The head of Australia’s biggest supermarket chain is to step down. On the face of it, this is not altogether remarkable news. Australian CEOs hold their jobs, on average, for about five years. Woolworth’s chief executive Brad Banducci has done nearly nine years at the helm, which is worthy of attention because it’s Woolworths. The brand has about 1,400 stores nationwide and boasts a 37% share of the grocery sector. It’s big and that’s the issue underpinning Banducci’s exit. Commentators, including the former ACCC chief Rod Sims have bemoaned the lack of competition within the sector. Woolworth ..read more

Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin bowed to the inevitable on Monday and resigned as chief executive of Australia’s second largest telecommunications company. Why inevitable? Poor communication and a lacklustre response during a major system outage is bad enough. Then things got worse when Bayer Rosmarin and the director of Optus networks admitted at a Senate hearing on Friday they had no disaster management plan for the kind of national outage experienced two weeks earlier. Someone was always going to have to take the blame. Now, two critical questions emerge. First, will the resignat ..read more

Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin is set to front a Senate inquiry this week, probing last week’s colossal outage which left millions stranded without internet or mobile phone connectivity for a staggering 14 hours. The company has faced severe criticism for its handling of the outage, including for its lack of urgency in updating the public. Loss of trust and confidence aside, if the national outage has taught us anything, it is there are real dangers in leaving the management of critical national infrastructure to a 100% privately owned company, in this case, a subsidiary of Singapo ..read more

Wilfredo Lee/AP The loss of the OceanGate submersible Titan appears to be an example of warnings ignored. “We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often,” OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush wrote in 2018, after being told he was putting lives at risk using his experimental submersible Titan to ferry customers to view the wreck of the Titanic almost 4,000 metres below sea level. “I take this as a serious personal insult.” Rush, who died along with four others with the Titan’s “catastrophic failure” last week, was warned by marine technology experts as w ..read more

Kerry Marshall/Getty Images “Uneasy is the head that wears the crown”, wrote Shakespeare, way back in the 1500s. It’s not a new idea that top-level leadership jobs are intensely stressful and pose a heavy toll. Extended periods of stress are known to put people at risk of burnout. Yet probably few of us can ever grasp just how unrelentingly demanding and difficult leading a country actually is. Especially in times of crisis and with our modern media and online environment, every statement and every move a leader makes is subject to extensive scrutiny and commentary. Increasingly, a troubling ..read more

Spraying disinfectant on an Indonesian cattle farm infected with foot and mouth disease in July 22. Getty Images Recent warnings of a “doomsday” scenario if foot and mouth disease (FMD) arrived in New Zealand inevitably singled out the agriculture sector. But overseas experience tells us FMD can also result in potentially severe impacts on the tourism sector. As the 2001 FMD crisis in Britain highlighted, inadequate planning and crisis management can cause a reduction in trade, job losses and damage to a destination’s image. This matters, because destination image is one of the leading factors ..read more

GettyImages Leading people through the pandemic is clearly no easy task. But does the criticism currently directed at New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reveal a major misstep on her part, or something deeper about the nature of leadership itself? Ardern has previously won widespread praise for her COVID-19 response and crisis communication, topping Fortune magazine’s “world’s greatest leaders” list in 2021. Focused on minimising harm to both lives and livelihoods, her pandemic leadership has comprised three main strands: reliance on expert advice, mobilising collective effort and cush ..read more

People line up at a mass vaccination centre during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mississauga, Ont. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette It’s a frightening and perplexing time for Canadians who have either been vaccinated against COVID-19 or are trying to determine what vaccine to get. On May 3, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) updated its COVID-19 vaccine statement and recommended that Canadians less likely to contract COVID-19 may want to wait for a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine instead of AstraZeneca (AZ). Days later, Ontario said it would not administer AZ as a first dose due to t ..read more

It's a brave new business world, so turning to novelists can help explore possible future scenarios. (Shutterstock) Reading fiction has always been, for many, a source of pleasure and a means to be transported to other worlds. But that’s not all. Businesses can use novels to consider possible future scenarios, study sensitive workplace issues, develop future plans and avoid unplanned problematic events — all without requiring a substantial budget. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many business leaders have learned how important it is for businesses to consider a wide range of possible outcomes an ..read more

Some businesses have managed to build positive outcomes from the crisis. MicroOne/Shutterstock The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted different responses from company CEOs seeking to ensure their businesses survive. Keeping their employees safe has been the first priority, but beyond that, their task has involved understanding the situation, launching countermeasures, and trying to evolve ways of working to ensure their businesses can continue. We spoke to the chief executives of three major companies in three very different industries. In their responses to the crisis we found that Winston Church ..read more