Leadership philosophy

- May 2022

The Dalai Lama once said ‘If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.’ I love that quote and it aligns with our leadership philosophy at Parbery to be the authentic alternative.

Nick Chapman and I were the original Parbery Partners before Kim Moeller joined us in 2020. Nic Kelly made us a quartet when he became a Parbery Partner in September 2021. Since we started on this journey, we’ve been privileged to lead the Parbery team, growing and learning together along the way.  

With rapid growth and new Partners on board, we knew it was important to have a shared vision of the future, and a shared commitment in the behaviours we seek to model and uphold. So we sat down together and developed a Partner leadership philosophy statement to guide, ground and communicate our promise to the organisation.

It is: ‘The Authentic Alternative – Our commitment to you and each other and the behaviours we will model and uphold.’

Our full Partner leadership philosophy

The philosophy sits alongside our vision and mission and underpins our strategic and business planning activities. It is a way of demonstrating our shared values, our expectations of each other, what the team can expect of us and what we expect of the team. 

One of the key tenants of our philosophy is that we value diversity in all forms, dimensions and intersections.  

The four Partners each bring vastly different professional and life experiences, skillsets and personalities to the role. We firmly believe that diversity brings strength, both within the leadership team and across the whole business.  

While we are all very different, we back each other and are all moving in the same direction.

‘One for all, all for one’ is a traditional motto of Switzerland and was made famous in literature as the motto of The Three Musketeers. We’ve adopted it as a statement of how we trust and support each other (although with less flourishing of swords than The Three Musketeers and their eventual fourth member – much like us!).  

Our leadership philosophy also talks about how we respect and support each other and the ways we connect – with each other, our staff, clients, and the community. That connectivity is at the heart of our values and the way we do business. 

We also believe that we can never stand still.  

Our philosophy is explicit about how we seek to grow in a scalable and sustainable way with innovation a core principle of how we will build a business that is different by design.  

Having agreed and committed to this leadership philosophy, the four Partners know this is a starting point, not a destination. We need to turn the words into action every single day. So, we also make the commitment to continually reflect and focus on our leadership, how we work together as Partners in the firm and how we serve our staff, clients and community.  

Our full Partner leadership philosophy

Kylie Burnett is Managing Partner at Parbery. Authentic leadership is a passion for Kylie.