Ash Barty is one of Australia’s most unheralded sporting champions. She is the current world #1 in women’s tennis and played played top professional cricket during a break from tennis a few years ago. Her cricket coach said this about Barty’s abilities … “Her skill from the first time she picked up a bat was outstanding from a coach’s perspective… She never missed a ball in her first session… That’s what attracted me as a coach to her as a player, her ability to pick up things really quickly.” Andy Richards (Coach Brisbane Heat 20-20 Cricket Team) Last night, Ash won …

An iso_types Haiku At home in Aireys ISO, A family of five in COVID lockdown – Six … when counting the dog! This is us (left to right): Polly, Griffin, Lachie, me (Geoff), Ingrid and Hamish. Since I was last actively blogging the kids have got a lot bigger and Ingy and I have gotten a whole lot older! When I was last writing at this blog nearly a decade ago, no one would have guessed the context for the family portraits in this post! A global pandemic with city and country wide lockdowns! The closing of borders and shutting …

The title of this post is part II of a piece of the same name by friend and colleague Chris Corrigan over here. And what started as a piece about ‘Asking for Help’ … it ended up somewhere else! Ever since watching another colleague, Gary Hirsch, deliver his entertaining Tedx talk on Collaboration, I’ve turned the act of “Asking for Help” into an activity at many gatherings that I design and facilitate. Gary suggests that one of simplest and most effective ways to kick-start collaboration is to simply ask for help. It seems bleedingly obvious because we all, often without …

Of late, I’ve been getting tripped by the language I use. Feedback from clients and workshop participants has forced me to bring some discipline to my thinking and pay attention to what and how I’m communicating. It’s all to easy to fly along on auto-pilot and I’ve been neglecting those I am supposed to helping. I’ve always loved Lee Lefever’s Commoncraft video explainers, so, when a random reference to his latest book popped onto my screen I clicked the buy button. The Art of Explanation arrived late last week. Hopefully Lee’s wisdom can help me live into the tagline of …

More and more of my work is with Russell Fisher and Suzie Brown over at RustyBrown. The work that really excites us are the multi-stakeholder journeys that go beyond the usual, one-off workshop. These groups contain a diverse mix of people and groups who have ‘skin-in-the-game’, in relation to some complex, intractable challenge(s) that they face together. These groups (representing a slice of a system or field) are often stuck and know that a collective effort is needed to make progress. Along these learning journeys, part of the task is to build stronger relationships and develop the courage to be …