andrewnicol.net - blog

AIDS IS OUR LEPROSY

Today 8000 people will die of aids. Today 11000 people will become infected with aids (mainly women and children). 115,000,000 people will die by 2015 (just 7 years away)

Aids is our generations leprosy www.one.org

Yesterday I learnt how to cheat the church!

I'm serious. I went to the Global Leadership Summit and Andy Stanley said that he learnt to cheat the church and that we should learn to do the same. Anyway, as is the very nature of sort of day, we were subjected to a torrent of great leadership material. The challenge for me is now to incorporate my key lessons, into what I am being as a leader.

Bill Hybels - Life Cycle of a Leader

Quote
"4 Statement grid for key leaders. They must have
    - Intelligence
    - Be Energetic
    - Have Relational IQ
    - Have a win or die spirit"

"If we lead well, people live!"

Lesson
The life cycle of me as a leader (our influence) should go up and up to my dieing day.

Andy Stanley - Focused Leadership
What he meant by cheat the church was that we shouldn't cheat our family of our time, rather we should cheat the church of our time. It wasn't a money thing.

Quote
We spend more time in our organizations because we love progress and because we are afraid.  If I don't it wont ... is an example of being afraid.

Lesson
I need to play to my strengths and delegate my weakness, and the less I do the more I can accomplish.

Jim Collins - When business thinking fails the church

Quote
Building something great is not a function of your circumstance; it is a function of your choices and discipline.

Lesson
And this is reflective of my thinking this week, I need to ensure I continually develop to become a great leader and learn from other leaders.

Bono - An exclusive interview www.one.org

Quote
I have always thought smack in the middle of a contradiction is a great place to be.

Stop asking God to bless what you are doing. Find out what God is doing because it is already blessed.

Lesson
I am compelled to be generous with my resources. How can I lead others to do the same?

What the FOGGLES?!

Imagine driving in your car, and being given a pear of foggles (sight limiting glasses that simulate fog or cloud). All you can see now is the instruments on your dashboard, but that’s OK because the person in the passenger seat is going to tell you what to do!

Well today I did my first real session of Instrument Flight for my Private Pilots Licence. It is isn’t quite as bad as doing it in a car because you have more instruments and the instructor has a complete set of controls but it was reasonably challenging none the less.

All flight training to this point has told me to look outside the cockpit where as instrument flight is the exact opposite. You take-off, don the foggles at about 600ft, fly around blindly (well just using the instruments shown) for an hour, then come back into the circuit, and take the foggles off just in time to land. I know went out to the western training area (because I requested it from ATC), but really I had no idea where I was.

It is harder than it sounds as your body can make you feel like you are level when in fact you are turning. For the most part I did ok. How do I know, well I didn’t get asked too many questions like; What altitude are we aiming for (meaning you at the wrong altitude) or how do you think that turn went (meaning you stuffed that turn completely!)

Flying Hours:       1.0
Instrument Time:  0.7
Aircraft:              Cessna 152
Registration:        ZK-EOQ (Echo Oscar Quebec)

42 Below Vodka sells out!

Susan Wood got all excited tonight about 42 BELOW selling out to Bacardi for 77c per share (a 33% premium). She seemed to imply that once again a Kiwi company made good and got the better of a big foreign national. - YEAH RIGHT.

The company said the offer was an opportunity for 42 BELOW to become a global brand. "I think we as New Zealanders should be pretty rapt to see a Kiwi brand become an icon in the luxury goods world. The brand has always been unashamedly New Zealand and now with Bacardi's help our country's vodka brand is set to become a major global force," Ross said.

Good on Geoff Ross for selling, it wasn't making money anyway and it would be a very hard journey into the international markets without further backing.

I can't help but wonder however if we will ever see some sharp, innovative, iconic New Zealand brands actually stay on shore and still make it overseas. Unfortunately that sort of company wouldn't get to appear on Close-Up!

For the record I haven't even tried 42 BELOW, but this post is not about alcohol, it's about Kiwi companies selling out.

What do Vision and Mission really mean?

Vision, Mission, and Strategy. Typing these three terms independently in to google returns over 1.5 billion hits. Even as a group of words over 20 million hits are listed. Little surprise that the observations of what these words represent is as varied as opinions on life itself.

Most experts say you must have Vision and Mission statements. If your people don't know where they are heading they will get lost. It's difficult to disagree, unless you have read vision and mission statements for companies and then talked to the people on the ground to see what really happens.

So I thought, just to add to the confusion, I would give my inference on Vision and Mission, to which I am sure many people will disagree.

FIRSTLY - Whatever you do it must be relevant!

Vision - Is timeless, it is what you want to be, and what you are. For agóge it drives what we want to be in 10, 50, 100 years time. "We will live people matter..." is a philosophy rather than a goal.

Mission - Is timebound and specific. It is what you want to do and achieve now. Mission is a fighting term in my mind, this is where we are taking the battle. It is a broad goal that changes as the business grows and adapts.

Strategy - Is the translation of the Mission into specific actions and goals. It is the determining of what you will do when and how to fulfill your Mission and Vision.

So why do I put all this down in this post? Well because this week is a focus week for me, a week in which I base myself away from the office to read, think, reflect and review how things are going. Not just work, but people, and me. As I have engaged the brain this week, I am really happy with our Vision and Values, but I think our Mission and Strategy is very much lacking.

Is the agóge mission clear and the strategy compelling? I think not.

Homer helps Helen

I don't normally rant on about NZ Politics but today I can't help myself. The government today announced that they are going to build a new supreme court for just $65 Million!

Rick Barker in an interview on TV3 justifies the price by saying that he "could have gone to a Lower Hutt caravan park and brought some caravans" but he felt the supreme court needed better than that.

"This is a building of great significance to New Zealand as it will serve our country for at least 100 years. The design incorporates the old and the new. Once constructed the Supreme Court will be an architectural legacy," Rick Barker said.

What is with that? Comparing $65,000,000 to $20,000, almost the same number... This is how he justifies the 3 fold increase in cost.

Go Helen! Your advisors are doing really well.

Helen and her advisor (Rick Barker?)

PS. The new court house will have bullet proof glass right through to the court room, so you can see the "action" from the street. Wow, can't wait!

Choose the best Maneuvers

“The story is told of the battle of the Midianites near Mt. Gilboa. Gideon, during his personal reconnaissance of the enemy, noticed that their sentries were nervous.

To create panic in the enemy lines, Gideon planned a night attack with a relatively small force. Each of his 300 men was issued a trumpet, a pitcher, and a torch. Convinced that the Lord was on his side, he gave the battle order. The men lit the torches, hid them in the pitchers, slung their trumpets, grasped their swords, and quietly went to predetermined positions.

When the Midianites changed their watch at midnight, Gideon gave his signal. His men blew their trumpets and waved their torches. In the resulting panic in the Midianite camp, tribe fought tribe while Gideon and his Israelites stood and watched. And thus the battle was won by the strategy of an observant commander who understood how to confuse the opponent.”

With some stretch here are some thoughts that could apply to business competition.

• Personal reconnaissance gives the leader a feel for the right plan of attack, too often leaders don’t have a clue what is happening in the market place.
• Gideon did not attack a larger army head on, rather maneuvered to their weakness.
• He was clear on the actions required of his men. They all worked as a team.

Above all it comes down to using the right maneuver for the situation. He was mobile, flexible and superior at the critical point of attack.

Quote of “Sun Tzu – Strategies for Marketing”

Leader vs Manager

• The manager administers; the leader innovates.
• The manager maintains; the leader develops.
• The manager accepts reality; the leader investigates it.
• The manager focuses on systems and structures; the leader focuses on people.
• The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
• The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
• The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
• The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader has his or her eye on the horizon.
• The manager imitates; the leader originates.
• The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
• The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.

I believe every business needs great leaders and great managers! Trying to segregate the functions of a leader from that of a manager is very problematic. Most people can have some qualities of leadership in one area, but not in others. Does that make them a leader or not?

I guess the key question as always is; what am I doing to become a better leader?

Quote from Warren Bennis

Don & Helen get back to work!

Now absolutely tired of Don & Helen getting stuck into each other. Wouldn't it be nice if New Zealand had a Level 5 leader running the country. One that cared less about themselves and their ego's, and more about the Country itself! It seems every real issue is linked to the Exclusives at the moment. I stole this from David Farrar's blog.

Nat: Labour broke the electoral act spending limit
Lab: But you meet with the Exclusive Brethren

Nat: Labour won't pay back the $800,000
Lab: But you meet with the Exclusive Brethren

Nat: Labour has the largest current account deficit in history
Lab: But you meet with the Exclusive Brethren

Nat: A Labour Minister has been savaged over his marina decision by a Judge
Lab: But you meet with the Exclusive Brethren

Nat: Prisoners are getting flat screens TVs which cost four times a normal one
Lab: But you met with the Exclusive Brethren

I get uneasy when I look back at a week in business and feel like we could have done more to build the future. It would be nice if our countries MP's would stop wasting millions upon millions of tax payer money mud slinging, and started focusing on building a better NZ.

Furthermore why, why, why do the media continually put so much coverage in to it. In other news "A flaming object was hurled through an elderly woman's kitchen window, in yet another Wellington arson attack."

Last word to Brash, "The public are sick of this garbage.  It's time for Labour to get back to the issues."

It's time for someone to actually step-up and lead! And I'm not sure either Don or Helen are up to it.

Origin Pacific falls from the Never Never Land

'The best way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with a huge one'. I am sure that Mike Pero might have personally learnt this lesson after sinking $10 million into Origin Pacific. The full-blown disintegration of Origin Pacific last week, confirmed New Zealand’s domestic aviation market has become fully mature.

No one, other than a huge multi-national, has the resources to compete with Air NZ. They, along with Qantas who choose not to do regional, are the Super Powers in the domestic market and there is simply no room for ‘secondary [ugly] powers’, like Origin.  In the ‘business guerrillas’ camp we have small niche operators like Air2there, Sunair and Sounds Air. Each has very niche markets that Air NZ simply doesn’t care about or is too small to enter.

BIG question - Can you become BIG without directly competing with the Super Powers?

Short answer - No!; but the road of business is littered with companies that tried.

There is a place for specialists with a niche market, but ultimately they have to be prepared to stay as “guerillas”.

If you are not happy being a guerilla, then sooner or later you are going end up in the middle ground. To stay there and grow to be BIG, you will have to take it to the Super Powers. Once you reach the never never land of the Secondary Powers, you now must compete in price, service and features. If you can’t compete in that position for a prolonged period of time and if you can’t continue to grow month on month, you are near stuffed!

Now here’s the challenge if you want to be big, somehow you need to grow and yet maintain the nature of guerilla warfare. Making very strategic decisions about the markets, even specific customers you want, the service you will offer and the prices you will charge. If you can continually move the battle front, the Super Powers will struggle to fully understand what you are up to. They will respond with a defense that is already irrelevant as you have move to the next battle field and target.

In my opinion Origin was doomed to failure before their first flight left the ground. They tried to behave and act like super powers, then align themselves with super powers like Qantas, rather than establishing profitable niche markets and attacking and growing through guerrilla warfare.