Q: Sarah Louise What is the one piece of advice you were given as you were starting out that you would pass onto others?

A: Hi Sarah, the one piece advise - or the one question I ask anybody who is starting out is 'Why?' be really clear about why you do what you do... and no one will be able to slow you down.

Q: Jillian Kingsford Smith How do you manage to fit it all in?" ie life, work, fitness & family?

A: Hi Jillian, Who said we fit it all in... my kids probably think I'm a lousy mother, my dog definitely claims he is neglected... (Janine Allis told us that her husband claimed she was a 'laptop' dancer.) Even if I don't have a lot of time... I do make sure I am focused on what I am doing at the time, and really listening to whoever I am with. There is no point yearning to be somewhere else or playing the guilt game. We too are muddling through the best we can. My personal motto is 'if it is meant to be it is up to me' - so there is no point making the blame game. Work out what is really important, what you are best at, and get help with the rest. (I'd like to outsource fitness quit frankly - but apparently there are some things we do have to do ourselves.)

Q: Toni Bramley After being screwed by 3 different website designers I would ask Naomi what's the 2 most important questions to ask when choosing a design firm

A: Hi Toni, Web development and design can be tricky... I am not much help here. I had a similar frustration with external consultants in my early days. So I had to bring it in house. A web developer was the first hire at RedBalloon. We now have a whole bunch of professionals completely dedicated to design, database, architecture, User Interface, programming and other things I did not even know existed. The RedBalloon website (have you seen the latest version) is so critical to who we are - we wanted to have these very precious people in house. Sorry not much help here really.

Q: Fran Blake What do u believe ur #1 personality trait is that has helped u succeed?

A: Hi Fran, I'd say my #1 trait is persistence, resilience and naivety... (is that one?) I truly believed in what we do, I never ever doubted it, and I had fabulous support. Maybe my best trait is gathering an amazing team.. and aligning them to the vision

Q: Angela Sedran What's the most cost-effective way to get your brand out there?

A: Hi Angela, The best way to get 'it' out there, cost effectively, is to deliver an exceptional customer experience. The cheapest and most authentic marketing is having other people talk about you. And they will in spades if they have something worth talking about.

Quite happy to answer any questions... so do keep them coming

Jim Collins told us that values are the essence of great businesses. But trust throughout business is the basis for all values. No one can be in business, or lead a successful business if they don’t trust those around them. If there are caveats on that trust then surely by definition it is not trust.

The basic premise of family is trust and shared values. Communities are founded on trust… by very nature it is about give and take. But really do we trust those governing the country. I understand that politicians are considered one of the most un-trusted professions of our community (next to real estate agents according to one study). What can be done to rebuild our faith in the leadership of Australia – at all levels of government? How can leaders build our trust on both a business and personal level. Input please.

He talks about customer happiness with religious zeal. The culture of the business means that there is not a department accountable for customer care – the whole company is. Every employee has at least 2 weeks on the phone with customers as part of their induction training. No matter what role have joined the business for, being with customers if everyone’s job.

At some point in the book – Hsieh poses the question – ‘As leaders are we asking the right questions?’. I ask myself – how do we know what are the right questions?

Recently RedBalloon for Corporate wanted to find out – not just if RedBalloon was delivering on it’s promise (ie customer satisfaction) – we wanted to gain real insights to assist us ask the ‘right questions’ and determine future activities.

We know to be successful we must be truly transparent with our customers – acknowledge our commitment to customers – but also appreciate that sometimes things do go awry.

If we are not asking the right questions –and listening to customers, more often than not, we also won’t even know if things get out of kilter. Establishing listening posts with customers is also a great source of innovation and development of how we can grow and better support our corporate clients.

94% of the corporate customers said that we were friendly, knowledgeable and professional… (Whilst no one said we were extremely bad at these things) what is it that the 6% of people who are ‘on the fence ‘were expecting ? How could we either better manage expectations or create a better approach for them? RedBalloon has close to 2000 corporate customers  so a short fall of – 6% represents – 120 people – which is a lot of clients who we are not serving the way they want us to.

94% of people also rated the experience suppliers approach in the same way. This gives us an opportunity to drill down more into what people expected and how we could make that smoother for them.

We discovered that only 5% don’t know the impact that the RedBalloon for Corporate has on their business – whilst 91% claimed that RedBalloon was successful or very successful in achieving the business objective of using us.

Satisfaction is a subjective term – and depends on an individuals perceptions… so what we wanted to discover was whether our customer talked about us to others and are advocates of what we do… I was delighted to see that 91% of people are strong supporters and tell others about us. – and 92% have recommended us to others…which of course support the theory that word of mouth is the best marketing strategy of all.

As RedBalloon progresses it’s customer excellence program – this is the first time we have surveyed our corporate customers. Thank you so much to the hundreds of people who took the time to help us listen.

We appreciate it – and look forward to delivering.

We are pretty close to our people at RedBalloon – as a leadership team we are all committed to the team and we listen and recognise contribution. But engagement is a journey. It is many many ongoing activities. It has taken an amazing commitment from everyone in the business to want to be a part of a Great Place to Work.

I responded to the question ‘Act quickly. Cynicism and anti social behavior cannot be tolerated – there is a place for these people but not inside your business - if someone is not living the values and contributing, they need to be somewhere else. As a leadership team if we don’t act quickly then the trust and values we have worked so hard to nurture will begin to look like lip service. It might be unpleasant – but our people expect us to be forthright and make the tough decisions.’

Many years ago we recruited someone who was in a very autonomous role. After just a few months I was beginning to here whispers from his team that all was not right. There were a few resignations in that team, which seemed odd. One of those employees in the exit interview outlined that this colleague had in fact been using company resources to run his own business – during work hours. When challenged by his colleagues he had said ‘that I knew about it – and had condoned it’. The employees were confused. It looked as if I was saying one thing but turning a blind eye. So they went to find jobs else where.

His actions and words completely undermined our values and the trust in the leadership team.

Listening to Stuart King, Managing Director of KWS Workplace Solutions at a recent HR conference. His business looks at bad apples. According to Stuart ‘Essentially bad stuff happens in the community, and workplaces are a microcosm of that..... so bad people exist in workplaces. Sometimes the culture puts controls over them, on other occasions it gives them license – it is our job to weed them out.’

RedBalloon didn’t use outside services to investigate our problem. But in some cases it would be much better to have experts support in such an investigation.

Our 'bad apple' chose to disappear quickly and quietly when confronted. Our culture would not allow such behavior to go unnoticed for long.

So my advice is – if you think you have a problem, don’t ignore it, it won’t go away. Get external help if needed. Act quickly! Otherwise all your hard engagement work will be a complete waste of energy. However, we as employers have a responsibility, we cannot just pass the problem on to some other employer, if unlawful activities have taken place then the appropriate actions must be taken - no matter how unpleasant - your people will respect you for it. We cannot have the bad apple upsetting someone else's apple cart.

The truth is any organisation no matter the number of people or the size of the budget can be a great place to work if they accept that what they need to have first is trust. Trust underpins the belief in the organizations purpose.

Trust is the foundation of a Great Place to Work; it stabilizes relationships when times are tough, when important decisions need to be made and enables us to remain focused on the future.

Do you trust who you work for? (Do you believe in what the business is doing and how it is run?)
When employees trust leaders to make the right decisions and look out for their interests, then they gain respect for them too.  Here are some things that contribute to that trust:

• When management recognises honest mistakes are part of doing business
• When management authentically seeks and responds to suggestions and ideas.
• When management shows a sincere interest in me as a person, not just an employee.
• When managers show appreciation for good work and extra effort.
• When we are given the resources and equipment to get our jobs done

Do you trust your colleagues?
Manager’s aren’t always the bad guys, camaraderie between co-workers is equally important as trusting the boss.

• Is there a sense of “family” or “team” feeling in your organisation
• When people join the company they are made to feel welcome
• People feel at home when they change jobs or units
• There’s a sense of fun and celebration at times
• Can you express yourself freely

Does the business trust you?
When we have trust we also to a certain extent predict what other people will do and what situations will occur. Does your business surround itself with employees it can trust? That it can count on. This is where a shared set of values are so important.

This is also about empowering employees to make decisions so they don’t have to ask or waste time decision making due to mistrusting one another and not wanting to take the blame.

to be continued:

Without failures, of course we would not know success either.

There is one thing that I wish I’d got right. I wish I’d backed myself more… or just had a bit more cash to throw at the problem. That is the URL I chose right at the beginning in 2001.

The business was always called RedBalloon, but we called the product RedBalloon days (the product was  a gift of a ‘day’ – ie something to DO rather than a physical gift).

We did find that the redballoon.com.au URL was already registered to another business… so we settled for redballoondays.com.au.

Now with hindsight I can see that I lacked foresight. I should have approached the business who owned the URL to see if they would ‘sell’ it way back then.

A few things happened over the years.

1. We started doing radio advertising and those in media said we needed a shorter URL for brand recall – our existing one was not ideal.
2. We did brand research and found that we were being confused with a charity – (I had even had people coming up to me and saying – ‘I sleep my baby on the side’ – they had confused us with Red Nose Days)
3. We wanted to be unique – and known to be an Australian/New Zealand business – and not confused with any other organization in other geographies that may or may not have the same brand reputation as us even though they were in a similar game.
4. We began to provide experiences in a box and other experiences that were not necessarily a ‘day’. (eg an astrology reading or olive oil tasting)

So the approach was made and about 4 years ago we purchased the URL www.redballoon.com.au

My regret is not just for the wait for 5 years to purchase it – more the regret that it has taken another 4 years to truly get the brand return on this.

It was fear that stopped me from making the tough decision.

We had been working so hard for so long on our search engine position with Google we didn’t want to change anything. So we used the www.redballoon.com.au in all communications but then redirected traffic to the main original URL.

But given that we had formally updated our branding to drop the ‘days’ it was completely out of alignment with our brand voice.

So for the past 2 months or so – we have had very many, very clever minds working on the switch. That is to migrate our primary URL to being www.redballoon.com.au and referring all the unique ‘days’ URL through.

I shared the delight with our developer team as they learned, discovered and executed a program to migrate the URL… So last Saturday as we all crossed our fingers and toes the switch took place. Now 4 days after the migration we have not seen a dip in traffic, or a reduction in Google rankings. However they tell me that we won’t know for sure for a few more months. (Fingers and toes still crossed).

Sorry team that it was such a big job – when really it is something that could have been done 9 years ago. A massive thank you to the team for cleaning up my lack of foresight.

LESSON LEARNED: If you want to create something big - play a big game, make the investment needed. Big dreams – take big decisions, and resources.

What a waste! (Not for the agency, or media who are the recipient of the funds) But as a marketer I know you cannot spend yourself into having a great brand image. Building a brand takes so much more than advertising. No amount of icing can hide the mud in mud pie.

I remember years ago Ansett, the airline spent a fortune trying to boost the ‘morale’ of its employees (I was one of them) by creating an advertising campaign. ‘You can’t have the greatest airline in the world without the greatest people.’ Fantastic sentiment, which they spent millions on creating TV ads depicting different employee groups of the airline saying how great they thought the airline was…. Yet just a few months later (whilst the ads were still on air) the pilots first chose to strike and then resign and Australia didn’t have an aviation industry for nine months. There was clearly something structurally wrong – and no amount of spend on advertising was going to fix it. Icing on mud pie.

Fast forward to this governments $38m spend and I see exactly the same thing. People are not idiots and we are being treated as if we are. You cannot dress this so called tax reform up. (Mud pie) The fact that there is so much debate means something is not right – and there has clearing not been the consultation and inclusion needed from business.

If I was running the show I would not be spending money on advertising (yes you heard this from a die hard marketer) I would be looking at how I can save money – I would be looking at the discretionary effort that each person in the public sector has to offer – I would be hiring really, really smart people – I would be making those in the public sector feel very, very proud of where they work – I would notice their contribution and make sure others knew what they would do. I would spend money on recognition. I would make our teachers, doctors and police people feel like heros (that they are) and the administrators who support them… heroes for what they do.

I’m a simple woman who believes in the power of people. No matter what business you are in (including government) nothing can get done without the contribution of individuals all aligned and heading in the one direction. If they spent that $38m on the people of the public sector – you would see a far greater return on the investment – and not have to sell a fundamentally muddy tax system.

The question that I now have, who is the real champion on behalf of the customer? Hence this new position. How do we ensure that we keep listening and that we are transparent with our customers? Given the increasing scale of the business, we must continue to nurture, listen and deliver an ‘intimate’ customer experience.

I was recently at a seminar, which talked extensively about growth strategies. Interestingly enough the lecturer had us focus on one particular question throughout the three day program.

We were asked to answer this question from the customers point of view; ‘What is the job to be done here.’ That is ‘Do the job that your customer wants done’ not the job that you think they think they want done

The job to be done may well differ for different audiences. For most people who visit redballoon.com.au the job to be done is:

‘I need an interesting gift for a person I care about – quickly (where they are), that shows that I am thoughtful.’

You may in fact think that RedBalloon has a different job that we need to do for you. (and I’d be keen to hear what that is)

The thing that I am excited about is that the Customer Excellence manager will be all ears… listening to what that RedBalloon job to be done is.

Then it is for the Customer Excellence Manager to champion that voice loudly to ensure that the rest of the business stays focussed on what the customer really thinks – not what we think they think.

What do you think?

The challenge is how to identify what I should I stop doing? I cannot work it out. I think if I put enough energy and effort into everything – some of it will work. But really that is a massive opportunity cost on my time.

So when asked the question by the author of ‘What got you here Won’t get you there’ Marshall Goldsmith – I was challenged to have a deeper look at my real contribution to the growth of RedBalloon. From where I sit as a leader I cannot see. So I need to ask people around me their insights.

This week I have been asking the very confronting question: ‘How can I be a better: leader/manager/wife/mother/blogger/tweeter/speaker/daughter etc –  all the roles that I play (feel free to comment on any of these). This I believe will give me a greater insight into how I can best contribute.

Goldsmith tells us that there are four classic challenges to leadership:

1. Wanting to win too much (at the expense of bringing people with you)
2. Adding too much value (can damage commitment with those people around you) I remember one of my bosses years ago used to rewrite every word I wrote. In the end I stopped trying because I knew he would just do it for me anyway.
3. Telling the world how smart we are (ho-hum, get over yourself, you didn’t do it on your own)
4. When someone brings you something of interest – responding ‘I already knew that’

Remember the old adage ‘An achiever is all about me: A leader it’s all about them.’

The greatest gift of any leader is to listen – and to give up trying to be better than anyone else. A leader is a person who unites the group based on a shared sense of purpose.

Goldsmith poses an interesting challenge: If someone tells you something –listen without judgment and give up responding with a ‘no’, ‘but’ or ‘however’. If you do start the sentence with one of these words you are effectively ‘belittling’ the other person's contribution, because it appears as if you are trying to prove that you know more.

In addition to listening without judgment, he suggested learning as much as you can and offering as much help as you can… it will transform your leadership.

In doing this I plan to work out what I should stop doing… and do more of the things that are adding the most value.

Discovering and understanding the RedBalloon purpose has driven me and inspired the team, suppliers and other stakeholders including our clients. We know why we do what we do everyday, which means when we further the 'cause',  we go home everyday feeling like a winner having achieved something that is made a contribution to something bigger than ourselves.

Having read Jim Collins books years ago it was quite evident that 'great companies' are driven by a purpose and united by our shared values. So I was delighted to discover a whole book dedicated just to PURPOSE.

Nikos Mourkogiannis wrote his book Purpose back in 2006. I've heard this small book has had a massive impact on organisations of all sizes by aligning people to a shared sense of purpose to drive change and focus throughout 'broken' organisations.

His book simply demonstrates:

• Successful companies have a clear sense of purpose - and everyone knows what it is.
• Individuals who have a personal purpose have 'strong characters' and are resilient
• That purpose is a greater motivator over the long term than a charismatic leader
• Purpose is not ethics, values or governance
• It creates a form of energy
• Organisations with a single minded purpose, which is clearly articulated over and over again will mean that its employees find meaning in their work and as a result are far more engaged.

Fundamentally, purpose will drive business success by:

1. Driving achievement
2. Revealing human dynamics
3. Motivate people

When we sat down to talk about why we do what we do at RedBalloon - we discovered our purpose by listening to our customers and understanding the impact that we were having. It came from the stories from the team and what made them feel great about working for RedBalloon. Each person at RedBalloon tends to make the purpose their own. For some it is about employee engagement, others on reducing clutter, for others they just want to 'give people a good time'. Changing gifting in Australia and NZ forever means different things for our people - but everyone is aligned to the one purpose.

It is interesting to read that there are different types of purpose... for many organisations it can take a lot of soul searching to discover what really drives them. I was speaking to a banker today and we chatted about purpose... and I asked her if her purpose was to support Australian businesses grow and develop because they have funding for expansion. I suggested that her work is making Australia a better place, a more robust economy - creating employment. You might think that I am overly airy fairy... but if we keep asking the question 'why' do we do what we do... it is not usually about money... money is just a means to an end.

Mourkogiannis suggested that there were four types of purpose:

1. Discovery - Never been done before (new products/services)
2. Excellence - Aiming higher than people know is possible - reaching goals
3. Altruism - Helping people in need - the world will be a happier and better place
4. Heroism - Leading the way - destined for greatness

Great leadership inspires people to unite for the collective good of all. Leaders must clearly define the purpose - otherwise how do they know where they are going?