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Elevate CA Blog

Welcome to the Elevate CA blog - a mixture of interesting and useful observations from our team.

Leave something on the table

Can one measure the skill of a negotiator based on what they leave – or don’t leave – on the table?  I think so.  The person who negotiates a deal extracting maximum value without leaving anything on the table is indeed a skilled negotiator, right?  I’d say “wrong”.  [Read more…]

Finland vs New Zealand

Here’s a question:  What do New Zealand and Finland have in common?  Both have a similar population.  They are similar in size.  Both have a single large city which accounts for a big chunk of the population – Helsinki is similar in size to Auckland with something over 1 million population.  And neither Finland nor New Zealand is blessed with significant mineral riches.  So what? [Read more…]

Employment Issues

The November Business Owners’ Forum will feature a panel discussion on employment issues.  It will be hosted by The ICEHOUSE, Level 2, The Textile Centre, 117 to 125 St Georges Bay Road, Parnell – and will be held on 19 November from 5:30pm (sharp) to 7:00pm.  As always with BOF events, discussion will ultimately be driven by those who attend on the night – and the panelists will keep discussions moving along quickly.  We have three great panelists, and here’s what you can expect to be covered over the hour and a half:

Rebecca Brennan, a director of ElevateCA Limited will discuss the use of tools for performance management and performance measurement – and some great pragmatic ideas and concepts around getting the most from your team.  Rebecca will get straight down to the “how to” nuts and bolts of the subject.

Michael Masterson, a former CEO of the largest contact centre in Australasia who took the business to over 6,500 staff in a short time.  Michael has some humourous and pertinent insights from this experience – and is a great advocate of “leading from the front” in order to keep your team fully engaged.

Paul Diver, a lawyer, employment specialist and HR Partner at the ICEHOUSE, who will share some of the latest and emerging legal issues relating to employment in New Zealand.  Paul is the Plastics Industry multi-employer collective agreement advocate – and also negotiates collective agreements for the Order of St John, Restaurant Brands, Chubb, Otis, DHL and United Group.

Format is casual over pizza, beer and wine – and Business Owners Forums are always rather lively events!  These events are targeted to owners of businesses with $1 million turnover and more.

The ethos of ElevateCA Limited and the Business Owners’ Forum supporters is to give back to the business communities which support us.  In line with this ethos, Business Owners’ Forum events are always free of charge.

If you would like to be invited to this event, please contact ElevateCA.

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Business Planning Competition Winners

Congratulations to the 2009 winners of the Spark Entrepreneurial Challenge – a business planning competition run annually by the ICEHOUSE and the Auckland University Business School.  The winners were announced at a ceremony at the Business School on Thursday, where the winning team – Green Loos – were awarded the $30,000 top prize.  [Read more…]

Employment Issues

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Business Owners’ Forum this evening.  It was a great turnout, and there was some quality discussion around employment issues from the panel and the participants.  The format was intended to be three 15 minute presentations from the panelists followed by 45 minutes of discussion from the floor.  But what actually happened was that the participants from the floor drove the discussion along and the evening took on a life of its own.

A great Business Owners Forum session – just what these meetups are all about!

The panelists tonight were:

  • David Grindle, a partner at Webb Ross Lawyers, who shared with us some of legal trends in getting solutions around the 90 day probationary period – and the redundancy rules.  David stimulated plenty of discussion with his pragmatic views and approach to working in good faith with the employment relationship – and fixing things when good faith just isn’t enough.
  • Rebecca Brennan, a director of ElevateCA Limited, discussed some good practical strategies around performance management and performance measurement.  Rebecca drove home the importance of communication and measurement, and got down to the real “how to” nuts and bolts of the subject.  Her point that “bad news is NOT like wine – it doesn’t improve with age” was well received and sparked plenty of good discussion about making the tough calls, raising issues early and avoiding the temptation to sugar coat them.
  • Michael Masterson, a former CEO of a large Asia Pacific contact centre, shared some practical and amusing anecdotes to make his points about keeping your team fully engaged in their work.  He advocated what he called the three f’s – fun, focus and fulfilment – in the workplace, and talked about leading from the front and the little things that make a huge difference.

As always, format was casual over pizza, beer and wine – and the event was well attended by business owners who, judging by the show of hands at the end, all got plenty of good tips and points to take away from the evening.

There was some discussion about possible future topic