May 2019

NZBusiness and Management

The owner manager's magazine – Inspiring business leaders

NZBusiness and Management2 min read
Diversity And Adversity
Welcome to our May issue – one that deserves to be branded the ‘diversity issue’ because we really do have a diverse selection of stories for you this month. Standouts include our inspiration piece on Grounded’s Ben Grant and Josh Kempton – who are o
NZBusiness and Management4 min read
Making Ground
War has been declared; the war against single-use soft plastic packaging. Ben Grant and Josh Kempton have seen the environmental impact of these plastics first-hand – particularly, in Ben’s case, within the hospitality industry. They’d talked about b
NZBusiness and Management4 min readMedical
Deafness No Barrier
Customers of Porana Carpet Overlocking on Auckland’s North Shore are in for a treat in May. It is New Zealand Sign Language Week early in the month and Porana Overlocking’s owner manager, Tim Lewin, plans to offer his customers free lessons in sign l
NZBusiness and Management4 min read
Snippets
THE DAVID AWARDS are back in business – returning in 2019 to once again recognise the unsung heroes of New Zealand’s home-based and small businesses. After many years under the excellent stewardship of Bizbuzz.co.nz’s Heather Douglas, the popular 100
NZBusiness and Management4 min read
Trucking To A New Standard
To be a successful entrepreneur you need focus, drive, opportunity and a chunk of luck. That’s probably not the textbook definition, but not too wide of the mark. Add creativity, the ability to listen, to multi-task and get most of the tasks right –c
NZBusiness and Management10 min readLeadership
Full Throttle The Life And Times Of Zuru’s Nick Mowbray
On a glorious autumn morning it’s easy to overdo the superlatives when arriving at the immaculately-groomed Mahoenui mansion estate. Its previous tenant may have given the Coatesville address a degree of notoriety, but the current owners – Mowbray si
NZBusiness and Management6 min readIntelligence (AI) & Semantics
What AI Is Doing For Business
As the recent AI-DAY Conference in Auckland emphasised, artificial intelligence (AI) is already playing a vital role within the business community in terms of boosting business efficiency and productivity. However, unless you attended the two-day eve
NZBusiness and Management4 min read
Sister Act
Living on the opposite sides of the world hasn’t prevented Amy and Paula Sutton starting up a successful business. The sisters, whom their parents describe as “good little buddies” when growing up, are busy building an online artwork business that fe
NZBusiness and Management4 min read
Live Well Work Hard
Running a business is not a perfect work-life balance scenario, where everything is neat and tidy and all goes according to plan. Home life can impact the business, and the business can impact your home life. When things are working smoothly at home,
NZBusiness and Management4 min read
Nerds On Noodles
Like most raging tech-export success stories, this one has humble beginnings. When John Daniel Trask (JD) and Jeremy Boyd met while working for Wellington IT company Intergen they already shared a track record for computer coding from a very young ag
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
USING MARKET INTELLIGENCE TO INFORM YOUR R&D STRATEGY
A half a billion (NZ) dollar increase in business sector R&D spending over the last two years may not sound significant by world standards, but by New Zealand standards it was highly welcome news. Not only does it represent the highest increase in 10
NZBusiness and Management2 min readCooking, Food & Wine
Bone Appetit! Exporting The Power Of Pet Nutrition
K9 Natural started as a small family business in 2006, after founder Geoff Bowers experimented and observed the great benefits in dogs being fed a similar diet to that of the grey wolf – getting energy from natural protein and fat rather than carbs.
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
How To Get Your Website To Rank In Google’s Featured Snippets
Let’s start with ‘what is a Featured Snippet?’ Featured Snippets are search results which give answers to people’s questions directly within the Google search results page, without the user having to click through to an actual website. Google decides
NZBusiness and Management4 min readTelecommunications
Phones To Hold Phones To Fold
There’s no question about the star attraction at the Mobile World Congress (MWC). There were crowds around the stands showing phones with folding screens. Huawei’s futuristic looking Mate X model got the most attention. At first glance it looks like
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
The New Deal On Trial Periods
THE SECRET to success for any business is its people. Hiring the right people from the start requires careful planning, research, patience, and understanding exactly what you are needing from your role. We all intend to make great recruitment decisio
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
Three Different Approaches To Franchising Your Business
IF YOU have a successful business of any kind, then looking at the success of homegrown franchises like Columbus Coffee, Green Acres, Harcourts, Paramount and Carpet Court can be inspiring. These brands testify to the success that can be achieved thr
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
How To Beat Price-focused Competitors
SO YOU’VE GOT a good share of your market. Your business is ticking along nicely, revenue is increasing, and profit is too. You’re feeling pretty great about your success so far. Then along comes an overseas competitor, with big buying power, a hefty
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
Decision Time: More Profit Or More Sales?
IN THE NEXT look at our “8 levers of sales growth” series we tackle the decision between winning more valuable clients (lever 2) or winning a higher volume of clients (lever 3). If your business is in the fortunate position of being well established
NZBusiness and Management4 min read
Show Us The Plan
HAVING JUST returned to Europe from New Zealand, leaving on the day of the frightful mass murder at the Christchurch mosque, it is interesting to reflect on New Zealand’s population growth and its impact on the SME community. Perhaps I should start b
NZBusiness and Management2 min read
Substantial Growth Expected In The Agritech Sector
New Zealand can expect to see substantial growth in the agritech sector in the next 12 months, according to AgritechNZ chief executive Peter Wren-Hilton. Recent research suggests that New Zealand had approximately $1.4 billion worth of agritech expor
NZBusiness and Management2 min read
Beyond Now 2019
Some 600 people turned out for the Institute of Directors (IoD) annual leadership conference in Auckland in early April and a range of local and international speakers meant the conference provided some great learning opportunities for existing and a
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
User-generated Content On Social Media Could Put Your Brand At Risk
Spark’s decision earlier this year to pull advertising from YouTube because of inappropriate content targeted at children, is a timely reminder for senior management teams to put in place risk management strategies for just such an eventuality. CEO o
NZBusiness and Management5 min readPoverty & Homelessness
BRACE YOURSELF for the INFRASTRUCTURE REVOLUTION
Richard Threlfall, the global head of infrastructure at KPMG, had one very strong message while in New Zealand for the Institute of Directors’ Conference in April. That message is that the world is having an infrastructure revolution driven by the sh
NZBusiness and Management4 min readPsychology
Leadership Lessons From Christchurch
Like the vast majority of people, I was profoundly affected by the terrorist acts in Christchurch on March 15. Now, a month on, I want to explore a few things I think we can learn about leadership from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s very first respo
NZBusiness and Management5 min readPsychology
COLLECTIVE CEO WISDOM On Managing A Top Team
New research based on interviews with 45 top CEOs across the New Zealand business spectrum is described by its author as the collective wisdom of CEOs about the reality of managing at the top in today’s environment. The study, undertaken by Dr Ann Hu
NZBusiness and Management4 min readLeadership
GREAT LEADERS NEED COURAGE and diversity
What is great leadership? Not the jargon, the mantras or the clichés, but real, honest leadership that drives and impacts and changes the world. The kind of leadership that enables employees to be better and businesses to thrive. This question has b
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
New Zealand’s UNTAPPED TALENT POOL
In New Zealand, we have a long list of skill shortages that need to be filled. We need more engineers, accountants, IT professionals, scientists, teachers, lecturers, nurses and doctors. We also need bakers, carpenters, bricklayers, electricians and
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
Does Young And Funky Dressing Cut It In The Corporate World?
I’VE RECENTLY been asked to work with a business owner in a creative field. He’s young, successful and driven and he’s been steadily growing his business over a number of years. More recently he has moved away from smaller clients to work with some o
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
Why A Job Description Shapes A Performance Review
WHEN IT comes to performance reviews, the job description is crucial for informing individual goals and aligning them with the overall business strategy. The job description is one piece of the puzzle that is the performance review. It’s there to cla
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
Virtue Signalling
A GOOD definition of virtue signalling is from the Urban Dictionary: “To take a conspicuous, but essentially useless action, ostensibly to support a good cause but actually to show off how much more moral you are than everybody else.” CSR (Corporate
NZBusiness and Management3 min readLeadership
DIVERSITY At The Decision-making Table
Five years ago Mike and Toria Moka established Indigenous Growth which works to enable businesses to understand and implement Maori strategies. Their focus is “to conquer the poverty cycle by creating more of our everyday indigenous role models to ex
NZBusiness and Management3 min read
Finding A Balance Between Multi And Uni-tasking
RECENTLY, as I waited for the phone to ring for a pre-arranged call, I found myself skimming the weekly update email to staff, checking numbers on a budget and answering a couple of staff queries while prepping for a post-work meeting, all the time f
NZBusiness and Management5 min readLeadership
The Leadership Versus Management Debate: What’s The Difference?
You are a great manager. You meet your targets. You’re friendly and easy to work with. You’re technically savvy. You say “Yes!” to change. You manage your people with ease and push them to deliver high-quality results. But does that make you a good l
NZBusiness and Management2 min read
Finding Our Place In A Growing World
It is always fascinating to talk to individuals whose work and background means they really do see the big global picture and have a very clear-eyed view of where the world is heading, in their particular sphere of influence at least. So it was illum

NZBusiness and Management

More Issues From NZBusiness and Management