‘The Premiership Quarter’
Delivering on the Promise
COME TO PLAY
“Being the CEO finds you wherever you are, but never leaves you where it found you”
Building and coaching the CEO leadership system that is equal to the CEO leadership challenge.
Yes, it is lonely, but there is no excuse for doing it alone, and as CEOs, we all need a ‘second set of eyes’.
Deliver on the promise
As CEOs, there are two fundamental questions we must always be able to answer, culturally and strategically:
Are we on track?
Is it the right track?
If we can confidently say yes to both questions, as CEO, we have belief, and therefore trust, in its many forms.
It is trust that we can ‘deliver on the promise’, the CEO's fundamental responsibility, drawing on the lessons and learnings of our ‘story so far’, but with the motivation and inspiration of our north star, a compelling ‘story not yet’.
This year marks designCEO’s decade of work with CEOs and their teams.
I still have the sticky note on my desk with the original vision, which reads:
“Build and coach the CEO leadership system that is equal to the CEO leadership challenge”.
In many ways, I was trying to build the leadership system I spent twenty-five years searching for as a CEO in high-performance sport, but never quite found.
I believe I have now found it.
The Premiership Quarter
“Of everything involved with building your team, two priorities are at the very top. First: knowing what you want. Second: superbly evaluating what you already have.”
Bill Belichick - Six-time Super Bowl winning Coach
At the core of the designCEO system I now coach, as Belichick explains, is understanding where you, your team, and organisation are; ensuring ambition and capability align, and ‘deliver on the promise’.
Over the past twelve months, I have turned the designCEO system back on the designCEO business, including being clear-eyed about the value we bring to CEOs and their teams.
I coach CEOs to give definition to the phase they are currently in:
Phase 1 - Create - ‘The right to play’
Phase 2 - Control - ‘In the game’
Phase 3 - Challenge - ‘The Premiership Quarter’
Phase 4 - Custodian - ‘A game never won’
designCEO is now entering the Premiership Quarter, a deep reflection on ‘what we want and what we have’.
I would like to share these reflections with you, drawing on the most profound lessons from a decade of coaching CEOs, having been invited into their inner lives, ranging from rapid scale-ups to established global brands, as well as the inner sanctums of their leadership teams, working together to identify and apply practical and evidence-based leadership solutions to the most vexing challenges that organisations face today.
Please join us for an exclusive evening of collaboration, discussion and a live demonstration of team-based learning in high-performing environments as we launch CEO Connect.
I am confident this is the very best work we have done.
Have your notebook ready, your pencil sharpened, and ‘come to play’ for an evening of curiosity, challenge and growth.
Event Details
Held at Eclat, the home of CEO Connect, in the members' lounge in Hawthorn East.
Afterwards, we'll settle in for a beer, wine, soft drink, and quality nibbles, and keep the conversation going.
Date: Thursday 12 November 2026
Time: 4.45pm arrival for a 5.00pm sharp start, finishing around 7.00pm
Venue: Eclat, Ground Floor, 4 Monteath Avenue, Hawthorn East (Miele building)
Know what you want and superbly evaluate what you already have.
No team or organisation can outperform its leadership.
I am inviting you as someone who would identify well with the ‘Premiership Quarter’ metaphor, perhaps as it relates to your business, but more importantly, you, the leader.
I often say that leadership, if we embrace all its challenges, will pick you up somewhere and leave you someplace different. This is what it means to be ‘In the Arena’.
CEOs are in the business of ambiguity. Yes, it is lonely, but there is no excuse for doing it alone, and as CEOs, we all need a ‘second set of eyes’.
I have identified you as a fellow ‘Premiership Quarter’ CEO, someone who fully embraces the CEO challenge and everything that it asks of you.
I’d like to invite you to be part of the designCEO ‘Premiership Quarter’, which includes the launch of CEO Connect, the next iteration of our work with CEOs (details below).
It is a launch of sorts. We are putting together two teams of CEOs who will ‘Come to play’, ready to share accountability for the practice of leadership, growth, problem-solving, and supporting each other as we find a way forward in ambiguity.
As the Australian icon Paul Kelly says, when describing a team, “We get to make the thing that none of us can make on our own”.
So it will be with CEO Connect.
It will build on this team-focused mindset, and therefore you will need to be a team player, otherwise, it is not for you.
It will ask you to ‘come to play’, the CEO Connect Trademark, embracing the legendary Leigh Matthews mantra: “Know your role, accept your role, and play your role.”
His three-time Premiership skipper, Michael Voss, represented this mindset as completely as any captain ever has. He will be a high-performance coach in CEO Connect and will present at the launch.
Also presenting will be Neil Craig, our second high-performance coach. No man has lived high-performance like Neil Craig across so many sports. He still coaches coaches at the Australian Institute of Sport, bringing insights from four decades of coaching in elite environments.
Vossy and Craigy will be the CEO Connect ‘High-Performance Coaches’, whilst I will be the ‘CEO Coach’. As you can see, this is a very different offering, and I am confident you will find it very compelling.
Yes, it is lonely, but there is no excuse for doing it alone.
About your CEO Coach, and your High-Performance Coaches
Cameron Schwab
Cameron Schwab spent 25 years as CEO of three AFL clubs — Richmond, Fremantle and Melbourne — appointed at Richmond at just 24, the youngest CEO in the history of the game, and the second longest-serving CEO of the modern era.
His leadership was forged in clubs at their lowest ebb, playing a central role in major transformations in an environment where results are publicly scrutinised weekly, and failure has nowhere to hide.
As the founder of designCEO, Cameron has spent the past decade invited into the inner lives of CEOs as their coach and mentor, working with senior leaders and their teams across many industry sectors. He holds an MBA and Master of Marketing from the Melbourne Business School, and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.
He explores the challenges he faced as a leader with openness and generosity, bringing not just theories but game-tested wisdom.
Michael Voss
Michael Voss is one of the greatest players in the history of Australian football. A five-time All-Australian and 1996 Brownlow Medallist, he played 289 games for the Brisbane Bears and Lions, and as the Lions’ longest-serving captain led the club to three consecutive premierships from 2001 to 2003 — one of the great captaincy achievements in Australian sport.
He is an inductee of the Australian Football Hall of Fame and an official Legend of the Brisbane Lions.
His coaching career has spanned both ends of the leadership experience — senior coach of Brisbane, assistant at Port Adelaide, and most recently senior coach of Carlton, where he ended the club’s decade-long finals drought in 2023. Few leaders have known the game’s highest peaks and hardest tests from both the playing field and the coach’s box, and Michael speaks about leadership, resilience and performance with rare authority.
Neil Craig
Neil Craig’s leadership education began in two of the most demanding environments in Australian sport. A brilliant SANFL player, he played 319 games for Norwood and Sturt — including premierships with Norwood in 1975 and 1978, the Sturt captaincy, and 11 State of Origin appearances for South Australia.
A sports scientist by training, who holds an Honorary Doctorate in Sports Science from Flinders University, he worked under legendary cycling coach Charlie Walsh with the Australian Cycling Team — an apprenticeship in elite performance that shaped his coaching philosophy, one he carried into eight seasons as senior coach of the Adelaide Crows and senior performance roles across the AFL.
Neil now mentors coaches at the Australian Institute of Sport, and has mentored world-class coaches including Ange Postecoglou (Tottenham Hotspur), Brian Goorjian (Australian Boomers), Eddie Jones (Japan Rugby), and Luke Beveridge (Western Bulldogs), bringing extraordinary insights from across elite sporting environments to our conversations about leadership at the highest level.
From leaders who have experienced our sessions
I’ve had the privilege of listening to Cameron talk about leadership and life twice now. I was so impressed the first time that I asked him to present to my Leadership Team.
You could have heard a pin drop on each occasion and everyone, sports enthusiast or not, got so much out of the session.
Cameron tells a powerful, entertaining and deeply personal story that resonates with everyone who has experienced change and challenge.
Joe Barr, Chief Executive Officer | John Holland
It was truly incredible to sit in the energy of a room of people completely captivated by your storytelling
Your vulnerability and the art you have mastered in weaving your personal story into some incredible lessons for leadership and life.
Thank you Cameron for a very moving and insightful session, very grateful.
Suzie McInerney | CEO | Six Degrees Executive
You will be learning from the very best I have seen.
Rodrigo Pizarro, Managing Director | L'Oreal Australia & New Zealand
My role as Principal of Caulfield Grammar School affords me the privilege of observing many outstanding leaders and speakers from a number of sectors. Cameron sits right in the top echelon.
I value authenticity and humility above all other leadership attributes and Cameron exudes both. He develops trust in his session quickly and shares raw and vulnerable stories of his own journey.
The human side of Cameron is there for all to see.
The care and attention to detail in all elements of the evening showed me that he genuinely cares for his participants.
Cameron has the academic background and lived experience adding integrity to his presentation. His delivery is in plain speak, he cuts to the chase and he has high expectations of his participants.
When you invest in this way, you want tangible learnings to use in your own context and the session delivers this in spades.”
Ashleigh Martin, Principal | Caulfield Grammar School
Cameron Schwab’s presentation was raw, passionate and insightful.
I was taken aback by his engaging style and willingness to share his own story in a way that was at times raw and vulnerable.
His insights into leadership and the challenges that go with it gave me a lot to think about as I brought his messages back to my own organisation and family.
I would recommend him in a heartbeat. In fact, I already have.
It was the best presentation I’ve listened to in the past 2-3 years.
Jim Mole, Chief Executive Officer | Ameropa Australia
You are an incredibly powerful storyteller and I found myself hanging off every word.
It inspired me to be a better storyteller. That said, there was always a link back to leadership which was very engaging and clever. As a sport lover I resonated with your approach to leadership.
I think the greatest compliment of the day I could provide it that I felt really challenged.
Challenged to think more clearly about who I am, my values and to think about how I lead now and how I want to lead in the future.
Andrew Hewison, Managing Director | Hewison Private Wealth