This report sets out what we heard in fourteen 30-minute Discovery Interviews with the Planning and Design team during April and May 2026. It is the first deliverable of the Team Effectiveness engagement, ahead of two facilitated workshops and an implementation plan.
As the Planning and Design team heads deeper into 2026 and nears the end of a recent restructure, a strong programme of work and a number of priorities lie ahead across the organisation. With that in mind, it was a good moment to pause briefly and make sure the way the team is working together is as effective and streamlined as it can be.
Opposite, an organisational psychology and human-centred design consultancy, was engaged to work with the team over a short period. Opposite specialises in helping teams clarify priorities, strengthen collaboration, and embed practical ways of working that protect quality and momentum.
The focus of this work is simple: optimise how the team currently operates and set it up for a strong, aligned year.
This report captures findings from fourteen 1:1 conversations completed in April and May 2026. It sets the agenda for two upcoming team workshops, a Ways of Working Charter, a practical Toolkit, and a Meaningful Work and Motivation Guide. The team shapes the outcomes. This report does not pre-empt the conclusions.
The team is cohesive, capable, and supportive. This has held the team together through roughly twelve months of disruption due to a long-vacant City Design Coordinator role, a State-driven change in the planning programme, restructure, project reassignments, and delayed organisational decisions. The team appears resilient under sustained pressure.
Six themes were raised by four or more interviewees:
The City Design coordinator vacancy is the single most-named structural issue. Corporate communication was considered to be disruptive because it was perceived as delayed, incomplete, or via rumour. Within-team cohesion is strong; eleven of fourteen specifically asked that it not be disturbed. Reactive workload is wearing, for different reasons in each sub-team. Cross-organisational silos are returning, particularly with Comms, Statutory Planning, and engineering. Needs shared include: document who-does-what-by-when; realistic sequencing of work; earlier reviews; executive transparency; and preserve the rhythms that work.
City Strategy has adapted to a chaotic external environment with a diminishing team structure. The team generally feel undervalued by the State's approach to planning and consultation style. City Design has absorbed comparable disruption with the coordinator role being vacant since December. Uncertainty and a lack of autonomy are evident, where projects are reassigned, and funding is questionable. Both teams are tired but in different ways.
Immediate priorities: Key improvements include: fill the City Design coordinator role (which we understand is already underway), improve executive communication, resolve role duplication, give realistic timeframes or push back on unrealistic ones. Team-level ways of working can be tightened in parallel.
Fourteen 30-minute interviews were conducted between Tuesday 28 April and Thursday 8 May 2026 by Ash, Joie, and Ramsay: psychologists working with Opposite. The guide covered five themes including: role and context; what works and what creates friction; working together; energy and meaning; and the year ahead, with selective probes. Facilitator notes were taken; no audio recorded; all participants gave informed consent.
Themes were tagged against five listening categories (collaboration, communication, accountability, meaning and motivation, uncertainty) and analysed against role clarity, workload, leadership, change readiness and culture. Patterns are reported where four or more interviewees raised similar content. Quotes are de-identified to sub-team level where role would identify the speaker. Sensitive items that could re-identify a participant will be handled in a separate confidential briefing.
Eight themes emerged. Each is summarised below with the pattern and a representative quote. Detail and implications carry into Sections 5 and 6.
Within sub-teams, roles are clear. Across sub-team boundaries and at the edge of the team, clarity weakens. City Design has absorbed delivery work while a separate delivery team continues to operate; Strategic Property has moved out of the team; City Strategy has gone from eight to six through non-replacement. There has been some time lost reorganising accountabilities, some duplicated work, and an emotional load of being "a cog in a wheel."
"Our team is doing delivery, but there is also a separate delivery team. It feels like we are being set up to fail."
Within-team rhythms are functional and valued. These include weekly rapid-fire sessions, fortnightly peer meetings, monthly City Futures forum, and ad-hoc buddy reviews. Multiple interviewees explicitly asked that these forums be preserved. There is friction when work crosses the team boundary outward (Comms, Statutory Planning, engineers), when decisions are needed from above, and when reviewers engage late, triggering avoidable rework.
"People meant to review work often don't, then do it at the last minute, which means everything gets redone."
Within-team collaboration is the team's strength. Almost every interviewee, unprompted, named the people and the manager as something they value highly. Cross-organisational collaboration is more variable, with friction with Comms and Statutory Planning and engineering. A small number of individuals — the manager, the admin lead, certain principals — are functioning as connective tissue across the organisation. This is functional today and a concentration risk.
"We were the last to know but the most impacted, and that is part of why we are so close as a team."
Local leadership is strong. Matt is named with warmth across multiple interviews: fair, approachable, and supportive. The City Strategy coordinator is similarly well-regarded. The departed City Design coordinator (Julia) is still actively missed six months on. There appears to be frustration with organisational decisions to cancel, move, or rescope projects, which can arrive late, partially, or through rumour.
City Strategy describes a reactive, State-driven workload with short turnarounds and uneven volume. City Design describes late, unbriefed, time-compressed delivery asks — "$2 million to spend in a year with no brief" was named more than once — alongside additional requirements to conduct delivery work. The current workload is being delivered through individual professionalism and collaboration. This has been working for now but there are concerns it may not be sustainable.
"I worked on a project for months and then it got pulled. And then at the last minute we had it back."
Motivation is intrinsic. The team enjoy the craft, variety, learning, and visible impact on the community. The team find reactive work, cancelled or reassigned work, and tick-box consultation draining. Several interviewees volunteered specific strengths the team is not using: project management, economics and finance expertise, engagement experience, and mentoring skills. Engagement is currently strong because of the team and the craft. It is under pressure from external factors.
"I love being a landscape architect, especially when we have a low budget and we get the best outcome from it. You can see that the community appreciates it."
We asked participants to explain the last six months in one word. This produced a revealing range: evolution, hectic, shift, and rudderless are a few. City Strategy has started to accept and move forward from the changes. City Design is still finding its feet with recent changes not completely settling. Change has been continuous: workload changes, restructure, coordinator departure, project reassignments, budget tightening, and a new CEO. The team are reporting change fatigue.
Psychological safety within the team is high, confirmed by specific behaviours, not just sentiment: peer review, buddy systems, asking openly when stuck. The team are open to challenging each other openly but find it more difficult influencing leaders on raised issues like timeframes, scope control, and lessons learned that need to be implemented. A small number of interviewees describe quietly disengaging from work outside their immediate control. This has been a useful way of coping with change but a key area to avoid becoming a dominant orientation.
"We hear each other out, we have been through tough times together, and even though we all have different work, we are all empathetic and have each other's backs."
The team operates as a single unit in headline terms and materially differently in operational terms. This will need to be considered when exploring norms and ways of working.
State-driven changes have flipped the planning programme. Council-led work paused or replaced with reactive submissions. Headcount has reduced through non-replacement. Coordinator is in place; peer review and check-in rhythms are functional.
There is some reported friction with Comms, particularly around engagement. There are also concerns over the loss of interesting work to State direction; underused technical and engagement skills.
The main issue is the coordinator vacancy since December. The team has held together by stepping up, but this has removed a dedicated person to advocate upward, missed development conversations, increased workload, and sometimes decisions made on the team's behalf without consultation.
A new delivery scope sits alongside a separate delivery team that continues to operate. Budget cuts have moved projects unpredictably. The community-facing craft remains a strong motivator.
Implication for the workshops: A shared track on team-wide norms, and a sub-team-specific track — for City Strategy, addressing the boundary with Comms and underused skills; for City Design, filling the coordinator role, reducing delivery duplication, and improving project sequencing.
Six strengths the team has earned and should not engineer away:
Six focus areas are proposed for the workshops to shape. Three are within the team's direct reach; three need leadership commitment alongside team input. The team will set the commitments.
A short Ways of Working Charter capturing six to eight behavioural norms in the team's own language; a shared definition of "good" for the craft; agreement on giving and receiving feedback.
A lightweight protocol for confirming decisions in writing; a default handover template; an agreed channel for tracking commitments. Lightweight: heavier process would displace functional informal practice.
A structured exercise in Workshop 1 to name strengths the team is not using, with one or two practical applications committed for the next quarter.
Explore how communicating decisions that affect the team can be improved where possible (timing, channel, what is communicated, when feedback is sought).
Substantively fill the coordinator role with appropriate authority; define the design-and-deliver scope agreed with the parallel delivery function; clarify accountability, sign-off and escalation pathways.
Improve the sequencing logic for design projects with improved durations and/or explore efficiencies; a protocol for adding scope mid-cycle; protected time for deep work.
Two facilitated workshops follow. Workshop 1 plays back the de-identified themes and shapes priorities. Workshop 2 works through the Ways of Working Charter and the practical Toolkit. Deliverables at engagement end: the Charter, the Toolkit, a Meaningful Work and Motivation Guide, and an Implementation Plan with owners, timeline and review points.
The team shapes the outcomes. This report sets the agenda; it does not pre-empt the conclusions. A separate confidential briefing has been prepared for Matt covering items sensitive in attribution but operationally important.
Your responses will be compiled and shared with the Opposite team to refine findings ahead of the workshops. All individual feedback is treated as confidential.
Feedback is sent to joanna@opposite.com.au