Making the
Your Partner in Profit and Growth
December 2025 - This Month’s Focus:
Making Space for What Matters
As we close out 2025, it’s an ideal moment for you to pause, reflect and prepare for the year ahead.
This edition of the SHIFFT newsletter centres on a theme that has shaped much of this year’s workplace conversation: creating space — for better decisions, stronger teams, and smarter ways of working.
These articles offer practical insights to help you protect focus, elevate productivity and build a work environment where people can genuinely thrive.
Cheers,
Russ
Blogs & Insights
Australia’s Workforce Crisis is Entering a New Phase
Australia’s workforce crisis continues to evolve. It is no longer simply about shortages. It is about capability, cost, flexibility and performance. Many businesses can fill roles eventually, but too many new hires require long lead times to reach competence and too many teams are stretched by inconsistent capacity.
The Hidden Power of No: How Smart Leaders Create Space to Win
Most leaders assume improvement comes from addition. More projects, more ideas, more tools, more meetings, more customers - more everything. The logic seems sound: if you want progress, add more effort. Yet the longer you lead, the clearer one truth becomes.
Featured Resources
Take the time to reflect on 2025
Reflection is our under-rated business skill. Now is a great time to pull out your "Journal" and reflect on the year that has been so that you can create the year ahead.
Our EOY Diagnostics have been created with this end in mind. A series of simple reflective questions that you will assist in reflecting on the year that has been. It will take you 10-20 mins to complete.
I have tailored 3X different versions depending on your role:
Business Owner EoY Diagnostic
This diagnostic is designed to help you reflect on your performance, progress, and priorities over the past year — across both your business and personal leadership.
Executive and Manager EoY Diagnostic
This diagnostic is built for executives and senior leaders in privately held or family-owned businesses. It offers a structured opportunity to reflect on your leadership, team performance, execution, and personal effectiveness over the past 12 months.
CEO EoY Diagnostic
This diagnostic is designed to support CEOs of family-owned and privately held businesses in reflecting on their performance across strategic, operational, governance, and personal dimensions.
If you have completed one of these earlier in the year, let me know and I can compare results for your. The Diagnostics are free to complete and your information is confidential to you and I.
Upcoming Events
We’ve got some exciting opportunities ahead to connect, learn, and grow together. See below for our upcoming events — each designed to help you strengthen strategy, build capability, and boost team performance.
AI for Business Webinar —Strategy & Planning
Learn how to harness AI with 13 proven prompts to sharpen your strategy, align your team and kick off 2026 with clarity and momentum. Join Russ on Friday, 5 December for a practical, high-impact 60-minute session on how to sharpen your strategy and execution for 2026 using AI.
Focused Execution Learning Sprint – February 2026
Get clear, focused, and back in control. The Focused Execution Learning Sprint is a 12-module online program designed to help you close the gap between knowing and doing. Over 6 weeks, you’ll master the principles of Focus, Discipline, and Control using the Focused Execution system and 90 Day Productivity Journal. Join us this February to make your next 90 days your most productive ever.
Focused Execution Mastermind Group – Launching Feb/Mar 2026
Ready to take your personal productivity to the next level? The Focused Execution Mastermind Group gives you structure, accountability, and support to embed these habits long-term. You’ll get monthly 2-hour webinars, fortnightly 1-on-1 coaching calls, quarterly online planning sessions, full access to the Learning Sprint and our online Resource Centre with 150+ business tools and 25+ training courses — all through a dedicated coaching platform.
Books & Journals
Focused Execution: How to stop wasting time and focus on what really matters
This book summarises the key elements for improving your personal productivity. Russ utilized the tools, concepts and principles outlined in the book to lift his personal productivity by 4X. He went from working 70+ hours/week to 35 hours over each week on double the revenue.
Focused Execution gives business owners and managers a proven system to take back control of their time and achieve results without burnout.
Available now in print and e-book version on amazon – Click here
90 Day Productivity Planner
If “Focused Execution” – the book – is the “WHY”, then our Productivity and Planning Journals are the “HOW”! Stay disciplined as you cascade your 90 Day Plans to monthly, weekly and daily priorities integrating strategies, tactics and operational priorities. Built on the powerful tools and concepts highlighted: The Focused Execution Book, this journal is ultimate daily planner that includes links to free videos and templates to enhance your planning experience.
Available on amazon in A5 dated paperbased format – Click here
Annual Operating Planning Journal
“Focused Execution: Annual Operating Plan: Planning for the next year and beyond” by Russell Cummings. Turn your strategy into action with the powerful AOP process. Our AOP Journal dovetails neatly with out 90 Day Planning Journal to help you move from Annual to 90 Day to daily plans. The book includes links to videos and templates to enhance your planning experience.
Available on amazon in A5 softcover format – Click here
AI Prompt Libraries
The biggest challenges our clients have with AI is what to ask it. To help Russ, created a series of AI prompt libraries that include a range of prompts to help you navigate through a variety of scenarios. Accelerate your results with our growing collection of AI Prompt Libraries – real words tested prompts for ChatGPT, Co-pilot and other AI Tools to streamline work, increase productivity and spark new ideas. Each book contains approximately 700 prompts tailored to your specific industry, role or situation. Simply “cut and paste”, tailor for your situation to get amazing result.
Available in e-book and softcover - Click Here
Ready to lift your performance?
Let's start 2026 with a rush — now it’s time to take things up a gear. Russ works with leaders like you who want to lift performance, strengthen teams and create lasting results.
Book a free 15-minute call with Russell and let’s talk about how we can help you get there.
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