Never Too Old!
21st March, 2009 | 8:42 pm | By Graham Crombie - Audit and Assurance Services, Partner and Chief Executive

It has been nice to come to the end of a hectic week and get a chance to reflect on what happened.

For the first couple of days I was in Sydney, meeting with chief executives of firms involved in Leading Edge, the international alliance Polson Higgs works with.  In a separate meeting I also met with the firms we are involved with working in India.  It is great to spend time with people facing the same issues as I am and share approaches.

While I was there I received a call from our local paper, the Otago Daily Times.  They were reacting to a news story that ANZ were looking to develop 500 jobs in India and were interested in what Polson Higgs were doing.  No doubt the reporter was looking for a bad news for New Zealand jobs story. 

It was interesting to spend half an hour with him outlining why we are working with India and how we believe it will benefit both our clients and our staff.  I will make this the subject of another blog as I don’t think the story can be told often enough.  The story on the front page the next day got most of the messages and was almost positive.

I was then fortunate to get to see Coldplay performing in Auckland.  Great band and great concert.  What struck me about the band and Chris Martin in particular was they way they related to a wide cross section of ages.  I cant image many other super star bands wandering out into their audience and being comfortable to play a set from up in the seating.

From Auckland I stopped in Christchurch on the way home to give a lecture to a class at the University of the 3rd Age (U3A) based at Canterbury University.  I understand you need to be in your 60s to enrol in this group.  We had a full room, (I understand the streams are over subscribed) and a great mix of ages.  Indeed one very sharp gentleman was in his 90s.  I believe he is likely to read this blog! 

Again it struck me what a huge resource we have in our older people.  We are keen as a country to dismiss people’s contribution based on age.  I was tasked with speaking on how New Zealand was responding to international pressures on our freedom from a business perspective.  While I snuck through my presentation the questions and debate at the end was really refreshing.  The group tackled the globalisation challenge for New Zealand and discussed IT developments on things that didn’t exist when they retired!

What they bought to the discussion was huge experience, analytical minds and a curiosity and passion that was refreshing.  Our challenge is to keep our minds open to the ideas this type of group.  There is no doubt I learnt more from this group than they learnt from me.

Thanks to all those who have responded to my blogs.  I can be contacted at graham.crombie@ph.co.nz

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Last updated: 23rd March, 2009 | 1:10 pm