Local government
The drag on your council isn’t capability. It’s decision friction.
Councils are under constant pressure to do more with less. Resourcing and statutory obligations are a genuine part of that — but they rarely explain all of it. The policies, processes and measures — each added for good reason, drifting out of alignment over time — quietly slow good people down doing their day-to-day jobs.
We help you find exactly where that decision friction lives, and clear it — so routine services are delivered faster, with more confidence and less pain.
Flags for your council
Recognise your council in any of these?
If a few of these ring true, decision friction is likely a constant drag on your team’s day-in, day-out delivery — invisible in everything you measure, until it shows up in the bottom line.
Note:we’re talking about the frequent routine decisions which add up day after day, not the complex decisions which need the time they take.
- 01Do you keep asking why straightforward objectives take so long to land?
- 02When a project runs late or lands below par, does it pass with a shrug — with little sense that it mattered?
- 03Does performance reporting dwell on how much was delivered, while staying quiet on how many hours it consumed?
- 04Does a low policy threshold force you into processes that feel low value, yet somehow the policy remains untouched?
- 05Do you have plans where creating the plan (say, for a playground) eats a serious share of the budget meant to build the thing itself?
- 06Does the most cautious reading of an Act win by default — absorbing time out of all proportion to the real legal, financial or reputational risk?
These are the everyday operational decisions, not the complex calls. When did you last see a hard number for how much time the team spends on them — measured, not guessed?
The evidence
It isn’t a hunch. It’s in the data.
Two independent measures, drawn from official Statistics NZ and BERL data, point the same way right across the sector.
+33%
More staff per capita than in 2000 — while the wider services sector went the opposite way, doing a third more with the people it had.
Reform, and the rates cap
What reform changes — and what it leaves to you.
Amalgamation proposals and an incoming rates cap are reshaping what councils have to work with. Neither reaches the layer this page is about. Policies, processes and measures travel with you into whatever structure emerges — and so does any misalignment between them. Under a cap, the capacity it ties up is worth more, not less.
Transition Pre-check
Reviews what’s already working and what isn’t, so the new design starts clean instead of inheriting the old drag.
Systems Alignment
Realigns what the restructure left behind, to help your new structure reach its full potential.
More on this: Reform Is an Answer. Nobody Checked the Question.
The difference
Close enough to understand it. Independent enough to challenge it.
This is grounded in real experience within New Zealand councils, paired with wide private-sector experience, from start-ups to multi-nationals — giving Conan a strong objective position to challenge the status quo, backed by a deep understanding of why the current systems are in place. He knows how councils actually work — and where the friction tends to hide.
Most improvement work sharpens the process; we work one level deeper — finding the decision friction your cost and compliance KPIs can’t see, realigning the systems causing it, and proving it on a low-cost healthcheck before you commit further.
More about Conan →“This helped frontline teams make faster and more confident decisions.”
Conan identified a genuine gap between our strategic and operational risk processes and developed a practical framework to connect the two. His thinking was always sharp, practical and well considered.
How it works for councils
Start within your team. Prove the value.
Friction Factor survey
Twenty questions show where operational decisions are stalling across your team, and which of the five pillars is dragging hardest.
Decision Friction Healthcheck
Pinpoints the friction in one part of your operation, and what it's costing you. You come away with two things:
$500 now — standard rate $750 from 2027.
Targeted realignment
A precise adjustment to fine-tune the points of misalignment, not a wholesale transformation. Around a structural change, that takes two forms:
Start with the free survey.
Three to five minutes, and you’ll see where routine decisions are stalling — before you commit to anything.
Prefer to see the full service range? See all services, including Section 17A reviews.