leadership

Biscuits

Here’s another one from a Facebook friend:

A young lady was waiting for her flight in the VIP lounge of a big airport. As she’d need to wait many hours she decided to buy a book to read to pass the time. She also bought a packet of biscuits. She sat down in an armchair to rest and read in peace. Beside the armchair where the packet of biscuits lay, a man sat down in the next seat, opened his magazine and started to read.

When the young lady took the first biscuit out of the packet, the man in the next chair took one also. She felt irritated but said nothing. She just thought: “What a nerve! If I was in the mood I’d punch him for daring to do that!” For each biscuit she took, the man took one too. This was infuriating her but she didn’t want to cause a scene.

When only one biscuit remained, she thought: “Ah! What will this irritating chap do now?” The man, took the last biscuit, divided it into half and gave her one half. That was too much! She was now very angry! In a huff, she insulted the man, took her book and her things and stormed to the boarding area to catch her plane. When she sat down in her seat inside the plane, she looked in her bag to take out her spectacles and to her surprise, her packet of biscuits was there untouched and unopened!

She felt so ashamed. She realized that she was wrong and that she’d forgotten that her biscuits were still in her bag. The man had shared his biscuits with her, without feeling angry or bitter while she’d been very angry thinking she was sharing her biscuits with him and now there was no chance to explain herself or to apologize.

The moral of the story?

There are 4 things that you cannot recover.

– The stone after the throw…the word after it’s said…the occasion after the loss and the time after it’s gone. So always be careful and patient!

21
JAN

facebook, friends, leadership, management

Sarah Knight

Check this wonderful picture of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with the lovely Sarah Knight in the foreground, before she climbed the mountain in aid of Sparks Childrens Charity. I got to know Sarah on Twitter where she’s @sarknight – well worth a follow!

In her usual life Sarah’s director of a regional recruitment agency – Sarah West Recruitment – and passionate about her industry, local business and her work. Mother to 2 amazing children who inspire her on a daily basis to not only aim high, but to enjoy the little things in life too.

Sarah has a ‘can do’ attitude to life and adventures, she loves life and tries to make the most of every moment and encourage others to do the same. Climbing Kilimanjaro was initially another flippant ‘yes’, little did she know that this adventure would be such a learning experience, bringing the rewards of new friendships and new experiences. That’s without even setting foot on the mountain!

If you follow her blog like I do, then I guess we’ll find out more about her climb when she has time to write. On Twitter she said it was without doubt the toughest thing she’s ever done in her life. Awesome I call it!

Sarah lives in Exeter, just 15 miles from where I was born.

13
FEB

activities, Africa, children, Customers, leadership, Tanzania, tourism, Twitter

Norway Rules!

Once again it’s our pleasure to introduce you to Norwegian guests staying at Chanters Lodge. Meet from left to right Erna Ravn, Silje Helland and Line Mannerud who featured last Sunday on our radio show – The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild. The show goes out between 20.30 and 21.30 hrs every Sunday night on Zambezi Radio 107.7fm, Livingstone’s most popular local radio station. We feature music and conversation in just about equal proportions, chart news from around the world and the latest from Lodgeblog, as well as giving away a weekly prize of dinner for two at Chanters to the first person to text us the answer to a deliberately simple question. This week we asked which country our guests hailed from and towards the end of the show Joyce quickly answered ‘Norway’ and won!

Erna, Silje and Line are 3rd year students at the University of Tromso in chilly Northern Norway, studying teaching and currently in Zambia for a month to complete their course practicals at Nansanzu Basic School in Livingstone. The girls will be educating Grade 8 pupils in history, home economics and maths respectively. They were due to start teaching on the Monday following the show having completed a week’s acclimatization, and we weren’t sure whether they were more nervous about starting work or appearing on radio! Mind you Line seemed nervous about nothing! The girls said they were staying at Chanters following a recommendation from fellow students who had stayed with us last year. We liked that!

“How long have you been in Livingstone?” Milli Jam wanted to know. The girls replied that they’d been in town just over a week. “What activities have you done?” He carried on, and here began the partial tale of woe! The girls told listeners they’d been for an elephant safari on Saturday morning and whilst they’d had a good time, as they were dismounting Line fell off the beast and cut her leg. On Friday evening they’d taken a sunset cruise and Erna had been stung by a wasp – her wrist was still sore and swollen as the show went on air. The girls said “these things go in threes, we’re waiting for something to happen to Silje”! We hoped not! “Had they been clubbing already?” They were asked. “Not yet” they replied expectantly… “but we’ve flown microlights over Victoria Falls and seen the Falls from the ground as well, getting very wet in the process.”

The music on the show was great. We opened with Enrique’s latest smash featuring Ludacris and DJ Frank E ‘Tonight I’m Loving You’ back to back with Jennifer Hudson’s ‘Where You At?’ Our Zambian tracks were Zeck Dizzy with ‘Danger’ coupled with T-Sean’s ‘Wonder Why’. Ne-Yo’s ‘One In A Million’ and Keysha Cole’s ‘I Ain’t Thru’ featuring Nicki Minaj went down well and so too did Christina Perri’s ‘Jar Of Hearts’. We asked the girls which band was ‘hot’ in Norway at the moment (as if you could be – lol!) and they told us Kvelertak. “You be careful” said Line “this is dark rock”! We promised we would be!

Inevitably Milli Jam and George wanted to know if the girls had boyfriends pining for them back in Norway. Erna had, Silje and Line hadn’t. “Where would you like to be and what would you like to be doing ten years from now?” We asked these three lovely, lively ladies. Erna wanted to be married to her boyfriend and teaching in Norway. The much travelled Line still wanted to be travelling and quite fancied teaching in Zambia. Silje wanted to be at home with 40 cats listening to classical music! (Yes 40!)

Amidst studio discussion about Arsenal’s 2nd half debacle the previous Saturday afternoon and Manchester United’s first league loss the same day, together with Liverpool beating Chelsea (Torres and all) that evening, the girls admitted they didn’t follow football but just loved skiing, though they supposed people in Zambia didn’t ski much! We confirmed that……..

Were the girls happy at Chanters? Milli Jam wanted to know. They were and just loved the Chanters Girls!

8
FEB

activities, Africa, cricket, education, leadership, livingstone, Norway, radioshow, victoriafalls, volunteers, wildlife, Zambia

Mao Kasonso

“Some say he’s recently been in UK working as ‘The Stig’ others that he built Victoria Falls, all we know is that he’s called Mao!” I declared, when I was asked by Milli Jam to introduce our guest on the most recent edition of The Chanters Lodge Experience with The Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild. That’s our regular weekly Sunday night radio show airing at 20.30 hrs on Zambezi Radio 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s best loved local radio station. Why start like that? Well Mao Kasonso, in the picture above, to the right of George da Soulchild, is well known on Facebook and people often do Clarksonesque things with his name on that site. Anyway my intro took everyone by surprise, got a good laugh and got our show off to a happy start.

It was for us a ground breaking show, not only did we feature three international No 1 hits, but for the first time we had an additional guest interview by phone from Lusaka. This featured Mr Vezzy aka Lang’a Mweene, a musician with a smash hit in Zambia on his hands – ‘Imma Bad Boy’ – which we played on the show (for the second time). Lang’a talked to us mid-way through the show when Milli Jam asked him about his work, his music, his family and his ambitions – it went down well with the listening audience. I asked him how long he’d been on Twitter and what he thought about it. He replied “about 3 months and it’s the world”. More evidence, if it was needed, that Twitter’s popularity continues to grow in Zambia.

Mao Kasonso our studio guest is a well known figure in Livingstone. He was a club DJ at The Fairmount Hotel in his younger days and then for many years was employed by Radio Mosi-o-Tunya, starting as a volunteer and working his way up to become Head of Production. At Radio Mosi-o-Tunya Mao hosted a weekly show as well as managing his administrative duties. The station is a Catholic Church owned community service radio station and Livingstone’s other local radio station. “What are you doing now?” Milli Jam asked our guest, who went on to explain that he’s currently studying a one and a half year business management course. He has an ambition to set up his own radio station in the future and we wouldn’t bet against that. Vibrant, intelligent and hard working speak for themselves!

The music on the show was excellent – as mentioned we featured three international number one hits: Kenny Chesney’s ‘Somewhere With You’ – currently top of the US country charts. Britney Spears with ‘Hold It Against Me’ charted at number one in the US pop charts last week and ‘Who’s That Girl’ by Guy Sebastian featuring Eve – the Australian number one. In this regard I told listeners how we’d received blog comments querying our lack of knowledge about Guy on the previous week’s show! We all agreed that the track was excellent and we were happy to have aired it for the first time on radio in Zambia. Together with these smash hits we featured Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull with ‘On The Floor’, Lady Gaga’s ‘Animal’ and Ty2 featuring Scarlet with ‘Desire’ this last number the second of our two local tracks. Milli Jam chose a Nigerian track ‘Jupka’ by J Martins.

Mao greeted his wife and family at home, especially his 3 children Geen 10, Ben 5 and Melinda 2.5 and told listeners that he didn’t like football but loved music, particularly pop, rock and dance and that his favourite track at the moment was ‘Hello’ by Martin Solveig and Dragonette. We gave listeners their regular chart news – featuring for the first time the USA Ringtones Charts – that caught listeners’ interest.

Appropriately the question we asked for the prize dinner for two was ‘tell us the 3 letter name of this week’s guest on the show’ and ‘Mao’ was quickly texted and the winner rewarded!

25
JAN

Africa, Australia, Chanters, entertainment, leadership, management, music, People, radioshow, training, Zambia

Leaving A Mark

I loved this from Seth Godin – takes a couple of readings but spot on as usual!

Soles

All you’ve got, all your brand has got, all any of us have are the memories and expectations and changes we’ve left with others.

It’s so easy to get hung up on the itinerary, the features and the specs, but that’s not real, it’s actually pretty fuzzy stuff. The concrete impact of our lives and our work is the mark you make on other people. It might be a product you make or the way you look someone in the eye. It might be a powerful experience you have on a trip with your dad, or the way you keep a promise.

The experiences you create are the moments that define you. We’ll miss you when you’re gone, because we will always remember the mark you made on us.

There’s a sign on most squash courts encouraging players to wear only sneakers with non-marking soles. I’m not sure there’s such a thing. If you’re going to do anything worthy, you’re going to leave a mark.

14
JAN

blog, leadership, management

Office With A View

Check the view from the window of our new offices at Chanters Lodge, Livingstone, Zambia – looking west up Obote Avenue. Isn’t that nice? Have you moved in? We hear you ask.

Errrmmm, no, not quite, but we will, the moment the curtains are up!

Then we’ll post a view of the interior too – minus the beer crates we might have to be sitting on!

31
MAR

Africa, Chanters, entrepreneurship, extension, infrastructure, innovation, leadership, livingstone, victoriafalls, Zambia

Zambia Reserves

From ThePostOnline

“There’s no underlying need for Zambia to build reserves beyond the current US$1.8 billion hence the surplus should be directed at infrastructure investment to stimulate the local economy, observes Standard Chartered Bank head of research for Africa Razia Khan. And Khan has said there are possibilities of extra-budgetary expenditure in the run-up to the 2011 elections that may see the government to overshoot its planned domestic debt issuance.

Khan challenged the government to put in place measures that would ensure the economy to be ‘firing in all cylinders’ to result in satisfactory and meaningful growth that would subsequently reduce poverty levels in the country. Last year, Zambia recorded US$1.8 billion, which is about four to five months import cover due to increased inflows from the International Finance Institutions, mainly the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which boosted the country’s foreign exchange reserves.

However, financial market experts and analysts have questioned the motive behind the continued stockpiling of the reserves, saying Zambia should just save slightly above what is required as import cover and use the surplus for infrastructure development such as roads. It is also understood that there were several challenges in maintaining large currency reserves, which included fluctuations in exchange rates, low international interest rates and reduction in purchasing power of the reserve currency due to inflation.

The financial experts, who preferred anonymity, stated that there was no need for Zambia to continue stockpiling foreign reserves when the country’s infrastructure capacity which is key to enhance economic growth was not being developed. “Why do we want to keep so much money doing nothing instead of investing it into infrastructural projects that will help stimulate the country’s economy?” questioned the experts.

Commenting on the issue and giving a foreign exchange market outlook for Zambia last week, Khan said the Zambian Kwacha had started 2010 with a powerful advance, leaving the US$/kwacha at 4.2 per cent below turn-of-year levels and at 22.7 per cent below the K5,750 which was the 2009 peak.”

And that 22.7% represents the Kwacha income loss we’ve suffered in a year as a result! What a lot of sense this piece makes, though I don’t suppose anyone will listen!

29
JAN

Africa, infrastructure, innovation, leadership, trends, Zambia

Poignant Picture

This, to me, and I’m sure the rest of my family, is a very poignant picture. It shows my late brother-in-law Don Binney, who passed away on November 13th last year, being served by my (now) Assistant Manager Annastasia Katele, during Don’s visit to Zambia in March 2006 with my sister Ruth. A good time they had too! Don and Ruth came to Zambia following some time in South Africa during which Don, a great cricket lover, was thrilled to have attended a test match at Newlands in Cape Town. I’m very much looking forward to Ruth’s return visit in March 2010 as I’m sure she is too. Our thoughts are with her today.

Annastasia’s had a great year since being promoted to the post of Assistant Manager in January this year. She’s grown a lot in the job (not in height, she’s still pint sized) and is about to start her annual leave. She’s shown herself to be super reliable, tough and her great public relations skills have made her popular with suppliers and Guests alike. By way of a reward for excellent work the company have sponsored a return flight to South Africa for her to go and see her young brother who lives in Johannesburg. As soon as our new bedrooms are finished (a week or so to go), we’ll be starting the construction of two offices – one for her and one for me, with a view to her being able to take over even more responsibility next year.

How nice to be able to link these two super people together in one image!

13
NOV

Africa, Canada, Chanters, family, leadership, management, rsa, Zambia

Late John Mwanakatwe

As reported in the press, John Mwankatwe has died and today is to be given a State Funeral by the Zambian Government. He was a remarkable man, one of Zambia’s first graduates in law, he served as a Minister in the Government and amongst other distinguished posts, Chancellor of University of Zambia. He was a Zambian, a lawyer, author and intellectual.

His son Mupanga Mwanakatwe is married to Margaret, an executive with Barclays Bank, and elder sister to Towela, mother of two of my children, Michael and Alexandra. They knew late John as ‘grandpa’ and were very sad at news of his passing. John gave me very valuable advice in 1992 when I unexpectedly had to leave my post as General Manager of Ridgeway Hotel (now Southern Sun Ridgeway). Some of the advice I followed and some I didn’t – it was valuable!

Late John was often guest of honour at functions held at the Ridgeway. This was always a cause for concern. Why? Well, his speeches used to last so long it disturbed the food service! He was a lawyer after all! We always used to try and pursuade the organizers to let us serve the main course before the speeches. When they asked “why?” Our reply was “well, do you really want to eat your main course at midnight!” Consternation!

Late John always passed by Chanters Lodge when he visited Livingstone to see my progress and express his best wishes, and I highly valued these visits. He’ll be missed by family, friends and all who had the privilege to know him.

26
AUG

entrepreneurship, guests, hotels, leadership, livingstone, Zambia

I’m really interested in stuff about leadership and management and found this from Focus.com via Fresh Inc very useful. Incidentally did you see Fresh Inc’s fabulous ideas for Father’s Day gifts? With 5+2 ‘children’ do you think I might get lucky one of these years? Highly doubtful but there’s nothing like dropping big hints. (Today’s Father’s Day actually). Anyway, here’s about leadership:

“Becoming a great leader in 101 easy steps. Vincent Van Gogh once said, “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” Along those lines, Digg links to the business site, Focus.com, which has compiled a list of 101 Common Sense Rules for Leaders. The list covers all aspects of a good manager’s toolbox, including tips for getting along with employees, boosting productivity, and managing finances and resources. Also included are pointers on maintaining body language that’s appropriate for a leader: sit up straight, face the person you’re talking to, and take your hands out of your pockets. To be fair, those last few tips have been in use for decades by mothers of pesky third-graders everywhere.”

There you are then, get reading and leading!

21
JUN

leadership, management

Page 2 of 2 12