Humans are amazing. We’re capable of orchestrating moving music, creating beautiful structures and deconstructing the human genome. Why then, when we possess such constructive capabilities, do governments find themselves grasping for answers, businesses struggling to grow, and communities feeling insecure and mistrustful of public and private sector leaders alike? In...
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Practical engineering solutions may be the key to transcending the political gridlock that confounds the energy-climate crisis. Several days ago, Matthew Warren, chief executive of the Australian Energy Council, warned “We now risk rolling into a second decade of energy policy uncertainty. This could be catastrophic for the cost and...
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“How did I get here?” asked the reluctantly departing CEO. “How did we get here?” question citizens in a Brexit-Trump world. “What now?” is their coupled question. A growing suite of societal crises threaten to fracture governments, businesses and communities. Yet perhaps this is a natural part of our collective...
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From infancy we’ve learnt values, ideas and social rules through stories. This schooling has occurred for millennia. Today, some of these stories are being questioned. Leaders need to understand this dynamic and just how important stories are to sustaining success. In 2011, history professor Yuval Noah Harari published his book...
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An upcoming executive conference promises to shed powerful insights into current, under-played challenges of the fourth industrial revolution for engineering executives and company directors. What follows is a small component of the under-pinning research and analysis that informs the conference dialogue. In the early 1990s I was a researcher, exploring...
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More money won’t address the shortfall of good infrastructure projects. Better planning and governance arrangements will help, but a shift in mind-sets is the key. Many people in the infrastructure ‘community’ are captured in a false narrative and mind-set. Better approaches are being overlooked as effort goes into solving the...
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Executives in the infrastructure sector can literally design their way to success. But their language and actions reveal that they don’t believe this to be true. This is despite real evidence to the contrary. Until they display the humility to test their basic assumptions, many millions of dollars will continue...
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In times of tough market conditions and endless change, might a safe, process-driven approach to organisational leadership actually be counter-productive? Being nimble and adaptable – having adaptive capacity – is arguably more critical. But what does this mean for leaders, boards and investors? Change makes most people anxious, particularly when...
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Despite tangible, immediate opportunities to fuel productivity and growth, many leaders will fail to act. Here’s how to overcome the barriers and achieve personal and organisational success. No nation, no community, no business wants to experience declining prosperity nor leave their inheritors worse off. Yet that’s a real prospect for...
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Lazy, insular, complacent – words used to describe the state of enterprise in Australia. Harsh words indeed, but are they right? Anatomy of Opportunity In my last article (here) I described the Anatomy of Opportunity. It highlights the opportunities for government agencies and businesses alike to unleash greater productivity, innovation...
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