Thoughts

Do you spend the first week of your holidays just recovering? Do you get sick when you step off the merri-go-round of day to day life? If so, you’re not alone. Most people are in this boat. We use our holidays to ‘get back to baseline’. There’s another option. That’s to make your time out […]

How often have you wished other people would ‘get’ the future that you see possible? Yesterday I was with a client who was expressing his frustration that his managers and teams just didn’t get the importance of operating differently. It’s a common challenge, right? You’re out there leading into a new future, while others furiously […]

I’ve been on some great leadership courses throughout my career. I’ve had great teachers. I’ve been exposed to brilliant ideas. And through the shared experience of a course, I’ve developed a rich network of colleagues, many of whom I still connect with today. But none of those courses can compare to the best leadership course […]

A lot of local councils here in New Zealand have recently declared a climate change emergency in their districts. Now, you might think that a bunch of local councils in one of the world’s smaller countries aren’t going to make much of a difference, especially to the global situation. And you might be right. Then […]

I was navigating my way through Sydney airport last week. It was a busy time of day, with plenty of travellers clogging the space. There were big lines everywhere. I was travelling with a group of colleagues. We all knew each other well and we were in a fun, playful mood. And when we encountered […]

Last week, I was lucky enough to listen to and meet James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. The book’s become a global phenomenon. He joined us at Thought Leaders Business School in Sydney to share some of the core ideas in his book. Here are three messages from James that stuck with me. And I […]

I was watching my son’s rugby game on the weekend. They took a hammering. And I reckon I know what happened. First, there were the ‘set pieces’. That’s where the game pauses for a bit, usually due to a penalty being given, or a try being scored. The team with the ball takes a moment, […]

Last week my family and I went on an amazing road trip through the South Island of New Zealand. We took the back roads, including a spectacular four-hour drive on winding gravel roads through Molesworth Station (check out the pic). Our 17-year-old son drove some of the way. He’s had his license for about nine […]

When people talk about achieving ‘work life balance’ and other such notions, I get the impression that they’ve got some nirvana in mind where everything is perfectly sorted. There are no tensions or conflicts to solve. Nothing changes. Sounds boring to me. Beyond boring, it’s not actually how life works. To my mind, ‘balance’ doesn’t […]

Last week my family and I went to Java, Indonesia. Our destination was a surf camp that was a bit of a mission to get to – an eight-hour drive from Denpasar in Bali, including a car ferry across to Java, and then down through the jungle from there. We’d heard from friends that the […]