Laurie wants to stop and retire. Originally from New Zealand, he built a landscaping business from nothing in 1986 to the best on the north coast. He reckons he is working harder than ever. Finding and keeping staff is getting harder. Dealing with their attitudes is...
Heard of Learned Helplessness? It is a condition first researched in the 1960s by a team of psychologists that included Professor Martin Seligman. A group of dogs were given mild electric shocks. Some dogs could press a button to stop the shocks, while a second group...
Twenty-one years ago, I conducted a qualitative survey of Australian financial advisers with John J. Bowen Jr and Russ Alan Prince. The objective was to identify the client proposition advisers regarded as crucial to the future of financial advice. Russ’ team had...
We’ve been looking at rural properties. One near Little Hartley looks special. Why? It sounds ridiculous, but it’s the driveway. It has a long, winding, tree-lined driveway lined with well-established liquid ambers. As you near the home, the trees open...
A tell-tale our family is on holiday is a jigsaw puzzle. A Stackpool holiday isn’t a holiday without a tricky new puzzle. The puzzling can take all holidays, with the puzzle spot remaining frustratingly off-limits for non-puzzling activities until the puzzle has...
I was a COBOL programmer. Not a very good one, but that didn’t matter in the early 1980s. Back then, every Tuesday’s Australian newspaper featured a twenty-four-page IT section, of which many pages advertised programming and analyst positions available, with most from...
