Yesterday, while working out at the gym, I got into an interesting conversation with the owner who, as well as the gym, has a great practice as a personal trainer and as a health consultant to a lot of corporations. Anthony has a degree in Physiology from Sydney University so is not your typical gym […]

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Knowing how to manage your time seems like a skill that only junior managers would need to learn how to master. And yet, again and again I work with senior clients who are spending too much time on activities that are not creating long term value. Important but not Urgent Covey’s work back in the […]

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In today’s organisations most of leadership is not exercised through hierarchical structures but rather through a complex network of relationships. Results are obtained by getting a diverse group of people to collaborate with you. I am constantly surprised by the number of my clients who don’t really understand this and who have therefore not developed […]

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Two weeks ago, the Labor Party lost the Australian elections. The polls got it wrong, as did many of the Labor politicians and their voters who expected a clear victory. No doubt the party had been brave in the clear transmission of their policies, but it would seem that they misjudged the nature of the […]

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Many people rate Roosevelt the greatest leader of the 20th Century. What made him so great. There are many answers to this questions but let me tell you about just one of them. In Michael Fullilove’s great book, Rendezvous With Destiny, he tells the story how Roosevelt thought out of the box in order to […]

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The recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris and the disturbances on New Year’s Eve in Cologne show that there are real problems in Europe around the integration of their immigrants. Many Europeans have a romantic view of their past in which they long for a time in which everyone in their countries lived together […]

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At the moment I am reading Antony Beevor’s great book about the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. One of the things I like about Beevor’s books is that not only does he research official government and army records but also uses letters from the front line soldiers so that the reader experiences […]

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A few days ago I went to visit my favourite café in Madrid where I had lived for twenty-five years. I returned to live in Sydney three years ago but I still miss those great “tostadas” and “Cafés con leche”. As I approached the café I was surprised to see that it was all dark […]

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The federal government in Australia has been unable to get their budget passed. Opposition in the Senate, ridicule from the opposition and general dismay by the Australian people has meant that there has not been the necessary support to execute the changes that the budget tried to achieve.   Carrying out true reform is never […]

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I just finished reading Antony Beevor’s excellent global account of the Second World War. Unlike his other books this one gives you a global picture of the whole war giving you a real feeling of the breadth and depth of the human suffering caused by the ambitions of a handful of all too human men. […]

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