Tag Archives: team

Life Experiences, Values

Busy! Busy !! Busy !!!

One of the questions we often get asked is, “how are things going in the land of White Now?”  (or words to that effect), and our response is usually along the lines of:

  • Flat Out
  • Flat Chat
  • Busy, Busy, Busy!
  • Don’t Know if We’re Arthur or Martha
  • Etc, Etc, Etc

What I’ve noticed though is that each and every time the above is clarified with something like:

  • But I’m not complaining, or
  • Which is FANTASTIC, or
  • I’d rather be flat out as at least we know we can pay ourselves this week, or
  • We never take our good fortune for granted

It got me to thinking just how “lucky” we are!  And when I say “lucky” it is not because of a fluke or being in the right place at the right time.  It comes down to a lot of BLOODY HARD WORK!!!  But the bottom line is that we all genuinely enjoy it and on a personal level, I am not sure what I would do with myself if I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs!

The past fortnight has seen a significant part of the team away on annual leave and whilst some in our office might suggest that the people in question do very little ‘real’ work, the fact of the matter is that they (well, at least one of them) do/does contribute to the overall productivity of the team!!! 🙂  ……office humour!

What never ceases to amaze, please, excite and drive me personally is the continual influx of business and the fantastic range of services that we get asked if we can provide or assist with.  Not a week goes by without the phone ringing or an email pinging that asks us to step outside our core business/services and look at opportunity from a different angle.

I was wondering why this might be the case.  And I think the answer is our………………INTEGRITY.  I firmly believe that the business is founded on such strong principles and that each of the team live up to those values on a daily basis so that our customers form a trusted bond with us which means that they are comfortable asking us for things that might not be on our ‘list’ of what we do.

So, in summary I would like to say that I believe we are so incredibly fortunate to wake up each day and be surrounded by opportunity, questions, ideas, laughter, integrity, honesty, support, open communication, etc, etc and that I pinch myself regularly and do a stop…….check…… every couple of days to make sure I recognise the reality of that fortune and never, ever take it for granted.

To everyone that supports “us” in the myriad of ways that we are so fortunate……….THANK YOU!!!  You are our reason for continual improvement and integral to our overall success.

The 'Read & Recover' Initiative - Helping sick kids!

Fantastic Group of People

Isn’t it just THE BEST feeling when you get a group of decent, easy-going, happy people in the same space?  And isn’t it amazing what can be achieved with a group like this?

On Tuesday just gone, we assembled “The A-team” to assist with the packing of the 1600 books for 100 Children’s Hospitals as part of our “Read & Recover” initiative.  I am sure that it will be blogged about further in the near future, but I just wanted to share briefly, what I took from the day!  Whilst it was never about me, I came away with a fantastic feeling and it was all because of the wonderful people I shared the experience with.

Upon arrival, everyone jumped to the various tasks and throughout the process there was plenty of happy chatter, a few laughs and a general air of comraderie.  Over the ensuing 5 hours, (minus time for lunch of course) – we unpacked, bundled, wrapped, packed and posted the books so that they could get to their various destinations all across the country.

From me personally, I just wanted to say a HUGE THANK YOU to the wonderful people that I got to know a bit better and spend some quality time with.  The opportunity to get to know some truly good and decent human beings was an honour.  The fact that I was able to do so whilst we all worked together for the greater good was truly a wonder and something that I feel greatly priviledged to have experienced.

Sue, Kathy, Michael and Jenny – THANK YOU for being so kind and generous with your time and more importantly, with yourselves.  It was my absolute pleasure to have been able to get to know each of you (even you JW) that much better and I look forward our next catch-up!

Life Experiences, The 'Read & Recover' Initiative - Helping sick kids!, Uncategorized, Values

Plan all you want, but flexibility is what is needed !

Read & Recover

When we started our Read & Recover Initiative in partnership with Brad Sugars, we knew that it was going to be a big job, full of fun and a fair bit of hard work and hey, we’re ALWAYS up for a challenge and ALWAYS up for hard work !  To us, it was going to take some great organisational skills and a passion to make kids smile. If you think about the process in its simplest form, all we have to do is buy 1600 books and send them to 100 hospitals.  All of us at White Now consider ourselves as organizational machines (and we usually are except when one of our kids has been up all night then we are more like organisational disasters) !!

We started with a plan and a time line. Isn’t it true though that it’s not until you plan a process that you actually work out that the simple logistics that you had once thought of, have turned into a 68 page procedure manual that takes 2 weeks to develop and another 2 weeks to digest ? Our aim though is to get these books out there and we will do what it takes to make that happen.

We are rapidly crossing the tasks of the list with each cross triggering a smile on our faces knowing that we are one step closer to getting those books out.  There have been so many people who have offered their assistance to pack or deliver the books or simply be involved somehow, and they are patiently waiting until it is ‘packing day’.  We had many photographers offering their services to do photo shoots for us with Brad and also taking images of the delivery of the books to the hospitals. We ended up securing Michael O’Farrell from www.ofarrell.com.au, who is already an absolute pleasure to deal with.  This contact came through Facebook and we thank his daughter for putting his name forward.

We are right in the middle of calling the hospitals and this is where the interesting challenges have manifested.  The plan was to call each hospital, find the appropriate person to chat to about the initiative, grab their details, gain their permission to donate the books, send them a formal letter, get the delivery volunteers to call them when it is time to deliver, have the hospital contact receive the books at a mutually suitable time and there endeth the process.  Don’t forget that we are organizational machines here at White Now and if there is a process to follow, we will do it.  What we didn’t plan for was all the variables that we would find once this ring around started – these include;

  1. The person we need to talk to is on leave
  2. The person we need to talk to is unable to return our call
  3. The Reception staff want to handle this themselves and won’t pass the call on
  4. The hospital is unable to take books for hygiene/OH&S reasons
  5. The hospital is unable take books, they can only take monetary donations
  6. The message gets lost
  7. The hospital wants to give the books to kids to take home
  8. The hospital wants to see the actual books prior to accepting them
  9. The hospital will only take them if they are posted

With all of these variable thrown at us, we soon realized that we had to be flexible to meet the needs of either the individual taking the call, the hospital or the donation protocol.  So guess what ? That is what we did.  We put our ‘flexible, accommodating’ hats on and tried to meet all of their needs.  Once we did this, we could achieve White Now and Brad Sugars’ goal of getting 1600 books to 100 hospitals.  What was so great about talking to the hospitals was that even if they could not accept the books, they usually offered suggestions about other hospitals that could.  Everyone seems to care which is simply amazing.

We have learnt a valuable lesson with this process and that is that you can plan and set up procedures to YOUR requirements, but the other stakeholders may not always be able to follow your procedures. You have to quickly adjust your strategy to suit everyone…… and that is just what we are doing;  Some books are staying in their factory wrapping, some books that were to be delivered are now being posted, some hospitals that were to receive books now are not receiving the books with other hospitals being added to the list, our formal letters change depending on the individual requirements of each hospital and soon there will be 1600 more books in Australian hospitals.

It is certainly true that if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail, but when you are planning anything, build into the plan the flexibility to meet the needs of others as you cannot always predict others behaviours.

Life Experiences

Good Peoples (intentional typo) !

Isn’t it funny how “Good Peoples” attract “Good Peoples” ???

What a treat !

I can quite honestly say that I work in a truly great organisation and am surrounded by a whole load of genuinely “Good Peoples” both professionally and personally.  And sometimes things happen that reaffirm this, such as yesterday (a work day):

My fantastic MD arranged through one of her contacts for me to be taken for a drive in a BMW M3……………………..something that I have always wanted to do.  (I openly admit to be a Revhead, but promise to do my best not to make this a car story as such !).

I was instructed to be at a certain location at a certain time and as my Dad (a fellow Car Tragic) was visiting from SA, he was also invited along for the ride.  Upon our arrival we were greeted by the owner of the aforementioned M3 who saw my Dad was using a walking stick and so very kindly told us to wait there whilst he collected the car and brought it out the front.  As this gorgeous charcoal-silver M3 pulled up to the collection point, Dad and I prepared to load ourselves in to the passenger seats, but the owner had another offer – one that quite frankly blew me away.  He wandered over to me and handed me the keys to his VERY powerful and VERY expensive ‘pride and joy’ and told me that I would be driving.

Mouth agape and in a mouse-like voice I tried to decline but he insisted and so I climbed in to the driver’s seat and got myself comfortable.

I won’t bore you with the details of the drive as I know cars are not everyone’s cup of tea, but I will just comment that it was everything and more than I had imagined.  I came back quite literally shaking with excitement, nervousness and awe.  The car’s owner had happily let me have a pretty serious “go” and was quite obviously chuffed at my enthusiasm and enjoyment.

Upon returning to where we had set off from, we all went out for lunch where we shared a fantastic meal and some amazing company.  Dad and I spent nearly three hours with a person that we had never met before and he had managed to clear his very, very busy schedule to make time for us !  Dad had a ball !!!  He has been retired for a few years now and so rarely has the opportunity to mix in “business” circles which afford a level of intellectual conversation.  I had the opportunity to spend some quality time almost one on one with a highly intelligent and very successful businessman and in doing so discovered a person of great integrity and passion – a person that enjoyed the opportunity to give with absolutely no expectation of anything in return.  A truly “Good People” !

Yesterday was indeed a VERY special day !  I not only got to drive one of the cars of my dreams, but I had the opportunity to witness my Dad be genuinely happy (not that this is uncommon, but it is something that you never grow tired of) and I also got to broaden my network of “Good Peoples”.

To everyone involved (you know who you are)………………….THANK YOU !  THANK YOU !!  THANK YOU !!!  I wake up on a daily basis and thank my lucky stars for all of the wonderful things around me and yesterday was yet another moment to be thankful for !

You guys ROCK !

The 'Read & Recover' Initiative - Helping sick kids!

The Read & Recover Initiative gets GREAT ideas from Facebook mates!

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1600 books to 100 Hospitals

The Read & Recover intiative, which is a joint venture between White Now and Brad Sugars from ActionCOACH (you can read about this amazing gift in previous posts) took its next  step – finding which kids hospitals people thought the 150 books should go to.

If there is one thing I have learnt in my years of running businesses, it is to always ask others for their input and ideas – whether it be your team members, clients, potential clients or simply people that want to add value to what you do.  With this in mind, our team put a post on the Wiz Whitenow Facebook site “Wiz WhiteNow” (http://www.facebook.com/wizwhitenow).   This is what the post said “Wiz WhiteNow is needing your help to recommend hospitals to us! We are sending 150 kids books to 10 NSW hospitals with kids wards. This is a gift we are giving jointly with the amazing support of Brad Sugars from ActionCOACH. The generosity of this entrepeneur is inspiring & the time and efforts of the White Now team are appreciated. Would you like to suggest a hospital that would appreciate the gift ?”

The response was amazing and we qiuckly gathered up the names of the first 10 hospitals named.  It shows that people can be so passionate about things that are close to their heart !  White Now and Brad Sugars would like to say a huge THANK YOU to the following people and their recommendations !

Hospital Suggested By
The Sydney Adventist Hospital Andrew Bassett-Smith                                    
Westmead Children’s Si Harris & Susan Churchill & Denise Ferguson
Gosford Hospital David Younie
Nepean Hospital Leah Gibbs, Emma Huszar, Tanya Westcott Gorton
John Hunter Hospital Leah Gibbs/Amy Waight
Sydney Kids Hospital Randwick Kathy Carnemolla, Damien Greig                                    
Royal Darwin Hospital Marianne O’Farrell
Coffs Harbour Hospital Sue Patterson
St George Hospital Garry Weston
Sutherland Children’s Ward Sue Jago

Our next step was to source the books – we searched high and low.  We wanted to look for books that were a mix of Australian authors and popular well known kids stories.  We went to many book shops, online stores, auction sites – you name it, we researched it.  The final decision was made yesterday and the books were bought.   The most amazing range that suited our needs were actually at an Australia Post shop – yep, it’s true.  To those who recommended the hospitals and to all of our friends and colleagues who are supporting us in this venture, thank you so much !  People are the true essence of life !

These are the authors and titles in case you are interested;

Author Title Title
Pamela Allen Mr McGee and the Big Bag of Bread Waddle Giggle Gargle
  Herbert and Harry The Pear in the Pear Tree
Graeme Base The Eleventh Hour The Worst Band in the Universe
  Jungle Dreams The Waterhole
Dr Seuss The Cat in the Hat Fox in Socks
  Green Eggs and Ham  
Beatrix Potter The Tale of Peter Rabbit The Story of Miss Moppet
  The Talk of Jemima Puddleduck The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit
Disney Cars – A friendly Crew Toy Story 2 – Toys to the Rescue
  Monster Inc – Monsters  Everywhere Little Mermaid – A Different Life
  Finding Nemo – Adventure in the Ocean Cinderella – The Magic of Dreams
  Sleeping Beauty – A Secret Princess Snow White – A Princess Hiding
Mem Fox Possum Magic Shoes from Grandpa
  Sail Away Hattie and the Fox
Roger Hargreaves Mr Strong Mr Messy
  Mr Noisy Mr Funny