andrewnicol.net

267 |365 Motherhood

Michelle’s leaving, after almost 5 years at agoge to be a mum! Go Mich, enjoy the new season of life, you'll be an awesome mum!

250 |365 - Agoge's Story

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.

216|365 On the road again

Had to make my 2nd unplanned trip to Auckland in as many days.

All the things I thought I was going to do, and all my planning are out the window.

211|365 Late night

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

Not a good reason for a late night either.

162 | 365 Pondering

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.

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.

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

 

Agoge at the MHL Expo

By way of a mini advert. Below is a very basic video/powerpoint of agoge's key messages at the MHL Expo.

Does advertising really work?

'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

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]

Winning - Leadership Development Booklet

Around 18 months ago I brought the majority of the staff in our company the book "Winning" by Jack Welch. The purpose for buying the book was to use it as a leadership development tool and to stretch their thinking, which in turn helps grow us as a business.

To assist in the learning I developed a booklet that people used to stay on track. People would read 2 -3 chapters a fortnight. We would then have a conference call with groups of 5 -7 people, discuss our obersations and learnings from the chapters.

Agoge is a small business with limited funds for training and leadership development and has staff based all over the country. I found that this process worked really well and we learned a lot as a business as a result. A key lesson for us was Candor, which has since become one of our values.

Below is a link to the PDF file. I hope you find it useful. If you would like a word copy please email Andrew Nicol (links in side bar)

Download winning_reading_plan.pdf

What is your website worth?

An interesting website that summaries your website and values it.

My Site is worth $60 How much is your site worth?

viewpoint.net.nz is worth $40, and agoge.com is worth $145.

Kiwiblog has a PR5 rating and is worth $26,950.

Agoge News

I have set-up a news post for Agoge. It will be linked off the agoge.com site in the next week or so.

It will provide information, media releases and agoge job info.

In the meantime a link is [here].

Teamwork: Backyard Soccer

"We did it Kyla, we got a goal!" Talia hollers with excitement after she kicks the ball between the trampoline legs that have become the goal posts for our backyard soccer game.

Its kids verses Dad and there is a lesson in play for the girls. Its called Teamwork! Their tendency, their predisposition if you will, is to play as individuals, to both run around trying to get the ball off Dad and then each other, even though they are on the same team.

I explain to them that if Kyla comes to get the ball off me and Talia waits by the goal,they will get goals easier. Talia of course very offside but it is not a lesson in soccer rules. Now, because Dads are always really bad at soccer when playing with 5 and 7 year olds, Kyla easily manages to get the ball off me and kicks it to Talia. The distance of 3 metres is simply to enormous for me to cover in the 15 seconds it takes for Talia to line-up and score the goal which is met with shouts of pleasure from both girls. "Kyla and Talia 5 points, Daddy 1" they yell.

Anyway, I was thinking about grown up kids, like the kind I work with. Our tendency, our predisposition is to play as individuals. We often want to score the goal and have our turn and be in the limelight of success, rather than making sure that first and foremost the team wins!

Within our company team we have a number of smaller teams. Some of the teams function really well as... well teams. They pass their ball off to each other, which are off course the various aspects of their jobs. They don't really care who does what as long as the team gets the goal and the team wins!  Some other teams function more as individuals, they own just their part, don't pass the ball and continually try to just get goals themselves and often fail to keep up.

I guess it is no surprise which teams achieve the best results, have the most victories and generally win the most. It is of course the groups of people that realise they need each other and scoring a goal for the team is more important than getting a goal as an individual. They help each other out and have few lines drawn about who does what. They do what it takes to make sure the team wins.

Incidentally the winning teams, have heaps more fun, get a buzz out of winning and 'holler with excitement' when they get their goals.

Which 'team' would you rather be on?

A review of my blog

"In short I thought I would start shouting into the wind..."

And with those words my blog began. Like most things in my life my blog has proven to be random, distracted thoughts. It comes and goes depending on my mood and has had three major changes to its look and feel.

It will continue to change because I love change. It will continue to be random and change in writing style because I am always learning and experiencing different things.

Anyway here are a few of my favourate posts etc from each month since Aug last year.

Old Posts

Old & New  ... Lost after 3 years is the new car smell, it now has one of those car airfreshener smells . A smell that you know is hiding a potentially more potent odour, the way lighting a match in the toilet tries to hide a foul stench... read more [nb this is my most commented post a whole 3 comments]

Origin Pacific falls from the Never Never Land ... 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 ... read more

Authentic Community ...I think this small business called agóge. This business with people from all over the world, with varying educations, from different religions and diverse upbringings is starting to become an authentic community ... read more

Woolgathering at 17,000 ft about the Marlborough Sounds ... I sit in the ATR, transfixed at the sight of the Marlborough Sounds out my window and grateful for the relief from a tiring day that woolgathering about the Sounds allows. ... read more

Flying an Alpha 160 ... "It is like climbing into a new car when you have been used to driving a car that is 25 years old." ... read more

Most enjoyable book

Blue like Jazz - Donald Miller.

Best quote

"I’ve always thought smack in the middle of a contradiction is a great place to be!"  Bono - U2

Authentic Community

Last Thursday after we got into the Fast 50, I took a few people from work out to dinner with me to celebrate. At the table was Hav who just has an immense passion for agóge; Rob jnr who has such a detail mind and who keeps so many things I hate doing on track; and Cherie who is simply one of the most bona fide people I have ever met. Anyway I am sitting in this restaurant with a funny look on my face, watching my friends and just soaking it in and totally overwhelmed. There was something about the moment. A sense that in spite of everything hard we have been through, we're going to make it. I know this sounds a little corny, but you know what I am saying. It was an ordinary moment in an ordinary setting that for me became infused with something bigger. With community. Inspiration. Hope.

In two weeks time I have to talk on authentic community and I was chatting to a friend of mine yesterday about what that means. Community literally means 'in common'. People who gather together with something in common. Authentic according to dictionary.com theoretically means "not false; genuine". To me it means more than that.

It means being Real.

Honest.

Vulnerable.

Loyal.

An authentic person doesn't wear 'masks' to make them appear to be different than they are. They are honest and real about their struggles and failures. They seek help and are vulnerable.

I asked my two team meetings recently "How are you going? Really? " and generally I received genuine. Real. Honest. Vulnerable answers.

I think this small business called agóge. This business with people from all over the world, with varying educations, from different religions and diverse upbringings is starting to become an authentic community. A community that could actually make a huge difference in peoples lives.

It humbles me.

Lost for words

We have all seen the Oscar's or MTV awards. Someone gets an award that they just didn't expect and end up babbling into the microphone about nothing. I have, in my own opinionated way, thought it was bizarre that these stars would speak publicly so badly.

Anyway last Thursday a group of us went to the fast 50 awards. We were sitting there and they said the first award is for the Fastest Employee Growth in the Central North Island. As they said it I was struck by the fact that we might actually win this, which was something I hadn't prepared for, "and the winner is Logistics Personnel".

What the? I then tried to get my team to come up with me (their legs became rocks), I lost my way getting up the front (there were only about 100 people there) and then was lost for words. Yes you heard it correctly, I, Andrew Nicol was lost for words. I blahed something about thanking my team about ten times and promptly left the stage. To this day I can't believe it!

Later we got another award for 28th Fastest Growing Company. I had a bit more to say about living people matter and my team, but I will never get over the shock of being lost for words.

You can read my viewpoint post to see some of my thoughts about our growth.

Agoge is the 28th Fastest Growing Company

Last Thursday agoge received a place in the Deloitte Fast 50. This is a competition to establish the 50 fastest growing companies in New Zealand. Well after I duffed the speech and we went out to dinner to celebrate, I got to reflecting on what got us there. Here are some of my less than insightful observations:

My Team - The average age of my team is 30 and I am privileged to have the people I have. We are growing and learning and trying things together. We have an incredible culture, a heap of fun and seek to live "people matter" in everything we do. As Tim Finn says in his song "We had no idea, that it couldn't be done. And we needed to find, a like minded someone" I have found those someones in my team. The lesson: People are more important than anything else!

A lucky idea? - I had (and still do) have a heap of business ideas. I choose to launch under Logistics Personnel because it was the idea that I thought offered the quickest growth and good cashflow. A heap of the other ideas would have been a disaster. I did it after taking a week off work and surveying potential customers, researching the market size, blah blah. The lesson: Choose the right idea, an idea that will actually sell.

Cashflow - I started the company with around $60k cash and we have grown the business to almost $10m in annual revenues in 3 years. We could not have done it without strong cashflow. Seth Godin had a post the other day that gave 10 secrets of the marketing process. "#1. Don't run out of money. It always takes longer and costs more than you expect to spread your idea. You can budget for it or you can fail." - He's right and I often use the saying "Profit is a concept, cash is a fact".

We have had extended periods of making losses in the past as we invested in the future. We could only do this because we have strong cashflow. We work hard on rapid debt collection (65% in 17 days) based on the principal that the money belongs to us once it is billed. It sounds a little arrogant but a heap of small business just let other companies use them as a bank. We are not a bank! The lesson: You must have strong cashflow! You will only run out of cash once.

It is genuinely a privilege to be in the Fast 50. I am not sure we will make it next year, getting 200% growth year on year gets more and more difficult as you get more and more millions in revenue. I am not too worried if we don't but I know one thing for certain, we will have a heap of fun trying.

Lost for words

We have all seen the Oscar's or MTV awards. Someone gets an award that they just didn't expect and end up babbling into the microphone about nothing. I have, in my own opinionated way, thought it was bizarre that these stars would speak publicly so badly.

Anyway last Thursday a group of us went to the fast 50 awards. We were sitting there and they said the first award is for the Fastest Employee Growth in the Central North Island. As they said it I was struck by the fact that we might actually win this, which was something I hadn't prepared for, "and the winner is Logistics Personnel".

What the? I then tried to get my team to come up with me (their legs became rocks), I lost my way getting up the front (there were only about 100 people there) and then was lost for words. Yes you heard it correctly, I, Andrew Nicol was lost for words. I blahed something about thanking my team about ten times and promptly left the stage. To this day I can't believe it!

Later we got another award for 28th Fastest Growing Company. I had a bit more to say about living people matter and my team, but I will never get over the shock of being lost for words.

You can read my viewpoint post to see some of my thoughts about our growth.

New idea, new space

I downloaded and listened to a Skypecast with Seth Godin yesterday on the way to Tauranga. On it he talks about 'small being the new big' and the application of that philosophy to blogging. He was basically saying that you need to find a small niche space for your business blog and just go about doing it. At the time it didn't actually ring true in my head.

This morning I wrote an editorial for the FTD magazine. The trick with an editorial is to write it like the editor has written it, and then refer to yourself in the third person. Below is an part of the article.

Is the transport industry in for some tough times? It appears so, particularly with higher fuel prices and a shortage in staff and drivers.

But Andrew Nicol, director and founder of agóge Logistics, disagrees. "We have total control over the success or vulnerability of our industry. The choice for us is simple; either sit on hands and do nothing or take action! Being PROACTIVE and having VISIBILITY are vital to ensuring our industry continues to experience profitable growth."

Blah blah blah...

Let me tell you, it is really hard to write in the third person after you have been blogging for a while. When I blog I just give you a view or opinion and publish it. I don't have to make it newsworthy or elegant.

After I had finished I took a shower, which is where I do all my best thinking, and thought that we should set-up a blog for NZ Transport & Logistics Opinion's. Get guest authors and do maybe 1 or 2 posts a week. The cost to administer it is nothing, yet it may add heaps of value and be a place for candid opinions and ideas to feed our industry. Seth's idea and my writing an editorial come into one and a new space is born.

Now that I have the idea, I know I need to host it. Hosting it under the sub domain of 'agogeboy' just doesn't feel right for customers and general public, so I decided to shutdown 'agogeboy' and relaunch with 'agoge' via typepad.com. You would think I would have done that the first time, but I didn't really have a clue what I was doing. It also gives me the opportunity to host other people and internal blogs under different names.

So I am at a new location agoge.typepad.com or www.nicol.co.nz for my personal blog. Our transport blog will be launched in the next few weeks. It will be at www.agoge.net, I will keep you posted.

Benefits vs Features

Mark (a marketing guy) and myself were talking through a product launch we are about to do soon. I was chatting to him about the benefits of this new service that my team and I had put together. He diplomatically tells me some good benefits, but others are just features. He was right of course, and somehow in my haste to nail things I missed it. I thought I would check out some blogs and found this one with a rather good example.

"The lesson [about benefits] was hammered home for me a few decades ago in my first career. I was representing my employer, International Harvester at the International Plowing match. I was on tractor displays. My job was to explain all the features of the new tractors to the farmers.

I had memorized the details of the tractors - horsepower, PTO power, tire options, etc. I even prepared some cue cards with this information in case I forgot.

But I was jolted into realty when some farmer with crooked teeth stared at me after my dissertation about horsepower and said, "Can she pull a three-furrow plow in sandy clay?"

The question shocked me. I didn't know the answer. And I realized that that was the important question. I didn't know the answer and the company had not prepared me for it. They had given me facts - not relevance."

My lesson. I really need to get in front of some real customers to make sure we are not just talking about features, while they sit there thinking about getting stuck in the clay.

Quote from Benefits vs. Features - George Torok

People Masquerading as Tiny Little Envelopes

It was to be a challenge to the scale of biblical proportions! One man versus a multitude of people masquerading as tiny little envelopes on his screen. All of the envelopes are open, which was an indicator to the man was at least checking them for urgency and shaping the view that they could wait. Gone already of course, are the envelopes that couldn't wait or simply required but a handful words and minimal thinking to conjure up a response. Eradicated are the countless daily spam that arrive offering him all kinds of advances and enhancements to parts of your life I dear not mention.

What lingered in my inbox were the hard emails. Emails I actually had to reflect on, process and even make a decision on. Emails that required more than an effortless one line answer or that simply were not a priority for me. These emails needed thought and in many cases well crafted responses. So yesterday I spent the best part of the whole day clearing emails, and handling the related requests. Some of my time was spent at Machina drinking a mocha and a flat white, the rest of my time was at work nailing detail to reply with.

Now here is the point! Email is an incredible non-urgent method of communicating. It is a fantastic way of providing information and updates in a timely manner. But I must say I have a key philosophical issue with email today and it's use in most companies. It is this:

When we send an email we mentally transfer the problem to someone else until such time as they handle the problem themselves, forward it to someone else, or respond. I do it all the time by the way!

Now my philosophical issue is that when we do this, we generally think our email or problem or question or information is more important than the other things people have on, or dear I say it, we don't even think about what they have on and just send the email.

We expect an answer from emails and most the time get one, when in fact it could be distracting people from doing really important tasks. There is generally no opt out, just an expectation that you will handle it. People live with their inbox open, are continually distracted and productivity plummets as they bombarded by a multitude of people masquerading as tiny little envelopes.

Yesterday I cleared some emails going back 3 months. I considered resolving to focus on clearing all my emails each week, but then I thought I would be allowing the envelopes to determine my priorities rather than me. I am happy to spend a day every few months clearing the backlog and sometimes I admit that I actually just delete the email a month or so after it was sent. If it was really urgent they would have called me or asked me when I had an opportunity to say no.

Potato Plates

What is a potato plate?

"Potatoes, on their journey from spud farm to French Fry, are blasted with water, washed, scrubbed, and at 120kph, pushed through a tube fitted with a series of knives. The waste water from this is full of starch from the cut surfaces of the Potatoes. The starch is extracted and in doing so it returns clean water to be reused by the Potato processor, and dried Potato starch to be used by us in the making of our Trays and Plates!" (www.potatoplates.com)

Why do I ask?

Because yesterday in a moment of sheer brilliance (with the aid of financial reward) I managed to get Jim to eat 2 of them. Daniel (better know as denial) cooked us an awesome pasta dish for lunch, and provided potato plates. Well, us being the kind of people we are, started tasting the plates, and before long I was looking for the one of the younger guys to substantiate himself and elevate his position in potato plate eating rankings!

Jim finally took the honours. I am quite sure he was the only person on the whole planet of earth to eat 2 potato plates yesterday. Gee that would be something to write home about!

Cost of medical advice to get unblocked - TBA

Cost of getting Jim to eat the plates - I'd rather not say

Cost of 2 paper plates - 36c

Yet another wacky day at Agoge - Priceless