CEO Institute Blog

From Pressure to Perspective

The CEO Institute — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 03:04:44 GMT

From Pressure to Perspective: Helping Senior Teams Stay Focused When Everything Feels Urgent

There is a particular kind of pressure that builds inside senior leadership teams.

It is not always dramatic. It does not always arrive as a crisis. More often, it accumulates quietly through competing priorities, constant trading pressure, shifting customer expectations, economic uncertainty, people issues, operational demands and the daily need to make decisions with incomplete information.

Over time, everything can start to feel urgent.

A sales issue needs attention. A key person is under pressure. A customer relationship needs repair. Costs are rising. A project is slipping. The board wants more confidence. The market is moving. The team is busy, but not always aligned.

For CEOs and business owners, this is one of the hardest parts of leadership. Not simply dealing with pressure, but helping the senior team stay focused when pressure is coming from every direction.

Because when everything feels urgent, clarity becomes one of the first things to suffer.

The pressure is real

Senior teams are carrying more complexity than they were even a few years ago.

The modern leadership agenda is no longer confined to growth, cost, people and operations. CEOs are also being asked to navigate AI adoption, cyber risk, workforce change, productivity pressure, geopolitical uncertainty, culture, compliance, wellbeing, customer expectations and reputation.

Each of these issues matters. Each can make a legitimate claim on leadership attention.

The challenge is that leadership capacity is finite.

A senior team can only make so many good decisions in a week. It can only properly absorb so many shifting priorities. It can only run at heightened intensity for so long before judgement, communication and alignment begin to weaken.

This is where pressure becomes risky.

Not because leaders are incapable. Most senior teams are highly capable. The risk is that capability gets diluted when the team is constantly reacting, reprioritising and moving from one urgent issue to the next without enough time to step back and ask: what matters most now?

When priorities keep shifting, teams lose focus

One of the clearest signs of senior team pressure is a growing lack of shared priority.

Everyone is busy. Everyone is working hard. Everyone is trying to do the right thing. But different executives may be solving for different outcomes.

The CFO is protecting margin. The sales leader is pushing for growth. The operations leader is managing capacity. The people leader is concerned about burnout and retention. The CEO is trying to hold the whole picture together.

None of these priorities are wrong. In fact, each may be essential.

But when they are not clearly connected to a small number of enterprise priorities, the senior team can begin to fragment. Functional goals take over. Meetings become updates rather than decisions. Conversations become more reactive. The organisation receives mixed signals.

This is often where momentum slows.

Not because the business lacks effort, but because effort is spread too thinly across too many fronts.

Focus is not about ignoring important issues. It is about creating enough clarity that the senior team can distinguish between what needs attention, what needs escalation, what needs sequencing and what needs to stop.

That discipline is easy to talk about and difficult to sustain.

Leadership rhythm creates breathing space

A strong leadership rhythm is one of the most practical tools a CEO has.

Rhythm does not mean more meetings. Many senior teams already have too many. It means creating a deliberate cadence for how the team aligns, decides, reviews and communicates.

Without rhythm, pressure sets the agenda.

The loudest problem gets discussed first. The newest issue takes priority. The most persistent voice shapes the meeting. Decisions are made in corridors, side conversations and one-on-ones rather than through the senior team as a collective.

A good leadership rhythm gives the team structure.

It creates space to separate urgent noise from strategic priorities. It ensures the same few enterprise goals are regularly reviewed. It makes accountability visible. It helps the CEO see where energy is being spent, where decisions are stuck and where the organisation may be drifting.

At its best, rhythm gives senior teams a shared operating system.

What are the three to five priorities that matter most this quarter?
What decisions need to be made this week?
What issues are genuinely enterprise-level?
What can be delegated, paused or simplified?
What does the wider organisation need to hear from us?

These questions are not complex. But under pressure, they are often the questions that get skipped.

Focus is an organisational capability

Many leaders think of focus as a personal discipline.

To some extent, it is. CEOs need the ability to manage their own attention, energy and time. They need to resist being pulled into every issue. They need to decide where their involvement adds value and where it creates dependency.

But focus is also an organisational capability.

A focused organisation knows what matters. It understands what the leadership team is trying to achieve. It can see how priorities connect. It has the confidence to say no, not yet, or not now.

That does not happen by accident.

It happens when the senior team is aligned enough to communicate consistently. It happens when leaders stop adding priorities without removing others. It happens when the CEO creates the conditions for disciplined decision-making rather than constant escalation.

One of the most common causes of organisational overload is initiative build-up. New projects are added, but old ones are rarely stopped. Priorities accumulate. People become stretched across too many commitments. Execution suffers because everything is important.

The result is not just pressure at the top. It becomes pressure throughout the business.

Teams become unclear on what success looks like. Managers struggle to allocate resources. Staff feel busy but uncertain. Performance conversations become harder because expectations are shifting.

This is why focus cannot sit only with the CEO. It must be built into the way the senior team leads.

Communication matters most when pressure rises

Under pressure, communication often becomes either too frequent or not clear enough.

Leaders talk more, but say less. Updates increase, but alignment does not. Information moves quickly, but meaning gets lost.

Senior teams need to be particularly careful in these moments because the organisation takes its cues from the top.

If the senior team sounds scattered, the business feels scattered. If priorities change every week, people stop trusting the plan. If leaders appear reactive, uncertainty spreads. If communication is vague, people fill the gaps themselves.

Clear communication does not require CEOs to have every answer. In volatile conditions, pretending to have certainty can be counterproductive.

What people need is direction.

They need to understand what the business is focused on, what has changed, what has not changed, and what is expected of them. They need to know which priorities matter most and where trade-offs are being made.

This is especially important for senior teams.

The executive team cannot communicate clearly to the business if it has not first aligned clearly with itself. That alignment takes time. It takes honest discussion. It takes a willingness to surface tension between functions and resolve it at the leadership table rather than allowing it to play out across the organisation.

Pressure does not remove the need for communication. It raises the standard for it.

The CEO cannot be the only point of clarity

Many CEOs carry the burden of being the person everyone looks to for perspective.

That is part of the role. The CEO is expected to see across the business, hold the long-term view and make decisions in moments of uncertainty.

But if the CEO becomes the only point of clarity, the organisation can become overly dependent on one person.

Every difficult decision escalates. Every tension comes back to the CEO. Every priority needs personal reinforcement. The senior team waits for direction rather than strengthening its own collective judgement.

This is exhausting for the CEO and limiting for the business.

Strong senior teams do not remove pressure from the CEO entirely, but they do share the responsibility of leadership. They bring enterprise thinking, not just functional advocacy. They help interpret the strategy, not just execute tasks. They create confidence in their teams, not just activity.

For that to happen, CEOs need to create space for the senior team to step up.

That may mean changing the way meetings run. It may mean spending more time on decision quality and less time on status updates. It may mean asking each executive to speak not only for their function, but for the business as a whole.

The shift is subtle but powerful.

A senior team under pressure can become a group of functional leaders defending their own area. A senior team with perspective becomes an enterprise leadership team making better decisions together.

Peer support helps CEOs regain perspective

One of the difficulties of the CEO role is that it can be hard to find objective perspective inside the business.

The board has a role. The senior team has a role. Advisors, mentors and consultants can all add value. But there are times when a CEO needs to speak with people who understand the weight of the role because they carry it themselves.

That is where peer support can be so valuable.

A strong peer environment gives CEOs the opportunity to step outside the immediate pressure of the business and test their thinking with people who are not caught inside the same operating rhythm. It creates room to ask better questions, challenge assumptions and separate urgency from importance.

Often, the value is not that another CEO provides the answer.

It is that they help create the space in which the answer becomes clearer.

When a CEO is under pressure, perspective can narrow. The most recent problem feels bigger than it is. A difficult conversation gets delayed. A team issue becomes personal. A strategic choice becomes clouded by operational noise.

A trusted peer group can help reset that perspective.

It can remind CEOs that they are not the only ones facing these pressures. It can provide practical insight from people who have faced similar decisions. It can help leaders return to their business with greater clarity, confidence and calm.

In a world where the CEO agenda keeps expanding, that kind of perspective is not a luxury. It is part of staying effective.

Moving from pressure to perspective

Pressure is not going away.

For most CEOs and senior teams, the leadership environment will remain complex. Conditions will shift. Priorities will compete. Teams will look for direction. The unexpected will continue to interrupt the plan.

The goal is not to eliminate pressure.

The goal is to lead well through it.

That starts with clarity. What matters most? What needs to be decided? What can wait? What needs to stop? What does the senior team need to hear, and what does the organisation need to understand?

It also requires rhythm. Not more activity, but better structure. Not more meetings, but better conversations. Not more priorities, but clearer choices.

Most importantly, it requires perspective.

The CEOs who lead best under pressure are not necessarily the ones who move fastest. They are the ones who can step back far enough to see the bigger picture, bring their senior team with them, and create the conditions for clearer decisions.

When everything feels urgent, perspective becomes a leadership advantage.

And no CEO should have to find that perspective alone.

References

Harvard Business Review, Too Many Projects.

Harvard Business Review, Your Company Needs to Focus on Fewer Projects. Here’s How.

McKinsey & Company, The CEO as Chief Resilience Officer.

McKinsey & Company, CEO Excellence.

McKinsey & Company, How Leaders Can Help Their Organizations Metabolize Strain.

The CEO Institute, Leadership Insights.

The Productivity Imperative

The CEO Institute — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:19:03 GMT

The Productivity Imperative: Why CEOs Must Rethink How Work Gets Done

Productivity has moved from an economic debate to a boardroom issue. For years, it has been discussed through the language of national accounts, labour inputs, output per hour and multifactor productivity. Those measures matter because they shape wages, living standards, investment, competitiveness and economic resilience. Yet for CEOs and business owners, productivity now feels much more immediate. It shows up in the work that slows the business down, the meetings that crowd out thinking time, the reports that track activity without improving decisions, and the technology investments that promise efficiency but often add another layer of process.

Across Australia and New Zealand, the productivity challenge is not abstract. Australia’s Productivity Commission has reported that market sector multifactor productivity declined by 0.5% in 2024–25, while the Australian Bureau of Statistics has noted that labour productivity in the June quarter of 2025 was roughly back at pre-pandemic levels. In New Zealand, Stats NZ reported that labour productivity rose 0.8% in the measured sector in the year ended March 2025, while multifactor productivity fell 0.9%. These figures tell a clear story: productivity improvement is proving difficult, uneven and far from guaranteed. [1] [2] [3]

The CEO reality: growth, cost and digital pressure are colliding

The challenge for CEOs is that productivity is not arriving as a standalone problem. It is arriving at the same time as stubborn cost pressure, cautious customer demand, technology disruption, labour constraints and increased expectations from boards, investors, employees and customers. Leaders are being asked to grow, protect margin, invest in digital capability and keep their people engaged, often with limited slack in the system.

The CEO Institute’s Pulse Report, based on 798 leaders across Australia and New Zealand, captured this tension clearly. Across ANZ, 42.6% of leaders nominated growth and expansion as their top internal priority, 22.9% selected cost management and efficiency, and 21.2% chose innovation and digital transformation. Externally, the leading pressures were inflation and cost pressures, consumer demand slowdown and technology disruption. [4]

This is the leadership reality of 2026. CEOs are not choosing between growth, cost and digital change. They are trying to deliver all three. Productivity, therefore, cannot sit only with operations, finance, technology or HR. It must sit with the CEO because it is fundamentally about how the organisation creates value.

Productivity cannot be solved through cost-cutting alone

Cost discipline matters. Every business needs to understand where resources are being wasted, where effort is duplicated, and where costs are no longer connected to value. But when productivity is reduced to a cost-cutting exercise, the organisation can become leaner without becoming stronger. It may reduce headcount, cut discretionary spend or slow investment, while leaving the deeper causes of underperformance untouched.

The more important question is not simply where cost can be removed. The more important question is how work actually gets done. In many organisations, work moves through a complex web of meetings, approvals, dashboards, handovers, systems, spreadsheets, informal workarounds and inherited processes. Some of that work is essential. Some of it protects quality, manages risk, builds trust or enables coordination. Some of it is waste. Some of it was once useful but has outlived its purpose.

The productivity challenge is that many organisations do not have a clear enough view of the difference. They can measure activity more easily than value. They can see whether a task has been completed, but not always whether it was worth doing. They can see that people are busy, but not whether that busyness is translating into better decisions, stronger execution, improved customer outcomes or more profitable growth.

The work needs to be understood before it can be redesigned

Productivity improvement starts with understanding the flow of work through the business. Where does strategy lose clarity as it moves through layers and functions? Where are teams working hard on priorities that no longer matter? Where does rework happen? Which decisions take too long? Which systems create manual effort or duplicate reporting? Which leaders are spending their time coordinating work that the operating model should make simpler?

These questions are often treated as operational housekeeping. They are not. They are strategic questions because they determine whether the business can scale, whether the strategy can be executed, whether AI can be adopted effectively and whether people can sustain performance without burning out.

A CEO who wants to improve productivity must move beyond the assumption that more effort will produce better outcomes. In many businesses, people are already working hard. The issue is whether the design of work allows their effort to become value. If the answer is no, then asking for more pace, more output or more accountability will only compound the pressure.

AI will only unlock productivity if the work is ready for it

AI has made the productivity conversation more urgent, but it has also made it more dangerous. The opportunity is significant. AI can analyse information, produce first drafts, improve decision-making, automate repeatable tasks, surface insights and help people spend more time on higher-value work. Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index found that 66% of surveyed AI users said AI allowed them to spend more time on high-value work, while 58% said they were producing work they could not have produced a year earlier. [5]

The risk is assuming that AI creates productivity by default. It does not. If a process is unclear, AI can accelerate confusion. If data is fragmented, AI can expose the weakness rather than solve it. If accountability is vague, AI can generate more output without improving outcomes. If leaders use AI only as a cost extraction tool, they may miss the bigger opportunity to redesign work around better judgement, better flow and better value creation.

Microsoft’s report also makes a critical point for leaders: organisational factors such as AI culture, manager support and talent practices accounted for more than twice the reported AI impact of individual mindset and behaviour. That should matter to every CEO. It means AI-enabled productivity is not simply a technology adoption problem. It is an operating model, leadership, management and capability problem. [6]

Leaders need to protect the value they cannot easily measure

There is another risk in the productivity conversation that deserves more attention. Not all friction is waste. Not all repetitive work is low-value. Not all human overlap is inefficiency. Some work that looks slow from the outside is where people build judgement, expertise, relationships and organisational memory. Remove it too quickly and the organisation may look more efficient while becoming more fragile.

This matters because many productivity efforts focus on what is visible and measurable. Time saved. Roles removed. Costs reduced. Processes automated. Those measures are useful, but they do not capture everything that makes a business perform. Trust, judgement, craft, culture, customer intimacy, leadership confidence and institutional knowledge are harder to measure, but they are often the things that separate a resilient organisation from a brittle one.

The task for CEOs is to pursue productivity without hollowing out the capability that future performance depends on. That requires a more thoughtful approach to automation, workforce planning and work redesign. Leaders need to understand which tasks are genuinely low-value, which tasks build capability, which tasks require human judgement and which tasks can be safely supported or performed by technology.

Productivity is a growth discipline

The organisations that make real progress on productivity will not be those that simply push their people harder or cut their cost base faster. They will be the ones that redesign how work gets done. They will connect strategy to execution more clearly, reduce unnecessary complexity, improve the quality and speed of decision-making, strengthen management discipline and apply technology where it can genuinely expand organisational capacity.

Productivity should be treated as a growth enabler, not simply a cost-reduction exercise. Done well, it gives people more time for the work that matters. It improves customer experience. It strengthens execution. It increases the return on technology investment. It helps leaders protect margin while still investing in the future.

For CEOs and business owners, the imperative is clear. Understand how work flows through the organisation. Look beyond activity and focus on value. Treat AI as a catalyst for work redesign, not a shortcut to transformation. Build managers who can translate strategy into daily execution. Protect the human judgement and capability that make performance durable.

The next productivity gain will not come from asking people to work harder inside systems that are already stretched. It will come from designing work better.

[1] Australia’s Productivity Commission reported that market sector multifactor productivity declined by 0.5% in 2024–25.
[2] The Australian Bureau of Statistics noted that, in the June quarter 2025, Australia’s labour productivity was roughly at pre-pandemic levels, similar to December quarter 2019.
[3] Stats NZ reported that labour productivity rose 0.8% in the measured sector in the year ended March 2025, while multifactor productivity fell 0.9%.
[4] The CEO Institute’s Pulse Report was based on 798 leaders across Australia and New Zealand and identified growth, cost management and innovation or digital transformation as the top internal priorities.
[5] Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index reported that 66% of AI users said AI allowed them to spend more time on high-value work, while 58% said they were producing work they could not have produced a year earlier.
[6] Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index found that organisational factors accounted for more than twice the reported AI impact of individual mindset and behaviour.

Men's Mental Health Month

Richard Wynn — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 03:09:41 GMT

The Men Who Look Fine Often Aren’t

Content note: This article discusses suicide and men’s mental health. Please take care when reading.

A confronting truth behind Men’s Mental Health Month

By the time you finish reading this article, several men somewhere in the world will have died by suicide.

It is a confronting statement, but perhaps it needs to be. Global estimates suggest that more than 720,000 people die by suicide every year, and a significant majority are men. On that basis, close to one man dies by suicide every minute. Almost 60 every hour. More than 1,000 every day. Tens of thousands every month.

Those numbers are almost too large to comprehend, which is part of the problem. Statistics can become abstract. They can sit at a distance from us, safely contained in reports, presentations and awareness campaigns. But each number represents a life. A father, son, brother, husband, partner, colleague, friend, business owner or leader. In many cases, someone who may have looked perfectly fine to those around them.

June is Men’s Mental Health Month. I have always had some discomfort with the idea of singling out one group’s mental health, because mental health is not a competition. Women suffer. Young people suffer. Families suffer. Entire workplaces can be affected when someone is struggling. Pain does not belong to one gender.

But there are moments when a particular issue needs a sharper focus. If this month gives us permission to speak more directly about men who are struggling silently, then we should take that opportunity seriously.

This is not men versus women

This conversation should never become men versus women. That would miss the point entirely. Men’s Mental Health Month is not about excluding anyone else’s pain or implying that one form of suffering matters more than another. It is about recognising a pattern that is real, persistent and, in too many cases, fatal.

Men are less likely to seek help early. Many have been conditioned to see vulnerability as weakness. Many have learned to measure their worth by their ability to provide, perform, endure and keep going. In leadership, those pressures are often amplified. The higher someone rises, the more they may feel they have to conceal.

That is why awareness matters, but awareness alone is not enough. We need to move the conversation from recognition to prevention. From sympathy to action. From “that’s terrible” to “who around me might be struggling, and what am I doing to make it easier for them to speak?”

Bringing the issue into the boardroom

At The CEO Institute, we work closely with CEOs and business owners across Australia and New Zealand. Men and women. These are people who carry a particular kind of pressure. They are responsible for payroll, performance, customers, staff, growth, shareholders, families and futures. They are expected to be calm when others are uncertain, decisive when conditions are unclear, and resilient when the business is under strain.

That responsibility can be deeply rewarding. It can also be lonely.

In our latest Pulse survey, mental health and wellbeing emerged as one of the top five issues raised by our CEO and business owner members. 78% told us they feel significantly worse off in terms of their mental health and wellbeing than they did two years ago.

That figure should stop us. It tells us that behind the professional confidence many leaders project, there is fatigue. Behind the strategy, there may be anxiety. Behind the composure, there may be people wondering how much longer they can continue at the same pace.

The reality is that many CEOs and business owners do not feel they have permission to struggle. They may be surrounded by people all day, yet have very few people they can speak to honestly. Their teams look to them for reassurance. Their families may rely on them financially and emotionally. Their boards or stakeholders may expect progress, answers and certainty. So, the instinct becomes to absorb the pressure privately.

That instinct can be dangerous.

Why this is personal

I understand this more personally than I wish I did. Many years ago, I went through a period where my own mental health severely declined. From the outside, many people would not have known how bad things had become. I was still functioning. I was still showing up. I was still doing the things people expected me to do.

But privately, I was in a very dark place. I had the darkest thoughts of my life.

I do not share that for effect. I share it because I know how easy it is to misread someone’s external performance as evidence that they are okay. During that time, I learned things I have never forgotten. Some of the people you expect to stand beside you may not. Some of the people you never expected may become lifelines. And sometimes the person who appears strong, composed, successful or even happy is the person who is closest to breaking.

That experience changed the way I look at people. I try not to assume that someone is well because they are productive. I try not to assume that a smile means peace. I try not to assume that silence means strength.

The danger of high-functioning distress

High-performing people can be very good at concealment. In fact, many have been rewarded for it. Leaders are praised for being calm under pressure, for pushing through, for holding the line, for not letting emotion cloud judgement. Those qualities can be useful in business, but they can also become a mask.

A CEO may be praised for resilience while privately feeling exhausted. A founder may be celebrated for persistence while quietly feeling trapped. A business owner may look successful from the outside while carrying financial pressure, family stress, loneliness or shame that no one else can see.

This is one of the most dangerous aspects of mental health. The people most at risk do not always look like they are in crisis. They may still be answering emails, leading meetings, closing deals, attending events and making others laugh. They may be the person everyone else leans on.

And because they appear capable, people stop checking.

That is why we need to become more attentive to the subtle signs. Not to diagnose each other, and not to overstep, but to care enough to notice. A change in behaviour. Withdrawal. Irritability. Exhaustion. An unusual loss of confidence. Increased drinking. A sense of hopelessness. The person who suddenly becomes hard to reach. The person who keeps saying they are busy, but never seems to be okay.

What leaders can do

No CEO, chair, colleague or friend is expected to become a therapist. That is not the role. But leaders do have a responsibility to create environments where people can speak early, honestly and without shame.

That starts with the tone we set. If every conversation about performance ignores wellbeing, we send a message. If every admission of stress is treated as weakness, we send a message. If leaders pretend they are invulnerable, we send a message.

The opposite is also true. When leaders speak with honesty and humanity, others are more likely to do the same. When a workplace treats mental health as part of sustainable performance, rather than a private failure, people are more likely to seek support before they reach crisis point. When senior leaders check in properly with each other, not just with their teams, they create a culture where strength is not confused with silence.

For CEOs and business owners, this may mean looking closely at the culture around them. Do people feel safe to say they are struggling? Do senior leaders have trusted peers they can talk to? Are we rewarding unsustainable behaviour because it produces short-term results? Are we noticing the people who carry the most responsibility, or simply assuming they can handle it?

These are not soft questions. They are leadership questions.

Ask twice

Men’s Mental Health Month should not be reduced to a campaign, a morning tea or a social media post. It should be a prompt to look more carefully at the people around us, especially the ones who seem the strongest.

Ask someone how they are. Then make enough space for the real answer. If they say they are fine, do not interrogate them, but do not always accept the automatic response either. Ask again, gently. Ask in a way that tells them you actually want to know.

Because “I’m fine” can mean many things. Sometimes it means exactly that. Sometimes it means, “I don’t know how to say what is really happening.” Sometimes it means, “I don’t want to be a burden.” Sometimes it means, “I am waiting to see whether you really care enough to ask again.”

The businesses we lead are made up of human beings. Their wellbeing is not separate from strategy, productivity, culture or long-term success. It sits underneath all of it.

This month, I am asking every CEO, business owner and leader to do one thing: check on the person who always says they are fine. And when they say they are fine, ask again.

Support is available
This article discusses suicide and men’s mental health, which may be distressing for some readers. If this has raised concerns for you, or if you are worried about someone you know, please reach out for support.

In Australia, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, text 0477 13 11 14, or visit lifeline.org.au. You can also contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. If life is in danger, call 000.

In New Zealand, contact Lifeline Aotearoa on 0800 543 354, text 4357, or call the Suicide Crisis Helpline on 0508 828 865. You can also call or text 1737 any time to speak with a trained counsellor. If life is in danger, call 111.

Top Social Procurement Trends in Australia

The CEO Institute — Mon, 25 May 2026 05:48:25 GMT

$1.4 billion and accelerating: why social procurement has moved from compliance to competitive advantage

For many CEOs, procurement has traditionally been viewed through a narrow lens: cost, quality, reliability and risk. Those measures still matter. No organisation can afford a supply chain that does not perform commercially. But the role of procurement is changing, and the latest data from Social Traders suggests that the change is no longer marginal.

For eight years, Social Traders has tracked the spend Australian businesses and governments direct towards certified social enterprises. The FY25 results show that $304 million was spent with certified social enterprises in FY25 alone, an 18% increase on FY24 and the highest single-year total on record. Cumulative spend has now passed $1.4 billion since FY18, with a 35% average annual growth rate sustained over eight years.

For CEOs and business owners, that sustained growth is the point worth paying attention to. A one-year increase can be explained by policy, a major project, a small group of early adopters or market enthusiasm. Eight years of average annual growth points to something deeper. It suggests that social procurement is moving from a values-led initiative to a strategic business lever.

At The CEO Institute, we see this through the lens of leadership. CEOs across enterprise, mid-market and SME businesses are under pressure to strengthen productivity, attract and retain talent, meet rising ESG expectations, manage stakeholder trust and make their organisations more resilient. Social procurement sits at the intersection of those pressures. It gives leaders a practical way to turn existing spend into measurable social, environmental and commercial value.

The supply chain is becoming a leadership lever

Social procurement is based on a simple but powerful premise: organisations can use the money they already spend to create broader social value. By partnering with certified social enterprises, businesses can procure goods and services while supporting employment, inclusion, community outcomes and environmental impact.

Social enterprises employ people who often face significant barriers to work, including refugees, people living with disability and those recovering from long-term unemployment. They also supply goods and services that meet community needs in underserved markets, and they provide environmental solutions across a growing range of categories.

The strategic value for CEOs is that this does not require a business to choose between commercial performance and social impact. When done well, an organisation receives the goods and services it needs, while also generating verified social and environmental outcomes through the same transaction.

In FY25, Social Traders reported:

$304 million spent with certified social enterprises, a record single-year total, up 18% on FY24.
$1.4 billion cumulative spend since FY18, with 35% average annual growth.
151 business and government members, and 735 certified social enterprises.
71% of members increased their spend year on year in FY25.

Across eight years, Social Traders member organisations have contributed to 13,383 jobs for people who face barriers to employment, one million training hours, $103 million in community goods and services, and 68,050 tonnes of waste diverted from landfill. In FY25, spend directed to marginalised women grew 56% year on year to $47.1 million, while spend supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities grew 69% to $18.8 million.

These outcomes matter because they are tangible. They are not abstract statements of intent in a sustainability report. They are the result of deliberate procurement decisions made by organisations that have embedded social performance into their supply chain strategy.

“35% average annual growth over eight years is not a trend. It’s a structural shift in how leading organisations think about their supply chains as a social performance driver. The businesses experiencing that growth aren’t doing it as a tick box. They’re doing it because it’s delivering real value, commercially and socially.”

— Tara Anderson, CEO, Social Traders

Why this matters for enterprise and SME leaders

For enterprise CEOs, social procurement is increasingly connected to ESG strategy, stakeholder confidence, government tenders, investor expectations and brand reputation. Large organisations are being asked to demonstrate measurable progress, not simply publish commitments. Supply chains are one of the clearest places to show that progress.

For SME leaders, the opportunity may look different, but it is no less relevant. Many SMEs do not have the same formal ESG infrastructure as large corporations. They may not have a dedicated sustainability team, social impact function or procurement transformation office. But they still have purchasing power, supplier relationships, local community presence and a need to differentiate themselves in competitive markets.

For an SME, social procurement can become a practical and credible way to demonstrate values through action. It can help build stronger local networks, appeal to employees who want to work for purposeful businesses, and strengthen relationships with larger customers that increasingly expect suppliers to understand and support ESG outcomes.

The CEO-level lesson is clear. Procurement is no longer only an operational function. It is becoming a visible expression of what the organisation values, how it manages risk and how it creates impact beyond its own walls.

More industries are getting on board

Property and infrastructure built the foundations of social procurement in Australia, and those sectors remain the largest contributors by spend. That is not surprising. Major projects, government frameworks and large procurement budgets created early momentum.

The next stage of growth is broader. In FY25, Social Traders saw membership growth across banking, consulting, energy, education, FMCG and transport. The energy sector provides a useful example, with new energy sector members joining Social Traders every year for the past four years. That pattern suggests that organisations are watching peers move and deciding they do not want to be left behind.

The questions have also changed. Five years ago, many organisations were still asking why they should engage with social procurement. Now, the question is more often how it works and what social value can be created. That shift matters. It shows that the business case is becoming more widely understood.

For CEOs, there is an important competitive signal here. When a practice moves from a small number of leading sectors into a broader cross-section of the economy, it becomes part of the expected leadership conversation. Early movers shape the standard. Late movers are often left explaining why they have not yet acted.

Spotlight: breaking the mould through bold procurement

When Southern Program Alliance, a joint venture comprised of ACCIONA, WSP, Metro Trains Melbourne and the Level Crossing Removal Project, lost its landscaping supplier on the Parkdale Level Crossing Removal Project, the team had a choice. They could take the safe route and find another traditional subcontractor, or they could use the moment to do something different.

They chose different.

At $3.8 million, it was the first time SPA had awarded a major landscaping package to a social enterprise. For Navaroo, the impact was transformative. Five skilled migrants gained more than 3,891 hours of meaningful work, alongside 185 hours of training. A two-year maintenance scope provided stable employment and career pathways. Navaroo’s supply chain spend also included $224,000 with other social enterprises, amplifying the impact beyond the initial contract.

“For us, it was more than a contract. It was proof that if you back people with the right support, they rise, and the work speaks for itself.”

— Hashan Senarathna, Director, Navaroo

That decision earned ACCIONA, SPA and Navaroo the 2025 National Social Procurement Impact Partnership Game Changer Award, setting a benchmark for what values-driven procurement can achieve when commercial decision-making is matched with leadership conviction.

Social procurement is moving into core spend categories

One of the strongest signals in the data is the movement beyond the categories historically associated with social procurement. Catering and cleaning remain relevant, but the growth is now in engineering, technology, architecture, planning, community services and building trades.

Engineering and tech services moved from $155,000 in FY20 to $11.6 million in FY25. Architecture, planning and design grew from $80,000 to $2.1 million over the same period. Community and social services reached $1.6 million, up from just $22,000. Building trades, repairs and maintenance, now the largest category by volume, reached $62 million in FY25, compared with $1.8 million five years ago.

This diversification changes the conversation. Certified social enterprises are not only providing ancillary services. They are competing and winning in areas that sit much closer to the core of business operations.

For buyers, the question is shifting from whether a certified social enterprise supplier exists to which certified social enterprise is right for the contract. That is an important distinction. It moves social procurement from a niche option to a serious part of supplier strategy.

Spotlight: Ventia and Australian Spatial Analytics

Since 2021, Australian Spatial Analytics, a certified social enterprise dedicated to training and employing young autistic adults in data analytics, has partnered with Ventia, a leading infrastructure services provider.

The unemployment rate for neurodivergent adults in Australia is 34%, which is 10 times the national average. ASA is helping to change this, with 80% of its workforce identifying as neurodivergent.

The partnership began with Ventia’s Queensland and Victorian Telecommunications project teams, with ASA undertaking design work on the nbn project. The team worked on revised sets of drawings submitted by subcontractors upon project completion, factoring in modifications and changes required during the build. The scope then grew to include more elements of the design process.

This partnership won the 2022 Social Traders National Game Changer Award for Queensland and the Northern Territory, recognising the positive impact delivered through social procurement.

Compliance opened the door, ESG is now driving the agenda

Five years ago, many organisations joined Social Traders because they were responding to policy. Tender weightings, mandatory government procurement frameworks and the Victorian Social Procurement Framework were major catalysts.

In 2020, 54% of new Social Traders members cited compliance as their primary reason for joining. By 2025, that figure had dropped to 45%. ESG and sustainability goals now account for 38% of new member motivations. The gap between compliance and ESG motivations has narrowed from 16% to just 7% in five years.

The trajectory is clear. Organisations are no longer engaging in social procurement only because policy requires it. They are increasingly doing so because social performance through the supply chain is becoming central to how they manage and report on ESG goals.

That shift has commercial implications. Businesses that can demonstrate credible, measurable social outcomes are better placed to strengthen stakeholder relationships, attract and retain talent, compete for work and reduce supply chain risk. Social performance is becoming a marker of industry leadership.

John Holland provides one example. For the second year running, it has been recognised for having the most diverse social supply chain among Social Traders members. In FY25, John Holland spent with 54 certified social enterprises, demonstrating a sustained commitment to supplier diversity and social value creation.

Repeat spend shows this is becoming systemic

The most meaningful behaviour in any strategic shift is repeat behaviour. Social Traders member organisations that spent with certified social enterprises two years in a row increased their spend by 47% in the second year. In FY25, 71% of active members grew their spend, while 26 organisations exceeded $1 million in annual spend.

That threshold matters. Once an organisation passes $1 million in annual spend, social procurement has typically moved beyond an isolated initiative. It has become part of the way the organisation thinks about supply chain strategy, procurement governance and impact measurement.

Organisations spending more than $5 million with certified social enterprises include ACCIONA, Ambulance Victoria, ANZ, CPB Contractors, Downer EDI, Fulton Hogan, John Holland, Laing O’Rourke, Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority and Visy Industries.

Organisations spending between $1 million and $5 million include Adelaide University, Bild Group, Built, Charter Hall, City of Moreton Bay, Conduent, CSR, Eastern Freeway BTA, Kinetic Group Services, Lendlease, Macquarie Group, McConnell Dowell, Mirvac, University of New South Wales, Ventia and Westpac.

These organisations are not treating social procurement as a side project. They are building it into the way they operate.

Spotlight: CPB Contractors and CareerSeekers

CPB Contractors spent $34.2 million with certified social enterprises in FY25, earning the Top Social Spender acknowledgement. One example of this approach can be seen in its partnership with CareerSeekers, a certified social enterprise supporting refugees and people seeking asylum into professional employment.

What began as a modest commercial arrangement between CPB Contractors and CareerSeekers is now a strategic, values-aligned workforce initiative. The partnership is in its third three-year agreement and has hosted 148 internships for 79 participants, with 57 securing permanent employment outcomes. That represents a 72% conversion rate. In 2024 alone, 22 interns joined the business, with five already securing ongoing roles.

Those outcomes position the partnership as a proven model for inclusive workforce development, not simply a procurement programme.

The leadership question now

For CEOs, the question is no longer whether social procurement belongs in the conversation. It clearly does. The more useful question is whether the organisation is using its existing spend as strategically as it could.

At an enterprise level, that may mean embedding social procurement into ESG strategy, procurement policy, tender processes, supplier diversity targets and board reporting. At an SME level, it may mean starting with a smaller number of supplier categories, building trusted partnerships and using social procurement as a practical expression of purpose and community connection.

The opportunity is not only reputational. It is commercial and cultural. It helps organisations show employees, customers, partners and communities that values are being translated into decisions. It also helps leaders build organisations that are more connected to the society in which they operate.

“Australia is moving faster on this than anywhere else in the world. We have the certified supplier base, the member network, and eight years of data to prove it works. The question for any organisation now isn’t whether to embed social performance; it’s how quickly they can get moving.”

— Tara Anderson, CEO, Social Traders

The organisations shaping the social performance leadership position are not waiting for policy to require action. They are investing in it because the commercial, reputational and human case is increasingly clear.

For CEOs and business owners across Australia and New Zealand, social procurement offers a practical reminder that leadership is often expressed through the decisions that already sit inside the business. The suppliers we choose, the contracts we award and the value we measure all say something about the kind of organisation we are building.

The time to lead in social performance is now.

This article was developed in collaboration with Social Traders, a leading industry body in social enterprise and social performance. Established in 2008, they’ve been supporting more than 300 businesses to track, measure and improve their social performance. Social Traders is also Australia’s certifier of over 700 social enterprises. Learn more at www.socialtraders.com.au

The CEO Playbook for Talent: Great People Stay Where the Team Is Strong

The CEO Institute — Tue, 12 May 2026 05:42:01 GMT

The CEO Playbook for Talent: Great People Stay Where the Team Is Strong

Across The CEO Institute’s Talent Series, delivered in association with Leading Teams, one theme kept returning with real force: talent is no longer a narrow recruitment issue. It has become one of the clearest tests of CEO leadership.

The mistake many organisations make is assuming people leave roles. More often, they leave teams. They leave inconsistent standards, unresolved behaviour, weak accountability and environments where the public promise of the organisation does not match the private experience of working inside it.

Every CEO understands the external pressure. Skills shortages remain real. Employee expectations have shifted. Hybrid work has changed the psychological contract between employer and employee. Younger generations are asking more direct questions about meaning, flexibility, progression and leadership. Experienced talent is more mobile, more discerning and less willing to tolerate environments that drain more than they develop.

In response, many organisations have strengthened the visible architecture of talent attraction. They have reviewed remuneration, improved flexibility, refined benefits, refreshed onboarding, strengthened employer branding and built more formal development pathways. These actions matter. They are part of the competitive reality of attracting and retaining good people.

But they are not the whole answer.

The more revealing question for CEOs is this: what kind of team are we asking great people to join?

That question should sit at the centre of every serious talent strategy. People may join an organisation because of the role, the brand, the remuneration or the opportunity, but they experience the business through their team. They experience the quality of the relationships around them. They experience whether feedback is useful or avoided, whether accountability is fair or selective, whether difficult behaviour is addressed or quietly tolerated.

This is where the work of Ray McLean and Leading Teams offers such a valuable lens. Team work is often treated as a soft idea, wrapped in language about collaboration, trust and alignment. In practice, it is far more demanding. Strong teams are built through honesty, accountability and a clear standard of behaviour that people are expected to uphold, especially when pressure rises.

A group of capable people does not automatically become a high-performing team. Talent alone does not create trust. Seniority does not create honesty. Experience does not create accountability. These things have to be built deliberately, practised consistently and protected by leaders who are willing to address what others avoid.

That is why the talent market often exposes what the culture has already been tolerating.

When strong people leave, organisations usually examine the obvious explanations first. Was the salary competitive? Was the role big enough? Was the career pathway clear? Was flexibility sufficient? These are valid questions, but they rarely tell the full story. A more uncomfortable question is often more useful: what did this person experience inside the team that made leaving feel like the better option?

The answer can be difficult to face. Good people may leave because decision-making was unclear. They may leave because poor behaviour was allowed to continue. They may leave because feedback was inconsistent, politics were exhausting or expectations shifted depending on who was in the room. They may leave because the organisation spoke about accountability, but applied it unevenly.

These issues rarely appear neatly in an exit interview. They accumulate quietly. A missed conversation. An unresolved tension. A leader who avoids the hard call. A high performer whose behaviour is excused because their results are strong. A team that learns over time that the stated values are less important than the unspoken rules.

That is how culture is formed. Through the repeated behaviours people observe, absorb and eventually accept.

For CEOs, this is both the challenge and the opportunity. The CEO cannot personally control every relationship, conversation or decision across the organisation. Nor should they try. But the CEO can set the conditions in which those relationships, conversations and decisions take place. They can make it clear that the standard matters. They can model the behaviour expected of others. They can ensure the executive team operates in a way the broader organisation can trust.

The executive team is particularly important because it becomes the cultural reference point for everyone else. If the executive team avoids honest conversations, the organisation learns avoidance. If the executive team tolerates inconsistency, the organisation learns ambiguity. If the executive team says one thing publicly and behaves differently privately, the organisation learns that values are negotiable.

People watch the top team closely. They notice what is rewarded, what is challenged and what is allowed to continue.

That is why honesty is such a powerful performance discipline. In many workplaces, honesty is treated as a personal virtue. In strong teams, it becomes part of the operating system.

Honesty does not mean bluntness. It does not give leaders permission to say whatever they think under the banner of being direct. Poorly handled honesty can damage trust as quickly as silence can. The honesty that improves performance is specific, respectful and anchored in a shared commitment to the team’s purpose.

It allows a team to ask what is really getting in the way. It allows a leader to say, “We have accepted a standard here that we would not accept elsewhere.” It allows people to challenge behaviour without turning the conversation into a personal attack.

These conversations are rarely easy, but they often determine whether a team matures or simply keeps functioning around its dysfunction.

The cost of avoiding honesty is rarely immediate, which is why businesses tolerate it for so long. The damage shows up later in slower execution, weaker trust, duplicated effort, unresolved resentment and the quiet loss of discretionary effort. People continue attending meetings. They continue doing the work. They may remain polite and professional. Underneath that surface, energy is being spent on interpretation, self-protection and frustration.

A CEO may look at a calm leadership team and assume alignment. Sometimes calm does mean alignment. Sometimes it means people have stopped saying what needs to be said.

Accountability is the companion discipline. If honesty allows a team to see the truth, accountability determines whether anything changes because of it.

In too many organisations, accountability appears only after something has gone wrong. Someone misses a target, behaves poorly or fails to deliver, and accountability arrives as a corrective mechanism. That is too late and too limited. In strong teams, accountability starts much earlier. It begins when the team defines what it expects of itself.

What behaviours will we protect? What standards will we hold? How do we challenge each other? How do we disagree well? What will we do when someone delivers the result but damages the team in the process?

These are intensely practical questions. They shape how decisions are made, how conflict is handled, how meetings function, how leaders give feedback and how people interpret fairness.

The best people care deeply about fairness. They do not expect every decision to go their way, but they do expect consistency. They want to know that accountability applies across hierarchy, tenure and commercial importance. They want to know that the organisation will not protect poor behaviour simply because someone is hard to replace.

This is one of the most direct links between culture and retention. Good people are not frightened by high standards. Many are drawn to them. What they resist is inconsistency. They resist environments where standards are spoken about but not defended. They resist teams where accountability depends on personality, politics or convenience.

A strong talent playbook therefore begins well before recruitment. It begins with the behavioural standard inside the organisation.

Values are useful when they are translated into observable behaviour. Respect needs to mean something in a meeting. Accountability needs to mean something when commitments are missed. Trust needs to mean something when feedback is required. Without that clarity, people interpret values through their own preferences, pressures and habits.

The CEO’s role is to reduce that ambiguity.

That means building feedback into the rhythm of work before there is a crisis. Feedback that only appears in moments of failure will always carry emotional weight. People brace for it. Managers delay it. Teams treat it as exceptional rather than developmental. Strong teams make feedback normal, useful and connected to improvement while improvement is still possible.

It also means recruiting for contribution, not competence alone. Technical capability matters, but capability without fit can be costly. The question is not only whether someone is talented. The question is whether their presence will strengthen or weaken the team system. Will they build trust? Will they take responsibility? Will they handle feedback well? Will they lift the standard around them?

CEOs also need leaders who can hold the line. Many managers are promoted because they are technically strong, commercially successful or reliable under pressure. Those qualities matter, but they do not automatically equip someone to lead human complexity. The hardest part of leadership is often not knowing what should be done. It is having the courage, timing and language to do it well.

Avoidance can feel kind in the moment and become expensive over time.

The organisations that stand out in the next phase of the talent market will still need competitive employment propositions. They will still need to pay fairly, offer flexibility where possible, develop career pathways and communicate purpose clearly. Those elements remain important.

But the real differentiator will be the internal experience. People will stay where the standards are real. Where honesty is expected, not punished. Where accountability is shared, not weaponised. Where leaders have the skill and courage to address what others avoid. Where talented people do not have to lower their expectations in order to survive the culture.

For CEOs, that is the real playbook.

Talent attraction begins with the reputation of the team and the leadership culture behind it. Talent development happens in the daily conversations that shape behaviour. Talent retention is earned through the consistency between what the organisation says it values and what it actually protects.

The best people are choosing the environment in which they will invest their energy, judgement and ambition.

They are choosing the team.

They are choosing the standard.

The strongest talent strategy a CEO can build is a better standard inside the team.

What Ancient Egypt Still Teaches Today’s Leaders

The CEO Institute — Thu, 07 May 2026 21:45:40 GMT

What Ancient Egypt Still Teaches Today’s Leaders

I just back from some annual leave spent in Egypt.

For once, I was not in a boardroom, an airport lounge or moving between meetings. I was on holiday, enjoying some rare and very welcome downtime. Yet even there, thousands of miles from home, I have found myself thinking about leadership.

Perhaps that is inevitable when you are surrounded by ancient Egypt.

Standing beneath the pyramids, walking through temples, hearing the stories of kings and gods, you are struck by scale. You are struck by ambition. You are struck by the extraordinary ability of a civilisation to build things that have outlasted not only the people who created them, but entire eras of history.

You also begin to wonder why some leaders are remembered for thousands of years, while others disappear almost as soon as their time is over.

The answer, I think, is not power alone.

Ancient Egypt understood something that many modern organisations have forgotten. Leadership was never simply about status, control or authority. It carried a deeper obligation. The role of the leader was to create order, preserve trust, make wise decisions and leave behind something that could endure.

The ancient Egyptians had a concept called maat. It represented truth, justice, balance and order. I don’t claim to be a qualified historian – but what Ive learnt these past few days is that a pharaoh’s duty was not merely to rule. It was to uphold maat and hold back chaos. A leader was judged not by how loudly they spoke or how much power they accumulated, but by whether they created stability, confidence and fairness for those they led.

That feels remarkably relevant today. Modern CEOs may not be asked to govern kingdoms, but every day they are asked to bring order to uncertainty. They lead through economic volatility, geopolitical instability, technology disruption, talent shortages and the relentless pressure to deliver more with less.

In that environment, the temptation is to think that leadership is about having all the answers. To be the strongest voice in the room. To appear certain, decisive and always in control. But perhaps the true responsibility of a leader is something else entirely.

Perhaps the real role of a CEO is to become a source of clarity when everything around them feels unclear.

The best leaders I know do not create calm because they never feel pressure. They create calm because they do not pass their anxiety on to everyone else. They provide direction when others are uncertain. They make decisions based on values, not mood. They create consistency, fairness and steadiness, especially when circumstances make that difficult. Is that modern maat…?

As I have wandered through Egypt, I have also been struck by something else. The kings of ancient Egypt understood that leadership is always visible.

Their monuments, symbols and rituals were not accidental. They were deliberate expressions of what they stood for. Their authority was communicated constantly, not only through what they said, but through what they built, what they prioritised and how they presented themselves.

Modern leadership works in exactly the same way. Every CEO if a figure-head, they become a symbol, whether they intend to or not.

People watch what you tolerate. They watch what you reward. They notice where you spend your time. They observe whether your behaviour matches your values. In moments of pressure, they are not listening most closely to the speech you give. They are watching the example you set.

You cannot ask your people to be collaborative if you lead through ego. You cannot speak about trust if you avoid difficult conversations. You cannot talk about wellbeing if your own behaviour tells people that exhaustion is a badge of honour.

Leadership is always being interpreted. That is why authenticity matters so much. Not because it is fashionable, but because people can tell the difference between a leader who genuinely lives their values and one who simply talks about them.

Perhaps the most powerful lesson Egypt offers, though, is about legacy. The pyramids are astonishing. They are perhaps the greatest symbols of human ambition the world has ever seen. Yet they also force you to ask a confronting question.

What are we building today?

For many leaders, there is a danger that success becomes confused with visibility. Bigger title. Bigger office. Bigger revenue. Bigger reputation. Bigger empire.

But those things are not the same as legacy.

Legacy is not what is written on your business card. It is what remains after you have gone.

Did you build a culture that people wanted to be part of? Did you leave behind stronger leaders than yourself? Did you create a business that could thrive without you, or one that became dependent upon you? Did people feel more capable, more confident and more valued because they worked with you?

The ancient Egyptians built monuments from stone. Do modern leaders build them from people, culture and values?

The most admired leaders are rarely those who make themselves the centre of everything. They are the ones who create something enduring beyond themselves.

There is also a warning in all of this. Ancient Egypt was extraordinary, but it was not perfect. History is full of rulers who became too insulated, too powerful and too convinced of their own infallibility. Power without challenge has always been dangerous.

The same is true in business.

The higher a leader rises, the easier it becomes for people to tell them what they think they want to hear. The greater the authority, the greater the risk of losing touch with reality. That is why the strongest leaders do not surround themselves with admiration. They surround themselves with truth.

They create cultures where challenge is welcome. They invite differing views. They build teams and boards that are prepared to speak honestly, even when the conversation is uncomfortable. They remain curious enough to know that no amount of experience makes them immune from blind spots.

Humility is not weakness in leadership. It is protection.

One final thought has stayed with me as I have travelled through Egypt.

This civilisation thought in generations.

The monuments were not built for the next quarter. They were built with the expectation that they would endure. There was a long-term horizon to the way the Egyptians thought about leadership, responsibility and contribution.

Modern business often struggles with that. We live in a world of quarterly reporting, monthly targets and daily noise. There is enormous pressure to focus only on what is urgent.

Yet some of the most important questions a leader can ask are not urgent at all.

What are we building that will still matter in ten years?
What values are we embedding that will outlast our tenure?
Are we simply reacting to events, or are we shaping a future?

As CEOs and business leaders, we may never leave behind pyramids or monuments. Nor should we want to. But every leader leaves something behind. A culture. A standard. A way of treating people. A sense of trust. A business that is either stronger or weaker because they were there.

Walking through the pyramids, I have been reminded that the real test of leadership is not how much power we hold. It is what kind of order, confidence and legacy we create for others.

The Cost of Being Right

The CEO Institute — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 22:30:14 GMT

What You Tolerate Becomes Your Culture

Every leader likes to believe that culture is built through the things they say.

We talk about values. We launch leadership principles. We hold town halls and write vision statements. We tell people what matters. We explain the standards we expect and the behaviours we want to see. Yet culture is rarely shaped by what a leader says.

Culture is shaped by what a leader walks past.

It is formed in the meeting where somebody interrupts a colleague, and nobody addresses it. It is built in the moment an underperforming executive is allowed to stay in role because confronting the issue feels too difficult. It grows when a high performer behaves badly and is excused because they deliver results. Over time, the organisation stops listening to what leaders say and starts paying attention to what leaders tolerate.

That is the true culture of the business.

Most leaders do not lower standards deliberately. Few CEOs or business owners wake up in the morning intending to create a culture of poor accountability, political behaviour or low trust. More often, it happens slowly and quietly.

A behaviour is overlooked because everybody is busy. A difficult conversation is delayed because the timing is not ideal. A decision is avoided because it may upset people or create tension. What feels like a small compromise in the moment can become a pattern. Eventually, that pattern becomes accepted.

Then one day, the leader looks around and wonders how the culture became something they never intended. The answer is usually uncomfortable. The culture became what the leader was prepared to tolerate.

This is perhaps more relevant today than it was ten or fifteen years ago. Modern leadership asks us to navigate a far more complex set of expectations. We are encouraged to be empathetic, inclusive and understanding. We are told to care about wellbeing, belonging and psychological safety. All of that matters. In many ways, it represents progress. There are workplaces today that are healthier, kinder and more human than they once were.

But there is also a risk that, in trying to be compassionate, we have sometimes become reluctant to be clear.

Many leaders now worry that holding somebody accountable will be seen as harsh. They fear that giving direct feedback may be interpreted as insensitive. They hesitate to challenge poor behaviour because they do not want to create conflict or be misunderstood.

The result is that difficult conversations are delayed, softened beyond recognition or avoided altogether.

Underperformance is explained away. Poor behaviour is tolerated because the individual is talented, stressed or difficult to replace. People who consistently fail to meet expectations remain in important roles because nobody wants to be the person who finally addresses it.

In the short term, this can feel easier. It keeps the peace. It avoids confrontation. It allows the leader to believe they are being kind.

In reality, it rarely is.

When leaders avoid difficult conversations, they do not remove the discomfort. They simply spread it to everybody else. The team notices the person who is not pulling their weight. They see the executive who behaves badly. They know who gets away with missing deadlines, creating tension or undermining others.

When nothing happens, people draw their own conclusions. They conclude that standards are optional. They conclude that performance matters less than politics. They conclude that the values on the wall are not real.

Perhaps most damaging of all, they conclude that leadership does not have the courage to do what it says matters.

There is a profound difference between kindness and avoidance.

Kindness means having the conversation because you respect the person and the team enough to be honest. It means being clear about expectations. It means helping somebody understand the impact of their behaviour and giving them the opportunity to change.

Avoidance feels gentler in the moment, but it is often far crueller over time. It leaves people in roles they should not be in. It denies them the truth they need. It allows problems to grow until they eventually become impossible to ignore.

Many leaders tell themselves they are protecting people when they stay silent. In reality, they are often protecting themselves from the discomfort of the conversation.

That may sound harsh, but it is worth reflecting on. Leadership is not simply about setting a vision or making strategic decisions. It is about creating an environment where standards are real, where behaviour matters and where people know what is expected of them.

That requires courage. It takes courage to tell a senior leader that they are damaging the culture, even if they are delivering results. It takes courage to address poor performance before it becomes entrenched. It takes courage to say no to behaviours that may once have been accepted, even when they come from somebody important or influential.

The strongest cultures are not built by leaders who avoid tension. They are built by leaders who are willing to enter it early, respectfully and clearly.

In many organisations, the behaviours that cause the greatest damage are not the dramatic ones. They are the smaller patterns that are allowed to continue unchecked. The eye roll in a meeting. The executive who always interrupts. The leader who says one thing publicly and another privately. The habit of blaming rather than owning. The reluctance to collaborate. The tolerance of mediocrity because confronting it feels uncomfortable.

None of these things seem significant on their own. Yet together they shape the experience of working in the organisation far more than any strategy document or employee value proposition ever will.

Culture is not created in the annual off-site. It is created in the ordinary moments of leadership, repeated every day.

This is why silence is never neutral. When a leader says nothing, people still hear something. They hear what is acceptable. They hear what matters. They hear what behaviour will be rewarded, ignored or excused.

A leader who tolerates poor behaviour because the person is commercially valuable sends a powerful message to everybody else. A leader who avoids difficult conversations because they want to be liked sends a message too. So does the leader who repeatedly says that culture matters, but does not act when that culture is being undermined.

People pay far less attention to what leaders declare than to what they consistently do.

That is why the most effective leaders are often not the loudest or the most charismatic. They are the ones who create clarity. They are consistent. They are prepared to have the conversations that others avoid. They do not confuse being liked with being respected, and they understand that standards only matter if they are upheld.

None of this means becoming hard, rigid or unforgiving. Great leadership still requires empathy. People make mistakes. Circumstances matter. Not every issue needs to be treated in the same way.

But empathy without accountability is not leadership. It is avoidance.

The best leaders understand that people are capable of more than we often give them credit for. They are capable of hearing difficult truths. They are capable of rising to clear expectations. They are capable of growth, if they are given the honesty and support to do it.

The real risk is not that we challenge people too much. In many organisations today, the greater risk is that we challenge them too little. Because what you tolerate does not stay contained. It spreads. It becomes normal. It becomes the way things are done around here.

And eventually, whether you intended it or not, it becomes your culture.

The Second Shock Is Often Worse Than the First

The CEO Institute — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 21:34:49 GMT

The Second Shock Is Often Worse Than the First

Across Australia and New Zealand, many CEOs and business owners are looking at the same thing right now: costs rising faster than they can pass them on.

The war in Iran and the disruption to global fuel markets are no longer distant geopolitical issues. They are already showing up in supplier invoices, freight charges, distribution costs and shrinking margins. Businesses that rely on transport, logistics, agriculture, manufacturing, construction and tourism are feeling it first, but no sector will avoid it entirely.

This is no longer just a fuel story. When fuel rises sharply, the cost moves quickly through the entire economy. The price of getting goods to market increases. Food becomes more expensive. Building materials rise. Ridesharing, deliveries and field service become dearer. Every business that moves products, people or equipment feels the effect, and eventually so do consumers.

Australian industry conditions have already deteriorated materially. In March, the Australian Industry Index fell 19.9 points to -23.6, with nearly one in three businesses reporting volatility in fuel prices, freight costs or supply arrangements. Consumer confidence has also fallen sharply, with Australians now more pessimistic about the economy than at almost any point in recent decades. Inflation expectations have risen to nearly 7 per cent, which matters because once people expect prices to keep rising, businesses begin pricing differently, employees expect higher wages and the pressure becomes self-reinforcing.

New Zealand is facing the same challenge through a slightly different lens. There, the concern is not simply the price of fuel, but its availability. New Zealand remains highly exposed to imported fuel and fragile supply chains. Recent business research has warned that rising oil prices and any disruption to fuel supply could significantly slow the country’s recovery, particularly for exporters, transport operators and businesses already operating on narrow margins.

The first shock, then, is very real. It is the rising cost of doing business. It is the pressure on margins, confidence and cash flow.

But history suggests that the first shock is often not the thing that causes the most lasting damage.

The second shock is what happens inside the organisation in response.

When uncertainty rises, businesses often react in remarkably similar ways. Boards tighten approvals. Leaders delay investment. Recruitment is frozen. Training is cut. Travel stops. Every cost is questioned, every initiative scrutinised and every decision examined through the lens of immediate return.

On the surface, this can look prudent. In many cases, some of it is. There are always costs that can be reduced, projects that can be delayed and spending that no longer makes sense in a tougher environment.

The problem begins when leaders move from being disciplined to being fearful.

Fear rarely announces itself clearly. It tends to arrive disguised as caution, prudence and sensible financial management. Businesses tell themselves they are simply being conservative. Yet sometimes what they are actually doing is panicking in a more sophisticated way.

In periods of stress, businesses rarely fail because of the first shock alone. They fail because leaders respond with indiscriminate cost-cutting, delayed investment and cultural damage that outlasts the crisis itself.

We have seen this pattern before. During the pandemic, some organisations made difficult but thoughtful decisions. They reduced cost where they needed to, but they remained absolutely clear about what they could not afford to lose. They protected key people and critical customer relationships. They stayed close to the market. They communicated openly and honestly. Even while conditions were uncertain, they continued to invest selectively in technology, leadership, capability and future growth.

Those businesses often emerged stronger.

Other organisations reacted very differently. They cut broadly and quickly. Headcount was reduced without thinking carefully about which capability was being lost. Training and leadership development disappeared because they were viewed as discretionary. Marketing budgets were cut because they did not produce an immediate result. Investment decisions were delayed because it felt safer to do nothing than to risk making the wrong call.

On paper, many of those decisions looked sensible. In the boardroom, they could be justified. Costs came down. Cash was protected. The organisation appeared to be taking control.

In reality, many of those businesses created a second crisis inside their own walls.

They lost the people they most needed to keep. High performers stopped believing in the future and quietly left. Emerging leaders looked elsewhere because every opportunity had been put on hold. The people who remained became more cautious, more political and less willing to take risks because they sensed that mistakes would no longer be tolerated.

Customers noticed it too. Service levels declined. Decisions took longer. Innovation disappeared. Relationships weakened because the business became so internally focused on cost that it stopped paying attention to what customers actually needed.

The external shock may have started the problem. The internal response often made it much worse.

That is the real risk for Australian and New Zealand businesses now.

For enterprise CEOs, the second shock often takes the form of paralysis. Large organisations rarely panic openly. Instead, they become slower. Every decision requires more approval. Every proposal is subjected to another round of scrutiny. Leaders become so concerned about avoiding mistakes that they create a culture where nobody is willing to take initiative.

At first, this can feel like good governance. The organisation becomes more careful, more controlled and more deliberate.

Over time, though, something important changes. The business loses momentum. Innovation fades because every new idea feels too risky. Talented people become frustrated because they can no longer get anything done. Managers stop making decisions because they do not feel trusted. The organisation begins to spend more energy protecting itself than improving itself.

From the outside, the business may still appear stable. Internally, however, it has become slower, less confident and less competitive.

For SME owners, the second shock is often more immediate and more personal. Rising fuel and freight costs hit directly and quickly. Margins disappear. Cash flow tightens. Every invoice feels heavier than the last. The pressure is not theoretical. It is real and immediate, and because the business is often deeply tied to the owner's identity and security, the emotional impact can be just as significant as the commercial one.

The instinct in those moments is understandable. Pull back. Spend less. Delay decisions. Stop hiring. Wait for certainty.

But certainty rarely arrives.

The last few years have shown that there will always be another reason to wait. Another shock. Another crisis. Another headline. Businesses that spend too long waiting for the world to settle often discover that the market has moved on without them.

They lose their best people because they no longer offer opportunity. They lose customers because they stop investing in service and relationships. They lose momentum because every conversation becomes about what cannot be done rather than what still can.

None of this means leaders should ignore reality. Some costs will need to be reduced. Some plans will need to change. Some businesses will need to make difficult decisions over the coming months.

The challenge is to know the difference between cutting cost and cutting capability.

The strongest leaders ask a different set of questions. Not simply, "What can we reduce?" but, "What can we not afford to lose?"

Which people are absolutely critical to our future? Which customer relationships matter most? Which capabilities, even if they do not deliver an immediate return, will determine whether we emerge stronger when conditions improve? What investments are easy to cut now, but expensive to rebuild later?

The best leaders understand that not every cost is equal. Some expenses are simply expenditure. Others are the foundations of the business.

Leadership capability. Customer trust. Strong culture. Key talent. Innovation. These things can look discretionary in a difficult quarter. In reality, they are often the very things that determine whether the organisation recovers or stalls.

Because while fuel prices and geopolitical instability may be outside your control, your response is not.

You cannot stop a war. You cannot control global oil markets. You cannot remove the uncertainty that is now flowing through Australia and New Zealand. But you can decide whether your business responds with fear or with clarity.

You can decide whether people inside your organisation become more anxious, more withdrawn and more defensive, or whether they feel informed, trusted and united around what matters most. You can choose whether this becomes a period that damages the culture, weakens the capability and drives away the people you most need, or a period that sharpens the business and strengthens it.

The first shock may be unavoidable. The second one is a leadership decision.

The Weight of the Role

The CEO Institute — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 23:07:09 GMT

The Weight of the Role

There is a moment in leadership that very few people ever see. It often arrives late at night, long after the office has emptied or the house has gone quiet. The emails have slowed, the phone has stopped, and yet one decision remains.

Perhaps it is a restructure that will affect people who have given years of their lives to the business. Perhaps it is the decision to exit a market, invest in something uncertain, or finally address the underperformance of someone you genuinely like. There are moments in every leadership role when the advice has been given, the opinions have been heard, and the responsibility settles in one place.

With you.

By the time you reach the top of an organisation, whether you lead a listed company, a privately owned business, a family enterprise or a growing SME, there are decisions that only you can make. A Board may advise. A leadership team may contribute. Trusted colleagues may help you think it through. But there is still a point at which the decision is yours, and yours alone.

From the outside, leadership can look enviable. It appears to offer influence, freedom and the ability to shape the future according to your own vision. For many people looking in, the role of CEO or business owner represents success. It suggests control.

The reality is far more complicated.

Leadership is often the act of projecting certainty while privately wrestling with uncertainty. It is being expected to stay calm when the answer is not obvious, to give confidence to others when your own confidence may be wavering, and to make choices without ever having all of the information you wish you had.

That is the weight of the role.

Yet the weight is not simply the price of leadership. In many respects, it is the privilege of it. The opportunity to shape an organisation, influence lives, create jobs, build culture and leave something better than you found it is rare. To lead is to be trusted with something important. That trust is meaningful precisely because the decisions matter.

The burden and the privilege are not separate. They are, in truth, the same thing.

If the organisation matters to you, if the people matter to you, if the consequences of your decisions are real and personal, then leadership should feel heavy. The weight is often a sign that you care. It is evidence that what you are carrying has significance.

Too often, though, we are encouraged to think that good leadership should somehow feel lighter. We are told to become more resilient, more productive, more positive, more balanced. There is value in all of those things, but there is also something slightly misleading about the idea that the best leaders have simply learned how to remove the burden.

They have not.

The best leaders have learned how to carry it differently.

There are pressures that come with leadership that are unavoidable. The responsibility of making payroll when times are difficult. The need to make decisions that will disappoint some people. The reality that, in uncertain times, somebody still has to choose a direction and live with the consequences.

But not every part of the burden is inevitable. Some of the weight we carry has less to do with the role itself and more to do with the way we choose to perform it.

Many leaders make the role far heavier than it needs to be. We convince ourselves that nobody else will do the job properly, so we hold onto decisions that should have been delegated months ago. We avoid difficult conversations because we do not want to upset people, and then spend weeks or months carrying the frustration, the anxiety and the consequences of that avoidance. We tolerate underperformance because confronting it feels uncomfortable, and in doing so we place an even greater burden on ourselves and on the people around us.

In those moments, what we often call leadership is actually control.

There is a profound difference between carrying responsibility and carrying everything. Responsibility is part of the role. Carrying everything is often driven by fear. Fear that we will lose control. Fear that others will let us down. Fear that if we stop being indispensable, we may no longer know who we are.

That is an uncomfortable thought, but it is an important one.

Many leaders derive part of their identity from being the person who always has the answer. The one who works the hardest, carries the most, sacrifices the most, and solves every problem. At first, this can feel admirable. Over time, it becomes exhausting.

The more indispensable you become, the more isolated you become. Not because leadership is inherently lonely, but because you have built a version of leadership that leaves no room for anybody else.

Perhaps one of the most confronting questions any leader can ask is this: am I carrying this because it is mine to carry, or because I am afraid to let it go?

For some, the heaviest thing is not the decision itself. It is the conversation they are avoiding. The senior executive whose role is no longer right. The business partner whose behaviour is damaging the culture. The reality that a strategy is not working and needs to change. We often carry these things for far longer than we should, telling ourselves we are being patient, kind or considered.

Sometimes we are. Sometimes we are simply postponing the discomfort.

Across Australia and New Zealand, this burden is becoming more pronounced. In our recent The Pulse Report, based on responses from 798 CEOs and business leaders, 78% told us that the weight of leadership is having a significantly greater impact on their mental health and wellbeing than it was just two years ago.

That statistic is revealing, not simply because leaders are more stressed or more tired, but because it suggests something deeper. The role itself has become more demanding. Economic uncertainty, workforce expectations, geopolitical instability, the pressure to perform and the erosion of boundaries between work and life all mean that leaders are carrying more than they once did.

At the same time, many leaders are carrying that weight in silence.

The founder who reassures their team that everything is fine while privately worrying about cash flow. The CEO who projects confidence to the Board while quietly wondering whether they still have the energy to keep going. The business owner who sits in the driveway for ten extra minutes before going inside because they do not want to bring the weight of the day into the house.

These moments are rarely spoken about, yet they are deeply familiar to many leaders.

Perhaps that is because we still cling to an outdated belief that leadership is meant to be lonely. That strength means staying silent. That the burden is simply part of the deal and must be carried alone.

There is truth in the idea that the accountability sits with the leader. Ultimately, there are decisions that cannot be delegated. But accountability and isolation are not the same thing.

The strongest leaders are rarely the ones who insist on carrying everything themselves. They are the ones who know what only they can do and who are disciplined enough to let go of the rest. They build teams capable of carrying real responsibility. They create cultures in which difficult conversations happen earlier, not later. They seek out people who will challenge them honestly rather than simply tell them what they want to hear.

Most importantly, they recognise that leadership was never meant to be a solo act.

The weight of the role is real. It always will be. To care deeply about something and to be responsible for it is, by definition, heavy. But leadership is not defined by how much you can personally endure. It is defined by your judgement about what you carry, what you release, and who you allow to stand beside you.

Because the true burden of leadership is not that the role is heavy. It is believing that you have to carry all of that weight alone.

Success or Significance - What Will Define You When It Counts?

The CEO Institute — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:45:09 GMT

Success or Significance: What Will Define You When It Counts?

There comes a point in every leadership journey where the traditional markers of progress begin to feel less complete. The metrics are still there, often stronger than ever. Revenue is growing, teams are expanding, and the business is moving forward with clarity and momentum. From the outside, it reflects exactly what most would define as success. Yet for many CEOs and business owners, there is a quieter, more personal shift taking place beneath the surface. The question is no longer just about performance. It becomes something more reflective, more enduring. What is all of this actually adding up to?

Success is the language most leaders are taught first. It is structured, measurable, and widely understood. It shows up in financial outcomes, career progression, market share, and external recognition. It creates momentum early in a career because it offers clear signals that you are moving in the right direction. For many, it also becomes deeply tied to identity. You become known for what you achieve, what you build, and what you deliver. There is nothing superficial about that. Success requires discipline, resilience, and an ability to execute under pressure. It earns its place as a critical part of any leadership journey.

But success, by its nature, is anchored in outcomes. It answers the question of what has been done, and it does so with clarity. What it does not always answer is what those outcomes truly mean beyond the result itself. That is where significance begins to emerge as a different, but equally important, lens.

Significance shifts the focus from achievement to impact. It is less concerned with what is visible and more attuned to what is felt. It asks different questions. Who is better because you led? What changed because you made that decision? What continues because of the standards you set? These are not questions that can be easily captured in a report or presented on a slide. They live in the experience of others and in the longer-term consequences of leadership.

Most leaders do not begin their careers striving for significance. They begin with ambition, often fuelled by a desire to prove something, to themselves or to others. Success provides the structure for that pursuit. It is clear, it is rewarded, and it creates opportunity. Over time, however, experience begins to reshape perspective. Leadership becomes less about individual performance and more about the weight of decisions and their impact on others. The moments that stay with you are not always the largest commercial wins, but the times where your leadership changed the trajectory of a person, a team, or an organisation.

This is where the distinction becomes more than conceptual. Success builds a career, but significance shapes a legacy. A career can be mapped through roles, achievements, and milestones. It can be explained with logic and evidence. A legacy is far less structured. It exists in how people speak about you when you are not present. It lives in the culture you leave behind, the people you developed, and the standards that continue in your absence. It is formed gradually, through consistent decisions rather than singular moments.

There is also a practical reality that many leaders encounter as they progress. The incremental gains of success do not always translate into a deeper sense of fulfilment. A larger title, a stronger financial outcome, or another milestone achieved does not necessarily change how the work feels. This is not because success loses its value. It is because it has a natural ceiling. Meaning, on the other hand, tends to expand. It grows as your focus moves beyond personal achievement and towards contribution, responsibility, and long-term impact.

This is often the point where values, purpose, and beliefs move from being articulated concepts to lived behaviours. It is one thing to define what you stand for. It is another to consistently demonstrate it in decisions that carry consequence. Significance is built in those moments. It is shaped by what you choose to prioritise when there is pressure, ambiguity, or competing interests.

It is important to be clear that this is not a choice between right and wrong. Success and significance are not opposing forces. Both have a valid and important role in leadership. Success creates the platform. It enables growth, provides resources, and establishes credibility. Without it, the ability to create broader impact is often limited. Significance ensures that what is built has meaning beyond the individual. It brings depth to ambition and context to achievement.

The real distinction lies in awareness. When leaders are clear on what they are striving for, their decisions begin to align more consistently. If success is the primary driver, the focus sharpens around performance, efficiency, and measurable outcomes. If significance becomes more central, the lens widens to include the long-term effect of decisions, the development of people, and the broader contribution being made. Neither approach is inherently better. The effectiveness comes from understanding which is guiding you at any given time.

For many, the most powerful leadership emerges not from choosing one over the other, but from integrating both. Success provides the discipline to build something of substance. Significance ensures that what is built matters in a deeper and more enduring way. When these are aligned, leadership takes on a different quality. Performance remains high, but it is grounded in purpose. Decisions drive results, but they also carry meaning.

At some point, the question becomes personal rather than professional. It is not driven by external expectations, but by internal clarity. What will define this chapter of your life and leadership? Will it be the scale of what you achieved, or the depth of the impact you created while achieving it? In most cases, the answer is not absolute. It evolves over time, shaped by experience, perspective, and the moments that matter most.

What ultimately defines a leader is not just the outcomes they deliver, but the significance those outcomes hold. Success may build the structure of a career, but significance gives it meaning. And when the two are brought together with clarity and intent, they form something far more enduring than either could alone.