Diana Renner is a writer, artist, and leadership consultant based in Melbourne, Australia.
She is the co-author of Not Knowing: the art of turning uncertainty into opportunity, winner of the Chartered Management Institute 'Book of the Year' award in the UK, and Not Doing: the art of effortless action. Her books have been translated into more than fifteen languages.
Diana’s work is shaped by a lifelong relationship with uncertainty. After leaving communist Romania with her family in 1987 and resettling in Australia, she developed a deep interest in how people orient themselves when familiar structures fall away, and how meaning, identity, and agency are renegotiated in the absence of clear answers.
Across her writing, artistic practice, and work with individuals and organisations, Diana explores uncertainty not as a problem to be solved, but as a condition to be lived with. Her approach draws on adaptive leadership, adult development theory, and process oriented psychology, and is grounded in an ongoing enquiry into negative capability, the capacity to remain with ambiguity without rushing to resolution.
Diana works internationally across leadership development, consulting, and participatory experiences in galleries and natural environments, creating spaces for reflection, experimentation, and learning in the midst of complexity.
PROFILE & EXPERIENCE
My work spans leadership development, consulting, teaching, and artistic enquiry, with a consistent focus on how individuals and institutions engage with uncertainty, complexity, and change.
Over the past two decades, I have designed and facilitated leadership programs across the social, private, and public sectors in Australia and internationally, including the United States, Italy, the UAE, Singapore, and Indonesia. This work has centred on adaptive leadership and the development of reflective, responsive capacity in complex environments.
I have partnered with organisations including Melbourne Business School, Monash Business School, the Australian Public Service Commission, and the Australian Institute of Police Management.
Alongside my consulting work, I teach at Monash University as a Senior Lecturer, with a focus on leadership, consulting practice, and navigating uncertainty and complexity. I am also the Course Designer and Senior Lecturer for Creative Methods at the Intersection of Art and Science, delivered at the Monash University Prato Campus in Italy, an interdisciplinary course exploring creative enquiry across artistic and scientific modes of knowing.
I am regularly invited to speak at national and international conferences on adaptive leadership, uncertainty, and working with complexity.