You can’t pick up a paper or business publication without reading about job losses and pay freezes… British Airways has asked it’s employees to go without pay for a month… Telstra has frozen it’s top execs’ pay. 51% of privately held businesses have frozen salaries. 44% of Telco’s have pay freezes and 33% of IT companies. And of course the finance industry is frozen. If I were an employee in one of these organizations I’d be asking questions of the…
Monthly Archives: June 2009
Standing out by being yourself
I wrote a blog back in 2006 about ‘The Story of Johnny the Bagger’. A simple tale about being ourselves when we are with our customers – and how easy it can be to add value to them. It is great to be reminded that it is the simple things that can make the biggest difference… Even in tough times. The book is well read at RedBalloon – but here is Barbara Glanz the author telling her story directly. Worth…
The best job in Australia..interested?
People often ask me whether as Chief Experience Officer I get to try all the experiences. It is not actually physically possible because we have more than 2500 experiences now listed… and we publish up to 50 new every month. That would be more than one a day. There is one role that does get to do that in principle…ie the person has to be very close and truly understand the experiences – I think it is the best job…
The end is nigh? and other happy thoughts
I ponder how best to say ‘thanks for playing’ as the financial year draws to a close. Leadership teams are frantically putting the finishing touches on the strategic plan for the year to come, employees and managers are getting ready for performance reviews, the sales and marketing bods are giving one last big push to get sales in the door. I’ve no doubt that come 1 July most of us will breathe a sigh of relief and return to work…
Four top future trends
Just listening to Richard Watson of nowandnext.com – the Futurologist who wrote Future Files. First of all I like a bloke who will make up words to suit the occasion (see some of them below). Secondly who will poke fun about his own profession and thirdly who, when asked what is the future of industrial relations answered authentically “I have no idea on that one.” He had a few other interesting things to say: “No one can predict individual events….
It’s time to plan for an exciting year.
It’s planning and review season at RedBalloon – everything seems to happen at this time of year. And this year it will be tougher to produce the operational plan when we still don’t know how the economy will impact us. I’d like to think that the planning process is more than a bunch of ‘guesstimates’. I’ve always been one to ‘take my destiny on myself’ – I have never considered hope a strategy. Here is a piece that I did…
Are we being un-Australian about the GFC?
Every couple of months RedBalloon sends a survey to it’s customers on how employees are feeling about a particular workplace issue. We’ve dubbed it the Pleasure Survey. This time we wanted to put aside all the doom and gloom in the news and ask workers of all ages their view of the GFC Well our latest survey looked at what employees think it takes for Corporate Australia to remain resilient throughout the GFC, and the findings revealed some relieving results…
Why do women need their own awards anyway.
Last year I was (and the RedBalloon team) honored being named winner National Telstra Business Womens Awards – Innovation – at the event I committed to be a great ambassador for the awards ‘and do them proud’. (speech below). So now it is time to nominate those women who you see who are up to stuff. Women who are both interesting and interested, who contribute to the bigger picture and support those around them. The journey through these awards is…
Which traits get you ‘ahead’ in business
The interview for Marie Claire asked such a variety of questions..the answers might be of interest. What one trait has helped you most in business? Knowing what I stand for, my values and those of the people around me…. People can copy what you do but they cannot copy who you are or the relationships you have. Every day I use my values to make choices and decisions – it makes it so much easier to recruit people if you…
Imagine running a business based on fun - that's what I decided to try when I left a very serious corporate career in marketing to set up RedBalloon...
A bit of emotion brings values to life.
It’s not just what you do – but it is who you are that counts. Values have always been such an integral part of what we do at RedBalloon. But they are nowhere listed on a wall in our offices. Yet we speak of them every day. I was chatting with one of my colleagues (who has been with RedBalloon for just a few months) the other day and he said ‘Of all the companies that I have worked with…