The Back Story – Inside The Work – Georgia O’Sullivan

Georgia O'Sullivan

We sat down with Georgia O'Sullivan, an alumni of our Australian team, who joined ADAPTOVATE in May 2024. We got an inside look at how execution breaks down in organisations—and what it actually takes to close the gap between strategy and reality.

Image : Georgia O'Sullivan (second from left) is joined with some of her Australian team members at ADAPTOVATE.

What types of problems do you usually get brought in to help with?

I help organisations when there are too many competing priorities, decisions take too long, and teams aren't clear on what really matters. Leaders often have a clear ambition, but the people doing the work aren’t clear on what they do day-to-day to enable that.

My role is to help clarify the core problem, establish what needs to happen first, what can wait, and what should stop entirely. I make sure ownership of outcomes is clear, decision-making processes are straightforward, and delivery has enough structure for work to actually progress.

Ultimately, I help close the gap between what leaders say matters and what the organisation actually spends time on. The goal is to redirect effort towards the actual problem, not just react to symptoms.

What have you changed your mind about during your time at ADAPTOVATE?

Earlier in my time at ADAPTOVATE, I believed that once leaders were aligned and priorities were clear, execution would follow.

I've changed my view and recognise that I underestimated how much day-to-day behaviour determines whether a strategy actually lands.

I've seen leadership teams articulate clearly defined priorities, structured roadmaps, and alignment, yet progress stalled. What I noticed was the gap between what was stated and what behaviour was actually reinforced.

Time was still spent on legacy work, decisions defaulted to old trade-offs and incentives continued to reward the previous model.

What I've learned is that if leadership time, decision rights and incentives don’t reinforce what's been agreed, the system reverts to old patterns. I now spend as much time assessing whether a strategy will hold in practice, including how time is spent, how decisions are made and what gets rewarded, as I do refining the strategy itself. That is often the difference between agreement and execution.

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“What I've learned is that if leadership time, decision rights and incentives don’t reinforce what's been agreed, the system reverts to old patterns”

When a client or stakeholder strongly disagrees with you, how do you usually handle it?

Every client scenario has nuance, and what worked before won't always translate directly. The client understands their context better than I do; I bring patterns from other organisations that may or may not fit.

When disagreement arises, I ask questions. Pushback is often a signal that there’s organisational context I’m missing, or a different view of risk. My approach is to be transparent about what I've seen work elsewhere, clear about what might not transfer, and open about the assumptions I'm making.

If I believe a course of action materially increases delivery risk, cost, or organisational friction, I name it directly. Part of my responsibility is to surface risks that are uncomfortable to raise but important to understand. This ensures the risk is visible and acknowledged, even if we ultimately proceed differently.

The goal is to work through the problem together, challenge each other’s thinking, and ultimately land on something that actually works.

What separates a good outcome from a great one in the type of work you do?

A good outcome solves the immediate problem. A great one leaves the team equipped to solve similar problems themselves next time.

The work I'm most proud of is where the solution sticks after we step away. That means not just fixing what's in front of us, but improving how the team works: how they make decisions, take ownership, and move work forward. When I catch up with people I've worked with and hear that the materials are still in use, or that the way they make decisions has shifted, that's the clearest signal something real changed.

The real test is what happens after we leave. If the team keeps using the approach, adapts it, and applies it to new challenges with confidence, that’s a great outcome.

What do you pay close attention to in your work?

I pay close attention to what gets avoided in early conversations. If there are clear tensions such as competing commitments, resource constraints, or dependencies that haven't been worked through, those will surface later when they're harder to resolve.

I also watch whether the people who will actually do the work had a genuine hand in shaping the approach. If a plan is built without them, it often falls apart once it meets day-to-day reality. When the people closest to the work are involved early, you catch practical issues sooner, the plan is simpler, and ownership is clearer.

In practice, the two tend to show up together, and the gap between a plan that looks right and one that actually holds tends to start there.