Birdsville 2011??

That's what we seem to be calling it, although none of us is particularly interested in the Birdsville races.

Planning night was last night, and at this stage the plan is:

Euroa - leave W a.m.

Broken Hill - to refuel

Innamincka - stay W night

Nappa Merri - to visit the Burke & Wills 'Dig Tree'

Birdsville - arrive before umpteen thousand would-be drunks, stay Th night

Williams Creek - stay F night

Hawker - Flinders Ranges, near Wilpena Pound, stay Sat night

Mildura - to refuel

Euroa - arrive Sunday

That's the rough plan, but the plan is to change the plan as we go.

Five of us in the plane at this stage. Ian's Airvan, usually used for parachuting. Seats 8. Piloted by Adam.

Planning

District exercise

Our first district exercise since moving from District 13 to 14.  About 30 trucks plus quickfills, ultralights, SES, cops, helicopters, medicos, salvos, etc.  29 degrees and sunny but pretty easy exercise.

One chopper dropped 1.2 tonnes of water right next to us...

... and refilled again - 1.2 tonnes in 30 seconds ...

Chopping up and falling down...

Busy weekend.

Saturday was chainsawing all day in the rain at Stella and Alan's place Wildhaven, with 15 other bods.  We were cutting up and burning heaps of burnt trees.  Totally knackered at the end of that day.

Sunday was a freebie jump at Nagambie, courtesy the Bushfire Recovery mob (except I had to pay for the filming).  Only a tandem jump, but good fun. 50 secs freefall from 14,000 feet.  It all came back to me. Linked up with another jumper and did a few hoops and loops.

There's a blue tongue lizard in there ...

Blue Tongue lizard

This is Garfield telling me to chill and back off -

it's only a blue tongue lizard

and it isn't going to hurt me.

The hissing is the lizard, not Garfield.

After the flood...

And then I had to chainsaw my way through this lot

to get home...

Exploring

Along the creek

Brave little paws...

Oh the indignity.

Under the bridge...

And a 35m pine that needs to go...

Walkies

Rain rain rain

Diamond Creek, Eltham, at the bridge next to the Leisure Centre.

It's back!

Sheep wrangling

Kate and Dave's sheep got out, so...

Dog Day

Dog got washed and dried...

The city

I spent the day visiting several organisations, looking at 'service' from different angles.
First was Skydeck, then Australian Unity, then Crown Casino for lunch (pheasant) and finishing up at Foxtel looking at the Next Big Thing (Connect).

All up, an interesting day.

I thought, how is a visit to Skydeck teaching me about service?  Never mind, had fun, great view.
Later, I realised it is all about the EXPERIENCE.  Was it good? Seamless? Would I go back? Recommend it?
Ditto lunch at Crown.

So the lessons for the day:

SAVE THE CUSTOMER
Great for a commercial organisation with members or subscribers they don't want to lose. How do we apply it? How do we even measure it?  Thinking thinking.

SIMPLE PAPERWORK
Foxtel's messy current bill -v- the new (draft) version
So why do our letters have to be, um, letters? Why not break up the page into the messages we want to get across.  The BIG MESSAGE gets the big orange block. For the details, see the grey box on page 2.

LEADERS ARE TRAINERS
Got a message for staff? Teach the supervisor and get the spvr to deliver it. Then you know the spvrs get it and can deliver it.  An old old message. Goes back to old research showing that whatever your boss delivers to you, sinks in best.  The army gets it bigtime. You get one hook, and you start training others, and getting train-the-trainer stuff.  So why is the army in the vanguard?  They're not - they're ancient, and that's how it always was. The only one to teach stuff was the leader, and he actually knew it better than anyone else.  So, back to the future.

THE EXPERIENCE
Does our customer / client / subscriber / member / visitor enjoy the visit, real or virtual, to us?
Do they feel supported? Sought after? Welcome back next time?

Thinking outside the box for a moment, how can we create a situation where we have to work to SAVE THE CUSTOMER? By giving her the option to get lost, to choose another provider...
So the off-the-cuff model becomes-
-employer pays premium to our outsourced premium collector,
-worker lodges claim on agent of her choice
-worker has option (1 pa) to move to another agent.

Enjoy the view.