Last week, Shawn and I spent the day together at the Melbourne Convention Centre. The morning speaker was Patrick Lencioni, author of ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’ and ten other books. The Wall Street Journal has described Lencioni as “one of the most in demand speakers in America”. It’s easy to understand why. He […]

The story behind Southwest Airlines’ ‘Bags Fly Free’ campaign demonstrates how having a clear purpose can help an organisation make better, more profitable decisions. Having a clear purpose can help an organisation make better decisions. Southwest Airlines’ purpose to ‘democratise the skies’ helped the airline add over $1 billion to their bottom line, despite a […]

To reignite creativity, innovation, and learning, leaders must rehumanize education and work. Brene Brown Anecdote was formed on 11 August 2004. At our first board meeting we discussed our purpose. It was possibly one of the shortest ‘purpose’ discussions I can imagine. The phrase ‘helping restore humanity to the workplace’ was immediately suggested and we […]

We were about 20 years too early. Back then, my group at IBM extolled the benefits of understanding organisations as complex systems – ones where it was impossible to predict how things were going to turn out; where technology and the speed of change fostered non-linear relationships; where a small thing could have a big […]

Back in 2008 Wharton School professor, Adam Grant (author of one of my favourite books, Give and Take), conducted a fascinating experiment that highlighted how important it is to be reminded of your purpose. He was working with a call centre that raised funds for a university. He divided the call centre into three groups. […]

In 1993, as the co-founder of photographic library startup, I travelled to Los Angeles to check out one of America’s largest commercial photographic collections. Remarkably they were well under way converting their film stock to Kodak PhotoCD, a proprietary digital format launched the year before. We were impressed with Eastman Kodak because it looked like […]

Here is one of the stories I heard at KM Australia as told by John Girard. On a foggy autumn day nearly 800 years ago a traveller happened upon a large group of workers adjacent to the River Avon. Despite being tardy for an important rendezvous curiosity convinced the traveller that he should inquire about […]

This week I have been talking to people about foundational stories and how they are important for reinforcing the core vales and direction for everyone in the organisation. HP has a well know foundation story about Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard starting their little electronics company in a garage with a measly $500. Within this […]