August 2007 - Richard Aston

This month marks one significant milestone in our expansion plan as I took on a new coordinator, Martin Hosking who, once he completes training, will be responsible for covering Auckland North and Rodney up to Wellsford. This move doubles to free another coordinator, currently covering in part, Auckland’s north shore, so he can focus time on training the new Wellington Coordinator later in the year. It’s a carefully orchestrated plan to resource the expansion of Big Buddy in the critical area of people.
Our work is very people centred, getting the right people in the right place with good training and support is crucial if we are to expand our services and keep up the quality for those services. In my darkest moments I sometimes think it would have been a lot easier to design our programme along more mechanical lines that did not depend on the quality of the people providing the service, a kind of tick the box fill out the form, look at the DVD approach. These darker moments pass (quite quickly!) when I remember we are in the business of real human relationships with all the complexity and mysteries they encompass. I remind myself that our core business of fostering long term and profound relationships requires a lot of relationship skills from us. It requires us to put ourselves on the line and that is not done lightly or without support.
One another note I am very pleased to report one of the mini World of Difference winners for this year, Rachel Harrison, has elected to work with us. She will be doing some much needed work on our communications databases, getting them all into a more professional setup. I’m looking forward to working with Rachael and am honoured she picked us. Another supporter of ours, Travis Field, has given us a free ad in his new Auckland magazine, Weekend, worth $1000. Great stuff, it’s the first time we have had an ad in a glossy mag so I’ll be interested in the response!. Travis will also be helping me develop the Big Buddy Business Supporter idea with his long experience in business and is extensive business contacts.
I am getting closer to finding our man in Wellington and taking the time to do this well. Interviewing a few people so far I found many who would have been great coordinators in Auckland but I need someone who also has mana to represent us in Wellington. So not only am I looking for a man with good levels of emotional intelligence, good organisational skills and great relational abilities, he needs to have a solid mana as well. Oh well if you don’t shoot for the best you don’t get the best.

This month had Fathers day so I was asked to make a speech at the Waitakere City Council Fathering week launch, did an interview with John Tamihere and Willy Jackson on Radio Live and later an interview with Shine TV.

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