Welcome to Alicia McKay’s Current Fad
Home of Wednesday Wisdom, McKayPedia, and deep-dive essays on strategy, leadership, politics, power, and culture.
I write about the systems we live in and the stories we tell: politics, power, technology, culture, leadership, and change. Enjoy a buffet of lenses - structural, professional, personal, and social - to expand and clarify your thinking.
Who it’s for
Current Fad is for high-impact professionals and strategic thinkers who want to understand and influence the world around them.
If you’re flooded with information but starving for insight, you don’t want more content. You want more clarity: intelligent, actionable commentary that helps you make sense and take action.
Making sense
You want someone to do the reading, research and thinking. To cut through the shit and tell you what’s really happening with AI, how the attention economy works, or why women are so bloody exhausted. You’ll get the language, stats and framing to have higher quality conversations at work and over dinner.
Taking action
Once you have the talking points, you need the action items: advice, frameworks and tools to put your thinking to work. I bring together deep research, professional experience, and actionable frameworks to give you things to read AND things to use.
For the strategic thinkers
My work is trusted by over 10,000 leaders, executives, policymakers and strategic thinkers.
Advisors and creatives who care about connecting the dots between the personal, professional, and political.
Leaders and decision-makers who want to sharpen their perspective on strategy, systems, and power.
Clients and partners who work with me on strategy, change, or leadership - this is the lab where those ideas stretch into bigger conversations.
I’ve been publishing weekly articles since 2018, on my blog or my Wednesday Wisdom newsletter. There are over 300 free articles on strategy, change, communication, leadership and personal development available on my website as well as many guides, downloads, videos, and resources.
Who I am
I’m an international keynote speaker, and public sector strategist. I’ve spent 15 years helping governments, Councils, and organisations make better decisions.
I speak across Australia, New Zealand and the US, helping leaders make decisions that shape the future. In 2025, I was named one of LGIU’s Top 25 Global Thinkers in Local Government.
I’ve worked with over 120 organisations across New Zealand and Australia, trained thousands of leaders, and written three books on strategy, change, and leadership. You might know me from the podcasts I’ve hosted (What’s On Your Mind? or The Alicia McKay Show) or a conference you’ve been to.
I design and deliver world-class development for public sector leaders, advise governments at all levels and work with charities, community organisations, and corporates. An entrepreneur at heart, I’ve launched multiple businesses, built an academy of self-led courses, and ran an executive education programme for 500+ global leaders.
I’ve also spent my life straddling worlds: from foster care to boardrooms, teen motherhood to keynote stages. That bridge-building powers my work, my writing, and my passion for translating complexity into action.
If you want a further feel for my background and what I’m about, here’s a profile the NZ Herald did on me.
NZ Herald wrote a thing about me
It’s a very strange feeling to have bits of your background offered up to the public for their thoughts, but that happened to me this Sunday.
Start here
Ready to get stuck in? Here’s a few pieces from across different themes and topics to get you started.
Technology
Scrolling is the new smoking
Big Tech stole Big Tobacco’s playbook. You’re holding the vape.What the AI bros won’t tell you
Better conversations for boring conferences.
The human hands behind AI’s magic
AI content is a less nuanced version of our existing bullshit, which is why the 'future' looks a lot like the present.
Systems and power
Critical thinking is not enough. It’s time you learned about power
Numbers and words are cool, but we have calculators and ChatGPT. What you need is power literacy.
For when it feels like you can’t change anything
Everything is connected. Once you see it, you can shift it.
7 reasons why being polite/nice is a terrible idea, including inequality, inauthenticity and... being boring.
Personal essays
You can’t read the label from inside the jar
Mental health, funny walking-sticks, and jars with fading labels.
Hearing the whispers before they become screams
The call is coming from inside the house
Always moving, never arriving
Society and culture
Why women are so bloody exhausted right now
Hint: it's patriarchy. Men - read this to find out why the vaccuum cleaner is always out.
Teenage sex, child sexual abuse, and a very queasy entertainment genre.
Creative value under extractive capitalism + an urgent plea to reclaim sovereignty over your attention.
Public sector
Local government is back in the firing line
They don't want reform, they want rates-capping. This is a bad idea, but it will play well in the 2026 election.
The difference between public and private value
Your retort to "you'd never run a business like this!". Taking the boot out of the public sector volume 2.
Personal development
You’ve made more progress than you realise
If you're a frustrated high-achiever, you might not appreciate your achievements. This is your reminder.
There’s no answer. No done. No end of the road where everything falls into place. Why would you want that? To sit still, and change nothing until you die?
You have infinite capacity for transformation
New beginnings are wasted on young people.
