The Future of the NZBWN

Written by Charlotte Kool.

CU FfezXIAEXN1rCurrently our Network is undertaking a 'customer-focused' design project to better understand our current and potential membership base. This project is being been lead by one of our lovely volunteers Carol Young who prior to moving to London was a senior strategy and operations consultant at Deloitte in Wellington.

The purpose of the project is "to ensure that the network's strategy and activities align with the needs of our members and to identify changes to improve what we do". This will also include updating the website so that it's more user friendly and resourceful.

To kick off the research we obtained initial feedbackfrom a cross-ection of the Network (a huge thank you to those who took the time to respond) and held an interactive workshop on Sunday 29th November at Ozone Coffee Roasters.

The workshop was hosted by Carol and myself, Charlotte Kool and we had a cross-section of 15 lovely ladies participating. Through a number of activities we addressed questions such as:

'Where do you see the Network going?'

'What you want to see in the Network?' - and -

'How we can better connect the Network to the outside world?'

The experience was made all the more fun with loads of post-its, felt tips and a delicious brunch at Ozone afterwards (highly recommended if you've not already been). The day went really well and it was great to meet some new faces too.

Some of the key themes that emerged included praise for the sense of belonging that comes from the network, the inspiring people within it and the connection back to NZ. And further questions around:

'What does it mean to be a ‘business’ network?'

'Should there be a members fee to allow for funding of staff/support and what would this look like?'

'How can I help the network without a huge time commitment?'

This was exactly the type of discussion we wanted and questions we are keen to address. Our next step is to refine our findings and insights, mock up some solutions to test with our current and potential membership base and then, following a few repeats of this process, we will finalise our strategy and update website for delivery (yay!).

So again, a huge thank you to those who have participated, we are really excited about the results, and will be sure to share our progress. In the meantime if you have any immediate feedback which you believe should be included please email Carol Yung directly on caro.yung@gmail.com