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…
Tag Archives: Business Leadership
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…
Coming up this week 28 March 2011
At some stage this week we will pass the half way mark on our journey to achieving the RedBalloon BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal)… there will be spontaneous celebrations in Pyrmont I’m sure. I gathered from the team last week ‘a one in a million story’ what it means to be a part of the RedBalloon journey. So I will put them together this week – as well as start my assessment to complete the AICD course. Coming Up this…
One more step towards a balanced board room
I remembering hearing once “if you win the rat race – you are still a rat”. Not sure why that pops to mind as begin to explore the process of becoming a director on a publicly listed company. “If you can’t beat them join them” might be more apt. I have discovered some interesting things already on the journey to holding another directorship. The women I know who hold paid board roles – have unanimously encouraged me to join their…
Coming up this week 21 March 2011
Last week was full of colour and excitement. I got to experience the shear variety of activities RedBalloon offers – from visiting our Jet Fighter supplier (they have a special on at the moment) – to indulging in our newest massage experience (worth a blog on it’s own). In addition there was much media activity – recording lot’s more employee engagement tips for Kochies Business Builders… and of course the end of the week we had the leader of the…
Why we must have more women on boards – Part 2
Applauding diversity not fearing it A young woman I know (30 – age is a relative thing) works within the financial markets. She works long hours, with little recognition or even contact with her manager. At annual review time her manager was very tough. He even went as far as to say: ‘the way you approach work is just different to the others.’ Interestingly, all her peers are men. Of course she approaches work differently – she is a woman….
Entrepreneur or bully?
An associate brought to my attention recently the antics of the US-based ‘Entrepreneur Magazine’. For the last few years the magazine publisher has fought against every entity possible that uses the word entrepreneur in its business name. Yet as far as I can tell it does not represent entrepreneurs apart from writing articles about them. Does this mean Ernst and Young will be getting a call asking them to cease and desist in their global entrepreneur award, and spin off…
Coming Up this week 21 Feb
Last week was a fabulous week of learning… I have heard that CEOs must keep learning to keep competitive. We all need to keep growing – and educating one’s self – it is one of the five elements of Wellness according to the New Economic Forum. Learning of course is made so much easier if it is something interesting, relevant and delivered well. I attended the Growth Summit last week, what a great way to check in with leading thinkers…
Some days things don’t go as planned – but you still need a plan
With natural disasters in every corner of the country – one can’t help but think of the impact to all those 1000s of businesses… Those who toiled for years – building their enterprise – to have it dashed from them… or maybe not completely but impacted none the less. Some years ago RedBalloon invested in a business continuity plan. The leadership team posed the question ‘what if this building was not here – could we still operate?’ We are an…
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...
