I've been so excited by this story since yesterday I just had to share. Yesterday Danny told me that one of our developers, Simon, had launched a game on the iTunes app store. I was interested but to be honest, at least initially, more polite than excited. That was until Simon introduced me to "Nutty Bugs", and then I was blown away. I am not easily impressed, but it's not an overstatement to say that I was stunned. Stunned, not just because I had no idea about the project, but because what they have created is so complete and professional. In six months they have not only developed a game, they've To View More >>

I just had a wonderful evening with CEOs from some of New Zealand's best companies. The group was brought together by Better By Design to visit some of the USA's best Design-led and Innovative companies. It's going to be an amazing week, challenging I am sure, but an interesting thing happened tonight: if you like, a small distinction became clear to me. There I was talking to Diego Rodriguez a partner at Ideo, a brilliant design company, and Perry Klebahn a consulting associate professor at Stanford Design School, two great people who were truly gracious in the knowledge they shared. To be honest, To View More >>

People with dirty jobs are happier In this movie Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs does two things, first he talks about a day he worked on a farm and amongst other things docks lambs. I saw this show and couldn't believe he did what he did. I thought it was inhumane and as it turns out initially he did too, but in an entertaining fashion he talks through his learning and explains. The second thing he does is he makes the point that in his opinion people with Dirty Jobs are happier. He puts forward a strong case that following the advice "Follow Your Passion" might be bad advice. For some it To View More >>

Yesterday I let you know that I was going to take the "31 Days To A Better Blog" challenge and I am getting more and more excited. Day 1 The task for today was to write an "elevator pitch for my blog". This was something that had been on my mind for a while, as I felt I didn't have a strong focus around what I wrote. I genuinely think I could go "toe to toe" and hold my own in a discussion on most of the issues I write about, but I wasn't providing any depth of information. We have deep experience and knowledge in HR, IT, Marketing, Relationships, Leadership, Strategy etc but I didn't want to To View More >>

Yesterday I wrote about how not to travel. To be sure, living stupidly out of balance as I've been is damaging to your health, depressing and unsustainable, but working 9 to 5 doesn't seem to work either. Being careful, never putting in extra effort when required, will almost always cause an enterprise to flounder and it's not the making of good "War Stories". In my office is a bookshelf full of business books and autobiographies, and at home I have shelves full of the same. You never read, "Well we started the business, it all went well and I made it home early every night." Instead the stories To View More >>