Leading Excellence in Innovation: Deliberate Optimism Creates Value

Leading Excellence in Innovation:  Deliberate optimism turns possibility into value
A commentary by Victor Perton

“Deliberate optimism.”

That is the inscription on a pen carried by Dona Tantirimudalige, the new Chair of Intelligent Water Networks. It was a gift from her brother-in-law and a fitting symbol for the 2026 IWN Members Conference.

Jason Cotton, IWN’s Program Director, reinforced the organisation’s recognition of optimism when he introduced me to chair “Leading Excellence in Innovation”. He spoke of optimism as underpinning innovation and invention, and sustaining the resilience and persistence needed to carry promising ideas through setbacks and into practice.

Jo Murdoch, the retiring Chair of Intelligent Water Networks and Managing Director of North East Water, then gave that connection memorable expression:

“Excellence and innovation start with optimism. If we are not optimistic about the future, then you can forget about being innovative.”

The transition from Jo to Dona carried a fitting continuity: optimism as both the foundation for innovation and a deliberate leadership practice.

It also confirmed that optimism was not simply a theme I brought to the conference. Intelligent Water Networks recognises its practical value. Innovation rarely travels in a straight line. It requires people who can face reality, remain curious, learn, adapt and persist. It requires infectiously optimistic leaders who help others see possibility and find the confidence to have a go.

The panel featured Jo Murdoch; Shaun Cumming, Managing Director of Barwon Water; Damian Wells, Managing Director of Coliban Water; Dr Dale Andrea, General Manager, Service Futures at Yarra Valley Water; and Nick Mumford, Executive Manager, Infrastructure at GWMWater.

Each brought a different perspective, but together they offered a practical account of how optimistic leaders create the conditions for innovation, carry people through uncertainty and turn promising ideas into operational and customer value.

Jo Murdoch: Optimism opens the future

Jo’s declaration that excellence and innovation start with optimism was more than an encouraging opening line. It identified the mindset that enables innovation.

True optimism faces reality, sees possibility and strengthens action. It does not pretend that every idea will work or that every challenge will be easily overcome. It gives us the confidence to examine reality honestly while continuing to ask: What could be improved? What could we do differently? What capability do we already have? What is now possible?

The water sector faces real pressures, including climate change, population growth, ageing infrastructure, financial constraints, customer hardship, contaminants of concern and rapidly changing technology. True optimism neither denies nor diminishes them. It helps people see that difficulty is not destiny and that practical action can create a better future.

Jo illustrated this through North East Water’s approach to transforming its largest wastewater treatment plant in Wodonga into a resource recovery hub.  Instead of treating a conventional upgrade as the only option, its people looked for opportunities to recover energy, reduce emissions, make better use of biosolids and prepare for future growth.

The possibilities emerged largely from operational people who understood the site and asked why it had to be done the usual way when a different approach could create greater value.

That is the leadership significance of Jo’s words. Optimism does not provide every answer. It creates the belief that better answers can be found and gives people permission to look for them.

This is also why optimistic leadership can become infectious. When leaders display genuine belief in their people, remain curious when something goes wrong and give others permission to explore, that optimism spreads. People become more willing to contribute ideas, test assumptions, learn from setbacks and encourage one another.

Shaun Cumming: Innovation is an investment in value

When budgets are tight, innovation can be treated as an optional extra. Shaun Cumming offered a better formulation:

“Innovation is an investment in value, not a cost.”

That distinction matters.

A narrow focus on immediate cost can discourage experimentation and lock organisations into existing systems, even when those systems will become more expensive or less effective over time. Strategic leadership considers not only the cost of trying something new, but also the cost of standing still.

Water corporations manage far more than a water cycle. They interact with cycles of energy, organics, nutrients, nature and data. Enormous value passes through their systems every day. Innovation helps us recognise, capture and share more of that value.

Shaun pointed to Barwon Water’s work on heat from sewers, renewable organics networks, biochar and artificial intelligence. These are not isolated technological curiosities. They are ways of connecting environmental purpose, customer value, organisational productivity and new sources of income.

Shaun also raised the importance of “strategic courage”. Constraints can inhibit innovation, but they can also force it. Tight guardrails may require people to think differently and find better ways of delivering value.

Shaun’s metaphor of dormant seeds was especially powerful. At a restored site, regeneration can emerge from seeds already present in the soil. In the same way, leaders do not need to originate every innovative idea. Their role is to establish the conditions in which the ideas, knowledge, creativity and optimism already present among their people can grow.

The great strength of the infectiously optimistic leader is not simply that their optimism spreads. It is that they unlock the optimism already present in the people, teams, organisations and communities they lead.

Shaun described this as “360-degree leadership”. Boards establish ambition and risk appetite. Executives create space and remove barriers. Managers connect ideas with resources. Operators and frontline employees often see possibilities first because they work with the systems and serve customers every day.

Leadership for innovation therefore operates in every direction and at every level.  The leader does not necessarily look like the person at the top of the organisational chart. The leader looks like the person in your mirror.

That is the invitation of infectiously optimistic leadership. Each of us can help another person see possibility, find the confidence to have a go and take the next wise step.

Damian Wells: Ask what is now possible

Damian Wells brought optimism, leadership and innovation together in one of the panel’s useful questions: “What is now possible?”

It is a deceptively powerful question. It can be asked when a new technology emerges, when a partnership becomes available, when circumstances change or even when an experiment does not work.

Damian added another memorable formulation:

“You either win or you learn.”

Neither statement excuses poor judgement or weak accountability. Innovation still requires discipline, evidence, clear objectives and responsible governance. But when a well-designed initiative falls short, the leader’s task is to extract the learning and improve the next attempt.

Damian stressed that leaders must be honest with boards and stakeholders about where a project sits on the spectrum between established practice and experimentation. Boards and executives need to agree on the purpose, risk appetite and guardrails before difficulties arise.

Leadership is revealed not simply by what we say about innovation, but by how we behave when an initiative is not going well.

People notice that behaviour. If leaders proclaim their support for innovation but respond to every setback with blame, disappointment or public distancing, employees quickly learn not to take risks.

I recalled an innovation proposal considered during my time on the Yarra Valley Water board. When someone raised the prospect of failure and adverse media coverage, I said that the board had understood and accepted the risk and would take responsibility. A year later, one of the people involved told me how empowering that had been.

On another occasion, an expensive innovation did fail. The chair’s first question was not, “Who is to blame?” It was:

“What have we learned?”

That is optimistic leadership in practice. It faces the failure, protects accountability, extracts the learning and strengthens the next attempt.

Damian also showed how partnerships can unlock innovation. Coliban Water’s approach to the Castlemaine Water Reclamation Plant uses procurement and early contractor involvement to bring private-sector knowledge into the process, share risk and generate new thinking.   Leaders do not always have to invent or fund every solution themselves. Sometimes their most important contribution is to bring the right people together and create a fair structure in which they can collaborate.

Dr Dale Andrea: Adoption turns insight into value

I asked Dr Dale Andrea what a leader does when innovation stalls. How do you move beyond a promising idea or successful trial and create real value?

Dale’s answer focused attention on adoption and the leadership required to achieve it. A new technology cannot simply be attached to an old organisation and expected to transform it. Real adoption may require changes to systems, responsibilities, skills, incentives, relationships and everyday working practices.

As Dale observed:

“Value from innovation stalls when the organisation hasn’t decided it’s worth the real effort of changing the way it operates.”

This helps explain why people may appear to resist an innovation even when they do not dispute its technical merits:

“What struck me was that people weren’t really questioning the innovation idea. They were questioning what it meant for them.”

Dale identified the deeply human question that can sit beneath this uncertainty:

“Will I still be relevant in this new world?”

Leaders should take that question seriously. Experienced employees possess operational knowledge essential to successful innovation. Change imposed on them can generate understandable resistance and cause the loss of the very expertise needed to make the innovation work.

Optimistic leadership respects people enough to involve them. It values the curiosity of those proposing the innovation and the practical wisdom of those who will own, operate and improve it. It helps people see how change can strengthen their contribution, improve their work and create better outcomes for customers and communities.

Adoption therefore cannot be left until the conclusion of a successful trial. It begins much earlier:

“Adoption doesn’t start at the end of a trial. It starts the moment people begin to believe the future you’re describing is better than the present they’re being asked to leave behind.”

This is one of the essential tasks of optimistic leadership. Leaders must face the risks and uncertainties honestly while helping people see what could go right, how they can contribute and why the effort of changing is worthwhile.

As Dale put it:

“We spend a lot of time talking about what could go wrong and not enough time talking about what could go right.”

That is not an argument for ignoring risk. It is an argument for examining possibility with the same seriousness that organisations bring to potential failure. Optimism enables people to imagine a better outcome and gives them a reason to undertake the difficult work needed to achieve it.

Dale also drew a valuable distinction between confidence in a particular solution and confidence in the process of discovery. Innovation leaders do not pretend that every unproven idea will work. They bring curiosity and realistic optimism to experimentation, empowering people to test new approaches, discuss disappointing results honestly and learn from the unexpected.

“Some of history’s greatest innovations started as accidents or failed experiments. What mattered wasn’t the accident. It was the curiosity to learn from it and the optimism to act on what was learnt.”

Drawing on Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin following an unexpected result in his laboratory, Dale reminded us that experimentation can reveal possibilities no one set out to find. Leadership means giving people the confidence, permission and support to investigate those insights, not merely directing them towards solutions that have already been proven.

The insight itself, however, is only the beginning:

“The real value often isn’t in the insight itself. It’s in how far it spreads. As leaders, our job is to amplify it, connect it and compound it.”

Amplify good ideas so they do not remain invisible. Connect them with the people, systems and purposes that can make them useful. Compound their value by applying and sharing the learning across the organisation and the sector.

Dale brought these elements together in a compelling description of an innovative organisation:

“I don’t think being an innovative organisation is about having the best ideas. It’s about creating cultures that are curious enough to discover new insights, optimistic enough to act on them, and connected enough to multiply their impact.”

This moves innovation beyond the heroic story of one brilliant inventor. It becomes an organisational and sector-wide capability in which leaders unlock the optimism, knowledge and capability already present in others. People learn from one another, insights spread, and improvements accumulate.

It also connects directly with IWN’s priorities to drive, create, connect and share. Curiosity helps drive exploration and create new possibilities. Leadership develops the capability and confidence to act. Connection brings together the people, knowledge and resources needed for adoption. Sharing enables learning from trials to travel across organisational boundaries.

When leaders amplify, connect and compound those insights, adoption turns innovation into member value, customer value and wider value for the water sector.

Nick Mumford: Necessity can drive practical innovation

Nick Mumford brought the perspective of a regional water corporation, where extensive infrastructure, smaller customer bases and practical constraints make innovation essential.

“We need to innovate. We have to be innovative to maintain almost the status quo.”

That is a clear-eyed statement of reality. Productivity expectations continue, but existing systems can only be stretched so far. At some point, organisations must do something differently.

Nick’s account of GWMWater’s off-grid water treatment plant at Elmhurst showed what this looks like in practice. A conventional electricity connection was neither cost-effective nor environmentally attractive, so the organisation had to look beyond the conventional solution.

“We innovated out of necessity.”

Necessity alone, however, does not guarantee successful innovation. Leadership was required to assess the alternatives, establish appropriate safeguards and help people understand why a different approach was needed.

Nick stressed the importance of taking operational employees on the journey. They must understand both the “why” and the “how” of a new system. If they are excluded or poorly supported, they may become its strongest detractors. When their knowledge is respected and they are involved from the beginning, they can become its greatest champions.

This is where innovation meets operational reality. An award-winning trial or project is not enough. Someone must operate it safely, maintain it, improve it and rely on it every day.

Nick’s example demonstrated a distinctive strength of regional water corporations. Constraints can encourage agility, ingenuity and a close focus on whether an idea will work in practice for the communities being served.

From Creativity to Adopted Innovation

Leaders clear the path

The panel identified several barriers to adoption: limited time, constrained funding, regulation, organisational habits, complex approval processes and differing attitudes towards risk.

Ben Mutton, Senior Scientist at Wannon Water, put this challenge in practical terms. Drawing on nearly 18 years of experience spanning plant operations, technical advice and innovation trials, including the Supercritical UV trial at Port Fairy, he observed:

“Trying out new and innovative things tends to take time and money and can tie up staff, drawing them away from their normal expected duties. If management don’t support and resource this, then things will never get past the idea stage.”

Ben’s insight sharpens the leadership lesson. Encouragement is important, but permission without time, funding and people is unlikely to carry an idea into trial, implementation and operational adoption. Leaders demonstrate their commitment to innovation through the resources and organisational space they make available.

Shaun Cumming nominated “headspace” as an essential but scarce resource. People overwhelmed by daily demands have little room for creativity. Artificial intelligence may itself help innovation by reducing repetitive work and creating more time for judgement, relationships and invention.

Jo Murdoch described North East Water’s work to establish an innovation seed fund and draw on expertise from both within and beyond the water sector. A modest amount of early support can help people test an idea and develop a credible business case.

Damian Wells described leaders as the plumbers who sometimes need to unblock the innovation pipeline. That may mean securing board support, aligning risk appetites, redesigning a process or connecting people with the right partner.

Dale Andrea showed that leaders must cultivate confidence in learning and discovery, help people believe that change is worthwhile and address its human as well as technical implications. They must amplify useful insights, connect them with the people who can apply them and compound their value through wider adoption.

Nick Mumford showed the importance of practical implementation and operator involvement.

Together, the five perspectives suggest a useful governance discipline: boards should receive regular reports not only on innovations adopted, but also on promising ideas that were rejected or stalled and the reasons why.

The strength of the Victorian water ecosystem

A final question from Chris Edwards of Inside Water asked why regional water corporations appear to be such hotbeds of innovation.

Regional corporations often face metropolitan-scale challenges with smaller customer bases, extensive infrastructure and tighter budgets. Necessity encourages ingenuity and a practical can-do attitude. Their leaders and employees are also closely connected to their communities, so an innovation must work not only technically but socially and operationally.

Yet the panel resisted a simple regional-versus-metropolitan distinction. The Victorian water sector is an ecosystem in which corporations can learn from one another, combine their strengths and build on each other’s work.

VicWater Chief Executive Officer Jo Lim captured the inclusive leadership needed to build this sector-wide capability:

“Leadership in innovation is not just about backing smart people in the sector who come up with bright ideas. It’s about empowering and supporting all of our people to develop new ways of thinking and working. By using proven, intentional and collaborative processes, we can build an innovation culture and capability across the sector and ultimately deliver great outcomes for our customers and community.”

IWN drives the exploration, trialling and adoption of innovative approaches, thinking and technologies. It creates opportunities that foster emerging leadership talent. It connects industry, research and government to build a trusted and collaborative innovation ecosystem. It shares insights from trials to help address industry challenges and opportunities.

In this way, IWN provides practical innovation infrastructure. It connects organisations, reduces duplication and risk, develops capability and helps innovations move from successful trials to wider adoption.

The strategic plan also keeps the purpose of innovation in view. Driving innovation creates member value. Developing people builds capability. Connecting the ecosystem strengthens partnerships. Sharing knowledge creates customer value.

A leadership spirit that continued throughout the day

The same spirit of courage, ambition and practical experimentation remained evident throughout the conference.

A hall full of passionate, optimistic innovation leaders reminded me of the brilliant panel I wrote about last year in “Secret Sauce of Successful Transformation: Intelligent Water Networks”.

That earlier panel produced a memorable formula:

Successful transformation = optimism + people focus + bravery + clear vision + learning + joy + policy support

The 2026 conference showed that these were not ingredients of a single successful conversation. They remain part of the culture and practical strength of Intelligent Water Networks.

Rodrigo Marquina, Senior Infrastructure Planning Engineer at Goulburn Valley Water, demonstrated that spirit in both his presentation and his subsequent reflection. Although difficulties with the presentation controls disrupted his flow, he remained optimistic that he could communicate the value of the trial. The questions he received afterwards confirmed that the message had reached the audience. His response was characteristically optimistic: learn from the experience and do it better next time.

Rodrigo described excellence in leadership and innovation as both a privilege and a responsibility:

“It is a privilege because we need the right conditions to foster leadership and innovation. It is also a responsibility because we have to use our resources wisely to achieve trial outcomes or to capture the lesson if the trial was unsuccessful. Optimism underpins the whole process.”

“Have a crack, be ambitious.”

He later brought ambition, challenge and optimism together: “Be ambitious and optimistic for the future, but challenge yourself and challenge the organisation to be better and do better.”

I later asked Graham Hawke to reflect on excellence in leadership and innovation. Graham had previously drawn on Theodore Parker’s famous proposition that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. His response connected that moral purpose with the leadership conditions that enable people to act:

“Excellence in leadership creates the conditions for people to feel safe, supported, and courageous enough to choose ambition over avoidance: to tackle complex issues without easy answers, engage in difficult conversations, work through disappointment and cynicism, and turn frustration into constructive energy for change. Innovation thrives when people are ambitious to do better, willing to ‘have a crack’, and committed to exploring, growing and learning together as stewards of a more just, humane society and a healthier planet.”

Graham’s distinction between ambition and avoidance is powerful. Difficult issues invite caution, frustration and sometimes cynicism. Excellent leaders do not deny those reactions. They help people work through them, speak honestly and turn frustration into constructive action.

His words also give innovation a larger purpose. Innovation is not simply the pursuit of novelty, efficiency or technological improvement. At its best, it is an expression of stewardship: people exploring and learning together to build a more just and humane society and a healthier planet.

Jason Cotton reinforced that call to action by recalling the words of Aurecon Group CEO Louise Adams:

“Optimism is contagious.”

Jason urged us to connect growth mindsets, lean into challenges, remain curious and spread a healthy dose of optimism. Optimism, he said, is no longer a luxury or a nice-to-have. It is a necessity.

Nick Raffaele, one of the IWN Champions and a brilliant co-MC of the conference, offered another clear expression of the connection between leadership and innovation:

“Excellence in leadership is creating an environment where people feel trusted, challenged and supported to do their best work. Innovation is about having the curiosity and courage to continually improve the way we work and creating more value for our people, our customers and the communities we serve.”

Nick’s words bring the argument together beautifully. Excellent leaders create the environment. Curious and courageous people improve the work. Innovation creates value.

Gus Thiele of StormHarvester added another important quality: the ability to hold strong opinions lightly.

“When it comes to innovation, I like the idea of a diverse group of voices ‘holding strong opinions, lightly’. By that, I mean hearing from a room of different people who are happy to share their own ‘why’, but prepared to change their perspective based on the wider group.”

This is not indecision. It is confident curiosity: contributing a well-considered view while remaining open to evidence, experience and the wisdom of others. It is also one of the reasons networks such as IWN are so valuable. They bring diverse voices together and create the trust needed for people to test assumptions, learn and improve.

Michael Webster of Wannon Water describes himself as a “pragmatic optimist” and connected that outlook with inclusive leadership:

“I am a cup half full person and describe myself as a pragmatic optimist. It certainly makes life much more pleasant. Excellence in leadership which brings forth innovation is to allow the knowledge, understanding and experience that has been brought to bear on an issue to bring about outcomes that are greater than the sum of the parts.”

Michael added that making room for the quietest voice can reveal profound insight. People may hold knowledge derived from experience, history or perspectives beyond the leader’s own understanding. Excellence in leadership means creating the conditions in which that knowledge can be heard, combined and turned into better outcomes.

His reflection reinforces Gus Thiele’s call to hold strong opinions lightly. Innovation benefits from people who contribute their knowledge confidently, listen seriously and remain willing to change their view. This is also central to IWN’s value as a trusted and collaborative innovation network.

Commenting on the conference outcomes, my Chairman Robert Masters AM captured the strategic importance of optimism:  “Leadership without optimism becomes management of the present. Leadership with optimism creates the future. It is the cornerstone of strategic vision that informs strong policy decisions and sustains the determination needed to transform initiatives into measurable outcomes.”

His formulation extends the argument beyond individual projects. Optimism helps leaders imagine a better future, make the policy and strategic decisions needed to pursue it, and sustain action until initiatives produce measurable value.

Dr Arash Zamyadi, Senior Lecturer in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Monash University, grounded that proposition in the urgent challenge of PFAS:

“For me, excellence in leadership is about inspiring people to tackle the problems that matter most. In our case, PFAS is an emerging contaminant with major public health and environmental impacts.

“Excellence in innovation is about turning scientific curiosity into solutions that create lasting value for society. In our case, that means using a novel combination of advanced treatment processes to remove very high PFAS concentrations under real-world Victorian conditions.

“The greatest innovations happen when researchers, industry and communities work together to transform knowledge into real-world impact.”

Arash’s words reflect IWN’s strategic priorities in practice: create leadership capability, connect researchers and industry, drive the exploration and trialling of promising technologies, and share the knowledge needed to produce wider value.

These were not calls for reckless experimentation or comfortable positivity. They expressed the practical spirit of true optimism: face reality, see possibility, aim higher and strengthen action.

Looking around the conference hall, I saw passionate, optimistic innovation leaders. Some held formal leadership positions, and many did not. All had the capacity to lead because the leader looks like the person in your mirror.

From true optimism to customer value

“Deliberate optimism” is a fitting description of what I saw at the IWN Members Conference.

Jo Murdoch showed that optimism opens the future to innovation.

Shaun Cumming showed that strategic courage turns innovation into an investment in value.

Damian Wells showed that leaders create safe guardrails, learn from setbacks and keep asking what is now possible.

Dale Andrea showed that optimistic leadership helps people believe a better future is worth the effort of change. Curiosity discovers new insights, leadership amplifies and connects them, and adoption compounds their value.

Nick Mumford showed how necessity, operational knowledge and practical leadership turn unconventional ideas into working infrastructure.

Their perspectives were different, but the message was coherent.

True optimism faces reality, sees possibility and strengthens action. Curiosity leads us to explore that possibility. Leadership unlocks the optimism, knowledge and capability of others. Trials test promising ideas, but implementation, adoption and organisational learning turn them into value.

Infectiously optimistic leaders do more than spread their own optimism. They unlock the optimism, knowledge and capability already present in others. They help people believe that their ideas matter, that difficulties can be discussed honestly, that setbacks can produce learning and that better outcomes are possible.

That is also the promise of Intelligent Water Networks. Its priorities to drive, create, connect and share provide a practical pathway through which optimism strengthens leadership, leadership enables innovation, and adopted innovation creates member and customer value.

The next wise step is to make the journey from idea to customer value as deliberate as the optimism that begins it.

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