The Business New Zealand Challenge

For some years now  the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce has been involved, as a sponsor and supporter, in The Business New Zealand Challenge (formerly know as SELL). This initiative is designed to introduce students to the challenges and excitement of a business environment, in a condensed three day business planning exercise. The programme is run by the Young Enterprise Trust and is complimentary to the popular Young Enterprise Scheme, which has been around for many years. This year The Business New Zealand  Challenge will be staged at Kaikoura High School, Papanui High School, Timaru Boys’ High School, Rangiora High School, Mt Hutt,  Linwood College, Avonside Girls and St Bedes College.

Have a look at  http://youtu.be/8kPwHD4ehj8  to see what  The Challenge is all about.

We think connecting the students of today with the business opportunities of tomorrow is a critical part of growing New Zealand.

www.cecc.org.nz

The beginning of the recovery end of our Earthquake experience

It is clear that we are starting to get into the beginning of the recovery end of our Earthquake experience.  Increasing work on infrastructure, rebuilds, repairs, skill shortages and housing shortages are all signs of increasing economic activity relating to the recovery.

We are awaiting  finality on the Central City Plan and the wider Economic Recovery Plan is about to go out for consultation and input.

We are getting closer to certainty with the siting of critical pieces of infrastructure and there is now more clarity on the anticipated long term impact of the Earthquake on City Council plans, programmes and finances. Of course we are still living the nightmare of insurance complications, building assessments and continuing delays in housing repairs.

However we know this recovery is a long game.

We should be assured, that once we do get the recovery really cranking, we will enjoy a sustained period of intense and positive activity in the rebuild. No one should consider that we are “stuck” in a rebuild mode and that this is a negative environment until the rebuild is completed. On the contrary: we have suffered the pain and we have a lot of the potential gain locked  in!

Christchurch is  going to be an exciting and challenging place to be part of, long into the future. It is just about time to climb on board and fasten your seat belts!

http://www.cecc.org.nz/

Design Your Future Forum

Here are some thoughts eminating from the  Design your Future Forum I attended in Auckland last week. It was driven by some of the worlds  great thought leaders on business trends.

You might find some of them challenging. I hope you find all of them interesting

• Data is the new oil
• Water is the new oil
• Simplicity is a part of good design
• We are living in a volatile place
• The more efficient a system gets the less resilient it becomes
• You cannot plan an urban space. You can imagine it, but you cannot plan it
• Design behaviours, not objects
• Be insanely great
• Design is never done
• Systems are never done
• Focus on the user and all else will follow
• A powerful mission is fundamental to success.
• The play you are immersed in, in childhood determines how you act as an adult.
• Imagination is more important than knowledge
• The smartest person is the one who is the most strategically creative
• The hand programmes the brain
• Play has a positive approach to failure
• The opposite of play is depression, not work
• Bring your whole person to work
• Design is a method of imagining something that does not yet exist
• The employee experience is as important as the customer experience
• The concept of empathy means you must understand what is happening in your customer’s life
• Youth are perpetually connected
• Youth are forming new habits that everyone else is adopting
• The millenials do care about their privacy.
• Leadership is the capacity for human beings to scope their own future

 www.cecc.org.nz

Inspirational Kiwi businessman to speak at Get Into It Christchurch

The Get Into It Cocktail Event for Business is the final part of the Get Into It Christchurch campaign, which has been running for the last five weeks. The event is being held tomorrow (Wednesday 4 April) from 5.00pm to 7.00pm at the Westpac Business and Community Hub, and is free for any Christchurch business to attend.

Steve Lange purchased Tony’s Tyre Services when he was 23 years old, using a loan from his accountant at 28% interest.  He grew the business from a single Palmerston North tyre shop to a recognised national brand, overcoming enormous challenges along the way – including nearly going broke twice. A high school dropout who went on to become one of New Zealand’s leading entrepreneurial businessmen, Steve is coming to Christchurch to share his story of triumphing over adversity, at a free business event.

“Christchurch business people have been through the wringer over the last 18 months and I’m hoping that through sharing the highs and lows of my business career I can provide a bit of encouragement and inspiration – and maybe a few laughs,” says Steve. 

More than 100 Canterbury businesses have taken part in the Get Into It Christchurch campaign, and they are all in the running for thousands of dollars’ worth of prizes which will be up for grabs at the Get Into It Cocktail Event for Business.

Any Canterbury business can attend the free event, which is proudly sponsored by Vodafone.  To register email registrations@cecc.org.nz or for more information go to www.facebook.com/GetIntoItChristchurch or call Recover Canterbury on 0800 50 50 96.

http://www.cecc.org.nz/ 

A new home for the Crusaders!

It’s so good to see the new stadium up and running at Addington, now the new home for the Crusaders and a refurbished home for league as well as being available for football and events.  The stadium was built adjacent to the Westpac Business and Community Hub where we are currently based.  It has been quite incredible watching progress there over the last 100 days - up to 500 people on site at any one time, all working in a well coordinated way, bringing used and new components to the site and at 5.00pm on Friday, 24 hours before kick-off, the entranceways to the grounds were being sealed.  Talk about programming things down to the last minute!

It is good to see the Crusaders and Canterbury now have a new, albeit temporary, home and it is symbolic of the progress starting to be made around the  city.  Everywhere I go now I see signs of repairs and new buildings, and with seismic activity continuing to settle down, I think we will be seeing a lot more insurance activity on the residential front in the very near future.

Managing the pressures that full scale recovery will bring to this economy is going to be quite a trick.  Population volatility, resource constraints and the disruption of the recovery process will all place significant challenges upon us.  However, the way I look at that is that we have got 15-20 years of positive growth locked into this economy as we recoup as much of the $30b worth of insurance cost as we can.  And of course many of us will be making improvements to our houses as we repair them.  We won’t just be replacing our residences on a like-for-like basis.  All of this injects new equity into our community as we march forward.

   http://www.cecc.org.nz/ 

Terrific Traffic Dynamics

Christchurch motorists have behaved in a  much more considerate way  since 22 Feb 2011.  Rocky roads, blocked off streets and  big changes to traffic  flows now means snarl ups, grid lock and  long queues are common.  I used to think that being stuck in  traffic for two changes of lights was gridlock. Well, that is now normal in  many parts  of town.  A trip that used to  take 10 minutes  can now  take 40 minutes at the wrong time of the day.

The interesting response to all of this  has been one of tolerance, acceptance and consideration.  It is now the norm to let  traffic  join a queue from a side street. Buses are  given right of way when  pulling out of bus stops as a matter of course. We, as  harassed motorists,  are giving constant consideration to our fellow road users including the poor cyclists who now  spend  a lot of their  road  time in mountain  bike  country,.

This new  behaviour is good.

Right now we have about 30 road crews out working across Christchurch on earthquake recovery. As we get seriously in to the  2.5 billion  horizontal infrastructure  (pipes, cables and roads) you can expect to see over 150 road crews working daily across the city. This is going to put further strain on  our transport systems and constantly change traffic flows.   As this  pressure increases the new behavioural patterns  being witnessed today are going to be even more important. The new considerate Christchurch drivers will also make it easier to adopt a defensive driving stance, as we get used to the imminent changes to the intersection road rules.

http://www.cecc.org.nz/

ChristChurch Cathedral - A big call and a tough one!

The decision to demolish most of the ChristChurch Cathedral seems to be the right one, given the state of the building and the significant additional damage caused on December 23. It is a big call and a tough one, given how iconic the Cathedral is and what it means to so many in the city and beyond. 

In my opinion it is symbolic of the many big calls being made, and that will have to be made, in the context of our going to new places as we rebuild this city not going back to where we came from.

Dutch Leonard, Professor of Crisis Management at Harvard University stated when in Christchurch before Christmas, that as we rebuild and recreate Christchurch, we must do so in a way that allows us " to ride the great tail winds of our time". That  means doing new and different things, from buildings and businesses right through to how our city is laid out and how our society evolves and operates.

In my (very few) darker moments, I ponder on the fact that it has taken the citizens of Christchurch 40 years to disagree on the design and layout of Cathedral Square and now,somehow, we have to agree on the rebuild of a large part of our city. Big, brave, hard calls will be required and what some will consider to be serious and sad sacrifices will have to made.

The unique strength of our community will get us through these issues, but that same strength sometimes polarizes us and makes progress difficult. That is when inspired leadership has to step up!

http://www.cecc.org.nz/