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Meeting Summaries

For 2005
For 2004
For 2003
For 2002 
For 2001

Appreciative inquiry

Reports from working groups 2 (Hot Topics) and 4 (Structuring the Meeting).

Click here to download >>

Appreciative Inquiry - follow

The reports from the small groups 2 (Hot topics) and 4 (Structuring meetings).in a zip archive. Click here to download>>

Black Economic Empowerment 

Overview of the scorecard and some of the underlying principles and concepts

2004-06-02

Employment Equity for the Consultant

No speaker. It will be participative session, structured around the following questions:

1. How does it affect us?

2. What are the rules

3. What are the opportunities?

2004-05-05

Skills Development Levy

1. What are the rules?

2. What do you have to do to get back your mandatory grants?

3. At what point does it pay to attempt to get something back?

4. Strategic options: Building your company using learner on learnerships - what are the issues?

2004-04-06

Company structure and tax issues  

Kevin (and others) gave us a very interesting insight in the SARS thinking for smaller companies (independent contractors, personal services) and a rule of thumb of how to ensure that SARS doesn't view your efforts as salaried employment by another name.

2004-03-03

Why interventions fail

• PowerPoint slides as a Zip Archive

• Logic model spreadsheet: now removed

Schedule 2003

The meetings remain the first Wednesday of the month commencing in February 2003.  The dates in bold are in the school holidays. The dates are as follows:

• 5 February - Book Review Warning: May contain Nuts

• 5 March - Conversation Control Skills 

• 2 April Review: Conversations with God

• 7 May - Appreciative Enquiry

• 4 June - Black Executive Development

• 2 July - Skills Development and BEE directories: opportunities for developing your market

• 6 August - Customer Relationship Management

• 3 September - Living on the Edge of Chaos: implications for businesses

• 1 October -'Retire young, retire rich and stay rich forever'

• 5 November - Copyright and Intellectual Property

• 3 December - Social evening at El Burco Restaurant, Linksfield

2003-11-05

An intensive and interesting session covering all aspects of intellectual property:

• patents

• trademarks

• registered design

• copyright

Seems your best protection is via some sort of trademark??

2003-10-01

A short telling overview of Kiyasaki's approach to investment - specifically real estate - from Richard, using his own experiences of buying properties

2003-09-03

Michael challenged us with chaos theory, complex adaptive systems theory to explain organisational change and how do organisations respond to changing environments.

2003-08-06

Kevin took us through the issue customer relations management and its implications for small consulting businesses

2003-07-02

William Janisch presented a fascinating history and overview of the evolution of his company's National Training Directory and the planned directory on Black Economic Empowerment. This presentation included some background and possible models for one-person companies to engage in the process. Visit www.PeopleDevelopment.co.za.

2003-06-04

Charles Lewis presented: 
Benchmarking the Black Executive Development Process - Some insights from a study conducted across 15 corporations

2003-05-07

Walter Röntsch presented an overview of the appreciative inquiry methodology. This is based on the premise that looking at problems may not always yield optimum solutions, Looking at what worked, what was successful in the past may will lead to better implementation of things that work

2003-03-05

Christoph Vorwerk reviewed the book If only I had said - Conversation Control Skills for Managers by Charles Margerison

2003-04-02

Bernard Janisch reviewed the series of books Conversations with God. This was thought-provoking material. It went beyond our usual theme of providing material of interest for us as consultants.

2003-02-05

Karen did an entertaining review of Warning: May contain Nuts
by Barry Gibbons 

Apart from insights in marketing, the book also contained some funny comments about prominent business people and companies and some very quotable quotes, eg

Business will provide all that is needed to self-destruct.

Reports 2002

• 6 February Bench marking meeting summary>

• 6 March Coaching meeting summary>

• 3 April cancelled

• 8 May Storytelling as didactic technique summary>

• 5 June Issues in mentoring summary>

• 3 July Investors in People>

• 7 August F 16s and the OODA loop>

• 4 September Mind of a Fox: Scenario Planning in Action>

• 2 October Balanced scorecard - some tools>

• 6 November Social Evening

Announcement

The possibility of a new venue was discussed but has been shelved for the moment.

2002-10-02

Charles presented a summary of the balanced scorecard and some observations and tips based on his experience of using it.

2002-09-04

Kevin took us through Charlotte Illbury and Clem Sunter's Mind of a Fox: Scenario Planning in Action. For his summary as a ZIP file click here. What's a Zip file?>>

2002-08-07

Michael spoke about the fighter pilots, F 16s and the OODA loop and their relationship to strategic planning. I don't have a summary but you can read something about it here 

2002-07-03

Dianne introduced the Investors In People (IIP) standard Companies measure their human resources development practices against the standard to see if they meet the benchmark. There are four principles which make up the standard

1. commitment

2. planning

3. action

4. evaluation

During the presentation the following points were discussed:

• IIP doesn't compete against the NQF or ISO quality standards - it complements them

• It meshes with concepts such as the workplace skills plan and other components of the Skills Development Act

• I f companies want to compete locally and internationally they are going to find the pressure to conform to these  ISO 9000, 14000, the planned 18000 and IIP. For small and medium-sized companies this will be quite taxing.

For more information see http://www.investorsinpeople.co.uk

Membership

• Gabi Witthaus joined us for the meeting. She's back from a stint in Oman, but will shortly be going to Qatar

• Zephne and May joined us for the first time

Karen Hinrichs presented some issues in cross-cultural (diversity) mentoring:

• mentoring for equal opportunity now addresses a wide range of target groups, not just high potential women

• concept of equal opportunity management has been overtaken by diversity management

Some of the lively discussion centred on the concept of mentoring as a method of 'cloning' mentees in the mould of the dominant group senior male executives.

Story telling as a methodology for education and training formed the basis of a discussion presented by Christoph Vorwerk. Initial scepticism based on the sense that story telling = fibbing gave way to a realisation that stories based on real experience gave a context to generic knowledge.

Jane Margalit demonstrated some options in terms of coaching. She did this by way of demonstrating two different coaching conversations using two members of the group as guinea pigs. The advantages and options for coaching were then discussed.

She also described how coaching could be used to develop generic skills such as problem solving (the critical outcomes for the NQF).

Welcome back: One of the founding members, Glen Tucker who has had a bit of a marital and pastoral sabbatical returned.

Kevin Loader discussed various aspects of benchmarking:

• Objectives and purpose of benchmarking

• Different types of benchmarking

• What to benchmark and how it can be done

After discussion the group concluded: Benchmarking may have lost its fashionable glamour but it was still a useful technique for  creating a focus for both strategic and operational change.

July 2002

Now removed:  Past meetings, 2001

October & November meetings

Apologies, things were just to hectic to update the site

September

General discussion - Generating alternative revenue streams

August 2001

George Nene, using his own experiences, took us through:

• a brief history of the union movement, with emphasis on the standpoints and political affiliations of the various federations

• some of the personalities (many in high positions in government today)

• the impact of travel to overseas countries on the outlook and viewpoints of shop stewards

• the relationships between workers, shop stewards, union officials and management and other staff and how these could change

• capacity and other constraints in the union movement these days

New members: Kevin Loader 

Christoph apologises. He had his camera, but forgot to take any pictures. 

July 2001

Christoph Vorwerk did an overview of various uses of mind mapping and mind mapping software. 

We welcomed Jane Margalit to our group.

June Meeting

Michael Mun  took us through a presentation Leveraging change through intellectual capital he gave to an august body last year. The presentation was based on his dissertation. 
 Key points included:

• Linking intellectual capital and the value chain
• the results of a survey conducted in his department on the impact and attitudes towards change and the challenges of the future 
• the formulation of a strategy based on the findings of the survey
• the fear of top management to deal with the issues raised and the ultimate dissolution of the department as a result of the failure of top management to grasp the nettle

Michael also raised a number of issues that we as consultants in our own companies and as agents for change within other organisations should take into account. 

We welcomed George Nene to our group.

April Meeting

Roger Jannaway took us through a case study of how Afrox has re-invented its HR function and made it  a value adding service.  

He described how the transaction component of HR has been automated, the HR structure been redesigned and redefined, the challenges of changing mindsets and age-old practices.

March meeting:

Charles Lewis gave us on overview of:

• how he approaches projects

• pitfalls and must-dos in project planning

The meeting took place at Gabi's flat - the  Golf Club couldn't host us.

We had a couple of new faces, Annie Orgill and David Dickinson

February meeting

Gabi Witthaus did a presentation on:

Harriet Rubin, 1999 . Soloing - Reaching Life's Everest. Random House: London

We learned to distinguish between a soloist and:

• a freelancer>  

• and a corporado >.

Soloist vs Freelancer

Corporado vs Soloist