At lot can happen between 7:30 and 10:30 am… This morning I earned the Cock-up of the year award (or very close to it).

This week I had 3 different training events on with one company but 3 different business units. I left the Far East this morning on route to one of these events in Sunninghill which was on route to another one in Lichtenburg. I almost arrived in Sunninghill and I discovered that there may be a bit of a problem…

The trainer sms’d me to see if I had the venue mixed up because the location I had sent her to was not expecting her. So I contacted the client to confirm the venue and she said, ‘yes, it is in Sunninghill, but tomorrow.’ On Monday, one got postponed and I mixed up the day and event and cancelled the trainer for the wrong day.

Now I have one of our trainers all set up and ready to go, and no participants!!! (for those of you who know Tracy – she has put countless hours into preparing for this session).

So I sit in the parking lot, take a deep breath and walk into the training venue with my tail between my legs to tell Tracy that she is not actually training today (after all that time on preparing and having the training room all set up and ready to go!). After I explained my screw up, she took it like a champ and told me that she was feeling very privileged to be a part of the biggest cock up of my year and a half with Avo.

This would not be as big of a deal if Tracy could do the training tomorrow, but she is booked to do another client session tomorrow and there is no one else that I can put in to do the training because it is a custom project that she has been immersed in for over 6 months.

At this point I have visions of me prepping into the wee hours of the morning and getting up at 4am tomorrow to drive back to Joburg from Lichtenburg so I can run the session myself. But after a couple of hours of her cell phone attached to her ear, Vanessa, (our Training Manager) has re-organised heaven and earth and made a plan!

So as a result I am able to trade in my prep time to shower love and gratitude on all the Avos (Tracy, Grant, Vanessa, Raelene and Clint) that pitched in to help or had to rearrange their lives to help me (and most importantly my client!), recover from my cock up.
P.S. There is more to this story, it is only 9:45. Part II to come tomorrow – I will get my butt kicked if my blog is too long…

So you might be thinking, why am I getting emails from Gill, but “Carla-Jo” is the name at the bottom of the mail…

No, you are not losing your mind, and No, nor have we (yet? ).

Our Gilly (these days affectionately referred to as Belly Bean..) has disappeared overseas on some glorious travels with her hubby for a month (just look at all those memo’s, she needs it!) and so Carla-Jo is helping us out until she gets back.

To keep things running smoothly, Carla-Jo is using Gill’s laptop, so that’s why Gilly’s name is still on it!

However, seeing as though I am the chick who does the whole ‘email signature’ thing, I’m sure I can make a plan to keep confusion at a minumum!

Thanks for helping us out Carla-Jo!!!

I have to confess that when Jules sms’ed to tell me we were in the Star Workplace, I was expecting to find us on the front page, and there we were on page 2!!!

Hey Jules, at least I actually paged through this time!

In this article Jules talks about how managers need to coach resilience into themselves and the people they lead.

To quote: “The challenges SA managers face in day-to-day managing people are tough and complex, and stretch us to deal the issues and still remain competitive in a global economy.”

She talks about the challenges we face as South Africans and how managers “have a role to play in helping their people stay the course, and remain competitive and productive.”

It is, yet again, a fantastic but relevant read, and I’m afraid that if you want to know more you’re going to have to ask me to send you a copy to read!

I’ve been working with a really phenomenal bunch of people from Group Risk at one of the big 5 banks in South Africa.

What a privilege.

I’ve gained so much insight into myself and other people during this time. What we do at Avo is about self and the other person, try looking at any course we run and you’ll find it revolves around that dynamic. So how privileged am I to be constantly working on myself while I’m working with others?

So to my point; I have a pretty equal combination of analytical and very steady behaviour in my personality profile and by far the majority of people coming from Group Risk are analytical - their behaviour fits the analyst personality profile very closely.

Just last week a group came along on our Persuasive Conversations course, and every single one of them were very strongly analytical. Many people misunderstand the analyst type person. An old stereotype of this group of people was that they didn’t have much of a personality. Analysts know this is not true but I sometimes get the feeling other people are not always so sure. Later research indicates that they may be some of the most complicated personalities to be found.

On this series of courses I have experienced this complexity and have been through the widest possible range of emotions and experiences that you could think of. We’ve had so much fun but at the same time have had some incredibly serious, deep discussions. There has been laughing and joking mixed with thinking (lots of it), discussing, explaining, wondrous stories, debate… about senior managers, exploring family relationships and the minds of teenagers, some tears (yes some of my own as well), challenges, challenging situations brought to the table, worries, solutions, ideas and learning.

Yes, every single programme makes my mind spin, at some point I usually consciously feel myself thinking how great it is to be alive, enthusiastic and stimulated with the people around me. When engaging with people and attempting to work out how to connect with them be aware that you don’t box the analyst too rigidly, they have incredible depth and bring massive value.

One day you’re all sitting around the table throwing around ideas about what belongs where, descriptions galore and deciding on the importance of all these things, and then you wipe your eyes out and there are all these fantastic artworks to look at too!

Avo has been going through quite a process with the Blueprints team to identify the things we do as a company that will keep us successful, and also identify those things we do that could mean us closing our doors.

We then wittled down all the given suggestions into 15 Top Line (things that make us successful) and 15 Bottom Line (things that make us unsuccessful) items. Each “item” then needs a piece of artwork made for it to be kept on-site, as a reminder to us.

What then happens is we all vote monthly to keep track of what the employees think is working and/or not working, and this way we keep track of how we’re doing.

So all of our Bottom Line artworks have been completed by Jeanette and her dad, Colin, and they are absolutely stunning!

I wanted to give you a little taste of the fabulous work…

The guy on the left going into the mincer (ag shame!) represents ‘Bad Capacity Management’, and this one on the right stands for ‘Not managing the numbers’.

Don’t they rock?!

They’re all on display at the Avo site, so if you’re ever in our space, come and have a look!

(PS: Top Line artworks are still being made, so watch out for those pics!)

I am officially a jetsetter!  Yesterday I left Joburg on a flight to Kimberly at 16h00, and was back in the office by 8h00 this morning!  I had to do a talk at the De Beers Finch mine out on the road to Kuruman!  I had a couple of real trip highlights along the way:

FIrstly, I got upgraded to the new C-class merc for my trip through the Kalahari!  ME!  The Renault-clio die-hard!  The chick who gets ripped at Avo because even our driver drives a better car than me!!!! (although he should, shouldn’t he???? He drives all day!  How horrible if he drove a worse car than me…..??!!!). I must confess to feeling a wee bit cool in my white merc.

It took me about 15 min to get out of the parking, though: who knew the handbrake had to be  off before it would go forward?! Also, stopping and getting out was a bit of a challenge: nowhere on the car is a sign that says ‘put into parking gear before you take out the keys, stupid!’ so I didn’t find it very user friendly, I must say. 

Although, I found out how to work the cruise control about 20km away from my destination, which was fun, but short. But I never did figure how to turn off the radio once I got out of range, so I listened to loud static for most of the trip until I accidently bumped the volume button on the steering wheel at which moment I was able to experience pure bliss and silence as I pulled into the mining town….

Never did crack the bluetooth cellphone connection either, dammit!

Oh, and then I came home on the lear jet, and was back on the Avo mountain for coffee at 8, (did you see how casually I said that?) So now, when you talk about me, just call me Jules the Jetsetter… my future’s so bright……….!

The spiral is an ancient symbol reflecting the universal pattern of growth and evolution. The spiral pattern appears again and again in the natural world from the milky way galaxy to snail shells. The living spiral does not begin or end, it is an ongoing process of innocence, discovery, community, and the essence that connects all things. Deep!