My wife saves restaurants. Curated lists on Google Maps, organised by city, cross-referenced against reviews, sorted by cuisine. She has shortlisted restaurants in cities we haven't booked flights to (and even in countries we haven’t even discussed visiting!). I find this mildly unhinged, but she finds it completely normal.

The thing is, she's right. This is how most people now make decisions about services. A $22 lunch gets the same scrutiny as a $400 hotel room. Star ratings, Google reviews, testimonials, all these are not niche behaviours. They're the default consumer journey, and the family members making aged care decisions on behalf of their parents have grown up inside that system.

Last week I presented alongside Elena Muller in a session on planning for the future of home care. One of the main conversations that stayed with me afterwards was about consumer expectations — specifically, how poorly prepared many providers are for the scrutiny that's coming.

The aged care sector has star ratings via My Aged Care, but most providers haven't thought carefully about where else their reputation is being formed. Google Business profiles, testimonials that go beyond stock photos and generic praise, social proof that actually reflects the experience families encounter — these are the stakes in every other service industry, and it’s only natural that it is coming to aged care as well.

This is less a marketing problem and more a service experience problem. We're planning to explore it properly in the coming months — more on that soon.

Australia's aged care workforce is one of the most culturally diverse in any industry. Workers come from dozens of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. So do the residents and clients they serve. Most providers treat this as a fact of life — hire a diverse workforce, call an interpreter when needed, run an occasional awareness session, and hope that it all works.

Robert Bean has spent 45 years working in intercultural communication across government, community, and business. He's one of Australia's most experienced interculturalists, has designed and facilitated over 1,000 cultural intelligence workshops, and is now mentoring the next generation of practitioners — including the team at culturalQ, the intercultural training arm of MCCSA. He also happens to be my mentor on cultural intelligence, so this interview is quite special to me.

In this interview, Robert draws a sharp line between two concepts many blur together. Cultural intelligence (CQ) is the individual capability — your ability to recognise your own cultural lens and adapt when working across cultural boundaries. He describes it as an extension of emotional intelligence: "CQ is like EQ with a passport." Cultural competence is the organisational capability — whether your systems, leadership, and strategy actually support inclusive service delivery, or whether you're relying on individual goodwill to fill structural gaps. One without the other, he argues, is incomplete. And when both are absent, the consequences are concrete: high workforce churn, miscommunication, dysfunctional teams, hidden conflict, complaints, and litigation.

Robert frames CQ as being on par with workplace health and safety — something you manage continuously. The data backs him up: Diversity Council Australia found that inclusive teams are 10x times more likely to be highly effective, 9x times more likely to innovate, and 5x times more likely to provide excellent customer service.

👉 I interviewed Robert Bean on what cultural intelligence means in practice, where most providers are getting it wrong, and what it takes to build cultural competence as a strategic capability.

Wednesday 25 March, 12–1pm AEDT | Online | Free

This is your last chance to register. The session was rescheduled from earlier this month and takes place next week. The panel includes Amanda Birkin (CEO, St Annas Residential Care), Dr George Margelis (Chief Technology Advisor, Ageing Australia), Emmanoel Katris (CEO, Innovation Philosophy), and Peter Kokinakos — covering what you can actually do with AI in aged care operations right now, where the real risks sit, and what compliance actually requires.

No presentations and no fluff — send me your questions by replying to this email and our panel will answer them.

An essay in Aeon traces the question of where emotions come from — whether they originate in individuals or are shaped by culture. Drawing on historical thinkers and more recent research, it argues that emotions are both biologically grounded and culturally constructed. Boas, the father of cultural anthropology, demonstrated that habits, language, and social norms shape how emotions are felt and expressed — a finding that underpins much of what cultural intelligence training is built on. The essay's conclusion is practical: recognising our own cultural lenses allows for greater self-awareness, reduced bias, and more reflective participation in the communities we serve.

A Yale School of Public Health study published this month analysed over a decade of nationally representative data and found that nearly half of adults aged 65 and older showed measurable improvement in cognitive function, physical function, or both.

The gains weren't limited to a small group of exceptional individuals. What predicted improvement was positive age beliefs — how people thought about ageing itself. The researchers argue that when you look at individual trajectories rather than population averages, the story changes fundamentally. Averages show decline. Individual data shows that improvement in later life is common, and that beliefs are modifiable. Given this week's interview on cultural intelligence, the parallel is worth noting: the frames people carry — cultural or otherwise — shape outcomes more than most institutions account for.

Swedish researchers interviewed care professionals and found something counterintuitive: despite regular experiences of technology breaking down, staff maintained persistent optimism about digital tools in aged care. The researchers coined two concepts to explain this.

"Tech love goggles" describes the tendency to blame external factors when technology fails — the wifi, the user, the implementation — rather than the technology itself.

"The magic leap" captures a future-oriented logic where current problems are expected to dissolve over time, without specific evidence for why. The paper, published in Sociology of Health & Illness this month, argues that this optimism can obscure the immediate needs of both workers and residents. Worth reading alongside any AI adoption discussion, as a reminder that honest evaluation matters more than enthusiasm.

If you've ever needed to turn a policy document, meeting transcript, or scope of work into a presentation, this workflow gets you from raw material to finished slides in under fifteen minutes.

What you need: A Claude account (paid) and a free Gamma account.

Step by step:

Tip: In the preview step, select "Preserve" and "Concise" to get the cleanest output. You can always expand individual slides afterwards.

ARIIA's Partnership Program matches aged care providers with technology innovators and researchers for co-design, piloting, and implementation projects. They actively facilitate introductions and are currently listing several open opportunities.

Three examples currently on their noticeboard:

👉 If any of these are relevant, or if you want to browse what's available, visit the ARIIA Partnership Opportunities page. Providers and technology partners can both list and respond to opportunities.

Remember Press helps people turn rough notes, scattered memories, and half-finished drafts into published books. They've been doing it hands-on for years — working closely with people through the whole process, from first conversation to finished copy.

They're now in the final stages of building an app that guides people from first idea to finished memoir: structured prompts, expert guidance, a clear path through. No finished manuscript required. Rough ideas, old journals, fragments — that's what it's designed for.

They're looking for three beta testers before launch. It's free, and your feedback will directly shape the final product.

👉 If you've been sitting on a story you keep meaning to write down, get in touch with Christine Green by [email]

Novabridge, an Australian ServiceNow Elite partner with existing work in health and aged care, is looking for two or three providers to help shape a platform they're developing for the sector.

The problem they're starting from is familiar: staff credentials tracked in spreadsheets, complaints logged in systems disconnected from care records, compliance reporting assembled manually every time an auditor arrives. What they're exploring is whether a single hosted platform (purpose-configured for aged care, no enterprise IT team required) can bring those workflows together for providers operating five homes or more.

This is a co-design arrangement. Providers contribute operational knowledge and help shape what gets built; in return they get early access and direct input into the product's direction. (If the conversation moves toward a commercial arrangement down the track, Novabridge will name a price range; no obligation assumed.)

If you know ServiceNow from a previous life in health systems or government, this is that, built for aged care.

👉 If this is relevant to where your organisation is headed, contact Simon Mackey by [email].

Each week, I review developments in ageing and aged care and what they mean in practice. If this was useful, forward it to someone in the sector who'd appreciate it.

George Gouzounis