About

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 and so I started writing about these experiences in a series called "Business Lessons of a Firefighter"

Blog Topics

Business

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 hardwired to see connections between running a business and everything else. Here I share some of my learnings. more ...

Fun

What would life be without fun? I never wanted to have an overly serious blog, so in this category I share some of the things I find fun and hopefully make me laugh. more ...

Has My Attention

My "miscellaneous" category. Things that have my attention and that I want to write about, but don't fit in elsewhere. more ...

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 ...

Creativity

Something about the human spirit causes us to thrive in an environment of creativity. Whether it be obvious areas like design, music, and art, or less obvious like user interface design, problem solving and commerce we do our best and have the most fun when encouraged to approach our lives creatively. more ...

Geek

I am definitely a Geek at heart. I love technology, what you can do with it and the challenges of working with it. Here I share some learnings, observations and of course desires. More ...

Relationships

Nothing fascinates me more than relationships. My relationship with other people and how people relate to each other. I guess I have always been quick to see both "sides of the story" and try to bring people together in harmony around a point in the middle. Here I share some thoughts and observations. more ...

Public Speaking

As CEO I'm very proud of the group of companies we've built, and of the awards and media recognition we've received in areas as diverse as human resources, customer service, IT, exporting and innovation. I'm also proud to have had the chance to speak publicly about what we've learnt along the way, much of which has been pioneering, to organisations like these:

University of Auckland Business School MBA Programme
Better By Design
Unitech Business School
Unitech Design School
Telecom and Microsoft for the Chambers of Commerce
Business Club
The Icehouse
Enterprise Waitakere

Mentoring

If you have a serious project you'd like some help with, or an opinion about, let's talk.