Designing a Performance System That Could Scale Across a Vast Network
Essential Energy
Helping a state-owned energy utility operate as one integrated organization
Essential Energy, the state-owned electricity distributor serving regional and rural New South Wales, operated one of the largest and most geographically complex energy networks in the country.
Its workforce was experienced.
Its engineers and field crews were highly capable.
Its public mandate—to deliver reliable electricity across vast distances—was clear.
Yet despite these strengths, performance was under strain.
Outages were frequent in certain regions and increasingly accepted as unavoidable. Restoration times varied widely. Maintenance costs were rising, driven by reactive work and fragmented decision-making. The network was functioning—but not performing as a system.
The challenge was not whether the utility could improve—but how to redesign the organization so performance could be sustained across scale, geography, and time.
Our Role
HashtagOne partnered with Essential Energy to design a High Performance Organization (HPO) system—one that could work within a public mandate while improving reliability, cost discipline, and managerial effectiveness.
Our role was to help translate strategic intent into a practical operating system that managers and frontline teams could actually run.
Rather than treating performance improvement as a set of isolated initiatives, we focused on designing a system that aligned accountability, decision-making, and daily work across the organization.
Outcome
The organization began to operate as one system rather than a collection of functions.
Reliability improved, with fewer outages and faster restoration times
Reactive maintenance declined, stabilizing operating costs
Managers took clearer ownership of performance outcomes
Frontline teams understood how their work connected to network reliability
Leadership gained confidence that improvement was structural, not temporary
Most importantly, Essential Energy gained a repeatable way of improving performance without relying on heroics, restructures, or external pressure.
What we did
Understanding the system before intervening
We began by immersing ourselves in how the organization actually operated.
This included:
how reliability and cost were managed across regions,
how decisions flowed between engineering, operations, and field teams, and
how managers used—or avoided—performance data in practice.
This understanding revealed not a lack of effort, but a lack of clear ownership and shared priorities. Performance problems were being managed locally, while their causes were systemic.
Designing a performance model that balanced control and autonomy
With insight in place, we worked with leadership to define a clear performance model and operating logic. The focus was on balance:
maintaining regulatory compliance and public accountability, while
empowering managers to take real ownership of outcomes.
Accountability was redesigned around service regions and asset systems rather than functional silos. Performance expectations were clarified—not expanded—so managers knew what mattered most and where to focus their attention.
Building the system managers could operate day to day
To support execution, we designed simple, practical management systems. These included:
clear performance outcomes linked to reliability, restoration time, and cost,
regular performance dialogues focused on learning rather than blame, and
decision-right frameworks that reduced escalation and delay.
The goal was clarity—so managers could act with confidence instead of defensiveness.
Supporting early execution and embedding new habits
As the HPO system was introduced, we stayed close to leadership and management teams through the early stages of execution.
This allowed us to:
adjust the system as real operational constraints emerged,
support managers as they shifted from reporting to leading performance, and
ensure alignment between strategic intent and daily operational decisions.
The focus was not on speed alone—but on embedding habits that would last.