Pick Your Path: Stress, Guilt, Fear
Help for three of your most pressing problems: managing stress, banishing guilt and overcoming fear. Enjoy.
Strategy
Pick Your Path: Boundaries, Decisions, Focus
Help for three of your most pressing problems: setting boundaries, making hard decisions and focusing your time and energy.
How to Make Hard Decisions More Easily
How to make hard decisions, broken down into three easy steps: frame, evaluate, test.
Make Peace with Problems
How to make peace with problems – because we always have them.
Understanding Idea Technology
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.
7 Ways to Feel Better About Your Job
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.
Save Your Relationships with Quality Questions
Bad questions kill relationships. Boost the quality of your professional connections by asking better quality questions.
Big Questions Enable Bold Choices
Most people ask small questions, so they make small-time progress. Learn to ask big questions for bolder choices and better results.
Master the World’s Most Valuable Skill
The world’s most valuable skill is decision-making. Here’s three frameworks to help you master it in record time.
The Problem Is Never the Problem
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 with Bright Spot Thinking
Business planning in a recession asks for bright spot thinking. Work backwards from the things that are workinhg instead of focusing on problems.
Don’t Be Afraid to Narrow Down
The planning paradox – the more specific you are, the more your opportunities expand.
Create Systems Change
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.
Strategists Get Whatever They Want
You can have literally anything you want – and it’s astonishingly easy to do it. Learn the strategist secret.
How to Care About Your Job Again
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.
Unwinnable Games
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.
Nail Your Next 8 Weeks: How to Keep Strategy Alive
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.
Find Your Why Journey Update #2
Ask meaningful questions about your purpose with Questions Of The Day. Rediscover what drives you and what you care about as I travel alongside.
Stop Using Meetings to Build Your Culture
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.
Why Your Team Needs a Meeting Policy – and What to Include
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.
Find Your Why Journey Update #1
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.
Tell, Don’t Sell: How to Get What You Want at Work
Conviction beats persuasion every time. Try these tips to get your project or proposal over the line in your next meeting.
Meetings Are Murder
Every time you have an unnecessary back to back meeting, a butterfly dies.
Get Your Meetings Under Control: 6 Questions to Help You Banish Back-to-backs
Take control of your calendar with this guide to running more focused, useful meetings.
Create a Personal Strategy
Humans are wired designed for meaning and contribution.. Create your personal strategy to maximise your contribution.
Why Strategy Fails (and What to Do Differently)
Understand why your strategy fails and learn practical ways to fix it for better results.
How to Stick to Your Strategy Throughout the Year
Learn 5 easy tips to help you stick to your strategy throughout the year, even when you’re busy and overwhelmed.
15 Signs of a Strategist
Are you a strategist? Find out the 15 tell-tale signs and strategic skills that indicate you are a strategist in the making.
4 Ways to Move Fast Without Breaking Things
Moving fast and breaking things is great, but you should follow these 4 rules to prevent unnecessary stress and headaches.
Lead Teams with Better Planning: Hit a Sustainable Pace
Leaders set the tone when it comes to planning and time management. When leading teams, your example is much more powerful than your words.
How to Be a Strategist: 3 Things to Do Today
Strategy is simple. To be a strategist, there are three easy things you can do to fully embrace your strategic side.
3 Strategic Thinking Skills That Get You What You Want
Achieve more of your goals and get more of what you want with these 3 strategic thinking skills.
When to Try New Things: 4 Options for Creating Change
How to decide what kind of change you need to move ahead with.
Leading Through Change: the Power of Language
Feeling overwhelmed and put upon? Try this easy language hack to shift your thinking and feel better quickly.
Find Your Purpose: Upgrade Your Inner Google
If you want to find your purpose, you might need to change your search criteria first.
The Mistrust Epidemic: Why We Don’t Trust Anyone at Work
Trust at work is declining, with disastrous consequences. Learn why this is happening and how you can rebuild trust in your workplace.
Embrace Meh: 6 Surprising Benefits of Feeling Like Sh*t
We all feel like sh*t sometimes. But it doesn’t have to be all bad – there’s a few decent upsides.
3 Things You Can Do to Make Your Meetings Suck Less
Most meetings suck, but they don’t have to. Learn the secret that that all good facilitators know about workshops that drive change…
8 Things People Get Wrong About Strategy
Here’s 8 myths about strategy – and how to do better.
8 Ways to Kill Stress for Good
Most advice on stress and resilience is short-term and unhelpful. Inside: eight powerful strategies that show you how to reduce stress.
Why Are You Like This?: How Strengths Overused Become Weaknesses
Every habit, pattern and behaviour that annoys you once served a useful purpose. But strengths overused become weaknesses.
How to Lead Change When People Don’t Care
Lead change so that people care. Build buy in and commitment to your change project with these tips.
Your 2020 Digest
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.
Angry People
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.
Facilitating Difficult Groups: 6 Lessons I Learned the Hard Way
Anger beats apathy every time. Harness the power of difficult groups with these tips.
How to Plan Your Year When Things Are Uncertain
Given the dogs breakfast that was 2020, there’s no point planning for next year… right? Wrong. So, so wrong.
4 Steps to Playing the Long Game
Most things matter less than you think – when you put your long game lens on.
How to Convert a Cynic: Assume Positive Intent
Why are some people so cynical and resistant to change? Probably for a good reason.
Before You Restructure, Read This
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.
Freshen Up Your Focus
It’s never been a better time to get clear on what really matters, and to do something about it.
How to Live Your Values
When you know what you’re not willing to compromise, you can let go of everything else.
Commit Or Quit
Good decisions are not about what we should do or will try to do; they’re about what we will do.
How to Tame Talkfests: Focus Prompts for Frustrated Facilitators
Four quick questions for facilitators to tame talkfests and drive focus in important conversations.
How to Find Your Purpose: 7 Questions from Mark Manson
If you don’t have the resolve and determination to do good sh*t, leadership is not for you.
How to Make People Listen
The level of influence you have on others is directly proportionate to the level of trust they have in you
Stop Being a Hero
Heroes overcome the odds. Systems change them.
Public Sector Leadership in Quiet Times: Readiness
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.
Beware the Lure of the New: Sustainable Change
The lure of the new is powerful, but it can come at the expense of the now.
Good Decisions
What makes a good decision good or bad isn’t the outcome – it’s how we make it.
Leverage As Less
Leverage isn’t always about more. Sometimes it’s about achieving the same or more, by doing less.
Go Back to Basics
Manage time, communicate well and keep relationships strong. Let’s get back to basics.
Meetings That Matter: Rethink Your Purpose
When did we decide that a meeting was the answer for everything? When did we stop valuing people’s presence?
When in Doubt, Zoom Out.
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…
You Can’t Work with What You Can’t See
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.
Preparation Beats Prediction
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.
Focus – to Have, to Do, Or to Be.
Like our eyesight, focus doesn’t mean staying fixated on one spot. It needs constant adjustment and adaptation.
Strategy Is Everyone’s Job
Ever heard of Not My Job (NMJ) syndrome? Making strategy meaningful and delivering on change is all about everyday decisions and actions.
Strategy Is Simple
Somewhere along the way, we let the buzzwords take over. But, strategy is simple at its heart.
Strategic Leadership: 3 Ways to Be Less Operational
How to shift from operational to strategic leadership – three quick tips to get you on your way
How to Focus More Clearly
Setting focused priorities is hard work. Here’s some useful perspective.
The Public Service Has Citizens, Not Customers
Businesses always focus on the needs of customers. But real public sector leadership puts the needs of the broader citizenry ahead of the individual.
Public Sector Leadership: Connect to Outcomes
What public sector leaders can learn from Undercover Boss about staying connected to outcomes.
Get Strategy Off the Shelf
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 Importance of Timing
Have you ever underestimated the importance of timing and suffered the consequences? Timing matters more than you think.
Strategy Needs Space
Here’s a tip: you don’t get out of the weeds by going deeper into the weeds. Strategy needs space.
How Running a Marathon Became Resilience Skills Training
17 lessons marathon running became resilience skills training.
If Everything Is a Priority, Nothing Really Is
Organisations should worry less about selecting the wrong priorities, and more about failing to prioritise and make it stick.
Translate Strategy to Action
Good strategy isn’t enough. We need to turn strategy to action – and here’s how you can get started.
Money Isn’t Everything: How to Uncover False Constraints
What would you do if you won Lotto? Be ready to challenge your thinking about what’s really holding you back.
Do More of What Makes You Awesome
Strategy gets a bad rap, because we overcomplicate it. Just do more of what makes you awesome.
Slow Action Lets Down Good Strategy: Get Moving on What Matters
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” – General George S. Patton, Jr.
How to Take Calculated Risks: 3 Key Steps
Fear is like alcohol because it clouds our judgement. Learn how to move past fear and take important, calculated risks.
How to Defeat Strategic Overwhelm
Strategic minimalism means understanding and respecting your bandwidth. Here’s how to defeat your strategy overwhelm.
The Curse of Common Sense
Common sense is a real curse when it comes to solving problems.
Prioritise with Intent
Real focused needs awareness, alignment and intention.
Get Over Yourself: Tackle Decision Bias
Like it or not, people are intuitively pretty crappy decision-makers. Get over yourself and tackle your decision bias.
Focus Means Saying No
You don’t have to do everything – and you shouldn’t.
Focus Means Saying No
You don’t have to do everything – and you shouldn’t.