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Insights on Purpose-led leadership.
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Your purpose statement is just the start. Here's how to make it a reality
Every leadership conference has them: the beautifully crafted purpose statement, unveiled with ceremony, celebrated internally—and then quietly forgotten as the urgency of quarterly targets reasserts itself. Purpose becomes wallpaper.
The Real Leadership Crisis Isn’t Burnout — It’s Purpose Drift
Purpose drift quietly drives disengagement, poor decisions and declining performance — and most organisations have no idea it’s happening.
Why Your Training Investment Isn't Solving Your Retention Problem
Here is a scenario most learning and development professionals will recognize: the organization has invested seriously in its people—leadership programs, coaching, skills academies, well-being initiatives—yet engagement scores remain stubbornly flat, managers are still burning out and top talent is still leaving.
Why purpose without follow-through is just wallpaper
Most CEOs we work with genuinely care about purpose. The offsite was real, the conversation was real—and then the quarterly results came in, the restructure needed managing, and the purpose statement stayed on the wall while the organisation got on with things.
As Summer Davos Debates Innovation, Purpose Is the Bigger Story
As leaders convene at Summer Davos in Dalian, the debate centers on how to scale innovation amid geopolitical volatility, economic uncertainty and rapid A.I. adoption. But the organizations best positioned to innovate at scale are those with the clearest sense of why they exist.
From LinkedIn
"Grief cracks you open. But sometimes, what spills out is love, clarity, and a deeper sense of purpose."
Over the past week, I’ve been sitting with the immense grief of losing my mum. Her passing has been one of those rare, life-altering thresholds—a moment that disrupts the everyday, and invites you to reflect on what really matters.
Doing the inner work to Transcend as a Leader
This week, I immersed myself in my third Transcend.Space retreat, alongside 28 extraordinary individuals in the magnificent Norwich countryside.
The Transformative Power of a Retreat
Many of us are fortunate enough to enjoy offsites, planning sessions and other “out-of-band” events with our colleagues from time to time. They provide an opportunity to reflect on how your team is working together, contemplate the future and sometimes to get to know your colleagues on a deeper leve
Social Entrepreneurship - An idea whose time has come.
The Schwab Foundation defines social entrepreneurs as “founders of non-profit, hybrid or for-profit organisations who innovatively address a social or environmental problem, with a focus on low-income, marginalised or vulnerable populations.” In a world where social issues are exploding, where gover
How COVID-19 is defining business purpose
Last Friday, EY convened a webcast with leaders of key Purpose-led organisations including: Alan Jope, CEO Unilever Plc Nigel Higgins, Group Chairman, Barclays Bank Plc Bernard Looney, CEO BP Plc Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO Dell Technologies Carmine Di Siblio, Chairman and CEO EY Over 10,000 peop
How are Purpose-led Leaders rising to the challenge of COVID-19?
The words unprecedented and surreal are probably the two most used words I hear when speaking with leaders who are doing their utmost to navigate COVID-19 and keep their own organisation intact. There is no doubt, we are living through the greatest crisis of our generation.
How do we move from problem mode to solution mode on climate change?
Looking out of the window from our Melbourne office today with visibility reduced to less than a kilometre and air quality at hazardous levels due to the terrible bushfires, it is hard not to feel this is the wake-up call Australians needed. The tragic event that shakes us out of discussing we have
Is a benefit company the Purpose-driven company of the Future?
Compared to a couple of years ago, most would agree that the Purpose movement has been gathering steam. To this point, the Australian Financial Review awarded 'Purpose' the Business Buzzword for 2018.
The power of purpose in action
In the last of my series of four purpose blogs, I felt it was important to reflect on the week that has been. EY has been holding our #EY #FutureRealised at Cockatoo Island in Sydney.
Do employees care about purpose? And does this translate into monetary value?
Earlier this year I was approached to pitch for a $300k-400k piece of work to design a customer-led strategy for an organisation whose values didn’t align with my beliefs and EY’s purpose "Building a better working world". What they were asking for wasn’t illegal or improper.
Is ‘purpose’ just strategy with a different name?
Sceptics will argue that purpose-led organisations are a myth – that purpose is just strategy with another name. But as some of the world’s top business people are coming to understand, strategy and purpose are not the same.
Busting the myth: purpose-led companies are not charities
We’ve been inundated in the past few months by business leaders seeking ‘purpose-led’ strategies as an antidote for controversial Australian stock exchange new governance principles which require Board Directors to add “defining the entity’s purpose” to their long list of duties. The updated princip
Purpose over Politics.
Like America (and many other countries around the world) we have a problem. The destructive political forces on all sides are bombarding the Australian people and perpetrating a “us versus them” massive cultural divide.
Gender diversity progress: the data is here – no more excuses!
As I shared in my previous post, we now have a simple, leading indicator for gender diversity – correlated to business profitability. It’s called the Gender Diversity Score (GDS).
What can we learn from the Customer Experience revolution to help achieve Gender Diversity?
Does the name Fred Reichheld sound familiar? For many of you perhaps not. In 2003 Reichheld penned a somewhat controversial article in the Harvard Business Review (One number you need to grow) that went on to fundamentally change the way organisations assessed and measured customer loyalty by introd
Going from Base Camp to Everest with Customer Experience
In my previous article, we looked at where base expectations are for customer experience and how reliability, value, relevancy and trustability are the table steaks for customer experience today. Remembering that these four factors need to be critically judged from the customer perspective (outside-
Where is base camp for customer experience today?
Those of you who are involved in designing and delivering customer experience would probably be familiar with the name - Don Peppers. Don co-authored his first book with Martha Rogers in 1993 entitled “The One to One Future” which proposed a revolutionary idea about the business implications of one-
The secret weapon in delivering great customer experience
I have just come back from a glorious two week break in Bali with my family feeling energised and refreshed. In my profession, assessing customer experience across everything I touch and feel is just part of my DNA, so after spending two weeks experiencing flights, airports, resorts, restaurants, el
My Empowered Customer Epiphany
Last week I had an experience that I wanted to share with you. I feel it illustrates the concept of the empowered customer at its best (and most scary if you are on the brand side).
Customer Experience Professionals in Australia have a new wingman
Last week was a milestone week for Customer Experience (CX) professionals in Australia, as US based Customer Experience Professional Association (CXPA) launched into the country with a session kicked off by their CEO Diane Magers, hosted at EY’s Sydney office. The CXPA is a global non-profit organis