Last week at RedBalloon we were full of the joys of Christmas. The IT team hosted our final company meeting of the year and were massively creative with their festive theme ; including beaming in their colleague Dave from Perth to have him appear in a cut out Santa via Facetime – (I guess you had to be there). As part of the planning process and moving my role to be Founding Director I needed to update my job description…
Tag Archives: productivity
Yoooo hooo… is anybody listening?
As I sat in the back of a taxi rushing from one appointment to another this week… quick to check my phone for messages as soon as I jumped in the cab, the taxi driver asked “And how’s your day going?” I stopped and chatted and found out what he thought of the troubles with the unions and Qantas. The taxi driver lamented that most people were to busy on their mobile phones to chat any more. As I said…
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…
NSW Opposition Leader announces ‘Economic Growth Plan’ at RedBalloon
The NSW Opposition Leader – Barry O’Farrell visited RedBalloon this morning to make an announcement on his ‘Economic Growth Plan’. They were very deliberate in chosing a fast growth business with a strong employee engagement record as a venue for the announcement. It was an interesting experience having eight or so party people and three politicians visit, however it was the 20 media people with all their equipment which took over RedBalloon. Barry chatted with the team, I got to…
Launched
This week will see some significant enhancements to the RedBalloon offering…. All of the innovations that we will announce this week have all been driven by our single minded purpose: ‘RedBalloon is changing gifting in Australia forever’. Over the past five years this sense of purpose has driven much of our innovation in our Corporate team, our gift card offering through retailers (including Coles just announced which takes us to about 3000 retail outlets), our gift box range – which…
Three Lessons in tough love
I just heard from a friend of mine who lives in NYC – that he has resigned from his GM role because the owner of the business said, “I don’t want happy people I want factory workers”. My friend was completely disheartened – he thought business owners were enlightened – and understood that happy people = happy profits I guess I question if this entrepreneur is reading or learning anything. One thing that Verne Harnish is noted as saying ‘the…
Friday Fact: Facebook tops Google in US weekly traffic
I think this 4 minute video is well worth a watch. Is Social Media a fad? I know that it might not be the destination – but twitter et al is all part of the journey.
Coming up this week – 1 Nov 2010
This past week was such a rush – crammed so much in, but I would hate to be bored. Coming up this week we will kick off Trimester 2 at RedBalloon. We are into our people reviews, the plan has been signed off, personal promises are being finalised – and the theme is set to be launched. We will wrap up the Dream Employers report and publish the video of the press conference. I’ll be sad to miss the company…
3 Emails Recieved this Week
We have calculated that the team at RedBalloon send and receive more than 10,000 one to one emails every week ie not automatically generated from the system. I thought I would share a sample of some this week. Email One ‘Hi, Thanks for the email??. Loved the little red book!?? My boss is actually a bit of a jackass (pardon my French)….and while reading the book all I was thinking was ”why can’t he do those kind of things for…
Thoughts on innovation
Innovation is the responsibility of every person in a business – it is a way of thinking. It is the endless pursuit of improvement and discovery. Ideas that, turn into concepts, proto types and ultimately become commercial reality. Leadership is to nurture this commitment, which will lead to an innovative culture. There must be clear ambition (to see what is possible) There must be a practical approach to how things will be achieved. Innovation must be tirelessly, endlessly pursued with…
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...
