Dermot Crowley author photo
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Dermot Crowley

Dermot Crowley is a Sydney-based productivity author, speaker, and founder of Adapt Productivity whose work focuses on personal effectiveness, team collaboration, and leadership in modern workplaces. His notable books include Smart Work, Smart Teams, Urgent!, and Lead Smart, reflecting more than 25 years of experience helping professionals work more effectively.

Biography & Author's Journey

Dermot Crowley built his career through practice rather than a conventional academic route. Born in Dublin, he worked in Ireland in retail and in a wine business before moving into time-management training, an experience that gave him an early view of both effective management and workplace friction. He moved from Ireland to Sydney in 1993, and his exposure to corporate clients during the shift from paper diaries to digital tools became the central turning point in his professional life. After being made redundant, he founded Adapt Productivity in Sydney in 2002, turning a personal fascination with organisation, email and workflow into a specialist business focused on helping knowledge workers and leaders cope with the pressures of modern work. ((https://mentorlist.com/dermot-crowley-smart-work-adaptproductivity/))

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Quotes

quote
I don’t believe that you need to be disciplined to adopt a new productivity system
-The difference between disciplined and committed
quote
Changing the culture of your meetings does not need a major change initiative
-The five-finger meeting evaluation
quote
If you become a victim to your organisation’s poor productivity culture, you will just end up hating your job
-Find a way to love your work and your job
quote
Every task, simple or complex, has three stages – Deadline, Planning and Execution
-Getting traction with complex tasks
quote
Multitasking is no guarantee of improved productivity
-So you think you can multitask?
quote
How we organise ourselves, and how we work together needs to become an ongoing conversation
-Productivity is very much a leadership issue
quote
Productivity needs to be led from the top, by the leadership team, senior partners and key influencers like HR and Learning & Development
-Leading productivity

Community Voices

"Dermot Crowley is one of Australia's leading thought leaders on personal and team productivity"

CEOWORLD magazine

"Dermot Crowley is Australia’s thought leader on this extremely important subject—working smarter"

John Karagounis

"Dermot Crowley is the founder of Adapt Productivity and is a well-known thought leader on Personal Productivity"

The Breakthrough Co

"Dermot Crowley is one of Australia’s leading productivity thought leaders"

Mortgage Professional Australia

"Dermot Crowley again demonstrates his deep understanding of how productivity can impact performance"

Susan Ferrier

"Dermot Crowley is a productivity thought leader, author, speaker and trainer"

Openforum

"Dermot Crowley is one of Australia’s leading productivity thought leaders, director of Adapt Productivity, and author of Urgent!, Smart Work and Smart Teams"

Leaderonomics

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