Zamagias Consulting

I have had the joy and privilege of mentoring young people in the business world, both formally and informally, for quite some time. My husband has also mentored young people in various capacities. I have to say I am hopeful for the future. When we talk about “passing the baton,” another good piece of wisdom is the importance of being mentored as well as mentoring others. While this article is mostly about mentoring others, my hope is that we all have somebody who mentors us,

Stephen Covey’s Quadrant Thinking has become my go to framework for time management. I’ve referenced it often in seminars, adapting its principles to suit different contexts. One example is my September 2023 article, Covid Fog, Crisis Fatigue and Other Blahness in which some of these principles were addressed. Though Covey’s principles date back several decades, the core concept—understanding and managing the urgent versus the important—remains profoundly relevant. In a worl

A common error we sometimes fall victim to is shortcutting our understanding of complex ideas. I have heard Edward De Bono’s rich parallel thinking strategy reduced to labelling that can border on insults rather than its intended use. Edward De Bono sees that parallel thinking can avoid unnecessary arguments when it is understood that individuals may be seeing different aspects or facets of a scenario which results in a different view being expressed, rather than one part bei

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay; it is too late to wind back the clock. It is a waste of time and energies talking about how bad it is but do put your energies into putting in some constructive guardrails. Every entity, no matter how small, should have an AI Policy. Start off small with a one pager (or commensurate with the size of your entity and your other policies).  You will need to decide beforehand how much AI use you will allow in your entity, but good luc

You usually don’t have to dig too far to find instances where third-party service providers are involved in compliance issues. Qantas are not the only ones to endure cyber threats in recent times, with it being a common occurrence for businesses to have to outsource work related to their vulnerable data, which inevitably complicates risk management. As much as we would like to think otherwise, we all rely on others to some extent. I lived in a remote part of Australia for a f

As I had cause to stop and wait, I observed a bird over a couple of days that was constantly attacking its reflection. It frequently flew up to the reflective window or tried to attack it from above. It would spend time squawking at its reflection and was persistent in trying to get either above or behind the bird in the window, which usually meant slamming itself into the window at each time. This ‘other bird’ was a big part of this bird’s life, taking up a fair bit of its t

This is one of those ‘do as I say, not as I do’ articles, and a bit of mea culpa. I have always been a cerebral type of person, I can see...

Loyalty has to be earned; platitudes and preachiness will not cut it and will only succeed in turning others away.

Any good manager will tell you how important it is to lead with your instincts. And this is true, your instincts, or gut, is often the...

Who are your stakeholders? Who would you consider important enough to your business, that you would consider buying them a cup of coffee?

Risk appetites are waning as there is no obvious relief in the future. 

Whether your waiting time is short or long, learn how to make time your friend.

Delegation is not about palming off tasks, it is about maximizing skills and energies to achieve best outcomes.

What does it mean to be Trustworthy? 

There are many good recipes for fried rice on the internet. The beauty of fried rice is the ingredient list is so flexible. You can put...

Not everyone is born or grows into being a leader, but everyone on this earth is a follower.

This is one of the most difficult articles for me to write, mostly because it is more worthy of a book than an article. But I think it is...

Many good leaders have developed their skills by learning from others as well, which means that they are likely to have been good followers

Regularly interrogate your chart of accounts, it will help you to understand your operations better.

A recent Harvard Business Review article on leadership caught my attention. It was entitled Practice leadership in low-risk environments,...