I have had a couple of weeks out of the office – I had a week in Perth – with three speaking engagements before heading to Amsterdam (via a weekend in Paris with a long time girlfriend.) for the Entrepreneurs Organization conference. I found the event completely inspiring, insightful and educational – I will share in future blogs. This week: Arrive back to Sydney and have breakfast with Verne Harnish (he is in town delivering the Rockafeller Habits Program…
Tag Archives: Business Leadership
Coming up this week – 1 August 2011
This week is exciting at RedBalloon – we are celebrating many things, including 17 RedBallooners being promoted to new roles… which is wonderful to be able to provide career growth in such a relatively small organization. Last week I had lunch with the ‘newbies’ and I always delight at their enthusiasm – funny now though for me, as many of them were in primary school when I started the business, so when I ask “how did you hear about RedBalloon?”…
Coming up this week 18 July 2011
Last week I had the privilege of speaking for NICTA in Melbourne at their ‘Meet the Founder’ series. I did a podcast for Anthill magazine – and finalized plans and reviews to finish of FY 11. As well as enjoying the last week of school holidays with my every growing teenagers. This week I’m doing a breakfast series for the Optus technology series ‘Connecting your business to the Cloud’ in Sydney and Brisbane. We are having Cameron Herold visit RedBalloon…
‘Real women’ don’t need quotas?
‘Real women’ don’t need quotas? was the topic debated last week in Canberra at the AIM great debate event at the National Convention Centre. I was given the task of debating for the affirmative. Which meant that I was debating against having quotas. I’m not sure of the number but there seemed to be about 1000 people in the room. And they voted a resounding ‘Yes we do need quota’s’. I think however that the audience was not really simply…
Big Hairy Thinkers
I recently attended TedX Sydney as a guest of PwC… I enjoyed most of the content… but this speaker particularly resonated with me. I particularly enjoyed the way Saul Griffiths approaches the data of the impact he personally is having on the planet.
Five great lessons in greatness
I wonder what it is like to work for a business that has been around for 100 years? IBM turned 100 and Fortune wrote up a great article on ‘Lessons from IBMs 100th anniversary’ The five lessons are: At the start, convince the troops you’re a company of destiny, even if that seems crazy. Build a cult-like culture that people either buy into, or run away from. Bet the company once in a while. Make people talk about you. Hand…
Secret Sauce on Engagement
I had a great time debating with my colleague Megan (Employee Experience Manager – an HR professional) about what engagement means at RedBalloon – she has developed and documented all the things we do – and Matt in our corporate team is getting ready to share that with the world. Here are some points from a webinar that my colleague Emma sent me on the same topic I have added the RedBalloon view of the world in italics: Engagement is…
Coming up this week 30 May 2011
Last week was full of surprises and discovery. I felt very privileged to attend a business event in Beijing – which included doing a goal setting program at the Great Wall. One appreciates a sense of purpose when sitting on the largest man made structure in the world. The Chinese clearly had a shared sense of purpose (the fear and loathing of the Mongols) to build such a structure – thousands of years ago – with only manual labor. After…
Lessons in mega growth from China
To achieve mega growth – you best have a plan… I am in Beijing this week for an educational event. It is great to see first hand what we hear so much about in the media in Australia. The last time I visited Beijing was in 1986, only a decade after the Cultural Revolution, when tourists used a different currency – and there was no hot showers. Where I am now almost unrecognizable as the Beijing I visited 25 years…
Four great business opportunities
‘Sharing’ is the new business opportunity. People often ask me ‘what is the next big thing?’ Occasionally one get’s an insight into what the world ‘might be like’. Here are some things we know: There is an anti ‘stuff’ movement – not only can we not store everything we own (we live in smaller spaces in cities – and self storage is one of the fastest growing industries) but we are increasingly concerned about the cost to the planet of…
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...
