Accounting For Culture with Di Marchment

About this episode

Di Marchment was told by one of her first employers that she’d never make it. In 2023 Di is celebrating 30 years as owner of Dianne Marchment & Associates, an accounting firm based in country Victoria.

Not only has Di made it in the industry, but she has also excelled. It’s this determination that’s driven her success and helped develop skills and leadership for herself and her staff.

Di is a life-long learner and first came to be associated with Leading Teams in the early 2000s through the Wimmera Development Association which she was on the board of. Leading Teams and WDA have collaborated for almost 15 years now on bringing to life the Leadership Wimmera program where participants learn life and leadership skills. This program has been completed by more than 600 people across the Wimmera Southern Mallee Region & Di’s contribution to that program and the region at large is significant.

In this episode of Leading Conversations, Di’s in conversation with her long-time Leading Teams Facilitator, Jesse McLean about the road to success, and the cultural concerns they worked on together, some of which are quite specific to a small business, in a small town.

Key Learnings from Accounting for Culture episode:

• Running a business in a small country town adds an extra layer of complexity for leaders.
• The value of investing in building a trademark and strong professional relationships, Di didn’t know about the issues in her team until they started to work on them. Sometimes people can’t share with leaders their concerns until given a space to do so.
• The use of humour is a common way of avoiding having genuine conversations about performance in teams, it is easier to make a joke of something than to provide feedback if it is not a skill that you regularly practice.
• A weekly check-in that is both personal & business, can create that space for the team to share and be vulnerable. It might be awkward at first but once it becomes a consistent habit it can be a powerful way to re-enforce the culture of a team. The example Di used was they run a ‘compliment a team member’ part of the check in, to reward against their team trademark.