It is always wonderful to discover the journey of successful female executives. Last week I had the privilege of meeting the Big W General Manager Julie Coates. Whilst she primarily spoke of the success of the discount department store over the past few years – I was also interested in her journey through retail to her present role. She started her career as a maths teacher in Victoria. (She is clearly strong with numbers and has a great head for…
Tag Archives: Business Vision
Pride & Purpose
Planning for the new financial year is upon us again. The leadership team at RedBalloon is in the midst of brainstorms and planning sessions with their teams, exploring how they each can help deliver our purpose: creating happiness by giving people more good times. Its times like this I’m so grateful for the wonderful contribution we make to peoples’ everyday lives. Be that ticking an item off their bucket list, celebrating a 30th, 40th, 50th or 60th, or simply providing…
Clever Corp the hypothetical
Geoffrey Robertson with panelists at the Telstra CIO forum in Melbourne I find myself on a board with David Thodey, Anna Bligh and Graeme Samuel and . And we are the new board of Clever Corp – and fictitious corporation invented by hypothetical luminary Geoffrey Robertson. For more than an hour Geoffrey weaves his questions around corporate governance, ethics and growths in a new world of business. I listen intently never sure when he will turn to me –…
Australian Women – what we really want (and deserve)
In celebration of International Women’s Day (8 March) LinkedIn has released the ‘What Women Want @ Work’ global study. According to the study, the majority of Australian women (65 per cent) define professional success as having the right balance between work and personal life, and 68 per cent believe they can ‘have it all’. And while everyone’s version of ‘having it all’ is different – in the same way we all have our own definition of ‘success’ – overall, I…
It all started in kindergarten
One of RedBalloon’s business values is ‘a sense of humour and fun’. I am blessed to come to bound out of bed every day looking forward to my day at work. It strikes me that the basic tenets of encouraging fun and productivity in the workplace, I learnt between the ages of three and five. If we share everything, play, be curious, hold hands and stick together (and we learned to cut and paste – we now use different tools…
At the heart of Invention
This week I am in San Fransisco and there is much to do and many people to meet. Many of tech companies are headquartered here – it is like coming to the heart of technology innovation. All of these businesses are busy inventing the ‘next big thing’ – whilst trying to protect what they have already created. Recently I wrote for LinkedIn a list of office items that are headed for museums. Ironically of course, ‘once upon a time’ the…
Vote please – if you like what you read
It’s the beginning of another year and 2013 is set to be a fulfilling and exciting one… and it has started with a flurry – I’ve been writing this blog for 2571 days (but who’s counting) and in that time I have shared 713 posts… now my writings have been nominated for ‘Business Blog’ of the year… but it is a popularity vote… so if you have a moment and like what you read then could you vote please… So…
Three things I wish I’d known when I started my business
[Originally appeared on LinkedIn] I think back more than a decade to the moment when I thought it was a good idea to start an online business. There are some things I really wish I had known as I set out. Although one mentor said to me years ago, “the greater the loss the bigger the lesson,” there comes a point if the business lessons get too expensive – and, well, then it’s all over! 1) It’s never just the…
Coming up this week 26 November 2012
It has been a few weeks since I managed to sit and write what I am up to. In fact I seem to have been running very hard recently… Yet I have been up to some really amazing things – as well as fabulous experiences. In the last few weeks I have: been Rally Driving sat on the Heads Over Heels advisory panel attended the launch of Bazaarvoice on RedBalloon met with big wigs from Amazon Web Services attended a…
Five tips to attracting the people you deserve
[Originally published on LinkedIn] Capital One CEO Richard Fairback once said, “At most companies, people spend two per cent of their time recruiting and 75 per cent managing their recruiting mistakes.” Now, you may not be in a business where you need to build a team, but I believe this statement is relevant personally as well as in business. As an individual, have you noticed you attract the same sort of person in your life over and over and getting…
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...
