Transforming a Utility from the Inside Out
When Hunter Water Corporation needed to fundamentally transform its performance and customer relationships, it discovered that technical solutions alone weren't enough. The real shift required building human capability — across the organisation, its supply chain, and eventually its community.
The result: a compliance-focused utility that had "forgotten how to learn" became an adaptive, curious organisation that delivered measurable behaviour change at every level.
The Challenge
In 2016, Hunter Water Corporation — the public water utility serving the Lower Hunter region of New South Wales, Australia — faced a strategic inflection point.
Performance had plateaued. Customer satisfaction was stagnant. The organisation had become compliance-focused, risk-averse, and culturally resistant to change. Leadership recognised that achieving their ambitions for operational performance and customer experience would require more than process improvement or restructuring.
They needed to transform how people thought, learned, and worked — starting with themselves.
The Approach
WILD worked with Hunter Water over several years to build human capability systematically across three levels:
1. Leadership and Organisation:
Beginning with the executive team and cascading through the organisation, WILD's Learning Power methodology helped Hunter Water's people develop the adaptive mindset and thinking skills required to lean into complexity rather than retreat from it. Leaders learned to create conditions for learning and change, not just manage performance.
2. Supply Chain and Partners:
The transformation extended beyond Hunter Water's own workforce to include contractors, delivery partners, and the broader supply chain ecosystem. Shared language, shared capability, shared commitment to outcomes.
3. Customer and Community:
With internal capability established, Hunter Water was able to engage its community differently — moving from a compliance relationship ("pay your bill, follow the rules") to a genuine partnership in water stewardship. This inside-out sequence proved essential: you cannot ask customers to change behaviour if your own organisation hasn't done the work first.
The Results
Organisational Transformation:
Shift from compliance culture to learning culture — measured through WILD's validated diagnostic tools
Increased adaptive capacity and willingness to engage with complexity
Leadership capability embedded, not dependent on external consultants
Operational Performance:
Measurable improvements in operational delivery
Enhanced collaboration across supply chain partners
Sustained performance improvement over multiple years
Customer and Community Outcomes:
"Love Water" campaign achieved genuine community engagement
Behaviour change at household and community level
Customer experience scores improved significantly
The Proof Point:
Sydney Water, observing Hunter Water's success, attempted to replicate the "Love Water" campaign — but without the internal transformation work. The campaign had limited impact. The insight: you can't skip the inside-out sequence. Community behaviour change requires organisational behaviour change first.
Testimonial
"In 2016 we appointed Jim Bentley to lead Hunter Water Corporation with a mandate to transform our performance and customer experience. One of the most significant contributions to the measurable behaviour change and operational performance improvement we achieved – with staff, partners and customers – was Professor Crick's thought leadership based on the science of Learning Power.
A compliance focused organisation which had forgotten how to learn became curious about what we could achieve and optimistic about the future we could build with our community."
— Terry Lawler AO, former Chairman, Hunter Water Corporation
What This Demonstrates
Hunter Water proves that WILD's methodology works at infrastructure scale — not just individual coaching or team development, but whole-system transformation across an organisation, its partners, and its community.
The methodology is now being applied to Scottish Water's SR27 programme, one of the largest infrastructure investments in UK water sector history.