404: Australia: A Lighthouse in the Global Storm with Adam Dixon

I'm a naturalized Australian citizen, originally American, and one of the reasons why I emigrated here is 'cause I think it's one of the greatest countries on the planet.

However, I- I'm concerned.

Uh, for the first time since I moved here, uh, originally 30 years ago, I'm worried the country is heading in the wrong direction.

I see a morally confused and complacent landscape and deteriorating economic foundations, and I believe that free enterprise is part of the solution, not the problem.

And this book is an unapologetic defense of free enterprise, and it's a, a call, a manifesto for CEOs.

So we'll get into some of those unique challenges and opportunities in Australia in a moment, but what was your process like in actually putting this book, this manifesto together?

Yeah.

So we, um, we started very clearly focused on the CEOs, the chairs, and the leadership teams of Australia's most important institutions, and we knew that we wanted to write on transformational topics that cover across sector, but we also wanted to deep dive into some of Australia's most important, uh, sectors.

And so we, with that in mind, we, we structured the book around five transformational topics and seven, uh, industry structures, and we started with provocative headlines and perspectives and a precis.

And we tried to operate on a pull no punches, uh, principle because we wanted to say something that moved beyond just consulting jargon or banal points of view that may not offend anybody.

Not that we're trying to offend anybody, but I think it's important that people are speaking more plainly.

Uh, and I think it's important that people are speaking truth to power.

And so, so, and we, th- this was a collective effort.

The partner team in Australia and, uh, many of our consultants all contributed.

So I'd say there was about, about 30 or so of our team over the course of about 18 months wrote the, the chapters, then multiple editing rounds, and then now here we are at, uh, publishing date.

This really does feel like a collective effort, like a collective bringing together of some, some brilliant minds then.

It's, yeah, it certainly has.

I, I, and, and we, we had junior consultants who were doing deep research around specific topics because we wanted to bring some new and proprietary knowledge, young consultants working with us.

We had senior partners.

We had people covering different, uh, sectors ranging from telecommunications to financial services.

AUKUS is one of the chapters, and its implications for, uh, the industrial base of Australia.

So it really covered a, a whole bunch of different, um, areas, which meant we needed a collective effort because there's no way I could cover all that knowledge, uh, on my own.