Category: Leadership In Action

Place yourself in a second scenario: you head a market-leading company that wants to expand. You identify a struggling business, which has been trounced by its main competitor and been stagnant for a decade. You make a leadership decision to significantly outbid two private equity firms and pay well above what the market expected for the […]

What are the checkpoints a new leader should address if they want to succeed in their first 100 days? 1. A clear mandate A new leader must understand their going-in mandate – is it big, medium or small? It’s very possible to overreach and be too aggressive or underreach your mandate, cautions Robert Hargrove, an […]

CINDY HOOK, CEO DELOITTE AUSTRALIA When Cindy Hook, a long-time Deloitte employee, learned the top job would be vacated a year ahead of time, she swung into action with an external career coach. First she needed to decide if she wanted the role and to figure out if her personal values aligned with the firm’s. […]

In the pre-social media age, I quickly found that it took a lot of time and effort to start and cultivate those relationships, and they needed the right environment to prosper. I also observed that, all things being equal, people prefer to do business with people they like and trust, and you’re not going to […]

Dr Dharmica Mistry has spent the past eight years researching and developing a simple blood test for breast cancer. The new diagnostic test will be available to people of all ages, replacing mammograms, the most common tool currently used for early detection that is limited to women over the age of 50 (breast tissue is […]

Every Monday night in Australia over 600,000 people tune in to Q&A on ABC to be entertained, educated and outraged in turns. The lively debate between panellists, the audience, and host Tony Jones has led the national conversation around politics and current affairs since the show’s inception in 2008. HOW Q&A WORKS Each week five guests […]

The cost of ethical failure After the recent VW scandal, for example, where it was shown that the company had doctored emissions tests on its diesel engine, the financial repercussions were huge. VW’s behaviour had not met either investor or consumer expectations and its share price dropped by 23 per cent – almost a quarter […]

Recruiting people from diverse backgrounds, with ideas that question the status quo, can change an organisation for the better. Leading and sustaining a successful and ethical business can be a complex game. For some people, it is made all the more (seemingly) complex by bringing together individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives. However, we now know […]

One senior ANZ trader, who was dismissed following an internal investigation, filed an unfair dismissal claim against the bank claiming that he was forced to behave badly because of the bank’s abysmal corporate culture. (Another trader has also filed a separate suit.) The claim alleges that the bank itself created, supported and encouraged a toxic […]