Brendan Shaw "It’s just the vibe of the thing.” - Denis Denuto, The Castle “Principle #1: Build strong relationships ahead of time. During negotiations, understand what your counterpart cares about.” - Paul Fisher, “Lessons From Brexit on How (Not) to Negotiate”, Harvard Business Review, 2020. “When a country has been governed by a close-knit group of politicians and civil servants working in collaboration with business and labour groups, they can reduce some of the uncertain

Brendan Shaw "We are trying to reassure people that removing all of the lavatory paper from the shelves of supermarkets probably isn't a proportionate or sensible thing to do at this time." - Dr Brendan Murphy, Australian Government Chief Medical Officer, March 2020 “I get up And nothin' gets me down You got it tough I've seen the toughest around And I know baby just how you feel You got to roll with the punches and get to what's real” - Van Halen, Jump, 1983 I

I passed a milestone the other day. I had forgotten all about it, until LinkedIn kindly reminded me in one of those sometimes annoying pop-up reminders. This was a surprise one sunny afternoon I hadn't expected. Apparently, I have been running my own consulting business for two years. (Pause .... ) After I picked myself up off the floor from the shock, I took a few minutes to reflect on this. There was a time when I would never have imagined that I would be one of those peopl

"rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno” ("a rare bird in the lands and very much like a black swan”) - Juvenal, Roman satirist, 2nd century AD “No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion." - John Stuart Mill “The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007 “Everyone see