Guardian Award

Several months ago, we (Global Integration) were delighted when we were shortlisted for a Guardian Award for business management (For those outside of the UK, the Guardian is  UK national media group.)

Yesterday saw the awards being presented, with an interesting keynote for the entrepreneur James Caan, who many will know from the UK’s version of the Dragon’s Den.

The event was attended by an interesting array of businesses, from those who are strictly regional to the ‘two man band’ who are outsourcing production (of sweets for grown ups!) overseas.

One of the most interesting comments Caan made was with regard to expanding into other countries: that working across time zones, language barriers and cultural differences is hard.  It is, of course, one of the reasons that people value us so much, and it was good to hear this being articulated and acknowledged by a senior, well respected business person.

We’ll post up some pictures in our social spaces – keep watch!

Meanwhile, one of the reasons I wanted to post this today rather than saving this for Friday, which is the only day we normally post on anything relating to the company rather than our subject specialisms –  matrix management, global working and virtual teams) is that it’s our finance and administration manager Caroline Blair’s birthday.

Many of the people reading this will be our clients, and all of them will have benefited from Caroline’s work. She’s efficient face behind many of the materials that arrive ahead of the training we deliver (we wrote about some of this last year) and the person who administers the approach outlined in the Guardian award.

On behalf of the team here, and of the many customers who have had the benefit of working with her, I’d like to wish her the happiest of days.