Home to Chatham House Having completed the Australian Company Directors Course, I run the risk of sounding like a paid advertisement… BUT if you have contemplated doing this course, don’t hesitate, just do it. The quality of presenters and the work that has gone into preparing the course material is utterly first rate. I must say I [...]
Last week I attended, along with around 1100 other people, a presentation given by Kerry Stokes as part of the Business News Success and Leadership breakfast series. Kerry and Peter Gammel approached Business News to hold the breakfast with a key aim in mind – to attract solid support from Perth’s business community for his [...]
This week I had the great pleasure of meeting Professor Bob Garratt, author of the above book amongst others. He was in Perth to present on “Directors and their homework: developing strategic thought”. The presentation was interesting and through provoking and particularly highlighted the ever growing demands on directors, as the scope of what is [...]
I recently attended a workshop held by the Australian Institute of Company Directors that was discussing the challenges of compliance, particularly related to the continuous disclosure legal requirements of Australian companies. The intent of the requirement is to ensure continuous disclosure to ensure an equally and adequately informed stock market. A case study was presented [...]
Richard Koch and Peter Nieruwenhuizen have written an enjoyable and practical read on strategy as it applies to business. It asks 10 key questions that are the useful questions that need to be answered when taking over or trying to get the better out of a business. The questions are: What business are you in? [...]
Unlimited capacity – wouldn’t it be great to be able to deal with immense volume without experiencing stress or conflict? Much of the challenge exists from pressure below and above – pressure below comes from a multiple of staff that need to direct information to or access information from their boss. From above, the challenge [...]
If you have ever found peformance issues and the reasons being given seemingly incredibly complicated, then perhaps distilling the essence back to the number only may be the answer you are looking for. For example, let’s say sales performance is down. A person can provide any number of reasons, incredibly well argued, as to why [...]
Business and leading people can both be hard and easy. Getting stuck in a mental rut is also easy, and no wonder as making a similar decision based on past experience makes a lot of sense. It saves time, allows you to move onto the next task. But it also can increasingly become dangerous without [...]
If you are in a professional services firm, then one of my favourite books is called Managing the Professional Services Firm. The book describes what to do when you have extraordinarily bright people, smart consultants, who know what they should be doing – but just simply aren’t doing it. The book covers so much more [...]
In a meeting today I was talking with a client who has a particularly dry sense of humour, and a great philosophical perspective on ensuring successful delivery of projects. We were talking about change management. His simple and insightful comment was this: “You have two tools you can use for change management – they are [...]
