In both the coaching and consulting environments I am often approached by individuals or organisations to support them in resolving a particular issue confronting them. A foremost question in my mind is always, “Are they focussed on the right thing?” The tendency is for people to focus on the issue or behaviours that are right in […]
Very early in my career a manager of mine said to me “Everything has a dollar consequence and it is everyone’s responsibility to be a financial manager and use resources well”. That statement and the truth of his words has stayed with me always. Many times over the years, including recently while working with two […]
A friend was telling me the other day how she often has ideas suddenly occur to her about solutions to problems or things she ought to do but then the moment passes. She said sometimes she follows through but more often she forgets her idea, or cannot bring it back to mind with the same […]
Why is it that getting performance planning, personal development planning and performance reviews to work is so hard? In the past few days I had a discussion with a high level senior executive service manager responsible for human resource management for a large public sector organisation. He was expressing frustration about the unwillingness of people, […]
Following on from my recent post on ‘Internal Audit’s Role (an Audit Committee perspective)’, I wanted to share another issue that came up in discussion with colleagues, before and during, the course of the recent Public Sector Internal Audit Conference in Canberra. The issue was ‘When does risk appetite change?’ In my experience, it is the practice […]
A few days ago I attended a meeting of fellow members of the International Coach Federation in Canberra and got into discussion with a colleague about challenges she was facing in supporting people through organisational change. She was expressing surprise at how difficult it was to get people to let go and move forward to new […]
In the past week I participated in a Keynote Panel Discussion for the Annual Public Sector Internal Audit Conference in Canberra, run by the Institute of Internal Auditors. The subject for the panel discussion was ‘Establishing Risk Tolerance – The Audit Committee Perspective’. During discussion I was asked what it is I seek from internal audit, in my capacity […]
This post has been inspired by three recent conversations in which I have posed the question “Is it useful?” and had senior managers in three different organisations look startled and then uncertain. I was taught the value of this ‘Useful’ question several years ago by my Director of Communications. At the time we had quite […]
(The importance of communication in times of uncertainty or change) There have been three occasions in the past year where I have had a discussion with someone whose team has been going through a change process, or considerable uncertainty about future arrangements at work. On each occasion I have asked how their team has been […]