Don Anura De Alwis has spent over three and a half decades in the engine rooms of global enterprise. Having served as CEO, CTO, and CIO across diverse regions, including the Netherlands, Norway, Ireland, and the United States, Don’s approach to leadership was forged in high-stakes environments. His transition to public moderation began in the lecture theatres of international MBA programmes and culminated in Talk the Vox, a hard-talk style management show he founded to connect boardroom disruptors with emerging talent.
Now based in Australia as Fortude’s Chief Digital Advisory & Growth Officer, Don views executive dialogue not as a presentation of knowledge, but as a mechanical system of inputs and outputs where peer benchmarking is a strategic necessity.
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Why must a moderator come from the C-Suite to interview the C-Suite?
Don Anura De Alwis explains why pre-written scripts fail when trying to uncover how top-notch executives handle strategic failures.
“My formal entry point into large-scale executive public moderation happened when I launched a self-funded management show called Talk the Vox. The format brought two board members onto a stage without giving them a heads-up about the questions. That experience completely shaped my philosophy: you cannot effectively moderate a C-level executive without being in the C-suite yourself. To ask a question like, ‘How did you fail this instance, and why did you reflect?’ you need to have the perspective. It is not a written question on a piece of paper. You have to actively absorb the real-time knowledge being poured out, process it, and inject it back into the loop to enrich the turn of the conversation.”
How does a roundtable mirror the concept of a corporate multiplier?
Reflecting on a recent Melbourne event, Don Anura De Alwis contrasts intimate roundtables with traditional, clinical panel formats.
“In a roundtable, the biggest difference is that you do not have an audience, because the audience and the speakers are the same. For the Melbourne roundtable, which focused on the complexities of the US sales tax nexus, I deep-dived into the subject matter beforehand to understand the geographic nuances. Prepping your speakers with a comprehensive summary table ensures the room enters the space aligned. I believe in the concept of diminishers and multipliers. If you are a multiplier, you talk to one person, that person talks to another ten people, and your idea multiplies. In these intimate forums, you get the knowledge back a hundred times over.”
How do you guide turbulent discussions without breaking psychological safety?
Don Anura De Alwis shares his tactical manual for managing boardroom personalities, quiet leaders, and highly charged industry critiques.
“The most critical step happens before the first question is asked. I love to have a short chat with the team prior to the session because you need to understand your audience and read the room. You find out who is timid, who is open, and who is too talkative. To draw out quieter leaders, I focus heavily on eye contact and physical proximity rather than throwing a cold question.
When a discussion veers into highly charged territory, my absolute go-to technique is a sharp sense of humour. You can bring a joke to change the topic without hurting people. If a topic becomes uncontrollable, you must jump in like a captain and say, ‘Hi guys, we have a little bit of turbulence, please put your seat belts back on.’ You ground the data and change the topic so no one walks away defensive.”
How should leaders handle the corporate ego surrounding hyper-trending AI?
Addressing a common executive blind spot, Don Anura De Alwis reveals how to gently correct misunderstandings about true artificial intelligence.
“The most surprising insight is that, most of the time, senior executives don’t fully know what they are talking about when it comes to hyper-trending technologies. I will go to a session and hear someone talk about how agentic AI can help a business, and when I ask for their real use case, I realise the person is actually talking about basic process automation, not true artificial intelligence.
Because I deal with the CIO and advisory community, you cannot flatly correct them to their face due to the corporate ego. They do not want to be told they are wrong in front of their peers. My approach is never to enter with a correction mindset. Instead, you enter in a partnership mode. Reframe it by saying: ‘What you said is incredibly valuable, but how do we implement this successfully when looking at how other organisations have done it?’ That is how you bypass the ego and get the message across.”
What question are global operations leaders failing to ask each other?
In a final call to action, Don Anura De Alwis challenges executives to move past theoretical plans and focus on absolute return on equity.
“The primary topic that executives should be discussing more openly right now is return on investment. Leaders must look closely at the actual return on equity for everything they do and the massive capital they are spending on technology. The single question that leaders don’t ask each other often enough in these spaces is: ‘What was the specific use case in your organisation that successfully proved the validity of what you just stated?’ People love to talk about what could be done on a theoretical scale. The missed opportunity is failing to challenge each other to show the concrete, proven use case that proves the theory works in reality.”
Join the Conversation: The Ortus Club’s Executive Network
Across the insights of Don Anura De Alwis on the C-suite peer rule, the corporate multiplier effect, and bypassing the corporate AI ego, one pattern is clear: these operational challenges aren’t solved in isolation. They require a peer-level perspective and the kind of high-trust dialogue that transcends theoretical slides.
His vision of the “Moderator as Multiplier” reflects a broader reality: today’s digital advisory and growth officers cannot rely on internal roadmaps alone to validate massive technological spending. The most effective executives, especially those managing global transformation frameworks, actively seek out peer dialogue as a strategic necessity to ground the data and test real-world outcomes.
At The Ortus Club, we host curated executive roundtables that bring together senior leaders facing these exact challenges. Step away from the script and engage in the kind of open, high-value conversations that protect your credibility and challenge the boundaries of industry innovation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the difference between an Executive Multiplier and a Diminisher?
A: An executive multiplier is a leader who leverages the intelligence and capability of the people around them, causing insights to expand exponentially. A diminisher relies strictly on top-down authority, isolating knowledge and reducing team output.
Q: Why is the US Sales Tax Nexus a challenge for global firms?
A: The “nexus” determines an enterprise’s tax obligation to a specific US state based on business activity (physical or economic presence). Because rules vary wildly across individual states and alter annually, it requires continuous strategic alignment for multinational companies.
Q: What is the Ego Partnership Mode in digital advisory?
A: It is a consultative communication technique where a leader avoids direct contradiction of a peer’s technical misunderstanding. Instead, they validate the business intent and introduce the correct framework by referencing external industry benchmarks.
Q: How does Process Automation differ from Agentic AI?
A: Process automation follows predefined, rigid “if-then” rules to execute repetitive workflows. Agentic AI possesses independent decision-making capabilities, utilising advanced model reasoning to adapt to novel edge cases and dynamic environments.
Q: How do you measure the Return on Equity (ROE) of an AI investment?
A: By moving away from superficial optics (“paid to show” prototypes) and strictly tying the deployment to core operational metrics: reduced quality issues, shortened delivery times, verified cost avoidance, and employee adoption rates.
