Yup yup yup. We had a fabulous celebration on Friday afternoon in anticipation of Spring.

Yes, it was a day early, but can you blame us for wanting Spring to arrive already?!

As a special gesture, we each had an indigenous flower to plant in the Avo garden. Some Avos embraced this whole-heartedly and got their hands dirty, and others (as much as I want to I’m not going to mention any names!…) watched while the guys dug up the ground and posed for photo’s at the end. (Actually, I can’t blame them, ha ha!). And yes, all Avos are posers.

We also got to enjoy an absolutely delicious supper, provided by our favourite caterer Brenda. As a matter of fact, most of us went back for seconds!

To the boss chicks, thanks for spoiling us and letting us bring in the new season with smiles on our faces.

And bring on Spring!

We had another article in The Star Workplace today, written by Jules.

The article, “Are you a real manager?”, centers around lifting your management game.

Jules mentions that most managers are promoted because they are damn good at their jobs. But that promotion means that they are thrown into a new space of getting work done through others, instead of being an individual contributor.

It also means that they suddenly “get” how much they don’t know about this new management role.

Jules also quotes David Rock, who believes that it’s time to reinvent the manager. He says that today’s managers need to understand what it takes to manage and retain knowledge workers, and highlights three key competencies for the manager:

Get your people to think better, Become master communicators in order to circulate and sell ideas better and; Become master facilitators of relationships and tough conversations.

Jules suggests a fourth, cited by Marcus Buckingham of the Gallup organisation: Be clear about your own strengths, and those of your team, and play to those strengths whole-heartedly!

To quote: “In essence, management is about your ability to connect with, inspire, grow and support the people for whose performance you become accountable.”

Great article Jules!

Eish! The debate is raging like mad at Avo! We are about to change our email addresses to reduce the hectic spam our server has been processing over the past few months. And of course, the next thing that happens when email addresses change is NEW BUSINESS CARDS!

And if we’re having new business cards, this seems like the appropriate time to lift our card design into our fresher branding. And if we’re doing that, then Avos (only some, of course) are looking at changing our ‘Phrase that pays’!

Until now, we’ve had the phrase ‘Leveraging the potential of people connections’. We’ve also used ‘Helping people have better conversations’.

BLEAUGHHHHHHH!, say the Avos.

So! Easy to chuck out the old. But not so easy to decide what new to bring in! We had a sales team meeting. Becky came up with the phrase ‘We get fresh with learning’. We all loved it. Except Clint. Clint says that’s too cheeky and won’t fit with our clients. He wants something that has the word ’solutions’ in it! I quite like it because ‘fresh’ is the word most people come up with when they think of Avo. How about ‘Fresh learning solutions’?

Pia, one of our Avo marketing friends says we shouldn’t have a payoff line at all. Just do what we do and say what we say. Add value to our clients and the brand will live as part of that. She says we’re in the business of relationships, and so the relationship is what will count, not a line on the business card!

And so the debate continues. Needless to say, the business card printing is on hold. We’re desperate for a solution. SO it’s now in the public domain. Clients. Learners. Suppliers. Friends. Avos. PLEASE. Let us know what you think!