Posted on March 26, 2020
As we set out on an adventure I had dreamed about, racing 5000km across the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny rowing boat, everything was going to plan… On day two, my mate (Kevin Biggar) and I faced unexpected adversity. We found ourselves in the middle of a major storm. Headwinds, waves and currents – all…
Read MorePosted on November 13, 2018
Companies often think R&D is the only path toward innovation, while some think innovation focuses only around the performance of products and services – features, benefits or new offerings. But ‘innovation’ goes well beyond these things. Peak Performing organisations with a clear purpose and objectives continually try to create greater value, and this requires innovation…
Read MorePosted on October 23, 2018
Sustainable enterprise requires you to continually create value for a specified group of people. And your business model describes the logic of how you’ll deliver that value through to your customer / consumer. But what are the ways you can do this to ensure you achieve your objectives, or grow faster than your industry peers?…
Read MorePosted on October 23, 2018
Sometimes you learn more when things go wrong than you do when they go well. We were in Mykonos half way through our 2018 Northern Summer sailing adventure on our yacht ‘Swallow’. The Meltemi is a Katabatic wind that blows North to South through the Aegean in the summer months. It is at its strongest…
Read MorePosted on October 4, 2018
Time’s too precious to wonder if tasks and projects will be done on time. Or worry if your frustrating co-workers will do a sloppy job because they’re not accountable to someone for the quality of their work. Also, a global survey of 38,000 people found that ineffective meetings are one of the top three corporate…
Read MorePosted on September 4, 2018
Resilience comes in many different forms. Whether it’s enduring an unexpected tragedy, trauma, or a change in circumstance, the ability to cope with stress and adversity can bring about a new and lifelong inner-strength. The story of Louis Zamperini is so compelling that when reading it I asked myself if it was a true story…
Read MorePosted on August 28, 2018
How often do have a meeting feeling like you all ended with the same required tasks as the last time you met, simply because no-one did anything. Hang on, did they know they were meant to? A global survey of 38,000 people found that ineffective meetings are on of the top three corporate time wasters….
Read MorePosted on March 14, 2018
Have you got one thing you’re truly good at? Do you find yourself coming back to it time and time again? Think of the hedgehog, and their defensive mechanism – to curl up in a ball with all spikes pointing outwards. That’s their thing. It works, it works well. The hedgehog model is based on…
Read MorePosted on February 12, 2018
Through the TV Series First Crossings, we celebrated some of New Zealand’s pioneers by demonstrating their desire to create new benchmarks of performance and problem solving in uncharted territories. There is something special about the concept of adventure. There are no sidelines, goal posts, or carefully measured weights in an air-conditioned building. Instead, imagine the…
Read MorePosted on September 30, 2014
During First Crossings I was fortunate enough to learn first hand some of New Zealand’s pioneering stories. Stories that occurred at a time when our country’s native wildlife was abundant, so much so that naturalist Joseph Banks, a passenger on Captain Cook’s first voyage, described our native birds’ dawn chorus as ‘deafening’. With the arrival…
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