Last week I was fortunate to attend a breakfast with UN peacekeeper, Colonel Michael Bond CSC, Commander Australian Forces Operation ASLAN, in South Sudan. He has some amazing stories of how little differences can bring a community together in a tough environment.

With permission, I’m going to share his leadership principles. The first 3 are in order and the last 5 are no particular order.
 
1.    Be perpetually optimistic
2.    Being nice matters
3.    Clear mission about where you’re going and continual conversations to bring people along
4.    Laugh and enjoy
5.    Value peoples contribution and explain what their contribution means
6.    Persistent bias to change
7.    Evolve to perfect
8.    Actions speak so loudly, no one hears what you say
9.    Have the courage to stand alone and make judgement calls

A good exercise to complete is to write a Command Philosophy which states what you stand for, what you don’t, what your expectations are and sets a commitment statement from you. A commanding officer will present this to those under their command so it is clear to all.

What would be on your Command Philosophy? Do you think having one for your team in the workplace would be beneficial?

Yesterday, one year ago, I registered Process PA Pty Ltd. It’s been an amazing journey. Are we where we thought we would be? No. Have we learnt much? Yes. Are we optimistic about the next year? Even more so. Since general availability in May the feedback has been great and our product is running well. Around 150 meetings have been completed containing 480 action items and 500 resolutions. We have sent over 3700 emails containing agendas, minutes or action items reminders to our customers.

Efficient or Effective?

Being in a role for many years I’ve found people happy with their efficient process. Interestingly, when I mention we have customers with a committee meeting running for over 2 hours and immediately afterwards the minutes are completed and distributed, I soon find we are talking about very different things in terms of efficiency. Although they were effective, they were still spending hours after meetings typing up the minutes. Effective does not necessarily equal efficient and we all need to challenge our processes to see if there is a better way.

Partnerships

We now have running our partnership program. This is providing organizations the ability to promote a useful tool that helps their member organizations while making some income at the same time. We currently have four partners signed up representing over 3000 organizations. There is another two coming on board soon. To find out more check out http://processpa.com/partners.

With this we are looking for a Partnership Manager. This could be someone with a Sales or Marketing background, that wants to work within a growing startup and understands good governance around management committees and boards.

Thank You

No one should journey alone. I would not have come this far without the support of many people. I want to thank all the mentors, family and friends that have given advice, encouragement, financial support, and their time to help me and believe in the vision we have for the company. Especially my advisory board, my beautiful wife Allana, 4 children and extended family. Thank you.