Ideas for leading with purpose in practice

A moment that matters An aged care resident refuses a shower. It is a small moment in the rhythm of a residential aged care home. Easy to miss from the outside. Easy, too, for it to become a task that needs to be managed: a routine delayed, a care plan interrupted, a...

More so than ever, organisations have to hold fast to their essential purpose in a world where the word ‘mission’ – like vision and values – can sound a bit hackneyed.  We have seen numerous examples of organisations that promote a purpose undermined by the actual...

The new Aged Care Act, passed by Parliament in November 2024, has launched a generational change in Australia’s aged care sector. From 1st November 2025, the new Act introduces increased regulatory requirements, a rights-based framework, enhanced national quality...

Business is a lot like farming.  Both require patience, resilience, and a willingness to invest up front with no guarantee of return.  Both are influenced by unpredictable external forces and ever-changing market conditions. In the mid 20th century, both business and...

When I was 28, I developed a repetitive strain injury.  For nearly a year I wore a brace on my wrist, and for months my husband had to cut up my food because I couldn’t apply the weight required to the knife. That’s not the point of this story. Desperate to find...

There are things that we know but cannot tell. Michael Polyani Many of us have an intuitive sense of what we are doing, in whatever professional field we have chosen. Years of experience, and Gladwell’s famous 10,000 hours required to build expertise, can lead us to...

A magical thing happens when I sit down at the piano to learn a new piece of music.  At first, my hands fumble to find the right notes and I watch the music closely to try to understand the pattern of notes following each other one after the other.  Sometimes it makes...

I spent the last ten weeks living and working in Hungary, and this change of pace and environment has been stimulating and creative.  My usual daily routine and my working hours have shifted while I have balanced client commitments in Australia with activities in...

"Death, dying, and grieving today have become unbalanced. Health care is now the context in which many encounter death and as families and communities have been pushed to the margins, their familiarity and confidence in supporting death, dying, and grieving has...

Success in life, as in politics, depends on compromise.  Peace, social progress, relationships and individual happiness all require some kind of accommodation with others and the world around us. Facilitation has been called the ‘art of the possible’, a phrase first...

Australia's Intergenerational Report 2023, released last week, outlines a number of challenges facing us in the next 40 years. Five macro trends are identified, which are outside the control of individuals but will shape our lives in the decades to come: Population...

The Not-for-Profit Governance and Performance Study 2022-2023, released by the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) notes the mounting challenge on NFPs to “look with a wider lens and understand their role in, and impact on, society” (p6).  This is a good...

The World Bank’s 2023 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals, released this week, makes for sobering reading.  After years of making progress towards reducing poverty and increasing school attendance, the Covid-19 pandemic has set the global project back several years...

The Australian Government’s recent budget emphasised the need to address short-term challenges while maintaining a sense of direction for the long-term. According to the published overview,  the new budget ‘strikes the right balance between dealing with immediate...

We are living longer and it is likely that most of us will work longer as well. That almost certainly means we will need to rethink how we move through a working life that may span five or even six decades. The 20th-century pattern of entering the workforce in our...

Many of us will have experienced the camaraderie of singing in a group of people, whether at a sporting event, a rock concert, or with friends. Research now indicates that singing also has significant health benefits. Humans have been singing for millenia, with music...

Death is a very personal experience, and also a very social experience.  My death will touch others’ lives just as their deaths will touch my life.  When death does come, what would you want that last experience to be? Followers of the world’s religions have long been...

It is easy to feel overwhelmed in our era of fake news and growing social polarisation.  We are living through “a particularly disruptive period in human history” with significant challenges including rising inflation, extreme weather events, geoeconomic...

Our awareness of loneliness has been heightened in recent years by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, with isolation requirements forcing many into seclusion for weeks and months.  Research has now shown that there has been a ‘small but significant’ increase in the...

In a series of focus groups and interviews, we spoke with 29 people of different ages, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity, from metropolitan and regional locations. All participants valued being invited to talk about such an important and sensitive subject, as...

The 1st of October marked the United Nations’ International Day of Older Persons (UNIDOP), a day that was first celebrated in 1991. The purpose of the IDOP is to raise awareness regarding the ageing of the global population and to foster age-inclusive societies....

The Jobs and Skills Summit held this month by the Australian Government has identified many ways to grow, retain and sustain the workforce. Only one of these was focussed specifically on older workers, introducing a temporary rule change to make it more attractive for...

The NSW Government’s recent budget announcement of $743m to fund palliative care services is to be welcomed. Palliative care is an essential component of any health system, providing integrated and holistic care to people with life-limiting illness, their families and...

August 2022 Last month the World Health Organization called for feedback on the draft summary of the Global Report on Health Equity for Persons with Disabilities. The report’s authors note that compared to those without disability, people with disability are more...