Lessons from the crisis front line, on leading for today.
I still remember how it felt. Waking up on 12 September 2001, in my bosses apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I was sleeping on a very small couch, in an office, surrounded by paper, a fax machine, and my ‘list’. There was a dusty hue to the sky and a stale smokey […]
Change is a problem to solve
When a career enjoyed for decades begins to feel tedious and uninspiring, thoughts often turn to making a career u-turn and embarking on something fresh and meaningful. But the idea of abandoning the familiar to try something new can be terrifying. Featured in the New Zealand Herald, 10 February 2018. By Raewyn Court Melissa Jenner […]
The collective rise of consciousness and impact on our work
Have you noticed anything about social media lately? Apart from a lot of nonsense coming over twitter from POTUS, have you noticed that the sentiment of what people are talking about is changing? For me, when Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in first emerged the conversation seemed to be a lot different. I’ve noticed a big shift […]
Getting innovation ready – how hard is it?
There are two things I get asked a lot by CEOs and other senior business leaders. “What exactly is innovation?” And: “How can you help me or my company get good at it?” Now, we could spend a lot of time debating what innovation actually is. Arguably, this might have been one of human kind’s […]
For Amanda, work wasn’t working anymore. So she designed a new path.
Recently I had the pleasure of working with an incredible young woman. For the purposes of anonymity, lets just call her Amanda. Amanda – like many women of 27 – had a great job, and a solid future ahead of her. She was a lawyer, and was working her way towards fulfilling the dreams she […]
If you think starting is hard, finishing is harder.
When I started my new business, I knew it would be hard. I was wrong. It has been relentless. So many times I have thought – why? Why did I give up my well paid, safe, secure career to leap into the unknown and pursue a purpose that I believed in? Yet here I am. […]
Use your holiday to unlock your creativity
Undoubtedly, the most precious commodity we all have is time. When I gave up working for someone else and started my own business, this suddenly became the greatest paradigm shift I’d had in a long time and a major ‘aha’ moment for me. Suddenly, I was no longer locked into a routine. I didn’t have […]
Board Directors in NZ say the CEO has to be the Innovation Champion
For a long time I have held the belief that innovation should be a fixed item on the Board Agenda. With a mandate to drive strategy and manage risk, innovation seems to sit in the cross-hairs of the Board’s Governance role. Especially given it is essentially a form of investment risk. So in association with Appoint Better […]
Where did all the play go?
Recently I was fortunate to be a coach at a design thinking workshop (thank you Thinkplace). As part of the learning for the executives, we brought in 20 school children (ages 8-12) to work on a project to ‘imagine a better community for everyone’. Their ability to build, create and work together on something quite abstract […]
Are you doing what you really want?
Recently at an event for START NOW I asked the audience – what would you do, if you could be whatever you wanted? For many, it was something very different to what they are doing today. As we’ve gotten older, it’s a question I think we have stopped asking ourselves. We’ve accepted what we are […]
