The Step Change Blog

No one likes feeling stuck at work.

When you've made a bad decision, how do you overcome? Here are four simple ways to recover from a bad decision.

Not all opportunities are created equal. You will find that some are worth saying yes to — they advance your business and your career growth. But saying yes all the time can be unhealthy.

Massive change and disruption have transformed the way we work and live. The old ways are no longer working and innovative and more creative solutions are called for by the day.

Welcome to a new episode of the Insight Hunters with Dr Norman and Detective Flash! Ready to ask better questions to get better insights?

Unless you’ve been running your business under a rock, you would know that businesses today are operating in a VUCA environment. In this context, it’s the quick-thinking, action-oriented, and strategic organisations that win. Those that produce strategic documents and leave them in a bottom drawer — well, they come second or simply fail to finish.

Companies do not come to faster decisions by osmosis — it is always the result of a better decision-making framework.In agile organisations, the ability to make nimble decisions lead to 2.5x the growth, twice the profit, and a 30% higher ROI on investments.

How can you unlock your ability to make better, smarter decisions?

Learn about the scenario planning mistakes and how you can prevent them from misfiring your strategy so you can navigate complexity efficiently.

UPDATE: In a special event, Dr Chris Shambrook of PlanetK2 delivers a masterclass on performance– drawing inspiration from the perspective of Leader, Manager, Mentor and Coach, or what is collectively known as the Four Executive Modes. 

In this interview, the master-coach, author and speaker walks the Step Change community through how business leaders can drive more value into their interactions by moving between these modes. He also talks about the lead indicators of performance, what performance looks like regardless of the mode, and emphasises the appropriate human connection and social support required from industry leaders.

Watch the full video here.

In these times of great change and uncertainty, it is very important that we adapt and utilise the opportunities and resources at our disposal the best we can. This is especially true for industry leaders because every decision has the potential to make or break your organisation.

To begin, you will need to fully define your role as an executive within your organisation by understanding the 4 Executive Modes namely– Leader, Manager, Mentor and Coach. 

Clearly defining these modes will allow you to understand and seamlessly move between these roles, propelling your organisation to even greater heights.

The new year is here! And as we venture forward with fresh business insights and useful strategy, here are the top 10 articles most popular with C-suites in 2019 that you may have missed. 

The biggest hindrance to transformation and innovation in the workplace is blame culture. Throughout most times, many do not realise that an atmosphere of blame can be deeply rooted in leadership.

It’s easy to say your business is customer-centric; in fact, many businesses would claim they are putting their customers at the heart of what they do. 

Modern customers are savvy and sceptical. Businesses can no longer win because of their scale, professionalism, and history. It’s those that put the customer’s best interest at heart who perform better and win.

In the past, customers often trusted banks on the basis of their scale, professionalism, and history. Today, customers are more likely to measure the trustworthiness of a bank based on their customer service and support. Customer-centricity is likely to be the key to winning over customers again.

Here’s a recap on the biggest takeaways from last month’s Step Change Open Haus event, How to Build a Customer-Centric Culture.

There is no question about it. Customer-centric companies perform better and are far better able to drive customer loyalty. If you‘re a company looking to adopt a more customer-centric culture, where do you start and how exactly do you make that transition?

Poor culture leads to poor conduct. Following the release of the Commissioner’s final report, it’s clear that businesses need to get their culture and governance right.

Many informed businesses today are actively looking for ways to transform their business model or their culture to become more customer-centric, but many struggle to implement it or just don’t know where to start.

In today’s diverse business landscape, creativity is an essential skill that modern business leaders need to have. It is synonymous to imagination and innovative thinking — specific skill sets that are necessary in pushing workforces to be progressive.  

In disruptive times, change may be essentially imposed to improve what is not working or steer the wheel towards a new direction.

No matter what type of change your organisation is going through, having the means to measure success and being able to report the progress to the board are crucial to ensuring that your organisation stays afloat as it wades through these challenging times.

The need to lead change is growing. But leaders who have done it before can attest that going through a transformation is a complicated process. Explore one of the key factors that helps leaders successfully lead transformations: change communications.

Our CEO, Ashton Bishop, reveals what businesses can do to find their next step change, and how to implement the Big 6 Challenges for business growth in this 7-minute Marketing the Invisible podcast with Tom Poland.

Running a business or managing a team is no walk in the park. Along the way, we realise that failure is unavoidable and sometimes even necessary. In this fourth video of a five-part interview series, we asked former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts on what we can learn from failure and how to make the most of it.

A four-billion dollar merger is underway between two of the country’s media player giants, Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media. The new company name after the merger is Nine, and it is set to become Australia’s formidable integrated media player.

With two giants combining forces to create one formidable integrated media player, there is one worthy question that begs an answer.

When your employees make a serious mistake, what’s their initial response? Is it making excuses? Finger pointing? Or do they have a great sense of ownership for business results that they take action to solve the problem and learn from their mistake?

Many agencies who are at their optimal performance are striving to achieve peak performance thinking that is what is needed to win.

So we asked former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts how to maintain peak performance in your team and as an individual. In this video, he also shares how he has been able to put this into action to get to where he is now.

No matter how far-reaching a leader’s vision may be, the reality is that transforming organisations is a difficult and arduous task. Many businesses today are so deeply rooted in operational efficiency and stability that they continue to struggle with how to effectively manage and sustain change.

The Practice of Powerful Presence is a series of concepts and exercises that let you consistently bring out the best in you so you can be the best leader for others.

The next Powerful Presence is in Adelaide on 24th - 26th August. Register Here. 

This is not another leadership tool or app you can simply download — it’s the complete operating system you need if you want to think clearly, think creatively, be powerfully present, and have an edge in your communications.

If you can’t simply define management and leadership then you can’t hope to be effective at either. We’ve got it down to a word for each. At the end of this article you should be able to see what great looks like — no matter what side of the divide you come down on.