MSI Blog

How often do we plan for the future and indeed live a lot of our lives either looking forward or looking back. And that is how it should be because this is what it is to be human. However the Christmas season got me thinking about the specialness of this time in whatever way we celebrate it. It is the end of the year. It is the start of a new year. It is a time to be with loved ones. It is a time for celebration and also a time for reflection. It is a time of lessons learned, a time ......... read more >>

Date: Wed 23rd Dec 2009     Author: Terry McCloy    

One of the most fascinating changes that I have seen over the years is the speed at which things are changing. And it is accelerating rapidly!! A friend recently suggested I look at Did You Know on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8 Look it up. This amazing clip really sums up the world we are living in today and the challenges that we all face either as individuals or in ensuring our organisation stays relevant and successful. So the big money question is how do we manage to stay on top of this wave of change? Working with organisations over the years I have seen many ......... read more >>

Date: Sun 27th Sep 2009     Author: Terry McCloy    

I wonder if you remember Joel Barker. He was a futurist who coined the use of that wonderful word Paradigm!! And one of the most insightful comments I remember that Joel said was that when a paradigm changes we all go back to zero. In the employment market today we are seeing exactly that. The paradigm has really changed. As result we are seeing a very different market for candidates where one where the old rules simply will not work like they used to. And it is not the economic climate. Yes it has been the catalyst that has made the changes so ......... read more >>

Date: Thu 13th Aug 2009     Author: Terry McCloy    

I was asked recently what I thought the next 12 months would hold for recruitment. And my mind turned to the marketplace impact that September 11 had for us. Organisations did very much what they are doing now reduce head count and reduce recruiting. It makes sound economic sense in these sort of times. However the most interesting aspect of that period was that as the market turned around and upwards about a year later organisation after organisation that we dealt with began to realise that their talent pool was very shallow. And it will be the same later this year and during ......... read more >>

Date: Thu 4th Jun 2009     Author: Terry McCloy    

I recently attended a remarkable conference that looked at what we as humanity are doing and where we are going. It was a fascinating conference and what made it so remarkable was that many of these types of gatherings are about the problems, about how bad everything is and that the world is basically coming to an end. Why even the other day we had Prince Charles telling us we have ten years to go before the planet self destructs!!!! And to be fair this is what many people truly believe. However what all of this is forgetting is the remarkableness of humankind. ......... read more >>

Date: Thu 19th Mar 2009     Author: Terry McCloy    

"Whether you make it and whether you stay there, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you." So said Jim Collins, author of "Good to Great" and co-author of "Built to Last." All the media are telling us that this will be a very tough year. I agree. My feeling is that this will certainly be a tougher year than last year. However I also believe that for the prepared and the fortuitous 2009 will be a year of great challenge, opportunity and abundance. I have been reading over the holidays a number of books relating ......... read more >>

Date: Tue 20th Jan 2009     Author: Terry McCloy    

Change and turbulence. What a fascinating world we are living in!!! I remember Allen Bruford who was the Head of Operations for Customs and he had a wonderful plaque on his desk. "Everyone wants progress but no one wants to change"And for some people this is true. Interestingly for most people it is not true and that is why the world around us changes so much and why we live in such amazing times. Just imagine it!!! We are living in perhaps the most exciting, most fluid, changing and perhaps challenging time in history. And if you doubt this then ......... read more >>

Date: Fri 28th Nov 2008     Author: Terry McCloy    

Robin Sharma recently wrote a very fascinating Blog that I feel needs to be shared further. I would like to quote from it and recommend that you visit Robins' site on www.robinsharma.com and also read some of his books. They are quite remarkable.
What Robin said was this:
"How did we get to be a world built around a sense of entitlement? So many of us want a great career and a gorgeous life but we're not willing to unleash the creativity/self-discipline and self-sacrifice to get there. I deeply believe that you can have so much of what you dream ......... read more >>

Date: Sun 21st Sep 2008     Author: Terry McCloy    

With the Olympics almost due we will see over the next few weeks some absolutely remarkable feats of courage, commitment, endeavour and single mindedness towards a goal. And we celebrate it!!!!! Rightly so. We are nation that loves to see these attributes in our sporting heroes. As a kid I remember listening on a crackly old radio to Murray Halberg's gold medal win in Rome in 1960. I was inspired and so proud to be a Kiwi. Still am!!! Murray Halberg's win still for me sums up what courage, commitment, endeavour and single mindedness towards a goal is all about. And I think that ......... read more >>

Date: Wed 16th Jul 2008     Author: Terry McCloy    

You know the tragedy is that many people die without discovering their gifts - or living the life that they could. And why? Because day after day we allow ourselves to live in a negative environment - and we tolerate it!! We permit ourselves to hear the doom and gloom that our news media offers to us and to listen to the nay sayers who are there if we give them time to talk. For many people they want to believe the worst. And being an election year, all we are likely to hear is more of what is wrong about ......... read more >>

Date: Sun 11th May 2008     Author: Terry McCloy