I recently came across a presentation I delivered to the Student Conference of AHRI (the Australian Human Resources Institute) in 1998. The topic was ‘Building a sustainable career’, with a particular focus for those who were at the beginning of their professions and not in formal leadership roles. Looking back at it now, I can’t [...]
One of the conversations that is occurring more frequently for us at the moment revolves around people returning to the workplace as we transition towards a ‘post-pandemic’ world. In most states of Australia, various workplaces are now permitted to have 50 to 75 per cent of their workforce back on site, provided certain Covid-safe practices [...]
As 2020 came to a close, I had a very special call with some alumni of the Opening Doors Social Inclusion Leadership Program here in Melbourne. Part of our reflection centred around what had changed in our world as leaders since Covid-19 arrived. As we concluded the session, one of the group asked, ‘As we [...]
Back when I embarked on my career in the wine industry, it’s fair to say that conversations about a business’s role in the world beyond its own market were rare. These were the days when someone like Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, was promoting the idea that business could be a force for [...]
The arrival of election day 2020 in the USA, with the whole world watching in various forms of anxiousness and fascination, has brought to mind for me some work we did some years ago with a city council. It was a lesson in the way some leaders see themselves in relation to the rest of [...]
This month we feature a guest post from one of our recent Tables of Ten participants, Karl Fitzgerald. Karl is an economist for Prosper Australia, an NGO specialising in a fairer tax system. He runs the monthly Renegade Economists podcast and is best known for his study of vacant housing. When I first heard about [...]
I recently came across my High School Yearbook from a year I spent (a few years ago!) as an exchange student at Springfield High School in Vermont, USA. My senior photo appears along with a quote by French philosopher Albert Camus: ‘In the midst of winter I found there was, within me, an invincible summer’. [...]
This month we welcome a guest post from one of our clients, Kristina Karlsson. Kristina was born and lives and works on the land of the Wurundjeri of the Kulin Nations in Australia, where she works as a systems psychodynamically trained organisational consultant and coach. She currently works for the Victorian State Government. ‘Hope’ has emerged as a [...]
When Gayle and Malcolm invited me to write a short reflection six months after returning from Antarctica as part of Homeward Bound, the first thing I did was count the months on my fingers from December 2019 to now. I could not believe it had actually been 6 months! Of course, most of the last [...]
This year is challenging all of us in many and varied ways. Something that just about everyone is facing in one way or another is dealing with ambiguity on an ongoing basis. So much of what we would take for granted at any other time feels up in the air at the moment. For leaders, [...]
