Polson Higgs
May 2009, Blog Archive
Our People Are Over There
31st May, 2009 | 10:52 am | By Graham Crombie - Audit and Assurance Services, Partner and Chief Executive
I wrote my last blog while sitting on an Air NZ 777 over Russia heading for the UK. Since then I have spent a week in London and arrived back in New Zealand. I had a great week from a business point of view which I will talk about in another posting.
One of the things we try and do each time one of us is in the UK is set up a reunion of Polson Higgs staff currently based in London. I was lucky enough to get one of these together last week. We spent a great evening on a boat on the Thames kitted out as a bar. The early summer was coming in London and it was a great chance to catch up and have a couple of quiets.
The Worlds Getting Smaller – Yeah Right!
18th May, 2009 | 9:18 pm | By Graham Crombie - Audit and Assurance Services, Partner and Chief Executive
I’m writing this sitting on an Air New Zealand 777 somewhere over Russia. I have now been travelling for 30 hours on my way to London and still have another five hours to go. I’m not feeling like we are living in a small world!
The good thing is the trip has given me time to think about issues from a fresh perspective. It has been a busy few weeks for me focusing on Polson Higgs. We have been going through our annual balance as well as finalising our planning for the next few years. On top of that we have had our staff development session in Methven and our partners’ annual meeting last weekend. All these events have given some focus to where we are going.
Waste Not Want Not
10th May, 2009 | 9:15 pm | By Graham Crombie - Audit and Assurance Services, Partner and Chief Executive
I talked a little last week about our Polson Higgs training session held in Methven. We had about 85 of our people with us for a couple of days. Not only did we have a great social time but we were able to focus on some key areas of our business.
One of the streams we worked on was operating in a recession. As I have highlighted in earlier blogs this is something that is obviously taken a reasonable amount of my thinking time recently.
A component of this stream that worked really well was “focusing on waste”. We continue to observe that the first thing most organisations do in tougher times is “cut costs”!
It Is All About Me!
3rd May, 2009 | 8:24 pm | By Graham Crombie - Audit and Assurance Services, Partner and Chief Executive
I have always used the line “It’s not all about you” to bring myself (and others) back to focus when we were losing the plot on what we are trying to do.
I learnt the technique from a previous CEO I worked with. He was faced each year with a new chairman due to the nature of the governance structure he was working with. Each year he was required to discuss with the new chair how they might work together. After doing this for several years he managed to shorten the speech to “Its not all about you – focus on the role”.
This is great advice and I continue to use it, both on myself and some of those I am working with.
During the last couple of weeks I have been observing people turning this idea around and allowing some significant advances to happen.
Last updated: 2nd June, 2009 | 11:57 am
