Operations vs Governance (same team)
New directors get told to stop thinking operationally. The trouble is you can’t test what you’re told if you don’t understand how the company runs. Here’s the line between operating a company and overseeing one, and why the best boards need both the near view and the far.
NED Roles in SMEs and Startups: Why They Fail and What Works
The NED role carries the same legal weight in a five-person startup as it does with five hundred. The infrastructure does not. Here is what that gap looks like in practice, and what actually works.
Founder pay, unpaid super, and the ATO: what every startup operator needs to know.
Founder pay can wait. Super and PAYG cannot. What I learned managing ATO payment plans, director liability, and statutory obligations in a cash-constrained startup — and what every operator and director needs to know before it becomes personal.
What I learned doing the AICD course while my company was in crisis
I did the AICD Company Directors Course in 2022 while the company I directed was in serious trouble. Sitting in those sessions while simultaneously trying to keep the ATO at bay gave me a perspective on governance that no classroom exercise could have manufactured.
The five governance mistakes I watched kill a promising company — and how to spot them before it's too late
I watched a promising company die. Not suddenly, that's rarely how it goes. What killed it wasn't the market or the technology. It was governance. Five patterns, all documented, all avoidable. Here's what they looked like from the inside.