It’s quite an exciting thing, growing up!  We will be turning 12 tomorrow!  We’ve beaten all the odds (95% of SMEs close down before they reach their 10th birthday).

And to mark the new year of growing up, we’ve been working on defining the DNA of Avo to keep ourselves ‘Avo’ going forward.  Its been a great process: we’ve been arguing and debating what behaviours support and grow a successful Avo space, and what behaviours detract from our success.  Jeez - the Avos get heated when I try and get my way!  I’ve had to negotiate with both feet planted squarly on the ground to keep them from eliminating my precious culture of ‘Kudos and Cockup’!  (OK there’s a story behind this one!)

We’ve had some very talented Avo artists preparing icons to represent the behaviours, and will be revealing some of their work on the 9th May.  After that, we’ll start measuring ourselves against those behaviours monthly, to make sure we don’t stray off the track of building a profitable company that we’re proud of, and delivering work that we’re proud of!

Happy Birthday Avo!!!!!

I must confess to being completely delighted with the Footprint branding our creative team has come up with. Thanks so much to Caroline, Caren, Carin, Hanli, Sandi and Vanessa for your fabulous input.

The logo is steeped in symbolism which won’t necessarily mean much to people out there, but is very meaningful for those of us who are putting the company together.

It’s a series of shapes which mean things: The square is the architypal masculine shape: it represents our customers (mostly corporate, with masculine DNA), who will be bringing the financial resources to help our company succeed. The triangle is the feminine, and that will be the DNA of our Footprint, but also the women we will empower through this venture. The circle is about the union of masculine and feminine - a gestalt which realises energy and synergy far beyond what they can create alone.

The spiral is my personal symbol - it represents a journey inward for resources and learning, and a reach outward and upward to higher levels of purpose. And the arrows represent the programmes we will deliver: Manage your Money; Manage your Health; and others that we will create as we perfect our capability as a training company.

The payoff line, Reach Learn Stand, means the following: Reach is about the geographies we can acces through our unique operating model, and the people we can reach because of the low price of training we are able to charge; Learn is about what we will help the people of this country to do; and Stand is about helping the poor of this country to stand on their own two feet in a sustainable way.

I love the power and soul that is suggested by these things. Send us luck and blessings as we take more steps towards creating this space!

Everything I read tells me that there is often a huge disconnect between the minds of the strategists in a company, and the hands of the execution team.  Far too often, execution teams get on with their work while the strategists (completely out of touch with the people on the ground), draw blocks and arrows on paper.

I, of course, am under the impression that I have a very good idea that I know what’s happening on the ground, and that the execution team of Avo knows exactly what’s going on in my head.  However, people keep telling me that I’m smoking my socks!  I’m getting the sneaky suspicion that my team suspect me to be as out of touch with them as my corporate friends with their people!

So I have to find as many channels as possible to communicate what I want Avo to do this year, and this is one of them.

So here goes.  Goals for 2008/2009:

• Deliver work that we’re proud of
• Build a profitable company that we’re proud of.

We have put many things in place to enable these 2 goals.  Avos, please think about everything you do in terms of these: if what you are doing doesn’t contribute to those goals, please chat to your boss: We need to start asking ourselves why we’re doing it if it doesn’t.

Avo’s gardener, Douglas, is in the process of setting up his own little garden business.

We’ve been helping him out where we can, and it’s starting to really work out for him!

He did his first “new business” job this past Saturday and has a fully booked Saturday for this weekend.

So, what has this got to do with us doing our jobs too well?

Well, Douglas is also one of the people who sees Meryl for coaching, and guess who had who making notes in the latest session?

At the moment Meryl’s playing PA, chauffer and personal shopper while he gets things up and running!…

So, when we upskill, we do it properly!

Douglas does all sorts of handyman and gardening jobs, so if anyone in the Kensington area is looking for someone who’s reliable to do this kind of work, please get in touch with Meryl.

I’ve been re-exposed to the word “rigour”. I didn’t really think I would use it to describe a space that Avo or I would be training in, you know we do the ‘soft’ skills, but the last three courses I’ve been running with have been … rigorous (even though its still the soft stuff).

Yep that’s it … rigorous. And I guess the rigour-ness came in the debate, the discussion and the questioning. Not the material, not the concepts, not the exercises but the interaction. So for me its been a ‘wonderful’ challenge, a ‘fantastic’ experience and ‘exciting’ growth. The nice optimistic adjectives are in italics because when you are in the middle of holding the debate and hearing the arguments it feels very hard, … rigorous.
We are rolling out a country wide change intervention with one of our favourite clients (need to withhold name for now) and they are absolutely fantastic. For them it’s a serious change, hence the rigour of the arguments and debate.

I’m the facilitator and I know they are learning and unlearning a lot, but I’m learning just as much if not more than them.

What people? And what skill? Let me paint you a picture: They are strong, smart, driven, fast, efficient, energetic, focused, enthusiastic, engaging, fun and funny, witty, quick thinking, quick to argue, quick to challenge … rigorous … and on top of their game.

You try and keep up with this bunch in a day, even if you are the facilitator, wow …! And so back to my word, yep, Rigorous. I know that much of the nuts and bolts of this massive change rests on the shoulders of these guys and as one of them said yesterday, “the success is in our hands boys”. With this kind of talent in a company I have absolutely no doubt that they will succeed and stay an international leader in their field.
For those of you that continuously made the following statements … you know who you are!
“I just wanna ask One question” (for the 24^th time)
“There are pockets of excellence in our funnel of excellence”
“No guys – lets look at the Bigger Picture here”
“I need to stand up …uugh … I just want to say …”

Avo had a fab article in The Star Workplace yesterday.

The article, “Diversity is not enmity” was written by Elaine and centres around what diversity means today as opposed to what it used to mean (and what managing diversity was), and what that means for managers of diverse teams.

In it Elaine gives a relevant example of the conflict that can arise when different cultures come into the same space, without making an effort to understand each other.

And, of course, she mentions our very clever solution to this dilemma!

It’s a fantastic, thought provoking article thats well worth a read.

I have a PDF copy, so mail me if you’re interested.

I am walking a little shell-shocked today, after what has felt like a very hectic week of managing people challenges.  I can’t really descibe the circumstances, as so many of them are linked to personal and confidential stories, but I have to confess to feeling quite wobbly about it all. 

My coach and I were examining how easily I step into the ’soul’ space with everybody, absorb their pain, and excuse their behaviour or performance because I understand the underlying reasons for it.  I tend to let people off the hook, and don’t demand the high standards of performance from them that I expect from myself.  The impact that it has on me is that I end up rowing much harder in the boat, and putting my own emotional and physical health at risk.  Which, in turn, puts us all at risk.  So just as I think I’m really rescueing a situation, I fail to see the bigger picture of the bigger impact.

And at the same time I’m writing a proposal with Vanessa and Clint for a company that has exactly the opposite problem: a pile full of managers who have the output and task thing waxed, and very little emotional connection. 

I suppose their leaders and I have a lot to learn from each other.  They’ll need to learn how to listen up, care, and engage with their staff on a much more personal level, and I’ll be needing to learn to keep my people more goal-oriented, outputs-driven, and focussed on delivering their best work.

Sigh……..   Management is a hard thing to learn, no matter what mountain you’re sitting on……

I had one of those phone calls the other day.  One of those calls that every MD loves to get!  It was from one of our key clients with whom a talented team of Avos is rolling out a nationwide training project. 

She was just needing to tell me how fantastic you all are, and how well you are delivering under tight deadlines and often challenging circumstances.  And she wanted you all to know how much she values your work and the manner in which you deliver that work! 

Hanli, Vanessa, Grant, Anabela, Carin, Gill, Leizl, Donna, Mamello, Jill, Sego, Caroline, DAn and Nomsa. There’s something about that good ol’ Avo magic that just keeps our customers smiling.  Thanks guys!  You have all gone above and beyond to help our clients succeed! A seriously SUPER team!

Today was a really funny day. The Avo’s were pumping!

We had a major pitch to prepare for which we really wanted to win, so the sales team were hard at it! We are launching a massive country wide training roll out on Monday which requires an enormous amount of preparation, so our support team were doing cartwheels round the office. And… 6 of our trainers were attending a train the trainer on “how to use a blackberry”, so the conference room was buzzing with Vodacom people, client people and training people. It was all happening at Avocado Vision.

And then….. juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup… the lights went out! Everything came to a slow halt… except for the fact that we still had deadlines. What to do? What are the options? No generator yet… ok… let’s get innovative.

Where is the power? Next grid up… South Kensington. Vanessa lives there. She has a house. It has power. Let’s go! So within 5 minutes, everyone had packed their goodies, piled into their cars and made a bee-line for my house. Each team found a corner of the house to occupy, and within minutes, the show was back on the road.

The sales team nestled between the toaster and the microwave and finished off their pitch, adding the last touches to their sales presentation. The pressure was on. An hour to go before we were up.

The trainers (8 of them) crowded into the lounge, organised the sofa’s, took the pictures off the wall and fired up the data projector. Blackberry training was once again in progress. In amongst the learner group were a collection of loosely scattered cushions as well as a pair of uber-attentive dogs! Never has a slide presentation looked so dodgy as we beamed our images onto the deep mustard walls. Nonetheless, the session was in full swing.

As the sales team hastily made the final touches to their work and began to spruce themselves before heading off to the big event, a cell phone rang. It was the client. They apologised sincerely for having to postpone the presentation… they were out of power!

What an awesome day! We had power… we lost power… we found power! Yeehah… Avo power!

The Amazingzing race on the 16th March was amazing, even if the forces of nature were against us!

That didn’t stop the guys from running through Main Street JHB soaking wet and trying to find the clues, and not giving-up.

The interaction with the church choir in Hillbrow was one of the special moments for the team.

Our final activity was Rocky street in Yeoville - we met people from different parts of Africa and learnt about the different cultures and foods.

The guys had an unforgettable experience in Joburg, and saw it from a new perspective. One of the team even commented that he always avoided the CBD and just went there for business and now he was grateful for the opportunity to experience the vibe and awesome people of this city.

Thanks to everyone for an eye-opener of a day!