I have been through an interesting experience this week which caught me a little by surprise. During a meeting with a prospective client to assess each others suitability to work together I had the misfortune to have to sit across the table from a successful business person who was offensive, sexist, rude and basically boorish.
No, I am not suggesting this person was unique, I have experienced a few in my time, but in this example I was caught back by his overt sexist comments in front of one of my female staff. This caught her and I off guard and we should have taken immediate action but took some time to react.
Obviously we have complained about it and advised we wish to have nothing to do with this business, and I have discussed with all of my team how we should react and handle such situations in future. Firstly remove the offended parties from the room without hesitation and immediately - then deal with the person offending.
This post is not about the actual best way to handle such a scenario as a professional business we have processes in place to deal and respond to such issues. This post is about the ignorant / arrogant behaviour that still exists, in this era, by people who have some power (real or not) to exert over others.
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I was a guest today at the official launch of the 2008/09 Queensland Leaders Program. This program is now in its second year and by all accounts has been a huge success for the participants.
In short the program supports 15 individual companies based in Qld to assist them access mentoring, capital and training to enable them to become best of breed international corporations, enhancing the business future of Queensland.
From their site- Vision:
- Build the head office infrastructure and networks in Queensland
- Generate economic and employment opportunities at senior management level
- Further develop industry sectors around key organisations
- Further develop and diversify the Queensland State economy
- Increase local management skills and connectivity
- Increase business investment into the State
- Harness the strength & resources of our business leaders
The luncheon was addressed by the State Treasurer Andrew Fraser, and industry speakers. Notably Richard Suhr, Enterprise Lead at Google Australia & New Zealand, discussed the modern technology that matters (from a Google perspective anyway).
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Recently I added the TXT ability to my twitter account, following the badgering and raving of a colleague who loves the way it works.
Being a gadget man myself, I just had to, particularly as we both discussed how the simplicity of the tool could be used in numerous business / personal angles, which I am sure many twitter devotees could attest to.
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A lot of money is being spent again on web engineering for commercial success. During the lead up to when the dot com bubble burst every good idea got capital and the ‘web stars’ worked to engineer their destiny using a good idea and capital.
Many of them are doing something else or were up until the cycle started again.
Over the last 12 months or so the drive to engineer a site’s own commercial success has been fueled again. While companies, like ireckon, that provide development services can profit from this time (and I have no issue with profit), I still reflect on the logic behind it.
Everyone wants to be the next Youtube, Myspace, Facebook, Craigs List et alia. And while these sites are the oft-quoted ones there are plenty of other sites that have profited from the internet and converted great ideas to money. This leads to my main question:
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