Purpose-Led NZ

06/10/2024

23/09/2024

Oh, last proviso before we start, you should probably be comfortable saying your truths in the mirror first 💁‍♀️😉

11/05/2024

The Heart Model was originally developed and implemented within a New Zealand business, Vodafone, in 1999 as part of a corporate takeover. After a few years with great success and results of use, it was taken internationally and used all over the world. The change management leader who implemented it was Grahame Maher, my Dad.

While most people think of this model as a business planning tool, which it very much can be, I view it as something more because that's how we have always used it. It's taken me quite a few years to appreciate that not everyone was doing values analysis and purpose based goal setting as a young person at home! For a lot of my life, it just seemed normal. I guess for my children who have been doing it with me for years already, that might be the same…

One of the changes I have made to the way the model is used in my own practise, which steams across business, groups and individuals, is a first step not used explicitly in business. Because context is everything!

Quite often I feel like we talk about success as though the parameters of that are the same for everyone, which they are not.

In fact, do you personally have clear key performance indicators on what success might look like for you in life?

Is it money focused, with things like cars or houses or holidays that you are aiming for? Is it achievement focused, do you want to reach a certain level in your professional career, or maybe there is a goal that you specifically are aiming for? Is it a lifestyle related goal, something about how many hours you work and can remain comfortable financially, or is it something like just having enough funds to not feel like you are constantly struggling?? Maybe it's something else again entirely?

On an individual level this is an extremely important consideration to do, it seems like something many of us could benefit from knowing at a base level. It's something that helps us head in the direction we are wanting to aim for in life, remembering that measures of success are not the same for everyone.

It's still important for groups and businesses, but the way we approach it is different. For individuals, like the focus in my meeting this weekend, this is the coffee and morning tea treats part of our time together before we get stuck into looking at values.

We do an exercise considering your life from a different lens, from the perspective of the end of it looking back… this approach to values, purpose and goal setting makes it achievable, engaging and fun… nothing harder than personal development which feels like a mission!

The workbook for this program is in the works, making it a self directed process that's super affordable. If you want to come and chat to us in person and start the process that way instead, we have spaces available in the coming few weeks which we will sharing more on soon.

As always, feel free to slide into our DMs in the meantime and we can give you more info there ✌️

16/04/2024

We have some big exciting plans under way in the coming months... things that honestly have been decades in the making!

We would love for you to follow along and support the kaupapa where you can, making spaces and opportunities for women's empowerment and the betterment of whanau and community.

Watch this space!! 💜💙💚💛🧡❤

16/11/2023

Our founder, Jess Maher, recently was interviewed for the Chief of Anything Podcast (you can find it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts etc) and talked about the development of other businesses that ended up here and her experience with models and business development.

It’s a lovely trip down memory lane of how she has developed such an extensive range of expertise, tools and experience that she’s now taking from the corporate space and sharing wider with the world.

Here we share with you some highlights from the interview, to check out the whole thing, find it here - https://open.spotify.com/episode/1YtwtsCur1k9RQnnTF7mc3?si=K8zqZ1uITWGCaEhvXVqQ3Q

31/10/2023

The Heart Model as we call it, was a model developed somewhere in the late nineties, delivered in various change management and start up scenarios by Jess's Dad, Grahame Maher, most successfully with his work over the years internationally with Vodafone.

It is one of the core models that fundamentally sits as an underpinning for all our support, development and coaching work we do with Purpose-Led NZ, regardless of if it is from an organization, business or personal perspective.

While we start to look again at different ways and mediums in which to share the model and look at the most effective ways to explain and utilize it, we also look at ways in the past it may have been shared with others.

When Jess was setting up and running Babywearing with Jess, she discussed this model with fellow consultants and industry professionals. We recently found an old blog post about it, but really, the way we use and share it has developed so much over the years.

We did want to share it with you as it was, does anyone have anything similar they know of that they are keen to share also?

Have you seen something like this before?

My head seems to be whirling just a little slower now and something is really cool is happening… I am managing to get really clear and concise about what I am am trying to do, why I am trying…

26/07/2023

I had my first taste of working in the corporate world while I was still at high school. I worked in a call center for a large telecommunications community here in NZ.

When I left school, I had been working in part time roles for various roles for years. I had lots of ideas of things I didn't want to do, but not a great deal of what I did want. I left school in the days where the cultural norm of 'go straight to uni or fail' was a strong rhetoric, particularly at a private school in Auckland.

I was now two years out from high school and had the bitter taste of a boss who utilized the power imbalance for their benefit against a young adult, fresh into a full time working role post school. So I did what I know I'm not alone in and chose a university degree in Business.

I was one of those naive types who decided to study Human Resources as one of my business majors because I thought it was about people. I thought I could make a difference or impact around the imbalance of power between employee and employer. I thought I could help the 'little guy'.

That's not what HR is. The bigger the company, the further from that it often is. I ended up studying Business and Information Management as a double degree.

Before I had even graduated, I made my way into consulting roles in the corporate business world, primarily doing project based contracts with my lecturers in their consulting businesses. I mostly spent time dealing with fast growth organizations lacking structure required in a bigger operation, business takeovers, restructures and business development coaching.

After graduating my undergraduate degree and consulting with a number of large name consulting firms I branched out to working on my own in consultancy. Frustrated at the lack of change in the business world I was able to achieve from working with small to medium enterprises, I decided I needed a different approach and went back to uni for postgraduate studies and research.

I spent over 7 years in university study and research, working alongside at the same time. I studied business, management, information technology, cross cultural communication, education, how people learn, fundamental research principles and more.

I wanted to understand how we could make capitalism work better for humanity, how we could make the system work for people, particularly to help uplift those from lower down the privilege chain and improve the opportunities for their family line.

I established a trade sharing website project with some friends and fellow students and after it was up and running and proved successful on a small scale, we presented it for funding to investors. The lack of ability to factor in taxation or how to deal with IRD was a killer for scaling the project and I felt despondent about actually trying to make real change. Regardless of how I could spin it, it felt to me that the business world and capitalism prioritized money over people and the planet and attempts to change that often just felt like lip service.

It took me a while to work it out really on reflection, but those things I was seeking, they are not the specialty of capitalism. I finally ventured into Not For Profits, social justice and political reform arenas. Over that time I established and ran two further successful organizations, one a consulting agency working with community groups, small businesses and sole traders and the other a charitable trust that pushed for legal reform and social change in the digital space.

It was this stage of my life, my mid 20s that everything completely took an unexpected turn….

24/07/2023

One might say that I kind of grew up as a business protégé from the start.

This is my sister's birth notice. She's nearly four years younger than me and while I have had a bit of a way with words my whole life, I doubt I was articulate enough to write this alone at the time 😆

I did have a number of my own entrepreneurial efforts throughout school, starting more underage organisations of various kinds than I can count! As I grew up, I intimately watched the process of big businesses buying up smaller ones over and over again. Watching my Dad move from business creation to sale back to the start again.

Slowly over time he himself got absorbed into the corporate world and worked as a change manager internationally for corporate takeovers as my family moved around the world. But my early years teaching of how to identify market need, find solutions and then market them was well ingrained.

After leaving high school, I went on to work in a small family run education provider in their office. I quickly identified, within three months of working as the receptionist fresh out of school, that they were missing a massive part of the potential market share as the short term course we were offering was not NCEA accredited and therefore was not eligible for funding support from a number of providers.

I rapidly moved from reception to program development, office manager and course content teacher. That organization had exponential growth in an incredibly short period of time and still very much thrives today, going from just the one short term course offered when I joined shortly after the schools conception in early 2000s, to now over six different programs offered all NCEA accredited. They have won NZ Training Establishment of the Year awards for four years running.

I moved on quite quickly in the scheme of things from that role and then into bar management in hotels alongside beginning my uni studies. It turns out this first hand experience of how I could support other peoples entrepreneurial endeavors also came with another, less pleasant side...

My boss at the time was top level narc bully material who quickly realised I had was a resource he liked to throw his problems at. So much so was he generally problematic and awful that I later found out that his two previous employees before me had taken him to employment court for personal grievances and won!

This job was pivotal for me in my career development though and while I wouldn't wish that level of bullying and nastiness on my worst enemy, I am grateful for the push into the next stage of my journey regardless….

08/06/2023

Our values and beliefs are the underpinnings of all of our behaviours, decisions and actions. Influenced by our upbringing, culture, experiences, thoughts, feelings, needs etc, these forces are fundamental to the lives we live.

Sometimes we are conscious of this and how this interaction plays out in our lives. But more often than not, we tend to just unconsciously let these lead our “doing” in our lives.

Living with these two out of alignment can really throw our worlds out of kilter! However there really is no organisation or process in modern society which encourages or enforces time or space for us to individually and/or collectively take stock of such things.

Have you ever heard or taken part in a values analysis exercise? I wonder what percentage of people both had done so and also review it periodically?

22/03/2023

It's begun....

The first online module of the first programme is being released, 'Finding Flow' is out in the world.

This is the foundational programme. It's all about getting to the crux of what you want from life, where your values sit, what your purpose might be and how to align to it better in all areas of your life. It's about living in your dharma, aligning to your soul journey, uncovering your ikigai, finding your flow....

This is the programme that we lead all clients through as the first step, regardless of whether you are an individual or organisation. Whether you want to reassess your direction in life, your career goals, make your business level up to that stage you dream of or something else.

It's juicy and potent and full of magic! It's also self directed with support avaliable in a range of options as and when you need it. And it's being released just in time for the autumnal equinox here in the southern hemisphere.

The first exercise from the first of five modules is available free of charge if you want to get some kind of idea about where and what this is all about and see if it is for you...

These modules are also being run as part of Bush Magic NZ moon circles this year which is a brilliant, affordable way to get a taster. Alongside getting to be part of the power and opportunities those circles present. Meditation, breathework, sound journey, cacao, ceremony and ritual; the circles are a lovely way to make time and space for yourself, fill your cup, connect with likeminded people and tend to your soul.

If you feel called to jump in the Waka, get in touch, the journey has begun! 😊