Not that we’re a bunch of grammar fanatics, but when we routinely get people quoting our reports for years afterwards (no, really – years and years!) it does rather focus the mind on trying to get the spelling and punctuation correct! So forgive us a little in-joke when we say how often we smile when…
Women in Community
Client: Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, NSW Region MacKillop House, located at Lyneham in the ACT, is a very long-running initiative of the Sisters which is now due for review. The project team from ThinkEvans plans to report to the Regional Leadership Team for NSW in November 2018.
Thinking about one of the ‘golden rules’ of governance
It’s a long way from done but it’s already been an interesting year – by which we mean “interesting” in the sense of the curse “may you live in interesting times”! Frankly, for our taste the last 12 or 18 months has been just a little bit too interesting! Looking back a bit further, though,…
Once more with feeling
Client: Hadrian Logistics Solutions Pty Ltd Harking back to the early career of our Technical Director, Glenn Evans, as an aeronautical engineer in the Royal Australian Air Force, he will be the lead contributor from ThinkEvans in this collaborative work with other former RAAF colleagues at Hadrian Logistics Solutions. The confidential project involves a significant…
Refreshing governance for professional standards
Client:Chief Executive Officer, ACPSEM ACPSEM is a well-established member-based association, operating nationally under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) as a not-for-profit public company limited by guarantee. After a revised Constitution was adopted by the membership in November 2015, the College has followed through to reconsider elements of its governance arrangements in relation to bylaws, standing…
Coffee time thought starters for getting back in the (board) saddle
With the Australia Day holiday nearly gone for another year, workplaces of Australia are leaving behind the summer break and getting back into gear for the year ahead. To start some thoughts on the governance task ahead for all our colleagues on boards and in senior exec teams, its our shout for the virtual coffee…
Down the microscope, briefly
In every organisation, there is a group to whom the organisation owes its existence. We often talk of the ‘owners’, since in a commercial organisation it is the owners, literally, who cause the enterprise to come into being and to have a particular purpose. But there is an equivalent group for every enterprise, commercial or…
Dissent v Consensus
Setting up for success really does start in the board room. Otherwise, chances are the entity will flounder at least, and founder at worst. More than that, a great board needs to be a great team. Achieving that is no mean feat and often calls for disagreement on complex issues – although, we hasten to…
Endless coffee is great – but endless time on planning, not so much
Balancing time allocated to board tasks is yet another challenge for the board that requires compromise – between enough attention to rightful detail, and tipping over into meddling in management, for example; or between devoting enough time to well-informed planning, and investing so much time that plans far outweigh results. For the board, governance and…
Getting to more than the sum of the parts
There are many organisations that have no legal obligation to follow this or that regime for corporate governance. But our question remains, why do it the hard way? Instead – after decades of high-profile corporate disasters – why not learn a lesson from the experience of others: it seems far better to choose proactively to report along…
Legislation implemented
Client: Board & Chief Executive Officer, Nature Conservation Trust of NSW A bespoke entity created under a specific piece of NSW legislation, the Nature Conservation Trust was established as an independent statutory body corporate, that also operated as a nonprofit organisation with deductible gift recipient status for tax purposes, pursuing objects in relation to nature conservation on…
Rectangles are not squares, and not all roles in decision making are decision making roles
The trick maths question back around mid-primary school is about squares and rectangles – both are defined by having four sides, two sets of parallel sides, and four corners of 90º. But squares have one more feature, crucial to the definition – all sides are the same length. So all squares are rectangles but not…
Clarifying consensus
Possibly the most frequent question put to us is “if we don’t have consent amongst the board, how can we move forward?” For the largest part, this speaks to a very common misunderstanding that we strike in our work – about the meaning of consensus in a decision making process. Part of the difficulty is…
Coffee on the road: count the cups!
We had the pleasure this week of receiving a whole bunch of nice messages from clients and colleagues on reaching a milestone to which many a small business aspires – 15 years of work together! It doesn’t seem that long until we take a look back over the kaleidoscope of projects that we have had…
Sabbatical postcard – board decisions, how hard can they be anyhow?
Today brings another round of ‘journalism’ telling us that we live in a time of more information than ever before, and yet more social media messages urging us to think there is no mystery that can’t be solved if we google it hard enough or crowd-source the problem to enough people in enough places. That’s…
Coffee on the road: Enough! on April fools day
In an era of populism writ large in global events, seen equally in ‘any-opinion-will-do-if-I-shout-it-loud-enough’ leadership and public debate that often seems to have only a passing acquaintance with facts and reasoned logic, many of our clients and colleagues on boards are facing quite tough times in holding the line on more mature and considerate leadership….
Sabbatical postcard – lies, damned lies and statistics v2.0
What the numbers really say is an issue at least as old as published statistics themselves, but one finding a renaissance in the world of the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016: ‘post-truth’.* Anyone who has spent more than five minutes in a commercial organisation knows, for example, that it is possible to have both…
Coffee on the road – our word for the year
Big surprise – no, really, an actual surprise – our word for 2017 is not ‘coffee’! This year we are going public with our choice to applaud all those mature decision makers who know when to hold ’em, when to fold ’em, and when to walk off into the sunset for the next challenge –…
Implementing legislation
Client: Board & Chief Executive Officer, Nature Conservation Trust of NSW Our new client is a bespoke entity – a statutory body corporate also operating as a nonprofit organisation with deductible gift recipient status for tax purposes. In a new direction for the organisation’s objects of nature conservation on private land, the organisation is now…
Coffee on the road – what a difference an accent makes!
We might not be much given to knitting our own yoghurt or weaving muesli here at ThinkEvans, but we are pretty darn serious about sustainability. For us its about being able to keep your promises to stakeholders – not just this week or next week, but next month and next year and the year after…
Sabbatical postcard – kawhe i runga i te ara i roto i Aotearoa
Kawhe i runga i te ara i roto i Aotearoa – or coffee on the way in New Zealand – prompts fresh reflection on the microeconomic importance of engaging with fellow human beings, and the “innovation” value of just getting the basics right. In Wellington to present an element of my PhD research (to…
Sabbatical postcard – no time to wish for coffee
A self-confessed cynic about process improvement, which too often fails from want of a clear objective, I am delighted to report a customer service experience that seems to shine as an exception. It was so fast and efficient there was no time to wish for a coffee while waiting in line for service! The early indications…
Rethinking pricing
Client: Chief Executive, Coast City Country General Practice Training Ltd In a new project for our client, we will apply microeconomic disciplines to their pricing of services, including sensitivity analysis around key events. Sunset at Mollymook, in the far south of this client’s area of operations, is a great inspiration!
Congratulations!
After more than five years and two children, we are delighted to congratulate Sharna on the conferral of her PhD. Her thesis is entitled ‘Talking About Talent: Conceptualising Talent Management Through Discourse’. Her research ’employs discourse analysis in order to understand how the concepts of “talent” and “talent management” are socially constructed within an organisational…
Coffee makes planning go ’round
Carolyn Evans and Tanya van der Wall share our guide to keeping planning in perspective as a means to an end – all the coffee in the world won’t fix a governance and planning process that doesn’t keep “eyes on the prize” of realising the organisation’s purpose. Three decades since Michael Porter identified the ‘lost…
Sabbatical postcard … coffee on the road to international peace & security
In the first public airing of her thesis research, Managing Director Carolyn Evans this week presented her work at the Australia and New Zealand Society of International Law Postgraduate Workshop, held in Canberra on the eve of the Society’s annual conference. Using her experience in governance for government, commercial and nonprofit organisations, Carolyn presented her…