Category: Agoge (Page 3 of 5)

Tammy when I hear, Courageous or Aroha, I think of you.

21 June 2013 / Andrew

To my friend Tammy,

I will never forget asking you to ‘tell me your story’ in your interview for Agoge. Most people shy away from the question and lack authenticity, however your answer was powerful, rich and beautiful.

Your words told of pain and tragedy.

Your words spoke of love for your girls.

Your words reflected a desire for people and growth and purpose.

In that moment I knew you were meant to join our team at Agoge and you fit into the team like the missing piece of our puzzle. You are an amazing recruiter who loves to interview and cares about everyone you met. More importantly you understand Agoge and what we value and stand for.

As we have journeyed your fight with cancer together, I seldom feel that the words I speak to encourage you, do justice to the person you are. So here is my feeble attempt at writing words I struggle to say.

When I hear Courageous, I think of you.
You are so courageous. Even before I met you, your life, struggles and story had built in you a strength and determination many long for, but few experience. In your love for the Chance and Hayze , your love for Tom, at home, in your friendships, in your work, in your netball, and even in your sickness, you display such courage to fight for the things that are important to you. The courage to love. To reach out to those who need you. To care. To organise everyone. And the courage to try, when others would give up.

When I hear Aroha, I think of you.
The Maori word aroha seems so much richer in meaning than that lazy English word love. Aroha seems to blend love, and giving, and compassion, and action together into one verb. Aroha seems to naturally describe you Tammy. You are so giving, so caring, so selfless, and so loving. You continually put the needs of others before yourself, not because you have to, but because of your genuine natural aroha for all the people in your life.
To be courageous is one thing. But to have courage and aroha at the same time is unique and inspirational.

Your courage and aroha inspire me to live more fully.

Thank you for saying yes to working at agoge. Thank you for your friendship. Thank you for inspiring me.

Aroha nui

∴

I wrote this post and Tammy read it a month or so ago. I have been waiting for the right time to make it public. As she grows weary from her fight, I feel as though now is the right time.

I hope it’s again an encouragement to Tammy. I hope it might inspire those of you who know Tammy to encourage her and bring some words of beauty into her difficult days.

If you don’t know how to start maybe you could start with “When I hear …., I think of you”. Maybe those words will be something you can learn from Tammy, that will stay with you forever. Courageous and Aroha certainly will for me.

Post it on Facebook, txt her or even write her a letter.

Aroha to all of you.

Andrew

[Updated 28 June 2013]

In memory of Tammy Bubs Potania Te Huia | 30 Dec 1978 – 27 Jun 2013

I miss you already

🙁

NB: Finally the photo is one we took at Agoge under a year ago (Sep 2012), of her being crazy at her desk.

4 key lessons after attending the Entrepreneur Development Program (EDP) at MIT in Boston.

26 February 2013 / Andrew

Moments earlier we had been given five minutes to prepare our business idea and now I found myself pitching, to one of the 126 entrepreneurs gathered from around the world. They’d pitch their idea, I’d pitch mine and we would agree how we would split 7 points. You take 2, I’ll take 5 (not that easy with A type personalities).

After 7 pitches to complete randoms, we had a score out of 49. Bill Aulet, Managing Director in the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, humorously states that higher scores (I was 6th highest) meant you either had a really good idea (mine was created in 5 mins on my flight to the US), or you were really pushy (StrengthsFinder calls it “competitive”).

The top 26 of us pitch to the remaining 100 and then they walked up and choose a team, leaving only 16 ideas. Through this ad hoc process team reCollect was formed.

They say that attending MIT is like drinking from a fire hydrant, and over the next week we were saturated with ideas, discussion, teams sessions and coaching. So much so that it is only now I am narrowing down key lessons.

#1 Team is everything. The team that chose the reCollect idea was smart and diverse. Neil and Mark from Scotland, Rafael from Spain, Saeed from UAB, with Tanmay, Jax and myself from NZ. We all had radically different backgrounds and skills, which meant we ended up working incredibly effectively as a team.

I was reminded at MIT that having a cross functional team with a complimentary skill set is critically important when starting anything new. Startups with co-founders are more likely to succeed, however founding with friends you have never worked with before is more likely to fail.

∴ Build a great team with a common vision, but different skills and networks.

#2 Narrow your focus. Many startups spend huge portions of their precious resources on trying to be all things to everyone. Successful startups spend a lot of time talking with a narrow market of customers before they even build a product to make sure it is something they will actually use, and more importantly pay for. Test an idea and pivot constantly.

∴ Narrow your target market right down and talk constantly to you potential customers.

#3 GSD: Get S(tuff) Done: Just make stuff happen. You can talk about it, have meetings, create really great plans and strategies, but if you don’t GSD and get a product delivered then it is worthless. Herb Kelleher of Southwest said “We have a strategy plan. It’s call doing things!”

∴ everyone needs to GSD, and add real value to the customer. Everything else is worthless.

#4 Cash: Capitalism in America is NOT dead. To be honest if a Kiwi has a great idea and someone in the States has the same idea. They will be funded about 10x more than you. Thats the reality. It doesn’t mean you can’t win, just that you need more resolve around the first 3 points. The downside risk to not having cash, is we fail to rapidly build Innovation Based Enterprises at a speed quick enough to compete.

∴ Charge your customers as soon as possible, export and seek funding. Run out of cash and all your hard work means nothing.

Attending MIT was a fantastic learning experience, which I liken to reading 12 books in a week. Thanks to MSI / MBIE, now Callaghan Innovation for the incredible opportunity.

Watch this space for a new business to spin out of Agoge this year.

Learning to be decisive and the two things that stop me.

28 May 2012 / Andrew

After more than 10 years my picture of the moment is more like a bird’s eye view, than sitting in the seat of the car I was driving. From up above I remember the exact place I was parked on the motorway on-ramp, while waiting to converge with the peak hour traffic. I remember the car, the weather and my mood.

Most importantly I remember the conclusion of my self-talk.

“I will make a decision within 24 hours if I have all the information I need, or I will request more information”

It was a decision to be decisive. A resolve not to be a bottleneck. A drive to allow people to move forward with their jobs and projects, quickly and effectively.

It was a verdict against indecisiveness.

Over my years I have often seen very intelligent managers rendered almost ineffective as leaders, because they cannot make decisions.

It would be great if I could tell you I always make decisions quickly, but I falter and generally there are two reasons I’m not decisive;

I fool myself into believing I must have 99.99% certainty before making the call, which I barely ever get, so I sit on it. Over think it. And wait … and wait.
I know the decision that needs to be made, but it is hard. It involves hard conversations that people might not like. People might not like me. So I do nothing.

In both cases, my indecisiveness annoys the people I work with, and cripples the organisation I am trying to lead.

To be sure being decisive has risk. Making a decision with only 60% of the information can mean you get it wrong. It can cost money. It can make you look bad. Really bad!

But from my experience, you also make a heap more good decisions than bad. And the good decisions seem to out multiply the bad.

When I left the job I had at the time, two of my team independently told me I was the most decisive manager they ever had.

Of course being decisive applies to every area of our lives.

The implication; decide to be decisive.

14 tips when applying for jobs from the business owner of a recruitment company

26 January 2012 / Andrew

UPDATED: Feb 2019

While a lot of the below post still applies. Technology is changing how CVs and Data of Jobseekers is handled.

I’ve written an updated post »

10 great tips when applying for jobs online!

ORIGINAL POST: Jan 2012

Having just spent an hour or two looking over applications for an internal role at agoge, I am compelled to share some hints about applying for jobs. They are just my perspective, from a guy who has been on the receiving end of literally 1000’s of CV’s and covering letters.

CV’s

I don’t read the whole CV. Not even close, I just skim read. If I’m really interested I might read more than 10%.
As I skim read, I’m looking for fit into my business culture, as well as growth and learning and experience that could be portable into my business. You don’t have to have done the job, just show me you could do our job, in our context.
Even though I don’t read your CV, bad speling and formatting jumps off the page.
Most CV’s arrive electronically, make sure they are PDF that way your formatting looks the same to me, as it did when you sent it. PDF also saves me clicking 2 times to open your docx on my doc machine and I can read and highlight all over your PDF on my iPad.
Computers have colour available. Yip, you can use graphics and colourful fonts and pictures to sell yourself. It might make me read more than 10%. It will definitely make you stand out from 99.99% of the other people. I’m serious in the latest 100+ CVs I’ve read, none have done a good job of that.

The cover letter

Firstly all of our ads have a contact name. So “Dear Sir/Madam” is really not appropriate. I also doubt I will ever be a “Sir”.
If we ask you to provide 2 great reasons why we should consider you. Then provide 2 great reasons, don’t just cut and paste your last letter.
On that note, I frequently read other companies names instead of our company name in people’s letters. Oops … best you proof read it, or better still get someone else to proof read it.
Make it obvious in the cover letter that you have checked out our website, or know about who we are. You can’t underestimate how excited we get about people who are excited about us.
Your first two lines of any letter either scream “boring, stop reading me”, or grab our attention and draw us to read the rest of the letter. Make it the latter.

Other stuff

I really like it when people take an interest in our jobs and our company before they apply. It stands out in their CV, their letter and gets my attention.
Alexander Bell created these amazing things called Telephones. If we give you permission, pick up the phone and ask a couple of questions. You’re not likely to blow it, and I will remember your name. Therefore your CV moves up the pile because you showed initiative.
I know a lot of companies will now only accept electronic CV’s. I don’t mind getting a physical colour, bound CV. Dress up, call in, ask for the person and just let them know you wanted to set a good impression and drop your CV in. It’s scary as anything, but this is about getting the job you want. This will move your CV up the pile.
I really appreciate honesty. If you’re applying for a job that’s a stretch. Say so. We often keep hold of CVs we might be interested in later.

So these are my suggestions. Some people will pay a lot more attention to your CV, most I suspect don’t.

Listen to my ideas, or don’t. It’s up to you.

Unless of course you’re applying for a job with me.

One question with Sam

17 January 2012 / Andrew

Caught up for coffee with Sam who has recently returned from Hawaii for his summer holiday.

So I asked him … “highlight?”

The people.

Definitely the people.

I just loved spending time with the people, getting to know new people and having the time to listen to their stories.

‘He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata!’ (It’s the people, the people, the people)

Sam did heaps of amazing other things like swimming with Manta Rays at night, but his highlight was people.

Sometimes in our busy and task based days we forget that life is about people.

He tāngata.

250 |365 – Agoge’s Story

31 May 2010 / Andrew

Agoge means conduct, although I use the word ‘being’. It’s a word that is meant to connect our way of business (day to day) with our purpose (people matter, leaders, ingenious, lucrative) to bring a common story. It means to ‘be’ day to day the things we have said we want to be.

Unfortunately too often in the last 18 months we have struggled to connect our actions to our purpose.

While we have had some great stories, we have had some really bad stories as well.

All this goes to show that as the leader of Agoge I have a lot to learn.

211|365 Late night

4 May 2010 / Andrew

A late night at work, with 3 of the team.

Not a good reason for a late night either.

162 | 365 Pondering

5 March 2010 / Andrew

I love the view out of my office window. I enjoy gazing off into the distance towards Mount Pirongia, which is 27km away to the southwest of the city. I am captivated by the movement of cars and trains journeying to their destinations at the bottom of the road.

When I’m on my mobile, I often get out of my seat and watch the world go by my office. I’ve been known to get caught leaning on the window ledge, just pondering, considering, thinking. Across our driveway is a café. I’m sure that people must look up from time to time and wonder what the weird guy is doing just looking out the window. “Get a real job” they probably think.

Yet a huge chunk of my job is thinking. And thinking can be really really hard. But without thought we carry on through life without change.

Without change nothing improves.

I got reminded that I need to think more yesterday. To ponder more.

So today will be a day of …

155 | 365 – Uniquely talented slightly crazy person needed for this desk.

25 February 2010 / Andrew

Here is my problem…

I have three roles I need to fill. ‘Customer super star’. ‘Administrative genius’ and ‘Executive assistant’

Role A: Customer super star.
This role will be to take external calls. It will wow our customers, provide them a stunning service and generally win them over. We are looking for someone who has a vibrant personality and who loves connecting with people.

Role B: Administrative genius
This role will handle a variety of administrative functions within our company. It will be responsible for billing to training clients, supporting our trainers and assisting in payroll and countless other functions. We are looking for someone who has a high attention to detail, loves getting things right first time and enjoys admin work.

Role C: Executive assistant
This role will support the Management Team through and will co-ordinate and develop many of our internal processes like Health and Safety and our Quality Management System. We are looking for some who can document new simple processes from scratch and be able to keep the somewhat crazy members of our management on task.

Role D: All of the above.
In all roles you will need a fun upbeat personality, be flexible in the hours you work, a great self manager and have good to advanced PC skills.

Here is my solution…
No actually, you tell me.

I am happy to consider any person, young or old, man or woman, slightly crazy or slightly sane, for one or more of the roles. Each of the roles above (a-c) are, in reality, part-time positions. But combined (d) the roles would make a full time position.

The key is I really want passionate people working for me. People who have strengths that actually align to the work they are doing. People who enjoy doing the work they are doing.

If you are interested in one of these roles part-time, then apply for just that role (A, B or C). If believe you have the unique talents to be able to do all three roles then apply for D.

More information
Roles B and C (and therefore D) would need to be based at our national support office in Te Rapa, Hamilton. A picture of the view from your desk is attached.

Role A could be based in either our Auckland or Hamilton office.

Agoge is a young, innovative, nationwide company that specialises in providing ingenious services predominately to the transport, logistics and supply chain industries.

You can find out more about Agoge by visiting our website http://www.agoge.co.nz/working-for-agoge or give Andrew Nicol a call.

Apply
So let us know what you think and send a cover letter and your CV to crazyteam@agoge.net.nz

A surprise Christmas gift.

25 December 2008 / Andrew

Here is peice of art my wife did for me for Christmas. Will hang at work when I get back from leave.