On Monday, I had the privilege to spend an hour with Marshall Goldsmith, one of the leading executive coaches on the planet and 3 times NYT best selling author. I was struck by his humility, sense of purpose and joyfulness. As someone once wrote about him, in the dictionary against the word ‘Joy’ is a...Read More

Many of us have been shaking our heads at the political ‘system’ and politicians for years now, and we’ve had more examples in recent days of how low things are sinking to. A front runner for Republican nomination for President of the USA has his rallies cancelled after inciting people to violence in previous rallies (“Get...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

I have a philosophy on management which goes – if you notice the manager, then management has gone wrong. Good management should be invisible. It happens behind the scenes, allowing the parts to move together efficiently and the whole organisation to work effectively. Good managers select great people, self motivators, give them the tools to do the job...Read More

There are loads of books out there about sales. I was fortunate last year to have breakfast with the author of the best selling sales book of all time, Jeff Gitomer, who wrote ‘The Little Red Book of Selling‘. Jeff has an awesome ego, as one might expect, and was wonderful company. He cooked me a...Read More

OK, I know I got the whole Chris Gayle sexism thing off my chest recently, but when one of my junior cricketers yesterday was telling me how good Gayle’s recent 12-ball 50 was (… hopefully his final innings at the Big Bash), I had to take issue. Did his team win that game, I asked? Err…...Read More

We’re in the middle of ‘startup week’ in Perth, with an incredible array of start up events, conferences, hackathons, demo days, meetups and even reports being published (one is already out.) The media, MPs and Ministers are all over it. There’s a bit of ‘bandwagon jumping’ going on, but that’s OK, as long as something now happens...Read More

Last week I spoke about catastrophe theory, and the way things can go belly up pretty quickly, from a seemingly impregnable position. It can happen in business (think Kodak, Blockbuster, Australia Post..) and sport (countless examples – including the French golfer who blew up in the last at Carnoustie in 1999). It can happen in...Read More

There’s no doubt that most of business, sport and life generally is played in the mind. What fascinates me are those moments of madness, when what has gone before is seemingly irrelevant, and pressure leads to craziness. Take the incredible implosion of French golfer Jean van de Velde at the last hole of the British...Read More

There’s a line in an old episode of The West Wing that goes : ‘What do you call a leader that no one follows?    Just someone walking around.’ In the past week we’ve seen another change of political leadership at the top, our 5th Prime Minister in 5 years, which some refer to as “the...Read More