Archive for the ‘Archive’ Category

Here are some pics from Havana. Cuba is certainly a surreal place!

Old cars!

A Havana Square.

The Capital Building.

The Capital Building at night not lit up as there is not sufficient electricity to light it up!

These photos are the clean streets, yet just off them, well, not terribly pleasant.

This is an overview of Trinidad.

This is a typical street (although this one isn’t cobbled). And yes, more horses and carts than cars!

This is the image on the quarter coin (see below)  – a famous Trinidad scene.

This is one of the main highways – 4 lanes. A couple of interesting things. First, note the condition of the road. It was full of potholes and uneven surfaces and the driver frequently changed lanes or slowed down to avoid these. Second, where is the traffic? Not many can afford a car so not much traffic at all. In fact, look at the photo below to see how people get around in Cuba.

Hitching (and often paying for it) is the most common way to get around outside of the cities.

This is the major department store in Cienfuegos (about 150 000 people). I don’t think Harvey Norman has anything to be concerned about.

Rubbish collection in Cienfuegos.

This is my favourite – you’d take your chance wouldn’t you? Give up or run? Run! Mind you, if they catch you, have a look below to see where they send you.

The prison just outside of Cienfuegos.

Here is a picture of the inside of the Cuban plane (which was filthy by the way) as we landed. It looks like smoke but imagine it is vapour of some sort. Both when landing in Cuba and back in Mexico, the passengers clapped once the plane landed! I don’t recall these two things occurring on any Air New Zealand flight.

Did a tour in Savannah on a Segway. I want one!!!

Went to Disney World and got on all the rides I wanted too – OK, so a big kid at heart.

Went to the Kennedy Space Center – an absolutely amazing experience.

The Space Shuttle Atlanta on the launch pad for the last ever launch scheduled for 24 February.

Saturn 5 which was the rocket to launch the Apollos. This is over 100m long and is totally overwhelming to look at.

A space suit.

There have been a lot of pictures of the devastation, some of which I have shared elsewhere. However, this picture below is different as I think it shows the acceleration and force. I lifted the remote control off the couch about an hour after the quake, and expected to find a clean outline of the remote (dirt flew from everywhere and has totally embedded in the couch).

However, what I found was that not only the outline of the remote, but the buttons had been impressed into the couch. Given that nothing fell on the remote to drive it into the couch, the only explanation was the force of the quake lifted and drove the couch into the remote at such an acceleration that the remote didn’t bounce but became imbedded into the couch!

In practically every organisation I visit, I observe a feedback deficit. People aren’t receiving the feedback they require. Even when management ask staff for feedback, all too often nothing comes back. For staff, this results in a perception of a lack of empowerment (“nothing I do makes a difference anyway”). Just as bad is the lack of feedback responding to customers. I wrote last week to F&P’s customer care centre to communicate my annoyance at the delay in getting my appliance fixed (given this was the second problem in less than a month. Love the appliance when it works, problem is that this is somewhat infrequent). As of 5 days later, no response. My feedback has been lost in the organisational black hole. The effect? As a customer, I now perceive the customer care (customer ignore?) centre really isn’t about caring for customers and since I have already bought the appliance there is absolutely no urgency to deal with me. You do an awful lot of harm if you actively solicit feedback, then completely ignore it – better off not even to ask for it.

So then, if you want to dramatically improve your staff’s performance and your customers’ loyalty, don’t just solicit feedback, actually listen and respond to it.

I phoned Vodafone to ask when new stocks of the iphone 4 would be available. I found it somewhat astonishing that I got a recorded message telling me that no one could help me as everyone was busy. How is it possible that a person at a phone company cannot attend to the phone? Somewhat ironic!