Moments of Truth

Edition 135 Monday 16th April 2012

Hi, ‘they’ say life is a series of ‘moments of truth’ and that it is our reaction to these moments that defines us as people. ‘They’ also say these moments act as a catalyst for deciding what path we will take in life and at what point in our lives we will take those paths. All I can say is whoever ‘they’ are ‘they’ certainly seem to know what ‘they’ are talking about.

Our latest ‘moment of truth’ is bigger than Ben Hur, Texas, sliced bread and the All Black Rugby World Cup victories of 1987 and 2011 combined!!!,you see,we are going to be truly blessed with the birth of a wonderful little boy. Our brand new son will be a brother for Matthew (24) and Mark (29) and whilst it has been more than a long time between nappies, sleepless nights, breast feeding and celebratory drinks we are thrilled and both cant wait to get cracking!

Yes this is taking ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ to a whole new level but we don’t want to regret not doing it, or die wondering if we should have done it, so …..we we are doing it !

Never in our wildest dreams did we think there would be a chance to be parents all over again. We consider ourselves extremely lucky to have this opportunity and by crikey we are going to seize our ‘moment of truth’ with both hands as we head off again down the parent path of life. As you can imagine the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of pre baby stuff like scans, tests, amazed relatives and friends so as a result we have been swept along in a surreal vortex of emotions..Crikey!

Anyway that is far too deep for now I agree, lets talk sport……what about those Breakers?!!! jeez I loved the ‘over time’ game#1 of the final last week…….good luck in Perth next week guys.

We had a cool weekend, the highlight for me being a record breaking 8 golfball find dog walk(previous record 5),second hand ball business is good at the course !. I hope you had a fun weekend with your family and friends, have an awesome week ahead and take care,Cheers Jonesey. 

Harry and the Hendersons will take a bit of getting used to the ‘new kid’ on the block’!

Poor old Oscar Henderson was rushed to after hours for stitches…boys will be boys !!

“Assumption is the mother of a screw up”. Angelo Donghia

Crikey…there I was with my memory stick containing my presentation all ready to rock and roll. The seminar was being attended by 50 senior managers and they were a merciless, humourless lot Nothing short of a well prepared professional presentation was going to cut it today.

I felt confident , I had some good slides and I knew my stuff…..I sat at the back as another presenter finished off with some Q&A. Then it was time to get the techo guy to hook me up, I passed the memory stick and headed to the front of the room full of confidence as the audience hummed with anticipation,then it happened!,a presenters worst nightmare! apparently my memory stick was blank for some reason there was no slides, no presentation, no life boat, no security blanket arrrggghhhhh.

I would be lying if I said the thought of running out of the room didn’t occur to me because it did along with a number of other exit, pull the plug, C.Y.A (cover you’re a….) type solutions….BUT NO!!

In true Toastmasters fashion I stood up to the plate without my trusty bat determined to be the first one to hit a home run anyway ! What followed was nothing short of sheer brilliance as I imagined my slides in my mind and brought them to life with words, body language and tone of voice as I put on one hell of a dog and pony show up there. Instead of my audience smelling my blood in the water and tearing me to shreds they interacted with me, laughed and genuinely became part of a presentation that for once lived and breathed rather than being read to them from a screen! Yes against all odds I will forever be remembered as the’Green Gorilla guy’ , the fact that none of attendees will recall anything I said is minor. So ladies and gentlemen, my message this week is….1)never assume anything and 2)always be prepared to step up to the plate just in case.

“Have the daring to see yourself as a bundle of possibilities” Harry Emerson Fosdick

You snooze, you lose !!!

Hi, is there a nicer smell than freshly cut firewood?...the amazing aroma of pine, wattyl, macrocapa and gum all combining to make a fragrance that is hard to beat ! Ok the Breville coffee machine comes close but not as ‘forest and bird’ as the firewood! Yes it is that time of year again as we prepare to hibernate and hunker down out in the wild west! Easter is a good time to get sorted for the coming winter as the ‘man shed’ duly got its annual autumn clean to accomadate the fuel for the recently chimney swept log burner. Cant wait to crank up the fire and sit mesmerised in front of the flames as they dance their merry jig ! We had a relaxing and fine weather weekend (against all prediction!) Admittedly the program had a bit of a ‘fitness camp’ look and feel about it from which ‘Harry and the Hendersons’ profited on many walks! An Easter chore list was prepared well in advance and all items were ticked off by Monday lunchtime resulting in a bonus afternoon of sky movies and trademe.life does’nt get any better. We could get quite fond of four day weekends if they became the norm!We decided a few more each year is a good idea, so we booked two to make sure!

How about those Breakers !!!, huge win during the week at Townsville then backed up two days later in Auckland as they swept into their second consecutive NBL final serie.Clearly ‘no Dickheads’ better than the ‘too many dickheads’ in the Auckland Blues team in Melbourne on Thursday night, jeeez Pat with all your ALL BLACKS sort it out guys ! A team full of Green Gorillas would do better !!!

I hope you all had fun relaxing, eating, exercising and laughing this Easter weekend with your family and friends and that you have another awesome short week, take care,  Cheers Jonesey

 Harry and the Hendersons love the Breakers, Easter, long walks, chocolate and sleeping!

Carpe Diem…..seize the day!.....they who hesitate lose! Jonesey

Carpe Diem , a great saying and one that says a lot about winning and losing. Those of you that saw the movie ‘The Dead Poets Society’ featuring Robin Williams will have been inspired by the way in which Williams motivated those he taught to ‘seize the day’ and not hesitate for a second before grasping life and everything it has to offer.

I was reminded about the importance of doing just that on a number of recent occasions ;

• I dropped on to a tremendous opportunity for our business to introduce itself to a number of influential procurement managers. Instead of seizing the day I procrastinated and missed out on applying by a due date to be included in an introductory event! I learned the valuable lesson  to act immediately on opportunities or regret not doing so forever ! The annoying thing is it is not the first time I have done this, arrggghhhhhhh (I hate it when that happens)
• This instance above reminds me also of the number of times where I have seen cool stuff in a second hand store or on trademe and resisted the urge to buy it (procrastinated) only to decide later how much I wanted the item to go back and find that someone else seized the day and made the purchase ! (I hate it even more when that happens !)
• On a more positive note one of my colleagues took a phone call last week from a person who had rung the wrong number. Instead of hanging up they started talking to the caller and ended up establishing the person was the owner of a large business that had a need for our services. This in turn led to us being invited to quote and now looking good to win the business.(I love it when that happens !!)

These examples reinforce that we are surrounded by opportunities every minute of every day of every week, the difference is the speed with which we react…carpe diem, simple aye,so just do it!!!!

“Person stand for long time waiting for roast duck to fly in.”My favourite Chinese proverb !

"NO DICKHEADS"

Hi, it must be old age , crikey I have been grumpy lately ! As you will know from last week I was more than a little annoyed with the outcome of a recent event. I thought I was getting over it slowly but instead of things calming down they sort of got worse.One phone dies another is born and life continues…right?…..well not quite so I managed to wind myself off the clock until someone finally took the time to figure out a simple solution ! The more I got annoyed the worse it seemed to get and when I eventually calmed down,guess what, things got better….hmmmm I learned something and not for the first time….its not worth the energy loss or the drama!!...when will I get that?

There is always a funny side…just like Clarke Kent I had to find and use a phone box for the first time in over 20 years !!, took a bit of figuring out and cost me ten bucks for a phone card ! Talking about stuff we havent done for a while I sent a card via post last week. I reckon it is exciting sending and receiving mail the old fashioned way. The fun,romance and anticipation is something that will never  be recreated electronically. There is and always will be something special about handwriting a note or card and sending it to someone you know will get a surprise to receive it.It is a cool retro thing to do. Give it a go if you don’t believe me, see how it makes you and the recipient feel. The highlight of the week was undoubtedly half price green lipped mussel night at De Fontein in Mission bay, highly recommend the 1 kg mussel hot pots with your choice of sauce, yum,go on you know you want to !!

I hope you all enjoyed the extra hour of sleep as we said goodbye to daylight saving and look forward to the two short weeks wrapped around the coming Easter weekend,take care, Cheers Jonesey

 Harry and the Hendersons don’t care what time it is, daylight=walk time…NOW!!

We have a simple policy at the ‘Breakers’ it’s the ‘NO DICKHEADS’ policy

I watched a program last week on the Breakers basketballl team where we got a a rare look behind the scenes at the successful franchise. The team policy above I thought said a lot about why this team has been so successful. There are ‘no dickheads’ just a bunch of guys with talent working hard as a team to be the best they can be. From their down to earth owners the Blackwells of Pak n Save fame right through to the local and overseas stars that make up the playing team the ‘winning culture’ we talked about last week is clearly evident.

Unfortunately the winning culture deserted them on Friday night in their first semi final game in Auckland as they went down to Townsville!. The semi final series is the best of three games so the Breakers have now made the job a lot harder. This team is more than capable of winning the semi the hard way just like they did last year and then went on to win the final !!

The Breakers are a classic example of things being harder staying on top than they ever were getting there in the first place, we wish them the best of luck for the coming  week in Townsville.

The ‘no dickheads ‘ policy is a good one we can apply to our own business and personal lives. How many times have we persevered with a difficult or non productive employee instead of dealing firmly but fairly with the situation. Same goes for customers, I know I have resisted the urge to cut difficult,  uncooperative or unrealistic and demanding customers loose. Both have instead tied up valuable company time that could have been more profitably spent developing other staff and customers who wanted to be part of the companies future.

In our personal lives too the ‘no dickhead’ policy would help us to avoid wasting time and energy on people in our lives who are clearly takers not givers….imagine the time we could have saved if we were operating this policy. Good luck out there team and keep a look out for dickheads !!!!!

“If you don’t stand for something, you will stand for anything.” Ginger Rogers