Dig Deeper

Right now, public sector organisations across New Zealand are losing people in numbers we haven't seen before. The redundancy figures get reported. The org chart gets updated. But what happens to the knowledge that walks out the door with them, the way someone could read a tricky stakeholder in three seconds, the history of why a system was built the way it was, the relationships that kept the wheels turning?
In this solocast, Digby argues most leaders are treating workforce reduction as a numbers exercise when it's actually a capability exercise. Systems and technology can pick up some of the slack. They cannot replace the relational, tacit knowledge that lives in people's heads and in how a team works together. Digby sets out a practical way to prepare for these transitions: map where critical capability actually sits before it leaves, invest deliberately in the people who stay, and build systems strong enough to survive the next departure. As he puts it, you can be the fire or the fire tender.
You'll learn:
How to identify the institutional knowledge that exists only in people's heads, before it walks out the door
Why systems and technology can't replace the relational work that holds a team together
The difference between leading as the fire and leading as the fire tender
A practical way to map critical capability before a restructure hits
How to invest in the people who stay so they can carry things forward
What it actually takes to build a team that survives transition without falling apart

Other References
What Survives When People Leave Blog Post

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How much of your energy goes into being the version of yourself you think the room expects? For many senior leaders, that performance runs quietly in the background all day, and it is exhausting. You spend years climbing toward the room where the big decisions get made, only to arrive and quietly wonder whether the person doing the job is actually you.
This episode explores what changes when you stop managing a persona and start leading from who you already are.
My guest Erin Judge calls the hierarchy we all defer to the "fictional ladder," and once you see it that way, the distance between the newest person in the room and the most senior starts to look a lot smaller. What becomes possible when you trust that the thoughts in your own head are as worth saying as anyone else's?
We also explore a deceptively simple idea for handling feedback: rather than rebuilding yourself every time someone pushes back, you keep your essence and adjust the dial.
Erin Judge (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) has built her career inside some of New Zealand's most complex systems: child welfare, criminal justice, and sector-wide public reform. She came from a low socio-economic background, was the first in her family to go to university, and was admitted to the bar at 21. She went on to become Chief Legal Officer at Oranga Tamariki and helped establish the Government Legal Network. These days she works for herself, moving between Iwi, NGOs and the public sector, and the value she brings is holding several of those worlds at once and helping each one see where the other is coming from.
You'll learn:
How to tell the difference between leading and managing, and why chasing the title is the wrong prize
Why the newest person in the room might be the most valuable, and how to give them permission to speak
How dialling your strengths up or down beats trying to become someone you're not
Why every strength carries a shadow, and what it costs to hide behind the thing you're good at
How understanding someone's motivation changes the way you influence them
Why seeking out hard things, and views that rile you, builds the kind of resilience that lasts
How to lead for impact that outlives your tenure, without needing the credit
Why a breadth of experiences often matters more than deep technical expertise

Timestamps:
(05:03) - Journey to Authentic Leadership
(10:00) - Resilience Through Adversity
(25:41) - Understanding Perspectives and Influencing Change
(28:05) - The Duality of Superpowers
(35:18) - Leading vs Managing
(39:39) - Creating Lasting Impact Beyond Tenure
Other References
Supernormal, by Meg Jay
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
Proverb: planting trees whose shade you'll never sit in

You can find Erin at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-j-16001153

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/
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How much of your day do you actually choose to give your attention to? Not just your time but your attention. Because there's a difference. And most leaders are managing the wrong thing.
This episode cuts through the noise around productivity to explore what's really going on when leaders feel stretched thin and constantly reactive. The answer isn't a better calendar or a tighter to-do list. It's getting deliberate about where your focus actually lands and protecting it like it matters. Because it does.
In this solocast, Digby explores the distinction between time, attention, and intention management, and why most productivity advice stops one layer too shallow. You'll hear about:
Why time management alone won't fix a scattered leadership practice
The difference between attention and intention, and why intention is where the real leverage lives
How notifications and constant availability are quietly eroding your capacity to lead well
Why sanctuary time, protected space to think without interruption isn't a luxury, it's a leadership discipline
What wisdom has to do with AI, and why it's the distinctly human edge that no tool can replicate
The one question worth sitting with at the end of each day

Other references
Leadership as an Act of Attention Blog Post

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How much of what you measure actually tells you whether you're making a difference?
Most senior leaders can point to a dashboard full of healthy-looking numbers. Attendance is up, participation is steady, the reports come back green. And underneath it all sits a question that's easy to avoid: is any of this the thing that actually matters? Grant Yonge took a job with that exact question built into the title.
When Grant said yes to becoming Executive Director, Organisational Impact at the Y, his honest answer was that he didn't yet know what impact meant. What he knew was what it wasn't. This conversation follows what happened next: the shift away from counting participation towards real evidence about whether young people are flourishing, and the discovery that a 180-year-old story could anchor purpose better than any strategy document. What if the most useful thing you measured was also the hardest thing to count? Let's explore what changes when a leader stops settling for the easy version.
Grant Yonge is Executive Director, Organisational Impact at the Y in Western Australia. He arrived there by an unusual route, starting out in hotel and resort management before spending the past fifteen years in the not-for-profit sector. He brings corporate rigour and a genuine sense of purpose to the work, and he thinks about leadership the way he thinks about playing in a band. In this episode, you'll hear:
How to move an organisation from counting participation to evidencing real impact
Why "getting to what's real" matters as much in corporate and government as it does in the social sector
How a story from 1844 becomes a living tool for shaping culture today
Why knowing your part, and resisting the urge to play every part, makes the whole team stronger
How stepping back can create more impact than stepping in
Why naming each person's "spikiness" leads to better decisions
How to help people find their place in the work, even on their hardest day
Why deep conviction and real vulnerability can live in the same leader

Timestamps:

(08:27) - The Journey to Defining Impact
(19:09) - Gathering and Sharing Stories of Impact
(26:31) - The Metaphor of Music in Leadership
(30:34) - Understanding Your Unique Contribution
(35:36) - Navigating Leadership Challenges
(39:13) - Connecting to Purpose and Legacy

Other References
Y.M.C.A Song
Y.M.C.A Boy George re-recording
How Great Leaders Inspire Action | Simon Sinek TED Talk
How to Make of a Life | Jim Collins
The Gifts of Imperfection | Brené Brown
The Art of Possibility | Ben Zander
Keith Richards

You can find Grant at:

Website: https://theywa.org.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-yonge-b6a30924/

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/

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You know how most days go. There's the list to clear, the email that just landed, the conversation that has to happen by Friday. You sort it, and tomorrow you do it all again. Those things matter, and I'm not going to pretend they don't. But if a good day's work is only ever solving the problems of that day, I reckon you're missing a trick. Because your days become your weeks, become your years. When you look back over those years, what will you be able to say you contributed? And what do you want to be able to say?
This solocast came out of a briefing call with a school principal. She told me she'd been sitting in her own leadership team meeting, listening to everyone work through what needed doing, and quietly realised she didn't need to be there. She wasn't threatened by that. She felt good, like something had finally worked. We get into what makes that moment possible: the difference between a problem focus and a possibility focus, what shifts when you stop patching symptoms and start improving the system, and the language change that marks leaders who've started thinking beyond their own time in the chair, from "this is what I'm doing" to "how am I setting this place up to outlast me?"
Here's some of what I cover:
Why a possibility focus lifts your energy, while a problem focus has you tired and playing defence by Tuesday afternoon
The shift from delegating tasks to genuinely growing the people around you
Three questions we worked through at the conference, worth sitting with on a quiet morning
How to find the intersection of where you're energised and where you're uniquely positioned to serve
Why lasting impact asks you to choose one thing, not everything at once

If relentless busyness is the pattern you keep running into, drop me a line at https://www.digbyscott.com/contact and we'll have a chat.

Blog post https://www.digbyscott.com/thoughts/what-will-outlast-you/

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