The work behind the thinking
Ideas are important.
But I am most interested in what happens when ideas are tested through conversation and applied to real organisational challenges.
My recent work has included designing and facilitating leadership roundtables, creating dialogue between leaders from different sectors, contributing to organisational reform and exploring the practical implications of service redesign, strategy and automation.
- The common thread is curiosity.
- How can we create better conversations between leaders?
- How can organisations turn strategy into action?
- How can services be redesigned around the people who use them?
- How should leaders respond to AI and automation?
And how can organisations reduce unnecessary complexity while improving performance?
Here are some of the conversations, projects and ideas that have shaped my recent work.
Leadership Round Tables
Small groups. Important questions. Candid conversations.
The Leadership Roundtables bring together leaders with shared challenges but different experiences.
The format is intentionally small and conversational.
Rather than asking people to sit through a series of presentations, each roundtable is built around a carefully framed question and an opportunity for participants to share experience, challenge assumptions and learn from one another.
My role is to help frame the conversation, create the conditions for candid discussion and ensure the conversation goes beyond familiar leadership talking points.
Sector: Life sciences, health, research and professional services
Format: Curated leadership roundtable
My role: Convenor, moderator and discussion facilitator
The life sciences sector sits at the intersection of research, healthcare, technology, government policy and commercial innovation.
It is also navigating significant change.
The Life Sciences Leadership Roundtables bring together leaders from across this diverse ecosystem to explore the human and organisational issues shaping the sector.
The conversations have explored leadership, workforce participation, career progression, organisational culture and the changing expectations placed on leaders.
The opportunity
People working within different parts of the life sciences ecosystem can face similar leadership and workforce challenges without necessarily having the opportunity to discuss them together.
The roundtable format creates a space for leaders to move outside their organisational boundaries, compare experiences and explore what can be learned across the sector.
My contribution
I work with participants and contributors to:
- identify the central question for the conversation
- design the discussion format
- develop themes and questions
- moderate the conversation
- draw connections between different perspectives
- identify ideas and questions that warrant further exploration.
The value
The objective is not to produce a conventional event with speakers and an audience.
It is to create a genuine peer conversation.
Participants leave with new perspectives, practical ideas and relationships that can continue beyond the room.
Sector: NSW Government and public administration
Format: Cross-agency leadership conversation
My role: Convenor and moderator
Government leadership is becoming increasingly complex.
Public sector leaders are expected to maintain operational performance while delivering reform, responding to changing priorities, managing risk, navigating stakeholder expectations and leading workforces experiencing continuous change.
The NSW Public Sector Leadership Roundtables create an opportunity for leaders from different parts of government to discuss these challenges with peers.
Conversation themes
Recent and emerging themes include:
- leadership in complex environments
- translating government priorities into organisational action
- leading reform while maintaining service delivery
- accountability across organisational boundaries
- decision-making in highly governed environments
- workforce capability and succession
- change fatigue
- AI, automation and the future of government work.
Why cross-agency conversation matters
The public sector contains enormous leadership experience.
But much of that experience remains inside individual departments, agencies and professional networks.
Bringing leaders together across organisational boundaries allows people to compare approaches, understand different perspectives and discover that many apparently unique organisational challenges are shared.
The conversations are practical, confidential and focused on the realities of leadership rather than leadership theory.
Sector: Not-for-profit, professional associations and purpose-led organisations
Format: Leadership roundtable and facilitated dialogue
My role: Moderator and facilitator
Purpose-led organisations operate within a distinctive set of tensions.
They need to remain true to mission while maintaining financial sustainability.
They need to meet growing community expectations while managing finite resources.
They need strong governance without losing agility.
And they need to build organisational capability while protecting the values and identity that make the organisation distinctive.
These roundtables explore how leaders navigate those tensions.
Conversation themes
- clarity of organisational purpose
- strategy execution
- financial and organisational sustainability
- governance and leadership
- workforce and volunteer engagement
- organisational capability
- leading change in values-driven environments
- balancing mission and performance.
- The central idea is simple.
Purpose matters.
But strong purpose needs to be supported by effective leadership and an organisation capable of turning that purpose into outcomes.
Leadership Dialogue
Bringing leaders together across traditional boundaries.
Some leadership challenges are sector-specific.
Many are not.
Leaders across government, professional services, health, infrastructure and service industries are all navigating versions of the same questions.
- How do we lead through sustained uncertainty?
- How do we create accountability while encouraging collaboration?
- How do we respond to changing workforce expectations?
- What does AI mean for leadership?
- How do we maintain trust?
How do we prepare emerging leaders for an environment that will be very different from the one in which today’s senior leaders developed their careers?
Leadership Dialogues bring leaders from different sectors together to explore these questions.
Participants: Leaders from government, professional services and service industries
Format: Panel conversation, facilitated dialogue and audience participation
My role: Moderator, conversation designer and contributor
Leadership Dialogue events are designed as an alternative to the conventional conference panel.
The objective is not to collect a group of impressive job titles and ask each person the same predictable questions.
The objective is to create a genuine conversation.
Each event begins with an issue that matters to leaders.
The speakers are selected because they bring different experiences and perspectives.
The conversation is then designed to explore disagreement, uncertainty and practical experience.
Recent areas of focus
- leadership and organisational complexity
- workplace participation and inclusion
- organisational culture
- leadership through transformation
- workforce change
- the changing expectations of leaders
- emerging leadership
- AI, automation and human judgement.
The role of the moderator
I believe moderation is a form of conversation design.
My role begins before people walk onto the stage.
It involves understanding the issue, working with participants, identifying the tensions within the topic and designing questions that will produce a genuine conversation.
During the discussion, my job is to listen.
To recognise when an idea deserves further exploration.
To connect one participant’s experience with another.
To challenge an assumption.
And, occasionally, to politely notice when someone has given a very good answer to a completely different question.
Whole of Organisation Projects
Experience that informs my perspective
My writing, speaking and leadership conversations are informed by practical experience working with organisations confronting real questions about strategy, services, structure and performance.
My consulting work is undertaken through SpencerMaurice and has included projects across government, professional associations and purpose-led organisations.
The following examples illustrate some of the work that has shaped my thinking.
Sector: Public education and shared services
Focus: Strategic planning, service improvement and implementation
A strategy only becomes meaningful when it changes what an organisation does.
Work within a major shared services environment has involved connecting long-term strategic direction with operational improvement priorities, service delivery, governance and performance measures.
The work included engagement with stakeholders, co-design of business improvement opportunities, prioritisation of initiatives and development of an implementation roadmap.
What this reinforced for me
The gap between strategy and execution is rarely solved by writing a more detailed strategy.
Organisations need to connect strategic intent with:
- clear priorities
- investment decisions
- operational plans
- service governance
- measures of performance
- accountability for implementation.
Strategy becomes real when it changes decisions.
Sector: Government regulation
Focus: Strategic planning, stakeholder perspectives and facilitated decision-making
Strategic planning is stronger when organisations understand how they are experienced by the people and organisations around them.
Work supporting strategic planning in a regulatory environment included engagement with external stakeholders, analysis of stakeholder perspectives and facilitation of strategic planning conversations.
What this reinforced for me
Stakeholder engagement should not be an exercise in collecting quotes for a strategy document.
Used properly, it can challenge internal assumptions.
External stakeholders often see organisational strengths, frustrations and emerging risks differently from those inside the organisation.
The value lies in bringing those perspectives into the strategy conversation while decisions can still be influenced.
Rory Gregg 