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It’s time to press the pause button

I love Christmas. Putting up the tree, buying presents, celebrating, catching up with old and new friends, and spending time with family. It’s a time for renewal and reflection. And yet this year it took a while for the Christmas spirit to catch on; to the extent that I debated with my husband as to […]

Are you owning your part?

Read the newspaper and online journals or watch and listen to the news and you’ll see many instances over the last 12 months where an organisation’s culture has been deemed to be at the root cause of organisational malaise, regulatory breaches or bad customer service. 2018 hasn’t been a stellar year for the culture of […]

What’s on your learning hit list for summer?

The upcoming Christmas holidays are a great time to catch up on the learning you haven’t had the chance to do during the busy-ness of the working year. It’s also a good opportunity to think about the health of your learning. That is, how much learning are you consuming and what’s the nature of that […]

Ten tips to help you make better decisions

By the time you read this article it’s likely you’ll have already made hundreds of decisions, with varying levels of effort, consequences and anticipated rewards from the decision. You make decisions every day – in both your personal and working life. They can be as simple as what time a meeting should start, or as […]

Are you minding the gap?

If you’ve been to London and travelled on the tube you’ll remember the frequent reminders to ‘mind the gap’ between the platform and the tracks. As I’ve been travelling around London recently, this message has been playing on my mind, but in a different context. We are often reminded to look after ourselves in a […]

Are you searching for too much similarity?

It’s natural to want to work with people you like and find easy to work with, and consequently when you are building a team or forming work groups you often seek out such people. This is either done consciously or subconsciously. In the case of recruitment, for example, search criteria often specifically reference the desire […]

Is your sleep getting in the way of a better decision?

There are warning signs to remind us that we shouldn’t drive or use heavy machinery when we are tired, and yet very rarely do we see warning signs to remind us that it can be dangerous to make decisions when we are tired. Many Australians are chronically sleep deprived. This is because they don’t find ways […]

Why self-compassion can be unhelpful

We hear a lot these days about the importance of being kind to yourself and not being overly critical of our challenges and failings. But are there times when being kind to yourself isn’t the best approach? When you are being kind to yourself you are showing self-compassion. This is a term that has been […]

With leadership it’s the little things that matter

Recently, I was at Virgin’s airport lounge in Sydney waiting to catch a plane back to Melbourne, and at the same time Richard Branson was in the lounge saying hello to guests and chatting with staff. Apparently, he does that every time he is in town. No doubt he’s busy, but he finds the time […]

Why you don’t need to change to thrive

There’s lots of reports about the future of work, and the Australian Senate recently added its voice to the debate releasing the findings and recommendations from the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Work and Workers. It was tasked with investigating the impact of technological and other change on work and workers in Australia. […]

Six ways to sharpen your focus

If you follow me on social media, you’ll know that I’ve just come back from an amazing holiday in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. For most of the time, it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. During the trip we did long walks most days. Some were easier than others, and […]

How to slow down, to speed up

Surprisingly, the 2016 census found that the length of the working week for most Australians hasn’t increased since 2011. And yet, most of us feel pressed for time and with an electronic device in each hand it can feel as though we never quite switch off from work. With ‘busy’ being the new catch-cry, it […]

Who’s your source?

We live in a world of abundance. Abundance of ideas, data and information. The challenge is there is so much we can be overwhelmed. As the noted economist and Nobel Prize winner, Herbert Simon said we are living in a world with a “wealth of information”, which is creating “a poverty of attention”. He’s right. […]

Want to get more out of each day?

I’ve just finished reading Gretchen Ruben’s book, The Happiness Project. One of the quotes that stood out was: “The days are long, but the years are short.” I like the sentiment that’s captured by those thoughts, and yet I frequently find it feels like the days are short too. It can be easy to get […]

The power of being seen and heard

One of the most powerful human needs is that of being seen and heard. We all want to feel valued, important and that we matter at various times. This is something that marketers try to tap into all the time, as they strive to personalise marketing offers in a way that resonates with us. For […]

What could happen if you changed the lens?

People watching is one of my favourite pastimes because the world is full of amazing situations, people and places. On this occasion, I was fascinated with the very loud conversation a person was having at a café with a friend. They were annoyed. In fact, very annoyed because someone at work had let them down. […]

Are you making it harder than it needs to be?

When we think about procrastination we often think of the person who is disorganised and leaves everything until the last minute – always rushing to meet the deadline. They use the pressure of a deadline to get them motivated to action. But there’s more to it than that, because even people who are ordered and […]

Don’t keep yourself in the dark

In the era of fake news and a social media environment where image appears to be everything it is more important than ever to be curious and to look beyond the surface. It’s often never what it seems. In recent times, I’ve been fascinated to watch the Theranos scandal unfold. Theranos is the failed biomedical […]