Commonwealth Bank moves to assert control over employees' social media connections

The Commonwealth Bank is set to meet with the Financial Services Union (FSU) to discuss the company's controversial social media policy, which requests that workers inform the bank if they see any negative comment about the company on a social media site, including their own Facebook page.

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The end of corporate social responsibility?

Looking back on the GFC Impact...

Do you believe this remains true?

Directors Report - Keys to Successful Entrepreneurs - a Comparison of Western and Eastern Cultures

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Recently I had the opportunity to meet with Peter Church, Founder and Chairman of AFG Venture Group and author of Added Value - The life Stories of Indian Business Leaders.

You can review the book review here

My discussion with Peter was about leadership and success. Peter gave some interesting thoughts on the differences between leadership in Eastern and Western cultures.

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Adaptive Leadership and the Need for Reflection - Lindley Edwards - GMD - AFG Venture Group

Adaptive Leadership and the Need for Reflection

A few weeks ago Australia acquired a new Prime Minister.

This was an extraordinary and unusual event for a first term government to depose an existing leader and elect a new one. The consistent reasons reported for this change of leader were the themes of a breakdown and a lack of confidence in leadership. The failure in leadership was not about any paucity of intelligence, or a deficiency in qualifications, or any immoral intentions, or an insufficient understanding of the challenges that needed to be dealt with. What was in limited supply were skills such as the ability to consult and listen; the willingness to seek and value broadly based experienced counsel; the capability to delegate and trust others; the aptitude to build a high performing team and the facility to create enough consensus to ensure that others were taken on a journey of change. There was no evidence of any reflective processes or incorporation of feedback mechanisms.

I have been reflecting that one of our often innate and immediate leadership responses in a time of crisis or uncertainty or chaos is to try to concentrate power rather than devolve it. This is because our natural human response is to try to control and command the situation when we are dealing with complexity, a high degree of uncertainty and challenging environments. What we should be doing instead is having high visibility, devolving issues to the experts in our team and making ourselves the ‘glue’ that holds it all together that allows the best choices and decisions to be made.

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Responsible Leadersip - Much more than Corporate Social Responsibility

The recent turmoil in financial markets is ascribed by many to be a failure of leadership and the calls for more responsible leadership continue to grow. But what is responsible leadership? There is a danger in taking too narrow a view and simply bowing to critics demanding more corporate social responsibility. Responsible leadership is more than this; it is a balance of between getting the right results and getting results the right way.

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