Tag: Australia

Blog post written by Jessica Goodman

 

This week we had the pleasure of visiting Beechworth Honey in the town of Beechworth, Australia. What a great opportunity it was for us to visit a small business that is the second largest player in the honey industry with close to 15 percent market share. We talked with the CEO, Sara Quon. Sara has a fascinating background, having worked as Marketing Director & CEO of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival and in New Zealand’s dairy industry prior to joining Beechworth. Beechworth Honey is a family-owned business, Steven and Jodie Goldsworthy come from four generations of beekeepers in northeast Victoria, and their family has been selling honey to Aussies for about 120 years!

 

I really admire how committed Beechworth Honey is to its core values, giving back to the community, and safeguarding Australia’s biodiversity. Beechworth Honey regularly advocates to the community about the role that honeybees play in food production and participates in a number of other sustainable initiatives with local partners.

 

Sara told us some alarming statistics during her presentation to our group. Sixty-five percent of Australia’s agricultural produce is pollinated by honeybees (such as avocados and kiwifruit). Yet, Australia faces the constant threat of a varroa mite infestation through their shipping ports. These mites transmit dangerous diseases to honeybees. Once a population of honeybees is infected, it needs the help of beekeepers to survive. Infected honeybees cannot live in the wild. Honeybee populations in the United States and other nations around the world have already been infested with varroa mites.

 

To further complicate the situation, the number of beekeepers in Australia has declined by 30% since 2008. And, unlike some of their competitors, Beechworth Honey products are produced exclusively in Australia. This presents a unique threat to the company. When Australia faced a drought a few years ago, the event significantly reduced the amount of products that Beechworth Honey was able to sell. At the time, the company chose to diversify the products it sold to customers while holding true to its core values. Beechworth Honey chose the socially responsible path, which is certainly commendable. Sara told us that many Australian consumers are unaware that the honey they purchase from their competitors may not actually be honey at all.

 

Our time at Beechworth Honey with Sara, in my mind, really underscores the importance of being an active and engaged consumer. It is important to understand how the goods we purchase are made – especially the ingredients that go into the food we eat. The visit certainly gave us a lot to think about, and we were sure to stop by the shop to buy some honey on our way out of town!

 

Blog written by Jessica Goodman

 

Our team faced challenges that consultants face on a regular basis. How did we want to present our team’s recommendations to our client in a compelling way? What data points and case studies from our internal and external research should we include in our presentation? What questions did we anticipate to receive about our ideas and findings?

 

We certainly needed to have answers to those questions by “Preliminary Findings Presentation” day on April 26. This was the day when all of the CAP Australia teams had an opportunity to present deliverables to a panel of faculty and industry experts. In the weeks leading up to our presentation, we practiced storyboarding our recommendations with one another and a group of second-year GMBAs.

 

Storyboarding is the practice of using the headlines of a slide deck to convey a central message and insights from an engagement with a client – that way, your client’s colleagues can follow your recommendation despite not having the benefit of hearing your presentation. As you can imagine, white boards and dry erase markers were prized resources as we fine-tuned our ideas and brainstormed our recommendations.

 

The morning of April 26 was here before we knew it. CAP Australia teams presented to a panel of professionals from George Washington University, KnowWho, Inc., Fannie Mae, and The World Bank. By 9:00AM, the halls of Duquès were packed with tired GMBA students buying coffee at Point Chaud Café, practicing our presentations, and putting finishing touches on our decks. We received some great feedback, including which parts of our presentation included “Americanisms” – like “playbook” and “bootcamp.” Some of my CAP Australia classmates said this about the experience:

 

• “It was a great opportunity to practice presenting in a professional and supportive setting, and we received insightful feedback that will help us rethink and refine parts of our presentation. It was a great feeling to be done with the presentation and amazing to see how far all the teams had come from our first day in January!” - Adam

 

• “The external panel review was both intimidating and rewarding; presenting for the first time in front of an audience of subject matter experts proved to be a wonderful opportunity to see how the story of our project flowed throughout the presentation, better understand how our information is received by an outside audience, and how to prepare for tough questions from our clients. The feedback we received on presentation day was incredibly helpful to fill gaps in our presentation, while also helping us understand areas where we might have too much information for our clients to digest. Our final deliverable is so much stronger, thanks to the expertise and insight of our panel.” - Ashley

 

We now have great feedback in mind and more work to do! On to Australia!