I'm very proud tonight of my daughter Alex and her friend Elisha who have just finished a short film for a school project. Alex is 11, and they have made the whole movie below themselves. The challenge was to do an "Olympic Bid" on behalf of their chosen city Japan, and as part of that they did a news item. Unfortunately this movie doesn't do them justice. They were working with a poor green screen (for a start it was blue), poor lighting, and of course all the iterations of change to file format from opiginal capture with Videocue Pro, to iMovie and then moving to youtube means they have lost 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 >>

Finally the OCR (Official Cash Rate) in New Zealand has been dropped to 8.0%. As an exporter we have been doing it tough for years now and maybe this is the relief we need. http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/news/2008/3376920.html I used to joke, in a black humour kind of way, that what exporters needed was a "mad cow" to take the edge off the economy. Nothing else seemed like it would work ... Then with some sadness I realized we already had one, but she was running the country, time would not be on her side forever ... Unfortunately our relief comes only because the economy overall seems to be screwed. 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 >>

I was walking the dog this morning and it occurred to me how much of the last week has been full of paradox . In no particular order ... 1, Do you find as often as I do that food that's good for you isn't usually as good for your wallet as food that's not? 2, Business is like a snow ball rolling down a hill: it grows faster the bigger it gets. So why don't we focus on getting the small snow ball right and rolling first? 3, I was shocked to realise a while back, and was reminded often last week, that the information (learning) we most need to hear is often the stuff that irritates us the most. To View More >>