Thoughts

When Naomi Osaka announced that she was not going to attend the post-match press conferences at this year’s French Open, she did me a favour. She shone a light on a status quo that I hadn’t really paid attention to before. That status quo was the requirement for professional tennis players to show up at […]

Last week I was in a session with my counsellor. Yes, I see a counsellor! He’s super-helpful to help me try to make sense of my life in a turbulent world. I was sharing with him how full-on life is right now and how it just feels non-stop. It’s like I’m always ‘on’. I’m on […]

I just watched Seven Years in Tibet. Brad Pitt stars as a headstrong mountaineer who becomes a prisoner-of-war in 1930’s Tibet. After multiple solo attempts, he escapes by teaming up with his fellow prisoners. When he’s out, he says “I’m going it alone” and runs off into the wilderness. Yet another movie upholding individual heroism. […]

When he was three years old, he was stung by a bee. His mother said “what a naughty bee!” And he replied “Mum, it’s OK. I think the bee thought I was a flower.” When she was 39 years old, she got a note from the tax department saying that she was due for a […]

Are you hearing a lot about ‘wellbeing’ at the moment? It is the flavour of the month or a fundamental strategy? I had conversations with two different client organisations last week, both centring on wellbeing. Their two lenses couldn’t have been more different. For one client, their wellbeing agenda was a list of activities that […]

When you’re on a mission to change the world, you’re going to hit some headwinds. Below is a transcript from a conversation I had with a client last week about how they’re dealing with headwinds, and how they can use them…   Right now, I feel like my wings have been clipped. For the past […]

You may know that I’ve been learning Wing Foiling lately. It’s kind of like being on those America’s Cup boats but on a smaller scale. You’re riding a kind of surfboard with a hydrofoil attached underneath, flying above the water powered by a ‘wing’, or sail. It’s exhilarating, and the learning curve comes with lots […]

I remember being at school – I think I must have been about six years old – when a friend, David, suggested we follow a line of ants on the ground to see where they led to. So we started off. I picked one ant and followed it as it slowly wended its way across […]

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing that at some level you want to create positive change in 2021. Maybe it’s for your industry. Maybe for your organisation or team. Maybe it’s just for you. How set up are you to do that successfully? Here are some ideas that I reckon help a huge amount. Commitment […]

Towards the end of 2020, I worked with one of New Zealand’s highest profile public sector executive teams. In the year that was, the CEO and the organisation had been under the pump and was in the media spotlight for most of the year. They were keen to reflect and review how they’d led during […]