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Category Archives: Decision Making

The fifth decision-scaling your leadership

In Episode Nine of the Propelling Performance Podcast, Rob speaks with Bill Gallagher, Scaling Up Expert, CEO, Serial Entrepreneur, Advisor, Keynote Speaker, Podcast Host, Strategic Planning and Growth Coach. Bill shares his wealth of experience working with business leaders to lean into leadership, and that in order for leaders to create change, they need to change themselves. He takes us through application of the Flywheel concept to leadership – inspire, engage, plan and coach.

Applying a game plan to your business

In Episode Eight of the Propelling Performance Podcast, Rob speaks with Andy Gowers, Business Development Manager, Cranage Financial Group. After a successful career as an elite AFL player with Hawthorn and Brisbane Football Clubs, and a mentor and Director with Hawthorn, Andy successfully transitioned from sportsperson to entrepreneur.

How to make your employees your greatest asset

In Episode Seven of the Propelling Performance Podcast, Rob speaks with Natasha Hawker, Managing Director of Employee Matters. Natasha shares her insights into the impact of the COVID pandemic on workplaces; what businesses are doing right and what need to be done better; the common mistakes leaders are making with employee engagement; key points on amplifying your culture and how to retain and look after your people as we navigate a COVID normal world.

How To Use Financial Transparency To Engage Your Employees

In Episode Six of the Propelling Performance Podcast, Rob speaks with Rich Armstrong, President, The Great Game of Business. Rich shares strategies to introduce financial literacy into your business; explains principles including financial huddles, scoreboard and mini games; discusses common mistakes he sees from leaders; how to build engagement in your organisation and examples of how to get started by creating and using a mini-game.

Navigating the challenges of family business

In Episode Five of the Propelling Performance Podcast, Rob speaks with David Werdiger, director of Nathanson Pearson. David shares his wealth of experience as a second-generation family business member and discusses the challenge of expectations surrounding subsequent generations in a family business, the critical importance of communication, shared vision and aspirations and a mindset change from ownership to stewardship.

Lessons in leadership

In Episode Four of the Propelling Performance Podcast, Rob speaks with strategic leader and Executive General Manager – Home Care & Retirement Living, IRT Group, Ross Gallagher. Listen to Ross’ insights on his leadership journey and the lessons he has learned; his hallmarks for great leadership; advice for young and emerging leaders; some of the most common mistakes leaders make and how Ross led his team successfully through the challenges of the COVID pandemic.

What’s your financial context?

I recently had two interesting conversations about financial context, and the way leaders think about revenue and opportunity. In the first case, the executive team was presenting a case study about a new service offering. This new business initiative was worth around $2M in revenue – frankly a sum that is dwarfed by their core business, but it has massive potential, and is likely to scale as a significant part of their 5-year strategy.

Reading the conditions

How do you set your future agenda – is it based on personal objectives, or do you research and run tests? How do you go about benchmarking in your specialty or industry? Whichever way you keep score, it’s all about reading the conditions, so you can obtain a view of current state and your desired future and, with these assessments in hand, plan how to get there.

Evolving Beyond Being ‘The Leader’ To Real Leadership

This article, written by Michael Nathanson originally appeared on chiefexecutive.net on July 9, 2021 CEOs practically may be the singular “chief” executive officers of their companies, but that does not mean they must think or act like they are the only leader at the top.

The illusion of certainty

The lifetime customer, the iron-clad supplier, the legislated right to operate – it can all change at the stroke of a pen … or the start of a pandemic. I had an interesting discussion with a prospect recently about starting or waiting. He’s looking to double his significant mid-tier business over the next 3-5 years and he’d also like to significantly increase the profit margin to 20% rather than the current 10%.

Are you playing the game or imposing yourself?

Success in professional sports this year has been not only about survival of the fittest, but survival of those able to adapt to change – just as we have experienced in business. Spring is high season for sports competition here in Australia – including Australian Football League (AFL) finals, interstate rugby play-offs and thoroughbred horse racing carnivals. So you get a good look at who’s best and who makes up the rest.

That Critical Piece of Information to Guide Decision-Making

It’s the season for getting bare-rooted trees into the ground, so last weekend I bought a chestnut tree for the farm. I was getting ready to plant it out when I saw on the back of the tag that it grows to 10m high and 10m wide. The spot beside my cattle yards would only accommodate a 5m diameter tree, and I certainly didn’t want a large overhanging branch to drop its spiny chestnut burrs into the yards, damaging the hooves of my cattle.

Obstacle course, sprint or marathon?

I was re-reading Jack Stack’s ‘A Stake in the Outcome’ over the last couple of weeks and a comment he made about the nature of the business race we’re running really jumped out at me. Teams would probably associate their long-term goal, or BHAG as Jim Collins calls it, as a marathon; an event of known length. At the opposite end of the spectrum there’s the encouragement to sprint towards near-term goals, often with a Scrum or Agile approach as recommended by Jeff Sutherland.

What is your saying/doing ratio?

Accountability Works Does the team understand where leaders are steering the ship or is the whole thing misaligned? How strong is the level of organisational trust to follow the course? My clients are held to account each quarter for delivery on their highest priorities. We all acknowledge that ‘everything’ won’t get done, but we do need to be accountable for that handful of things that, as a team, we’re committed to doing.

Do you live by rules or conventions?

I recently spent time in the company of Dr Kaihan Krippendorff, an inspiring strategist I had the privilege to meet through the Gazelles Coaching program. Kaihan is a business strategist, keynote speaker, consultant and best-selling author of four books, most recently Outthink the Competition. A former consultant with McKinsey & Company, he now writes one of the most popular blogs on fastcompany.com, ‘Outthinkers’.

Are You a Transformational Leader?

A Key Challenge A key challenge for my clients is that the pursuit of fast growth requires a series of transformations in their business. By definition we can’t dramatically drive up performance without making a number of changes: perhaps some different roles and people, a new strategy, a switch of emphasis in the client/product mix, some new execution disciplines and so on. But this puts an added load on the leaders, so what can we do?