AuthorJoel Bailey

Joel is the founder and managing director of a national consulting company, and an experienced strategy consultant and facilitator, company director and author. After working in government and consulting, Joel founded Wavelength and has successfully led its expansion with employees and clients, including ASX 50 companies, across Australia. Joel’s passion is making a positive impact by helping people, organisations and communities create clarity, so they can thrive and be more fulfilled in their lives. Joel’s other interests include reading and learning about all manner of topics, health and fitness, and spending time with family.

Cobras and butterflies: dealing with complexity

Complex adaptive systems can be particularly challenging when making important decisions. To help navigate these challenges, we have developed some guidance and a simple canvas that will help in understanding the complexity of the systems you work with, and to make better decisions within them.

The power of clarity

Consider the following set of seemingly unrelated questions: When a company is recruiting: Should we employ this person?For an infrastructure owner/manager: Should we keep maintaining our old assets, or replace them with something new?When you sit down to start work: What should I work on today?For a nation or community: What must we do to respond to our changing climate?During a meeting: What is...

Define your organisation’s value proposition in five easy steps

During a recent workshop with a client’s board and leadership team, a great question was asked which had everyone in the room stumped. We were discussing the organisation’s purpose (see our article on the importance of purpose here), which we felt was quite well-defined at this point; the purpose related to ‘creating value’ for a particular industry. Then came the question: “so what types of...

Our favourite podcasts about work and business

We love podcasts. They’re super convenient, cover every genre imaginable and usually free – what’s not to love? Beyond pure entertainment, we find podcasts to be a powerful tool for learning. There are many great podcasts covering the world of work and business that we listen to regularly that provide insights and ideas for creating and running great organisations. We’ve listed some of our...

Our 10 favourite tips for creating clarity

Clarity is a fundamental element of great strategy, organisations and relationships. At its core, clarity is simply the state or quality of being clear, coherent, intelligible and free from ambiguity. It exists in multiple forms – as a quality of something (e.g. clarity in the way we communicate), and/or an outcome (e.g. achieving clarity on an important issue). In our article on the power of...

Be crystal clear on your organisation’s purpose

I have recently been reading about the history of outdoor clothing and gear company, Patagonia. There are a number of stories about Patagonia that perfectly illustrate the power of purpose in business. Examples include: Suing the US President over the reduction of protected national parkland.Abandoning their most profitable product line due to environmental concerns.Telling their customers: don’t...

Breaking the ice

Icebreakers can be a great way to kick off a meeting or workshop. Our strategy workshops always start with an icebreaker, and we typically use them after major breaks in longer sessions. Done well, they lift the energy levels in the room, help people to start communicating, break down barriers and build trust and teamwork. Why use icebreakers? Icebreakers, put simply, are activities that are used...