On my last trip to Hobart I paid a return visit to a favourite spot in the Tasmanian Botanic Gardens. It’s a garden called “Pete’s vegie patch” that was started by Peter Cundall, the now retired host of the popular ABC program “Gardening Australia”. The patch is a working example of a productive garden and [...]

Tags: employee engagement, Employee morale, Leadership and management, Productivity

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” William Shakespeare In a previous post called “What language do you use” http://www.letsgrow.com.au/blog/?p=786I I talked about the issue of using technical terms rather than common expressions when discussing employee engagement. However, there is another language-related issue I want to [...]

Tags: Job roles, Job Titles, Leadership and management, Leadership skills, Reputation

  Some plants like company and really only look their best when massed together in a garden bed. Other plants need to stand alone, giving them plenty of space to grow and really shine. We call this second group “specimen” plants. They serve as focal points in landscape design. An example would be a flowering [...]

Tags: Employee morale, Employee retention, Job roles, Leadership and management, Productivity, Team work

  I recently saw a piece on the “Better Homes and Gardens” TV show with Graham Ross who raised an interesting point when planting a tree. We normally create a round hole in which to place the round tree root ball, as all the plants we buy have been grown in round pots. This can [...]

Tags: engagement, Job roles, Karen Schmidt, Leadership and management, Leadership skills, square peg in a round hole

Timing in the garden can be very important. Leave fruit on the tree or vine for too long and you risk insects or birds attacking them, having them fall to the ground or, in the case of my tomatoes, some of them splitting because they took on too much water. I now keep an eye [...]

Tags: Career path, emerging leaders, Job roles, Job rotation, Leadership and management, Productivity, Promotions, www.letsgrow.com.au