Never Too Far Gone

Hosted by Heather Cetrangolo

Business Management

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Oct 2025

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About the show

The word “leadership” has become tired. It’s been gentrified—repackaged as a job description, overselling its glamour whilst underselling its beauty. Real leaders don’t chase titles. They stay in the hard places, where there’s pushback and limited resources. They endure the subtle and overt ridicule that comes with believing things can be different. My podcast is for the weird and wonderful ones—the people who keep believing and keep building, even when the system seems designed to make them fail. If that’s you, let’s be friends. Because the biggest threat to people like us is isolation. The second is never having the skills involved in rebuilding from the ground up taught to us, studied or recognised. That’s why I created The Academy of Systemic Renewal : a place that champions the science of what we do. http://systemicrenewal.com

Listen to episodes

36 recent

October 6, 2025Episode 3622 min

Why You Probably Don't Need The Big Guy

Sometimes the smallest, messiest, most depleted organisation still has more life in it than you might think. In this episode Heather shares why she believes that external partners might offer quicker solutions, but it is almost always a false economy. She unpacks why she has chosen to focus her life on renewing long-established systems from within, assisting them to develop their own in-house solutions. Heather shares insights from Maria Mazzucato and Rosie Collington's research at UCL, into why an over-dependence on external advice creates a fear-driven economy in which actors lose the skill of learning.

October 6, 2025Episode 3511 min

Who Could Ever Learn to Love a Beast?

In this episode Heather explains what a 'Renewalist' is and why it is a different style of leadership to two more readily recognised categories, being management and advocacy. Heather explains from the example of Beauty and the Beast, how Renewalists are people who humanise systems by stepping into them fully. The episode ends with a time for reflection about whether you are "all in" to lead the community you stand within, or whether you feel one-toe-out.

October 6, 2025Episode 349 min

Planning for the Unplanned

In this quick Learning Byte, Heather shares about the importance of planning for the unplanned, or making space for what John Paul Lederach describes as "Serendipity." Heather shares an example of serendipitous discoveries that have been taking place for her at Holy Trinity in Port Melbourne. This episode finishes with an exercise in observing the unplanned experiences and opportunities that may be nudging you in an unexpected direction.

October 5, 2025Episode 337 min

How to Remember That You Are More Powerful Than You Think You Are

Every great leader experiences small, medium and big setbacks along the way. Knowing how to weather and metabolise these experiences can make the difference between going the distance, and not. This is the fourth of a series that draws from John Paul Lederach's book, The Moral Imagination (2005) in which he describes the place of patience, place, time and serendipity in the practice of peacebuilding. This episode shares three exercises for practicing Stillness by observing the place of the past, present and future at each juncture of our story.

January 5, 2025Episode 3225 min

Stillness as Place

This is the third of a four-part series called Stillness, a practical guide to creating pause in the midst of conflict. 'Stillness' is not a meditation or spiritual practice, but the art of suspending judgement to observe what is happening in a conflict, be it an inner-conflict, intergroup or intragroup storming. This series draws from John Paul Lederach's book, The Moral Imagination (2005) in which he describes the place of patience, place, time and serendipity in the practice of peacebuilding. This episode shares two exercises for practicing Stillness by observing place. These are designed to help us notice clues about the best levers for change in our environment.

September 30, 2024Episode 3135 min

Patience in the Startup Phase

This is the second of a four-part series called Stillness, a practical guide to creating pause in the midst of conflict. 'Stillness' is not a meditation or spiritual practice, but the art of suspending judgement to observe what is happening in a conflict, be it an inner-conflict, intergroup or intragroup storming. This series draws from John Paul Lederach's book, The Moral Imagination (2005) in which he describes the place of patience, place, time and serendipity in the practice of peacebuilding. This episode shares three types of patience involved in the startup phase of building new ideas, initiatives or organisations, which are: Patience with the 'yes' people; Patience with the 'no' people; and Patience with the 'yes but not yet' people.

September 21, 2024Episode 3034 min

Three Eyes of Three Storms

This is the first of a four-part series called Stillness, a practical guide to creating pause in the midst of conflict. 'Stillness' is not a meditation or spiritual practice, but the art of suspending judgement to observe what is happening in a conflict, be it an inner-conflict, intergroup or intragroup storming. This series draws from John Paul Lederach's book, The Moral Imagination (2005) in which he describes the place of patience, place, time and serendipity in the practice of peacebuilding. This episode introduces the concept of Stillness with three stories from Heather's recent experience of lobbying in Parliament.

August 9, 2024Episode 2932 min

Discerning Your Career Path, with Carl Stauffer

This is the final episode of an eight-part series called Policy Matters, journeying into how to be a successful policy entrepreneur, based on Michael Sheldrick's From Ideas to Impact. This episode explores how to discern your career journey, featuring Carl Stauffer, Senior Expert in Reconciliation at the United States Institute for Peace. Carl looks back over his 30 years of experience as a strategic leader in peace, justice and reconciliation initiatives and reflects on how he came to understand his vocation and discern his 'next steps' at each juncture. This episode frames our career journey in three areas:- 'The Stirring' or times when we feel restless in our current role; 'The Closed Door' which is about how to manage when opportunities we thought would open up to us suddenly do not; and 'The Title' which is about the various ways that people and life experiences communicate to us who we are and what unique gift we bring to the world.

August 2, 2024Episode 2845 min

When the War is Over (and When It's Not), with Carl Stauffer

This is the seventh of an eight-part series called Policy Matters, journeying into how to be a successful policy entrepreneur, based on Michael Sheldrick's From Ideas to Impact. The final two episodes of this series take a slightly different turn, as we meet with Carl Stauffer, Senior Expert in Reconciliation at the United States Institute for Peace. Carl is a strategic leader with over 30 years experience in peace, justice and reconciliation initiatives, including 16 years on the ground in South Africa. He has conducted training and consultation in 37 countries and 6 continents and comes with 11 years experience as Associate Professor of Justice and Peacebuilding at the Eastern Mennonite University. In this episode, Carl shares how he has witnessed radical attempts to cross dividing lines in our world today, referencing: The building of a parallel democratic process in Myanmar; The Comprehensive Agreement signed between the United States and Vietnam in 2023; and A legislated framework for transitional justice in Colombia.

July 25, 2024Episode 2737 min

Keeping the Agenda on the Table

This is the sixth of an eight-part series called Policy Matters, based on Michael Sheldrick's newly released book From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World. Michael Sheldrick is the Co-Founder of Global Citizen and has worked with a range of stakeholders to distribute over $40 billion worldwide in the past decade to end extreme poverty. In this episode, Heather explores the third of three phases of policy entrepreneurship, which is what Michael calls 'Implementation.' Once you have a policy change on the table and you've managed to get the right people to that table, how do you make sure it doesn't fall off the agenda?