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From Busy to Effective: Helping Leaders to Shift Their Focus

Shifting from busy to effective requires deliberate choices.
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Why Capability Building Fails Without Manager Involvement

Managers play a critical role in whether or not development sticks.
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Decision-Making Fatigue: What Happens When Everything Lands on One Desk

There is a cognitive and organisational cost to overloading leaders with micro-decisions.
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Why People Leave Well-Run Teams and Stay in Poorly Run Ones

The clarity that enables good performance also makes gaps visible, and not everyone wants that.
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Why Common Sense Isn’t Enough for Leadership

Leadership is its own set of skills, not just natural common sense. You need a shared framework and toolkit in place to make it work.
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When Escalation is a Symptom, Not a Solution

Excessive escalation is feedback that something isn't working.
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Organisational Behaviour and How You Think About Your Identity

Identity is heavily influenced by one's social environment and interaction. What does this mean for work?
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Reading the Room: Using the Systems Leadership Values Continuum

People’s behaviour at work makes sense when you understand how they’re judging what’s going on around them.
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Who Matters at Work?

I'm asking you to genuinely think about this. It's very easy to read a thinkpiece about workplace dynamics and then move on, gently reassured that you're one of the good ones, rather than put work in to make change that lasts.
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Thanks for 2025 – hello 2026!

Thank you to our clients in 2025!
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What We’re Reading: The Hidden Beliefs that Hold Leaders Back

Beliefs we have about ourselves and our work can hold us back.
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Video: When Peter Didn’t Follow Instructions

Peter's first job was a paper run. Here's what happened when he didn't follow instructions.
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How to Change Culture – and Minds

A leader needs to understand why people believe in the things they do and how can they be persuaded to change what they think.
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Making Environmental Sustainability Real for Heavy Industry Teams

Sustainability in heavy industry can feel abstract – especially when you’re working to keep the lights on. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
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Why Emotional Intelligence Is Hard in 2025 – Especially on the Ground

Emotional intelligence isn’t soft. It’s operationally critical – and worth investing in more than ever.
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4 Things we Ask People to Report Back on in our Leadership Development Programs

At several times during our longer leadership development programs, we ask participants to present on the tasks they've undertaken as part of the programming.
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Making Cyclical Work Not Boring: Weekly Meetings That People Actually Want to Attend

Weekly meetings don’t need to be stale. They just need to be real, useful, and owned by the team.
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How we Involve Participants’ Leaders in our Leadership Development Programs

We like delivering programs that connect directly to what people do back at work. We involve organisational leaders, both in their capacity as participants' managers and as subject matter experts.
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Balancing Expectations and the Reality of Human Behaviour

The reality is that not everyone has the same idea of what values are attached to particular kinds of behaviour, and also that people have limits on their capability and capacity.
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Measuring Leadership Development: Moving Beyond Anecdotes to Impact

When done right, leadership development isn’t fluff. It’s one of the most practical choices an organisation can make.
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Achieving Cost Efficiency and Quality Together

Driving cost efficiency and improving quality aren’t opposites, they’re two sides of the same coin.
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The Role of Organisational Design in Leadership Effectiveness

We work with leaders to design organisational structures and ways of working that enable rather than obstruct.
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The Power of Delegation: How Letting Go Drives Team Growth

Delegation isn’t about offloading work. It’s about ensuring decisions and tasks are handled at the right level.
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Addressing Mental Health and Wellbeing as a Workplace Leader

Leaders play a critical role in creating the right conditions to support mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.
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Supporting Cross-Functional Working: How Leaders Can Enable Better Problem Solving

By combining these insights, leaders can guide their organisation toward solutions that are more innovative and effective than any one team could achieve alone.
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Making Feedback Part of Business as Usual for Leaders

Creating a feedback practice, informally and formally, is essential for the continuous development and effectiveness of leaders.
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Welcome Scott Forrester, our New Leadership and Culture Associate

Here's an interview with our new Associate, Scott!
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Key Messages from the AICD Sustainability Paper

The guide emphasises the importance of proactive engagement by directors in implementing mandatory climate reporting.
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Make Continuous Learning Part of Your Organisation’s Culture

By embedding development opportunities into day-to-day operations as well as formally, organisations enable sustained growth and improved performance.
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Lessons from Bayer’s Organisational Change: Analysis Versus Management Populism

Does this language just allow us to avoid difficult analysis and resort instead to our popular prejudices?
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3 Questions for Customer-Oriented Service Design

Services should be designed in accordance with user needs. It's not as simple as it sounds.
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Empowering Emerging Leaders: Why Early Development Matters

By supporting their growth from the outset, organisations can better prepare them to take on greater responsibilities and build continuity in leadership.
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Aligning Leadership Development with Organisational Goals

We design development programs that are relevant and have the intended impact, both for individuals and their organisations.
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Thanks for 2024 – here’s to 2025!

Thank you to our clients in 2024!
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What are our leadership and transformation offerings?

How can we work with you?
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Navigating Leadership Successions

At LKS Quaero, we believe that a well-structured approach to leadership transitions is essential to enable continuity and maintain momentum.
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About our coaching practice

LKS Quaero's coaches support individual leaders to achieve better results through tailored coaching services.
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Making the Time for Leadership Development

Investing in people leads to their own investment.
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Driving Financial Sustainability: A Collective Effort

Financial sustainability is not just a leader’s responsibility.
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The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

At LKS Quaero, we are committed to helping leaders to develop their emotional intelligence through comprehensive assessments and targeted coaching. This empowers them to lead with empathy, resilience, and authenticity, driving organisational success.
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The value of persistence

That's why it's so important socially for us to value persistence; it builds more satisfied human beings who are better at doing what they need to do, and who value the journey.
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Key Australian WHS Statistics and Your Workplace Safety

As a society, we don't learn the lessons of the past - we just treat everything as isolated incidents and someone else's problem.
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Balancing Strategic Direction with Agility in a Rapidly Changing Environment

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Empowering Worker Decision-Making: A Path to Organisational Excellence

By organising authorities to ensure decisions are made efficiently at the lowest viable level, organisations can unlock their full potential and achieve sustained success.
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Welcome Alex Spinks, LKS Quaero’s New Associate!

Alex sat down to tell us a little about herself.
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The Impact of LKS Quaero’s Leadership Development Programs, Beyond Organisational Leadership

What's really heartening for me are the often transformative experiences people describe in terms of how they see themselves.
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Join Us – Site Safety Supervisor Public Program this Winter in Singleton

From 30 July to 1 August 2024, in Singleton NSW, we're running a Site Safety Supervisor program open to anyone who'd like to sign up. Successful completion of the course results in a statement of attainment for four units of competency from the RII30120 Cert III in Surface Extraction Operations.
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Nurturing trust in remote work

Fostering trust between managers and workers is paramount for achieving organisational goals and maintaining employee wellbeing.
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Navigating Private Versus Public Orientations to Communication in the Workplace

Different approaches to private versus public hold significant sway in shaping worker experiences and organisational dynamics.
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Combating Weaponised Incompetence in the Workplace

This phenomenon occurs when individuals intentionally underperform or manipulate situations to their advantage, ultimately impeding the progress of the team or organisation as a whole.
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Getting the Most Out of Your Leadership Development Program

Having shepherded hundreds of students through our programming, here’s our advice on how you can get the most out of your leadership development journey.
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Video: artificial intelligence for organisations

Chally, Nathan, and Sam talk artificial intelligence for organisations.
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Working with both Artificial Intelligence and the Human Touch for Customer Interactions

By leveraging the strengths of both AI and human beings in a thoughtful manner, businesses can foster stronger connections and deliver exceptional service tailored to individual needs.
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Video: resilience for organisations

Chally, Nathan, and Sam talk resilience for organisations.
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Welcome Maddy Andrews, our New Leadership and Culture Associate

Here's an interview with our new Associate, Maddy!
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Video: how not to talk about working from home

Sam, Chally, and Nathan discuss back to the office vs work from home organisational messaging.
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Thanks for 2023 – and on to 2024!

Thank you to our clients in 2023! Here's some of what we have planned for 2024.
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Don’t make the mistake of undervaluing admin

It’s often seen as low skilled or inconsequential work, when really it’s finely detailed work that keeps everything moving.
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Video: Advice on Program Quizzes

Here's Chally's best advice on taking our program quizzes.
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The Importance of Honest Feedback for Leaders

As a leader, receiving honest feedback is crucial for personal and professional growth.
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Video: Breaking Down Adidas’ Strategy

Sam Robinson, Nathan Farr, and Chally Kacelnik got together to talk about Adidas' strategy.
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What We’re Reading: When It Comes to Communication from the Top, Less Isn’t More

These studies bear out that undercommunication, particularly about tasks, is detrimental for leaders' relationships with their teams.
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Three Factors for Sustaining Improvement

The bright shiny change will fall apart if you don't get implementation right. Think it through, set the stage, and follow it up.
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What We’re Watching: Class Takeaways – The Human Factor

Professor Huang has distilled a few critical points for effective communication and decision-making that are all too easy for leaders to forget.
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Video: Breaking Down Nokia’s Strategy

Sam Robinson, Nathan Farr, and Chally Kacelnik got together to talk about Nokia's strategy, and how they went from top to bottom and on the rise again.
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What We’re Reading: Why Leading With Empathy Is More Important Than Ever

Empathy's critical, not fluffy - people can tell when it's applied and consistent, and are hugely put off when it rings false.
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Relationships are Not the Basis for Getting Work Done

I’m always pretty bothered by conversations about work that assume relationships are the foundation of getting stuff done.
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What We’re Reading: This CEO Has A Better Rule For Making Faster Decisions

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About Leadership Capability Assessments

Why do a leadership capability assessment? What's involved? And how's it different from other kinds of testing?
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What We’re Reading: How a CEO Can Create Psychological Safety in the Room

Some great practical tips for executive leaders on creating psychological safety.
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Genuine Work Relationships Versus Social Bias

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What We’re Reading: How Fair is Your Workplace?

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Leading People to Success in the Hunter

Our Managing Director, Sam Robinson, is in the March issue of the Hunter Business Review.
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What We’re Reading: How CEOs Manage Time

This 2006 study by Porter and Nohria outlines some surprising finds for how CEOs spend their time. 
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Changing Culture Starts With You

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What We’re Reading: If Strategy is So Important, Why Don’t We Make Time for It?

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Genuine Relationship Building for Leaders

Strong relationships are the foundation of a successful organisation, and a leader who can build and maintain genuine relationships with their team, stakeholders, and clients is more likely to achieve their goals.
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What We’re Reading: Better questions give better answers

If you're not finding the right answers, brainstorming for questions instead can help transform your approach.
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Video: Netflix’s Strategy

We got together to talk about Netflix's strategy and we had quite a lot to say.
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What We’re Reading: 9 Trends That Will Shape Work in 2023 and Beyond

Some new and novel, some tried and true.
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Our Greatest Hits on Strategy

Let's take a look back on previous posts on strategy.
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The 3 Ps: Purpose, Purpose, and Purpose

We keep coming back to purpose, because it's critical.
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Video: Leader Role in Linking the Everyday to Strategy

Sam Robinson, Nathan Farr, and Chally Kacelnik got together to talk about how leaders can link the everyday to strategy for their teams.
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What We’re Reading: Your Strategy Needs a Strategy

There is no single best approach for strategy: your environment is the critical factor.
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Thanks for 2022, and on to 2023!

It’s been another big year for us at LKS Quaero.
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Video: Focusing on the Big Picture Amongst the Daily Grind

Sam Robinson, Nathan Farr, and Chally Kacelnik got together to talk about how to focus on the big picture amongst the daily grind.
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Video: Role and Strategy Gaps

Sam Robinson, Nathan Farr, and Chally Kacelnik got together to talk about one of the most persistent issues we see: gaps between individual roles and their links to organisational strategy.
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What We’re Reading: What You Lose with Your New Strategy

'The latent and often unarticulated fear of loss is usually behind organizational inertia and resistance.'
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What We’re Reading: The CEO of Hershey on Turning a Candy Company into a Snacks Empire

A great practical demonstration of creating a new business strategy.
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What We’re Reading: Can You Spot Diversity? (Probably Not)

Spillover bias can cause you to perceive more diversity than is actually there: "people who observe one kind of diversity are likely to think a different kind of diversity is present".
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Leaders Who Try to Dominate Other People Look Weak

If you're worried about being seen as weak, displays of dominance are a sure fire way to embed an impression of weakness.
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How We Review Procedures

You need to get that corporate knowledge documented and readily understood by everyone who needs it, and you need to conform with legal requirements.
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What We’re Reading: 8 Time Management Techniques For Busy People

Most time management advice - to me at least - sounds too obvious and too easy.
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What We’re Reading: If You’re Not Outside Your Comfort Zone, You Won’t Learn Anything

Practical advice on how to take the plunge if you're feeling avoidant or frightened.
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Role Clarity and “That’s Not My Job”

If you're hearing "that's not my job," it's a good time to think about role clarity and accountability.
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What We’re Reading: Communicating Uncertainty: How to Connect With Your Audience, Even When The Answers Aren’t Clear

This is a great conversation, applying lessons from the medical field to leadership in any field.
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What We’re Reading: How to Build Confidence About Showing Vulnerability

'Confident vulnerability means that leaders can own their imposter syndrome by putting their self-doubts to work for them'.
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Video: Theory of Mind

Here's Senior Consultant Chally Kacelnik’s advice on attributing mental states to others in order to get the right outcomes and smooth the path of human interactions - it's about applying what's known as theory of mind.
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What We’re Reading: What Leadership Development Should Look Like in the Hybrid Era

We're running a mix of in person, virtual, and hybrid leadership development programs right now, and we're tracking lessons from each format to the benefit of our programming over all.
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