People Matter ∴ Do Good

Lead a vivid life that does good

Page 35 of 43

Free Prize Below

4 April 2007 /

Freeprize

Come to the edge. We might fall.
Come to the edge. It's too high!
Come to the edge! And they came,
and he pushed …… and they flew.  – Christopher Logue

I have just finished my sixth book for the year, Seth Godins "Free Prize Inside" (and it actually has one). It is a book that challenges business to go to the edges and beyond.

The key implication for me: Ideas are worthless if no one owns them and makes them happen.

To read the full review and get your free prize click here. If you post a comment on viewpoint.net.nz, I'll email you a free prize.

Setting up in Australia

3 April 2007 /

Mainfreight today announced that they have conditionally sold Pan Orient Project Logistics business and its 75% interest in LEP (New Zealand and Australia) to global logistics company Agility Group for A$83 million. It is the last of the non core Owens businesses to be sold. The funds released from the sale will be used by Mainfreight to fund its ongoing international expansion.

With Mainfreight, Freightways and others slowly establishing significant off shore businesses I wonder what a successful strategy would be for more NZ companies to do the same?

The road to overseas subsidiaries it would seem is littered with more stories of failure than success. Air NZ and Ansett, Telecom and AAPT (yet to see the end of this movie) are examples of huge companies struggling to make it happen. How then is it possible for a NZ company to stem the tide of Aussie investment and head into their backyard? What are the key points to consider?

#1 It is harder than you think.
Summed up well by Josef Roberts who launched Red Bull in the two countries. "Don't rush overseas. Australia might have five times the population, but it also has five times the competition, and Kiwis aren't used to dealing with Australian bureaucracy. Roberts worked out a worst-case scenario, and then doubled the cost and doubled the time. "We were about right," he says. "It took three times as long and was three times as expensive." [From Idealog "Meet the man who gave Red Bull wings"]

x NZ Herald

#2 You need to avoid the Valley of Death
Rod Drury wrote about the Valley of Death "From New Zealand, once you have saturated the local market, you then have a massive transformational change to address another market. You may need to introduce capital, add new staff, learn foreign rules – the list goes on. For us to take almost our first step of expansion, to enter only our second market – we bet our businesses. I'm calling this – the Valley of Death."

#3 You need to take your time.
This would be the key lesson I have gleamed from companies like Mainfreight, Freightways or even Michael Hill who have set-up in Australia. They seem to make slow educated decisions about their growth into other countries. They take the time to understand the markets, people, culture and regulations and they take small incremental steps. They have done this well and don't bet the NZ business on it.

I don't have much first hand experience. Hopefully one day I will, but in the meantime I am interested in your thoughts.

Nature, floods and awe!

1 April 2007 /

x NZ HeraldOne of my friend's parents could not get home the other day because of the flooding in the Far North and for some reason I had this urge to fly over the region and see it first hand. I love floods, they amaze me! If only I had my pilots licence and fine weather and spare time I am sure I would have done it – Yeah Right.

It is funny how we are often drawn to want to see natural disasters. I guess floods blow my mind for the same reasons that we are drawn to sit by rivers, stand on a wind blown rocks gazing out into the pacific ocean, look in marvel at the full moon or to sit on mountain tops and soak in the view.

I think in all of us, seeing the disaster or the view or feeling the wind reminds us that there is a force in the universe greater than us. That there are beautiful and awe-inspiring things in our life everyday that we take for granted.

For me it makes me feel human and reminds me, yet again, I don't spend enough time soaking in creation.

Does advertising really work?

30 March 2007 /

'Old marketing is dead
10 years ago we were able to advertise a position in a paper and know that people looking for a job would see it. Nowadays you need to advertise in many papers and on multiple websites and you are still not guaranteed a good response.

It used to be that you could build a product and market it really well and people would naturally use your service. Nowadays we are all bombarded with advertising and media and information. We as consumers often ignore these messages. When was the last time you made that call after hearing an ad? It is almost impossible to make an impression and a thousand fold more difficult to actually get them to pick-up the phone.

New marketing is everything we do
Brand is no longer about just having a great logo and good advertising. Brand is now driven by everything the company does. Every time we answer the phone or deliver a sales proposal or email a client or they use online, we build our brand. The aim of new marketing is to get talked about, in a positive way of course, because of how ingenious we are!

To have a strong brand you now have to have a service that is so ingenious, so smart and edgy and stunning that it gets talked about.  Think about Google. How many of you started using Google because you saw their ad. None, they didn't advertise. You heard about it, tried it, liked it, kept using it and if you're an early adopter like me, probably told others about it.' – quote from my eBook called 'Being INGENIOUS @ agoge'

All this means that the old way of attracting candidates or getting customers works less and less. It will get harder and harder get peoples attention. Your only chance is to focus on providing a stunning service or being an incredible employer, so that you get talked about.

Finally, fyi, we measure most of our advertsing, we change ads and try new and creative things. When you measure advertising, the results generally dont make good reading, it forces you to think outside the square. You should try it!

Casting Vision by writing an eBook

30 March 2007 /

Albert Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

His words echo part of the thoughts that have been going through my head over the last month. How do I lead agóge so that it can become a really ingenious company? How do I teach people to think more? To be more creative? And most importantly to take their ideas and make them happen!

At work we have an internal blog and I write a weekly review, that is never weekly, but that's an SOI thing. 

Anyhow, I sat down and started thinking about all of the stuff I had to get out of my head about being ingenious and creative and thinking and execution. As I mulled over the content I realised that it would never fit into a blog post and spreading the message over 5 or 6 weeks would dilute it significantly.

I then had an idea to write an eBook. A small, 6 pages, electronic book which is called "being INGENIOUS @ agóge". Cherie then gave me the idea to personlise it, which I did and then I actually printed it and sent it to everyone in  the company. I guess its no longer and eBook although is available on our internal blog.

It has been generally well received and I will probably write another one some time, but the aim of the eBook is to not just write stuff. It's aim is to reinforce our vision, and in this case just one small part of it. There is very little in the eBook that is new, it is just a different way of saying it.

When I wrote the eBook I was doing my job. Casting Vision and Leading my team. It is a different way of doing it but in my role 'my imagination is more important than my knowledge'.

I forget that often!

[PS I might post the eBook in the future, once our competitors are so far behind us in being ingenious, so as to give them a fighting chance! 🙂 ]

[PPS After I wrote the eBook Seth Godin posted a blog called "You should write an eBook". He wrote one that now easily sits on more than 2 million computers. I feel a small sense of satisfication for coming up with the idea on my own, then having it reinforced by him]

[PPPS You can read a small excerpt of the ebook at www.viewpoint.net.nz]

Random Thoughts

30 March 2007 /

I love mornings like this morning. You can hear the rain falling like a thousand tiny water falls on the tin roof. The house is quiet because most houses are at 5am. And I have time to reflect and think and scheme a little. As I do that my mind is drawn to a couple of quotes I read recently that are quite deep but v cool.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it" – Alan Kay

"The kind of thinking that will solve the worlds problems will be different to the kind of thinking that created them" – Albert Einstein.

Wasting your advertising dollars

24 March 2007 /

A couple of years ago, Amazon.com announced that they were going to stop their advertising all  together. No more magazine adverts or TV. Instead they decided to invest all of their advertising dollars into providing free shipping of books.

AmazonFrom what I have read the marketing industry thought it was a foolish decision and predicted that it would spell the downfall of Amazon. How could they possibly think that investing money earmarked for advertising into making the customer experience more positive would increase sales.

The results: 1 year after the decision total sales were up 37% and international sales were up 81%.

The implication of applying the same thinking to our industry is huge. What areas do we spend money on, that if deployed into making our customers experience more positive, would actually increase sales.

Is it technology or marketing or advertising or capital equipment or research & development. How could we redeploy this money, improve the customer experience and increase our business along the way.

Is Your Job Just a Job?

22 March 2007 /

"Your days can seem really long (and your life seem really short) if you're spending your entire career wasting time merely trying to earn some money.

Being engaged at work is seductive. It means that you're spending a big chunk of every day doing something you love, something that makes a difference. You get to motivate other people and create things that last. Unfortunately, this sort of opportunity is scarce and (apparently) getting more scarce. The gift I can give you is this: Since your boss hired you to make something happen, you now have permission to build something remarkable. You have the opportunity (on your boss's money) to build a project that will energize you and your co-workers.

You can do it.

The biggest insight about soft innovation is that anyone can do it. It's not based on your power in an organization, or your desire to become an entrepreneur or how creative you are. My goal is to sell you on your ability to champion an innovation in your organization. To find the Purple Cow and a team to build it. Then do it again and again."

This is a quote I enjoyed at 3am when I was trying to read myself back to sleep from Seth Godin's Book "Free Prize Inside"

YOUR FUTURE

15 March 2007 /

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

« Older posts Newer posts »

Recent Posts

Follow

I'd love to hear from you.

Connect at one of the following:

Subscribe

* indicates required

Intuit Mailchimp

© 2026 People Matter ∴ Do Good

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑