at Council, where we explore the diverse opportunities and rewarding parts available for those passionate about making a positive impact in our community.
An initiative of the state and territory local government associations, it was created by councils for councils established by industry to inform and attract local governments, future workforce and is much more than a jobs board.
You can access Careers at Council through our website, portable touch screen devices, laptop, desktop and smartphone are all accessible to it Careers at Council, it has a dedicated LinkedIn and Facebook page, and an active YouTube channel for sharing videos of the various job roles in local government.
You can explore the diverse career areas of council through our dedicated pages, where you’ll discover a wide range of roles and opportunities tailored to various skills and interests, all contributing to the betterment of our community.
Our performance data confirms that more than 10,000 jobs have been posted to date, and our scope spans 14 unique career areas and we currently have 619 active jobs.
Firstly I’d like to introduce Peter Gainsford PSM the general manager of the Inner West Council, to share his career journey.
Welcome, Peter.

Peter Gainsford: Thanks, Christian.
I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. I noticed a few of the attendees; a few staff, former staff. That’s nice to see them joining in today.
So yeah, really happy to be here.

Christian Morris: Excellent.
Look, Peter, we’ve known each other for a fairly long time.
We’ve done recruitments together and performance reviews, so it’s great to see you here.
Can you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to pursue your career in local government and what educational professional experiences have you been most influential in your career?

Peter Gainsford: Thanks for that.
I grew up in Balmain and I left school in year 10 and all my goal was to be when I left school was to be a carpenter and as you grew up when you were a young male, Balmain in the 80s there were two things that we wanted to do; that was either get a trade and play for the Tigers.
I was not good at footy, so stuck to the trade.
There was a recession at the time, so there weren’t a lot of private jobs. So government really stepped up the time. There are a lot of Council government jobs and I’d actually done work experience.
I went to a local schooling Balmain and I’m actually done work at school and a Council depot also in Balmain at the time and had the opportunity to see what Council was about and the trade which I really wanted to get an apprenticeship at the time. So it was highly sought after.
So I was fortunate about a year later to get a job as an apprentice carpenter here at council.
And it was an amazing experience that I think people don’t appreciate at the time that what councils offer it as I was one of those people that were local at the time.
So I think a lot of councils can vary depending on where your regional or city, but there’s still a high percentage of people that live in the local area.
So I turned up, just shy of my 17th birthday as a 16 year old, and there were all these people in the Council that I knew from school or there were parents of mates or there were older local legends, characters. It was amazing and early on I was fortunate to work at, there’s a heritage baths in Balmain called Dawn Fraser swimming pools and as an early apprentice I got to work down there.
So it was an amazing experience, but also to be connected in the local community, which I think is a unique thing that councils can do.
I think the only thing I’d say nowadays is probably the number of apprenticeships and traineeships has dropped down and it’s great to see that the office of local government are now offering trainees and apprenticeship funding for all the Councils which we’ve taken up at Inner West and I know a lot of other others are, which is great because it means they’ll be unprecedented level of opportunities for young people to get into local government over the next 12 months or so, which is great again.

Christian Morris: Hopefully following your path too, Peter.

Peter Gainsford: Yeah, well, that’s what I say colloquially: If I can do it, anyone can do it.
I had in terms of my career and opportunities. So when I all I wanted to, as I said, all I wanted to do was be a carpenter, and mum and dad never stopped me.
They encouraged me to do that, but I broke my leg early on, when I was about 16 or 17 and I broke my leg and the doctor said in a couple of years later he said, ‘Well, I don’t know whether it will be 30 or 40, but you’ll probably need a knee replacement and you probably won’t be able to be on the tools’. Which is quite an interesting conundrum to have as a young late teenager, early 20s to go ‘Oh wow, the thing I’ve been aspiring to do and I managed to get the apprenticeship and get the trade early that I’ll have to have a change in career.’
I had the opportunity which was created in Council and I tried it, create these opportunities as much myself as an outdoor work worker to get a job in the engineering to get a job helping out in the engineering office.
It wasn’t permanent, but some relief doing some surveying with engineers sparked a bit of an interest in engineering and with encouragement of someone that worked in the office with me, he encouraged me to go off to Tafe three nights a week with him, and we did a civil engineering certificate so that sort of helped me think ‘Oh okay, I can do something else.’
That certificate then led me into the engineering offices as an engineering assistant. I didn’t realise at the time I got the job, I didn’t read the fine print, they said after four nights, three nights a week for four years doing civil engineering certificate, they said ‘well, you’ve got to enrol in university.’ It was a precursor with the job. I didn’t read the fine print. So off I went to uni at UTS and I did six years, 6 and a half years doing my engineering degree.

For someone like me, I try to say this for other people, I’m not a studious person. I was an average student at school, but I was probably pretty driven, so I just worked my way through. I didn’t nail it as a top student. I just did my best and I worked at the Council at the same time and another job to sort of help pay the mortgage.
And I finished my engineering degree. I was about 30 odd and I went off and did, about after six months, one of the last subjects in my engineering degree. We were doing engineering management and the lecturer said ‘Engineers used to run everything, but they’re not very good at managing people and life’s moved on there have been many failures, you really need to know how to do the manage well’. So I went off and did a Masters of Business Administration at Macquarie Graduate School of Management. That really opened my eyes in, I suppose the big learning of that was how to look at things from different perspectives. Through that journey when I finished my engineering degree, I became a team leader in the engineering department, and when I was doing my MBA, I had the opportunity to step into management.
I worked in a property area for a while because I had transferable skills and then ended up and acid engineer, and then a director of engineering for a number of years at what was Leichhardt Council.
And then when we merged to become the Inner West Council, which we are now, back in 2016 I was one of the only execs to get a job as a senior staff.
So I was a deputy general manager in the new Council and had spent the first couple of years there and then I went to Canada Bay as their GM and had the opportunity to come back to Inner West four years ago.
So just the opportunity to present itself that to never stop learning and keep going.
But it’s been a great journey.

Christian Morris: An interesting career path and an interesting one too.
So I suppose if we could just move on and sort of talk about, you know, what a typical day looks like as the general manager of Inner West Council.

Peter Gainsford: Yeah I’ll pick one day, so early in the week on a Monday, I’d come in and I’ll deal with a few things that I have personally on and might have a one-on-one with one of my direct reports.
I’m a great believer in making sure you set time aside, and we do this at Inner West where you meet with your direct reports on a one-on-one basis at least every fortnight to check in how things are going, so I might have a one-on-one with a staff member.
Then on Mondays, I have a quick little meeting with the executive team just for an hour to check in for things for the week to see how that’s going. We then have a meeting with a Mayor to talk about broader priorities for Council.
I might also have another catch up on a Council of wide priority, at the moment we’ve got a lot of focus with the new Council on our new LEP we’re delivering or we’re doing some work in the DA space, so I might have something like that.
And then in the evenings, a typical evening might, it’s not every night, but generally once a week I’ll have a council meeting, Councillor workshop or a community meeting on. And generally that fills the days.
Typically a mix across the board of those meetings and then also carving out enough time to do a bit of thinking and strategic time.

Christian Morris: There’s a significant amount of community engagement and stakeholder engagement, so how do you feel your work as the general manager at Inner West impacts on the local community, and what initiatives are you particularly passionate about?

Peter Gainsford: Oh, look what we’ve got a huge significant. At Inner West we provide quite a large number of services. We’re a Council that’s very proactive in the provision of services in house.
We’ve got, we have a huge impact. We’ve got five aquatic centres. Two of them were managed externally previously, and we’ve brought that in house.
We’ve got one of the largest aquatic and recreation offerings within local government that we provide. We’ve got 8 libraries.
One thing we’re really proud of, we’ve got 12 early learning centres, so each week we look after, our early learning staff look after 1600 children on a weekly basis, so that itself, the services we do provide is phenomenal.
I pieced what we did altogether and did a video called a ‘day in the life’ which highlighted all the different things to help educate our staff and the councillors on the services the Council provide and very proud of the stuff that sometimes you take for granted that we deliver on a day-to-day basis.
In recent times are one of the probably big impacts we’ve had in the last 12 months, the Council had a priority to deliver a pride centre at the old Newtown Town Hall. It had been on the books for a while, but hadn’t been delivered.
So what was a major capital project to upgrade the Pride Centre was also a large community project. It actually named the front of the Price Centre ‘Pride Square’ and
it’s a place for the community to meet and represents an important part of our community.
We named it Pride Square and then we also opened up the Pride Centre and partnered with a company called, an organisation called Twenty Ten that provides important services for that community.
So that’s just one, but we’ve got a range of other services that people provide, but seeing the opening of that and seeing how the community responded, and how it met an important part of the Inner West community was fantastic seeing on the ground.
And I think what the great thing of local government is for those that thinking of joining, is you can get to see something from a concept right through to the delivery which is really satisfying, particularly when you see the community that are passionate about it really appreciate it.
And that’s the great thing about local government; the closeness with the community.

Christian Morris: Yeah. Look, you’ve touched on a couple of examples and projects, but can you share one highlight or standout project that you’re most proud of and how it had a significant impact on the community?

Peter Gainsford: Well, I’d probably say the Pride Centre would be one that we did.
We did another community centre at Glebe; we relocated the Glebe Neighbourhood Centre as part of that, which was an amazing effort.

We recently delivered a whole heap of training to the community. We trained 1,000 of our residents about the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
We held community barbecues about when the voice, the Parliament referendum was happening.
But whilst that the overall result across the nation was different, you could certainly see something that the Inner West community really rallied behind and was part of.
So that to me was a great thing that’s happened over the last couple of years.

At the moment, probably the big thing that we’re doing at the moment in terms of a legacy project, it’s in train at the moment, we’re doing the Greenway, which is a $50 million project where we’re linking the Iron Cove to the Cooks River.
It’s going to be a huge biodiversity cycle link for pedestrians, artwork, a great linkage and a great legacy project, as a regional project, for the whole community, not just the Inner West but adjoining to adjoin.
And I can’t forget one last one, is the delivery of the Marrickville Library.
I think there’s a lot of people, I can’t take any of the credit for it, I had a small part to play in it early on, but that is a phenomenal community facility that was done out of an old site and at some work with the developer of Mirvac that delivered that for the community and it’s probably one of the great Inner West community facilities.

Christian Morris: Is anything happening at Leichhardt Oval?

Peter Gainsford: Well, there is, but I haven’t done it yet, so I didn’t wanna blow the trumpet.
So very, very lucky to be part of a project where we’ve gained $40 million funding for the redevelopment of Leichhardt Oval. We haven’t delivered it yet, so if we’re back here in two years’ time, I’ll say that is certainly a significant achievement, very happy to be involved in it as a Tigers fan as well.
And I was lucky enough to be involved in their centre of excellence over at Concord when I was at Canada Bay, so looking forward to delivering a much needed upgrade to Leichhardt Oval. It’s certainly a great community and a great cultural hub for all sports. The number of sports that are played at Leichhardt Oval is phenomenal; 120 activities a year. We had the Matildas play out of there. It’s not only just the Tigers, the Matildas did a fan day the other day we had a few thousand people there.
We’re also home to Sydney Women’s FC, which were very proud of and they were getting crowds in the last 12 months of up to 7000 people.
So it’s gonna be a hub, not only for the Tigers, but for women’s sport generally as well, which is we’re really excited about.

Christian Morris: I’m sure the community will be happy to see Leichhardt Oval back to its former glory.

Peter Gainsford: That’s right.
I hope to see you on the hill, Christian.

Christian Morris: Yeah, absolutely.

So going on to, obviously you know the projects and the lead up to being where you are, but what do you think are some of the essential skills someone needs to be a strong leader in local government and what would be essential to keep updated with the latest trends and developments in local government management?

Peter Gainsford: I decided to do an MBA. 

When I finished my degree, when you do your engineering degree, there’s opportunities to do Master of Engineering Management, but I wanted to break the cycle of thinking like an engineer because I wanted to do more than that. So I went off and did, I looked around and did some research and at the time the Macquarie Graduate School of Management was providing probably one of the most recognised MBAs certainly in the country, but even recognised internationally.
So I went off and did that and I feel that everyone should be doing some further tertiary management studies. And in doing that, it opened my eyes to a lot of different perspectives that you’re not necessarily fronted with.
So I think a good quality MBA with group work, with working with others helps widen your horizons and for people for other industries outside of local government can provide huge perspectives, so I feel that that’s important.
I think that in setting up leaders within my own thing, but setting up leaders to the for the future within local government, I think the local government NSW local government capability framework is also a great way for people to understand the skills that you need to develop and work within a number of leadership roles within councils.

Christian Morris: Yeah, it’s not just about having the technical capacity.
You’ve gotta have those soft skills as well.

Peter Gainsford: Indeed, that’s right.

 

Christian Morris: Yeah. Ohh look, can you share any memorable experiences or lessons learned that is shaped your specific style of leadership?

Peter Gainsford: Yes, certainly. I think probably for those that have been in councils, we.. The Inner West Council merged back in 2016 and that’s probably the biggest change exercise that most people would go through within a local government environment.
You’ve got to think that most of the councils were quite stable for many years in the lead up to that, but we didn’t have two councils into one; we had three. And we didn’t have sort of one say ‘Oh, this is, we’re gonna do it this way.’ It was real amalgam. It was a very tricky time at the time, it really showed different varying levels of leadership skills, how people work under pressure, how to understand and show greater empathy, really, and how to collaborate the best because it was a tricky time for Inner West. In the first five years we had four different general managers, which is pretty, you know it was a lot of turnover and a lot of instability at the time.
But we got together. I came back almost four years ago now, and with a goal of stabilising it because I’d come from the area as well, pulling people together and focusing on the priorities, I’m really working well with the elected representatives.
I’ve gotta say now, through that merger gave me a lot of skills on what we need to do and what we what we shouldn’t do because those change things are evidence in small little pockets as you go along the way.
So I found that experience and it being able to transform the organisation and learning through that into what’s best practice, and pushing with.. When we first merged our first general manager, Rik Hart said, ‘We’re gonna push hard with the Australian Business Excellence Framework’, to try and have a continuous improvement model. That’s followed me wherever I’ve gone, and that’s certainly a focus of the Inner West Council now.
And those leadership improvement journeys sometimes peak and trough through organisations, but it’s certainly a focus that we’ve had over the last few years and we’re sort of working in a way around the seven categories of the Australian Business Excellence Framework and the first few years where the big focus on the customer, big focus on leadership and now people.

And going forward, we’re focusing on our reporting, our results, our processes, just our knowledge management system.
But the first few years it’s been great because we’re allowed to have stability, we’ve rebuilt the organisation, we’ve had great relationships with elected member and the senior staff because we’ve had stability there as well and we’re very fortunate after about three years of that work to be recognised with the AR Bluett Award for the Most Progressive Council within NSW, to recognise that work. So, but that was all founded on what I experienced through the early stages of the merger.

Christian Morris: Yeah. Obviously merger of three councils into one is you know it’s always going to be problematic, from the get-go I suppose. But have you have you felt that Inner West is finally sort of pointing in the right direction nearly ten years post amalgamation?

Peter Gainsford: Yeah, it’s amazing.
As I said, we wouldn’t have got that award if we couldn’t have demonstrated that.
As I said, I’ve never seen in my working career life, pride myself on ability led by, you know, former GMs for many years that I’ve worked with, when I first became a general manager, Peter Head did a great job of working with the counsellors and I feel that I’ve never had a stronger, with all the counsellors I’ve worked with over 20 years as senior staff member, we’ve never had a better, more collegiate relationship between the elected body, they’re there to do our job, but through the exec being able to execute their policies.
We’re very lucky we’ve got our counsellors, they’re really progressive, they are pushing the boundaries of what local government can do and we’ve got an exec that really, really worked hard to deliver that policy for the community, and whatever the priorities might be. And to me, it’s paying off in spades.
Certainly see the community are happy with what we’re doing and we’ve really worked hard to develop those relationships.
And yeah, to me, it’s certainly been going well and that’s been reflected with the stability that we’ve had both politically and at an exec.
And if we get to the end of the next this term at Council, we would have had eight years of stable political.. We’ve got the same Mayor that we’ve had, Darcy Byrne, for the last term of council to this term and he was in the first term, but that Mayor and senior staff stability only works in spades and improvement for the organisation, and we’ve been able to do that.. really happy about that.

Christian Morris: Who has been your biggest inspiration?

Peter Gainsford: Oh I suppose I’ve had… I’ve got two people early on, Peter Head early on was a GM here, but he was an engineer, so when I wanted to be… most engineers are quite daggy. The jury’s out whether that’s me or not, but there was a lot of aspiration in that role. He seemed pretty sort of a cool guy at the time and was very great at communicating and probably when you’re very good in technical point, you’re not necessarily great communicators. I’m probably not so great technical, but I’ve valued myself on communicating, so and that and the diplomacy. I think sometimes as a GM and a senior staff member, you have to show a lot of diplomacy. So Pete early on was great at that.
Then later after we merged, Rik Hart was very good strategically. So Rik taught me a lot about pulling organisations together, the improvements, just creating certainty, he was great. 

I’ve got lots of other colleagues that I’ve worked with over the years that have been great help and reliance to me, my current People and Culture Manager Joan Murphy Helen Lyons before that, Graham Carnegie. I always value the people in the people space. And I’ve got other friends throughout a range of different councils, GMs that you call on. I’ve got Dave Marshall that I talked to. I talk to my neighbours as well at Canada Bay; John at Canada Bay. I’ll talk to Ray at Randwick. Kelly, who used to work for us at Northern Beaches. So having those collaborations you can work with is also fantastic as well.

Christian Morris: Yeah, it’s a healthy network.

Peter Gainsford: Indeed.

Christian Morris: What advice would you have for an aspiring leader in local government?

Peter Gainsford: Oh that’s a good one. Look, I think always seek to improve and educate yourself.
I was never a great, until I finished the MBA, I was never a great avid reader or anything like that, but what it prompted me to do is keep learning and looking at different things.
So I think that if you can keep trying to educate yourself through whatever it might be, if you look at things from a range of perspectives, they’re always another perspective from the way that you feel or think about it.
I think it’ll help me navigate from that.
So if you do that, um, I think you need to remember if you’re working in local government, you are there to be of service to the community.
And I think that, and in doing that we are serving the Community, the organisation needs to come first above individuals.
That’s important.
I think in doing that, if you work local government, I think well, I’m a great believer in this, that we;re the most trusted level of government of all the Community things, it’s the most trusted above state and federal, because we’re closest to the community, but founded on two values that are probably more important than anything, of integrity and respect – the whole trust in local government is founded about.
So whatever values you may have as an organisation, I’m very proud that that’s two of our foremost values, but if integrity and respect is high on your radar, I think that’s really, really important for you going forward within the local government environment.
And as I touched on before, if you’re a young person wanting to move on, get in and start looking at your Council may have the local government capability framework in place. Have a look at that.
Look at those different behavioural indicators as you progress through the career.
Make sure that you look at those and manage yourself right first. There’s capabilities there for that. Look at that to develop and improve yourself.

Christian Morris: We’re getting towards the pointy end of all of this, Peter, but – what are your goals for Inner West, in the foreseeable future? And how do you see the role of local government evolving in the future?

Peter Gainsford: Yeah. Look, I think that. To answer the back end of the question.
The goal for local government is to really serve the community and try and do it as innovatively as possible.
And our future, our vision for Inner West has three parts, and the first is we created a purpose and we have the purposes to be of service to our local community and make the Inner West a great place to be; that thing of purpose I think and I’ve touched on it before, some people forget that when they work in a Council that you are hard to be of service, but that is a wonderful thing for people that wanna have a greater purpose in life, whether you send some of the most passionate people work for a Council that work in early learning or the environment, or aquatics, whatever your libraries, whatever your passion, is to be able to come here and do that and be a service.
So that is something we say to everyone across the board.
If you come here, we are being of service and we’re making the Inner West to great place to be, because local government is the ultimate placemaker.
We do that through our behaviours, through our values of how we behave, our values, our values of integrity, respect, compassion, innovation and collaboration.

Our third part is our goal for the future, we’ve got a Council that’s very progressive and it’s come up with a great suite of priorities to deliver over the term of Council, whether it’s a range of community events, facilities, capital works, as you touched on with Leichhardt Oval, we’ve got another aquatic centre, we’re talking about another recreation centre that we’re working on. So across the board in delivering those things, but as improving our goal is we wanna be a Council that everyone aspires to be, and we want our staff to feel like it’s the best place they’ve ever worked.
We want the services that we provide the community to really help and enrich the lives of our community, which I touched on with some of those examples, and we want our community to have great trust in us.
So if you ask other local government leaders who’s really doing well at what they do, I’d like them to say ‘Inner West’ in the future and we’re gonna manage, we’ll manage going forward with the vision, with the belief that pushes that through the entire organisation.

Christian Morris: Can we all manage it though when there’s constant cost shifting to local government?

Peter Gainsford: Well, that’s where the continuous improvement comes in.
It’s always challenging cost shifting, so we just need to continually improve and do our best to make it a better place.

Christian Morris: That’s I think a benefit of having a career in council, because you do get to be at the forefront of change.

Peter Gainsford: Yeah, that’s right.

Christian Morris: Yeah.
Look, that’s all from me with respect to the formal questions, I’ll open it up to our audience to see if they’ve got any questions for you.

Peter Gainsford: I can see one there.

Christian Morris: Yeah. This one is from Linda Rodriguez.
If you could go back in time, what would you tell your younger apprentice self?

Peter Gainsford: Oh, probably to.. I wish I’d went to uni a bit earlier to be honest.
I don’t regret the experience I have, which I think was invaluable of learning the ropes the outdoor staff.
I try to tell my kids now that if you can get the study done early and get it done, it helps you and winds your horizons later on. But that’s probably it.
Try and do that. Study early on.
I sort of fell into it, I didn’t really jump into it straight away, so that’s probably it.

Christian Morris: It couldn’t have been easy, Peter, you know, obviously being in your early 20s and you know, working full time and studying, studying part time, how did how did you manage that workload?

Peter Gainsford: But you don’t realise that I used to, but because all my friends played footy and I wasn’t very good at it anyway and I had a dodgy leg so when they were going footy training two nights a week I was going to uni three nights a week so it didn’t matter that much.
But I had a mortgage at the time and I wasn’t getting paid a lot, so I had to go and work in a pub nother one or two nights a week, so I didn’t have a lot of spare time.
And then, because you’re young, you’re going out on the weekend so now and again you’d crash in a big heap.
Council’s good; it gave me half a day a week to go and study as well, so that’s a way you get through the loads.
So yeah, I suppose you don’t realise at the time, but I was probably pretty driven and had an end goal which seemed to be a long way away, but stick at it and you get there eventually.

Christian Morris: And when we were asking you questions earlier, you talked about the fact that you know that there is that state government initiative to assist councils with the apprenticeships and trainee programmes. How many trainees have you currently got at Inner West?

Peter Gainsford: We’ve got a disability programme that we we’re running for eight trainees, which I think that every Council organisations big enough should do this. We had a traineeship, but we’ve turned it into a disability programme and it’s wonderful.
We’ve got people across IT, Finance, with someone in Civil Works, Early Learning, it’s amazing and it’s just the way they make you think and work together; it’s beautiful.
It’s great seeing that an organisation like this can change the lives for people that much more confident. On the top of that, I think we’ve got about.. we’ve also got about eight trainees across the board, students and through the OLG program we’ve probably got another 20 coming. Which is great, and I think generally maybe councils through whatever reason that’s dropped off a bit, so it’s great to see that funding opportunity to get everyone thinking like that and creating opportunities because I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have the opportunity as an apprentice, and I probably wouldn’t even have known about Council.
The key I think through those programs is dragging people in the local government that may not know that there’s a huge career in there and you don’t necessarily have to stay in your technical expertise and work your way through into a range of jobs.
So I think that’s a beauty of a council with such a wide range of services.
So let’s hope that everyone picks up on the traineeship.
You have to apply for it, but they’re getting there and start putting that on and creating opportunities for the next generation.

Christian Morris: And the next question we’ve been asked is Hi Peter, you mentioned that you weren’t particularly studious as a teenager. How did you stay motivated throughout your tertiary studies later on?
And I suppose you answered that – you had a mortgage.

Peter Gainsford: I had a mortgage but I had to do that, but it’s just one of those things that whilst you mightn’t be good, you don’t quit and I just didn’t quit and I just stuck at it and worked out a way. It’d be interesting to see, I always challenged myself if I had a crack at it now, I’ll probably get better marks. I could have got better, but I was trying to do everything work, go to uni, still wanted to go out I was in my twenties. While I started at 23, my engineering degree and just sort of worked my way through it.
Just one of those things that I suppose my parents instilled in me. They were not university educated. They were just tertiary qualification after school and they just said that you don’t quit, and I just stuck at it.

Christian Morris: How do you focus on efficiency in service at Inner West Council?

Peter Gainsford: Yeah, we like most councils now have to identify the three areas a year that you can do a service review and we do that.
We’ve got our own service review framework.
We’ve got a transformation team at the Inner West Council that do all of our improvements that have led the business excellence improvement program to start with, particularly in the customer side of it.
So we’ve got a team to do that. They do service reviews. They help with business planning. They help when there’s problem solving across other service units and we are gonna drive that through our business planning and using the Australian Business Excellence Framework, so it’s still a work in progress, we haven’t nailed it, but it’s through that that framework of the Australian business, excellent framework, through also having a transformation team and provide that commitment to continuous improvement across the board.
We’re gonna build in all of our improvements, we’re gonna build it into our corporate reporting and every council has to do corporate reporting externally.
We’re gonna corporate report internally on our improvement actions that fall out of our annual business planning and embed that through performance review.
So it’s a work in progress, but that’s the way we’re headed.

 

Christian Morris: Another question here. Did you always know you wanted to build your career into an executive role?

Peter Gainsford: I was pretty driven. It was funny, I remember a particular moment, I was a second round success person to getting into uni so when I when I got the job in the office and they said you had to go to uni applied and they knocked me back so I came into work and said ‘Beauty, I’m not going to uni, I didn’t get in, but I still have the job ‘cause I applied’ and then I’ve got a second round offer and I remember sitting at the I was working at my pub job and then I said I’ve got a cut back on my nights, I’ve got into TAFE, I’ve got into uni, I’m gonna go to uni and give it a crack because my boss earns X whatever at the time he looks alright and I wanna do his job and I and I just was driven to say that inspires me.
And then when I started going to council meetings, I like the idea of the challenge of it, but I have to think on your feet and I remember the first council meeting, I went in a manager’s job and I was sitting in and another guy was acting as the director in engineering and I wasn’t working in engineering at the time and I’d seen him stumble a bit through some of the answers, I knew all the answers I’ve been there.
I just wanted to – I was just driven and wanted to do it and I wanted to aspire.
I wanted the the opportunity to make a difference. I like the idea of the leadership.
I’m not saying I’m perfect at it, but I just aspired and saw someone doing a job that I thought, yeah, I’d like to give that a crack.
And I do like working with the counsellors. I do like working with it community in the inner W that if you don’t do it right, they’re not afraid to tell you, and then you’ve got to recalibrate. We’re not always right, but that ability to do that and self-improve, it’s been great.

Christian Morris: I’ve got a good question here for you. Peter.
Hello I’m a recent graduate interested in pursuing a career within Council.
I’ve noticed that most entry level council positions specify eligibility only for undergraduates or current students enrolled in relevant degrees.
Are recent graduates also eligible to apply for these roles?

Peter Gainsford: Depending on the council, but from the Inner West Council’s perspective yes, we’ve done a lot even without the traineeship program, our planning, some on plumber, our director of planning has done an amazing job with the development assessment team, finding new grads, students, recent graduates to come in and do some work with us. So depending on what it is, but certainly Inner West in town planning and engineering, I’d say across all facets we want to create that opportunity depending on the nature of the job, they might say they want someone’s still studying, but I think a recent graduate is also a great opportunity as well.

Christian Morris: I encourage you to contact Inner West Council. I’m not sure what you’re a graduate in, but certainly reach out to Inner West Council. There may well be an opportunity there for you.
Oh look, I think we’re getting close to the end.
I suppose the final thing I suppose for you, Peter, is a prediction on where the Tigers are gonna finish this year.

Peter Gainsford: The way they got at the moment, they’ve gone all right, but I think they’re gonna, they’re performing like they’re gonna come 9th.
Unfortunately, and they’re perennial 9th place when they’re not coming last, they’re coming 9th, but no, I’m hopeful that they’ll make the 8. They’ve certainly been more competitive. I think that their coach is a good human from a leadership point of view.
I think he’s got a lot of qualities and he’s gone through an emotional journey.
I don’t know him personally, but I’ve seen him speak on occasion.
I think he speaks from the heart and I think that’s a great thing.
So I feel confident that someone with those leadership qualities hopefully can turn it around and there’s certainly started to show that in a few games.
So fingers crossed.

Christian Morris: Excellent.
Well, Peter thanks very much on behalf of Careers at Council and Local Government New South Wales, thank you for joining us for this webinar today.
Yep, as I said, we’ve known each other for a long time. You’ve done some great things both at Canada Bay and Inner West and hope to continue the relationship.

Peter Gainsford: Thank you very much. Thanks Christian.
I appreciate the opportunity and thanks everyone for tuning it.