Thursday, July 2, 2009

What makes a great organization!

I listened to Steve Newman previously from NZ iconic company NavMan recently. What an amazing story! And obviously a pretty awesome businessman, who together with Peter Maire turned their own innovative ideas into a very successful business. I was interested in his comments around having staff that are a balance between “ideas” people and those who were able to measure the risk—I would totally agree with him and have been thinking a lot about the make up of our own staff and how you do need a combination of both types—innovators and stabilizers! I love this quote given to us in class: “Without order nothing can exist, without chaos nothing can evolve.”
I also really liked his narrative around what they did to build a solid staff culture—monthly whole staff meetings, 1 cafeteria for all, employee of the month schemes. Ultimately I would say it was the clash of cultures that occurred after Brunswick bought out NavMan that caused the greatest problems. I must get a copy of the book by Daniel Fink “A Whole New Mind”. The youtube site http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhKLSTBSgwI
of Daniel speaking is great to listen to, especially around his concerns about the education system.

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