How ChangePlan is supporting City of Gold Coast’s enterprise-wide change journey

At City of Gold Coast — one of Australia’s largest local governments with more than 5,500 employees — a growing transformation agenda and new operating model meant it was time to bring change management into clearer focus.

‘As part of a transformation program, our previously decentralized group of change practitioners came together under one leader as one team,’ explains Connie Longobardi, Organisational Change Manager. ‘But we weren’t a team that was connected. We operated more as a community of practice’

The community of practice model gave the team flexibility and autonomy, but as transformation efforts ramped up, a centralised structure became essential to coordinate timing, build consistency, and manage change at scale. To help achieve this, the team adopted ChangePlan.

THE CHALLENGE

Connecting the dots across a growing change landscape

Prior to ChangePlan, the team was using Excel to manage change, but while some practitioners had well-developed spreadsheets, there was no unified way to understand what was happening across the portfolio or how initiatives were landing.

‘We had some behemoth Excel spreadsheets, but they didn’t allow us to connect the dots and create a whole picture as an organisation,’ says Longobardi. ‘We all had different ways of running change, different tools, different levels of maturity, different priorities.’

As the team grew and the number of initiatives increased, the limitations of these manual processes became more apparent — and the need for a single source of truth became urgent.

THE SOLUTION

Building consistency and alignment

As the change team came together as a centralized unit for the first time, ChangePlan was implemented to support more consistent ways of working and reporting. 

‘We’re using ChangePlan to drive the big picture stuff — where the pressure points are, what the impacts are, what kind of time burden we’re putting on people,’ explains Longobardi. 

By helping the team identify shared patterns, impacts, and risks, ChangePlan allows them to show leadership where and when the organisation is likely to feel the weight of change and have more strategic conversations about how to manage it. 

‘We can show leaders where the business is going to be really stretched and drill into the detail when we need to.’

Crucially, the team is focused on ensuring the data they capture has purpose, not just volume. 

‘We’re making sure the data we put in isn’t just for interest’s sake,’ says Longobardi. ‘It has to support governance and actually be used across project and change processes.’

THE IMPACT

Surfacing blind spots and building team-wide capability

Even in the early stages of rollout, ChangePlan is already delivering a clearer view of where initiatives are colliding or teams are under pressure.

‘We’ve got projects that are running over each other. We’ve got teams that are impacted by different projects in the same area, and ChangePlan is starting to show that,’ says Longobardi. ‘We’re now starting to see things we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. That’s where the power is.’

ChangePlan is also building capability across the team by supporting those newer to change to build expertise and confidence.

‘It helps us have more consistent conversations across the team. That’s really important when you’ve got 25–30 people all running different initiatives. For people newer to change, or less confident with data, ChangePlan is really helpful because it guides you through what to capture. It builds good habits.’

And while updating the system takes time, the payoff is clear.

‘The benefits of what you can get out of it outweigh the time investment in keeping it updated.’

WHAT’S NEXT

Scaling smartly and measuring change burden and readiness

The team is now looking ahead to deeper insights — particularly around quantifying change burden and tracking change readiness over time.

‘We want to use it to get better insight into change burden and into how ready people really are. That’s where we want to go next,’ says Longobardi.

ChangePlan will continue to support the team as they build momentum and embed the tool more deeply into their day-to-day work.

‘We’re really just getting started. The more we embed it, the more valuable it becomes.’

Importantly, the partnership with ChangePlan has been responsive, collaborative, and grounded in listening.

‘There’s nothing we’ve asked for that’s been dismissed,’ says Longobardi. ‘The ChangePlan team always takes the time to listen and respond.’

‘We’ve been able to provide input that’s shaped how the product evolves. That makes it feel like a true partnership.’

What ChangePlan is making possible for City of Gold Coast

• A single point of truth across 50+ active initiatives
• Meaningful data to inform executive decisions and scheduling
• A scalable tool that supports different sizes and types of change
• A live system that encourages real-time updates and accountability
• A foundation for measuring change burden and improving readiness

Ready to reduce change burden and surface the insights that matter? Talk to us about how ChangePlan can support your team.