With Australian companies feeling the pressure of digital disruption – a ‘damburst‘ if you will – new research has found three key areas that companies successful at digital marketing have in common. The research indicates that a clear strategy, team-wide digital literacy, and using data to shape narratives inside a company correlated strongly with the...Read More

This week it was revealed that local tech business, HealthEngine, had raised $26 million from global venture capitalist Sequoia Capital. This is notable for a few reasons: it’s the largest private sector investment in a local tech startup the first such investment from this Silicon Valley VC in Western Australia, and their second in Australia...Read More

The first time I came to Perth, WA, was exactly 25 years ago, as a busker. Christmas 1991. We had a brilliant 10 days, and – incredibly – each made enough to cover our return airfares. At the time, I was living and working in Singapore, where busking was prohibited. Something about it being against the...Read More

In a recent post, I argued there was one proven way (borne from research) that dealt with bullying, but it was not easy to do. You had to deal with all 4 sides of bullying behaviour: the bully, the victim, the bully’s acolytes and the majority who carry on with their lives. I’d now like to step...Read More

No one’s listening anymore. Not for long anyway, as in, not for more than a few seconds. In this twitter era of short concentration spans, communication is boiled down to 3 word phrases and little else. You get passing attention. There’s just so much ‘stuff’ going on, flying by on newsfeeds and instachatter. Recent elections around...Read More

The CEO Sleepout last Thursday night was another humbling and thought-provoking experience for me, plus the other 100+ WA CEOs who braved the cold and hard concrete floors of the WACA, armed only with a thin piece of cardboard, a sleeping bag and a pillow. I found the same spot I had used 6 years earlier, and actually...Read More

I’ve lived through a few recessions in my time. I still remember getting the candles out (yes, really) during the miner’s strike of the early 1970s in England. I was 9. It was fun – as a family we knew when the power cuts were coming to our little town, and when to get the candles...Read More

It is a sad fact that today in 2016, you are more likely to meet a board chair called “Peter” than a female board chair. Only 22% of Board appointees are women, although this has increased from 9% a few years ago. In Australia, a recent report showed that men in full time jobs were paid...Read More

For the past 55 years, every Australia Day, the ‘Australian of the Year’ is announced, usually by the Prime Minister in a ceremony outside Parliament House. It’s become a major occasion, and is televised. The Award was originally designed to bring some deeper meaning and a focal point to Australia Day itself. These days the...Read More

On Friday I attended an Economic Outlook breakfast, hosted by RSM, with NAB chief economist, Alan Oster. Here are my notes… it’s more positive than you might have guessed (which was the main take away.) The headline is that there will be no recession in Australia in 2016, continuing an amazing 24 year run for our economy. Basically,...Read More