Brink & North
Lou designs the conditions in which an organisation can be honest with itself.
Twenty years across industry (Origin), non-profit (Lifeline) and government, making complex change work with the people who did not choose it. For the last decade Lou has led change across the Australian Public Service through the Change Management Centre of Excellence, which she co-created with Robin Hilder.
The CoE was open to every agency at no cost. More than 50 took it up, and because it was free and run from inside the service, they brought their hardest problems and were honest about what had gone wrong. Lou’s method came out of those conditions rather than a template applied from outside.
She built the AI-assisted analysis method behind Brink & North’s assessments. It reads free-text responses from every level of an agency and locates where the accounts diverge: analysis that would otherwise take weeks of manual coding.
Everyone answers the same questions, people write before they speak, and how specifically someone can describe a change is a finding in itself.
She co-directs Lightbulb Improv, where applied improvisation shapes how she facilitates and designs change.
