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There was rapturous applause. There were standing ovations.  We sold all our books. Well not exactly. But it was a very convivial evening with wine and reminiscing over travel stories from a time BC, i.e. before COVID-19.

Allow me to elaborate.

Last night Les and I delivered the first of what we hope will be many presentations about the cycling trip I undertook, and Les observed from afar to Thailand and Myanmar in January and February this year.

We’d chosen to present the Soft Nut Story to our neighbours in Aurora Tower in Brisbane. It’s always easier when you know the audience and can be guaranteed a smile from my Mum sitting in the front row.

I shared a few photos and a video about the trip.

Our rollout continues with a book signing at New Farm Editions Saturday 14 November from 10:00 – 2:00pm.   They are located at Merthyr Village Shopping Centre, 84 Merthyr road.  If you’re in the area, pop by to say hi.

And I’ve posted a few snippets from the book on the website Crazy guy on a bike.

Fingers crossed we’ll all be travelling again soon now a vaccine has been developed.

We typically want to work for an organisation with a great culture. We also choose to stay longer with organisations that facilitate learning and help bring out our best.

Many organisations want to enhance their organisational culture so that creativity and innovation flourish. For some organisations this is a huge change, while for others, reinforcing behaviours or processes and systems are needed. In this blog I’ll chat about steps you can take to change the culture of your organisation

In related news, I’ve recently published a book, Change Stories: Success and failure in changing organisations. This book describes a myriad of ways to facilitate change in an organisation including stories covering mergers, acquisitions, new systems and cultural change which is the focus of this blog.

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This month my latest book went live. It’s called Change Stories: Success and failure in changing organisations.  So excited.

While I’ve worked on global change projects, the stories I shared in side this book were not my own.

Let me explain.

The Back Story

After a few years living overseas, I returned to Australia and became aware of the diversity of change management roles, and often short-term ones, being advertised. While I had previously undertaken a global change management role introducing new systems and ways or working in a global technology company, I wanted to learn more about what other change managers were doing. 

I talked with connection in my network and asked them to recommend others I should speak with. I was motivated to get a diversity of perspective not only of change managers but of project managers, human resource managers and business leaders.

The questions I asked

I asked everyone the same questions including. 

• What did they understand change management to be? 
• What was it that change managers did?
• What sort of projects had they been working on? 
• From the successful projects, what the things that were critical to the project going well? 
• For the failed projects, what were some of the early signs that the project was going astray?
• And then thinking about the other change petitions that worked with. What were the characteristics of the most effective change practitioners? 

The stories shared were from diversity of change projects related to mergers and acquisitions; introducing new models and processes, digital transformation, building skills and driving cultural change to name a few and came from banking and financial services, energy, mining, manufacturing, telecommunications, hospitality, health, higher education, consulting, legal, state and local government, and non-government organisations.

I’m proud of the book and learnt a great deal from my 24 conversations. I think that Change Stories is a valuable learning resource for people who face the challenge of driving change in their organisation. 

Your copy here.

Playing with ideas in your team

An essential part of being creative involves play, that is taking time to play with ideas and explore different scenarios. Play is a word we typically associate with children. Indeed, when I searched for pictures of play most images were of children playing, like the one above.

But play is also a mindset. The capacity to play facilitates experimentation and the exploration of ideas. It’s a perspective we can lose as we get older.

In this blog, I’m going to explore different ways you can help your team to play with ideas and things you need to consider to do this successfully. But firstly, I need to start with a definition.

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Earlier this year, just as the pandemic was breaking, I set off with a few friends on a bike ride through Southern Myanmar. My husband was unable to join me as he had hurt his back.

We both kept diaries from the trip which we have shared in our book, Soft Nut Bike Tour of Burma, exploring the less travelled roads of Myanmar. Les recounted how he was spending his days in Brisbane, while I described (perhaps in too much detail sometimes), what I was experiencing as I flew from Brisbane to Bangkok and to Mae Sot for the start of the adventure into Myanmar. The contrast in experiences and writing styles makes the book unique. It’s an insightful and occasionally irreverent read.

You’ll enjoy it if you like visiting lesser known parts of the world, like (or don’t like) group travel, and appreciate the slower-paced form of transport that cycling affords. There’s also travel by train, tuk tuk, truck and all manner of water-craft. You’ll also enjoy Soft Nut if your fed up with being ‘locked down’ and dreaming of travelling.

Below are a few photos from the tour and this is where you can pick up your copy of Soft Nut.

I’ve also added two videos from the trip on my Amazon author page.

The book provides an opportunity to travel vicariously while you wait to see these wonderful places yourself, post Covid-19 quarantine.

Creative leadership during the time of COVID-19

The world is facing a truly wicked problem as the Corona Virus spreads unabated. We watch with admiration, concern, horror, (tick which is most appropriate), as leaders grapple with what to do. It’s a problem for which there is currently no vaccine or cure and for which there are significant health management, economic and moral challenges.

Decisions being made as to how to manage during this pandemic reveal the values of leaders. I was reflecting on which leaders had employed creativity in how they have responded to this crisis. Let’s look at this by considering what is creative leadership.

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