Your organisation is doing important work. But is something stopping it from fully landing?
I walk alongside leaders of organisations to find what's blocking their impact and navigate the path through it. Not from the sidelines. In the work, testing ideas, adjusting as we learn, until things shift.
Start a conversationThings are hard. They're moving fast. Consider having someone walk alongside you.
You know your organisation. You know where the friction is. But when you're leading through it every day, it's difficult to see the whole system at once -- the people, the culture, the technology, the way work actually flows.
A fresh set of eyes can help. Someone who can see those connections, ask the questions that haven't been asked yet, and help you chart a path grounded in evidence rather than instinct alone.
That's what I do. I walk alongside leaders through their most difficult problems. We form hypotheses, test them, adjust, and keep moving. It's not a report that sits in a drawer. It's not a strategy deck handed over at the end. It's a working partnership -- responsive, evidence-based, and designed to build your organisation's own capability as we go.
Read the terrain. Then move through it together.
I bring together four disciplines to understand your organisation as a whole -- not as a set of isolated problems. Then we design a response together and work through it. Test ideas. Learn from what happens. Adjust as the picture sharpens.
Systems Thinking
Understanding the interconnected parts of your organisation and how changing one affects the whole.
Organisational Psychology
Applying the science of human behaviour to leadership, motivation, and team dynamics.
Work Design
Structuring roles and responsibilities so that people can actually execute the strategy.
Applied Behavioural Science
Using evidence to design interventions that actually change how people behave day-to-day.
How we work together
Explore
Start with the full picture. Map where strategy, culture, work design, and leadership are aligned -- and where they're quietly working against each other.
Chart
Form hypotheses about what needs to shift. Design an evidence-based response that fits your organisation, your people, and your context.
Navigate
Walk through it together. Test, learn, adjust. Stay in the work until things move. Build your team's capability, not dependency on mine.
Engagements start with a focused diagnostic (from $1,500) through to transformation partnerships for complex, sustained change.
What this looks like in practice
Turning around a declining EdTech operation
A global EdTech provider's Oceania region was in sustained decline. I diagnosed root causes across commercial, cultural, and operational dimensions, redesigned the go-to-market strategy and team structure, and led the turnaround. Employee satisfaction shifted from 38% to 90% which built 27% year on year growth.
Merging nine not-for-profits into one
Integrated nine NFPs into a single national organisation as part of the transition executive -- 1,000 staff, 5,000 volunteers. Built shared strategy through co-creation. Staff turnover stayed below 3% throughout the merger. Donation revenue lifted 24% in year one under the new brand.
Rescuing a stalled digital transformation
Brought in to save an ERP implementation that had lost momentum in aged care. Identified process, people, and cultural blockers, rebuilt team confidence, and delivered. Task completion rates increased 500%. Staff overtime costs fell 78%.
“He is strategic and considered, bringing options to the table about how to proceed, particularly when the issues were complex or sensitive. This enabled us to walk through scenarios looking at them from more than one perspective before making decisions.”
I'm Geoff Mallinson.
Twenty years working with organisations -- commercial, NFP, faith-based, aged care -- that are trying to do something that matters and keep running into the same invisible walls.
My work sits at the intersection of strategy execution and organisational psychology. I hold an MBA from AGSM (graduated with excellence) and am completing a Graduate Diploma in Psychology at UNSW. I've led organisations through mergers, turnarounds, digital transformations, and culture change.
Outside work, I lead search and rescue teams for NSW SES. That probably says something about how I think: read the terrain carefully, find the right path, and know that the most important step is usually the diagnostic one.
Cairn Advisory is built on the idea that good navigation starts with honestly reading the terrain. If your organisation is at a point where the path forward isn't clear, I'd like to help you find it.
Start a conversation
No pitch. No obligation. A straightforward conversation about where your organisation is and whether I can help.