Blog

2 March, 2020

Consciously managing and creating benefit

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow The Hollow Men, T. S. Eliot   Organisations run projects to achieve … something. Time and resources are spent on projects and project teams. Despite […]
2 March, 2020

Blackwhite—Qantas

In January 2020, sick of being force-fed the idiocies of Sky News Australia that are broadcast non-stop in Qantas lounges, we wrote to Qantas. In the back of our mind was the statement made by Qantas that they recognise human-induced […]
2 March, 2020

Thoughtful public service and Sportsrorts

Reasonable and decent people have cause to be horrified at the unfolding disaster that is Sportsrorts. Millions and millions of taxpayer dollars spent according to sly and crooked criteria and a process that defines bad faith administration. Ministers and ministerial […]
2 March, 2020

Footballs, meat pies, kangaroos, no Holden cars

In a statement made on 17 February 2020, General Motors said that it is: taking decisive action to transform its international operations, building on the comprehensive strategy it laid out in 2015 to strengthen its core business, drive significant cost […]
5 February, 2020

The summer of our discontents

Now is the summer of our discontents made inglorious by … bushfires, hailstorms, choking smoke, record high temperatures and climate change. And the challenge for governments is how best to respond. In the face of an emergency, a good government […]
16 December, 2019

A review of the weirdness that was 2019

2019 was a weird year. Bushfires and heat waves in November. Lots of stuff happened and so we list here three moments that we thought were inspiring, strange and surprising. We start with the best. If you are over thirty […]
3 October, 2019

Can public servants write well? That’s a multimillion-dollar question

  Published in the Public Sector Informant, Canberra Times, on October 1 2019 On a dark and stormy night, a long time ago, a colleague of mine, having spent long hours reviewing and clearing documents, declared that the work of […]
4 September, 2019

Can and should in the Age of Implementation

A good rule for life—and one learnt very hard sometimes by teenagers—goes like this: just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Just because you can stand on the roof of a car travelling at 90 kilometres per […]
1 August, 2019

Ratbags, rorts and regulation

The Big Short is a fabulous film about the global crash of 2007–2008. It stars Steve Carell as Mark, a financial dealer who is obnoxious, loud and utterly correct in his analysis of a financial market that was white-ant riddled with fraud. As […]
22 July, 2019

Be passionate about the new digital Style manual

Sometimes in life we get lucky. Something comes along that captures our imagination and interest and which aligns perfectly to the things that we’re passionate about. Generally it’s love. On this occasion, however, it’s the Commonwealth Style manual, which now […]
22 July, 2019

A eulogy and a meditation to Bob Hawke

This is a meditation on decency, humanity and grace. A eulogy to Bob Hawke who transformed Australia, helped to end apartheid in South Africa, constructed Medicare, built a modern Australian economy and believed that a winner-takes-all approach to politics created losers […]
3 March, 2019

Even Homer sometimes nods

Amid some conjecture and debate, Homer is the ancient Greek author credited with writing the epic poems The Odyssey and The Iliad. These two poems, aside from being great literature, have had a defining impact on the development of Western culture. Homer’s works […]
Contact us