My day job is Managing Director of Queensberry, but about 3 years ago I joined the New Zealand Fire Service as a Volunteer Firefighter. Not long after joining I extended my role to include Medical First Response and I now hold the rank of Senior Fire Fighter. This has offered me an amazing array of experiences and learning opportunities. I hadn't expected it, but there are some incredible parallels between handling emergency situations and running high growth organizations like ours. I use this learning daily and have found the stories of jobs I have attended to be powerful metaphors for what we experience daily at work. I'm also sure I've told stories of how I have loved Business since my early teens, in fact probably my whole life. As a result of this fascination, lots of reading and growing up in a family business the receptors in my brain are hard wired to see connections between running a business and almost everything else and have learnt so much from my kids. Don't tell anyone, but there are so many parallels between parenting and HR, developing strategy, day to day management and of course leadership. Over time I hope to share some of these stories in a series of blog posts, I trust you will find them interesting and thought provoking. Please leave your thoughts as comments to these posts. Please also read my Firefighters disclaimer