Shows / On the Subject of Leadership
On the Subject of Leadership
On the Subject of Leadership is a series of conversations about how organisations are actually led, managed, and governed—the kind usually held behind closed doors, here held out loud. Each episode, I sit down with an executive, director, founder, or scholar who has carried real responsibility, and we talk through what they have seen: the decisions nobody takes, the frameworks that meet real organisations, the gap between what is said in the boardroom and what is said in the corridor…
Episodes
On the Subject of LeadershipGilbert Lorquet: The People Who Don't Have to Be There
"A title gives you almost no real authority if people do not want to follow you," says Gilbert Lorquet, and he learned it at a junior football club, where…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The Orphan Issue
Victoria spent some $60 million on private security guards to enforce hotel quarantine in 2020, yet no one could tell the inquiry who had decided on them, and…
On the Subject of LeadershipMalcolm Duncan: Reality Versus Aspiration
Charisma is the most overrated quality in an executive, says Malcolm Duncan, and it is usually confused with leadership. After nearly four decades in executive…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The Director Who Reads the Summary
In 2007 the directors of Centro approved accounts that classified some $1.5 billion of short-term liabilities as non-current. They had a chief financial…
On the Subject of LeadershipTim Newbold: Doing Less with More
Management has a long habit of inventing instruments to turn intention into action, and an equally long habit of watching each one harden into paperwork. When…
- On the Subject of Leadership
What a Certificate Actually Certifies
Australia’s National Microcredentials Framework obliges a provider to disclose fifteen things about a short course, down to the learner’s hours spent reading…
On the Subject of LeadershipPamela Wyatt: Organisations Don't Change Because They're Criticised
No organisation matches the brochure. The question is what you do about the gap — and whether you have any right to. International development runs on a…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The Cocktopus Problem: Eight Arms, No Judgement
Mintzberg’s diary work found half of observed management episodes concluding inside nine minutes, and later research shows that people compensate for…
On the Subject of LeadershipProfessor Alistair Noble: A University Is For Saving the World
The Commonwealth supplies less than half the revenue of Australia's universities and sets very nearly all of their terms. We have spent a decade arguing about…
On the Subject of LeadershipDavid Harvie: The Falcon's Club
Every incentive system that fails is easy to criticise. The difficult ones are those that work. In the late 1990s David Harvie sold for a firm that ran its…
On the Subject of LeadershipJay Fontanini: You Cannot Skip the Stages
Nine years of rising conversation about artificial intelligence, and a measured return that has not moved. The comfortable reading is that the technology was…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The Score
The second essay in the Prior Obligations series, released as articles in audio format, follows a number from birth to dashboard. When a felt condition becomes…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The Old Complaint in New Clothes
This week I begin a five-part series, Prior Obligations, released as articles in audio format. It starts with a farmer in a harvester cabin and an executive…
On the Subject of LeadershipBrett Raven: Two Things Kill It
An employee who is not spending enough money is not doing their job properly. That is not satire. It is the logic of a productivity metric currently in use in…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The Officer of Last Resort
A post came across my feed this week that I have not been able to put down. A client wanted a Chief AI Officer and told its search partner not to look for a…
On the Subject of LeadershipJarrod Myers: The Climb Is Not the Point
We call the move from doing the work to managing the people who do it a promotion — as though there were only one direction worth travelling. Jarrod Myers took…
On the Subject of LeadershipWilliam Domanski: The Standard Cannot Interpret Itself
Every serious corporate failure of the past two decades has been examined by people who found the frameworks in good order. The register existed. The audit was…
On the Subject of LeadershipRachel Condos-Fields: Staying the Distance
Most conversations about corporate governance begin with structure—committees, charters, the machinery of oversight. This one ends on the side of a dirt road…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The Trouble Was Never the Idea
Since 2005 Hollywood has compiled the Black List, an annual register of the screenplays its own executives most admire and have nonetheless declined to…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The Saviour-Industrial Complex
There are two kinds of executive in the final interview. One asks for the diagnostic—the operating model, four years of financials, time to return with a…
On the Subject of LeadershipKen Sandy: Influence Was Always the Point
Most conversations about artificial intelligence and the product manager begin by asking whether the role survives. This one begins somewhere more useful: by…
On the Subject of LeadershipClare Kitching: Make My Business Grow, How Can I Do This?
Most organisations now claim to be adopting artificial intelligence. Far fewer can describe what they are actually adopting it into. I speak with Clare…
On the Subject of LeadershipNine Years, One Number
A bonus release from the Inner Circle feed, made available to all listeners. Weekly article readings are normally reserved for Inner Circle members; this is…
On the Subject of LeadershipPascal Uerlings: Good Thing, Bad Thing, Who Knows?
Most technology transformations do not stall because the technology fails. They stall because no one in the room has resolved a prior question—what, precisely…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The Chair's Dilemma: When the Board Becomes the Problem
A bonus release from the Inner Circle feed, made available to all listeners. Weekly article readings are normally reserved for Inner Circle members; this is…
On the Subject of LeadershipNick Hassett: The Problem Won't Be Solved by the Thinking That Created It
Nick Hassett has spent more than three decades intervening in organisations under pressure—not as a theorist, but as someone called in when the politics are…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The Person in Front of You: On the Quiet Tyranny of the Proxy Interview
Janet Albrechtsen, writing in The Australian, took aim at the ‘lived experience’ workforce now embedded, and often mandated, across Australian mental health…
On the Subject of LeadershipCraig Baker: Leadership at the Point of Contact
Craig Baker has spent the past eighteen months in growth and sales leadership at Jarvis, shaping strategy and securing commitment at the front end of…
- On the Subject of Leadership
The $200 Hammer: Why Talent Without Context Is Just Expensive Disappointment
Boards keep buying $200 hammers and handing them to people who have never built anything more demanding than a flat-pack bookshelf. The talent market assumes…
On the Subject of LeadershipMartin Kearns: From Empowerment to Ritual—Agile’s Unintended Consequences
Agile promised empowered teams and faster learning. In many organisations, it has delivered something closer to ritual—stand-ups, sprints, and dashboards—often…
On the Subject of LeadershipAbdullah Ramay: The Power of Purpose-Driven Leadership in Business
Abdullah Ramay is the Chief Executive Officer of Pablo & Rusty's Coffee Roasters—a name many listeners will recognise from the label on their morning brew. We…
- On the Subject of Leadership
Stop Trying to Solve Every Tension: Some Are Polarities to Manage
Research on organisational paradox explains why leadership teams swing so predictably: contradictions generate discomfort and defensiveness, so leaders…
On the Subject of LeadershipChris McGowan: The Recruitment Insider Who Built a Company With No Managers
Chris McGowan is the founder and CEO of ThunderLabs, an Australian firm working across digital experiences, customer identity, and specialist recruitment…