Blog

Banker, businesswoman and academic powerhouse, Helen Nugent talks about career planning, change management and being on boards. By Georgina Jerums. She is Bond University Chancellor, a non-executive director of Macquarie Bank, Origin Energy and Freehills, chair of Funds SA and Swiss Re Australia and director of the National Portrait Gallery. And in the late 1990s, as strategy chief, she helped bring about a $2.8 billion revival for Westpac. Yes, Helen Nugent is your chronic overachiever.

Finding the best person for a job today often involves psychometric testing, but is that all that's required? Sarah Marinos reports. Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world? Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning?

Problem-solving is a critical skill for a manager. Michael Carman looks at how to find solutions to problems. An oil executive wanted to make better use of the expensive, and wasted, real estate of petrol stations. His solution: add convenience stores.

As the business world scrambles out of the crater left by the global financial crisis, the war for talent will be more brutal than ever. But leading companies began mobilising their forces long ago. Chris Sheedy reports. The global financial crisis hasn't been all bad news. Around 18 months ago, after making a decision to better understand staff-turnover issues, management of Diageo Australia changed various policies and added new ones. As a result, staff turnover fell and commitment levels rose dramatically, even as other businesses fell to pieces.

Reg Bryson says that organisations must look to brand themselves by what they stand for and do, not just by what they say or sell. By Jason Day Oh for the silver bullet. Want your workforce's tenure to go up by a 12-month average? Silver bullet. Want a brand makeover that will lead to a 15 per cent jump in sales? Silver bullet. Under pressure to sort out your electorate's unsightly tagging graffiti epidemic? Find that silver bullet. Of course, there is rarely such a thing.

Genuine one-to-one communication is needed, today more than ever, to help staff learn, develop and contribute. By Karalyn Brown For almost as long as we've researched human psychology in the workplace, the impact of a manager on the engagement, productivity and loyalty of their team has been clear. Back in 2004, for example, in a global study of 50,000 employees, the Corporate Leadership Council found the employees who are most committed performed 20 per cent better and were 87 per cent less likely to leave an organisation.

Money, power, success, achievement or a calling? What drives leaders to be what they are?

You do not need to convince Ronni Kahn or Paul Henderson that the quest for real satisfaction as a corporate leader often involves taking the road less travelled.

Kahn attributes growing up in racially-divided South Africa and 10 years living on a kibbutz communal settlement in Israel for her philanthropic attitude towards life and work.

Does positive organisational culture hinge on recruiting like-minded people, or is this the worst mistake a company can make? Chris Sheedy seeks answers to the perfect balance. Sportswear giant Nike makes a fascinating case study in the analysis of the pros and cons of the employment of like-minded people. The company's obsession with creating better sports shoes for athletes helped the business grow from one that was selling shoes out of a car boot in 1964 to the multinational giant we know today.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has his work cut out maintaining the premium Qantas brand in a cut-throat market. By Georgina Jerums Most mornings, Qantas boss Alan Joyce heads off from his apartment at The Rocks and pounds the pavement for eight kilometres around the Sydney Opera House before work. A jogger's high - and getting stuck into books by British evolutionist Richard Dawkins - are the 43-year-old's way of "keeping stress at bay" at work.

Flexibility over where, when and how staff work is king when it comes to managing an organisation's greatest asset: its people. Mark Story reports. Admittedly, it was less applicable to some sectors than others - notably banking and finance but abnormally high staff retention levels in 2009 may have had more to do with global-financial-crisis fatigue than genuine loyalty.