Peter McLean's Regular Newsletter on Leadership and Strategy Issue#16, December 2025 Happy end-of-year, Christmas, New Year and all of that to you all! SEEING THROUGH THE FOG OF WAR When you get in the middle of the action, with all kinds of insanity and chaos starting to happen: people coming at you from every direction, policy changing around you on the fly, tariffs or not-tariffs changing during the night, Head of HR resigning due to pregnancy, supply chains disrupted, cus

Peter McLean's Regular Newsletter on Leadership and Strategy Issue#15, November 2025 From this issue, I'm changing the name of this newsletter to my "Lead With CLARITY" IP, as it more closely reflects my work. Still "Charting The Course" to help Executive Leaders manage mission and life, as the old header stated, but with more clarity ;) CLARITY FOR LEADERS: THE COMING AI BUBBLE A point of clarity leaders need is realising that there is an AI Bubble immanently (not necessaril

From the CLARITY Insider series by Peter J. McLean — practical insights for leaders, organisers, and keynote sponsors. One of the most important things you can do as an event sponsor is to decide what outcome you want from a Keynote. Do you want your audience to be challenged , to make sense of everything they’ve heard, to be motivated to act, inspired , encouraged —or even intentionally made uncomfortable so they think differently? What do you actually want them to do when

It's easy to criticise the leader or senior leader - until you're the one in that position. Then suddenly you realise all of the pressures that were on them in the past. But that doesn't excuse the previous leader from having been rotten or managing poorly. Nor does it excuse you. It's a challenge to you: How will you proceed? Will you adopt the same manner and problems or will you change direction and do things differently? You will make mistakes. That comes with the territo

The "lonely at the top" feeling great leaders are supposed to have? Entirely self-inflicted. If you're leading people, you actually have no excuse to be lonely, because you should be sharing responsibility, vision, strategy, insight, needs, etc. And one thing you should always be doing is finding that sounding board of one or more trusted advisors with whom you can share and bounce ideas, perspectives, challenges, queries, hopes, dreams, road blocks and frustrations. Unfortun

I was reminded the other day of The Challenger Shuttle disaster . January 28, 1986, the Challenger shuttle, loaded with the first...

Peter McLean video - Leadership Under Pressure

Strategy rarely fails suddenly with fireworks and explosions. It fades. It drifts. It becomes the oh-so eloquent term, “meh.” But great leaders - the kind that recalibrate systems, teams, and themselves - stop and ask a different question:

We often say culture starts at the top. But it’s middle managers who carry it, bend it and, more often than we admit, bear the weight when it breaks. These leaders are the bridge between strategy and daily reality. They translate vision into action, hold the emotional tone of an organisation, and influence the climate where performance either thrives—or slowly deteriorates.

In leadership conversations, culture is often invoked as both the problem and the solution. It’s what’s blamed when things feel misaligned, and what’s celebrated when organisations thrive. But amid the urgency to change culture, one fundamental truth is often missed:

Strategy isn't about whether or not you use the "recommended" model or framework, whether that be Porter's 5 forces, Mckinsey's 7-S, the...

Peter McLean Keynote Speaker based in Australia speaks with David Turner at Turner Speaks Watch my latest video - an interview about...

Transcript How to get your team accountable I was just talking with somebody about a professional services firm and about accountability,...

Transcript Leading with Clarity: Focusing on What People Care About Daily At Work Here’s the big question: What do you really care about...