As published in The Mandarin December 3, 2024 by Kiah MD John Glenn If I had realised this when I first started out my life would have been much easier – everywhere! I would have got more of what I wanted to achieve with much less angst. At home, at school, at work – did…
As published in The Mandarin September 10, 2024 by Kiah MD John Glenn I know I’m a heretic. Surely, it’s obvious we need good contract management. The Department of Finance has a well-meaning 50+ page guide to managing contracts. ANAO has a web page providing advice on better procurement and contract management (ANAO Insights: Audit…
Negotiation is the process of trading something of value for something you value more. Deadlock is where there is no movement. It happens when creating a contract, during delivery, around change proposals. It happens within organisations – particularly where groups must work together but have different agendas or outcomes. Sometimes deadlock is real – there…
Some years ago I did a Harvard program called “strategic deal-making for business”. I followed on with a master’s unit in strategy at Edinburgh Business School that focused on strategic deals. I started to talk about it with our, mostly, public sector clients. Almost all of them said they “don’t do deals” because they are…
As published in the Mandarin 23 May, 2022 Talking about building strategic partnering relationships is the flavour of the month, especially in Defence where there always seems to be a search for a model that works better than what is happening now. I don’t think that is a bad goal, by the way, but we…
As published in the Mandarin November 2, 2020 The public sector is often exhorted to be more commercial in its behaviours. “In some ways it’s a bit of a nonsense”, says MD of Kiah Consulting, John Glenn. “Dogma, like any other dogma, doesn’t make sense. The public sector is about spending money to deliver a…
As published in Forge magazine in early 2019 Kiah MD John Glenn spoke to Forge Magazine in early 2019 about how Kiah is bridging the gap between the public and private sector. John Glenn knows the value of managed risks better than most. In his 23-year career with the Australian Army, he jumped out of…
Throughout our work we engage a variety of management consulting and legal services, either directly or through our client. Regularly we are handed the results of previous engagements, too often accompanied with statements like: ‘this is OK but not as useful as we had hoped’, or ‘doesn’t quite answer the question’. We confine our observations…
As published in the Mandarin June 19, 2018 by Kiah MD John Glenn The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short;but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.-Michelangelo In 2017, the federal government executed $47 billion of new contracts.1 Negotiating a 1%…
