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Over the past three or four weeks I have been guiding about 25 businesses through this terrible time. I have seen some extraordinary displays of leadership and some heart rending compassion. The compassion has been shown when people have been ‘let go’. I am ever aware of the common view of CEOs being heartless and […]

I have been to several small dinner parties since the ABC Four Corners report. I have been challenged with the same statements at each of them. ‘Cotton farming should be banned?’ ‘Shouldn’t we be growing food or something?’ ‘That water would have kept the Murray mouth open’ It is a difficult to explain the complexity

I have often wondered how I could bring value from my rural heritage to the urban business leaders that are my TEC group members. Then I met Chook and Jen Kealy. Together, we came up with the idea to use a Low Stress Stock Handling School as an analogy for communication in business.  Those that know Chook will remember him

When I tell people it is more profitable to run a regional business they don’t believe it. It is a widely held view that you cannot run successful businesses with National impact from outside of the cities. I reckon that view is wrong. The ABS tells us that of the 81,316 businesses in NSW, 32,526

I have been on many Boards that get very excited about Strategic Planning. The Directors roll their sleeves up to become animated and engaged. It is such a break from the normal mundane Director’s roles of compliance, risk management, monitoring, shareholder relations and appointing you as the CEO. There is not a Director on earth

How many times have we visited a company and seen the strategic plan on the wall? In some form or another it is there collecting dust. I once asked an employee of a company I was working with about the glossy poster on the wall. The reply was; “I dunno. Something head office did. We

I was asked this question last week by Matt Tice. The question stopped me in my tracks. For the sake of this discussion, imagine you are the manufacturer of matches. Imagine that the match business is dying as disposable lighters become cheap and durable. Then people started to give up smoking. Simply enough, the external

Australia has the wrong question for agriculture and environmentMore precisely, what is not the question? The question is not; ‘do we have environment OR agriculture?’ The future is not a binary choice of agriculture OR the environment. The correct question for the future of our landscapes is; ‘how do we have environment AND agriculture?’ The