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 Vision
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…
Coming up this week 23 May 2011
RedBallooners got moving this week in many ways – one of which is taking part in the Global Corporate Challenge – we are walking, running, swimming and riding around the world (metaphorically) as part of our RedBalloon Wellness program. I found myself being very active even at speaking engagements (sorry audiences – if it made you dizzy – but I have 10,000 steps to complete each day). It was exciting, challenging and insightful to contribute with the leadership team at…
Coming up this week 16 May 2011
Last week was frantic – but fun. I do think I thrive on being chaotically busy. Three speaking engagements in less than 24 hours… Lucky each was on a different topic and well prepared in advance otherwise I might forget where I am. I was reminded this week that more than 50% of women over the age of 45 have less than $8000 superannuation – which means no matter what, they will be dependent in their old age, either to…
Being Stingy is so last century.
Why do some people think it is okay to be stingy in saying ‘thank you’. I have been in three situations recently that have given me an insight I had been oblivious too. When we happily operate in our own world we are often blind to other peoples view of the world. I thought people knew how important it is to be grateful for another person’s generosity and that to authentically thank them was the gift they give in return….
Coming up this week – 18 April 2011
I had fun last week – meeting the team at Kikki-K – sharing the RedBalloon growth story at their lunch and learn. What a fabulously committed team – it makes sense why the Kikki-K stores are such a fabulous retail experience. We continued our 1,000,000th customer celebrations with a big sale…. I think we were all surprised with the amount of phone calls the advertising campaign is generating and as a result we got in back log in our customer…
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 4 April 2011
I suppose the theme that came out of last week – was ‘am I listening enough?’ It was a busy week, full of celebration. I had a fabulous time at the Contours Conference in the Gold Coast…. What a fun group. I had to rush back to Sydney to host a boardroom lunch at RedBalloon. It is very un-RedBalloon to have a board room lunch – so the invited guests sat amongst the team and we all had lunch together….
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….
Could a 21 hour work week be good?
I mentioned last week in the post ‘Can we Have it all’ that we are all given the same 24 hours… however how we use them makes the difference of our perception of time… (sometimes time races – other times it drags.) How would you feel if 21 hours was the new norm for the working week? This is an idea being proposed by the New Economic Forum (NEF) that – if money didn’t matter, if status didn’t matter –…
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...
