My shoulder, other wheels

I’m now mentoring, advising and coaching to support good work for public value. The strengths I can offer include:

I love to discover and apply new knowledge, about people, subjects and systems. I’d been in the sustainability sector eight weeks when I created the Green Rebuild Toolkit project, which is helping hundreds of bushfire-stricken households rebuild sustainably.

I work iteratively across systems, people and purpose. I help people become their best work selves. I regularly receive feedback that i’m the best boss someone’s ever had, and the most helpful peer in a tricky situation. I’ve rewritten policies, management systems, Board reporting frameworks and more to make them work better. And I’m always centred on achieving purposeful, ethical outcomes. Aligning systems, people and purpose is the only way to achieve this — focusing on just one simply doesn’t work.

I’m action oriented — turning waffle into action. I’m happy in ambiguity and complexity; I get going on incomplete data and adjust on the way. I create the conditions for others to act. I inspire creativity, I unite stakeholders around a vision, i get things working: from policies to operations

Most leaders align themselves with one methodology— humanistic, project management, design thinking. I think a person with a hammer risks seeing every problem as a nail. I prefer a varied toolbox, flexing and adjusting according to context, purpose and people by listening and facilitating deeper conversations.

My purpose is to help good people do better work, healthily and ethically.

I love IKEA’s vision — to create a better everyday life for the many people. I want to do that, with For-Purpose staff and boards.I’m not into shareholder value, I’m not into rivalry.

I want to help leaders and teams thrive in their for-purpose mission, whether that’s health, education, sustainability, heritage, science … This sector list can go on, but it’s about whether ‘the many people’ benefit tangibly and truthfully.

Principles

• Leave [projects, people, teams, organisations] stronger than when I arrived.
• Be good, do good.
• Learn something.
• Don’t create dependency — be useful then get out of the way.

Yeah yeah but what, specifically?

Over the coming weeks, I’ll describe ways I can help individuals, teams and organisations. This has three strands:

• Individual coaching/mentoring for leaders.
• Problem-solving for organisations — smoothing the path, aligning activities, connecting silos, bringing focus. Making things better.
• Major public project advisory — visioning, governance, leadership, roles and skills, project direction and management, quality assurance, healthchecks, interpretive planning, operational readiness.

For now, you can always contact me on paulbowersworks@gm*il.com. Conversations are free and simple. We’ll discover quickly if my shoulder can be usefully set to your wheel and if not — well, it was nice to meet you!

Some other people’s words about me

• You just understand how the machinery works and you can use it to get things done
  Board member while CEO
• Best boss I’ve ever had
  multiple people over a decade, including a manager while i was CEO and a staff member when i was a Head of Department in a museum
• That workshop was the most helpful things we’ve done on this entire project, we all spoke up and now i have so many ideas for improvement
  a staff member after a project healthcheck
• You cut through the ‘white noise’ to get to the crux of the issue and problem solve
  a peer on a stalled complex project i picked up and led to completion
• You did something no other person did for me […] you put some perspective around the situation. Other colleagues at work attempted to make me feel better with platitudes or tried to ‘rescue’ me. You helped me see that this would pass, my career would go on, I’d learn from my mistakes and that other people/orgs had made ones of a similar scale. You brought calm and generous counsel to my distress. I believe this shows great listening skills, emotional intelligence, empathy and experience. I can’t tell you how much this meant.
  a staff member seeking counsel after they made an expensive error
• You can hold the tension and create safety and confidence for everyone
  Board member while CEO
• My key observation of strengths would be of genuine curiosity, allied with the intellectual wherewithal to go and find stuff out. You make yourself knowledgeable about professional things — whether subject matter, techniques for delivery, techniques for management, software packages, whatever you need — at a rate and thoroughness that astonishes me. And you then apply and share that knowledge openly and generously
  Museum sector peer
• I wish i’d talked to you last year — you’d have saved me from so many mistakes!
  NFP sector peer