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Innovation Requires Commitment of TimeOn our honeymoon in France, my husband and I visited Monet's garden at Giverny. It's a beautiful French country house, every room in a different monotone palette. Monet loved colour and his studio looked out over the garden. He built a lake, complete with a bridge, and planted his famous gardens, just so that he could paint them.
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What We Learned at the BOLT HackathonThis year's BOLT Asset Management Hackathon brought together professionals from engineering, IT, operations and maintenance to tackle some of our most pressing asset management challenges.
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What Does It Mean to Be Committed to Innovation?It's easy to say that you're innovative. It's easy for companies to have an 'innovation' pillar in their strategic plan, to insert a paragraph on innovation in their annual report, or even to list innovation as one of their values, but what does true commitment to innovation look like?
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Pruning for GrowthWhen I was a young girl, my grandmother had a beautiful rose garden. It was formally laid out, right next to the house that sat in a clearing on a hilltop, surrounded by about five hundred acres of native forest.
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Jacaranda Blues: Why Self Imposed Deadlines Are the Most ImportantI've just seen the first jacaranda blossom of the season. These flowers have a distinctive purple blue hue. Right now in Brisbane their vibrant colour is starting to emerge as Spring unfolds across the city.
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The Board's Role in Asset ManagementOver the past five weeks I've written a series of articles on the Board's Role in Asset Management.
Board Directors are asset managers. Delivering value from the company’s assets is one of the key roles of the board. It’s important that board directors have a thorough understanding of asset management principles and how they apply to board decision making. |
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The Board's Compliance Role in Asset ManagementBoards need to consider a wide range of compliance obligations as part of their oversight role. These may be imposed by regulators, government or donor-funding regimes, federal, state or local legislation. Industry based standards may apply in the sectors in which the company operates. While meeting mandatory compliance requirements is not optional, board directors need to satisfy themselves that the company has systems in place to meet these and that they receive relevant and timely reports regarding any potential or actual non-compliance.
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The Boards Policy Role in Asset ManagementMy husband and I spent our honeymoon in France and we had the privilege to enjoy a wonderful lunch at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. Cesar Ritz was a passionate entrepreneur, with a single-minded vision: to have his hotels be the very definition of elegance and refinement. He wanted his hotel to be a place 'where a Prince would feel at home'.
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The Board's Risk Role in Asset ManagementNobody wants to think about risk when things are going well, but it only takes a moment for things to turn from very good to horrid. In my experience as a board director I've had CEOs say about a proposal that 'There's no risk.' My response: 'There is always risk.'
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The Board's Strategy Role in Asset ManagementLast week I had a day trip to Canberra and as I waited in the pre-dawn darkness for my cab to the airport, it only took a moment to swipe my phone and find out that it was currently -4.7 degrees in the capital (feels like -7.7!). However inconvenient for a Queenslander, I had no hesitation in carting my winter coat, gloves and scarf, because I knew I would need them.
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The Buck Stops Here - the Board's Leadership Role in Asset ManagementUnited States President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that read 'The buck stops here.' He's quoted as saying, “It's easy for the Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done, after the game is over. But when the decision is up before you — the decision has to be made.”
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Delegation Is Not IntegrationThe 'Oarsome Foursome' were an Australian Olympic and World Champion rowing team, competing most famously as a coxless four. Through the 1990s and into the early 2000s they were an unbeatable team and hugely popular in Australia.
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Better Business for a Better WorldWe create value through connections, not in isolation.
As a Certified BCorporation, it's been great to be a part of #BCorpmonth across Australia and New Zealand. It's fantastic to be involved in a community of business that is playing their part in creating a better world for our community and for our planet, now and into the future. |
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The Status Quo Doesn't Shift Because You're RightIn his book, This is Marketing, Seth Godin highlights that if all it took to upend the status quo was the truth, we would have changed a long time ago. The status quo only shifts when the culture changes.
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Have You Topped-Up Your Oil Lately?Do you remember the last time you bought a car? Did it come with oil already in the engine? Did you think that you'd never have to worry about oil again, because that had been 'done'? Probably not! Engine lubrication is not a one-off activity. We know we need to top-up the oil or the engine will seize up. |
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AMPEAK Wrap Up 2019AMPEAK is the premier annual conference for Asset Management professionals and this year was held in Fremantle, Western Australia. As a member of the board of the Asset Management Council, it was my privilege to be involved in this event. We had record numbers, a sold out conference, trade exhibition and gala dinner. These are all indicators of the growing awareness and interest in asset management across Australian and around the world.
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A Strategy Should Not Be an Unsolvable MysteryOutsold only by the Bible, Agatha Christie’s crime novels have sold over two billion copies. For fiction written in English, only Shakespeare comes close in total sales, but he has had a four hundred year head start. In more than eighty novels, Agatha Christie held readers in suspense as they tried to use their ‘little grey cells’ to deduce the villain in a series of nasty murders. Over the years, many theories have emerged that seek to explain the secret to Christie’s success.
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Every Industry Has an Imperative to InnovateHow is your company responding to this imperative?
In the 1990s the pharmaceutical industry was in the midst of a biotech boom. Recombinant DNA technologies and biological pharmaceuticals brought novel treatments to previously untreated conditions. For my PhD I researched the top 21 global pharmaceutical companies, who together represented a discrete strategic group. By the end of my four years of research there were 14 companies left. A flurry of merger activity between the dominant players in this industry was driven by the imperative for innovation. |
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Keys to Sustainable GrowthOne of the keys to sustainable growth through innovation is to divorce what you own from what you earn. Historically, wealth was linked to land ownership and he who had the most land had the most wealth and power. Kingdoms were built and wars were fought over the ownership of scarce land assets. While land still has value, it's no longer the only way to build wealth.
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Building Your Ark: Managing Unplanned ChangeAntediluvian is one of my favourite words. It has a quirky ring to it and it's unusual enough that if you drop it into a sentence you can really surprise people.
Its literal meaning is before the flood. Traditionally, this refers to the Biblical flood of Noah, and the term is generally used to describe thoughts, ideas or policies that are so ancient or archaic that they could have come off the Ark. |
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It Takes 20 Wickets to Win a Test MatchAs a kid my summers were filled with cricket. We watched it on the TV and then we'd play cricket at the beach or in the backyard with a transistor radio going so we didn't miss a ball. Some of my earliest memories are of Lillee and Thompson pounding the pitch against the Windies and Allan Border smashing it out in the Ashes.
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