My recent trip to Brunei saw me landing very early in the morning in Singapore with half a day to fill before my connecting flight so I went in search of some new Singaporean garden experiences. I ended up in Istana Park near Dhouby Ghaut MRT station before the sun was up sitting next to [...]

Tags: employee engagement, Leadership and management, Leadership skills, Organisational culture, Purpose, social aspect of work

On my last trip to Hobart I paid a return visit to a favourite spot in the Tasmanian Botanic Gardens. It’s a garden called “Pete’s vegie patch” that was started by Peter Cundall, the now retired host of the popular ABC program “Gardening Australia”. The patch is a working example of a productive garden and [...]

Tags: employee engagement, Employee morale, Leadership and management, Productivity

Another concept that came up in the Sir David Attenborough doco on “The private life of plants” that I saw recently concerns seeds. He began by reminding viewers that the purpose of flowers is to allow the plant to reproduce before going on to explain the reasons plants want their seeds to spread far and [...]

Tags: emerging leaders, Employee morale, Fierce leadership, Leadership skills, training new leaders, www.letsgrow.com.au

In the book “Good Boss, Bad Boss” by Robert Sutton there is a great quote from William Coyne, one of the leaders at 3M. He believes that: “The best management is sometimes less management or no management at all. After you plant a seed, you don’t dig it up every week to see how it [...]

Tags: Leadership and management, Leadership skills, Micro managing, Productivity

This picture represents a typical scene in any wine growing area . . . orderly rows of grapes. When I see them it always reminds me of offices full of neat cubicles in a row. Both might appeal to our sense of neatness and order but they are not natural. Plants don’t choose to grow [...]

Tags: employee engagement, Employee retention, flexible working hours, Office cubicles, Organisational culture, Productivity