My Blog
Turning Conflict into Progress: The Power of Healthy Disagreements in Non-Profits
As a leader in a non-profit, you may instinctively want to avoid conflict, seeing it as a disruption to your team’s harmony. However, I want to challenge that mindset. Conflict, when managed well, can actually be a powerful tool for growth and progress in your organisation. It’s important to recognise [...]
One Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch
Have you ever hired someone new and noticed that the whole vibe of the organisation shifts? It’s hard to pinpoint at first, but something just feels off. People who used to love coming to work seem less enthusiastic, and suddenly the team doesn’t feel as cohesive. At first, you might [...]
Planning for 2025: Learning from the Past, Preparing for the Future
As we approach the final quarter of the year, it's time for us to start thinking about the plans for 2025. While planning is often seen as a forward-looking task, the most effective strategies are those that learn from the past. By reflecting on what worked and what didn’t in [...]
Do you know what position you play?
When writing these blogs, I usually like to take a lesson out of what's happening in my life at the moment. I've just watched my son play in a field hockey match. He plays striker, which is all about positioning (the theme for this month 😊). Positioning is about being [...]
Running The Risk of Doing Nothing
I’ve taken forever to write this blog because I didn’t know what to say. Risk is so boring! Why did I choose this topic as the focus for the month! Probably because it is such an important aspect of the sustainability of an organization. We unconsciously deal with risk every [...]
Success measures for impact!
I spent the weekend watching my son play field hockey. And I began to wonder, how do we quantify success in school hockey. Let’s be clear here, he doesn't play for the A team, there are more losses than wins! We can't really quantify success as scoring the most goals. [...]
Laser focus for greatest impact
Today I took my teenage son to Comic Con. For those of you who don’t know, it is a convention for video gamers, board gamers, anime enthusiasts, cartoon enjoyers, cos-players, comic book readers and many other people who haven’t completely grown up yet. It had a big impact – and [...]
Leading with the individual in mind
It is the era of the ‘great resignation’ and the ‘great never applying in the first place’, particularly in the USA, but felt all over the world. Millennials, Gen Y, Gen Z and all the other letters of the alphabet have far more options when it comes to personal income [...]
The right people make all the difference
I was reminded yet again over the last few months how important it is to get the right people for the job. Competent people at the level that you need make all the difference. As you grow as an organization what worked before doesn’t always work anymore. You need staff [...]
Effective Communication – What are you trying to say?
Last blog I spoke about the need to repeat important information to make sure it sticks, is internalised and is actioned. Today I want to unpack the other C’s ineffective communication: Clear Comprehensive Concise Continuous (see the last blog) We all know that our communication should be simple and to [...]
Effective Communication – Rinse and Repeat
If you’ve known me for 5 minutes, you’ll know I like to talk! It’s how I learn, process information, and communicate most clearly. But I know that sometimes it’s important to distill information into text or video or a recording of some kind. People need to be able to refer [...]
The plan is the priority
This month’s theme is supposed to be about strategy but it’s already the end of the month! Where did the time go? I know for me it was sucked into the hole of my inbox after coming back from leave… catching up on what happened while I was away, extracting [...]
Change for the better
Change isn’t always a bad thing…. Recently I attended the farewell of the founder of an organisation. It was a bittersweet event, reflecting on all that has been achieved under his leadership while being very aware that he won’t be around next year. It is scary to consider a future [...]
Just Do It
I realized in writing the last blog (found here) that it’s not actually the decision that we struggle with as leaders. Deep down we know what needs to be done if we stop and listen to our gut. We try to rationalize things with a pros and cons list but [...]
Don’t delay tough decisions
Leadership is about having the courage to make hard decisions and live with the consequences. Today I had breakfast with a friend whose organization is closing its doors after many years of operation. That must have been a very hard decision to make but also a wise one. They took [...]
Parent yourself!
Welcome to my blog! I’m hoping to regularly (no guarantees!) share with you my thoughts, lessons I’ve learned, tips, processes, methodologies, and basically, my headspace. I hope that you will find some of it interesting, some of it useful and some of it shareable so that others can benefit from [...]
Michelle’s Birthday Bash
It's my birthday, let's celebrate! How do we celebrate birthdays? With friends and family, with the people we love, with the people who get us and have something in common with us. This year, I wanted to mark my birthday by celebrating it with people who are passionate about the [...]