In my day job I am the CEO of Queensberry, but I also spent almost 8 years as a volunteer Firefighter and Medical First Responder in the New Zealand Fire Service. This offered me an amazing array of experiences and learning opportunities.   I hadn't expected it, but there are some incredible parallels between handling emergency situations and running high growth organisations like ours. I use this learning daily and have found the stories of jobs I have attended to be powerful metaphors for what we experience daily at work.

Your Personal Legend

Early in my blog I started writing about these experiences in a series called "Business Lessons of a Firefighter"

I have loved business since my early teens, in fact probably my whole life. As a result of this fascination, lots of reading and growing up in a family business the receptors in my brain are hard wired to see connections between running a business and almost everything else.

Soon I was sharing what I've learnt from raising my two beautiful girls. There are so many parallels between parenting and HR, developing strategy, day to day management, negotiation and of course leadership, and as a result published a series called "Business Lessons From Kids".

My blog as changed a lot over time, and one of those reworks saw me integrate these stories more generally into other blog sections like "Creativity" and "Business"

I did also create a new section that included some of these stories. In this series, I share some thoughts on creating your "Your Personal Legend."

Nothing is more certain than when we leave this earth we will leave a "personal legend". The question however is what will it be. Will it be small or big, quiet or loud? Will people be thankful or will we be missed? Who do you want to be? In this category I discuss the idea of our "legend". More...