In the last few weeks, I’ve been invited to share experiences with a few groups of successful people considering that first leap into consultancy. The temptations of being your own boss are obvious. Greater control of your time and focus, a chance to excel in your chosen field and increased job satisfaction. Shame then that

It’s odd writing a history for something still less than ten years old, but there’s a common theme emerging in discussions with our clients in 2021. For many, we were there at the beginning of their social media adventure, helping design social media policies and supporting them in discussions with risk averse senior managers, still

As regular readers will know, I spend a fair bit of time working with Government departments across Australia helping them to really get to know their customers. Customer research is for some parts of Government still a very new area. As indeed is the notion of customers. I’ve seen the users of Government services described

In the two years since I launched GovCom, we’ve observed hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the pursuit of innovation, seen thousands involved in Government hackathons, hundreds of thousands more involved in community engagement programmes and a stream of new Government service initiatives announced from digital licences in NSW to the formation of Service

The last few months have reminded me again how every single aspect of business is changing in the digital age. In the middle of strategy season, running discussions and workshops for large and small organizations, I’ve been struck by how easily people are quickly moving on from outdated marketing playbooks about competitors to customer centric

As we enter that quintessentially Australian “caretaker” period in the run up to the election, thoughts turn again to politics. The Daily Telegraph in Sydney yesterday ran a piece about ad agencies being the major benefactors of the rumored $100m spend on political advertising and the first ads ran on TV last night. For what

Having spent something like ten years now working on advertising campaigns for Government departments, everything from drink driving to tourism and recruitment to tenders, it seems that the most common question I get asked nowadays, often sitting precariously on a stage in front of an expectant audience, is something like “what’s Government doing with digital?”

News today that the NSW Government are appointing an expert panel to look at the myriad back office structures and systems of affiliated entities and corporations operating throughout the state. All of our recent work at GovCom would support the argument that in the digital age there are likely to be enormous efficiency savings to

If the buzzword for 2016 is “innovation”, then for 2015 it was probably “engagement”. To easily understand the explosion in engagement, just google the phrase “have your say” and you’ll soon see what I mean. Embracing the notion that digital channels now allow us to have meaningful dialogue with our customers (as opposed to a

I’m guessing that one thing that all of us who set up a consultancy or freelance business have in common is that we saw it as a chance to break away from the 9 to 5 and move closer to the perfect work/life balance. Less time in traffic. more time at the gym, more time