The last Thursday of August is our annual pause button. It’s rather the day we reconnect after summer, meet people who know winter is coming, laugh a little, and get one clean hit of perspective before September eats the calendar alive.
Every year the theme changes, but the ritual stays the same: proper networking, candid conversations, a room that feels human again, and a topic that matters beyond any single organisation or role. The hardest shifts sit across teams, institutions, and ecosystems, in business, government, and the spaces between them. The story travels fast. Daily habits decide what survives.
This year’s theme sits right in that tension: From Story to Habit: how to make change stick. Big change begins with a story, what we’re trying to do, why it matters, and why now. Then reality tests it: priorities collide, routines pull back, messages drift, friction creeps in. At some point, many of us have a moment of clarity: the brutal truth: communication sets direction, consequences shape behaviour.
Change sticks when the story becomes daily practice:
- leadership behaviours and team rituals that make the new way repeatable
- incentives and operating rules that quietly shape decisions
- evolving expectations and skills as collaboration expands and AI reshapes work
- progress people trust, visible in speed, quality, resilience, and adoption
The alternative is the same change loop on repeat. This is a day to break that loop, embrace complexity, and keep the humour and humanity that make leadership sustainable.
It’s the Summer Festival, so the tone stays light and the energy stays high. What you take back should be principles that hold when September hits.
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