Yesterday, we held our annual staff hui. It's an important day for us here at the Institute of Directors in New Zealand as we bring all our people together under one roof to learn, connect and share their knowledge. We spent the day focusing on #creativity and #innovation to create meaningful change, and how we can inject more of that good stuff into the DNA of the IoD.
It's a big job getting a whole company together for the day, but now more than ever connecting people is so important, and we think it's well worth the investment. We usually spend our time creating memorable experiences for our members and customers, but yesterday it was our staff's turn to get treated to some IoD pearls of wisdom and manaakitanga.
Thank you to our amazing speakers David Wilks for inspiring us, and our expert member panel Tui Te Hau, Suse Reynolds and Murray Sherwin for your generosity of time and wisdom.
It's a tough time in business these days, so I want to give a shout out to the awesome local companies that helped us deliver an excellent day. If you want to do something special for your team, I highly recommend any of these businesses to see you right.
Worser Bay Boating Club - an awesome venue with beautiful outlook over the moody Wellington harbour. It's one of the best venues I've used in Wellington.
Spoonful Catering - very yummy food and they expertly catered to everyone's needs and kept us all nourished and caffienated.
Wētā Workshop Ltd who delivered a fantastic workshop where we got to get super creative and make our own special effects (blood splatter or bullet wounds anyone?)
Double Vision Brewing and especially Dustyn for making our people feel so welcome, and making the best toasted sandwiches I'd ever eaten.
My takeaways:
🎨 Everybody is creative. Not just artists.
💹 There is always tension between innovation, creativity and commercial reality. You have to lean in to it.
💜 People are at the heart of it. If you haven't got the right people (attitude, passion, drive) you won't get where you want to go no matter how creative you are.
🏹 Innovation doesn't have to be massive. It can be small, and still make an impact.
⏳ Good things do take time.
🦊 🚫 It's better to be a hedgehog than a fox (IYKYK).
p.s. someone needs to create hedgehog emoji. edit: 🦔 thanks Phoebe Edge!