Posted on January 20, 2013
I’ve recently been re-reading some books by New Zealand’s most famous adventurer. It’s been a few years since his passing but my memories of Sir Edmund Hillary are still very clear. As the patron to two of my expeditions, Sir Ed played a particularly important role in our Antarctica trek. During our preparations, Kevin and…
Read MorePosted on December 14, 2012
In today’s business environment do you think managers and leaders are the same? If you inspire your employees to be innovative and autonomous, where does the responsibility lie when something goes wrong? And unfortunately this does happen, sometimes with tragic results. I’m thinking of recent examples such as the Pike River Mine disaster and the…
Read MorePosted on November 7, 2012
In his hometown of Chicago this week, Barack Obama delivered his victory speech after being re-elected as President of the United States of America. As with any Presidential victory speech there has been a myriad of analysis. I’ve done some of my own too. What has always fascinated me about Obama is his leadership. In…
Read MorePosted on October 29, 2012
Felix Baumgartner’s epic spacejump this week created not just a global sensation and the most watched clip on the Internet, it had many of us struck in awe. How does someone take such a seemingly impossible dream and turn it into a reality? Or perhaps more importantly, takes so many risks and turn them into…
Read MorePosted on October 20, 2012
It’s the Voldermort of competitive sporting events and we must not speak its name for legal reasons, but you can’t help but notice just how good our rowers are performing at the rings related competition in the capital of England. Nathan Cohen and Joseph Sullivan stormed from fifth position to take the Gold in the…
Read MorePosted on October 16, 2012
I’ve said it before: Goals aren’t always achieved – if you reach them every time, then all you’ve done is become great at shopping list writing. Now, if I said “Hard luck mate, you can’t get gold every time” to Valerie Adams or Nick Willis, they’d probably give me an Olympic class uppercut. This is…
Read MorePosted on October 5, 2012
For the last few weeks, I’ve been asked to appear on TVNZ’s Good Morning show. Specifically, the Male Panel on Friday mornings. The make-up room, green-room, and studio-room are quite different from the filming locations of my pioneering doco series that I’ve just finished doing alongside my mate Kevin, but this has been a fun…
Read MorePosted on October 2, 2012
In 1810 David Lauristen and nine of his crew were presented with a job that I struggle to comprehend, sealing. Undoubtedly, animal welfare was unlikely an issue then, and it’s not a situation we’ d possibly face in today’s business, but our latest First Crossings certainly got me thinking about ethics. How do we do…
Read MorePosted on September 12, 2012
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 12, 2012
This weekend I am off to Hamilton to row in the Gallagher Great Race regatta. A fantastic event, that while dating back to 2002 in New Zealand, is set in the tradition of University of Oxford and University of Cambridge races from the early 1800s. In the inaugural Great Race regatta, and subsequently in 2003,…
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