Thanks very much to Avo, Tshepo and Maria for putting the idea forward!

Location: Moyos Zoo Lake.

Those attending: Tshepo, Nomsa, Dinah, Kayla, Maria, Klaas and Douglas.

It all started when Tshepo overheard Maria saying that she had never eaten at a restaurant before and she was trying to phone Zola-7 to find a way to go to a restaurant.  Tshepo thought “We don’t need Zola-7 to go to a restaurant!” and kindly offered to be her Zola-7.  The ball started rolling and eventually a whole lot of Avos were in on the deal, due to the wonderful sponsor of AVO! 

We all met at the Avo home and drove together with Klaas and Tshepo, When we got there we sat outside at this beautiful restaurant under the trees with our faces painted like African warriors and queens, the weather was warm and sunny, what a perfect day.

Then food was served in a buffet style; pap, chicken, beef ribs, fish, breads, fruit salad, custard and the list goes on.  Not to mention the beer!  Conversation flowed at about the same rate as the beer, and we spoke about food and the different varieties.  After lunch we took a walk around the lake, it was so beautiful! 

Thank you so much to Avo and all the people involved for giving us this perfect day.

You know I have been really vocal over the years about how work and life must be allowed to merge and coexist in a comfortable way?

Now my philosophy is being put to the test in the most challenging way so far!  We have been incredibly priveleged to have Vanessa Thomas (now Lowndes) on our team for the past year.  Her fabulous technical talent in our industry, and powerful leadership and relationship-building capabilities have really lifted Avo into a realm where I wouldn’t have been able to take it on my own.  She has been a really powerful 2IC, in charge of our Delivery division.

She arrived at Avo with an ache in her heart to return to her precious Cape Town, where Avo has had no physical presence.  I promised her that if she stayed for a year, we could work together to get her to Cape Town so she could live where her heart needed to be, but still contribute to Avo with all her skills and strengths.

So this is it.  The year has come to pass. Today she gets into her car with her new husband, dogs, potplants, and suitcases and heads off into the sunset!  Jeanette has worked painstakingly at getting all her technology up and running so we can keep in close Skype contact. We have gone over all our plans about how we can make this distance thing a success… and now we hold our collective breath……and jump!

By Tuesday, Avo will officially have an operating branch in Cape Town: and that just has to be another one of our exciting ‘growing up’ milestones!  Go Ness! I know we can make this work!  And Thomas family, I know how happy you are all to have your precious Ness back home.  Love to you all!

Dan Swart is the extraordinary photographer behind the camera on all our famous Avo pics.  He’s not only a fabulous photographer (he’d have to be, to make all the Avos look good….), but also a fabulous artist!  And he’s also my dad!

Dan is having an exhibition of some of his paintings and photographs, starting on Friday.  It will run for four weeks at Gary’s restuarant in Melville called ‘La Vista’.  If you can’t make the opening, do go over there over the next four weeks: the food, the restuarant/gallery, and the art will all be a treat for the senses, I promise!

You must be sick of me and my tree metaphors by now! But really, you can’t expect anything else from someone who named her company after a tree now, can you?

We’ve just completed our latest ‘Blueprints’ vote to make sure we’re running our company as close to true as we can.  And I’m so delighted to celebrate that the icon our people and our clients chose as our top achiever for the month is ‘Growing our own People’!  I’m so proud of that.  It means that at Avo, we don’t simply expect our clients to fork out loads of money to develop their people, we actually really believe in the principle at our core, and make sure we’re doing the same for our own team! In our case, the shoemakers children have the best shoes!!

Well done to all the Avos who are making this a reality!

I found the perfect quote on my friend Rachel’s website: www.Mentorme.net

It says:

“If you want a harvest in one year, grow a crop.
If you want a harvest in ten years, grow trees.
If you want a harvest that will  last a lifetime,
grow people.”
Chinese Proverb

So, Donna, who writes the most beautiful poetry and simply compels you to hear every word she speaks with that stunning accent, is also one of our external trainers.

She was born in Jamaica where she studied law and got her Bachelors degree with Honours. In her own words, she became disillusioned with law after about ten years and transitioned into conflict resolution, training and facilitation, youth empowerment and activism - which is what brought her to SA.

So, enough with all the fantastic qualifications! (Not that we don’t appreciate them Donna…), but lets get a taste of some of that poetic talent already!

Donna has very kindly let us add one of her poems to her blog!

Poetry

Poetry… is definitely me
Is a ting dat really mek mi feel so free
Poetry is ‘ow a lissen to mi soul
Is why a mek mi feelin’s tek control

Poetry… connec’ me an’ you
Becaas it only talk wat is true
Poetry is a voice fram de heart
One of de ways in which a play my part

Wid poetry, yu nuh need no dacta
Yu nuh affi consult no chiropractor
Caa’ poetry … it ease di min’
Like a blessin, someting divine

Poetry is not no 9 to 5
Poetry is wat keep me alive
Poetry, yes a my ting dat
No matta where, no matta wat!
Poetry…

ds 01/01/41

It’s so fabulous I’m almost speechless!

As Jules mentioned earlier we are another little step ahead in our journey of feet. Mel has been working hard at putting the content together for our Manage your Money training with Footprint.

We ran our first pilot last week…..guys this is such important work we are doing here! I was so touched by how much the learnings that were shared affected people. People gained insight into their own financial situtions, reality was difficult to accept for some! Once people were shown how they can manage their money in a more effective way and how this could impact on their lifestyles, the lights went on in their eyes…….we must not take for granted that people know how to do this.

What we do need to catch onto rather quickly is that there are so many people in our country that don’t know what is available to them and how to use it. Footprint will give them the little steps to take with regards to their finances, which will take them a long way to Standing on their Own two Feet with pride!

So tomorrow is my ‘official’ last day in the Avo space. It’s been two and a half years already since I joined the Avos again, and five and half years all together if you count the years I was here before my UK stint.

And now I’m moving on into a completely different space and looking forward to the new journey.

However - I am joining you all on Friday for filling the well and I refuse to think about how hard it’s going to be to say goodbye to all of you, who’ve been so much a part of my life for  these past few years!

But if you think this is the last you’ll hear of me, you’d be sorely mistaken…  Somone’s got to keep the comments going on the site!

Just a big, heatfelt “Thank You” to all of you and lots and lots of love!!!

(And when I come to visit a Number 9 chocolate cake wouldn’t go amiss…)

In my attempts to sell our marvelous products I have started a networking evening with a very good friend of mine, John Bruckman. We have embarked on various networking events in the past with much success: we are both just the most charming delightful people, and we know how to give people a good time.

We had our first gathering last week and what fun was had by all. Now it is not all just fun! fun! fun!, we had some serious moments. John is a great speaker and he gave us some food for thought around the economic situation we find ourselves in at the moment. “How tulips caused the fall of Kings… and South Africa!”. He took us through the ages to various points where economies suffered and why. He also warned us about buying too much into what the “press” predict. His advice is to sit tight and ride the storm… or buy a good surfboard to ease the ride!

Whilst John was up there being his charming self, Roy (a new friend) was projecting a visual facilitation of John’s subject matter onto the wall! It was so much fun to experience and evoked some interesting comments and conversation. He is really good. Check it out!

Thanks to Gary from La Vista Social Club who allowed us to use his lovely restaurant for the evening and also to John Ford, who provided some great vibes….

If you wanna know more you know where to find me…. I’m at AVO!

I think we all know that we are in for tougher times ahead, and in the training and development world that often means that training budgets are cut because ’soft-skills,’ training is often seen as a nice to have rather than a have to have. And of course, as a sales team, we will need to get very clever as to how and where we apply our efforts…

I was reading an article last night about how to ‘Recession-Proof your Workforce,’ by TalentSmart. In this article they spoke of the importance of organisations focusing on increasing the emotional intelligence of their workforce so that they can more effectively deal with the tough time ahead. So how does ‘Sussing Personalities,’ fit in…?

Well for those of you who have seen the magic that can be created when people (or personalities) are in sync with each other, or the devastation when they are not, I probably don’t need to paint you a picture! But just to get a little more specific, in most work environments, one of the things that can have a huge impact on productivity is people’s ability to communicate and collaborate together in order to get the work done. When this is not happening, some of the things you may see are: one strong personality shutting down another in a meeting, good ideas not being shared or considered as they should, people that absolutely rely on each other to get the work done avoiding each other, compliance vs commitment, communication styles that clash, prolonged decision-making because you need to get the people stuff sorted out first, need I go on…?

One of the greatest benefits of the ‘Sussing’ workshop is that it introduces some very practical ways to help improve one’s emotional intelligence in the areas of self-awareness, self-management, and relationship management. It creates a common platform for people to understand themselves better, as well as those on their team. As times get tougher and the pressure and volitility in our work environments increases, ‘All the knowledge and technical skill in the world, can’t address a productivity issue that is rooted in poor emotional coping mechanisms (2008, TalentSmart).’ I strongly believe that the organisations who really get this and make a deliberate effort to do something about it, will come out better and stronger as a result.

Oh, and by the way, I wouldn’t be a good sales person if I didn’t go in for the close, if you want to be one of those organisations that comes out better and stronger as a result…give us a call…I know we can help!

Mels here!

I’m really thrilled about that because Mel is the clever person who is busy writing the content for our first Footprint course: Manage your Money! I have been exposed to so many financial literacy programes over the past few months, and keep struggling with the fact that they don’t actually seem to talk in to the LSM 1-5 market that we’re targeting for Footprint. They all feel like programes designed by relatively sophisticated people, who don’t really understand the situation of the people we’re trying to help!

But Mel’s different! She spent about 3 years working in Cape Town for a company called ‘You and Your Money’. Most of her time was spent working with the target market we have in mind, understanding their challenges, hearing their stories, helping them build financial literacy, and also understanding how well they already work with money (however informally)!

So I’m delighted she agreed to be our content designer - I feel we’ll have one of the few programmes out there that’s actually designed for the people it’s intended to help! She’s in Joburg this week to pilot it with some of our Avo friends, and also brief our colleagues, Trainiac, so they can turn the programe into pictures: that way we won’t be excluding anyone in South Africa, even if they can’t read, or don’t understand a particular language!

YAY!!! I’m so excited!