When I was 20, fresh out of university and in my first HR job, one of the senior leaders told me they liked coming to me for advice because I didn’t waffle. I gave a clear, decisive response.
The paradox of presence
From table-thumping to conflict intelligence
The room was packed with officials and workplace delegates from the Building and Engineering Unions. There were rank-and-file and leaders, shoulder to shoulder. The all-male negotiating team who’d been in place before me, told me it had been tense, loud, and aggressive.
The danger of clinging to a single signal
Doing so, soothes the discomfort of not knowing, but it creates a false sense of certainty that does not last.
Why overlearning matters before storms hit
The moment I stepped onto the stage, the batteries in the clicker started to die. Of course, they worked fine in soundcheck. They worked fine for the two speakers before me. But the second I needed them, there was nothing. I clicked and clicked and clicked, and nothing happened. And when it finally did work, it jumped three slides ahead, and I had to backtrack.
The cost of “faking it till you make it”
She wasn’t the CEO, but she was a senior executive everyone watched. In the quarterly all-staff briefings, she stood at the front of the room with polished slides, confident tone, and reassuring stories about the future. People nodded. The board praised her calm under pressure.
The hidden web that makes or breaks change
As executive sponsor of a major ICT system rollout, I faced a project board full of senior stakeholders—each with competing priorities, and hundreds of deliverables buried in the procurement documents.
The shortcut to breakthrough when talks are going nowhere
When people dig in, curiosity is the only thing that gets them to move. I’ve seen it turn adversaries into collaborators in hours—not months.
Is your team’s success hiding next year’s risk?
In 2003, Ducati re-entered MotoGP with a beginner’s mindset, focusing on learning rather than winning.
What if what you “know” just isn’t true anymore?
I was interested in trying out Microsoft’s AI offering, particularly its features for a secure environment, after learning how to get more out of ChatGPT.