Never Outdated

Never Outdated helps business and technology leaders stay ahead in a world of constant change. Hosted by Amit Singh, strategic advisor, speaker, and founder of evince Consulting & the AI Leadership Academy, this podcast delivers insights on strategy, transformation, and leadership. Hear expert perspectives, real-world case studies, and conversations with industry leaders to help you make smarter decisions, drive change with confidence, and future-proof your career and business.

Never Outdated is a business podcast hosted by Amit Singh, with 22 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Amit Singh hosts Never Outdated, a business show with 22 episodes published.

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  Episode #19

  Leadership Beyond Firefighting - with Lalitha Koya

  Sep 28, 202642 min

  Lalitha Koya has been a CFA volunteer firefighter for more than a decade. Ask him about it and he'll tell you about changing smoke alarm batteries for elderly residents, so nobody ends up falling off a ladder. That's the lesson he's carried into running technology. Prevention is better than a cure. Stay calm, follow the process, and know what you're actually trying to protect. Lalitha was CIO at the City of Darebin for four years, and at Moorabool Shire Council for four years before that. So we got into what the unglamorous work looks like in a council IT function, and why it matters even more now that AI has landed on everyone's desk. We cover: How becoming a dad got him into the CFA, and why his local brigade in Bacchus Marsh became a second family. Firefighting mode at work: the panic kicks in, and that's when the bad decisions get made. Getting the house in order. Data, cyber hygiene, architecture. The shiny big object gets the limelight and the basics get taken for granted. Moving from professional services into local government, where it's the public's money, so every investment has to stand up to scrutiny. What surprised him most about the public sector: how openly people share what worked and what didn't. A council runs close to 100 different services. Technology's job is to give the people delivering them more time to do it. The AI stocktake: around 500 staff already using it before there was any policy. Block it, and people will figure out a way. Awareness from the ground up to the executive, and guardrails as the smoke alarm you want working before the fire. Who should own AI. He's seen plenty of roles created to hold a problem (chief innovation officer, anyone?), and he'd put the accountability with the head of the organisation. Friction rather than blocker, and why security and data maturity have to sit underneath the transformation from the start, not get bolted on halfway. About Lalitha Koya Lalitha Koya was Chief Information Officer at the City of Darebin until July 2026, and before that CIO at Moorabool Shire Council. Almost eight years running council technology functions, after more than a decade in professional services IT at William Buck, BDO and Nexia. He chaired the Victorian Local Government CIO Forum for six years, so he has heard what every council CIO in the state was dealing with, not just his own two. Outside work he has been a CFA volunteer firefighter since 2012. He's proof that the best firefighting is the fire you never have to fight. Connect with Lalitha: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalithakoya/ Connect with Amit: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/au-amitsingh/ Website: https://amits.com.au Work with Amit: If you're a senior leader navigating AI decisions and want a thinking partner on strategy, governance, or where to focus first - that's what we do at evince Consulting. evince Consulting: https://evince.ai Join the AI Leadership Academy: Want to go deeper on AI strategy, leadership, and decision-making? Join the AI Leadership Academy on Skool - a free community for business leaders who want to stay sharp in an AI-driven world. Includes the AI Strategy Playbook, mini-course, webinar recordings, and weekly discussions. Join free: https://www.skool.com/aileaders Be a guest on Never Outdated: Got a story worth sharing? We're always looking for leaders with real experience and sharp perspectives. Register your interest to be a guest. Apply here: https://amits.com.au/contact Subscribe to Never Outdated: Never Outdated is where business and technology leaders go to stay ahead. Subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and sign up to the newsletter for a monthly dose of practical insights on AI, leadership, and transformation. Newsletter: https://evince.ai/resources/newsletter Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/never-outdated/id1799636085 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ybHtbXBqoWikIR93s4iWM

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  Never Outdated

  YOU wrote the plan. Now YOU'RE the problem.

  Aug 9, 202619 min

  Your AI plan will be out of date well before you're even close to delivering half of it. Most people do get that. But you're the one who told everyone the plan and now you're kind of stuck with it. Then six months later there's a better way, and you're the one who has to raise it. Twenty years ago this barely came up. A technology change started with a bill of materials. You ordered the hardware, racked and stacked it, and lived with it for three years, because that's what it cost and that's how long it lasted. Cloud changed the money but not really the model. Now AI moves monthly, and the way we commit to it hasn't moved at all. That gap has to land somewhere, and mostly it falls on whoever took the reins and made the plan. In this episode my AI executive assistant, Veda , and I go through what to do about it. There's one thing you must NOT do, and three practical steps to get you out of it. None of it works if nobody ever wrote the purpose down, though, and plenty of organisations never did. We get into that too. We cover: Why naming the approach is the commitment that costs you the most Hardware, then cloud, then AI. Only one of the three sped up Split the plan in two, so the purpose and the approach stop carrying equal weight Book the review date on day one. You only get to set that up once What a one-sentence purpose actually sounds like, and who owns it What it costs you when nobody ever wrote the purpose down Connect with Amit LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/au-amitsingh Website: amits.com.au Work with Amit If you're a senior leader navigating AI decisions and want a thinking partner on strategy, governance, or where to focus first, that's what we do at evince Consulting. evince Consulting: evince.ai Join the AI Leadership Academy Want to go deeper on AI strategy, leadership, and decision-making? Join the AI Leadership Academy on Skool, a free community for business leaders who want to stay sharp in an AI-driven world. Includes the AI Strategy Playbook, mini-course, webinar recordings, and weekly discussions. Join free: skool.com/aileaders ️ Be a guest on Never Outdated Got a story worth sharing? We're always looking for leaders with real experience and sharp perspectives. Register your interest to be a guest. Apply here: amits.com.au/contact Subscribe to Never Outdated Never Outdated is where business and technology leaders go to stay ahead. Subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and sign up to the newsletter for a monthly dose of practical insights on AI, leadership, and transformation. Subscribe here: amits.com.au/neveroutdated

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  Episode #17

  Talented but Invisible - with Russ Murphy

  Jul 27, 202645 min

  Russ Murphy spent over a decade in senior exec roles across NSW government, building platforms and services used by millions - including the payments platform processing billions of dollars a year. Then his role was carved up in the third restructure in three years, and a payments crisis put his team in the Sydney Morning Herald for weeks. He turned down the role on offer and took the redundancy - a decision he'd been circling long before any of it hit the papers. He says the moment he made the call, it felt like a gorilla climbed off his back. This conversation is about what's on the other side of that decision - and why the capability leaders go looking for is usually already there, waiting to be released. We cover: The gorilla-off-the-back moment: three restructures in three years, a payments crisis in the headlines, and why the decision to leave had nothing to do with either The stretch zone vs the terror zone - and reframing challenges as catalysts for growth instead of threats "Natural born coward": why calculated risk-taking is a learned skill, from packing up for Los Angeles in his twenties to walking away from a stable government career What people outside government don't get about how decisions are made - popularity contests, election cycles, and why all that bureaucracy exists Territorial "little kingdoms" in big organisations, and why changing what people care about beats changing what they do Coaching leaders through change vs running a transformation program - working down through behaviour and emotions to the beliefs underneath Why leaders should treat recovery like professional athletes do, and the "anti-retreat" Russ runs to reset burnt-out leaders About Russ Murphy Russ Murphy spent over a decade in senior executive roles in NSW government, including at Service NSW, where he ran digital platforms used by millions of Australians. His approach to leadership was shaped by two years living in Los Angeles, training with Gallup and learning from thought leaders like Patrick Lencioni and Marcus Buckingham. He now runs Lightning and Thunder, an executive coaching practice built on one idea: lightning doesn't create energy, it releases what was already charged. Alongside 1:1 coaching he hosts the Executive Reset, an immersive "anti-retreat" in the Northern Rivers for leaders who want to reset how they operate rather than escape it. He's proof that you don't have to be fearless to bet on yourself - taking calculated risks is a skill you can learn. Connect with Russ: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/russell-murphy-3912046/ Website: lightningandthunder.com.au Connect with Amit: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/au-amitsingh Website: amits.com.au Work with Amit: If you're a senior leader navigating AI decisions and want a thinking partner on strategy, governance, or where to focus first - that's what we do at evince Consulting. evince Consulting: evince.ai Join the AI Leadership Academy: Want to go deeper on AI strategy, leadership, and decision-making? Join the AI Leadership Academy on Skool - a free community for business leaders who want to stay sharp in an AI-driven world. Includes the AI Strategy Playbook, mini-course, webinar recordings, and weekly discussions. Join free: skool.com/aileaders Be a guest on Never Outdated: Got a story worth sharing? We're always looking for leaders with real experience and sharp perspectives. Register your interest to be a guest. Apply here: amits.com.au/contact Subscribe to Never Outdated: Never Outdated is where business and technology leaders go to stay ahead. Subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and sign up to the newsletter for a monthly dose of practical insights on AI, leadership, and transformation. Newsletter: evince.ai/resources/newsletter Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/never-outdated/id1799636085 Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/4ybHtbXBqoWikIR93s4iWM

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  Never Outdated

  You feel productive, and you're getting weaker.

  Jun 30, 202611 min

  Your team has never produced better-looking work. Sharper decks, faster analysis, polished answers in seconds. Here's the uncomfortable part: your organisation could be getting weaker by the day, and nobody would notice. The outputs keep landing, the work looks better than ever, and the erosion underneath stays invisible right up until the moment it matters. I was the kid who never showed his working at school. I could see the answer, so the steps felt like busywork. It took me twenty years to realise my teachers were right, and that the same lesson is about to cost a lot of organisations far more than it ever cost me. In this episode, my AI executive assistant Veda and I get into what AI strips out of your business every time it hands you the answer without the working: the judgment, the capability, the very human part of how value actually gets created. You feel productive, and you're getting weaker. We get into why an answer being correct isn't the same as it being right, why "dependency dressed up as capability" is the trap most leaders are walking straight into, and the one question to ask before you trust any AI output on a decision that matters. We cover: Why a polished answer can hide the fact your team learned nothing Correct vs right, and why only a human catches the gap Why the working, not the output, is the asset that actually compounds "Outsource the task, never the thinking", and where to draw the line The one test for any AI output on a high-stakes call This is the first episode of my new AI Duet series, just me and Veda , my AI Executive Assistant, in conversation. I'd genuinely love your feedback on it. 🤝 Connect with Amit LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/au-amitsingh Website: amits.com.au 💼 Work with Amit If you're a senior leader navigating AI decisions and want a thinking partner on strategy, governance, or where to focus first, that's what we do at evince Consulting. evince Consulting: evince.ai 🔥 Join the AI Leadership Academy Want to go deeper on AI strategy, leadership, and decision-making? Join the AI Leadership Academy on Skool, a free community for business leaders who want to stay sharp in an AI-driven world. Includes the AI Strategy Playbook, mini-course, webinar recordings, and weekly discussions. Join free: skool.com/aileaders 🎙️ Be a guest on Never Outdated Got a story worth sharing? We're always looking for leaders with real experience and sharp perspectives. Register your interest to be a guest. Apply here: amits.com.au/contact 🙋 Subscribe to Never Outdated Never Outdated is where business and technology leaders go to stay ahead. Subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and sign up to the newsletter for a monthly dose of practical insights on AI, leadership, and transformation. Subscribe here: amits.com.au/neveroutdated

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  Episode #16

  From Alta Vista to Agentic AI - with Rita Arrigo

  Jun 1, 202636 minS2

  <p>In 1995, Rita Arrigo opened one of Australia's first internet cafes. </p><p>There was no Google, and Netscape didn't even exist yet - just a coffee to drink while the page slowly built up on the screen. 30 years on, those same PCs sit in a glass case at the National Communications Museum, and Rita's on TED stages talking about responsible AI. </p><p>This conversation is about the arc between those two points, and what 30 years of tech adoption taught her about doing AI well.</p><p><br></p><p>We cover:</p>What a 1995 internet cafe can teach...

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