2024 Management Challenge

REFLECTIONS FROM THE 2024 AUSTRALASIAN MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE
At the beginning of April, 14 teams gathered with great excitement to participate in the Australasian Management Challenge. The Challenge has been at the forefront of professional development in local government in Australia and New Zealand for more than 30 years and provides an excellent professional development opportunity to become more effective in leading, thinking, communicating, negotiating, decision-making, analysing and engaging. The LG Professionals SA team loves seeing participants delve out of their comfort zones and thrive.

We reached out to some participants to hear about their experience. 

Tom Richardson, City of Marion - Mentor of the CoM-LYMPIANS 2024
"Mentoring the City of Marion Management Challenge team, ‘CoM-LYMPIANS 2024’, was an inspiring journey. It was amazing to see a group of individuals from vastly different work areas across council come together to create a high-performing, capable team. As I participated in the Challenge last year, it was great to be able to pass on my learnings and prepare the team for the big day. I'm excited to see the ripple effects of their achievements in their respective roles and beyond."

Olivia Selfridge, Alexandrina Council - Participant in the Alex in Wonderland Team 
"Challenge Day - What a Day! Our team set off at 5:30 AM to calm nerves before we turned into superhuman leadership pros! When we arrived, it was game faces on. We had a space that each team was able to decorate with quotes and themes they aligned with.

The introductions were very momentum building as you sit in your seat wondering whose team will they call up next? All the teams performed their introductions, which was quite courageous of us all to get up there and an awesome test to be thrown into first thing in the morning.

Each of the tasks are so carefully thought out with such detail to help you SUCCEED and push you outside your comfort zone. The tasks are stimulation based and very real scenarios that your leadership team deal with every day.

Lunch time came around so fast, ‘didn’t I just have breakfast?' I asked myself as they brought out the delicious food to fuel all the busy brains.

No way! We were already up to the last task of the day; each team presented their pre-challenge task ‘Viable Alternate Sources of Funding’ – how interesting it was hearing about all the differentiating sources each council team came to present!

Last but certainly not least (and the part I think everyone was most looking forward to) networking to celebrate everyone’s hard work."

Congratulations to the 2024 Champions - City of Tea Tree Gully - Le'Gully' Blonde

2nd Place - City of Mitcham - By Law & Order: Special Mitcham Unit
3rd Place - City of Onkaparinga - Coastal 31