Menzies Foundation

A single mother kept her daughter home from birthday parties.

Not because of the parties. Because of the gifts.

She couldn't afford one that wouldn't draw judgement — so it felt safer to just not go.
She wrote to Kmart to tell them this. Anonymously. And what she said was that affordable products had changed it. Her daughter could finally say yes.

That story is from Episode 3 of Purpose: Leading into the Future — a conversation with Callum Smith, Chief Commercial Officer at Kmart Australia and New Zealand. And it reframes something easy to overlook.

Because underneath that price tag isn't a margin. It's dignity. Belonging. The difference between a kid who gets to go and a kid who stays home.

In a cost-of-living crisis, affordability stops being a commercial issue. It becomes a social one. And leadership at the frontline stops being about reducing prices — and starts being about reducing exclusion.

A few things from the conversation worth sitting with:
→ Purpose is tested most under constraint. Anyone can hold values when things are stable. When fuel, shipping and inflation all hit at once, the real test is who absorbs the pressure. Kmart's commitment was to take as much of it as possible before passing it to customers.

→ Fairness is never isolated. Every pricing decision is a trade-off somewhere else — suppliers, logistics, workers, communities. Long-term thinking is what keeps the whole system honest.

→ Culture isn't built in speeches. Across 50,000+ people, many starting casual work at 15, purpose only survives through repetition. Stories told. Values reinforced. Every single day.
The clearest proof came during COVID. Stores closed — and leadership kept paying team members anyway, despite the hit. Not a drawn-out boardroom debate. A fast call, because internally it was simply understood as the right thing to do.

That's the tell. Purpose isn't what an organisation says when it's easy. It's what it does when there's a real cost.

The leaders worth paying attention to right now are quietly moving:
Margin → meaning.

Short-term gain → long-term stewardship.
"I" → "we."

Because in hard times, people remember more than products. They remember whether you showed up. Whether you acted fairly. Whether purpose stayed visible when the pressure was on.

This is the question at the heart of the series: when costs are rising and something has to give, what's the test you actually use to decide who absorbs it?

🎧 Purpose: Leading into the Future — Ep. 3
Conversation with Callum Smith, Chief Commercial Officer at Kmart Australia and New Zealand.

Full reflection piece: https://menziesfoundation.org.au/fairness-at-the-frontline/
Episode link: https://menziesleadershipforum.podbean.com/e/fairness-at-the-frontline-with-guest-callum-smith-purpose-leading-into-the-future/

Kmart Australia Kmart New Zealand

WEEK 7: SPEAKING vs. LISTENING

In a polarised world, where does your information actually come from? And whose voices are you really listening to? The practice of discerning when to speak up — and when to create space — is one of leadership's most underrated disciplines.

Professor Kristy Muir on leading in divided times and how the voices leaders choose to hear shape every decision they make.

💭 Whose voice has been missing from your recent decisions? How might you create space to hear them?
🎙️ Listen: Cultivating Cultures
🔗 https://menziesleadershipforum.podbean.com/e/leadership-and-the-cultivation-of-social-impact-hosted-by-michelle-bloom/

📚 A Leadership Recommendation from the Menzies Foundation

Resource: "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action" by Simon Sinek
This fortnight, we return to one of the most influential leadership books of the past two decades — a work that is as relevant to philanthropic leadership as it is to business strategy. Simon Sinek's deceptively simple framework has transformed how organisations around the world think about purpose, culture, and the art of inspiring others.

The book explores:
🔵 the Golden Circle: Why, How, and What — and why most organisations get it backwards
💡 how clarity of purpose drives loyalty, trust, and sustained impact
🌍 case studies from movements and organisations that changed the world by leading with 'Why'
🤝 why employees and donors give more when they believe in the cause, not just the organisation
🎯 how philanthropic foundations can articulate a 'Why' that outlasts any single program
📣 building a movement, not just managing an organisation

Key insight from Simon Sinek:
"Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do."
A foundational read for every leader navigating the intersection of mission, values, and impact.
👉 Find it here: https://simonsinek.com/books/start-with-why/

The debate is no longer about what you decide. It's about whether you have the standing to decide at all.

Permission is no longer inherited. It must be earned. Leaders today are no longer expected simply to make good decisions. They are expected to justify why they are the ones making them. Sarah Jenkins examines the shift from authority to legitimacy—and what this means for how you lead. In "When Leadership Loses Its Mandate," the first essay in our series, she explores the paradox of leadership in 2026: resisted and demanded at the same time. Leading without the assurance of universal permission is now the defining challenge. If you recognise this tension in your own leadership, this essay is for you. The conversation continues.*

→ Understand the shift
https://menziesfoundation.org.au/when-leadership-loses-its-mandate/

Dr Polly McGee, practitioner at the cutting edge of trauma-responsive leadership, and Dr Toby Newstead, host of The Future of Leadership Development podcast, argue that developing leaders fit for today's world requires a paradigm shift.

Leadership isn't something held at the top—it's distributed, relational, and responsive.

How are you building collective capacity rather than individual capability? Where could you shift from control to connection in your leadership?

Leadership is the practice of developing the capacity of those around us.

"1 in 10 aged care residents never receive a single visitor."
That's the line that stayed with me from Episode 2 of Purpose: Leading into the Future — a conversation with Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, CEO of Australian Unity.

Kelly has led through a banking crisis, a national cyber incident, and now one of the most stretched systems in the country. Different industries, same conclusion:
Purpose isn't a values statement on a wall. It's a decision-making framework.
At Australian Unity, every major call passes two tests:

Is it financially sustainable?
Does it improve wellbeing?

That second question changes the work. Because it forces impact to be defined in human terms, not just commercial ones. Sitting with someone who has no one else to visit them isn't a KPI. It's the job.

A few things from the conversation that shifted how I'm thinking:
→ In 20 years, the number of Australians entering their 80s will triple. The systems we design now will define how care is experienced for a generation.
→ Wellbeing isn't access to services. It's belonging. And loneliness is rising fastest in the most digitally connected generations.
→ The strongest cultures aren't built in stability. They're forged in crisis — when purpose becomes the thing that gets people to show up.
The leaders I'm paying attention to right now are quietly moving:
Strategy → impact.
Performance → wellbeing.
Authority → care.

Because delivering outcomes won't be enough. Holding complexity, navigating trade-offs, and acting with care when it matters most — that's what the next decade is going to ask of us.

When you're making decisions under real constraint, what's the test you actually use?
🎧 Full reflection piece + the episode linked in the comments.

WEEK 6: TRADITION vs. INNOVATION

Developing leaders fit for today's world requires challenging outdated models — while preserving the wisdom embedded in what came before. The courage to question tradition doesn't mean abandoning everything that worked.

Professor Ron Riggio and Dr Polly McGee on why 20th century hero leadership models no longer serve the challenges we face — and what needs to replace them.

💭 What leadership model are you still following out of habit rather than intention?
🎙️ Listen: Rethinking Leadership Development
🔗 https://menziesleadershipforum.podbean.com/e/rethinking-leadership-development-for-a-changing-world-with-dr-toby-newstead-professor-ron-riggio-dr-polly-mcgee/

🎧 A Leadership Recommendation from the
Resource: Taking Business Net Positive with Paul Polman & Andrew Winston – Outrage + Optimism Podcast

Platform: Outrage + Optimism
This week we're featuring a landmark conversation from the Outrage + Optimism podcast, recorded live in Edinburgh ahead of COP26. Hosts Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac sit down with Paul Polman — former CEO of Unilever and one of the most consequential business leaders of the past two decades — and Andrew Winston, acclaimed author and sustainability strategist. Together, they make the case for a wholesale reimagining of what business is actually for.

The episode explores:
🌍 why "net zero" isn't enough — and what "net positive" demands instead
📊 the responsibility of corporations to improve the wellbeing of every stakeholder they touch, not just return value to shareholders
🔄 how leading companies like Unilever, Microsoft and Google are already operating beyond zero — restoring rather than simply reducing
🤝 why consistency matters: companies can't champion climate action while lobbying against the very policies that enable it
💡 the "elephants in the room" every serious leader must confront — CEO pay, tax, trade associations, and money in politics
🌱 why climate and inequality are two ticking clocks — and why they must be tackled in tandem

Key insight from Paul Polman:
"If you break it, you own it. Take the possibility of your total handprint in society and try to bring that to a positive. Then society will let you keep staying around."
Challenging, clear-eyed, and essential listening for any leader ready to ask: is the world genuinely better off because my organisation is in it?

👉 Listen here: https://www.outrageandoptimism.org/episodes/taking-business-net-positive

The Australian Public Service designs policy for all of Australia. So why do you have to live in Canberra to be part of it?

Bayan Yazdani, Menzies Global Voices Fellow, took that question from Darwin to the IMF in Marrakech — and came back with an answer that challenges how we think about opportunity, place and who gets to shape national policy.

Read his story. If you've ever felt like where you live has limited what you could contribute — this one will resonate.

🔗 https://menziesfoundation.org.au/flexible-work-flourishing-regions-a-new-vision-for-public-sector-leadership/