It feels like ages since I have had a couple of ’sane’ hours in the office to catch up on things. I say that with a bit of jest as I sit here with my head stuck in my computer trying to catch up on e-mails, invoicing, customer follow-up, forecasting, doing my pre-work for an upcoming training course, scheduling client meetings, yada yada yada… Sound familiar to anyone?

On top of all of that, I am absolutely starving because I rushed out of the house this morning without breakfast (and food is very important to me)! Then an angel appears - her name is Dinah. She has a plate full of the yummiest pasta you have ever tasted! So I wolf my pasta down doing work in between fork fulls. About an hour later doesn’t she appear again! This time with a cup of tea exactly the way I like it. As I sat and enjoyed my tea I realised how lucky I am to have such caring people around me in my work space. She doesn’t have to do it - she just always seems to know when I need a little pick me up.

So Dinah - this is me just taking a moment to say a special thank to you, and to Maria and Nomsa for taking such good care of us you precious things!

Becks xx

Avo has an article in The Star Workplace today, edited by Theo Garrun.

In it Elaine talks about the challenges of managing diverse teams. Although in the past diverse meant managing black and white employees, diversity is now associated with race, gender, culture, personality types and life stages to name a few.

Elaine suggests that the basis for managing diverse teams is acknowledging that we all have a story to tell, and that the basis of diversity is acceptance.

To quote the article: “Diversity is as much about understanding yourself as it is about understanding others and accepting others.”

Elaine, congrats on a fab article once again! Always so much to learn from the Avo boss chicks who write these clever articles!

If you’d like to find out more about experiencing the ‘nuts and bolts’ of diversity with Avo, please contact Gill.

You don’t often get a day with your team to have some serious fun, bonding and learning. The QA team works under a great deal of pressure and they appreciated being given some time to do just this.

Here is what they said about the day:

The course was absolutely inspirational and an absolute pleasure!

We got to know who we are!

Very fruitful and challenging.

I thoroughly enjoyed the course. The highlight for me was the speed dating where I got the chance to interact with all my colleagues.

Highly innovative and motivating workshop!

In life-it’s all about the little things that we constantly ignore or acknowledge.

Do not stop what what you do because you are the best!

I was inspired by the course, to work as a team and also to continue to develop myself!

So it’s about that time of the year when blossoms start to bloom, bright new leaves start to sprout, the world feels bright and new, and you can feel rebirth or new beginnings in the air. It is also about that time when Jules and I feel the need to remind our dearest, darling Avo’s about the way things should be. You will remember that we had to do something very similar last year…it did of course have very little effect on the Avo’s, so this year I thought I would start the conversation earlier and infuse it with a healthy dose of indoctrination and, if I can, hypnosis.

So there are two things Avo’s that we need to bring to your attention:

The first is that Jules and I remain the bosses in the business irrespective of what you tarts might think. Jules say after me …WE ARE THE BOSSES..never mind what they say.

Secondly Avos, the count down begins to THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS OF THE YEAR, not Christmas but Jules and my birthday (24 and 31 December). As usual we do expect gifts that range from the very expensive to the heart warming. As we move towards these two events both of which you agree are watershed moments in your existence we are going to request in addition to the expensive gifts you delight us with the following attitudinal changes:

So where before you were assertive we would like submissiveness, where you might have been opinionated we would like silence, where you might have had a voice we would like you to listen to our voice, where you have had the space to be innovative you may still be, but please where necessary bow to our insight and superior intelligence.

What we will be looking for in the following months really is just that you all be NICE!!!

Recognise us as the Queens of all Avoland for this really short time and we will be most grateful. Leave all thoughts of coup de tarts, mutiny’s and the like…alone, embrace us with love and surround us with adoration. We in turn will bless you with our sunny, dispositions…you will feel all the happier for it.

If you need any assistance with deciding on our birthday gifts please feel free to contact our spouses and as a last resort you may of course consult Nomsa who will happily assist you.

So from Jules and I, we wish to extend much love and happiness to our Avo’s. We are in office all week if you feel the need to be close to us or just to bask in our radiance.

Love you all !

Hi all, thought i would drop you a note. I got here safe and sound, experiencing the Palacina, a beautiful, old colonial style hotel. Great people and lovely food. The guys from Enterprise IG have been wonderful, thanks Jodi, Cindy and Tendai, they are doing a Brand Activation of which I’m doing the first session - Sussing Personalities.

So tomorrow we start at 7:30 with Sussing Personalities. We are using it to introduce change - my angle is understand self, understand others and then begin changing the way you manage your people simply because you understand them better. You can approach people differently to get the most out of them and help them enjoy their work better. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m looking forward to speaking to a non South African group and intrigued to see how they respond to the personalities learning.

At 7:15 I arrived at their offices and was shown into what looked very much like a dining room in an old farm house yes, in Bryanston. I didn’t know but the Cape Dutch gabled house was the original farm house in the area - really, really beautiful. It feels like you’re far out of Joburg, with trickling water from the pond and ducks swimming noisily.

So I put my slightly anal “this-is-how-a-room-should-be-set-out-for-training
-especially-presentation-skills-training” view of the world on hold (how do you set out a Dining room???). Yellow-wood table, creaky chairs and squeaky wooden floors.

But I must admit, once over my own stuff, what a great day we had. The guys at Ogilvy have a lovely vibrant way of being, and so the course was full of discussion, debate, personal experiences and laughter. We were relaxed, engaged and tired at the end of two super days. I look forward to finding out how your recent presentation experiences have been, what you’ve learnt and what worked for you.

Here are their comments after the course:

Cassandra Naidoo - The course was incredibly valuable. Learnt lots about my bad habits & now that I am aware of it, I will make a conscious effort not to practice them.

Sabie Macu - This is bloody marvelous!!! Primary learning: I need to stop looking too serious, i.e. Work my facial expression!

Pranusha Naidoo - This was an extremely beneficial course. I found it very relevant and assisted me in overcoming my bad habits. Highly recommended!

Stephanie - Brilliant! I learnt so much about myself, what I need to improve upon, what I am great at, it’s practical!

Lisa Oosthuizen - It was great to learn all the tricks of presenting and to be made aware of any bad habits so they can be eliminated, I feel presentable now.

Guys, please blog and let me how things are going, would love to know of any experiences that really worked for you.

Ciao Grant.

As I explained in a much earlier blog, my children continually teach me truths. On this occasion it was a combination of my youngest daughter, Kerryn (aged 10 years) and a large avo tree that provided the lesson for me.

It is a Saturday afternoon. Typical Gauteng winter afternoon weather…perfect. The children (2 girls and 2 boys all of a similar age) are playing themselves into a stupor outside in the glorious sunshine. My sister, my mom and I are looking at photos of my other sister on the laptop. We hear a creak, a crash and then the silence……followed by a long wail!

Before I can leap up, put the laptop down, disentangle myself from the cables, my mom has sprinted outside and run smack into a large avo tree branch (this branch was duly cut off by mom this weekend). I finally get to the avo tree to find Kerryn dazed and bleeding, my mom dazed and wobbly. I take charge, issuing instructions to my sister to deal with mom, whilst I go into first aid mode. Check if Kerryn can feel her toes etc. Eventually, I carry her inside, I put ice on all the swelling bits and clean up and bandage all the bleeding bits. Then try and persuade a weepy child who had a VERY late night the previous night, to stay awake so that I can monitor her for concussion.

2 days later she is absolutley fine. No broken bones, no sprains, just a graze on her face. I have gone to see how high the tree is…..extremely high. But I was not sure from where she fell. So I asked her what happened.

“I was playing I was swimming in the sea. When I came above the leaves I was coming out of the water, when I went below the leaves I was swimming under the water. I had just come out of the water and was swimming under the water when I grabbed a branch to come out of the water again then I was swimming and landed on the ground!! I didn’t even know I was falling. I didn’t fall, the branch broke!”

Three things, immediately, were apparent to me.

Firstly, she was at the very TOP of the tree, she fell FAR.

Secondly, my innate knowedge of Kerryn was not wrong. Kerryn is one of those people that just knows where she is in the world physically and has immense control over her body. She just doesn’t fall. So I had been battling with the idea that she had fallen. She doesn’t fall.

Thirdly her comment ‘I didn’t fall, the branch broke” spoke volumes about her attitude to life.

This was my learning from her and the avo tree. Sometimes bad things happen, that just happen. It is not caused by you, you are only the recipient. Deal with it. There is no blame or guilt. It just is! I think if I had been the one climbing the tree I would have said ” I am so clumsy, I fell”. Now, I hope I can look at situations more realistically and just deal with them without the blame or guilt.

Thank you Kerryn.

It’s women’s day. I’m in the office for a couple of precious quiet hours this morning. The Avos are gone for today, and the place is magically silent. I can hear the birds outside, and can see the ambitious blossoms on the almond tree in full out spring-splendour! The Namaqualand daisies I planted in some of the ‘empty’ spots in the garden are celebrating yellows, oranges and whites of the promise of spring.

I was looking through the last few blog posts as I often do - drinking my coffee and waiting for my PC to boot up properly- and I was struck by the tone of our site over the past month. On the one hand, we are a company intoxicated by the fruits of our own labour: the icy fear of a long, lean winter for us is long forgotten, the toil of spring is just past as we prepared our lands for the growing that was to come, and now, the ripening of summer sun in our Avo space has revealed our garden rich with blossoming opportunities and fulfilling relationships with clients starting to fruit as a reward for a job well done. We have never had so much work at one time, and are thrilling in how it feels to be a (somewhat exhausted, but happy) high-performing team.

But we are also a company that has needed to stop, reflect and hold some precious Avos who have walked through that season when the parent passes on, and the child becomes head of the family. Its the rite of passage that is deep and dark, but also an important part of ‘becoming’. As the circle of seasons and life takes its course, we stand near our friends, and let them know we are there, walking next to them through their own seasons. Elaine, Tshepo, Jill - we are still with you as you come to terms with this new season in your lives. The Avo machine churns on, but your preciousness is held by us all, through it all!

When I was at school a long, long time ago I was never exposed to the great variety of jobs that one can do out there. You could be a doctor, teacher, lawyer or if you did biology a Marine Biologist, wow! Don’t laugh I seriously considered the Marine Biology thing. So after doing a botany honors degree here I am facilitating people on how to communicate, ya go figure (ok it’s a medium length story) And then I met these guys from Standard Bank (no, no, no they are not ‘Bankers’) on a course we did together. I had no idea, they are forensic investigators working for the bank and they are incredible - CSI here we come. Some of the guys are ex-police, some have law backgrounds and others financial sector experience. And they deal with fraud issues around the banking environment.

You can’t believe the passion they have about their work and solving crime. It’s reassuring to know there are all sorts of people out there working to make South Africa a better place solving crime, helping people that have been caught in a crime web and when necessary working with the police. And boy, did I also learn stuff about getting into someone’s head with your common old communication skills. We had a fantastic course, spent most of our time discussing scenarios, problems or difficult situations and learning from every single experience they raised.

To you guys, thanks for being out there and thanks for sharing your experiences with us to help all our learning on the programme.

Here are some of their comments at the end of the programme.

Rana: Profound learning about personality types which one can use in every life situation

Judy Joseph: I found the course very enlightening and insightful with a wealth of applicable knowledge

Ernst: Great, teaches you to start thinking when conversing with others.

Andre: Good food for body & soul

Kervin: It was a great learning course for me and I am going to implement and use this stuff

Rhian: The course made me reflect on how I personality interact with others, in situations, where I need to, persuade, it made me reflect on my career standing & gave guidance - I.T.O improving my technique to max out come!!!

Shaquille: The course was good and very interactive. The facilitator is accommodative and allows everyone in the room to participate

Kenny: This course helped me to pause and consider all the little things that happen in a conversation that we tend to take for in a difficult situation.

Aidan: I have enjoyed the content, structure & presentation

It’s with such sadness that we have to say that one of our special associates, Jill Wellbeloved’s mother passed away yesterday.

Jill, we are sending you love and strength during this difficult and sensitive time.

Know that we are thinking of you and cherishing you in our hearts.

With love from the Avos.