Recent events in Australia’s political arena and the carefully crafted speech of the new Prime Minister got me thinking about the similarities in challenges that are presented to a new government and to those of business leaders. In his speech, Malcolm Turnbull spoke of “digital disruption” being Australia’s friend; the need for agility, innovation and creativity in creating a vision of the future; the power of collaborative leadership in making high value decisions; and about the importance of explaining the “why” and “how” of meeting the challenges of tomorrow so that everyone comes on the journey with their leadership. These are all very powerful memes in current, cutting edge management thinking. Read more

I often hear that the key to better project performance is better communication. While I can appreciate this philosophical perspective, I have worked on a number of “troubled” projects where there was no shortage of communication. One might even describe it as quite effective communication in that messages were being delivered loud and clear. However, I believe that the more important enabler of improved performance is effective collaboration – working relationships that result in the desired output or product. Effective collaboration yields strategies that are aimed at providing holistic value to the project. It results in actionable and executable plans. It is the source operational improvements that increase efficiency. Read more