Each month we edit and produce the Circular, the magazine of the New Zealand Bus and Coach Association.The Circular is a highly regarded magazine read by most New Zealand bus operators as well as influential members of New Zealand’s wider transport industry.
For the past then years (or so) Scott Thomson Media has been making engineering and rope access company Abseil Access’ calendar. The calendar has a theme each year, and each month has an interesting story ‘vaguely’ based on the theme. This year’s theme was ‘The End’. Abseil Access say many of their clients look forward to the end of the year not for the festivities, but for the inevitable joy the Abseil Access calendar gives them. True story! Here’s October’s story…
Meetings in remarkable places
“Sometimes,” says Abseil Access director Martin Wilson, “our work is so important that our clients don’t want anyone else to know about it. So we have a meeting in very secret and very inaccessible place. If it’s hard for us to get there, we know that it is impossible for anyone else to get there, so we call a meeting. Quite often we don’t actually say much, because we are a bit puffed by the time we get there. Sometimes we just call a meeting in an inhospitable place to make people think we are having an important meeting and confuse them.” Martin and fellow director DJ Matheson have one golden rule for their secret meetings: ‘No pushing’. Sometimes, as in all meetings, things get a bit tedious and, like every meeting, it has to end. DJ’s favourite way to end a meeting is to announce they have run out of scroggin and they have to go home. Martin uses more traditional methods. “I like to know we are all on the same page. Teamwork makes the dream work. Is their body language congruent with what they are saying? If I sense they haven’t bought in, then I make the point that it’s a team effort to leave the secret meeting. If I sense a lack of motivation, I say ‘Can we schedule a time to come back and have another meeting?’ They normally aren’t that keen. The final thing I do is, I get a feel for what everyone is going to do next, usually it is trying to work out how to get down. If need be, soothingly, I sing: ‘There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief, there’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief’.”
Story by Jim Scott in Dominion Post and other Fairfax publications 22 Feb, 2017.
Jim was recently in Thailand and Sri Lanka on a fact finding mission. He researched a few stories involving coffee and coconut growing, and, in Bangkok he met some New Zealanders involved in teaching local children how to play rugby!