The Compass
Reflections, strategies, and real leadership insights to help you navigate change, challenge, and growth.
The Quiet Crisis in Middle Management (And Why It Deserves Urgency)
Middle managers are the organisational glue we keep forgetting to reinforce.
They lead teams, translate strategy, manage projects, soothe clients, mediate tension, uphold culture, and respond to both executive pressure and frontline frustration — often within the same day, sometimes within the same meeting.
They are not just conduits. They are shock absorbers. And they are breaking.
Stop Calling It a Culture Problem. It’s Usually a Leadership Problem
We love to talk about culture. We celebrate it in slide decks, measure it in quarterly engagement surveys, and market it with filtered photos of team events and branded T-shirts.
And when things go wrong, when trust erodes, high performers leave, or a team slips into apathy, the diagnosis is almost always the same: “We’ve got a culture problem.”
The Unseen Emotional Labour of Leadership (And Why It’s Burning People Out)
When we talk about leadership, we often default to the visible: strategy, board meetings, revenue goals, stakeholder reports. The outcomes. The optics. The KPIs.
But there’s a layer underneath all of that; invisible, unspoken, and heavy. The emotional labour of leadership.
The Advertising Industry's Identity Crisis
The advertising industry has always prided itself on reinvention. It’s weathered the rise of digital, the dominance of platforms, and now, the sweeping impact of automation and AI. But in 2024 and beyond, we’re facing a different kind of disruption—one that’s not just technological or creative, but existential.
IS HR FAILING US? OR ARE WE FAILING HR?
HR is under fire. And not always fairly.
In too many organisations, HR has become a scapegoat for everything thats broken in workplace culture.