A leader I once worked for used to say: winning isn’t everything — it’s the only thing.

In private, we debated that philosophy more than once. Long conversations, always pleasant, sometimes confronting. In the end, quietly, he came around. But we never spoke of it publicly.

The real question buried inside that famous phrase has nothing to do with winning at all. It has everything to do with this: what are we willing to compromise in pursuit of success? How will we behave? Will we fight the good fight?

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH ABOUT CHEATING

The main reason people cheat, lie and break the rules is brutally simple. It works. At least in the short term.

Not always. Not forever. But often enough, and for long enough, that the incentive rewards the behaviour. The cheater gets ahead. The rule-follower watches on, confused and sometimes resentful. We comfort ourselves that wrongdoers eventually get caught, that karma corrects, that guilt catches up with people in the end. Sometimes it does. But often the correction arrives too late, the penalty is too mild, and the gains have already been banked.

This is not cynicism. It is observation.

On your drive home tonight, notice the people who follow the rules — who indicate before they merge, who hold the correct speed, who wait their turn at the roundabout. Then notice the ones who don’t. The drivers who break the limit, who cut queues, who slide into gaps that were never offered, who behave as though the rules didn’t apply to them.

What separates these two groups?

Now look at the cars they are driving. Are expensive, luxury vehicles over-represented among the rule-breakers? Our experience says yes — and so does the research. We have a theory for why. And it has very little to do with the car.

THE FIRST ETHICAL CROSSROAD

In the two-part ESPN 30 for 30 documentary *LANCE*, we are shown something revealing. Before the performance-enhancing drugs, before the Tour de France titles, before the cover-ups and the public unravelling, there was a first ethical crossroad — a quiet moment most people would walk straight past.

Lance and his mother, Linda, needed to register him for his first major bike race. The problem: Lance was fifteen; the minimum age was sixteen.

So what did they do? They lied.

At the very first fork in the road, they chose deception — and, tellingly, they did not experience it as a moral failure. They experienced it as doing whatever it took to win. Lance described the mindset plainly: “We’d forge my birth certificate, compete illegally, then beat everybody.”

Linda was just as candid. She didn’t want to hold him back, she explained, so she simply changed the date on the form. And then the line that deserves to sit with us: “he just wanted it so bad.”

He just wanted it so bad!

The wanting is not the problem. The question is what we decide is permissible in pursuit of the thing we want — and Lance and Linda answered that question at the first opportunity. Their answer set the template for everything that followed. Winning at all costs, applied from day one.

What is most instructive is not the scandal itself, but the architecture of rationalisation underneath it — the way each compromise made the next one easier. A forged birth certificate becomes a tolerated edge. A tolerated edge becomes an expectation. An expectation becomes a culture. And a culture becomes, eventually, a sophisticated, coordinated, institutional deception spanning years, continents and millions of dollars.

Cheating scales.

WHEN THE MORAL MAP DISAPPEARS

For most of human history, the bulk of the world’s population subscribed to some form of religious belief — in the Western tradition, particularly Judaeo-Christian frameworks. Whatever one’s relationship with faith, those frameworks delivered something enormously practical: a shared moral map. A common vocabulary for right and wrong. Rules that sat outside the self and did not bend to desire, convenience or narrative.

Then, across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, something shifted. Moral relativism — the idea that right and wrong are not universal but subjective, contextual, a matter of culture or circumstance — took hold. And in cultures where the religious scaffolding had already weakened, the result was a vacuum.

We are now making the rules up as we go.

What was once treated as fundamental is now an option. Honesty and integrity become strategic choices rather than foundational behaviours — and subjective ones at that. My truth, your truth, whichever narrative best serves the moment. And into that gap — between the appearance of ethics and ethics itself — dishonesty thrives in plain sight.

Not at the hands of criminals in the traditional sense, but people with good suits, confident handshakes and impressive networks. People who speak the language of values fluently while quietly negotiating their own private version of them.

Hence the widespread misconduct in the Australian banking, superannuation and financial services industry. Hence PwC — and most recently, KPMG. Sophisticated, credentialed institutions, trusted explicitly to uphold the standards, found to have compromised the very thing they were paid to protect. In each case the question is not how it happened, but how long it ran before anyone said anything.

And the harder question: what would have happened if the whistleblower had simply stayed quiet? The honest answer: when people stay silent — or worse, complicit — cheating compounds.

THE PREDATORY CLIMB

Moral predators — and that is precisely what they are — tend to climb. They are skilled at managing perceptions, at calibrating their behaviour to whatever an environment rewards. They read power structures with precision: which signals to send, which alliances to form.

In environments without a clear and enforced moral framework, they thrive. They rise through corporate hierarchies, educational institutions, political systems, sporting organisations and influencer ecosystems alike — because the environment, absent a strong ethical scaffold, selects for exactly the traits that make cheating effective. Charisma. Charm. Boldness. A high tolerance for cognitive dissonance. The ability to hold a compelling story about oneself.

You have almost certainly met this person. Perhaps you worked for them. Perhaps you admired them, before you understood what you were looking at.

And here is what makes them so effective: the immoral predator does not see a predator in the mirror. Like Lance, like Linda, they carry a story about why what they are doing is justified — why the rules don’t quite apply in their case, why wanting it badly enough is its own kind of permission.

So they win. They even keep winning. Right up until the moment they don’t.

THE BYSTANDERS ARE NOT INNOCENT

But the predator never climbs alone — and this is the part we are least comfortable telling, because it implicates the rest of us.

No sophisticated deception survives on the strength of one liar. Lance did not forge a culture by himself. Teammates knew. Doctors knew. Officials suspected and looked away. Sponsors had every commercial reason not to ask the question whose answer they could not afford. The machine ran for the better part of two decades for one reason above all: the people positioned to stop it chose silence. Its single greatest protection was not the sophistication of the science. It was the willingness of everyone around it to say nothing.

We like to imagine the bystander as neutral. Uninvolved. Innocent by virtue of inaction. This is a comforting fiction, and it is wrong. To witness dishonesty and do nothing is not neutrality. It is compliance. The person who sees the rule broken and stays quiet has not stayed out of it — they have joined it.

The board member who tells himself he wasn’t active in the undermining of the CEO is as guilty as those who were. The athlete who collects the fairest-and-best award while ignoring bad behaviour on his team has some explaining to do. They are complicit in their silence. To watch the wrong thing happen and choose not to act is, in a real and unsentimental sense, to be part of the crime.

This is most true where it is hardest: on teams. Sport, the military, the workplace, the boardroom, the staff room — anywhere a group is bound by a shared mission and fierce internal bonds. The same loyalty that makes a team strong is the one that can be weaponised to protect the rot inside it. What happens in the team stays in the team. Protect your own. We dress these instincts up as values — and sometimes they are — but they are also how a culture learns to keep its worst secrets.

And here is the inversion we have to confront. The person who finally speaks up is not honoured. They are despised. We have words for them, and they are not kind: snitch. Rat. Dog. We reserve our deepest contempt not for the one who did the wrong thing, but for the one who refused to stay quiet about it. The whistleblower — who risks their career, their relationships, sometimes their safety to tell the truth — is far from protected. They are frequently destroyed for it. Those who told the truth about Lance were, for years, cast as bitter liars. The cheat was the hero. The truth-tellers were the villains.

This has to change. We have the moral arithmetic backwards. The teammate who stays silent to protect a cheat is not loyal — they are complicit. The one who speaks up is not betraying the team; they are the only one trying to save it. Loyalty to a person doing the wrong thing is cowardice wearing loyalty’s jersey. Until we see courage there rather than treachery, we will keep producing the exact conditions in which the Lance Armstrongs thrive — surrounded, always, by good people who knew, and said nothing.

WHAT’S ACTUALLY AT STAKE: H3 AND MARVIN SCOUT

This is where marvinScout and the H3 come in — because the antidote is not surveillance, and it is not a thicker rulebook. It is internal architecture.

HONESTY, HUMILITY and HARD WORK are not soft virtues to be admired on a wall. They are load-bearing. And honesty sits first for a reason: it is the foundation the other two stand on. Honesty is the refusal to negotiate with the truth — and notice that the first lie is almost always told inward. Lance did not experience the forged certificate as a lie. That is the tell. We cannot deceive others for long without first deceiving ourselves, which means honesty is not, in the first instance, a relationship with other people. It is a relationship with reality.

Humility is the antidote to the belief that drives every moral predator — the conviction that the rules are for other people. And hard work removes the very temptation cheating exists to satisfy: the desire to skip the cost and bank the reward. The person who has genuinely earned the result has no need to forge the date on the form.

The compass does not make a leader immune to the crossroad — temptation still arrives — but it makes the leader steady when they reach it. And steadiness is contagious: the leader with a stable compass is the one who makes it safe for everyone else to stop being a bystander.

This is exactly what marvinScout is built to surface. We measure character before competence because competence can be performed and credentials borrowed, but the H3 shows up in the room, in the moment when something is offered and the exit is right there and nobody is looking. A CV tells you what someone has done. The Scout is designed to tell you who they are likely to be when it counts — because that is the only variable that does not bend under pressure.

THE SCIENCE OF MORAL COMPROMISE

The research is consistent: moral compromise is rarely a single dramatic decision. It is a sequence of small ones.

The psychologist Albert Bandura called the mechanism moral disengagement — the gradual deactivation of the internal regulator that keeps our behaviour aligned with our values. We don’t usually abandon our standards. We quietly convince ourselves, one justification at a time, that this particular act doesn’t really violate them. Each small step makes the next one easier, and none of them feels, in the moment, like the act of a bad person.

The luxury-car observation has evidence behind it too. In a 2012 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Paul Piff and colleagues ran seven experiments on social class and unethical behaviour. Observers stood at a busy intersection and watched who broke the road rules. Drivers of higher-status vehicles were roughly four times more likely to cut off other cars before waiting their turn, and more likely to drive through a crosswalk without yielding to a pedestrian. In the lab studies, higher-class participants were more likely to lie in a negotiation, take valued goods, and cheat to win a prize. The researchers traced much of it to one thing: more favourable attitudes toward greed.

It is not about the money. It is about what the money can do to the belief system of the person holding it — and the conclusion it whispers, if the internal compass is weak: that the rules exist for other people.

The single most effective prevention is not regulation and not consequences, though both matter. It is identity. The people least susceptible to ethical erosion are those who have done the internal work to know — clearly, before the moment arrives — exactly what they stand for.

WHAT ARE WE REMEMBERED FOR?

So let us return to where we began: winning isn’t everything — it’s the only thing. Are we willing to gain the whole world, yet lose our soul?

We spend our lives in pursuit. Of success. Of wealth. Of power and influence and the next rung on a ladder we are not always sure we chose to climb. And much of what we chase, if we are honest, is not success at all — it is the appearance of it. The title that impresses strangers. The number in an account we will never spend. The applause of people whose names we will not remember. We mistake the scoreboard for the game, then are surprised, late in life, to find the scoreboard was never the thing that mattered.

Because here is what is actually remembered — albeit very briefly.

Not the championships. Not the revenue. Not the trophies in the cabinet or the figure on the balance sheet. Stand at any funeral and listen to what is said. No one recites a KPI. No one reads out a sales target or a personal best. What people remember — what they carry, what they weep over — is how a person lived. Whether they were honest. Whether they were kind. Whether they could be trusted when it cost them something. Whether, when the wrong thing was happening in the room, they were the one who spoke.

We are not, in the end, remembered for our success. We are remembered for how we pursued it.

How do we remember Lance Armstrong?

The question was never whether you win. The destination is not the point, and never was. The question is the journey — who you became to get there, who you took with you, and who you were willing to be when the lie would still have worked and no one was watching.

So who were you along the way? That is the only scoreboard that matters

.

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THE STAIRWELL

It’s 2am.

I’m sitting in the stairwell of a five-star hotel with a young basketball player who’s had a breakout season — from the wilderness to transformational success. He’s in the conversation for league MVP. And most importantly, a Championship in his first year.

We’re smoking cigars — the only place in the hotel where you can - without triggering fire alarms. We’re drinking a nice whiskey.

Inside, the rest of the team is still celebrating with fans, friends and families.

He turns to me and says, “Is this it, Nick?”

I’m silent. I’ve been here before, more than once. Almost always it’s with players and coaches who have never won championships before.

Yet I wasn’t ready for this question.

“Yes,” I respond. “This is it.”

“It feels empty. All that sacrifice, all the hype… the build-up,” he sighs. “It’s so lonely right now.”

THE HOSPITAL

This wasn’t the first time I’d been this close to the sadness of success.

Just days earlier, I was sitting by the hospital bed o…

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TL;DR: For most of my life I chased the things society told me to — wealth, health, family, legacy — convinced they were the summit worth reaching. But sitting here on Holy Thursday heading into my 56th Easter, I can't shake a troubling thought: I've been climbing the wrong mountain. Looking at Christ's death on Calvary — a man who died broke, friendless, despised, and physically drained — I'm forced to reckon with the fact that by every conventional measure, his life was a failure. Yet it's considered the greatest act of love ever given. Maybe success isn't about what I accumulate, but what I give away. Maybe the mountain I should be climbing isn't Everest — it's Calvary.

⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯

For quite some time now we’ve been conditioned to believe what success is.

For many it’s family and friends. For most it’s wealth and affluence. Almost all wish for a healthy life or a long one.

For some it’s fame and for others approval and reputation. A few yearn for power. A lot more lately w…

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There is a moment every seasoned manager, GM or coach knows. You watch someone warm up and think — that’s not the same person. And you’re right. The player you evaluated six months ago has changed. They often do.

This is the central challenge …

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IN BRIEF: Most team communication fails not because of what is said, but because the type of communication is wrong. This article proposes a four-mode framework to fix that:

• FYI (For Your Information) — “Just so you know.” Share only what’s needed, in the right format, at the right time. No response required. Requires honesty.

• FYF (For Your Feedback) — “I need your input.” Actively seek perspectives to close blind spots before committing. Requires humility.

• FYC (For Your Consent) — “I need your sign-off.” Clarifies who owns a decision and is accountable for its outcome. Requires accountability.

• FYA (For Your Action) — “Do this.” Converts decisions into execution with clear goals and feedback loops. Requires hard work.

It gives teams a shared language, ties communication to character, and scales across any team size — reducing noise, speeding up decisions, and turning capability into coordinated action.

Most communication failures in high-performing teams aren’t about …

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Christmas 2016 was one like no other.

Whilst the rest of the nation was busy with the usual family commitments, holiday merrymaking, or the momentous religious significance, we at the Perth Wildcats were facing the very likely prospect of not making the finals for the first time in the club’s record-breaking history.

We’d cut a shooting guard, replaced him with another who after just two games wanted to be released, brought back the former who then failed a drug test! Key players were injured, and we were sliding to the bottom of the ladder.

Pressure was mounting on coaches and management to turn things around.

So, instead of the traditional festivities, the coaching staff ran depth charts and made phone calls worldwide.

Our recruiting model was simple: the coaches picked the talent, and I had veto rights on character.

Whilst they were watching tapes of the player’s competency, I was screening for tell-tale signs on character.

What were their behaviours on a made play? Did they acknowledge t…

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Prayer Breakfasts at Warwick Stadium

☰ Monday 24 November – Paul Morrison – singer/song-writer, ex-Chaplain Eagles, SonshineFM

☰ Monday 13 October – Lea Cockram – Chaplain

☰ Monday 25 Aug 25 – Dave & Teige Morrell – Coach and Player – Husband and Wife (NBL1 & WNBL)

☰ Monday 28 Jul 25 – Danny Mills – GM – Perth Wildcats

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Quarterly Leadership Breakfast Series in Perth – Fraser’s Restaurant – Kings Park

☰ Wed 15 Sep 2025 – Kevin Bailey

☰ Thursday, 4th December 2025 – Mike Needham

Mike Needham is a senior global executive at one of the world’s largest technology corporations and a devoted Catholic based in Perth, Western Australia. Drawing from his extensive experience in technology and unwavering Christian values, Mike will share personal insights on navigating the ethical, spiritual, and societal challenges posed by artificial intelligence.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile

Meantime, along the narrow rugged path,
Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Saviour, lead me home in childlike faith,
Home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life.

John Henry Newman
Blessed John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
Beatified by Pope Benedict XVI
September 19, 2010
by

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Contents

☰ Guardian Angel Prayer

☰ Morning Offering

☰ St Michael Prayer

☰ The Angelus

☰ The Magnificat

☰ Benedictus

☰ Humility Prayer

☰ The Memorare

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As we wrap up another year, we wanted to share with you five key learnings from working with leaders in various walks of life.

REFLECTION TIME

• Leaders report having little time to think. Overwhelmed by urgency, always being ON, and the need to respond to endless communication channels leaves little time for reflection. Social media distractions, fleeting attention spans and multi-tasking have made considered leadership difficult.

THE SOLUTION

• Spend at least 15 minutes at the start AND the end of each day to think – away from all distractions. Pen and paper.

MORNING

• • Revisit your and your team/organisation’s Purpose – its response to an ever-changing world.
  • Consider if you have the right people in the right positions on the boat. Who is redundant? What’s the opportunity cost of keeping them? Who do you now need to solve today and tomorrow’s needs?
  • Are they rowing in sync? Are they headed in the right direction?

EVENING

• What did we accomplish? What should we accomplish?

• What were the failures…

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When Jesus emerged from the Jordan River, a divine voice declared: “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” These words capture something fundamental about the need for paternal affirmation and its immense importance in a child’s sense of self-worth, purpose and commitment to mission, even courage.

Modern psychology confirms what this ancient narrative suggests: a father’s words of love and pride hold extraordinary power to shape a child’s entire life trajectory. When fathers consistently express love and pride, they’re participating in one of the most profound acts of human development.

THE SCIENCE OF PATERNAL AFFIRMATION

Research demonstrates that fathers play a unique and irreplaceable role in child development. Active father involvement significantly reduces psychological problems and depression rates, particularly in young women. When fathers are emotionally present and affirming, children develop stronger self-esteem, better emotional regulation, and more resilient psyc…

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As an outsider to sports management, it took me a while to understand winning and losing games during a season.

Regardless of our performance, the outcome of the game dictated our response—reflect and learn from losses or rejoice and celebrate wins.

The problem, of course, is that winning and losing, certainly in a finite ecosystem such as a league or game environment, is a poor indicator because it is comparative.

In other words, it doesn’t matter how badly you play; if you were better than the opposition, even marginally, you won. Sometimes that margin could be a point, a free throw, a bad referee decision, or just plain luck.

This mindset can be limiting – narrowing ones focus to transactional tactics rather than aspirational, purpose-driven cultures. But more on that later…

All the coaches I worked with usually paid particular attention to the game tape after a loss. The version we received post-game by our video coach was always edited to remove breaks, timeouts, and audio.

It was fasc…

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Not everyone is on the team for the same reason.

A manager's genuine understanding of each team member's key drivers can greatly improve individual and team performance.

In most good teams, there is clarity of mission, good-charactered people committed to playing to their strengths, and accountability on expected efforts and results.

However, the primary motivators for joining and contributing to a team can vary.

In our work, it's usually one of three things: Purpose, People, or Performance. And while they all matter, different individuals place differing values on each.

PURPOSE

"We have one problem," the CEO said cautiously. We can't afford to compete on salary with the rest of the healthcare industry. After all, we are a non-profit in the alcohol and drug sector. The work is hard, the clients challenging, and regrettably, the pay isn't great."

"We don't see that as a problem," my colleague responded calmly.

The CEO looked back, surprised. "What do you mean? We've had trouble finding staff for so long because of affordability?"

"Perhaps we could try a different approach," she suggested. "Why don't we talk more about your purpose, mission and the lives you change and less about salary."

And so started a long-term relationship lasting many years, recruiting staff for this wonderful organisation with a retention rate far higher than the industry average.

Interestingly, most employers we speak to concern themselves with remuneration or Reward. While this is a significant factor (especially at sustenance levels), our research, based on over 3,000 surveys, indicates that other factors, such as recognition, voice, choice, and learning, are also important.

Increasingly, however, Legacy or Purpose has become a key driver in attracting and keeping people. All things being equal, people, especially in advanced economies, want their work to be meaningful.

This explains why, in Australia, 36% or 9.5 million people performed formal volunteer work in 2023 (up from 26% the previous year). For some of us, a compelling purpose is enough to work even for free [Volunteering Australia – Key Volunteering Statistics – March 2024].

They want to be on teams whose mission aligns with their values. They want the organisation's mission to be well-articulated and inspirational. And they want to know how their team and, importantly, their unique work contribute to the broader objectives and outcomes.

Managers who succeed in personalising the team or organisation's mission witness higher levels of performance and retention.

Gallup's research suggests that even a 10% improvement in employee connection to purpose results in a 4.4% increase in profitability and an 8.1% decrease in staff turnover.

To achieve this, managers must have regular conversations with their team members on how their unique contribution is linked to the organisation or team's purpose.

PEOPLE vs PERFORMANCE - Longley or Jordan

Some people are on the team to win, while others are there for the team. These are not exclusive motivations—they are predominant drivers for differing individuals.

Knowing the difference is critical to get the most out of them.

When success, performance, results, or winning are the primary motivations, individuals can occasionally leave their teammates behind or, more commonly, not be the most congenial. Conversely, sentimental people value interpersonal relationships more than outcomes or objectives.

The former want to win at all costs, whilst the latter are more concerned with camaraderie and team culture.

A great example is the well-publicised championship run of the Chicago Bulls under Michael Jordan. Following the Netflix documentary, Australia's ABC interviewed Michael Jordan, Luc Longley and Steven Kerr (now head coach of the NBA's Golden State Warriors) regarding their time together.

Longley's perspective of Jordan was a one-eyed, success-focused, results-based team-mate that could not be disagreed with - 'carnivorous'!

Jordan agreed. "My mentality was to win at all costs and to pull, push, yank, whatever, to get everybody on the same page...I think it was needed in some respects, and our success illustrates that."

"I don't think Luc had the mentality of what it took to win. You want to see that frustration; you want to see a little bit of anger. You want to dominate, you know, and there's times where I had to push him on that," he said.

Longley's motivation was quite the opposite. He was what people call a 'team player' willing to sacrifice individual glory for the team - putting his teammates over everything else, even performance and success.

“I cared about my teammates more than I cared about winning. Winning became how to reward them, so that’s part of what drove me to be good.”

Longley's contribution was not limited to the basketball court. He was famous for his home barbecues, which built social bonds among the team, something unheard of in the NBA. In an environment where players were traded like commodities between teams, he built life-long relationships with Kerr, Pippen, and even Rodman and Jordan.

As now NBA head-coach Steve Kerr summarised, "He became one of the people who connected everyone because he shared relationships with everybody.

While there are no statistics or scoreboards to measure the contribution of 'team players', their impact is critical.

As Jordan now puts it, “I loved him as a team-mate. If you asked me to do it all over again there’s no way I would leave Luc Longley off my team. No way possible. Because he mattered, he had an impact on me. He made me better as a player, you know, as a person.”

A winning team requires all three types of people: the ones who keep focussing on the why—purpose-driven; the ones who focus on the what—performance-driven; and, more and more importantly, the ones who focus on the how and the who—people-driven.

It takes a good manager, coach or leader to know what drives each individual to ensure they satisfy their needs and mobilise their motivations for the team's success.

There is no greater tragedy than doing well that should not be done at all.

Yet, we fall into habits that are unfruitful at best or dangerous at worst - in business and life.

Taking stock every 90 days enables us to evaluate, eliminate, and make room for what must be done to accomplish our objectives.

This allows us to constantly refocus our time, energies, and resources.

Strategic Abandonment is best achieved by considering three key dimensions: Purpose, People and Performance.

PURPOSE

1. If we were not doing what we are doing right now, what should or would we be doing?

2. Is what we are doing maximising our comparative competencies to create value in the current environment?

3. What is the opportunity cost of our current pursuits? In other words, what pursuits should we abandon for more productive or profitable ones?

PEOPLE

4. Who would we not have on the team if we started again today? How could we appropriately exit them?

5. Who on the team is taking up a spot best served by someone else?

6. Is anyone negatively affecting our culture or not living our values despite their results?

PERFORMANCE

7. What parts of our operations have become blithe, lazy, and inefficient?

8. What are the disruptions, noise and silly rules that need to be abandoned?

9. What are the bottlenecks that are holding people back from performing?

Atrophy

We are all susceptible to atrophy.

However, as Peter Drucker noted, “In turbulent times, the enterprise has to be kept lean and muscular, capable of taking strain but capable also of moving fast and availing itself of opportunity.”

And these, indeed, are turbulent times.

In our experience, typical constraints to accomplishing this include tradition (we’ve always done it this way), routine and inertia (avoiding conflict and change), and familiarity (being too close to the problem or the people).

In such instances, there are few better approaches than having an external consultant facilitate the process. This ensures thoroughness, avoids conflicts of interest, and eliminates bias.

Personal Lives

Even in our personal lives, spending half-a-day every quarter, going through our possessions and splitting them up into three groups:

• The first - items that we still use and need to keep;

• The second - things that we no longer use and need to trash;

• And third - stuff that we’re unsure of - which we put in storage...if we don't use it over the ensuing three months - dispose.

If we purchase something new, it must accompany the disposal of something redundant.

Abandoning bad Habits

We need to constantly focus our time, energies, and resources on what is important. Otherwise, distractions creep in and dilute our abilities.

We start by asking a very simple but powerful question: With the information we have today if we weren't already doing this, would we engage in such an activity?

What habits have I formed that are unhelpful or damaging?

What relationships have we fallen into that are not in our best interests?

Opportunity Cost

Only if we stop doing certain things and free up our resources can we effectively chase new opportunities.

Sometimes, of course, it’s about doing ‘less of’ or ‘more of’ certain things—reducing the investment of resources and people on certain projects or, conversely, increasing time and effort on others.

Now is as good a time as ever to run a ruler across everything in the organisation, be it purpose, people, product or service, process, department, capital investments, or even suppliers and customers.

Financial Planning

Financially, we suggest including A Divestment budget and an Opportunities Budget in our planning.

The former puts every activity on trial, asking questions such as: Is this really necessary? Does the cost justify the results? Is there a better, more cost-effective, efficient way to achieve the same outcome?

The latter considers opportunities in the environment and the financial cost or investment required to deploy the organisation’s comparative competence in pursuit of them.

The rule here, as Drucker put it, is to “feed opportunities and starve problems”.

SSML - Stop/Start/More/Less

A useful tool is the Stop/Start/More/Less framework from a personal and professional perspective…

What should we Stop doing, Start doing, do More of, do Less of?

When we use this tool, we uncover tremendous insights, not only from board members and managers but from those on the front line - whether they are working on the factory floor, engaging with customers, knowledge workers, players on the court, support staff, or even suppliers and partners.

After more than two decades of working with professional sporting teams, high-net-worth individuals, and C-suite executives, sleep health consistently ranks among the few indicators with proven performance results.

There are others, but none with as much science to reinforce what we have experienced.

Back in 2011, Stanford University's Cheri Mah's Sleep study on basketball athletes prompted us at the Perth Wildcats and Perth Lynx to partner with UWA's Dr Ian C Dunican, championed by our own head of Physical Performance, Josh Cavanagh, to conduct our own research into sleep and its effects on performance in 2015 (https://lnkd.in/gd3JhYyy).

Mah's study proved that just two extra hours of sleep has significant improvements such as:

- Players ran faster 282-foot sprints (16.2 seconds versus 15.5 seconds) than they had at baseline;

- Free throw percentages increased by 9 per cent;

- 3-point field goal percentage increased by 9.2 per cent; and

- Fatigue levels decreased following sleep extension,…

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When recruiting,if you can’t compete onPurpose or Culture you will have to compete on Price...

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The greatest test of any leader is at home – how they lead their own life—and, above all, their family.
For who we are in private will eventually be manifested in public.

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For every significant weakness in an individual there will be an equally significant strength.
It is a leader’s responsibility to find and maximise it on the team…

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When it comes to culture, it’s the first straw the breaks the camel’s back.

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You are replaceable at work but irreplaceable at home

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The Miracle of Teams
As individuals, we are limited by our greatest Weakness…
But in a team, we are limited only by our greatest Strengths

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When you silence the noise, the signal appears. That’s true in sport and leadership.

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06SEP24 - Time

Of all the resources available to us, time is one that we spend without knowing how much we have left.

I don’t know if I have one or a…

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☰ My Frequent Prayers

FAITH DIARY

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

“To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement”

St Augustine of Hippo

We must never let creatures or created things to separate us from the creator.

Edify or be silent

Each one of you has received a special grace, so, like good stewards responsible for all these different graces of God, put yourselves at the service of others.

1 Peter 4:10

Character is the congruence of one’s moral compass and consistent behaviors—especially when no one is watching.

…nearly all that we call human history—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, Book II, chapter 3,

CEOs, Chairs, and Managers often say it's lonely at the top. And that may well be true.

Increasing research, however, suggests that this is a problem throughout most organisations.

Ironically, loneliness is a global epidemic despite all the communication channels and high tech available to us.

This flows into the workplace. And with half our waking hours spent at work, it's no surprise.

Gallop's new State of the Global Workplace: 2024 Report is confronting:

» Job levels have little association with loneliness.

» 20% or one in five employees report experiencing loneliness a lot.

» Same percentage for both men and women.

» Loneliness is more prevalent in younger (under 35) people.

» On-site is best with just (16%) compared to hybrid (21%) and fully remote (25%) levels of loneliness.

Key symptoms are unpunctuality, sick days, fluctuations in performance and job changes.

However, managers have a powerful and influential role to play in reducing loneliness.

1. E…

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