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Answer The Conversational Debt Pulse Survey

Help us measure Conversational Debt In partnership with @Fearless Culture, we are looking into the concept of Conversational Debt. Therefore, we are collecting responses for the Conversational Debt Pulse Survey – from anyone working in any business or organisation. We are asking about how much is not being said. Conversational Debt is the cost […]

The Organisational Bermuda Triangle of Debt

In our work with organisations, we uncover the hidden costs that take a toll on the growth of a business. Our consultant, Paul O’Kelly, has named those costs in an Organisational Triangle of Debt. Like the Bermuda triangle, good employees, income and innovation vanishes if the debts compound. The triangle consists of The conversations leaders […]

Naoise O'Kelly Hughes

Managing Director

Having worked alongside her father Paul in the business for a number of years, in 2024 Naoise took over the role of Managing Director. With top talents of Communication, Positivity and WOO, Naoise’s role in the business relates to all things ‘people focused’. Naoise is a Certified Gallup Strengths Coach and along with her expertise in Employee Engagement and Interventions she provides support to CEOs and Leadership Teams on enhancing this critical part of their businesses.

With over a decade of experience in demanding leadership roles within the not‑for‑profit sector, Naoise brings deep, hands‑on expertise in strategy development and delivery. She has held senior management positions with responsibility for people leadership, frontline service delivery, and organisational performance. As a member of an executive leadership team, she played a key role in governance, regulation, and the oversight of high‑quality service provision within one of Ireland’s largest disability organisations. Throughout her career, Naoise has championed Appreciative Inquiry and strengths‑based approaches, embedding these principles into both leadership practice and organisational culture.

With a key focus on the involvement and integration of all key stakeholders, Naoise’s experience extends to group facilitation, workshop coordination, mentoring, professional supervision and extensive human resource management, including building positive relationships with trade unions. Naoise facilitates Culture Design Workshops supporting clients to transform how their teams work, lead, and create.

Naoise is also Predictive Index Associate, specialising in talent optimisation for recruitment, career development and retention. Naoise holds an MBA from the Technical University of Dublin where she explored employee engagement as a key focus area. She also has a post-graduate Certificate in Behaviour Support, a post-graduate Diploma in Social Policy and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Care. Naoise is a Board Director of a Section 38 Disability Service. She lives in the South East of Ireland with her husband and the chaos of four young daughters. Outside of work you will find her in her touring caravan or on the GAA sideline.

Paul O'Kelly

Strategist, Coach, Consultant & Founder

For over 35 years, Paul O’Kelly has worked as a strategist, coach, consultant, and trusted advisor to purpose-driven leaders who seek to consistently make breakthroughs in their thinking, planning, and performance. Paul is the Founder of Mylyn, which encompasses his rich tapestry of three decades worth of clients, businesses, collaborators, partners and associates.

While Paul has no “typical client company”, his simple measure for the unique impact of his work is based on his clients’ enduring and unreserved referrals. This has led Paul to work with an eclectic mix of clients across the world. His portfolio spans start-ups, Fortune 100 corporations, century-old family businesses, not for profits, and government departments, as well as those in the food, technology, banking, professional services, and educational sectors.

A growth mindset among his client’s leadership team is the common thread that connects each project. Paul’s mission is to work with those who are inspired by a deep sense of purpose, have a desire to build great teams and cultures, and those who are humble and dare to make value- and principle-driven decisions. Paul has worked globally from San Francisco to Vancouver, Romania to Africa, Singapore to Sydney with household name brands spanning Dell Technologies, Bord na Mona, Dubai Government, GAA, KEMP Technologies, Trinity College Dublin, Bank of Ireland, and Activision. His clients have received 100’s of awards, including Best Place to Work, EY Entrepreneur of the Year, Deloitte Fast 50, Ethnic Entrepreneur of the Year, and Best Managed Company.

Paul’s primary degree was with NCPE/Thomond from the University of Limerick, where he is a member of the Founding Class Endowment Fund Working Group. Since then, he has completed dozens of educational certifications including the altMBA, Appreciative Inquiry, Marshall Goldsmith’s Stakeholder Coaching, and Sports Psychology at Newcastle University. He is a member of numerous boards and is a regular speaker at events and forums. As an experienced sports and performance coach at national and international levels, Paul enjoys working “under the radar” with teams and individual athletes. With his wife Margaret, he lives between Offaly, Wexford and Philadelphia in the U.S., never far from his daughters and grandchildren.

Culture Innovation - Etex Exteriors

Since 1905 Etex, Belgium, has been pioneering to become a global leader in lightweight construction solutions. Its people are driven by a desire to inspire people around the world to build living spaces that are ever more safe, sustainable, smart and beautiful. Etex employs 11,000 people across 110 facilities in 42 countries.

People First – Serving Customers – Sustaining Growth

Our Team was first retained by Etex through its Tegral, Ireland, leadership team in in 2000. Through a Think Customers project Tegral teams were brought on a deep dive into customer relationships and strategic value propositions. With these customer experience insights they built a strategic platform for growth. At the heart of the project success was the client’s growth mindset, and deep commitment to developing their people.

The teams worked at the nexus of strategy, leadership and culture renovation with an unrelenting focus on the best interests of customers. This clarity of focus enabled Tegral to build one of Ireland’s most recognized construction industry brands.

In the last five years our work with Etex has centred around the Exteriors Division headquartered in Belgium. We are continuing to work with the leadership team as they consolidate and accelerate growth in fibre cement solutions for roofing, facades and terraces. Our work involves workshops with the leadership team and dozens of teams across the globe. For example, “Lighthouse” workshops in 13 countries refined Etex’s purpose “Inspiring ways of Living”. These workshops designed on Appreciative Inquiry principles brought the Purpose alive and lived in the organisation at all levels and was experienced by customers. This vibrant engagement was one of the foundational factors which allowed Covid to be an accelerator of positive change at Etex Exteriors.

During Covid we designed and facilitated dozens of virtual workshops involving participants from more than 30 countries.

Accelerating purpose-driven change

Strategy, Culture, Leadership, Teamwork, High Performance

In the last three years Etex Exteriors successfully focused on three big moves; engaged and passionate employees, superior customer focus and commitment to innovation driven by sustainability. To quote Michael Fenlon, CEO:

“This new brand architecture helped us focus, and our teams thoroughly revamped our business models for each brand to place our customers in the centre of what we do. Our teams have already put in huge amounts of work when it comes to mapping out the customer journeys for our three core brands. Now, the Exteriors team is working across boundaries to pilot and scale up disruptive ideas, redefining ourselves to ensure that we adapt in an agile way to our customers’ needs.” – Micheal Fenlon, CEO.

Thrive & Grow Journey - Fitzgerald Powe

In The Currency News: Stuart Fitzgerald, CEO of Fitzgerald Power

During lock-down I became interested in the Sky Atlantic show Billions and the impact an executive coach had on the performance of the fictional hedge fund team. My wife was convinced that this interest was based solely on the fact that the executive coach, Wendy Rhoades, was glamourous and sexy. She may have had a point, but whatever the reason I ended up researching the topic and ultimately hiring a team of business coaches to work with my accountancy firm, Fitzgerald Power.

Paul O’Kelly, an Offaly man in his mid-sixties, is different to Wendy but he’s glamorous and sexy in his own way. Paul and his colleague Nicola Colleran have been working with Fitzgerald Power for eighteen months helping to build the leadership capabilities of our senior team while overseeing our strategic planning and execution work.

What follows is a brief summary of my experience to date.

It’s like personal training …. with less shouting.

What gets measured gets held over you until it’s done.

Much like the muscle-bound beefcake who screams, “one more rep” as he abruptly brings you to the conclusion that bed is a more appropriate 6am setting than the gym for a middle-aged man, a business coach will hold you accountable.

We all perform better when we have someone to answer to. The difficulty for entrepreneurs and people running companies is that there often isn’t anybody to fill this role. Leadership can be lonely. If you’ve done your job properly the people who work in your business will be talented, committed and highly capable. But they don’t share your experience and they won’t really hold you accountable. That’s not how it works.

Lizzo might be her own soulmate, but I do better when I’ve got someone to answer to.

What does your business coach hold you accountable to? If they’re any good the business plan and objectives that you and your team has developed under their guidance. They will help you to articulate clear goals and will work with you to build a step-by-step execution plan.

In our case we build and refine our plan in a cloud-based planning and execution system called Metronome. This system is used to guide our management meetings with each member of the leadership team responsible for a quarterly priority, the progress of which is tracked through Metronome. Each quarterly priority, which is agreed upon at our quarterly off-site meeting, is specifically designed to move the business plan forward.

The actual strategic framework we use is a topic for another article but suffice to say the design and execution of the plan is overseen by our coaches who facilitate the quarterly off-site and help to ensure what we are doing is relatively sensible and aligns with our overall objectives.

Developing a growth mindset.

The term Growth Mindset was coined by American psychologist Carol Dweck in 2015 when she said; “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.”

Working with Paul and Nicola has created lots of benefits for Fitzgerald Power, but the development of a growth mindset across our business has been the biggest win. In preparation for our quarterly offsites our senior team reads a business or leadership book that is relevant to the theme of the meeting (along with other pre-reading and preparatory work). These books are analysed and discussed by the group in a way that I couldn’t have imagined eighteen months ago. The process has built confidence and collegiality and makes our discussions more focussed and better informed.

Our intention is to cascade these initiatives throughout our organisation.

Part of my monthly one-to-one meeting with Paul focusses on the development of our senior team and the support they need to grow their leadership capabilities. The ultimate output is an individual scorecard for each role with agreed metrics and a personal development plan.

These plans are informed, in part, by the results of our senior team’s Predictive Index Behavioural Assessment which has helped us to understand our different personality types, our respective strengths and weaknesses and how we gel together as a senior team.

Our intention is to cascade these initiatives throughout our organisation.

We have converted a former meeting room into a small library (it’s very small and I use the term library loosely) where the books the leadership team is reading and other learning materials such as the Harvard Business Review will be made available to the entire company.

In recent weeks we have launched a companywide mentoring program where everybody working in our business can benefit from one-to-one coaching from a member of our senior team. It’s an idea we borrowed from Joe McVeigh and Mark Homan who run the legal practice BHSM and did a very good job of selling me on the benefits as we enjoyed a few pints together following Ireland’s resounding victory over France. It might have been the occasion, but it all made perfect sense that evening.

Our mentors and mentees will undertake a training course to ensure they get the best out of the process. Given the positive impact this mentorship program could have on Fitzgerald Power, the senior team is currently reading The Coaching Habit which is a fantastic manual for anybody interested in building a coaching culture in their organisation.

The positive momentum of this company wide growth mindset is a virtuous cycle that has led to better engagement and a real focus on the support the individual members of our team need to grow and develop in their respective roles.

Finding the perfect debs date.

In typical fashion I didn’t really know what I was looking for when I started the business coach recruitment process. I just knew I needed help and an external perspective.

Jasper Walshe, one of the prospective coaches I met, asked me a great question, “are you looking for leadership coaching, strategic input or both?”

Jasper’s question helped clarify my thinking. It was a generous interjection considering; (a) he probably already knew the answer, and (b) the focus of Jasper’s business is leadership development and not strategy.

Having copied my homework from Jasper I eventually met Paul and told him I was looking for a cross between Wendy Rhoades and Warren Buffett. We agreed it was a modest hurdle and one we should easily clear. Time will tell but so far so good.

Thanks to Stuart for sharing this which was first published on The Currency News.

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Answer The Conversational Debt Pulse Survey

The Organisational Bermuda Triangle of Debt