David Mann: Career Reinvention, Stewardship and Why the Path Doesn't Have to Be Linear

David Mann: Career Reinvention, Stewardship and Why the Path Doesn't Have to Be Linear

David Mann has never had a grand plan. What he has had is a willingness to follow the thread - to say yes to the next opportunity, trust the learning, and keep moving. From auctioneer to NSW Police Officer and court Prosecutor, to commercial lawyer, to 24 years leading billion-dollar consulting operations for Accenture across the UK, Asia Pacific and the Middle East, to CEO of Workplace Giving Australia, to now leading Tour de Cure as its CEO - David's story is one of the most compelling examples of career reinvention and non-linear leadership you will find. In this conversation, he takes us behind the decisions, the discipline, and the quiet conviction that has shaped a life built on purpose, stewardship and trusting the process. KEY HIGHLIGHTS 1. The police force was his first leadership school Before any boardroom, David Mann spent six years as an NSW Police Officer and court Prosecutor. He credits that time with teaching him the fundamentals of human behaviour - how to read a room, how to negotiate without igniting a situation, and how to understand that people do not all think the same way. He describes the best police as those who can defuse rather than escalate - a philosophy he carried directly into his leadership approach at Accenture and beyond. It is not a background most senior executives share. And it shows in how he leads. 2. He has never had a grand plan - and that was the strategy David said it plainly in this conversation: he has never had a grand plan. What drove every career decision instead was a simple filter - will this keep me learning and growing? He described his father's question that still shapes how he thinks: what is the point of working 48 weeks of the year in something you do not enjoy, just for four weeks of holiday? For anyone navigating their own non-linear career path, that question is a compass. Career reinvention, David says, is not a crisis. It is a choice. 3. Stewardship is the leadership principle he returns to again and again After 24 years at Accenture, David left deliberately - not because he had to, but because it had become routine. He recognised that a leader who has stopped being energised is a disservice to the people around them. He described stewardship as making other people successful and then getting out of their way. It is the leadership principle he applied to leaving Accenture, and the one he now applies every day at Tour de Cure. In a world that celebrates holding on, David makes a quiet case for knowing when to let go. 4. Tour de Cure - from bikes to a national cancer research force David joined the Tour de Cure board in 2014 as a volunteer, and became CEO in October 2024. When he arrived, Tour de Cure was built around one thing: riding. Bike tours were the centrepiece and the identity. Today, riding represents only about 10% of what the organisation does. Over 20,000 of its 25,000 annual participants now come through runs, walks, swims and gala events - a deliberate diversification David helped drive from the board before stepping into the CEO seat. Tour de Cure has funded over 1,300 research projects, contributed to more than 250 world-class medical breakthroughs, and currently sponsors approximately 130 PhD students. David is clear: researchers will find cures for cancer. The only thing that will stop them is lack of funding. 5. Kindness has been a thread through everything When asked where kindness had shown up across his career, David Mann did not reach for a corporate example. He talked about his parents, his friends, and the people around him who were never just in it for themselves. He describes kindness not as a soft leadership idea but as a practical force - and it is part of why he joined My Acts of Kindness alongside his work at Tour de Cure. For David, leading with kindness and leading seriously are not in tension. They are the same thing.   David Mann did not set out to build an impressive career. He set out to keep learning, keep growing, and be around people who were doing the same. The titles and the scale came as a by-product of that orientation - not the other way around. What this conversation leaves you with is something quieter and more useful than career advice: the reminder that the path does not have to be linear to be right, that stewardship matters more than status, and that career reinvention is not something that happens to you. It is something you choose.   Connect with David Mann: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-b-mann/]  Tour de Cure: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/tour-de-cure-ltd/posts/?feedView=all] | Website  [https://tourdecure.com.au/] My Acts of Kindness: Linkedin [https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-acts-of-kindness] | Website  [https://myactsofkindness.com.au/] This episode is brought to you by: Cell Wellness Co  [https://cellwellnessco.com/] Connect with Kirsty Ghahramani (Gee):  LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsty-ghahramani/] |  Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/kirsty.gee/] | Website [https://www.leadershipodysseys.com/]

Dr Kat Page: Why Fixing Work, Not People, Is the Leadership Shift We Need

Organisational psychologist Dr Kat Page has spent two decades researching workplace wellbeing and happiness at work. She is a Leadership Partner at ByMany, Adjunct Professor, and author of Good Work a book that makes the case that burnout is a design problem, not a people problem. In this episode of the Leadership Odysseys podcast, Dr Kat Page and Kirsty Ghahramani (Gee) explore what happiness actually means, how good leadership shapes the conditions people work in, and why designing better work is the most important lever any leader has. From a Goat Farm to a Life's Work Kat grew up on a 40-acre property in Benalla, Victoria, a writer from primary school age. When she landed on happiness research at Deakin University at 21, she knew immediately it was what she was meant to do. Two decades of organisational psychology research followed — and a book that needed all of it to be written properly. "I was just in my happy place, no pun intended, studying happiness." What Happiness at Work Actually Means Most people sit between a six and eight on the happiness scale regardless of what happens to them. The deeper form of happiness, flourishing comes from living in alignment with your values and feeling like your life matters. Kat's practical tip for leaders and founders: do a values card sort, rank your top three, and use them to make decisions. At any point in time, she says, there are only three values you can truly live by. "Happiness is really about having someone to love, something to do, and something to contribute towards." Why Fixing Work, Not People, Is the Answer to Burnout The central argument of Good Work is that poorly designed work not a lack of individual resilience is driving the workplace wellbeing and burnout crisis. Kat's Six Cs framework describes what good work looks like in practice: clarity, control, competence, connection, contribution, and care. Each one is a design choice. And each one, when absent, quietly depletes people who are trying to do a good job. "Work is a social determinant of mental health. Fix work, and you improve outcomes at scale." The Loneliness Nobody Talks About Kat admits she has experienced loneliness herself, despite being surrounded by people constantly. In a world of Zoom meetings, Slack messages, and back-to-back calendars, genuine human connection at work is increasingly rare. The antidote, she says drawing on researcher Zach Mercurio's work on mattering, is not more contact — it is the feeling that you matter to someone. "How rare it is to have someone say: I see you. I see how hard you have been working." The Me, We, Us Framework for Good Work Good Work is organised around three layers that every leader can act on. Me is your own energy, recovery, and non-negotiables. We is the space between people — connection, psychological safety, and how leadership is felt in the moments between conversations. Us is the organisational system: culture, work design, and the structures that either protect people or erode them. Knowing which level a problem lives at is the starting point for solving it. "Good work is not a luxury. It is a design choice and a shared responsibility."   This episode of the Leadership Odysseys podcast was recorded 1 May 2025. Good Work by Dr Kat Page is available now in print and audiobook. Connect with Dr Kat Page: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kat-page-2366514/] | Website [https://www.drkatpage.com/]  ByMany: Linkedin [https://www.linkedin.com/company/%E2%80%94bymany/] | Website [https://www.bymany.com.au/] This episode is brought to you by: Naturally Glutenfree [https://www.naturallyglutenfree.com.au/] Connect with Kirsty Ghahramani (Gee):  LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsty-ghahramani/] |  Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/kirsty.gee/] | Website [https://www.leadershipodysseys.com/]   Mentioned in this episode: Zach Mercurio [https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachmercurio/] — The Power of Mattering Megan Wright — Spacious Mode Craig Hassad [https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-hassed-101471a8/] — Punctuating Your Day Sir Cary Cooper [https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-sir-cary-cooper-cbe-4213909/] — Workplace wellbeing researcher and mentor Amy C. Edmondson — Harvard Business School, endorsed Good Work Life values card sort — search online for a free version

Stop managing your time. Start leading it. Mridu Parikh on intentional productivity for founders and leaders

Most leaders are good at filling their calendars. Far fewer are intentional about what goes in them. In this episode of Leadership Odysseys, Kirsty Ghahramani (Gee) sits down with Nashville-based productivity coach, speaker, and bestselling author Mridu Parikh, founder of Life Is Organized, to explore why driven, capable people still end the day feeling like they didn't do enough. Mridu shares the single question that replaces every productivity framework you have tried, why white space in your calendar is quietly deceiving you, and how to build systems that protect your focus without sacrificing the life you are building around your work.   Episode Highlights 1. The Closet Was Never the Problem Mridu began as a professional home organiser, but a pattern kept emerging. She could sort the garage and tidy the pantry, and clients would still come back overwhelmed. The real disorder was not in the spaces. It was in the calendar, the inbox, and the mental load of expectations people had never stopped to question. That shift became the foundation of everything she teaches. The physical and the organisational, she argues, operate by the same logic. If you can organise a cupboard, you can organise your priorities. You just need the right questions. 2. The Pillow Test Mridu replaced the Eisenhower Matrix with one question asked at the start of every day: what two to three things will make me feel most successful when my head hits the pillow tonight? The phrasing is precise. It limits scope, grounds decisions in how you will feel rather than what looks urgent right now, and consistently surfaces what you have been avoiding. Those two or three things, she says, are almost always what you are procrastinating. It is also the question at the heart of her recent TEDx talk, How to Stop Feeling Like You Didn't Do Enough, which explores why we can work hard all day and still go to bed feeling like none of it mattered - and how purpose, presence, and relationships all hinge on getting honest about what we are actually working towards. 3. The White Space Trap When we see open space between meetings, we believe we have more time than we do. Mridu calls this positivity bias, and high achievers are especially vulnerable. Her fix: schedule the work, not just the delivery. If a proposal is due Friday, Monday needs a block for the outline, Tuesday for team input, Wednesday for the draft. When you fill in those steps honestly, the calendar stops lying, and you stop overcommitting. 4. Schedule the Distraction Willpower is not a strategy. We are wired for ease and the dopamine hit of a cleared inbox. Mridu's answer is to schedule distraction deliberately and use a timer without exception. The timer creates an external signal that breaks the pull of the scroll in a way that looking at a clock never will. She also notes that how we communicate our availability trains the people around us. Telling your group chat you will respond tonight removes the pressure, protects your focus, and costs almost nothing. 5. Purpose Before the To-Do List When Mridu compares a client's stated priorities to their actual calendar, the gap is almost always startling. Health, strategic growth, family time. None of it on the schedule. Her point is not that people are dishonest. It is that intention without a calendar commitment stays intention. The calendar is not the last step in planning. It is the moment the plan becomes real. Mridu's work is not about optimisation for its own sake. It is about alignment between the life you say you want and the days you are actually building. Her advice for founders: protect the morning, block strategic thinking, and come to a mutual agreement with your team that internal emails and meetings don't start before 10am - so everyone can protect their highest-value hours, not just the leader. The leaders who create lasting impact, she says, are not the ones who manage their time. They are the ones who lead it.   Connect with Mridu Parikh: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mridu-parikh/]  Connect with Life is Organized: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/life-is-organized-llc/about/] | Website [https://lifeisorganized.com/]  This episode is brought to you by: Naturally Glutenfree [https://www.naturallyglutenfree.com.au/] Connect with Kirsty Gee:  LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsty-ghahramani/] |  Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/kirsty.gee/] | Website [https://www.leadershipodysseys.com/]

Tane Hunter & Dara Simkin: What It Actually Means to Stay Human While the World Speeds Up

Leadership Podcast | Workplace Culture | Play at Work | Intelligent Optimism | Full Stack Human Book There is a question that most leaders are quietly asking but rarely say out loud: if I keep doing more, why does something still feel off? Not broken, not lazy, not wrong. Just stretched past the point where effort alone solves anything. This conversation sits right inside that tension. Two thinkers, two very different paths, and one shared conviction that the world has changed faster than the playbook we were handed, and that staying human is not a soft skill. It is the strategy. The Guests Tane Hunter grew up an outsider — a blonde-haired nerd in rural New Mexico, raised by a mathematician father and a counsellor mother, who found his footing on a mountain bike and then lost it again to a spinal injury that ended his national champion career. What followed was science, cancer research, sailing solo across the South Pacific, and eventually co-founding Future Crunch, a global platform built on intelligent optimism and the belief that the stories we tell about the world shape the world we build. Dara Simkin arrived in Australia by winning a camper van competition, fell in love with Melbourne, and built a career from the inside out: coaching, mental health workshops, a summer camp nobody came to, and then the insight that changed everything. Play is not a reward for finishing the work. It is how the work gets done well. She is the founder of Culture Hero and Australia's leading voice on play in the workplace, a late ADHD diagnosis lighting up everything she always knew about herself. Together, they wrote The Full Stack Human — a book for anyone who refuses to sacrifice their humanity for success.   What We Get Into The myth of discipline and resilience Dara reframes one of leadership's most overused words. It is not that high-achievers lack discipline or resilience. It is that they are operating beyond their capacity. When you are running on empty, no amount of grit closes the gap. The real question is not how hard you push but where your energy is going and whether you are getting any of it back. What it takes to rebuild when the thing you love is taken away Tane's spinal injury did not arrive as a single moment. It arrived slowly, until he could barely walk. He talks honestly about grief, misdiagnosis, and what happens when your identity is wrapped up in something your body can no longer do. His answer was not to power through. It was to go back to his first love: science. That decision changed everything that followed. The child void, success amnesia, and the addiction to achievement Dara introduces the concept of the child void — that liminal space between achievements where high-performers feel most lost. She and Tane explore how success amnesia keeps driven people from celebrating anything before chasing the next thing, and why the messy middle is not a problem to be solved but a fertile space to be inhabited. Comprehension, they argue, is what creates compassion. Why the most dangerous leadership strategy right now is control In a world moving this fast, risk aversion is itself a risk. Tane and Dara dismantle the lie that seriousness equals success and make the case for the yes-and leader — someone who creates conditions for their people to bring their real thinking, not their polished version of it. Psychological safety is not about being nice. It is about building cultures where people can say this is not working and feel safe doing it. Play is not the reward. It is the on-ramp. The most common mistake leaders make with culture is treating play as a treat you get after the real work. Dara makes a different case entirely. Play, in its truest form — curiosity, flexibility, permission to experiment — is what expands capacity. You cannot force a frazzled nervous system to rest. But you can give it an on-ramp. Recovery and rest are not the same thing, and knowing the difference might be the most practical leadership insight in this whole conversation. Quotes From the Conversation "It's not resilience or discipline. It's capacity. When we are up to our eyeballs, we have very little capacity to navigate our lives. Where is my energy going, and am I getting it back?" — Dara Simkin "Don't treat hope as a noun or a hashtag. Treat it as a verb. Create strong pathways, your people's ability to imagine solutions. And couple it with agency — the belief that those goals can actually be obtained." — Tane Hunter A Note From Kirsty What I keep thinking about after this conversation is how much we have confused being stretched with being strong. Tane and Dara gave me a different frame: that the most human thing a leader can do right now is not grind harder, but genuinely ask where their energy is going — and whether any of it is coming back. That is not softness. That is strategy. And if you have ever crashed on a holiday because your body finally got permission to stop, this one is for you. Links & Resources Mentioned The Full Stack Human — Book Website https://www.culturehero.co/full-stack-human-book [https://www.culturehero.co/full-stack-human-book] Future Crunch Tane Hunter's platform exploring the frontiers of science, technology and intelligent optimism. futurecrunch.com [http://futurecrunch.com] | LinkedIn: Future Crunch [https://www.linkedin.com/company/future-crunch/] Culture Hero Dara Simkin's workplace culture and play consultancy. culturehero.co [http://culturehero.co] | LinkedIn: Culture Hero [https://www.linkedin.com/company/cultureheroco/] Connect with Dara: Linkedin  [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dara-simkin-culture-hero/] Connect with Tane: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanehunter/] This episode is brought to you by: Naturally Glutenfree [https://www.naturallyglutenfree.com.au/] Connect with Kirsty Gee:  LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsty-ghahramani/] |  Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/kirsty.gee/] | Website [https://www.leadershipodysseys.com/]

Jeremy Senior: Building Strong Teams Through Clarity, Not Comfort

What happens when leadership is tested not in theory, but in the moments where everything is on the line? In this conversation, Jeremy Senior takes us inside the reality of leading in high-pressure, high-stakes environments. From early personal loss to navigating corporate hierarchy, retail collapse, global culture clashes, and burnout, his story is not linear. It is shaped by tension, responsibility, and the quiet decisions that define who you become as a leader. This is not a conversation about titles or outcomes. It is about clarity when others stay silent. It is about leading people through uncertainty when the system is bigger than you. And it is about what it costs to keep showing up when performance is public and pressure never switches off. Jeremy’s odyssey reveals a truth many leaders feel but rarely say. Leadership is not just about results. It is about how you hold yourself, and others, when things get hard. Key Highlights ~ Clarity is everything Across every role, culture, and company, one principle held true. If people do not understand the why, they disengage, resist, or stay silent. Leadership starts with making things clear, especially when they are uncomfortable. ~ Silence is where businesses break At Dick Smith, Jeremy saw what happens when people stop speaking up. The warning signs were there, but fear and culture suppressed them. The result was not just commercial failure, but a leadership failure in communication and trust. ~ The reality of leadership loneliness At Samsung, Jeremy experienced something many leaders never admit. Isolation. The higher you go, the fewer people you can speak to honestly. His lesson is simple. Every leader needs someone they trust. Without it, judgment suffers. ~ You cannot lead without radical candour Kindness is not about being nice. It is about being honest, with care. Avoiding hard conversations does not protect people. It limits them. The best leaders say what needs to be said and stay to help improve it. ~ Burnout does not arrive loudly It builds quietly. For Jeremy, it was only visible when everything stopped. After years of constant pressure, he found himself unable to get out of bed. Not from exhaustion, but from depletion. A reminder that recovery is not optional, it is essential. Jeremy’s story is not defined by the companies he worked for, but by how he chose to lead within them. In systems built on hierarchy, pressure, and performance, he chose clarity over politics. He chose conversation over silence. And he chose to stay human in environments that often reward the opposite. This episode is a reminder that leadership is not about having all the answers. It is about creating environments where truth can be spoken, people can grow, and clarity replaces confusion. Because in the end, the strongest leaders are not the loudest. They are the clearest. Connect with Jeremy Senior: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-senior/]  Channel Axis: LinkedIn  [https://www.linkedin.com/company/channelaxis/about/] This episode is brought to you by: Naturally Glutenfree [https://www.naturallyglutenfree.com.au/] Connect with Kirsty Gee:  LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsty-ghahramani/] |  Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/kirsty.gee/] | Website [https://www.leadershipodysseys.com/]