Week off to a flier

This week has been pretty hectic as the Swedish summer holidays draw to a close. A session at ABB with a marketing director was followed by a day with a politician in Stockholm as well as looking over some copy writing for a close client to ICG. Amazingly I am looking forward to the weekend

Mentor, mentor, mentor

I would strongly recommend to anyone who has the skills and experience to mentor these to any person who needs support and guidance. The reasons are obvious but I recently had a very positive and rewarding experience. One of the two Human Resource professionals I am mentoring in Australia had a dilemma for which he sought my advice. It was not a simple issue as it was an industrial dispute with a union based on a very shaky premise in a collective agreement. Interestingly I had a similar issue as an HR manager some 20 years ago and manged to solve it so I advised Tony to follow the same path. At first he thought it would not work- I said to go ahead and choose what he saw fit. After a while he took my advice and did as I first suggested. He succeeded! The reward for me is so obvious- he weighed up my advice against his own thoughts and realised that I had succeeded in the past and followed that. It gives great satisfaction to know some knowledge from my experience can still work.

Last week

My daughter Kristen who has been visiting us from Melbourne has now departed to the Greek islands for two weeks before returning home to Australia. We had a great time while she was here and not only did we go to England for a few days ,we spent some time being tourists in Stockholm which was fantastic. The photograph shows me, Kristen, my wife Birgitta and her daughter Ida at an evening out at Sturehof in Stureplan. The restaurant is really one of the best and is always worth a visit.

ICG sponsors golf competition in UK

I have just returned to Sweden from a visit to Scarborough where I met with the Council leadership as well as joined a very exciting and fantastic afternoon of golf at one of the best coastal golf course in the UK, North Cliff Golf Club, Scarborough. The competition was actually a benefit day for the Yorkshire cricketer Anthony McGrath. Our fourball was honoured to be host to the Australian cricket legend Darren Lehmann. Darren who is a 17 handicapper played a really good round of golf along with myself, Steve Pybus and Dave Ellard. The golf club were excellent hosts and I recommend this course to anyone travelling to North Yorkshire. In the wind it can be very challenging. As you can see from the photograph all four of the team are keen to promote ICG.

End of another week

Good week just ending except for the weather of course. Planning business strategies and programmes for 2010. Looking forward to my daughter Kristen visiting next week from Melbourne. Furthermore looking forward to playing in the Anthony McGrath testimonial year golf tournament at North Cliff golf club Scarborough the week after next. Got a tip that we may be playing with an Aussie cricketer in our foursome- should be a laugh. Got tickets also for the Twenty20 match between Yorkshire and a representative Australian X1. Hope the weather in England is better than here!!

Floods and rain in our village

What a night! After very heavy rain yesterday from around 17.00 to 22.00 the village river and stream system overflowed causing a number of us to be up all night working at trying to control waterways. We have fields flooded, streams completely overflowing, roads washed away and much of our land is under water. Given this problem it started to rain 6 hours ago again and this is forecast to continue for 24 hours more. This could be North Queensland on a tropical cyclone day!!! yet it is central Sweden

Worth a look- Customer service

A friend and business associate in England sent me a link to a website called Simple truths to show a very interesting short video on customer service. Considering the poor and often abysmal customer service I come across in my business and personal travels there is nothing so true as the video suggests. Click on the bold 'Simple truths' above and wait for the movie to upload a few seconds

Heatwave draws to an end

Great great weather here in central Sweden for the last two weeks is now coming to an end- we have had sweltering temperatures of between 27c and 31c here in Norberg almost every day over this period- great for sunning and doing a bit of garden work as well as golf of course. Business this week saw ICG working with ABB leaders as well as Stockholm City managers. Planning for UK activities in autumn are now well under way and we look forward to be visiting key authorities with Swedish counterparts.