How do you overcome the wall of indifference people can have to your ideas to make things better? Bottom line: Don’t push harder to be heard— make it matter more so they start to listen. Inside are five actions to help you do this and have your ideas be heard.

Getting pushback is common challenge. Pushback met with more force just creates bigger barriers. The smart approach is isn’t to push harder, it’s to invite curiosity.

Most people look at what happened and stop there. The pros ask, “What could have happened instead?” That’s counterfactual thinking, the quiet superpower behind great problem solvers and innovators, from the engineers that saved NASA’s Apollo 13 crew to anyone brave enough to imagine a better way forward.

Focus is fragile. Your brain sips from a firehose of a billion bits per second while conscious thought crawls along at only ten. The trick to greater focus for longer isn’t working harder, it’s designing our environment and routines to optimise the little attention we can give at any one time.

Sometimes we don't realise we're already standing on a mountain of value. What unlocks it is looking at different ways of using what we already have. Inside is the story of how an engineer working on making Disney anamatronics more life like helped create one of the worlds leading guitar string brands using the same solution.

To solve twin business survival problems of drink spiking fears and cost of living pressures, Manchester’s XLR night club has just done something radical, they've borrowed a strategy used by another industry: BYOB. People can now bring their own drinks to the club in return for slightly higher ticket prices. It’s a great reminder, innovation doesn’t mean invention - it also means adaption.

Productivity isn’t about just about speed, it’s about creating greater impact. The most simple productivity hack is to cut out what’s no longer needed. What we do, day in day out, often hides a black hole of productivity loss. Taking a spring cleaning approach to what we do creates space for more of what we need to do.

Breakthroughs don’t come from thinking the same. They ‘break’ something that is usually taken for granted. A simple way to do this is to take one feature or frustration of a product, service or process and push it to the opposite extreme. Like 10x a price, cutting process time to zero or having no customer support. That’s what Apple, Atlassian and Zoom have done to create break through ideas that work.

We chase certainty because it feels safe, but Daniel Kahneman showed us that this instinct, what he called the Certainty Effect, often means we sell ourselves short. Over the past 20 years, the ASX 200 rewarded those who leaned into calculated risk far more than bonds ever did. The real lesson: slowing down, grounding decisions in data, and collaborating with others can help us escape the trap of selling ourselves short.

You hear, “The issue is our software is not working,” and suddenly every solution revolves around coding updates and testing. But what if the real problem is something else entirely, persisting with an internally developed software system that can’t keep pace with external changes? Anchoring bias tricks us into solving the first thing we hear, not the right thing. Here are three questions to ask to not get fooled by it.

Breakthroughs often don’t come from playing the same old tune with the same old band. Strangers bring fresh eyes, and a willingness to explore. Structure and safety matter, but so does the unexpected voice that shifts everything. If you want bold ideas, stop rehearsing only with the usual crew, invite someone new to the session.

Not all feedback is yours to carry, much of it is just someone else’s insecurity wrapped in words. The danger is that projected criticism erodes trust, respect, and psychological safety in teams faster than almost anything else. Real leadership is knowing the difference, and choosing feedback that helps others grow instead of protecting your own fear.

Teams rarely fail because a challenge is too big, they fail when small frictions quietly grind progress to a halt. Unclear goals, poor communication, and unequal participation erode trust, respect, and psychological safety, which research shows are essential for high-performing teams. Remove friction, make space for every voice, and suddenly collaboration isn’t just easier, it accelerates results.

Fear doesn't vanish through wishful thinking, it dissolves through deliberate practice. Acclaimed psychologist Albert Bandura developed a simply practice he called Guided Mastery to help overcome our deepest fears and limiting beliefs. By finding a guide, removing excuses, and committing to small consistent steps, you can transform limiting beliefs into limitless possibilities.

There's three ways to boost our capability: learning from others, earning it through practice and repetition and discerning new ideas through reflection. Most people do the first two. But the third creates the biggest gains because it surfaces new ideas we can’t see when we just focus on doing. And research shows just 15 minutes of daily reflection can boost productivity by over 20%.

Micromanaging feels like control, but it destroys trust and respect, two foundations every team needs to thrive. When leaders step in too much, they create followers instead of owners. Accountability, not control, is what multiplies human capability and drives results. Inside are eight steps to break the micromanaging cycle.

People don’t need to win every argument, they need to know the door was open for them when the decision was made. When we feel seen, heard, and included, research shows we’re far more likely to support outcomes, even if they’re not ours. Exclusion kills trust, and without trust, decisions fall apart when it comes to executing them.

Admitting “I don’t know” isn’t weakness, it’s the foundation of trust and psychological safety. I used to think the opposite.

Research shows that humility fuels better decisions, stronger relationships, and higher-performing teams. When leaders make it safe to not know, people drop their guards and bring their best selves today and grow faster into even better versions tomorrow.

I’ve learned to judge advice by its fit to my circumstances, not by its source. We trust doctors because they're trained to diagnose and fix problems with our bodies and our bodies don’t change much. But businesses do. They evolve constantly. Markets and laws shift, processes change, skills and tech are replaced. The patient is never the same. Before you act on advice in the future, ask: How well do they know the patient? Then go check with AI!

Most of us have built our careers on a cultural myth that's becoming outdated: that working hard regardless of outcome makes us virtuous. AI is systematically handling routine tasks, creating space for people to focus on what truly matters, identifying meaningful problems and orchestrating smart solutions that blend creativity with efficiency.

The mindset shift from, "How hard are you working?" to "What difference are you making?" will open a world of new opportunities for those willing to make it.