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At an early age, traditional learning is consumed in a structured and linear fashion. From a concentrated source – following a preconfigured curriculum – the process is designed to be identical, repeatable and scalable.
Upon entering the real world however, the rules change… it’s every executive for themselves.
Now dynamic and intensely personal, this demands self-awareness, curiosity and humility. Because leadership is not a static trait, rather a constantly evolving discipline shaped by experience, reflection and the willingness to grow.
No great leader is born fully formed in that respect. They are shaped by how they respond to success, failure, pressure and feedback.
“I can share one experience from when I really learned the hard way,” volunteered May Lam, CIO of Australian Payments Plus.
May took to the stage to kick-start the final session of Moxie Authority 2025 in Sydney, sharing insights under the banner of Pod & Page.
Aligned to the theme of Inspired Knowledge, this inaugural and invite-only conference housed the most influential figures setting the market agenda in business and technology across Australia.
More than 400 industry front-runners were in attendance spanning all ends of the ecosystem, from CIOs, CTOs and CISOs to CDOs, CEOs and Founders.
Know your purpose, trust your instinct
Learning for leaders happens in the real world – through tough decisions, complex challenges and often, unexpected setbacks. It is in these moments that executives either double down on outdated habits or embrace change by rethinking their approach.
For May, this came in the form of a strategic reset to prioritise purpose above all else.
“I was always very ambitious in my career and one time, I thought I was ready for my next elevated role,” May recalled.
“But have you ever had that feeling when your manager, mentor or coach said the opposite? That in fact, you were not ready? Well my response was, ‘no, I’m going to prove you wrong’.”
Wait. This story isn’t going in the direction you think. Don’t expect an inspiring tale of going against the grain and prevailing against all odds.
“So, I reached that moment in my career when I had my big break,” May continued.
The big break in question was May’s appointment as Head of Technology at AMP Bank in 2016, following more than 15 years of industry experience.
“I thought I was ready for the role and in truth, I was technically ready,” May added. “But at that time, I wasn’t ready to communicate to the board. I wasn’t ready to build strong and trusted relationships with my fellow executives and I wasn’t ready to be a leader of a leader of a leader.
“All up, there were quite a few things that I wasn’t ready for. But I always homed in on my title – I would ‘credentialise’ myself by presenting my business card to show who I was and who I wasn’t.”
May lasted eight months in the role before departing to launch her own start-up helping businesses develop global strategies and expand into high-growth nations.
“My lesson after that experience was that it was very hard to survive – I never really thrived in that role,” May acknowledged. “One day I had this glossy business card to credential myself but the next day, I had nothing.
“All I had was myself. That was when I came to the realisation about understanding my value and what I actually bring to the table.”
A barrage of self-reflection soon followed – question, after question:
For May, that was the sobering moment. The required penny drop to reset, rethink and rev up the engine for future growth.
Fast forward almost decade and May is at the top of her game as CIO of Australian Payments Plus. This is in addition to high-profile positions as Chair of the Advisory Board at Emerging Payments Association Asia (EPAA) and Governing Council Member of Hedera and CPMI API Expert Panel Member to G20 Leaders on Cross Border Payments API Harmonisation.
Fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, May draws on more than 25 years of technology leadership and business transformation experience across the banking and financial services, payments, fintech and public sectors in Australia, Greater China and Asia Pacific.
“I learned how to be purposeful,” May added.
In all walks of life, leaders must be willing to challenge their assumptions and remain open to new perspectives – especially from those around them. But what if the situation warrants the opposite approach?
“I’ve learned many hard lessons,” shared Hani Arab, CIO of Seymour Whyte.
The most pertinent coming six months after taking on a new executive role, exposing the consequence of ignoring instinct in favour of protecting perceived harmony.
“I was trying to build relationships with the executive team and while doing that, there was a new project coming up that as the technology executive, I held responsibility for deciding some of the significant investments in a new platform,” Hani continued.
“One executive had a very strong opinion about a particular solution and deep down, I knew that was the wrong solution. But it was better than what we already had.”
Hani took comfort in that crucial detail and decided that on balance, it was more valuable in the long-term to keep the executive relationship strong rather than trying to push his own agenda about what he felt was right for the business.
“I accepted that,” he said. “But then I paid the price for the next two years trying to make this platform work by keeping it together. And it didn’t make the relationship any better, it actually went downhill from there.”
As a result, Hani learned the valuable lesson of trusting his instinct and sticking to what he knows is right – based on all the years of experience and all the knowledge amounted during that time.
“I knew it was the wrong decision but I compromised to maintain a relationship,” Hani expanded. “I thought I was doing the right thing but in hindsight, it wasn’t. It didn’t help the relationship in the long run and made it harder for me in terms of the extra work trying to embed this platform and make it work.”
Continuing on the theme of authentic knowledge sharing, the importance of self-discipline was highlighted as a cornerstone of both personal development and career growth. The ability to stay focused, control impulses and consistently work toward long-term goals – even when motivation wanes or distractions arise.
“You will never know everything but people need to know that you’re willing to learn,” advised Saleshni Sharma, Regional CISO at Berkley Insurance.
“There’s a power to being vulnerable and saying, ‘I don’t know, can you share more?’ That’s when people start to bring information and ideas to you. Having that curiosity is crucial as long as it’s realistic and balanced with your other commitments and objectives.”
Pod & Page
Leaders learn through a dynamic mix of experience, reflection and exposure to diverse perspectives.
While formal education provides foundational knowledge, the most powerful learning often occurs on the job through trial and error, feedback and navigating complex challenges.
In today’s fast-moving world, great ideas come from a variety of sources – start-ups, academia, employees at every level and even customers. Podcasts, books, research reports and curated newsletters provide accessible ways to stay informed and inspired.
In other words, great ideas are everywhere. But where do the most influential minds in the industry access inspiration and knowledge?
“Before I go to the sources, the first thing I focus on is mindset,” May advised. “I have a ritual in the morning that allows me to create the headspace for myself to learn, excel and digest the information. It’s important to have that.”
As a regular listener of podcasts – and a practitioner of artificial intelligence (AI) – May has created a process in that all of her notes and insights are collated via GenAI and repurposed in the form of a podcast.
“It’s actually your voice, talking to yourself,” May explained. “So I listen to myself and through that understanding, I can focus on specific topics and tackle different challenges.”
May does read books but like all high-profile executives, seldom is one finished due to external time pressures.
“Again, it’s not a particular topic, rather a philosophy,” May continued. “I learn from people, whether day-to-day or at conferences such as Moxie Authority 2025 to access inspiration.”
May referenced guidance shared by Philippa Garner – Head of Data and Analytics at Life Without Barriers – in the previous session at Moxie Authority 2025, under the banner of Idea to Implementation.
“As Philippa said, 99% of the time, stakeholder management is everything,” May said.
“In my role, I work with so many different people and stakeholders which is why talking to people at all levels is so important to get different ideas and perspectives. That could be the board, my peers, my team, my family, my parents, my siblings or my children.”
Building on this, Hani also stressed the critical role of mindset in the learning process. This isn’t a one-off event but an ongoing commitment to growth, underpinned by humility, curiosity and the willingness to challenge conventional thinking.
“You have to be conscious, aware and want to learn – it starts from that point of view,” Hani recommended. “But in this day and age, the amount of information available is enormous and growing, so being time poor, I seek out things that are effective and to the point.”
That could be a podcast, a “small snippet of knowledge” or even tools like Perplexity or NotebookLM. Whatever provides the “biggest bang for buck” in terms of information provided and digested.
“I’m doing a PhD, I have a full-time job and I have a family so I can’t just open up a book and go through that entire journey to access all of the information that I need,” Hani acknowledged. “I have to be more strategic with my time but still try and achieve the outcome that I need.”
Hani shared the two podcasts that he regularly listens to:
“Coming from a technical and engineering background, one of the areas that I would struggle with in my early development was communication and how to influence people,” Hani shared. “That’s why I find value in Think Fast, Talk Smart, which is from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
“It’s very specific about communicating within a team, in front of a public audience or to the board. It’s a very good podcast which I would recommend.
“The Diary of a CEO is a very diverse platform which allows me to learn a lot of different things and pick up those little gold nuggets along the way. I find it very effective and I regularly tune in also.”
As a fellow C-level executive, Saleshni has more than 20 years experience in technology, computing science and cyber security. After starting her career as an academic in the field of mathematics and computer science, expertise soon spanned the sectors of banking, insurance, telecommunications, education, accounting and entertainment.
“I have started so many books but haven’t finished – I start with strong interest but inevitably don’t have the time to finish reading,” Saleshni said. “So I switch to Audible and start listening instead which means I always finish a book, just in a different way to how I started it.”
Currently, Saleshni is reading / listening to:
“The reason why is because I’ve been tasked to create my personal brand and I have 3-4 months left to achieve that,” Saleshni added.
The task was issued by Saleshni’s mentor, who was her previous manager and Chief Risk Officer in one of her former companies. They meet once every six months to set goals for Saleshni to work towards ahead of the next catch-up.
“It comes with your own discipline, you have to work hard,” she cautioned. “I would suggest that everyone finds a mentor, regardless of where you are in your journey, because there’s times when you need to bounce around ideas and talk through things with someone who can understand.”
In a final message to the 400 executives in the room, May offered guidance from a different angle. There was no podcast or book recommendation here, rather a lesson in purpose.
At the heart is a tale about a breeze and a butterfly, as told by her father.
“I talk to my dad a lot and I’m wearing this necklace which is a butterfly,” May explained. “He once said to me, ‘would you rather be paper or a butterfly?’ I responded a butterfly because it looks prettier.
“Then he said, ‘paper can be blown away at any time but when the wind comes and the butterfly is on the flower, the butterfly will not blow away. Why? Because the butterfly knows its purpose and is born from transformation.
“That was a key lesson in life – we are here for a purpose and that’s very important to understand. But he finished by reminding me that the butterfly also knows when the time is up, when it’s enough and you have to let go.”
Moxie Authority 2025 housed the most influential figures redefining business and technology across Australia. This inaugural and invite-only conference in Sydney hosted more than 400 industry front-runners spanning all ends of the ecosystem, from CEOs, CIOs and CTOs to CDOs, CISOs and Founders.
“Why would we call it something when it is an experience?” questioned Vivek Trivedi, resisting the urge to follow market convention.
A commendable position to take considering the industry is littered with new solution launches under the banner of artificial intelligence (AI) – each carrying a one-syllable name designed to be sophisticated yet edgy.
Run a two-second request by ChatGPT and the chatbot suggestions are endless. Why not try Sal (as in ‘Service AI Liaison’), Meg (‘Machine-Enabled Guide’) or Dan (‘Digital Assistant Node’)?
As CEO of Exigo Tech, Trivedi smiled and side-stepped the lazy journalism question. This isn’t about giving products personalities.
“We were thinking of adding some name or blurb to it but we didn’t want to label something which is designed to be very simple,” he confirmed.
And perhaps in the age of AI opportunity, that’s exactly the point – tone down the hysteria, less of the PR and away with the embellishment.
“For the past two years, we have been engaging with local councils and they are desperate to provide the best experience to their customers – the citizens,” Trivedi outlined.
“Citizens are questioning why they have a different experience between the public sector and the private sector? Why is the normal way of engaging in the private sector not available in the public sector?”
What is considered table stakes in the highly competitive world of private enterprise – i.e. transformative applications that are agile and transparent, underpinned by structured data and robust security – is commonly viewed as a luxury in the government space. Out of reach and inaccessible.
“The challenge is that the council wants to achieve that but they need the most efficient solutions,” Trivedi added.
“For that they need the right kind of partners who not only understand this problem but understand their ecosystem and how to enable and empower them through technology.”
So instead of brainstorming ‘cool’ product names and colour schemes, Trivedi and the team at Exigo Tech rolled up their sleeves and went deep in the trenches. This was 12 months of meticulous research, millions of dollars worth of investment and a dedicated team designed to extract the true challenges facing local council today.
“If a country is going through a change and you’re helping to provide 0.01% of that change, you feel very proud to make that contribution,” Trivedi shared.
Councils are challenged, in more ways than one
In drawing on some of the observations gathered during the assessment phase, Trivedi stressed that while local government councils in Australia are under increasing pressure to innovate with technology, they face a range of structural and strategic challenges.
“Actually, it’s between four to six problems at any given time,” he noted.
“We built a solution based on those challenges but we wanted to move away from the old and traditional way of delivery which involves running a large scoping session.
“This places a huge time burden on councils and means the entire delivery process becomes one to two years in length. By the time the solution is rolled out, new processes come in and the implementation becomes old.”
Instead – and armed with deep sector knowledge – the team at Exigo Tech tackled the issues head-on in the build phase of the product.
As shared by Trivedi, the key challenges are:
In response, Exigo Tech has created a customer experience offering built upon the latest technologies from Microsoft and the connectivity strength of the Telstra network.
The solution operates end-to-end to provide an entire segmentation of the service delivered, specifically targeted based on a specific use case. For example, a solution for customer service or a solution for waste management.
“Rather than competing with what is already in the market, we have created a platform that integrates instead,” Trivedi explained.
“We don’t want to derail councils or make their life more difficult by telling them what they can and can’t use. Instead, our approach is to provide an interface for using those systems which is more efficient and streamlined.”
For example, if James Henderson is building a house in Mosman, Sydney, then he will be required to make a development application (DA) submission.
Currently, that goes into the system and citizens have to constantly check on the progress of that submission.
But behind the scenes, that is allocated to a resource to manually check and approve. In this instance, could AI scan the document to ensure all initial requirements are met and either automate an action or progress the application?
“That’s a very small example,” Trivedi added.
“But it’s all about improving efficiencies and accelerating the delivery and quality of the professional services that councils provide. The aim is to strengthen the trust between councils and the community.”
The topic of trust extends to data governance and cyber security which are growing concerns within local government.
As councils digitise more citizen services – from waste management to urban planning – they are responsible for managing and protecting sensitive personal data, often without robust cyber security frameworks in place.
The pace of regulatory and policy change, combined with limited inter-council collaboration, also hampers agility and innovation.
“Yes, security is a huge consideration,” Trivedi expanded.
“You don’t want data without a strong and secure back-end, hence our partnership with Microsoft. As a specialist partner in Australia, we leverage secure offerings across the entire suite of Microsoft solutions from Outlook to Azure to Dynamics 365.”
Exigo Tech is aligned to the belief that modernisation related to AI should work on the premise that the two pillars of AI are data and security.
“There is a lot of unstructured data which is floating around organisations which may or may not be secure,” Trivedi said.
“We understand structured and unstructured data exists within councils which is why we’ve built a solution to access that information in a very secure way, present it to the world in a very secure way and accept structured data back into the system.”
In addition, the collection of structured data is also pushed back into incumbent systems which are now enabled by clean data.
“For example, TechnologyOne and Civica are large service providers in this space with brilliant systems, so why would we advise the council to move away from those?” Trivedi said. “We are providing a tier which integrates with those two systems and inserts structured data into the software.
“Clean data also allows for improved visualisation of data, visualisation of ticketing systems and visualisation of tasks. This level of insight will help change the very average view of council today, in terms of value for taxpayer money.”
This approach also tackles an ongoing roadblock facing local government around legacy infrastructure – many councils operate on outdated systems that are expensive to maintain and difficult to integrate with modern digital solutions.
“Rather than starting from scratch, we’re providing a vanilla version housing baseline functionalities with the option to add more and change based on requirements,” Trivedi continued.
“Different requirements exist from council to council but approximately 80% of things are common so we have focused on that as a start, then we can customise on top based on specific demand.”
Fresh thinking creates new experience standard
Founded in 2015, Exigo Tech is a managed service provider (MSP) specialising in the delivery of Microsoft technologies.
The Sydney-based business first entered the local government space two years ago, influenced by almost a decade of private sector expertise. Alongside Niten Devalia – Co-Founder and Chief Sales Officer – the company has delivered more than 1350 technology projects, spanning five countries.
“It happens,” Trivedi said. “There have been so many players in the council space for 15-20 years but we’re the new kid on the block and we see things in a different way.”
Using the emergence of Kylian Mbappé on the world scene of football as an analogy, Trivedi articulated where Exigo Tech fit in the public sector ecosystem.
“When Mbappe came in, it was never about Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Neymar not being good any more – it was just that he was different,” Trivedi explained.
“In my opinion, he completely changed the meaning of speed and skill and that became an addition for the fans. If you convert that thinking to local council, our arrival is to help improve the relationship with citizens in the same way.”
Currently, the MSP is working with five councils which provided on-the-ground experience regarding the true priorities of public sector agencies.
“We realised that it’s not about cloud migrations or just providing an application or licence, we had to go much deeper than that to add value,” Trivedi said.
According to Moxie Research, 87% of Australian businesses will allocate additional budget to AI projects in 2025. In addition, 78% will build a cross-functional team to set AI strategy while 69% will define clear AI business objectives.
Moxie Research surveyed 302 IT decision-makers across Australia in November 2024, zoning in on AI investment and outsourcing priorities. Findings were presented at Moxie Authority 2025.
To maximise the benefits of AI – and of note to the local channel – 46% of organisations will increase partnerships with specialist third-party IT vendors and partners during the next 6-12 months.
But despite such positive outsourcing intent, the AI ecosystem is in a state of permanent flux as new players enter the market and competition increases.
On AI, the type of technology outsourcing partners that Australian businesses currently work with are vendors (64%), data specialists (49%) and ISVs (48%). This is followed by software developers (46%), business advisory / consultancy firms (44%), MSPs (44%) and system integrators (43%).
Delving deeper, the most important business characteristics that organisations seek when working with an AI third-party partner are:
“The depth that we provide is around customer experience,” Trivedi added. “This is based on 12 months of research examining annual reports published by councils, including the statistics shared and the demands issued by the CEOs.
“Our dedicated team then probed what the real problems were and digitalisation was viewed as a fatigue, not as an enabler. Customer experience is everything for councils because serving the citizen is the primary goal.”
Citing waste management as a primary example of a process ripe for disruption, Trivedi shared the current approach to applying for a bigger rubbish bin in Sydney.
“You go online, you apply and then what happens behind the scenes is it all becomes a manual process,” he documented.
“Why? Because that email goes to someone, then it’s converted into a ticket in a third-party system. The third-party passes the ticket onto the vendor supplier to deliver and the cycle starts over.
“It’s all over the place so why not just create a single glass view to help provide efficiency and agility at the front-end?”
Looking ahead, Trivedi recommended that councils embrace strategic partnerships by adopting agile and scalable platforms to future-proof their services and meet rising community expectations.
In short, the objective is to “change the paradigm” with the best possible technology set available today.
“This wouldn’t have been possible 12 months ago,” Trivedi acknowledged. “Even AI technology was cumbersome then but the technology has gained immense maturity in this time across AI, data and security.”
The solution is available for all councils of Australia – irrespective of state or territory – and can be consumed via subscription licence.
“Councils shouldn’t face huge expense when digesting new technologies,” Trivedi said. “Our advice is to consume this in smaller bites to understand what works and what doesn’t. We can be agile alongside – learning fast, failing fast and redeploying fast.”
Such an approach served the team at Exigo Tech well during the initial build phase of the solution. Transitioning from a services business to a product-driven company demands a profound internal mindset shift.
In a services model, success is typically measured by client satisfaction, billable hours and tailored solutions. Teams are accustomed to reacting to specific customer needs, often delivering bespoke outcomes.
However, building a product requires a shift toward scalability, repeatability and long-term vision. This evolution requires teams to adopt a product-centric culture – prioritising user research, investing in design thinking and embracing continuous iteration.
“We had to build a separate team and recruit specialist consultants with expertise in council issues,” Trivedi outlined.
“We never allowed ourselves to fixate on one particular problem set, rather cover the horizons and focus on a couple of important points specific to issues that councils are facing.
“Plus, it’s built in such a way that the solution has its own agility based upon the client requirements of each council. Striking that personnel balance was crucial and the biggest learning was that a product mindset is very different to a project mindset.”
The experience in Australia – accelerated by a strong in-market partnership with Microsoft – has propelled the company overseas in the form of new customers in Singapore, Philippines and India.
What started as back-end support functions in Philippines and India, quickly morphed into client facing work in each local market.
In India, that includes government sector work in the digital meter space aligned to the big picture vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi through the Digital India campaign.
“Being a native Indian that has lived in Australia for more than 25 years, I’m incredibly proud that we are contributing in some capacity to that vision,” Trivedi added.
In an Australian market under constant cyber bombardment, convergence and consolidation are emerging as mission-critical security priorities.
Businesses are building new strategies with integrated infrastructure at the centre, combining networking and security in the pursuit of enhanced protection.
In parallel – and according to Moxie Research – 81% of Australian businesses are also consolidating the number of cyber security products deployed to reduce complexity, improve threat detection and lower the total cost of ownership.
Both shifts are embodied in emerging frameworks such as Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), SD-WAN and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).
This Executive Roundtable in Sydney – in association with Moxie Insights, Extreme Networks and Palo Alto Networks – outlined how Australian organisations are approaching the convergence of network and security infrastructure, documenting key challenges and highlighting industry best practice.
Key discussion points included:
View Moxie Insights – Executive Roundtable in photos:
CEOs in Singapore are navigating a complex global landscape marked by rising protectionism and the threat of international tariffs.
Yet, rather than retreating, a strong commitment to business transformation exists through bold strategies focused on innovation, resilience and regional diversification.
As global supply chains shift and trade tensions simmer, business leaders across the city-state are accelerating digital transformation, investing in artificial intelligence (AI) and expanding into fast-growing Southeast Asian markets.
These moves are not just defensive – they represent a proactive shift toward long-term competitiveness.
Yet it would be remiss to suggest such an approach is not without difficulty given current and escalating market volatility.
That’s according to the latest EY-Parthenon CEO Outlook Survey, which suggests that shifting trade and tariff policies will likely delay investment decisions in the short-term. Despite this however, the rationale for dealmaking prevails as CEOs take proactive steps to mitigate the impact and remain competitive.
“Singapore is an open economy that thrives on trade with access to markets across multiple regions,” observed Purandar Rao, Strategy and Transactions Leader across Singapore and ASEAN at EY-Parthenon.
“Hence, unlike countries that rely heavily on the US market, Singapore businesses may have less direct exposure to US tariffs, as reflected in their relatively lower levels of concern.”
According to Rao, Singapore’s economy is more weighted toward sectors such as finance, technology, logistics and services, which will likely face less direct impacts compared to economies driven by traditional manufacturing.
“That said, these sectors are still vulnerable to indirect impacts, such as the knock-on effects of a global decline in manufacturing, due to the interconnectedness of global supply chains,” Rao added.
“As there may be a time lag for these indirect impacts to play out, Singapore CEOs are likely to adopt a wait-and-see approach for their business strategies.”
Based on the data, 98% of CEO respondents (Singapore and global) are concerned about tariff increases affecting their company’s operations and sales in the next 12 months, with 38% of those surveyed in Singapore (global 50%) “very or extremely concerned”.
Unsurprisingly, geopolitical, macroeconomic and trade uncertainty are cited as the top risks to achieving growth – as cited by 35% of CEOs surveyed in Singapore. Also, 63% of local leaders have delayed a planned investment as a result.
But CEOs are responding proactively by rethinking global relationships:
The complexity of the current landscape is reflected in the fact that the most critical trading relationships are not always the closest or most locally significant, according to the survey.
While 42% of Chinese respondents cite the US-China tariff and trade dispute as their primary concern, 8% are more focused on the US-Mexico relationship. This underscores the global interconnections and difficulty of navigating tariff challenges, particularly as other major economies react to potential US tariffs.
CEOs prioritise cost reduction amid AI interest
While global CEOs report mixed results from AI deployments to date – which may slow down implementation in a turbulent year – executive leaders in Singapore appear to have a more “robust perspective” on their AI investments.
Also, while 42% of Singapore respondents (global 36%) plan to expand AI investments after positive results to date, 18% (global 25%) are “scaling back or reconsidering” spending in this space due to “unclear or disappointing” returns.
With nearly half of CEO respondents (Singapore 47%, global 42%) looking to absorb additional costs through operational efficiencies and cost reductions, many may be delaying technology investment pending more geopolitical certainty.
Also fueling a renewed and likely growing focus on cost management is the challenge of inflation. More than two-third (Singapore 68%, global 71%) of respondents agree that inflation continues to be a challenge and will be an issue they need to navigate for the next year, and many of those will be looking at opportunities to mitigate cost increases.
“AI and automation can help companies reduce operational costs by up to 30% and achieve efficiency gains by up to 40%,” outlined Joongshik Wang, Strategy and Execution Leader across ASEAN and Asia Pacific at EY-Parthenon.
“This can help companies absorb the impact of tariffs without solely relying on cost management. Additionally, the predictive analytics capability of AI allows for better forecasting, scenario planning and identification of new business opportunities, helping companies to respond proactively to market changes.”
M&A delivers value in times of challenge
Looking ahead, 53% of CEOs in Singapore are hoping to pursue mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity in the next 12 months.
But the report indicates that pre-existing pressures – technology adoption and a talent squeeze key among them – will remain pent-up transformation drivers that will see CEOs return to dealmaking as the market settles.
While reports of integration hurdles, cultural misalignment and overestimated synergies often lead to speculation around how much shareholder value is delivered post-deal, the survey tells a different story about the CEO experience.
More than half of CEO respondents (Singapore 66%, global 55%) say their recent acquisitions “met or exceeded” value expectations, with only 8% (global 2%) reporting value destruction.
“Times of uncertainty also present companies with great opportunities,” advised Luke Pais, Private Equity Leader across Asia Pacific at EY-Parthenon.
“With a clear strategy, disciplined execution and strong leadership, M&A remains a powerful lever to create long-term value, where companies can unlock synergies, preserve competitive edge, and drive growth well beyond short-term financial returns.”
Ideas are the lifeblood of progress – sparking innovation, driving change and laying the foundation for competitive advantage.
Whether incremental improvements or disruptive breakthroughs, new concepts represent untapped potential – a vision of what could be.
Today, the ability to generate fresh thinking is a critical asset. It fuels growth, inspires teams and keeps organisations relevant.
Yet most great ideas are left on the cutting room floor – that inevitable graveyard housing the remaining droplets of a burst thought bubble.
If the gap between idea and implementation is in fact widening, what methods are Australian businesses deploying to maximise light bulb moments?
“Let’s start by understanding that an idea is an awesome opportunity to connect across your organisation,” observed Nick Munro, Head of Innovation and Fintech, AI Product Owner at Westpac.
“Collect those ideas, make sure people feel heard and that they’ve got buy-in throughout the process. But also be transparent about how you’re going to take those ideas forward in terms of triaging them and reaching a point of value.”
Munro outlined that AI is “ultimately a team sport” with that initial fusion of cross-company ideas crucial to future project success.
“But that doesn’t mean you can deliver AI in technology and expect to deliver value,” he cautioned. “The idea is an opportunity but the key step is arriving at the right idea and moving that to execution in a meaningful way for your business and your customers.”
Central to that is a solid understanding of the opportunities available, the mechanisms of delivery and the core priorities underpinning everything. And once that understanding is reached, be articulate when outlining the process and progress.
“An idea without implementation is like having a seed that you haven’t planted,” shared Philippa Garner, Head of Data and Analytics at Life Without Barriers.
“You can get people to rally around an idea but you need to show what the future looks like with this idea in reality to ensure buy-in. People need to see how the opportunity impacts them whether positively or negatively – living and breathing it to feel what this new future might look like.”
For Garner, this is where most businesses get stuck however.
“There are certain visionaries who are able to see the future on the back of an idea and other people in the room who need a little more hand holding to be able to walk through what an idea does to process or what that it does to people,” Garner explained.
“People may also require different forms of media to engage with to understand this future. Some get the big picture very quickly while others still can’t see the vision even on the day that a live product is implemented – it might take months for that realisation to come.”
Drawing from experience, Ramesh Raghavan – Head of Digital, Innovation and Experience at Uniting – stressed the importance of “context” in initially evaluating the long-term potential of an idea within an organisation.
The deeper point is that ideas aren’t in short supply but it’s the ability to link back to the corporate vision in a tangible way that separates enthusiasm from execution.
“There is often a plethora of ideas but if we were to implement each and every idea, we’d go down a ditch pretty quickly as an organisation,” Raghavan noted.
“Hence why context is so crucial. The success of an idea isn’t in the implementation but creating a pathway to move forward in a way that best suits the need of the business.”
Munro, Garner and Raghavan joined forces on stage to debate Idea to Implementation at Moxie Authority 2025 in Sydney.
Aligned to the theme of Inspired Knowledge, this inaugural and invite-only conference housed the most influential figures setting the market agenda in business and technology across Australia.
More than 400 industry front-runners were in attendance spanning all ends of the ecosystem, from CIOs, CTOs and CISOs to CDOs, CEOs and Founders.
Chasing ideas, reaching ‘no brainer’ status
In many organisations, a persistent gap exists between the generation of ideas and their successful implementation.
While creativity and innovation are highly valued, translating a great concept into tangible results often proves challenging. This disconnect is typically due to structural, cultural or operational barriers.
In some instances, a lack of clear ownership or accountability can result in promising ideas stalling in the pipeline. Bureaucratic processes, risk-averse mindsets and siloed teams can further obstruct progress, turning energy and ambition into inertia.
Sometimes however, it just takes a little dose of courage and persistence to move the needle.
“Let me give you an example,” Raghavan detailed.
“Almost two years ago, the clinical practice head at Uniting had seen augmented reality glasses and raised the idea of using them for telehealth purposes.
“The product was run with software from TeamViewer which allowed remote collaboration with specialists and the initial thought was that nurses in remote Australia could use them and specialists could just dial in to make assessments.”
Met with company-wide resistance – due to concerns that this was nothing more than a “gimmicky idea” – the proposal succumbed to little support or buy-in.
In response, a partnership was formed with Raghavan to secure a “small and basic” budget amount to explore the possibility of overhauling remote care.
“We ran a trial for six weeks with a small amount of funds and kept it among a small group at the early stage,” Raghavan recalled. “We realised the ROI benefits and calculated that we saved 250 hours of travel for our clinical practitioners per week and avoided nine hospitalisations with those glasses.
“Each hospitalisation costs around $21,000 to the government so when we started collating the data and presented back to the director, the feedback was that this was a ‘no brainer’. It was $7000 for each pair of glasses which was expensive but the investment paid off within the first month.
“Now, we use it across 24 sites in Australia and it’s completely funded by the government through a telehealth grant.”
The lesson learned by Raghavan was that ideas not only require boldness to succeed but a healthy dose of unconventional thinking powered by strong early pace to create momentum.
“If you’re not bold then you’ll end up waiting for everyone to be aligned and even if they eventually do jump on-board, the idea could quickly become stale,” he added.
Arriving at the coveted ‘no brainer’ status also calls for a stronger emphasis on executional discipline, shaped by ‘big picture’ thinking. This includes developing processes that prioritise and fast-track viable ideas, empowering change agents and fostering a culture where experimentation is supported.
“If I use Westpac as an example,” Munro shared. “We’re a large organisation housing lots of different divisions that each do slightly different things. But there’s also elements of commonality.”
Take contact centres as a case in point, which run in consumer, business and wealth divisions. Although the products offered are different – and the customers served are different – crossover does still exist from an underlying capabilities standpoint.
“The ability of a banker to answer a phone call when a customer comes through doesn’t require a custom component – you wouldn’t make that available to one division but not the other,” Munro expanded.
“That would be inefficient if the capability can be leveraged by other teams. If you take an idea or concept, the first step is to think strategically and assess how this could add value elsewhere.
“Is there an opportunity to create greater value by expanding on this or even setting it up as a reusable service?”
Munro cited insights shared by Devesh Maheshwari, CTO of Lendi Group who headlined Moxie Authority 2025.
As outlined in his analytical session – Lights On? Light a Spark? – Maheshwari emphasised the importance of not thinking about an idea, rather thinking about a system.
“At Westpac, we’re thinking about the system,” Munro added.
“How do you create those common capabilities and make them reusable and repeatable? We don’t want to have a fleet of 1000 chatbots across the business, all running on entirely different platforms with slightly different ways of operating.”
According to Moxie Research, 84% of Australian businesses are currently running internal AI working groups to shape strategy and drive adoption.
While progress varies based on maturity, the key benefits of cross-collaboration between business units is to primarily drive efficiency and process optimisation (59%).
This is alongside creating innovation and a competitive edge (51%), plus enhancing customer experience (50%) and kick-starting change management and integration processes (49%).
“You have to take people who have different visions and different ideas on that journey,” Munro said. “It requires very strong sponsorship to get to the right point and never lose sight of that – it’s a cross-functional team.”
Execution requires more than just enthusiasm
When pressed to share the most debilitating problems that plague implementation efforts across organisations, Munro was clear:
Delving deeper, Munro tackled the first roadblock. This is centred around the misguided belief from executives that single idea ownership yields success.
In other words, ‘I’ve got an idea and I’m going to deliver it and take it the whole way through on my own. I’m going to keep it very tight and close to my chest’.
“Put it this way,” Munro advised. “If I want to build a house, I know how many bedrooms I want and can even design it conceptually in my head. But I’m not an architect and probably should get a professional to do it.
“That same professional – the architect – is probably the wrong person to build the house. They’ll probably need to give the plans to a builder to construct.”
Now take that analogy and apply it to an enterprise context, Munro told an audience of 400 technology and business executives.
“Trying to take an individual idea, bring it to life and deliver value is very difficult to achieve on my own,” he cautioned.
The second blocker is more related to technology, notably the tendency to deploy new tools without a clear business case or problem.
“Let’s use GenAI given that everyone understands it,” Munro added.
“Searching for something to use GenAI for because it’s fun and cool is the wrong approach. Start with the problem and then find the best way to solve it, which may or may not be the use of that particular technology solution.”
Switching industries to not-for-profit, Garner articulated the value of creating “excellent synergy” among delivery teams through subject matter experts who “fully believe” in the outcome of a program.
“Where we saw less success – and had to really fight to keep the program alive – was when there was a very strong technology solution or clear use case for digital or AI but it lacked the business support,” Garner recalled.
“Either because the subject matter expert didn’t have capacity, wasn’t able to prioritise or didn’t believe the technology solution was the right approach.”
In those scenarios, people skills trump any form of technology expertise or business acumen.
“You can sort of push that to a certain extent and sometimes you can convince people along the way but you usually have a high likelihood of failing if the business buy-in isn’t there early on,” Garner acknowledged.
“You need a champion who is willing to own the solution once it’s deployed and out in the wild while also understanding that the modern delivery of technology is iterative and agile.”
This is “groundbreaking stuff” for traditional businesses unaccustomed to the fast-paced and ever-evolving nature of new technology deployment. Gone are the days of rolling out a product and reverting back in 3-5 years once the refresh cycle comes back around.
“Yes, small wins do sometimes get people across the line but until you can say that a business figure is willing to take the lead on this change, then you’re going to fail,” Garner cautioned.
Managing people, building credibility
Leaders play a critical role in ensuring ideas don’t die in a backlog but instead are nurtured, tested and scaled. Without this focus, organisations risk becoming idea-rich but outcome-poor – full of potential, but short on progress or synergy.
“Stakeholder management is 99% of my job,” Garner outlined.
“When dealing with very difficult stakeholders or really excellent stakeholders – and managing that full spectrum of people – you need to recognise where those people sit on the spectrum before you actually start to jump in and have conversations.”
Life Without Barriers is a not-for-profit organisation that delivers services in more than 300 communities across Australia.
Garner’s career has encompassed roles in transformation, AI, advanced analytics, supply chain and commercial sectors. Deep expertise also lies in leveraging data-driven strategies to drive organisational growth and efficiency.
“Prior to this role I worked at one company for 17 yeas and what comes with this is a whole heap of social capital and a deep understanding of core business drivers,” Garner said.
During this time, Garner moved into an analytics role with in-built knowledge of how the business works which meant convincing “almost any person in the room” became easier – from the pain points that affected frontline workers to the back office.
“There is a credibility credit box that you need to tick, absolutely,” Garner accepted. “But you also need the skills to manage stakeholders and that’s regardless of what type of role you have.”
In a direct message to 400 executives in the room, Garner acknowledged that countless terminologies, playbooks and checklists already exist on this very topic.
Select any consulting firm in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane and they’ll show the pathway ahead to take an idea to implementation. The market isn’t short on advice.
“But the challenge lies in figuring out how to tailor that to your very specific business needs,” Garner expanded. “Every business has its own culture and some methodologies will either work very well or not translate at all.
“My advice is to fund a couple of people in the business who understand or have taken something through to success and extract what worked well. From that, create your own path from idea to implementation.”
Building on Garner’s advice, Munro also accepted that no organisation is perfect and the path to the promised land of full-scale usage and deployment is fraught with challenges along the way.
“So, listen to the people who’s been through that process and ask about the pain points,” he recommended. “What was harder than you expected? Take that feedback and work on fixing it before letting the next process go through and iterating again.
“These are very important steps because if you can reduce time to value, then you’re going to have more people engaged but most importantly, more value coming into your business.”
In a final takeaway, Raghavan summarised that as the flow of ideas evolve, so should how executives approach the aftermath of brainstorming and thought processes.
“Ideas have morphed into a six-lane highway which is heading towards a two-lane highway,” he explained.
“What does that mean? It means as organisations, we have to quickly have a model in place to either reject, approve or run ideas because if we don’t, we’ll fall behind and someone else will take our lunch away.”
Moxie Authority 2025 housed the most influential figures redefining business and technology across Australia. This inaugural and invite-only conference in Sydney hosted more than 400 industry front-runners spanning all ends of the ecosystem, from CEOs, CIOs and CTOs to CDOs, CISOs and Founders.
Declaring that cyber security is a mission-critical priority is as obvious as it is futile for Australian businesses.
Instead, executive energy must be devoted to converting business priorities into action plans with the aim of exposing weaknesses and strengthening defences. But this is no easy task in a market under daily threat from advanced attacks.
Today, the mandate of addressing security, governance, risk and compliance comes with a caveat – manage escalating risks, tackle complex challenges and evolve corporate responses at pace.
In response, forward-thinking organisations are scrutinising security from strategy to solution. This involves interrogating out-dated frameworks and assessing new capabilities from AI and cloud to data and infrastructure.
This Executive Roundtable in Melbourne – in association with Moxie Insights, Perfekt and Symantec by Broadcom – outlined the modern-day approach to securing mission-critical assets and operations, understanding ongoing roadblocks while sharing industry best practice.
Key discussion points include:
View Moxie Insights – Executive Roundtable in photos:
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