Organisations hire, promote, and govern by proxy—the credential, the confident manner, the dashboard—and then wonder why judgement is in short supply. I write about that substitution, and about what it takes to undo it.
Writer, podcaster, and speaker. Twenty years inside publishing, health, national standards, and the for-purpose sector.
The proxy is always cheaper, safer, and—as often as not—wrong.
The argument
Most of what goes wrong in organisations is not a shortage of talent but a failure to recognise and use it. Panels reward the candidate who performs judgement; boards reward the paper that looks complete; executives buy the system that promises to make judgement unnecessary.
The essays follow that one substitution through eight arguments, from the saviour hired in place of the artisan already on the payroll to the slow work of building institutions that can tell the difference.
The podcast
A curious, unhurried conversation with practitioners: a fly-on-the-wall view of what is said inside organisations and seldom said in public.
Invitations
I accept a small number of invitations each year: to speak to boards, executive teams, and conferences; to write for publications that want an argument rather than a listicle; and to join conversations on other people’s podcasts. The subject is usually the same one this site pursues—why organisations reward the appearance of judgement over the thing itself—fitted to the room.
Credentials
- PhD Leadership; doctoral research on Edmund Burke and the delegation of power
- MBA Organisational behaviour
- GAICD Graduate, Australian Institute of Company Directors
- Chair tekFoundation
- Currently Head of PMO at PRP Diagnostic Imaging
- Previously Senior leadership in publishing (HarperCollins) and national standards (Standards Australia)