From the Beyond Growth archive. Originally aired 6 October 2026.
Robine Stephenson’s first real job was calling people about unpaid court fines. It thickened her skin and taught her a lot of empathy. It was also where her first good idea landed: texting people instead of calling them. She says it recovered far more than anyone expected. From there came ten years in management consulting, roles across several organisations in Melbourne, and a chief of staff role in financial services. A few months before we spoke, she started her own practice, Straforma, helping leaders turn strategy into action.
Here’s what stood out.
Hold the why tight, the how loosely. Robine says your purpose is the one thing to hold firmly. Everything else, especially how you do the work, is changing almost weekly. Without a clear why, every opportunity looks like an opportunity and nothing looks like a distraction.
Fix the core before you add AI. Her first reaction to AI was dread, because it could do much of what she’d been paid for. Now her warning is about foundations. If you don’t know your processes, your value chain and who owns what, you can’t decide where AI helps, and you’ll end up following whichever vendor is loudest. She compares it to a good physio, who won’t load you up until your core is strong.
Strategic drift is the silent killer. A strategy launches, everyone is excited, then reality hits and the hard parts get pushed down the road while everyone stays busy. Robine asks leaders whether what slipped was by design or by accident. Not deciding is still a decision.
Busy isn’t a flex. Messaging your team at 5am, or needing every weekend to hit a deadline, isn’t control in Robine’s view. It’s chaos. The leaders she respects most build in time to reflect, the way surgical teams and the military do.
Start small. She tells teams not to start with their hardest problem, because they aren’t fit enough yet. Treat it like a pre-season: run a small experiment, learn, then take on the bigger thing.
What Geelong needs. Robine describes Geelong as big enough to make an impact and small enough to turn up. She hears big hopes for the region everywhere she goes. Her view is that council, the chambers and community groups need to pull in the same direction for those hopes to become real.
This is one adviser’s view, from someone who sees inside many organisations. It’s the kind of perspective that will feed into the Growth Intelligence research on business performance and growth.
Growth Intelligence is Reyan Fernando’s research practice. Reyan is also a Certified EOS Implementer, working with Geelong leadership teams on vision and execution. That experience shapes the questions he asks, but the research and conclusions are his own.