Dr Josie McLean

Dr Josie McLean Our purpose is to assist individuals and organisations to evolve themselves to flourish into the fut

Leadership and organisational development firm - cultivating profound change.

14/08/2026

I recently lost an engagement with a client - they explained that their Knowledgement Management Manager would take the lead and I was not required. and it prompted me to ask: Why would you use a someone like me, systemic change expert, rather than a knowledge manager to prepare your staff for AI? 🤖

Knowledge managers help people find, organise, share and apply knowledge. Their expertise will be valuable as AI changes how information moves through organisations.

A change expert brings a different lens. AI asks people to reconsider the purpose of their roles, the value of human judgement, the nature of meaningful work, and the principles guiding decisions about automation. 🧭

These are questions of identity, purpose and values. They require conversation, reflection and experimentation. They can also be highly emotional conversations as we all work through how teh changes affect our professional identities and habist at work.

A change expert helps your people:

🔍 Examine the assumptions beneath their work before AI reshapes everyday practices
🌱 Connect decisions about AI to shared purpose and values
🧪 Run small, safe-to-learn experiments, notice what happens and adapt the next move
💬 Create genuine dialogue about what to embrace, what to adapt and what to retain
✍️ Protect the human practices that help us think, learn and create

Writing, for example, is part of how many of us clarify our thinking. When we outsource writing automatically, we may also give away opportunities to test ideas, examine our reasoning and learn what we think.

AI adoption is both technical and adaptive. Technical expertise supports tools, systems, governance and access to knowledge. Adaptive change helps people learn their way through questions that have no ready answers.

The question I am encouraging organisations to ask is:

How do we really want to live and work with AI?

Two books, one journey. 📚 Big Little Shifts helps you understand and lead change in complex systems. Purposeful Cultures...
05/08/2026

Two books, one journey. 📚 Big Little Shifts helps you understand and lead change in complex systems. Purposeful Cultures helps you develop the self-leadership to do it well.

Together they move from the outside in and the inside out. 🔄

📚 The bundle is $45.00 (usually $59.90), shipping included.

You can't build adaptability on unspoken threat 🧠The ground feels like it's shifting for a lot of teams right now.New st...
02/08/2026

You can't build adaptability on unspoken threat 🧠

The ground feels like it's shifting for a lot of teams right now.

New strategies, new technology, new expectations. And underneath it, a quiet weight most people never say out loud:

"There's change coming, and I'm not sure I'm ready for it."

When we bring people together to point at the future, we often skip past something important. Before anyone can engage with what's next, they may need space to acknowledge the uncertainty, and sometimes the loss, of what's ending.

Here's what I've come to understand. Curiosity and threat can't occupy the same nervous system. 🔄 When people feel under threat, you don't get inquisitiveness or adaptability. You get a braced, defensive posture, no matter how inspiring the strategy on the slide.

So if you want the qualities everyone says they want from change, the first job isn't to sell the vision harder. It's to lower the threat in the room, so people can genuinely hear it.

Name what's real. Let people be seen rather than managed. Then watch how much more of them shows up for what's next. 🌱

I don't do generic case studies 🚫The fastest way to lose a room of experienced leaders is to hand them a case study from...
29/07/2026

I don't do generic case studies 🚫

The fastest way to lose a room of experienced leaders is to hand them a case study from someone else's world.

When I speak, I work the other way around. Before the day, I have a couple of conversations with you and your key people to understand the real pressures your team is navigating right now: the demand, the resourcing, the policy shifts, the change initiatives already in play. Then I weave that context into the session, so we're working with your live challenges, not generic examples.

I've done this with government departments, councils, state authorities, an aerospace company and professional services firms. Different sectors, same core: helping leaders tell technical challenges from adaptive ones, recognise work avoidance in themselves, and leave with one small experiment they'll actually run on Monday. 🧪

Over a decade addressing audiences, a book 📖, an award-winning PhD 🎓, and a stubborn belief that leaders don't need more information. They need a shift in how they see the work.

If you're planning a forum, conference or team gathering and want a keynote tuned to your people rather than a talk off the shelf, let's have a conversation. 💬

📩 [email protected]

Every so often I get feedback that my work is "theoretical" or "academic," said with a hint that it can't therefore be p...
26/07/2026

Every so often I get feedback that my work is "theoretical" or "academic," said with a hint that it can't therefore be practical. 🙂

I understand why. I do spend time on how the way we think about things shapes what we do. That's conceptual work.

But think about it. Isn't it true that how we think and feel about something determines how we act? Change the thinking and the doing follows.

Far from being impractical, I'd argue it's the most practical place to begin. Everything else is downstream of it.

Where has a shift in your thinking changed what became possible?

Why your plan keeps losing to reality 📉Change that matters rarely follows a project plan.I've spent more than two decade...
24/07/2026

Why your plan keeps losing to reality 📉

Change that matters rarely follows a project plan.

I've spent more than two decades watching well-intentioned plans fail to land. Not because the people were lazy or the strategy was wrong. Because the challenge was living, dynamic and interconnected, and we tried to manage it with tools built for a more predictable world.

Traditional project management is brilliant at certain things. It tells you whether you spent the money on time. It tells you very little about whether anyone actually changed how they work.

So what do the organisations getting results do differently?

Three things I see again and again:
🔹 They run safe-to-fail experiments instead of betting everything on one grand rollout.
🔹 They set decision triggers, agreeing in advance what would tell them to adapt rather than push on regardless.
🔹 They shift from consultation to co-design, so people rethink their own habits rather than having new ones handed to them.

None of this is soft. It's a more honest response to complexity than a Gantt chart that assumes a stable world.

If your team is pouring effort into plans that keep meeting the real world and losing, the problem may not be effort. It may be the paradigm.

Purposeful Cultures is a workbook, not a book to skim. ✍️It's for you if:- You want to lead beyond your formal authority...
22/07/2026

Purposeful Cultures is a workbook, not a book to skim. ✍️

It's for you if:

- You want to lead beyond your formal authority
- You're ready to notice your own mental models, values, strengths and purpose
- You want practical exercises you can actually try, in real settings
- You believe business can thrive AND contribute positively to society and the environment 🌍
- One past participant told me that had he not done this work, he might have ended up "a very frustrated and angry person to work with." Instead, he found the keys to his own kingdom. 🔑 That's the kind of shift this book invites.

📗 Purposeful Cultures

There's a habit in organisations of trying to "align" people behind a purpose, as if it's a rallying cry shouted from th...
19/07/2026

There's a habit in organisations of trying to "align" people behind a purpose, as if it's a rallying cry shouted from the top. 📣

I'd reframe it. Purpose isn't something you align people to. It's an invitation.

The work is helping people connect to a shared purpose from their own values and their own sense of direction. When that happens, you don't need to chase compliance. People bring themselves.

As George Bernard Shaw put it, the true joy in life is "being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one."

Recognised by yourself. That's the part that matters.

Bringing your people together at a moment of change?If you're gathering your team to introduce a new strategy or navigat...
17/07/2026

Bringing your people together at a moment of change?

If you're gathering your team to introduce a new strategy or navigate real disruption, there's a moment that quietly makes or breaks the day.

It's early on, before the vision, before the roadmap. It's whether people feel able to name what they're actually carrying into the room.

My keynote "Finding Your Feet in Shifting Sand" is built for exactly that moment. It meets a team where they are, names the uncertainty with compassion, and opens the inner work of meeting the unknown well, so people can hear your strategy with curiosity rather than dread.

I don't arrive with a fixed talk. I spend time beforehand understanding your people, your context and the assumptions they commonly hold, then tune the keynote to their reality. It's interactive and demonstrates the very principles it teaches, so the team experiences its own adaptability in the room rather than just hearing about it.

If that's the kind of opening your gathering needs, I'd love to talk.

[email protected]

Wondering if Big Little Shifts is for you? 🤔It's for you if:* You lead in a complex domain and the linear change models ...
15/07/2026

Wondering if Big Little Shifts is for you? 🤔

It's for you if:

* You lead in a complex domain and the linear change models keep letting you down
* You're a change agent who wants theory AND practice, not just tools
* You work in policy areas like sustainability, health or education
* You're curious about what it means to treat your organisation as a living system rather than a machine 🌿

I ask you to slow down and read the theory first, because what we do flows from how we see the world. Once you shift the lens, the doing becomes different.

📘 Big Little Shifts

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33 Pirie Street
Adelaide, SA
5000

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