Right from when we were first in business, our work was fuelled by our unashamed coffee habit – and not just for its welcome inspirational qualities! Our business model has been to have lower financial risks, and be more flexible for clients and for our team members, by the simple expedient of not having business…
Conversations
Client: General Council, Missionary Society of St Columban The Missionary Society of St Columban includes ordained priests and lay missionaries and is currently present in 16 countries around the world. The Society works across boundaries of culture and religion – with poor and exploited people, seeking justice and dignity for those denied their rights, and,…
COVID: no longer everything-everywhere-all-the-time
Client:Chief Executive Officer, ACPSEM As the world finds into a new gear that is not (at least not entirely) all-about-COVID-all-of-the-time, staff changes are an important opportunity to take that deep breath and think about some of the gaps that may have emerged in the rough and tumble of just surviving COVID-19. Lending a hand with…
Two decades … and the answer to that question
When we ticked over two decades in business last June, the question was what we might do to mark the occasion when a party in COVID-times didn’t really work so well. Well, wonder no more – we went with the virtual party and put a whole bunch of our experiences and thoughts into a book….
Mind the gap: between law and custom
Nobody is breath-taken with surprise now when governance issues are (routinely and perennially) on the agenda for the board, and neither they should be. With all the governance debate for the last two or three decades, leaders have no excuse on this – it’s a thing to have good governance, no doubt about it. And…
Mind the gap: questions (still) wanting answers
When it comes to knowing what we need to know to make a decision, it is always tempting to think we can devise a better answer if we first ask more questions. And, no doubt at all, we would be the last ones to say “less questions” – in fact, as committed members of the…
Two decades …
Goodness, what was that whooshing sound? Two decades going by filled with people, questions, reports, research, yet more questions, and, of course, copious amounts of coffee in all of its forms! When we ticked over 20 years in business today, it was sobering to think just how much has been jam-packed into such a vast…
Mind the gap: of missed opportunities or threats
Much to our surprise, recently we have had a return to board conversations about the dangers of developing tunnel vision on an organisation’s competitive situation – the sort of situation where a board doesn’t know what it doesn’t know and gets caught out. Our surprise about how often this is cropping up is partly because…
Basics – the gift that keeps on giving
Client: Hadrian Logistics Solutions Pty Ltd Our confidential logistics project -involving a significant series of detailed functional reviews and the associated labour standards – has motored on to a new series of activities in the first half of 2022. Even as the world is trying to “learn to live with COVID”, keeping a keen eye…
Corona coffee: back to the future
Deep into the Delta wave of COVID-19 – which for those of us in Sydney means pretty hard core lockdown – we’ve run out of interesting new craft projects to fill in the hours, so are reduced to doing the long-overdue filing, and cleaning out the bottom drawer of the office cupboards. Sad stuff really,…
Corona coffee: and it’s a . . . book!
As we reach a year since the first rumblings of COVID-19, we are more than a little chuffed to see the release of the book written by our Managing Director, Carolyn Evans. Published by Brill | Nijhoff, based in the Netherlands, the book becomes Volume 61 in their series ‘Legal Aspects of International Organizations‘. The…
Best of basics
Client: Hadrian Logistics Solutions Pty Ltd Our confidential logistics project -involving a significant series of detailed functional reviews and the associated labour standards – is now set for the first half of 2021. In a world of such COVID-induced uncertainty, we are delighted to be able to provide strong foundations for this client.
Corona coffee: still time for (plenty of) refills
Stop press: Well not really, this is hardly a newsflash when the project is some months in, but it is another moment in getting to the finish line with one of our special initiatives for the covidtimes. Our resident expert on all things governance and accountability, Managing Director Carolyn Evans, has at last received the…
Cheers!
Our languages guru, Alan Evans, has graduated from his studies at Keio University in Tokyo, completing a Master’s degree in Media and Governance. Any old time, such an achievement by one of our team members would be cause for many a celebratory coffee hereabouts. But in covidtimes, with all of the untidyness and uncertainty about…
Building on the basics
Client: Hadrian Logistics Solutions Pty Ltd As the coronavirus continues to richochet around the world, in second and third waves, spot fires, and a scramble for a vaccine, the opportunity to address the fundamentals of better work process for our key logistics client also continues. Taking great care to comply with all government requirements, that…
Corona coffee: and now the long brew time
It’s done. In the latest chapter of ‘what to do when you are locked down in a pandemic’, our Managing Director Carolyn has sent the full manuscipt of her forthcoming book to the publisher to be delivered into the waiting hands of typesetters. But don’t start holding your breath in anticipation just yet. Typesetting is…
Corona coffee: just add caffeine
Whoosh – or at least, whoosh in the sense of the usually-glacially-slow-publishing-process, raised to the power of a COVID-induced-reality! It is a common story to hear how book projects take considerably longer than expected, have myriad delays, and come to fruition long after might have been expected in comparison to commercial projects. Not this time…
Back to basics
Client: Hadrian Logistics Solutions Pty Ltd As we saw in the 2008 GFC, the presence of a global impact on business tends to focus the mind – particularly those of board members and senior executives – on how to deal with the fallout. Then we saw a huge surge in our business as boards tried…
Governance: report delivered
Client: Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart The report from this project provides an extensive context for the goverance issues presently faced by the Congregation and its leaders, and then puts forward a substantive body of findings and recommendations for actions needed to revitalise the Congregation’s leadership functions in contemplation…
Corona coffee: getting a WFH dividend
As consultants who have used a flexible working approach for our entire corporate existence (like, since before it became trendy, or now a necessity due to COVID-19), working from home is not exactly novel, and we have come in to the corona coffee era with more than a few relevant skills. Not least, we are…
Corona coffee: less barista, more home-brew
Like everyone, we are a bit stunned by the onset of COVID-19 as a world-wide phenomenon, and scrambling to work out what living and working in a coronavirus reality will look like. As a niche business that survived the 2008 GFC, and actually thrived in that environment, we’d like to think we can work it…
Governance: report on time for reflection
Client: Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart Over the cusp of the time in office of two leadership teams, this project consulted with, and then synthesized findings from, successive leadership teams at the helm of the Congregation. The time was right for reflecting on the changing needs of the Congregation,…
For the record …
In any governance project, a procedural point on which we inevitably face many questions is how to duly record what is decided by a board of directors (or any board of governance, however it might be named in other organisational structures). What is needed to show good governance? Don’t we need to do a ‘Hansard-style’…
Simplicity v Complexity
We’ve often had the conversation about achieving a balance between simplicity and complexity in organisational design, which – not unexpectedly – has knock on effects in how governance of that organisation will then perform. Of course, there is great strength in a self-explanatory design – like having a big red button to hit in emergencies….
Governance: time for reflection
Client: Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart Approaching the end of a 6 year period in office, the present team has seen many, if not most, of the complexities typically experienced in a large and, therefore, unavoidably complicated endeavour – meaning leaders always face consequent challenges for focussing on, and…
The gentle (?!) art of crafting reports
As much as we have come to shudder at the idea that there can be due accountability without formal reporting, the prospect of a truck pulling up to the door to deliver voluminous materials for a board meeting is something that, equally, we greet with regretful sighs. All too often we have seen baroque board…
Following through
Client:Chief Executive Officer, ACPSEM Following our report to the Board of Directors in late 2018, and their acceptance of all recommendations made, 2019 sees ACPSEM fully engaged on implementation as a major initiative in governance reform. Our present follow through is with the Professional Standards Board within ACPSEM, which is the custodian of professional self-regulation…