A simple truth we keep running into: every organisation wants to stretch, grow, and sometimes reshape—but none of that is easy if the middle is stuck. Unfortunately that’s where leadership capacity seems to run thin. Thriving organisations run on a leadership engine, leadership that’s visible across the organisation. Their real strength seems to lie in …
Everyone loves a reliable leader.The one who delivers, holds the line, and steps in before a problem becomes a crisis. The steady one. The go-to. But for many “star performers,” reliability slowly becomes a trap.The pressure, the solitude, the constant expectation, all add up. At first, you call it a phase. A busy quarter. A …
I recently came across Canva’s Be a Good Human policy. At first glance, it felt almost too simple; something you’d expect on a school poster, not in the culture code of a multi-billion-dollar company. But the more I read, the clearer it became: this isn’t sentiment. It’s strategy. Empathy, when embedded in culture, isn’t just …
I was just entering my middle management years when I was handed my first real opportunity to lead something from scratch. A large-scale project that didn’t exist yet in form, but was full of potential. It was all heart and all grit. Long days, high stakes, but the joy of creating something meaningful made it …
I wasn’t meant to lead that day. Definitely didn’t plan on leading that meeting. It was my first year on the job, nerves were pretty high and what was meant to be a routine catch-up on the project, suddenly turned silent. The manager I was depending on was stuck in traffic. The client had arrived, …
The financial year reset is upon us, and with it comes the sacred ritual of budget planning. Across boardrooms, spreadsheets glow with freshly projected figures, and leaders make the annual pilgrimage to debate costs, investments, and—somewhere in the mix—employee wellbeing. Traditionally, this conversation culminates in a well-intentioned yet predictable line item: the grand annual offsite. …
The Leadership Catch-22: Why Complexity Trips Us Up (and How to Beat It) A funny thing happens when we face complexity: instead of leaning into it with curiosity, our nervous system often sounds the alarm. Fight, flee, freeze anything but engage. It’s as if our brain mistakes a messy spreadsheet or an uncertain future for …
I remember a moment from my early years as a professional that changed the way I think about work. I walked into a meeting completely drained, deadlines looming, stress mounting, and everything around me felt heavy. Before we started, a colleague paused, looked at me, and said, “Are you okay?” It wasn’t the usual “How …
Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar, has been known to say that he considers smart people, working together as more important than good ideas. To some that is quite shocking, coming from a creative powerhouse that has spawned ideas into blockbusters. But, a closer look at Pixar’s culture reveals that collaborating may actually be Pixar’s …
On January 27, 1967, a cabin fire occurred during a pre-launch test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft, resulting in the tragic deaths of all three astronauts aboard: Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee. A huge blow to the morale of the team and the engineers at NASA. A massive overhaul ensued in engineering, flight …
