David Schmidtchen

The characteristics of digitisation generally and AI specifically inherently introduce wicked problems, and require systems solutions. Go with the flow.

Why do middle managers in Defence believe they are so powerless to influence change? How have they come to believe that?

Australian working hours saw an unprecedented increase in 2022-23 but the output of all that effort failed to keep pace. Hence, national labour productivity fell 3.7%.

It’s important to understand what you are regulating when designing regulation for an industry that has steadfastly refuses to be regulated.

Those with the courage to disagree with ‘how we do things around here’ contribute disproportionately to improving team performance.

Ethical decision-makers know a firm’s leadership and culture will support them when a decision is about impact, not profit.

The APS needs to start with the idea that integrity is not a problem to be fixed but rather a capacity and capability developed and matured over time.

Integrity is difficult to define, but the lack of it is a serious failing that disqualifies a person from leadership.

Relying on functional measures can distract from what is expressed in vision and strategy. It discounts aspiration in favour of practicality.

Fixing leadership failings isn’t about weeding out the few bad apples. Are we actually getting the leaders we deserve?

In 1969 and 1970, one-sixth of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) firms disappeared through mergers or liquidations. Thousands lost their jobs in the first major economic shock since the Great Depression. The cause was not the ethical failings we often associate with such events but another common problem: business leaders’ failure to adapt to […]

Human behaviour in the modern workplace – think the quiet quitting phenomenon – is having an effect on cybersecurity risk.

The total Defence Enterprise workforce is the delicate system at the heart of Defence capability. If one fails, it all fails. 

There’s a persistent ‘all or nothing’ current that runs through every discussion of Australian public service workforce capacity and capability. It’s a bit like the rabbit-duck picture illusion. Some people look at the APS workforce and see a rabbit while others look at the same picture and see a duck. At one extreme, the APS […]

‘COVID showed what your employer really thought of you’, is a statement that captures the undercurrents of employee experience during the pandemic. The early rush to remote working was quickly accompanied by managers questioning employee productivity, the loss of workplace culture (oddly enough through the loss of ‘water cooler’ conversation that the same manager would […]