I hope you’ve had an awesome week… and since this is doubling as my Quarterly Ideas newsletter, a fun last few months and start to 2025.
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I spent some time reflecting this week…
30 years ago, an inflight magazine changed my life.
A magazine from a plane I wasn’t even on. An Ansett magazine randomly left near my desk when I was 19 and working at Westpac.
I never had any desire to travel, I didn’t even know it was an option for me. No one in my family or anyone I knew had travelled. That’s not how I grew up.
That life changing article was about Oscar Peterson playing at the upcoming Montreux Jazz Festival and I immediately knew I had to get there. The itch had started but it was still a few years before it became a possibility.
My world had already opened up a couple of years earlier when I started working at Westpac. A job in the city, wearing a suit to work, surrounded by so many interesting people. A stark contrast to growing up as a bricklayer and working at a local wholesale nursery in Wainuiomata – an isolated semi-rural suburb of Wellington, NZ – for six months after leaving school at 17.
That was another thing I didn’t know was an option for me until my best mate did it… and then put my name forward to take his place when he was promoted. A small thing. But also life changing.
A major career pivot from the trades to financial services in 1993. Not something I planned. Just something I said yes to… and jumped in wholeheartedly. The theme of my life.
Then a fork in the road… read on for the rest of the story with what I’ve learnt.
Ideas
There’s always a lot going on in March. It’s B Corp Month, Southstart, and International Women’s Day. I’m also looking forward to Climate Action Week Sydney and our SydDT #110 meetup next week.
There’s a lot of live music at the moment too. I’ve already been to nine gigs this year with another five over the next few weeks. Follow me on Instagram for my realtime photo journal.
An event and a couple of reflection blog posts for you…
SydDT #110: International Women’s Day. Accelerate Action: Make AI Your Equity Partner with Kristin de la Fuente
To celebrate International Women’s Day, Kristin de la Fuente will lead a session on 13 March that will provide tools that ensure AI-generated outputs for design can be more ethical, inclusive, and free from gender bias. It’s already sold out but join the waitlist or you can always watch the recording.
Reflecting on the Week
I love working on top-level strategy and governance through all the layers of leadership, design, and innovation with purpose and wellbeing… through to pixels and devops. Wondering what I get up to? This will give you some clues of how I spend my time.
Reflecting on Adelaide Design Thinking #1: What Does Design Mean in Adelaide?
What a night. There was a real buzz in the room on 20 February for the inaugural Adelaide Design Thinking (AdlDT). It sold out within three weeks of us announcing it and we had another 50 on the waitlist. Check out the full write-up, photos, and video.
Let’s Collaborate
At Dynamic4, we specialise in leadership, design, and innovation with a focus on purpose and wellbeing. We do that by working alongside leaders and their teams to navigate complexity and solve problems that matter.
We love helping our clients design, build, and launch ideas that customers and teams love, make money, and do great things for people and our planet while increasing wellbeing. My book Solve Problems That Matter is a good way to get started.
This draws on my 30+ years of bringing together strategy, design, and tech to lead, design, and deliver strategic change in financial services, digital & tech, health & fitness, and building startups/social enterprises.
What do we actually do? Key ways we help is through coaching and advice, workshops, innovation sprints, and designing and delivering leadership, design thinking & innovation programs.
Our approach builds personal, team, and organisational capability to solve problems that matter with more:
🌿 Confidence to navigate complexity and solve problems that matter for your teams, customers, shareholders – and build momentum with more certainty and less risk while increasing your wellbeing
❤️ Clarity to empathically engage your stakeholders, make better decisions, and collaborate to create solutions that your teams and customers love, make money, and do great things for people and our planet
🎯 Purpose that drives progress on your goals and creates meaningful value that you’re proud of for all stakeholders – and build the relationships, workflows, rhythms, and habits for success
Keen to chat about how we can have fun collaborating to solve problems that matter? Book a free 15-minute discovery call.
Have fun!
Ben
