I so love this speech on TED because Sir Ken Robinson puts forward such a powerful argument contrasting what he sees as the current failure of the education system in the USA and his proposed alternative. I often wonder if education is being ruined by political correctness? Now don't get me wrong, I am all for behaving well and being aware of our behaviour toward other cultures, ideals, religions and the opposite sex; I just don't think people always think differently, they just know 'what not to say', and that's not the same thing. I often observe situations where I believe people are To View More >>

SPEAKING OF LOVE AGAIN : The other day I wrote about how my wife knows that I love her: because I turn her light off. Literally thousands of people have read that post since then, and the general theme is, the women go, Ohhh and the guys go, Dude sssshhh. :-) I have received so much direct comment, I thought I would share how such a strange thing came about. The simple answer is : I have literally loved this woman since the moment we met. We were individually told that we would be perfect for each other, and, as we thought that was ridiculous, we each spent the next few months avoiding each other To View More >>

My day job is Managing Director of Queensberry, but about 3 years ago I joined the New Zealand Fire Service as a Volunteer Firefighter. Not long after joining I extended my role to include Medical First Response and I now hold the rank of Senior Fire Fighter. This has 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 organizations like ours. I use this learning daily and have found the stories of jobs I have attended to be powerful metaphors for what To View More >>

On Thursday I called our Prime Minister, Helen Clark a mad cow, and I want to say sorry. LOL Ok I was going to say that's not fair on real cows and their unfortunate condition, but that would just be another cheap joke at someone else's expense. Funny thing about my blog is not many people leave comments, in fact almost never, but I get quite a number of emails directly and comments from friends and family. On Friday at a party Dad told me I was being a "tough customer" and my Sister said that it "wasn't my style, and would come back to bite me when I was Prime Minister." Something about Karma? To View More >>

The New Zealand Herald ran a story this morning about Kevin Roberts joining the board of New Zealand's Telecom. Some stories honestly just make me go, OMG, what? Here is one of my business heroes joining the board of a company (Telecom) that "I hate to love". I continue to support them despite myself, and despite the way they present themselves to their clients. But I would love to love them. In the interests of full disclosure, our company are pretty big telecommunication users. We are heavily dependent on Telecom for our international telephone presence, and we're big users of high speed internet. To View More >>