Delivery
Improvement at Auckland Transport
This delivery improvement case study shows how Auckland Transport strengthened priorities, accountability and cross-functional alignment across a complex public service organisation. Its COVID response had shown what was possible when people came together around a clear purpose, collaborated across boundaries and moved quickly to keep critical services running for Aucklanders.
As the organisation moved beyond the immediate crisis, AT wanted to retain the best of that experience: clearer priorities, stronger accountability, faster decision-making and better cross-functional alignment.
Radically worked with Auckland Transport to improve delivery focus, strengthen leadership alignment and support better outcomes for Aucklanders.
Challenge
How could a large public sector organisation improve delivery focus, accountability and customer outcomes across a complex operating environment?
Results
- Clearer direction and focus — stronger alignment around the priorities that mattered most and what was required to deliver them.
- Greater accountability — teams were more directly involved in planning, creating stronger ownership of outcomes and commitments.
- Stronger customer focus — delivery conversations became more clearly connected to better outcomes for Aucklanders.
- Improved cross-functional collaboration — teams were able to draw on collective skills and work more effectively across organisational boundaries.
- A more responsive organisation — AT strengthened its ability to respond to changing conditions while staying focused on its purpose: easy journeys and connecting people and communities.
Context
Auckland Transport is responsible for keeping Auckland moving, from roads, footpaths and cycling through to parking and public transport. It is a large, complex organisation serving a fast-growing region, with work that cuts across many functions, teams, partners and communities.
That complexity places real demands on how people work together. Priorities need to be clear, decisions need to be made across organisational boundaries, and teams need to stay aligned around outcomes for Aucklanders.
Like many public sector organisations, AT also had to respond quickly to a rapidly changing operating environment. The challenge was to retain the best of that responsiveness while building stronger delivery focus, accountability and cross-functional alignment for the longer term.
The Reshaping Programme
AT launched a programme called Reshaping to build on what had worked during its COVID response. The organisation had seen that, when people came together around clear problems and urgent outcomes, it could move quickly across functional boundaries and solve difficult challenges.
Reshaping was designed to take those lessons into a more deliberate programme of work. The focus was on improving customer experience, increasing internal capability, strengthening delivery focus and creating financial benefits.
The first step was to establish a clear problem statement to guide the work:
How could a public sector organisation apply the lessons from successful cross-functional crisis response to improve delivery in normal operating conditions?
Radically reviewed the Reshaping programme and identified the changes needed to help it operate with greater clarity, pace and alignment. We then designed a tailored programme to support delivery and leadership teams with the practical disciplines required to deliver priority outcomes.
The first phase gave AT hands-on experience applying these disciplines to important business outcomes. It also surfaced organisational constraints that were slowing progress, providing useful insight for the next phase of work.
The second phase used the lessons from the pilot to establish permanent cross-functional teams focused on priority business outcomes. The combined Radically and AT team also ran an awareness programme to build stakeholder support and create a shared understanding of what was required for success.
Radically then created a roadmap to provide a single view of what was needed to scale the approach across the organisation. This included a service model showing how other business units could engage with and benefit from Reshaping.
In parallel, AT launched the Jumpstart programme and began hiring internal talent for key transformation roles. This allowed Radically to build capability inside AT and progressively hand over ownership as the work matured.
The delivery improvement work helped AT create a clearer operating rhythm for priority work, while building capability inside the organisation.
The next stage of Reshaping focused on upskilling new AT staff and providing ongoing light-touch support so the organisation could continue improving delivery focus, accountability and cross-functional alignment over time.
Helping the transformation team model the change
As Reshaping progressed, Auckland Transport’s Culture and Transformation team recognised that it needed to model the change it was helping others make. If the organisation was asking teams to work with greater focus, transparency and collaboration, the central transformation team needed to show what that looked like in practice.
Radically reviewed the team’s existing operating rhythm and found that the volume of work, competing priorities and frequent context-switching were creating unnecessary load. The team was carrying a broad portfolio of activity, but needed a clearer way to prioritise, plan and work together.
Radically designed and delivered a practical, hands-on programme of change. This included:
- resetting the team’s key objectives and clarifying the existing workload
- working with AT to create more stable cross-functional teams with clearer ownership
- using Big Room Planning to build a shared plan across the business unit
- making work more visible so the team could see volume, priorities, dependencies and pressure points
- supporting leaders to create the conditions for better focus, collaboration and decision-making
- providing coaching, mentoring and practical support as people adjusted to the change
The work required real effort from everyone involved. It changed how the team planned, prioritised, collaborated and led. As the new rhythm became clearer, the teams made strong progress and developed a better understanding of what helped work move.
One important lesson was that sustainable change was less about adopting a specific methodology and more about building the leadership behaviours, team habits and operating disciplines needed to support better delivery.
The final stage involved Radically upskilling and mentoring two Culture and Transformation team members so AT could continue building momentum internally, with light-touch support from Radically as required.
Benefits of delivery improvement
Reflecting on the change, AT could see benefits across several areas.
Clearer direction and focus — teams had greater clarity on the priorities that mattered most and what was required to deliver them. Big Room Planning and stronger delivery visibility helped AT make sense of a large volume of work, sharpen focus, and create a clearer view of what each team needed to achieve.
Increased accountability — clearer priorities helped business owners define the outcomes they needed, while giving teams more ownership over how those outcomes would be delivered. Involving teams directly in planning increased engagement, accountability and shared commitment.
Stronger customer focus — with teams taking greater ownership of delivery, business owners had more space to focus on what mattered most for customers. This helped keep the work connected to better outcomes for Aucklanders.
Improved cross-functional collaboration — rather than work moving sequentially from one area to another, teams were able to bring the right people together earlier around shared business problems. This allowed AT to draw on the collective skills of the group, make better trade-offs and design more practical solutions, and create stronger engagement across teams.
A more responsive organisation — the changes helped AT respond more effectively in a fast-changing environment. By applying the lessons from Reshaping into other areas of the business, AT increased its ability to deliver against its purpose: easy journeys and connecting people and communities.
The future: building capability inside AT
Auckland Transport’s improvement journey continues, supported by a stronger foundation and a deliberate investment in internal capability.
As AT’s people grew in confidence, Radically’s role shifted from hands-on delivery support to light-touch advice and guidance. The focus became helping AT sustain momentum, build capability internally, and continue strengthening accountability, delivery discipline and cross-functional alignment across the organisation.
“I am really excited about what this shift means for Auckland Transport. It gives us a stronger foundation to improve the experience we provide every day for our customers, stakeholders, communities and, most importantly, our people.”
“To do great work for our people, our team needed to work differently. This shift helped us become more transparent, prioritise the right work, keep the customer voice front and centre, and work together as a more connected team.”
"My recommendation for any organisation going on this journey is that you absolutely need experts who have been there before.
Radically were awesome in this space. They don’t apply a strait jacket. They sense the organisation and then respond with a model for you to try together."
"When we first engaged Radically, we didn’t have a clear roadmap. What we appreciated about our partnership was they really listened to our needs as an organisation and then responded, walking alongside us in our journey."
Need important work to move?
We can help create the clarity, rhythm and discipline needed to improve delivery across complex organisations.
