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Leaning forward, cutting himself off mid-conversation, Nick Flood double backed… “I have to be candid. I was very concerned that I’d fail.”
Humble has become the safest costume in modern leadership. CEOs trip over themselves to wear it with self-deprecating anecdotes and carefully rehearsed vulnerability.
But this wasn’t some stock-standard line delivered as a brand exercise.
Because true humility is quiet. It shows up in listening more than speaking, in giving credit without needing to reclaim it, in making decisions that don’t centre the ego.
“I was probably energised by that concern, it fuelled me because I didn’t want to let the people down who had taken such a big risk,” Nick shared.
A risk?
“Yes, a risk,” Nick continued. “Given my age and tenure in the company, it was a very bold move and I felt a weight on me that I needed to live up to expectations.
“But I think that youthful confidence got me through. What really helped was having a quiet confidence that I’d found a way to be successful in challenging situations in the past and relying on that skill set.
“I knew I possessed that and that it would always help me navigate a good outcome even when at the outset, it wasn’t actually clear which way it would go.”
Appointed as the youngest leader in the now 94-year history of IBM locally, Nick became Vice President and Managing Director of Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) at 37. Technically, 36, given his December birthday and official start date in January 2022.
That’s Big Blue, a titan of industry and a giant in the market. While outstanding in achievement, documenting such youthful brilliance would actually be a disservice however.
That isn’t the headline.
“Where the story all starts for me – and it shapes my leadership approach – is my upbringing in regional Australia,” Nick detailed.
Growing up in a small town in northern New South Wales (NSW), near Armidale, Nick had an “idyllic childhood” – fishing, camping, lots of time outdoors and great memories running around with mates.
“But even then, I knew I wanted more for my life and I wanted to do something exciting,” Nick added.
“I have a beautiful family that I’m just so blessed with – my mum and dad – and the other formative force at the time was my biggest sister, Paula, who was born with an intellectual disability.
“One of the big forces in my life was coming to an awareness that my sister’s potential was different to others and that it was very important for me to step up and use the most of whatever gifts and talents that I was given.”
This is a story about how a humble country boy climbed up the ranks of corporate Australia armed with the highest levels of ingenuity and inclusivity.
A star student and exceptional performer, anchored by a desire to listen and learn. An abundance of self-awareness yet no shortage of quiet confidence. Courageous in decision making yet egoless in consultation.
“I feel incredibly lucky to have zigged rather than zagged,” Nick noted.
In candid conversation, Nick offers insight into the man behind the title – a case study in the power of not always taking the obvious path or assuming the obvious persona:
The world today is wired to make rapid assessments. Backgrounds, titles, accents, attire, age, gender, experience etc – they all become shorthand. But shorthand is rarely the full story.
In leadership and business, the most enduring qualities are not always visible at first glance – integrity, consistency, judgement, humility, stamina. They reveal themselves over time.
Upon assuming the reins at IBM, Nick departed from tradition and sought the counsel of past IBM leaders – those that sat in the chair before him.
“There’s a tendency inside big companies to part ways with the past too expeditiously,” Nick observed.
“It’s so common to think, ‘oh well, I’m here because my predecessors were stuffing up and didn’t know what they were doing’. That couldn’t have been further from the reality.”
A humble leader recognises that wisdom doesn’t expire with tenure because former CEOs hold institutional memory that no board pack can capture.
Seeking counsel is not about outsourcing judgement, rather accelerating it. It shortens the learning curve, surfaces blind spots and reinforces continuity during transition.
“I got so much out of those calls,” Nick highlighted. “I took a positive approach by framing it around how I wanted to build upon what they had all achieved and stand on their shoulders.
“That was rather than taking the more arrogant view of, ‘I’m here to fix things and show how your approaches were flawed’. I was so excited to seek their counsel, some of which held the role before I even joined as a graduate.
“That’s consistent with my approach of making people feel respected and admired rather than diminished and deflated.”
Sitting down for an hour-long conversation at IBM headquarters in Sydney – off-the-cuff with no prepared notes – Nick was an open book. Effortlessly affable, authentic to a fault.
Such rawness is refreshing but often rare. It’s usually robotic generalities and clichéd remarks, one eye always on the brand – personal or company.
Underpinning such striking self-awareness was a generous acknowledgement of the leaders that have guided him along the way. Heartfelt references to those trusted peers, inspiring executives and close confidants that contributed to his meteoric career rise.
In deep-dive interviews with C-suite executives, one or two name references is par for the course. Nick shared 12 – each with a backstory and nugget of information.
Andrew Stevens. Kerry Purcell. David La Rose. Rob Thomas. Jason Codespoti. Brenda Harvey. Hans Dekkers. Reuben Bettle. Jo Dooley. Peter Campbell.
Outside of the day job, his inspirational sister, Paula and Dan, his Friday night poker friend when he first arrived in Sydney.
And many, many more.
“I like to have a support network – keep it broad but within reason,” Nick outlined.
“Because when you’re faced with challenging decisions, it’s important to bounce it off people and leverage unique points of view. I do it with former bosses and people who report to me.”
For Nick, the approach achieves two core aims:
“Sometimes I can potentially seek the counsel of others too much but I’m authentically seeking out wisdom which has an amazing snowball effect over time – now I have a wonderful community of people who feel valued and respected, and it works both ways,” Nick advised.
Abraham Lincoln famously assembled a ‘Team of Rivals’, deliberately surrounding himself with strong-minded peers and former opponents to stress-test decisions during the Civil War.
Barack Obama was known for convening small, candid advisory groups and encouraging dissenting views in private before making final decisions.
Across political systems, businesses and eras, the strongest leaders have consistently shared one habit – they created private spaces where they could think out loud, be challenged and admit uncertainty… without consequence.
Not performative, not broadcast. Just trusted peers, quiet counsel and real conversations.
“I’ve worked for amazing leaders like Jo Dooley who is now at Microsoft and Peter Campbell who is advising our business as part of a transformation,” Nick added.
“And David La Rose who is now a senior executive in the US – all of them committed to really pulling me up and stretching me to develop and grow.”
On day one, the weight of expectation and amount of execution can be paralysing for a new leader. The instinct is often to endlessly think it over before taking a single visible step.
But there’s a simpler, more powerful principle.
“My number one learning is, just get started,” Nick recommended.
As a self-labelled ‘podcast fiend’, Nick referenced a podcast by Jocko Willink, co-author of Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win.
“He has a metaphor, ‘if you’re lost, just start walking’,” Nick explained.
“So, if you’re in a field and you’ve lost your bearings, just start walking. Part of the process of walking is running across a stream or a road and from there, finding a bearing and starting to navigate.
“In leadership, it’s so important to get going. Have a plan and start executing.”
For example, many client engagements start discussing proposal X or technologies ABC. Then the sale closes two, three or four quarters later with a fundamentally different framework to what was started with.
“But it’s that process of engaging, listening, iterating and going again that unlocks success,” Nick added.
“Having a commitment and bias to action is crucial. Even if you don’t know the path, in acting, the path is going to become clearer.”
Building on this, the importance of curiosity is also fundamental to future growth – a trait found in Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President of Software and Chief Commercial Officer at IBM.
“Rob is a prolific reader and shared a great piece of advice, ‘if you out-read your peer group, you’re going to be competitively positioned relative to that peer group’ – if you’re innately curious and always work on yourself as a project of continuous learning then you can always overcome any challenge ahead,” Nick detailed.
Personal growth demands discipline and discomfort, which Nick acquires from three sources:
“I find that early warning system to be great,” Nick added. “You’re often leading in a particular way with a desired impact in mind, but it can be felt, seen, heard and experienced radically differently.
“But in the absence of a professional coach, having a small number of people that you’ve got a relationship with who can give you frank and fearless feedback is invaluable.
“Tell you straight about how you’re acting and whether it’s having positive benefits or deleterious impacts – that ally-ship inside an organisation really helps you grow as a leader.”
When Harold Macmillan – British Prime Minister between 1957–1963 – was asked what was the greatest challenge facing a leader, his reply hit the bullseye.
‘Events, dear boy, events.’
Today, a leader’s calendar rarely reflects their strategy. Despite the best-laid plans, a single incident can re-draw the day in minutes.
A customer escalation. A regulatory query. A system outage. A key resignation. Events don’t politely fit between scheduled priorities – they dominate them.
“You must allow your instinct on your priorities for the company to dictate your calendar and where you spend your time,” Nick recommended. “I see too many leaders bouncing between multiple issues.
“You might be talking about a super critical thing that’s going to impact a client or company performance for the next year and some leaders when the it comes to time are simply, ‘okay, I’ve got to go to my next one’.
“In my mind, how can you switch off from that? No, you don’t need to go to the thing your calendar is telling you, you need to stay and we need to finish this and navigate it to a good outcome.
“Don’t let your calendar dictate your priorities. Not everything is equal.”
Relying on instinct is the most effective way for Nick to make the most impact. That’s the blessing and curse of senior leadership roles – the upside is you get to decide what you’re working on, the downside is you get to decide what you’re working on.
Hans Dekkers – General Manager of Asia Pacific and China at IBM – conducts an exercise of opening up Nick’s calendar to offer a fresh perspective on how best to audit and identify any “empty calorie work”.
“Hans has a framework called the 3Ds – Drive, Delegate or Ditch,” Nick outlined.
“I find that process to be very valuable. Especially when I come back periodically to assess where I’ve been spending my time.”
The more infamous model is that by Dwight D. Eisenhower, former US President and Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a task management tool that helps leaders organise and prioritise tasks by urgency and importance, evaluated using the criteria Important / Unimportant and Urgent / Not Urgent.
In looking back on almost five years in the role, Nick is currently addressing a common yet profound leadership challenge – scaling through others.
Using a Formula One analogy – in a nod to IBM’s recent partnership with Ferrari – Nick outlined the difficulty in transitioning from being the “fastest driver around the track” to the Team Principal. From outstanding individual contributor to inspiring executive leader.
“If you continue trying to be the fastest driver around the track, you’re not going to be successful,” he cautioned.
“But I’ve found that shift hugely challenging, especially as a younger leader often leading people more senior and tenured than myself. How can you actually establish yourself in a way that unlocks growth through them, rather than being a kind of super sales rep?
“I still actively seek out a lot of guidance on this.”
Another learning exists on Nick’s whiteboard in his office, borrowed from Jason Codespoti as CFO of A/NZ at IBM. Known as the ‘Strategic Action Curve’, the graph consists of two axes – Y is difficulty and X is time.
“The longer you leave things, the more difficult they get,” Nick shared. “I need to act sooner on things that need to be addressed rather than leaving it longer and thinking it will get better.
“With the benefit of hindsight, things that just instinctively didn’t feel right initially or the data was telling me that issues needed to be addressed earlier, rather than waiting and delaying action. Give things an opportunity to recover but if they don’t, be more decisive and change earlier – particularly on talent or challenging client discussions.”
Every leader makes mistakes. But how quick should CEOs move on?
“I ruminate a lot and it’s something that I need to watch,” Nick acknowledged. “Going over old ground when I should be a lot more forward is something that I regularly work on because it’s just empty calories. It certainly doesn’t benefit you.”
Not all CEOs scale well however. Because it requires trust – hiring strong operators is one step, letting them operate is another.
At the core, the difference between a leader and a manager isn’t in the hierarchy but the focus and effect.
Andrew Stevens – formerly Managing Director of A/NZ at IBM and now Chair of Champions of Change Coalition – best illustrated this decisive difference.
‘Nick, you have to understand that to get the best out of your employees, be a leader that gives them a sense of forward progress on the front of their face. Not a leader that gives them the warm sensation of breathing down their neck all of the time.’
“I admire Andrew so deeply and I always come back to his advice time and time again,” Nick underscored.
“Don’t be dismissive of what’s come before you. Stand on the shoulders of those that have preceded you and appreciate all of the hard work by employees along the way.
“And paint a forward vision around where the business is going beyond organisational growth and profit objectives. Make that tie into the values and the ideals that matter to your employees and the communities that they live in.”
Armed by such a profound calling in his early life, a young Nick understood that education was his ticket to a different life and a move to the city in the pursuit of a fulfilling career.
The natural tactic was to throw himself into his studies and entertain an entirely different set of extracurricular experiences, with one eye on his first graduate appointment.
Stars aligned as Nick – who was in the middle of a Masters Degree that was heavily quantitative and statistical analysis based – applied for an internship hosted by the local MP, who at the time was Speaker of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.
Working in the political office running data on electoral campaigning and how best to get re-elected, plus projects on zonal taxation incentives, Nick frequently visited Sydney and was fast approaching his first career crossroads.
NAB or IBM?
“It’s an interesting story,” Nick explained. “My path was very much in financial services given my skills and I had secured a placement with NAB as part of their graduate program.
“As part of my extracurricular activities, I was invited by the Prime Minister to go to Canberra as part of an Ideas Summit. I couldn’t afford a flight ticket so as a poor student, I got the bus down.
“At the bus stop was an advertisement by IBM around ‘let’s build a smarter planet’ which really resonated with me. I’m quite risk averse so the decision to join IBM was really not me in that sense but on reflection, I guess it tells me how loudly the proposition spoke to me as a young man at the time.”
Joining a cohort of over 150 graduates in 2010, Nick thrived due to a strong sense of community and strong support from senior leadership.
But it was outside of work that adjustments also had to be made. A country boy arriving in the big city isn’t easy.
“I don’t think it can be overstated how much of a barrier that can be for kids in the country,” Nick stated. “It’s just not as easy to pursue careers in multinational companies because unlike Sydney kids, they have huge relocation overheads and the worry of whether they are going to fit it.
“I was lucky to have a big sister move a couple of years prior so I had the benefit of a home cooked meal and knowing someone in my family had already made the move.”
But Nick is often the exemption, not the rule. Because ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’ and in regional Australia, the careers available are predominantly farmers, nurses, doctors, dentists or in the police.
Exposure to the full gamut of career possibilities and corporate Australia is rare.
“A good mate of mine, Dan, was a Sydney boy in the graduate program and he would invite us over for poker nights on a Friday,” Nick recalled.
“Almost 20 years later, I can’t tell you how much value I got from that – the fact that someone was prepared to open up their friendship network to someone starting a fresh.”
Nick had a unique graduate experience.
At the time, the perception of working for a large multinational company was being suited and booted in the office all day. The reality was very different however.
The first year was spent in a warehouse on the tools – using screwdrivers and installation skills to assemble a restaurant for McDonald’s or a branch for Westpac. Test all the computers, ensure everything is staged and working then package up the kit ahead of shipping to site.
“It was not a corporate job in that sense,” Nick recalled.
Then came recognition in the form of the IBM Inferno Recognition Award, annually bestowed upon the top performing graduate.
“On day one, I said to myself that I was going to win that award,” Nick shared.
“I was blessed to be honoured and used that opportunity to unlock career acceleration in the form of mentoring and development. One part was ‘Interest Interviews’ with senior executives which offered insight on how best to navigate a career at IBM.
“I asked, ‘how can I sit in your seat?’ The response was, ‘you need to be in front of clients and you need to be managing and working every day on the front-end of our business’.”
Heeding such advice, Nick transitioned from project delivery work into the client management, sales and marketing division.
On paper and in practice, Nick was riding the Big Blue juggernaut at lightning speed.
From maximising the graduate program as a launchpad into the wider business, to excelling in new roles with growing responsibilities. By design, the path was carved and the next steps were clear.
Then his heart overruled his head.
“I was madly in love with my girlfriend, who I am now married to,” Nick reflected.
“Actually, not past tense, I’m still madly in love with her. Please put that in the article, actually as the headline – ‘Nick Flood… still madly in love’ – because that will help me out a lot.”
Delivered in jest but with a serious undertone.
Nick paused his blossoming career in Sydney to follow, Cassandra, a talented lawyer and government affairs expert, to Canberra.
“That made it easy,” he said. “And if it ever entered my mind that I was giving something up by relocating or that my trajectory or momentum would be impacted, it would have been for a nanosecond because I was so in love and wanted to pursue that relationship.”
Fate rewarded such a family-first approach.
Nick’s new reporting line ran up to Reuben Bettle, who was Director of Government and Health at the time. Kerry Purcell was Managing Director of A/NZ.
“When I arrived in Canberra, everything just clicked,” Nick recounted. “Reuben has developed into almost my big brother and I feel very close to him, as well as Kerry who I worked for prior to that. There’s a lot of big brotherly love for them both.
“They saw something in me and were committed to my development – even when I made mistakes. And I made tonnes of mistakes.”
Also clicking in tandem was IBM’s work with the Australian Government, notably on accounts such as Services Australia.
Delivering systems that supported the National Disability Insurance Scheme, supported working parents to receive childcare subsidies to re-enter the workforce, supported veterans managing their health after serving the nation and supported people going through hard times with critical income payments.
“That was back to why I joined IBM at the very beginning,” Nick connected. “From my own family story – where I grew up in the country, my sister Paula and our community – it was clear that not everyone is set up in life with the same opportunities to succeed.
“I had a great home life, I had a great boss and I had a purpose and passion behind the work we were delivering.”
The relocation to Canberra was another defining career crossroads moment for Nick – akin to starting on that early education path to reach Sydney, or listening to his gut instinct to join IBM over NAB.
“On all of my trajectories, I’ve been very grateful to find people to lift me up and propel me forward along the way,” Nick recognised.
“Although I’ve often gone down path B rather than path A, my gratitude to the people who have helped me along the way really fires me up in the belly to do the same and pay that forward to the next generation.”
Undoubtedly the most challenging episode in Nick’s career to date also arrived in Canberra – the Australian Census in 2016.
“I was at home and I remember getting a call, ‘Nick, turn on the telly’ – IBM botched the national census and Kerry had to front a government hearing to outline how this happened,” Nick said.
“We’d impacted a national initiative of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who was looking to establish himself as the ‘Digital Prime Minister’. As a consequence of that fall-out, IBM was in the freezer and we’d lost and broken trust.”
All public information in terms of the fall-out. But now 10 years on, what isn’t often understood is the foundational work undertaken by Nick and a core team at IBM to rebuild trust at the highest levels of government in Australia.
The next two years were dedicated to that simple but seismic cause.
“We were wearing out the soles of our shoes continually walking the hallways to visit clients, help with issues and get systems back up and running,” Nick added. “Those were our measures of success when revenue objectives were not as achievable.”
The culmination was a restoration of trust in 2018, illustrated by the awarding of a five-year Whole of Government agreement at a value of $1 billion in AUD.
“Our team was recognised by the Australian Government as being exemplars around how we were partnering and powering citizen, national and defence outcomes,” Nick said.
“Inside IBM, that core team won the Gerstner Award, the company’s highest honour for client service. Named in honour of the late Lou Gerstner, our seventh CEO who’s heralded as turning the company around and is often considered as the top CEO in Wall Street during the 20th Century.
“After receiving the award, we had lunch with Lou. It remains one of the proudest moments of my career, not because of the trophy but because of what it represented – trust earned, outcomes delivered and a team that truly put clients first.”
For Nick, this is a story of how a very strong relationship encountered a cataclysmic issue but recovered through a diligence that was patient and placed the client at the centre of all thinking.
“Even in the darkest of days, you can work your way through it and get back to lofty heights in a client-partner relationship,” Nick advised.
Under the leadership of Nick, the company returned to growth with Australia recognised as the top performing country in Asia Pacific for three consecutive years in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
In 2024, software revenues continued to grow faster than the market and hardware sales were ahead of budget for the fourth consecutive year. This uninterrupted and compounding growth continued in 2025.
“The birth of my boy, Rupert, last year was a timely reset and shifted my thinking to who I am rather than the roles I have,” Nick summarised. “I have someone that I want to be proud of me so it’s more about who you are as a leader and the positive impact you can have on others.
“At the end of the day, how will you be assessed by someone that you love?”
Today in Australia, you would struggle to find an organisation that isn’t either using or looking to use AI. But the type and maturity of usage varies greatly.
Because of this, AI adoption across the country has emerged as a two-speed economy.
Financial institutions and digital natives are aggressively driving advanced implementation, fuelled by significant capital and competitive necessity.
In contrast, the SMB and government sectors have been slower to adopt, restricted by limited access to capital or less immediate pressure to drive productivity gains.
According to Moxie Research – AI Outlook: Australia 2026 – 93% of leadership teams in Australia are in favour of AI yet only 62% are deliberate in driving organisational change from the top.
When asked how effectively their leadership team supports AI initiatives, local businesses answered:
Despite a surge in Generative AI (GenAI) experimentation, broader market maturity remains low. While enthusiasm is high, many Australian organisations are currently limited to simple knowledge retrieval use cases.
Their ability to unlock meaningful business value is currently stalled by lacking capability and experience of how to productionise high return on investment (ROI) use cases.
There are a few key areas of adoption which are seeing consistent high value return across the market including AI for software development, intelligent document automation, knowledge management and customer enquiries.
A significant indicator of the relative low maturity is that nearly two-thirds of organisations still lack formal AI frameworks and policies, suggesting that while usage is high, the standardisation, governance and guardrails required for enterprise-grade maturity are often missing.
In that context, the priority for Australian organisations over the next 12-24 months should be focused on a few key areas:
While 2025 was labelled as the ‘year of the agent’, the priority for the next 12-24 months will be ‘productionising’ these agents – moving from proof-of-concept to consistent, cost-effective and efficient solutions that can handle the complexity of real-world business usage.
Moving from pilot to production
From a use case standpoint, we’re seeing strong traction in back-end process automation – specifically intelligent document processing such as claims automation and loan processing.
These internal processes are great candidates for AI where traditional automation techniques have failed to handle the ambiguity of the inputs across a large range of unstructured documents and therefore relied on lengthy human processes.
Simultaneously, there is a massive push into automated customer interactions via voice, email and chat, where the goal is to provide self-service human-like interactions which allow customers to interact with businesses via a range of modalities at any time without the potential wait times and high cost of operations.
Finally, we’re seeing the emergence of Generative UI (GenUI), where traditional user interfaces are transformed with natural language interfaces to enable users to perform complex tasks through a simple natural language prompt.
On balance, the technology priority is shifting from the models themselves to the ecosystem surrounding them – specifically tools, evaluations (evals), context and memory.
As we move toward multi-agent systems or ‘swarms’ that can collaborate to solve complex problems, the focus will shift from which model is used to how the model has the most context available using efficient tiered memory to improve accuracy.
This memory and context – combined with the ability to interact with other agents and third-party systems to gather real-time information or perform actions – will be the differentiator.
Prioritising proof of value
But challenges remain. The immediate priority of businesses is centred on shifting from hype-driven experimentation to demonstrable ROI.
The last 12 months has seen a lot of AI experimentation combined with the fastest rate of technology change in history, this has led to organisations being unable to identify the highest value use cases nor understand the true cost / effort to build production grade AI solutions.
The primary challenge isn’t technical capability, rather an ability to achieve the ‘reliability, speed and cost’ required for production.
Spinning up a proof of concept (PoC) is relatively easy but productionising an agent that performs reliably at scale is incredibly difficult.
Many organisations struggle to quantify the value of AI because they lack clear measurement frameworks, agreed success criteria and consistent baselines.
According to Moxie Research, the frequency of evaluating the impact and performance of AI initiatives is currently:
Furthermore, we see a prevalent issue where organisations fail to validate the feasibility and ROI of a use case before building, often choosing ‘happy path’ automation while ignoring the complex exception flows that drive actual business cost.
Building on this, the most significant risk is expecting 100% reliability – business stakeholders often expect AI to function with the 100% predictability of traditional software, failing to account for the probabilistic nature of large language models (LLMs).
To mitigate this, organisations need to implement robust guardrails and processes to verify outputs before they reach the user.
The secondary risk is getting caught in the AI agent hype – AI is extremely powerful and can provide significant value for businesses in many areas however it’s not a silver bullet.
Agents come with complexities that need to be considered when designing a solution, typically these fall into the non-functional bucket of cost, speed, security and reliability.
Whilst an agent can solve a problem, the risk to many organisations is assuming it’s the right answer to things which can be solved in a better way.
In response, AI is driving technology partners closer to the core business than ever before.
We’re no longer just receiving technical specifications; we’re now deeply involved in reimagining business processes. Because agentic AI requires a profound understanding of the ‘human’ process it is augmenting or replacing.
This approach is playing out in the data. According to Moxie Research, the most important characteristics that Australian organisations seek when working with an AI partner are:
We’re helping CIOs and CTOs navigate the cultural shift of AI literacy, ensuring that ownership of AI doesn’t sit in a silo but is embedded across the organisation to drive genuine value.
Adam Durbin is CTO at Mantel Group. As part of Moxie Top Minds, Adam contributed to AI Outlook: Australia 2026 by Moxie Insights. Download the report here.
In assessing AI appetite across Australia, three modes of business maturity have emerged and will define progress in 2026.
Firstly, some organisations are feeling the pinch to run at 100 miles an hour at risk of feeling left out or being passed by their competitors.
But they don’t truly understand any key risks or obligations against legislation, nor have awareness of the need for – and the importance of – quality trusted data to yield the required results.
At the other end of the spectrum, some organisations are taking a full aversion to risk to having AI being used in the business from restricting full use of any GPTs or empowering teams to explore in a ‘lab’ environment the opportunities that it could present to them.
They are aware of the potential pitfalls but are missing out on efficiency gains, service improvement and innovation.
Then we have the middle section of that maturity curve – some organisations are dipping their toe in the water, cautiously experimenting to find efficiency gains without the awareness of what to do next or how to improve compliance or improve the quality of data. This is the ‘curious and open to explore’ group but they remain unclear on what comes next.
There is no single ‘right’ approach as each organisation must assess its own risk appetite, the perceived benefits as well as its data maturity and compliance and regulatory obligations.
According to Moxie Research – AI Outlook: Australia 2026 – enthusiasm for AI initiatives remains strong at the executive leadership team level but that doesn’t always translate into execution.
In other words, sentiment is strong but support is weak – 93% of leadership teams in Australia are in favour of AI yet only 62% are deliberate in driving organisational change from the top.
Within this context – and building on the point of self-evaluation – two major priorities will emerge over the next 12-24 months in Australia.
AI maturity is not about the technology but the people who are using it and underpinning safe exploration and adoption, which will lead to better decision making.
I’ve seen organisations invest in building education and awareness first so staff can use AI tools, including GPTs safely and confidently. That means understanding there are benefits but also acknowledging the moral, legal and ethical obligations.
According to Moxie Research – and in response to increased demand for education and governance – Australian businesses in 2026 will:
Organisations must ensure their workforce recognises that publicly available GPTs still have a high error rate, however.
Using a personal example from last year, I was researching different motorcycles to buy.
I was new to this market. I’m not overly tall and I wanted something that wasn’t too big, too ‘hooliganish’ and no tiptoeing when stopping. It was alarming how many of the recommendations simply didn’t exist – motorcycle models were fused together from different brands or entirely fabricated.
If that can happen with something as straightforward as motorcycle shopping, imagine when AI is used inside a business without the right understanding or guardrails?
This second priority and differentiator is the quality of data being trusted, reliable and secure, which I believe will be the real competitive advantage with AI.
With strong data quality, governance and security, businesses can pivot faster, scale use cases and extract the value from an AI system.
The alternative is that organisations end up ‘fixing on the fly’, creating technical debt or introducing new risks. We all know the saying, ‘garbage in, garbage out’ which applies even more so with AI.
Organisations that invest in data governance, data quality and securing their data will end up the ones who accelerate faster.
A combination of forces will be driving these priorities, notably:
As a result – and based on Moxie Research – Australian businesses in 2026 will prioritise:
While the promise of AI is undeniable, the challenges are becoming clearer – and more complex – the closer businesses get to real-world deployment.
From a roadblocks standpoint, most organisations struggle with three ongoing roadblocks:
Moving beyond that, there are a number of obligations that organisations have under The Privacy Act, The Spam Act, Do Not Call Register (DNCR) or information handling rules that remain unknown to organisations.
The main concern is that organisations aren’t investing time or seeking guidance in understanding their obligations. Information and data handling obligations existed way before AI came into the picture so freezing is not an option.
These are all risks that need to be mitigated.
But the problem with AI isn’t the technology, it’s the legal and ethical obligations that organisations have, from privacy and data leakage, accuracy and reliability, bias, fairness and impersonation and ownership.
Evaluating AI use cases, building business value
At this stage of the maturity curve, most organisations have stood up select generative AI (GenAI) use cases but have yet to tackle more complex work such as data foundations, operating models and governance frameworks.
In 2026 – and as outlined via Moxie Research – 71% of Australian organisations will identify ‘high-impact’ AI use cases, leading to 68% deploying small pilot AI projects.
While use cases exist for building in-house GPTs and LLMs, AI isn’t new as businesses have being using this technology for some time.
Remember Clippy, the animated, paperclip-shaped assistant introduced by Microsoft in Office 97 to provide user help? That was a form of AI attempting to predict what a user was going to do but it didn’t learn anything new and existed to only help improve productivity.
Productivity support is probably the most widely used use case today in the form of summarising documents, notably legislation which is a key task at RSPCA Queensland.
Yes, there is a little legal nerd inside me that enjoys reading this type of document but AI helps summarise areas where I don’t have the legal jargon or large amounts of time to sift through multiple legislations and Acts.
Based on Moxie Research, Australian businesses are enhancing employee experience through AI in the areas of improved productivity (52%) and workforce optimisation (49%).
Also, chatbots and virtual assistants play a very big part in most common use cases, although I don’t think enough of this is currently used in organisations. Contact centre and IT service desks should already be exploring or embedding this functionality to provide quicker support to customers – plus, analysing the information afterwards is an even better use case.
According to Moxie Research, organisations are leveraging AI to improve customer experience through:
The use cases highlighted stand tall as the top AI solution priorities for Australian organisations during the next 6-12 months, based on my own experience and opinion.
In saying that, every enterprise application, frontline application, operational technology or reporting application has already embedded AI functionality into their platforms or have very near roadmap initiatives to embed AI.
Think SAP, Microsoft and ServiceNow as some of the major players that have already embedded co-pilots and predictive intelligence into their core application, alongside integrating AI into their platforms to improve triaging and response generations.
What is driving these priorities are technology vendors that are moving faster than organisations can receive and safely implement, though as we receive software updates from suppliers those updates are including AI functionality already.
At some point, there must be a leap of faith to start using some of that functionality.
It’s not our partners responsibility to wait for organisations to be AI safe and ready, they have their own competing priorities and release cycles to get out into the market with new AI bells and whistles.
Partners need to be proactive to engage their customers and provide as much education on what is embedded and how an organisation can gain value, along with any guidance and support.
It would be an amazing add-on service for a lot of our partners to take the lead on helping organisations build those foundations on education, innovation and governance.
Andy Anastasi is CIO at RSPCA Queensland. As part of Moxie Top Minds, Andy contributed to AI Outlook: Australia 2026 by Moxie Insights. Download the report here.
“I could feel my legs but they wouldn’t respond. From the airport, it was paramedics, neurosurgeon, emergency and medical advice to relieve the pressure.”
That was the surreal sensation engulfing Joe Craparotta as wheels touched down in Sydney, following a long-haul business trip to Dubai. Those 15 hours at a cruising altitude of 40,000 feet hammered the final nails in the coffin of an issue which started a few months prior.
“I was playing football and suffered a bad tackle which required emergency treatment,” Joe recalled.
“I recovered but that started the bulging of my L4-L5 disc into my spinal canal. It wasn’t so much the pain, more the discomfort but I pushed through for about six months, through to the end of year and Christmas.”
That was 2021. Australia was in and out of COVID-19 lockdowns and Joe – then Vice President of Cloud and Service Providers at Schneider Electric – was in ‘grin and bear it’ mode.
Located at approximately ‘belly button height’, the L4-L5 disc sits in the lower back, between the L4 and L5 vertebrae. Common treatments do not include ‘gritting your teeth or clenching your fists’ however.
“I was advised that an operation would take some pressure off but I refused – no one was going in, there had to be a plan B,” Joe shared.
“Instead, I just lied on my side for eight weeks until the discs reset and then followed that with three months of physiotherapy. We were coming out of COVID-19 and our company kick-off was approaching so that was the target – ‘you need to get me on that stage’.
“I made it, on crutches. But looking back at all of the photos and videos, I wasn’t in good shape.”
In many business cultures, ‘pushing through’ pain is still worn as a badge of honour. But when leaders override pain, fatigue or chronic discomfort, they normalise dysfunction.
Back pain becomes ‘just part of the job’, stress headaches are dismissed and poor sleep is treated as a temporary inconvenience rather than a systemic issue.
Over time, these signals compound.
“I did physiotherapy to the point that most people do, just when you start to feel better again,” Joe acknowledged. “But I didn’t get to the core of rectifying myself and I stopped everything around me – boxing, football, running – and instead, fully committed to work.”
Fast forward almost five years, to October 2025, and the muscle structure around Joe’s neck and back deteriorated to the point that his C2 to C7 collapsed.
That’s the vertebrae from the base of his skull to the top of his neck. C2 to C7, folding like a deck of neglected cards.
“Pure pain,” Joe grimaced. “Excruciating pain, 15 out of 10 pain. That collapse crushed the nerve so I had pins and needles on the left side of my body and the same neurosurgeon was clear – ‘look, you’re not in a good way’.
“Again, I was advised to have surgery – this time going through the front to shave off some vertebrae to create more spacing in between. But again, I said no.”
Only then did the penny finally drop.
Following approximately five years of ‘pushing through’ with quick fixes and high tolerance – that’s more than 1800 days of pain or discomfort, stretching over 44,000 hours.
At the end of December 2025, Joe called time on an executive career spanning 18 years at Schneider Electric.
“If you don’t do something, if you keep pushing through, by the time you’re 65 you won’t be able to walk,” Joe said. “That was the message from my doctor which turned a tough decision to leave my role into an easy decision.
“Time is undefeated. In your 30s you can bounce back and you can kind of bounce back in your 40s. But now I’m in my early 50s, the excruciating pain becomes much harder to overcome.
“If I don’t invest in myself now, I will feel the full force of this down the track.”
Vulnerability is a strength
For many men in leadership, ‘pushing through’ pain is not just a work habit – it’s a learned identity. From an early age, men are conditioned to equate strength with stoicism, silence and endurance.
Vulnerability is framed as weakness, and physical or emotional pain is something to be ignored, managed privately, or outworked. In executive roles, this mindset is still often amplified rather than challenged.
“Vulnerability is a strength, especially for men,” Joe advised. “That stigma of being vulnerable and exposing a weakness or an issue hasn’t gone away. But it’s the ultimate sign of strength.
“If you’re struggling with anything, definitely talk about it and ask people for advice. There’s no shame in saying, ‘hey, I’m not feeling the best this week’ – let people around you support you.”
Take the announcement of his departure as a case in point. A raw and honest post on LinkedIn that garnered thousands of likes and hundreds of comments.
“I thought long and hard about that LinkedIn post,” Joe admitted. “What if people think, ‘oh look at Joe, he’s getting on and he’s not up for the next challenge’.
“But I know what I’m capable of and I know what I’ve achieved over many decades in the industry. The truth is, you have to put your body on the line and that comes at a cost – for me, that’s my neck and it requires my urgent attention.”
Avoidance comes at a cost. Suppressed pain doesn’t disappear; it accumulates. It shows up as irritability, reduced patience, poor decision-making and emotional withdrawal. Relationships suffer. Leadership presence erodes.
“Listen to your body and solve problems in the infancy,” Joe recommended. “Believe me, ‘pushing through’ is not a strategy and won’t help you be a better husband, father, uncle or brother.
“Like in business, play all the options. Work out the short- and long-term benefits of each decision and surround yourself with the right team to help you through it.
“I connected with different neurosurgeons and personal trainers but now I’ve found the right combination of people that I want to work with during the next 3-6 months. Those business philosophies continue to help my recovery.”
Work-life balance is everywhere. It’s in leadership panels, employer value propositions and glossy LinkedIn posts.
Yet for many executives, reality tells a different story. Hours are longer, boundaries are thinner and the expectation to be ‘always on’ has quietly intensified. Despite the rhetoric, very little has actually changed.
“Correct, we use these blanket statements around work-life balance but we don’t follow them in practice,” Joe questioned. “In reality, there’s so many roles that don’t have the ability to do a walking meeting for an hour.
“If you’re in a car driving from site to site, or working on customer sites, or a road warrior in sales doing your thing, you can’t afford six hours a week of walking here or walking there.
“Whether we want to admit it or not, time is money.”
Executives are forever searching for time efficiencies. What used to be an hour run is now crunched into 30 minutes of high-intensity training – the more sharp and succinct the better.
But even that is now under pressure. How about three circuits in 20 minutes?
“Yes, the digital world continues to accelerate but our human bodies are the same,” Joe reminded.
“They’ve been the same for a long time which means time to exercise, to rest and to heal. You have to do things slowly and consistently to see results that last longer.”
There is also a silent contradiction at play. Organisations promote well-being while rewarding overwork.
Leaders who are visible at all hours are still seen as more committed, more ambitious, more valuable. Executives absorb this message quickly, often sacrificing health, relationships and recovery to meet unspoken expectations.
“It always comes down to ownership,” Joe said. “I learned the hard way that I have to take responsibility because I dropped the things I loved that were part of my rituals, like boxing at 5am.
“Take accountability of your health because fit and healthy people show up better at work and at home. The market sees you working in a more collaborative way because you’ve got a more positive mindset – the science is clear around dopamine and the way we interact with each other.
“And who wants to come home in chronic pain and be unable to play football with your kids or go for a walk with your wife? Then you start putting on a kilo a week and before you know it, you’re carrying 30 more kilos and everything starts to deteriorate.
“All of that is on you.”
It’s a question of hats
Referencing a conversation with long-time friend John Maclean – an inspirational paraplegic turned triathlete and two-time Paralympian – Joe addressed the issue of balance head-on by outlining the four hats that people wear.
“But you can only wear one hat at a time,” Joe caveatted. “John told me that many, many years ago and I forgot about the first hat, myself.
“I know sometimes the job calls for a sprint with intense focus but I’ve focused too much on my third hat. I haven’t been balanced because executives become very good at living regimented lives but as business intensifies, everything else falls by the wayside.
“Believe me, it doesn’t matter how early you get up. There’s a solid five or six different ways to connect to people today which makes complete disconnection impossible.”
At C-level, poor sleep isn’t just a personal inconvenience – it’s a compounding health risk amplified by responsibility, stress and duration. The combination of long hours, constant decision-making, travel and psychological load places senior executives in a uniquely vulnerable position when sleep is compromised.
“The science of sleep is so profound,” Joe admitted. “I never liked sleeping and have spent my life thinking it was a waste of time – just think of how productive you could be instead.
“I’d run on four hours of sleep a night. Work until midnight because there’s so much to do or take calls until 1-2am with the global team, then start my early morning routine to get a head-start for the day.
“That was my ritual for 30 years because you have to put a lot of your personal body on the line to build businesses. I’ve had many times waking up in a hotel room not immediately sure which city I was in or what time it was – you’re forever flying, having late nights and working at the extreme.”
There is also a dangerous cultural layer at play.
C-level executives often normalise sleep deprivation as leadership strength, masking warning signs and delaying intervention. This not only accelerates personal health deterioration but sets an unsustainable benchmark for the organisation.
“Only now have I come to realise that without good quality sleep, your body’s not going to recover at all,” Joe added. “As you get older, you have to give yourself every chance of doing that.
“You look at people on a screen and they look pretty good but under the surface is this constant throbbing mess of pain. Like anything in life, where there’s focus, there’s results, and I want to fully focus on my body.”
Now, a well-rested Joe is cramming days with personal training, physiotherapy, long walks and quality time. That could be early mornings ‘fumbling around’ at the gym alongside his sons – aged 27 and 25 – or coffee with his wife and friends in the afternoon.
Hat 1. Hat 2. Hat 4.
“I’m pain free as of a few weeks ago,” Joe confirmed. “That took six weeks of lifestyle change and the next phase is to stop the pins and needles on my left side. I’ve lost about 15-20% of strength on that side but we’re pretty close and expect to reach that milestone in the next 3-4 weeks.
“This is all about rebuilding and then increasing weights and cardio to move some weight. So yes, I’ve very much swapped business reviews for PT and pilates.”
Pressing pause to prioritise health
In 2008, Joe started as a Northern Region Manager at APC, before transitioning into Schneider Electric post acquisition as General Manager of Industrial Automation. Progression to Vice President soon followed, spanning business units such as Energy, IT Business, Cloud and Service Providers.
“We finished on a record-breaking year so it was a good time to smash the ball over the boundary, pull up stumps and just focus on me,” Joe added.
“The company was great, they’re a great employer. I was the longest serving executive and I love the place and love the mission of the ecosystem that I’ve been fortunate enough to work with.
“From the start they have been as flexible as I needed them to be and sabbaticals were on the table – just taking time off to recover and come back. But they were right, ‘you need to get yourself fixed up’ which was a tough but the right call.”
Health issues at this level are rarely superficial. Chronic pain, cardiovascular risk, sleep disorders, burnout, anxiety and stress-related conditions often develop quietly while performance remains outwardly strong.
Executives are particularly skilled at functioning through deterioration, masking symptoms and delaying action until the cost becomes impossible to ignore.
“Lots of transformation and changes are coming but to navigate that, you have to be physically fit and physically sharp,” Joe said. “You have to put your body on the line to build these things through late nights and long flights so I didn’t want to place the business in jeopardy given I wasn’t pain free.”
Whether exiting the business or not, Joe – who was also a founding partner of Indicium Technology Group – is aligned to the belief that leaders must make themselves redundant to ensure continued growth and success.
“The quality of the team made the decision easier to close the door on this chapter,” he accepted. “I care about legacy like anybody else and I would never want things to be different because I’m not in the chair – hence the great team and great systems.
“The market is ferocious, especially in the data centre space. It’s the biggest show in town at the minute and you’ve got to have your wits about you to compete.”
The body is not an obstacle to performance – it’s the operating system. Pain is feedback, not failure. Leaders who listen early can adapt workloads, routines and expectations before damage becomes permanent.
In an era that demands clarity, energy and longevity from executives, real strength is not found in suffering silently but in recognising that sustainable performance requires respect for the body that carries it.
“I had to tackle the root cause,” Joe stated. “My lifestyle and behaviour had to change which is why I turned down surgery twice. When you have chronic pain of this nature, you have to rebuild your muscle structure and become fit and healthy.
“I opted for the conservative route which takes longer but gives me a long-term result. I love what I do – I love working, I love being physical and I love travelling. But my set-up was no longer good for me and I want to be able to enjoy retirement one day with my wife.”
Currently tracking ahead of his recovery program, Joe is targeting March or April to make a soft return to the industry scene. That will be in the form of assessing the current ecosystem landscape, outlining non-negotiable conditions and reconnecting with strategic contacts.
“I love the technology ecosystem and have been lucky to spend a large part of my career under the big pillars of the market – the digital world, the energy world, the data centre world,” Joe noted.
“There’s one more chapter of this book at the leadership level so I will explore the C-suite options. I’m open minded and will focus on Australia and New Zealand as priority markets.
“But for now, it’s all about becoming entirely pain free and focusing on my health.”
AI is in uncharted territory – no longer emerging yet not fully understood or mastered.
Everywhere in the conversation but far less present in its full potential inside organisations… experiments are common, impact is not.
This unique combination is creating urgency, attention and tension across every industry in Australia.
This report objectively explores all three pressure points:
This is community created research and analysis.
Leveraging Moxie Top Minds – an invitation-only editorial initiative housing high-performing figures redefining business and technology – this report balances in-depth market surveys with authoritative executive commentary.
A total of 520 survey responses across Australia, generating more than 250 data points. Over 30 hours of C-suite interviews with 28 influential leaders spanning 16 market sectors.
Combining market intelligence with influential opinion to replace assumption with evidence and examine AI through the lens of credible, lived experience. Guidance grounded in shared truth, not isolated opinion.
The aim? To understand what is actually working, what isn’t and why.
In this research:
Download the full research report here.
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