It is said creativity is a way of looking at the world, a way of seeing that invites innovation, lateral ideas and a widening of the lens. It is also said it requires courage and motivation, risk and most likely failure. That's a lot! But in the hands of [...]

Where will the world be in twenty years time? We get so caught up in the day-to-day that we often don’t give it much thought. For Professor Greg Whitwell, Dean of the University of Sydney Business School, it’s just part of the job as he helps his students [...]

Building Houses in Cambodia: Culture Change that Really Works  Over one hundred partners from Grant Thornton went to Cambodia to build 10 houses together. At the Executive Coaching International conference, Kim Schmidt, Director of Leadership and Culture, shared the incredible story of how they discovered the true joy of leadership, [...]

Being competitive in an increasingly knowledge based economy means working at an entrepreneurial level. You have to stand out. At the Executive Coaching International Conference, Justin Di Lollo, a public figure in the Australian government relations and public-affairs consulting industry as well as business director at WPP AUNZ, [...]

Resilience is about debits and credits –my smart wife reminded me of this at dinner the other night!  The more positive stuff going in (e.g. good sleep, nutritious food, water, purpose at work, quality family relationships, etc) helps us weather the times when we make debits (e.g. stress, setbacks, loss, [...]

For all their good points, computers can also drive us mad. They chug along fine and then one day they grind to a halt. You haven’t done anything different but code piled on top of code has somehow caused a glitch. Luckily, a simple reboot - ‘Have you [...]

Government stimulus spending aims to minimise the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia by sustaining employment and spreading benefits across the economy. Infrastructure stimulus is likely to be a mix of individual large scale (and complex) infrastructure projects and programs of smaller projects with a broad geographical distribution. [...]

Sometimes when I want to be controversial or stimulate a debate I ask executive teams, ‘why do we want diversity at work?’.  I acknowledge it’s very ‘woke’ and politically correct but at this point you can sense a rising tension in the room as people know what they [...]

Imagine if you had to immediately stand down your entire organisation one day a week indefinitely – no ifs, buts or maybes. Would you feel the need to adjust your revenue targets? How about changing your project Gannt chart, Net Promoter Scores, service model? Every organisation we see [...]

The approach to business management continues to evolve looking for new and better ways to maintain competitiveness and deliver results. In today’s world the concepts of leaders and leadership appear prevalent amongst business consultants selling the secret to business success, but what do these concepts really mean and [...]

Executives in 2021 nominate FOFO, over FOMO, as a constant and nagging fear. If the Fear Of Finding Out is leading you to strive for tighter control over yourself, your outputs, your team, or your work life, read on. Distraction, avoidance and control are common ways we humans [...]

The Great Resignation is predicted to result in millions of Aussies leaving their jobs as people reassess their priorities. One thing we can all agree is that the workplace dynamic has changed, and we must plan for a different future. How are you planning on retaining and recruiting [...]

Summer in Australia is the perfect time to take time out – you won’t be alone – so make the most of it! This year has been one of the most challenging many of us have ever had to face. We’ve referred to FOFO - the fear of finding [...]

We looked at winding down strategies at the end of last year but a new year means a new beginning. In this edition we suggest a simple '4 Step' approach to help make high performance more sustainable throughout the year. Start a ‘new normal’ by finishing meetings after 25 minutes or [...]

My PhD research studied the use of management systems (the processes and procedures used in managing an organisation) in highly complex business environments and the importance of these systems to successfully achieving business objectives. For the purposes of my research, I studied the management of mega infrastructure projects [...]

The autocratic, heroic leader of yesteryear has largely disappeared from Australian workplaces and in its place is a far more ‘distributed’ or shared leadership. A few organisations have even done away with formalised management structures and their executives genuinely share the leadership of their organisations. Regardless of your [...]

Feedback is important, both to give and to get. Otherwise, how do you know if you have done something well, or could have done it even better? To encourage feedback, you need to reduce the fear and anxiety that commonly accompanies it. To do this, make it part [...]

Feedback is important, both to give and to get. Otherwise, how do you know if you have done something well, or could have done it even better? To encourage feedback, you need to reduce the fear and anxiety that commonly accompanies it. To do this, make it part [...]

Please tell me you are not asking me to read about running effective meetings! Well, if you keep reading that is exactly what I am writing about. A few salient facts to begin... 15% of your total employees’ collective time is spent in meetings. For executives it is [...]

Ironically, I had to fly to the other side of the world to get my head around the state of our planet! In 2019 I attended a conference in Dublin, which included a workshop on climate change. I spent the next two hours in tears. We were asked [...]