3 Good Reasons to Go Consulting
People are leaving traditional employment in droves. Here’s three reasons to go consulting – and how you can get it right.
People are leaving traditional employment in droves. Here’s three reasons to go consulting – and how you can get it right.
Guy Beatson enrolled in Not An MBA, and after finding a new sense of confidence and conviction in his leadership, he now urges others to do the same.
When we asked Donna how to sum up her Not An MBA experience, she kept returning to the same word: grateful.
Before you quit your job you should know your reasons, know your numbers, and keep your connections.
Not An MBA goes deep on your individual leadership development – something that Chris Jones, Regional Manager at Downer NZ, hugely appreciated.
Reasons to share your works in progress, especially when you’re not very good yet.
Your job is a temporary station that forms a small part of your life. If it isn’t working for you, change it.
If you’re frustrated at work, and wondering if it has to be this way… you’re not alone. People are opting out of corporate bullshit, and you can too.
The Consultants of Choice Foundation Programme development journey – in a series of graphs and pictures.
Help for three of your most pressing problems: managing stress, banishing guilt and overcoming fear. Enjoy.
There is only one thing separating scared people, and people who know how to do scary thing: action. Action converts imagination into reality.
If you crave meaningful work, it might not happen by accident. Here’s how to shape a fulfilling career, by asking 5 questions.
Help for three of your most pressing problems: setting boundaries, making hard decisions and focusing your time and energy.
How to make hard decisions, broken down into three easy steps: frame, evaluate, test.
How to make peace with problems – because we always have them.
People who are healthy, happy and satisfied don’t waste their energy worrying what others are doing. Happy people don’t judge you.
When you have a clear value proposition you show up with confidence and intention. You attract better clients, do better work, and achieve better results.
Now is the right time to start your own business. Businesses need you and your expertise now more than ever.
The ideas we have shape the world we live in. We need to question those ideas regularly, to create a society we can be proud of.
Not everyone is cut out for self-employment. Here are 8 of the most important self employment skills you need to master for success.
Learn the promises and risks of self employment, so you can design a business and lifestyle to support your goals.
If you’re struggling to feel good about your job, don’t quit just yet. Try these 7 ways to feel better about your job.
Bad questions make you look stupid. Good questions make you look smart. Killer questions make you look strategic. Choose killer questions.
Hamish Thompson from Hamilton Jet leaned all the way into Not An MBAthanks to the comfort and connection he felt with the rest of the cohort.
Bad questions kill relationships. Boost the quality of your professional connections by asking better quality questions.
Arie Hutflesz, a contractor at the Ministry of Justice, is enthusiastic when she describes what a refreshing change Not An MBA was for her.
Jo Kearins was ready to change her approach to leadership and breakthrough to a new level. On Not An MBA, she discovered a new way to work, lead, and live.
Most people ask small questions, so they make small-time progress. Learn to ask big questions for bolder choices and better results.
ChatGPT is the latest AI tool to break the internet. Learn how to beat AI and stop it stealing your job by asking better questions.
The world’s most valuable skill is decision-making. Here’s three frameworks to help you master it in record time.
Level up the questions you ask to make connections, drive progress and show true leadership.
Avoid these five career mistakes for a more fulfilling and meaningful career.
Here’s some controversial opinions I’d like to share on decision-making after 10 years working at the coal-face with thousands of leaders.
Check out Alicia’s top 10 business and personal development books for your summer 2022 reading list.
Use your core values to make tricky decisions and improve how you feel about your life.
Discover insights on how to decide what you really want and learn practical tips to apply in your own context.
The problem is rarely the problem. Strategists know that, and they don’t waste time blaming people, when systems are usually at fault.
Business planning in a recession asks for bright spot thinking. Work backwards from the things that are workinhg instead of focusing on problems.
Burnout is killing us – but the answer lies within us. Are you owning your reality?
When you work towards the grain, you generate incredible results and find endless reserves of energy and creativity. When you work against it, you suffer in silence.
The planning paradox – the more specific you are, the more your opportunities expand.
Take a personal inventory of where you’re spending your time, to eliminate the things that threaten your personal or professional peace.
Most people don’t like their jobs. It’s often not the job that’s the problem, but the way we think about it. Reconnect to your sense of meaning this week.
You can have literally anything you want – and it’s astonishingly easy to do it. Learn the strategist secret.
Most people don’t like their jobs. It’s often not the job that’s the problem, but the way we think about it. Here’s how to care about your job again.
Anything worth doing for the long haul is going to require renovation at some point. Keep a maintenance budget and be prepared for bust ups.
A blistering take-down of the child sex economy perpetrated by popular media outlets, including Netflix.
Odds are, to survive professionally or socially, you’ve dampened some of the most interesting things about you. Those are the things that offer the most value to the world. Own your outcast status.
The Queen’s death is a powerful inciting incident. An opportunity to ask important collective questions about our history and the kind of society we want to live in. Is it time for you to muse?
Discontented, middle-class family men who cheat and leave their wives for the promise of a better future are a cultural trope so common as to be unremarkable.
It’s time to stop shrinking, find your big voice, and use it. The world needs you.
Gaslighting is psychological manipulation aimed at undermining your grip on reality. It leaves you questioning your feelings, experiences or interpretation of a situation and it is an abuse of power in the workplace.
Some games can’t be won, and need the rules need changing. Stop trying to optimise yourself and start tearing down the structures that keep you trapped.
Juicy free resources to help you set boundaries, tackle burnout, take the plunge into business, reject professionalism and rail against the system.
Professionalism is just an acceptable way to discriminate against people in the workplace. It’s time we talked about class.
It’s time to stop being so nice and start standing up for what you deserve.
Women are expected to do more, much of which isn’t valued, and it still isn’t good enough. Gaps in confidence and exhaustion are burning us out.
Discover insights on the problem with banking on a better future and learn practical tips to apply in your own context.
Change is hard, even when we want it. Before things improve, they tend to get much worse – and here are five key reasons why that happens.
Stop pointing fingers at people when you talk about change and focus on the systems that need shifting instead.
Here’s some ideas for how to run exciting and engaging strategy away days that will keep people on track and keep your big picture plan moving forward.
Ask meaningful questions about your purpose with Questions Of The Day. Rediscover what drives you and what you care about as I travel alongside.
Being nice is a dangerous game. Taken too far, we damage relationships, jeopardise safety, perpetrate inequality and shortchange our impact.
There is no escaping problems, but you can use them as tools for learning, development, relationships, growth, service and leadership.
If you value socialising enough to allow work time for it, don’t rip people off by using meetings as a guise. Give them genuine opportunity, and watch your culture flourish.
Stop blaming people for managing their time poorly. Banish toxic culture by creating a meeting policy that supports everyone to do better, and feel better.
Ask meaningful questions about your purpose by joining in with this Question Of The Day experiment. Find your why alongside me as I make sense of things.
Conviction beats persuasion every time. Try these tips to get your project or proposal over the line in your next meeting.
A business model is a how. A strategy is a how. A job is a how. And the how I’d chosen was wrong, for all kinds of reasons…
Every time you have an unnecessary back to back meeting, a butterfly dies.
Take control of your calendar with this guide to running more focused, useful meetings.
I’m good at walking out. Truth is: I’m rash. I make snap decisions on gut feeling, and sometimes that comes back to bite me.
The potential for outrage is high right now. How can you have controversial conversations without descending into conflict?
Disagreement is great – but don’t back people into a corner. Leave room for dignity.
We spend 5x as much time lurking, watching and comparing ourselves to the public versions of others than we do interacting with people we care about. Eesh. No wonder we’re trapped in our own heads.
Making intentional choices about what is your responsibility, and what isn’t, means being OK with upsetting people.
Humans are wired designed for meaning and contribution.. Create your personal strategy to maximise your contribution.
Understand why your strategy fails and learn practical ways to fix it for better results.
Grace knew she wanted to level up her leadership – but she was struggling to find the right option for her. Enter: Not An MBA.
Create new coping strategies that move you forward, and stop hanging on to the past.
The more information we have access to, the greater our need for shared experiences. Facilitate meaning, not learning.
Clarity is not the opposite of confusion – it’s on the other side. Here’s 5 important things you should know about clarity.
If you keep thinking about it, it’s a sign you need to do something.
Struggling to trust your teams to get on and do a good job? Here’s three things you can do to make delegation easier.
Your vibes have more power than you realise – why your leadership is contagious.
Learn 5 easy tips to help you stick to your strategy throughout the year, even when you’re busy and overwhelmed.
Are you a strategist? Find out the 15 tell-tale signs and strategic skills that indicate you are a strategist in the making.
Moving fast and breaking things is great, but you should follow these 4 rules to prevent unnecessary stress and headaches.
Leadership is a buzzword that’s all the rage. But what does it really mean? In this article, we define leadership for the real world.
Authentic leadership and authenticity in the workplace are hot topics right now – but we’re missing the point on power and privilege.
Here’s a handy trick you can use to makes hard decisions a bit easier – and it won’t cost you a thing.
Changing your habits is hard – so before you start looking for things to take off the list, think about what you want more of instead.
Leaders set the tone when it comes to planning and time management. When leading teams, your example is much more powerful than your words.
Decisive leaders made tough decisions, with limited information, at speed. Fast decisions beat no decision.
Our social habits have been disrupted by the pandemic, and many of us just want to stay home now. That’s cool!
We’re all so busy – but what are we masking with those choices? Go beyond busy and ask yourself some scary questions.
Strategy is simple. To be a strategist, there are three easy things you can do to fully embrace your strategic side.
There are 4 key signs that it’s time to change. Check them out.
Almost 500 New Zealand professionals tell us the three most important things you can do to rediscover a sense of purpose and meaning in your work.
Nathan Smith was drawn to the opportunity for challenge that Not An MBA offered – and he wasn’t disappointed, seeing growth every week.
Achieve more of your goals and get more of what you want with these 3 strategic thinking skills.
How to decide what kind of change you need to move ahead with.
There are 17 days until Christmas. The way I see it, you’ve got two options…
You’ll be better at solving problems if you can put work into perspective.
Constant dissatisfaction and a push for improvement are the symptoms of a person who cares a lot and is working hard. It doesn’t mean you’re doomed to keep feeling like that, just that you’ve got new skills to learn now, because what got you here isn’t going to get you there. It might be time to lev
Sometimes we have to make our own endings, to make space for new things.
Warren Landles, Sustainability Manager at ofi, was blown away by how immediately value his Not An MBA experience was.
We should always be a beginner at something. When we’re uncomfortably stupid about something new, we grow.
New research suggests from now on, business growth will be driven by data, brand, reputation, strategy and content.
It’s hard to take feedback when we take it personally. It’s hard to change our opinion when our identity is attached to it. It’s hard to change who we vote for, what job we do, or how we parent our kids if we’ve used that to define ourselves.
Life would be easier without bosses, colleagues and customers. Except… we wouldn’t have a job. People are the problem, but they’re also the point.
The reason we get together is to make things happen outside of the meeting. To build understanding, shape choices and make decisions that will get the wheels of progress turning. If we’re wasting time, we’re also wasting energy, money and opportunity – none of which is OK.
Melissa Bailey wasn’t sure what to expect when she signed up for Not An MBA. A few weeks in, she couldn’t believe how quickly she changed.
All good decision processes include action.
The company you keep matters. Target your networking to people who will help you grow.
If you’re worried about your job, your business or your future, stop building technical skills. There’s always a market for uncertainty.
Life is full of worries. Reduce your anxiety by focusing on upgrading your worries, rather than getting rid of them.
We live in worrying times. Learn how to lead well when you’re worried.
Stop avoiding the important questions in your life and let go of your addictions.
If you’re wondering how to become a CEO, think about the outcome you want – not just the achievement.
Here are the five secrets of successful CEOS.
How to use crisis and challenges to develop new skills for the future.
Swapping out the occasional “I have to” for an “I choose to” or “I’m learning to” can have a transformational effect on the way we think about our situation. I mean, it’s happening anyway, so… why not?
Don’t stop growing and changing.. There’s always a way forward, it’s time to get unstuck.
Feeling overwhelmed and put upon? Try this easy language hack to shift your thinking and feel better quickly.
Could we maybe diagnose different patterns of behaviour and thinking based on the language people use?
Check out my top leadership reads for 2021. The best leadership books for the modern leader, vetted by Alicia McKay.
What are you still telling yourself that you don’t need to? Can you speak to someone else with a different story?
If you want to find your purpose, you might need to change your search criteria first.
This week, we’re talking about perspective – do you need to zoom out?
These are the five most important leadership skills you need to get ahead – and we probably won’t teach them to you.
This week, we’re talking about performance – are you working too hard?
This week, we’re talking about what flexibility is all about
Trust at work is declining, with disastrous consequences. Learn why this is happening and how you can rebuild trust in your workplace.
This week, we’re talking about how to treat ourselves as well as we treat others.
How can we be kind to others, when it doesn’t come naturally?
Seven things I’ve learned about how to handle a breakdown.
We might not get our revolution. But we might get something even more important instead.
This week, we talk about living your values. Spoiler alert: it’s hard.
We all feel like sh*t sometimes. But it doesn’t have to be all bad – there’s a few decent upsides.
Most meetings suck, but they don’t have to. Learn the secret that that all good facilitators know about workshops that drive change…
Here’s 8 myths about strategy – and how to do better.
Everyone makes mistakes, especially when they’re doing something worthwhile. It’s what you do next that counts. Here’s how to learn from your mistakes.
Most advice on stress and resilience is short-term and unhelpful. Inside: eight powerful strategies that show you how to reduce stress.
Every habit, pattern and behaviour that annoys you once served a useful purpose. But strengths overused become weaknesses.
Leaders aren’t the experts anymore – they don’t know the answers, they ask the questions. Here’s five skills you need.
Lead change so that people care. Build buy in and commitment to your change project with these tips.
Living a peaceful, meaningful life means giving your values some legs. Enter: boundaries.
Many of us read unprecedented numbers of books in 2020. Here’s 12 of my 2020 favourites on personal development, leadership, politics and society.
If 2020 had one thing going for it, it was lessons. Buckets of them. Here’s five of mine.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the remnants of 2020 and unsure what to take into 2021, try this guide to a 2020 digest – and have a read of mine.
Anger is not a feeling we’re not encouraged to have. We’re taught to ‘manage’ – aka stifle – it… and that sucks. Because anger is important.
Anger beats apathy every time. Harness the power of difficult groups with these tips.
Moving forward in our lives and work requires us to find acceptance. It’s not easy, but here are 4 steps to get you on your way.
You can take charge of your life by tackling these ten things.
Given the dogs breakfast that was 2020, there’s no point planning for next year… right? Wrong. So, so wrong.
Most things matter less than you think – when you put your long game lens on.
Why are some people so cynical and resistant to change? Probably for a good reason.
We need less change management and more uncertainty management.
It’s not change that’s hard. It’s what it represents.
Restructures, by any name, are not the answers to most of your problems. Check out this hierarchy to understand what you should focus on instead.
As Henry David Thoreau wrote: ‘Things do not change; we change.’
It’s never been a better time to get clear on what really matters, and to do something about it.
When you know what you’re not willing to compromise, you can let go of everything else.
Sustaining momentum is hard for everyone. Just keep going.
Good decisions are not about what we should do or will try to do; they’re about what we will do.
Four quick questions for facilitators to tame talkfests and drive focus in important conversations.
If you don’t have the resolve and determination to do good sh*t, leadership is not for you.
The level of influence you have on others is directly proportionate to the level of trust they have in you
Heroes overcome the odds. Systems change them.
We need to be careful of the quiet times, because that’s when we lose track of progress. Public sector leadership means readiness for what’s coming next.
The lure of the new is powerful, but it can come at the expense of the now.
What makes a good decision good or bad isn’t the outcome – it’s how we make it.
Cultivating networks doesn’t mean you need to join the social club. But it does mean that you need to be likeable.
There’s plenty of stuff we can focus on. But unless we’re clear on our most important priorities, it won’t happen.
Expecting to do important, different work inside the same constraints, environments and attitudes is a fools game.
Anyone can be an influencer, if they’re trusted and respected by the people they need to impact.
You don’t need to worry about goals – think about your identity instead. What identity do you need to take on to build lasting change?
Leverage isn’t always about more. Sometimes it’s about achieving the same or more, by doing less.
Your value isn’t in your indispensability, it’s in what you build in others.
Nothing important happens by accident. Minutiae is the mint plant of your task garden.
So much of what we do isn’t seen, isn’t asked for and isn’t valued. I’m calling time on the invisible list.
Sometimes we don’t really see ourselves, until we look through the eyes of others. How do we build on our position as the leader of leaders?
Dig below the surface and grow from stress by asking better questions.
Manage time, communicate well and keep relationships strong. Let’s get back to basics.
When decision fatigue hits, it’s time to get smart about how we use our mental energy.
When did we decide that a meeting was the answer for everything? When did we stop valuing people’s presence?
When everything around us changes, it’s time to adapt the way we work. How do we make systems change easy?
Crisis is a bit exciting, isn’t it? After the adrenaline wears off, there’s an awkward transition between response and recovery.
There’s a lot happening online right now. This increase in connection is unprecedented, and incredible. I don’t know about you, but it seems to depend what mood I’m in when I scroll, how it lands. Some posts really hit the spot. Others feel hollow, or add to my overwhelm.
We’re hearing the phrase “new normal” a lot this week. That’s a funny one isn’t it. I’ve never been much of a fan of normal… but this week, I get it.
Priorities are being tested – how can you use this as an opportunity?
Organisational culture – it’s a trendy phrase, but is it useful?
Do what you’ve always done, and you’ll get what you’ve always got. Think about changing your systems and mindset.
Perspective is a funny old thing – the things that are huge when they’re right in front of us seem to get smaller when they’re further away…
It’s 2020 vision time – how to grab onto this epic temporal landmark.
You are on top of things. There is plenty of time.
Whether it’s too many projects too many tasks or too many black t-shirts, you can’t work with what you can’t see.
I think it’s worth asking tricky questions like…
The way you spend time matters at least as much as the way you spend money. You’re certainly not getting any more of it.
What phantom pains are your leadership team dealing with?
Do you spend enough time looking outside? Are you connected to the edge?
Alignment is not agreement… it’s productive disagreement. Don’t aim for agreement.
People aren’t very good at judging risk when they make decisions. Try this trick to improve your risk management and decision making.
Like parenting, relationships and pretty much all things involving people, trust goes both ways… and someone has to go first.
Pushing back on other’s priorities
Is your team hiding in a shell? You need to take risks to make progress.
I never thought I’d be quoting Justin Timberlake in a Wednesday Wisdom, but I couldn’t resist this one.
The lens of a childhood dream, obituary or a newspaper headline gives us the opportunity to question the meaning of things.
The Global Simplicity Index tells us that, in the private sector, simplicity pays. Government should take this lead.
Anything worth learning has a steep effort curve at the beginning.
If you spend all your time on the detail, the big picture suffers. It’s time to get out of the operational weeds and focus onstrategic leadership.
When we connect the big picture and the ground-floor, we can make better, faster progress. Connect design and delivery.
Eliminate points of friction fro systems change, by looking at policy, process, people and budgets.
Where is your board, team or Council on this the continuum? Is it time to light some fires?
Are you suffering more in imagination than in reality? Or worse – not confronting reality at all? Does your team ‘get’ risk? Here’s some handy advice.
What rules do you need to set for yourself, to do more of what matters? True freedom is about making those rules and sticking to them.
Strategy and creativity are one and the same. Creativity is not magic. Get to work.
Like our eyesight, focus doesn’t mean staying fixated on one spot. It needs constant adjustment and adaptation.
Keep change momentum moving, if you want people to continue to care.
The thing about real change is that it can’t be as well as – we’re already at maximum capacity. Real change needs to be instead of .
Is your strategy keeping up with the times? Or are you still hooked on an old zeitgest?
When the way we do business doesn’t line up with the goals of our strategy, it’s hard to make real progress.
It’s budget time again – how’s yours going? Do your budget conversations sound at all like your strategy conversations?
Good decisions need diversity. And I mean real diversity – age, background, gender, the whole lot.
Ever heard of Not My Job (NMJ) syndrome? Making strategy meaningful and delivering on change is all about everyday decisions and actions.
Somewhere along the way, we let the buzzwords take over. But, strategy is simple at its heart.
ATMs did not spell the end for bank tellers, and machines are unlikely to spell the end for strategists. The demand for jobs with critical analysis, meaning-making and leadership skills is predicted to skyrocket.
Public sector strategy: producing maximum value through community impact.
When it comes to rolling out change, courting is the key. We can’t go straight to total commitment and participation without earning our way along.
Whether you’re driving technology change, process change, service delivery change, or any other kind of shift, we need people to come on the journey, and we need to make it possible for them to make ideas real.
When we take our finger off the pulse, and expect things to run smoothly without any additional tweaking or support, change dies. Leadership requires support.
We need to be asking questions that get useful answers and outcomes, and provide clear scope for engagement
Are you asking, when you should be telling?
Unfortunately, we can make that unnecessarily difficult, by turning human instinct into a transactional process that benefits no-one. The antidote?
How to get people interested in your change movement.
Making your thinking meaningful to others is one of the most important steps in driving new behaviours.
What to do when things change. Stop being so reactive and be more proactive and adaptive.
Setting priorities and following through requires us to say no to things – but that can be hard. Here’s some helpful advice to say no, nicely.
What mildly important things do you need to avoid?? Put your first things first and live your priorities.
You’ve already lost 8 hours, 1 more won’t help. Try making space instead. You have plenty of time.
How to shift from operational to strategic leadership – three quick tips to get you on your way
Setting focused priorities is hard work. Here’s some useful perspective.
There is a right and a wrong way to handle project failures – one builds trust, the other breeds resentment. Move on from project failure the right way.
Businesses always focus on the needs of customers. But real public sector leadership puts the needs of the broader citizenry ahead of the individual.
What public sector leaders can learn from Undercover Boss about staying connected to outcomes.
Actionable Strategy is Shelf Strategy’s hot cousin. A bit risky, but everyone loves it because it’s exciting and good things seem to happen when it’s around.
The public sector can be a tough gig – complicated, fast-moving and sometimes thankless. Inside: tips to cope with the crazy and enjoy the ride.
Focus on a single issue or behaviour to create better habits faster.
Amidst the festive chaos, I reckon this is the time to commit to calm. Are you with me?
Have you ever underestimated the importance of timing and suffered the consequences? Timing matters more than you think.
Making real progress in your work and life depends on your personal sense of agency. When you believe in yourself, you make changes, not excuses.
Respect your paygrade and learn to delegate.
Here’s a tip: you don’t get out of the weeds by going deeper into the weeds. Strategy needs space.
I’m going to let you in on a secret: people aren’t actually afraid of change…. they’re afraid of loss.
Why we need to be more like a baby and less like Adam Sandler when it comes to strategic progress.
Do you think it’s OK to fail? What about your teams, do they feel able to?
17 lessons marathon running became resilience skills training.
Have you been silencing tricky questions, brave ideas or a gnawing feeling in your gut? It could be time to embrace your inner rebel.
Resilient organisations need resilient people, this is true. Resilient people need resilient organisations even more.
Organisations should worry less about selecting the wrong priorities, and more about failing to prioritise and make it stick.
Time and space to rest, recover and reflect is critical for us to adapt to change. We simply don’t value it highly enough.
The habits that are required to successfully achieve a big goal are often more rewarding than the goal itself. Make the habit the result.
Good strategy isn’t enough. We need to turn strategy to action – and here’s how you can get started.
BAU doesn’t stop for new ideas. Intentionally create space for what’s important and take other stuff off the list to make it happen.
Allow yourself to be awesome, and you empower others to do the same
While I don’t agree with half the stuff that comes out of Gary Vaynerchuk’s mouth, but I do like this quote: “Ideas are shit, execution is the game.”
Smart people and organisations tend to know what to do – they need to know what to stop. What got you here won’t get you there.
What would you do if you won Lotto? Be ready to challenge your thinking about what’s really holding you back.
“The starting point is always now. The end is up to you.” – Ron Kaufman. Start now, not tomorrow.
Strategy gets a bad rap, because we overcomplicate it. Just do more of what makes you awesome.
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” – General George S. Patton, Jr.
Fear is like alcohol because it clouds our judgement. Learn how to move past fear and take important, calculated risks.
Strategic minimalism means understanding and respecting your bandwidth. Here’s how to defeat your strategy overwhelm.
Common sense is a real curse when it comes to solving problems.
Real focused needs awareness, alignment and intention.
Like it or not, people are intuitively pretty crappy decision-makers. Get over yourself and tackle your decision bias.
You don’t have to do everything – and you shouldn’t.
You don’t have to do everything – and you shouldn’t.