May 25, 2012 | Change, Management, Marketing, Operations, Personal Rant
Last week speaking to a gathering, I told the group that Australia was now a net importer of food with a $2.7 billion deficit in 2010-2011, according to the AFGC State of the Nation report . Utter disbelief was the primary reaction, “how could that be” being a typical response.
The Australian food industry is dying at a rapid rate, the pressures on local suppliers are heavy, and increasing all through the supply chain. Retail oligopoly, high $A, regulatory impositions that make no sense, costs of supporting local government social initiatives, and all the rest of the stuff that clogs up the wheels of competitiveness and productivity.
Heinz moved to NZ last year, SP exports, Australia’s largest tomato grower in liquidation, a second major grower hitting the wall in April, and this week, fresh tomatoes hit $10/kg in supermarkets. A sign of things to come in many categories.
We are watching the death by a thousand cuts of an industry, small businesses that garner little exposure are hitting the wall all over the place, Golden Circle gone, Goodman Fielder on the skids, growers are going broke across the board, dairy processing almost all owned overseas, about all that is left is meat, because we are amongst the biggest producers, and horticulture, because most fresh produce does not travel well.
Now, if we continue to go the way it seems we are destined to go, housebrand NPD will eventually overtake proprietary NPD as it has now done in the UK, and you need to ask where that NPD will occur. Certainly not here, because not only have we seen off the manufacturing businesses, we have substantially depreciated the technical capabilities necessary for innovation. Even the CSIRO is a shadow of its former self in the food industry, having removed much of the intellectual infrastructure as its masters re-aligned the priorities to other areas, and progressively trimmed the resources.
The recent drop in the $A will help, just a pity there are few businesses left to take up the slack.
May 3, 2012 | Personal Rant
When this Parliament came to us “hung”, as it were, I hoped that its nature would engender a vigorous debate, the merits of policy would take centre stage as the various sides argued their point of view.
Naively, I believed it would be an improvement on the staged party centric discipline that had dominated politics, and led to dumb, sterile, disassociated debate and sound bites that bore no relation to the question.
How wrong can you be?
The “performance” by Bill Shorten a few nights ago, someone who is held up an accomplished media performer, and a potential Prime Minister, defending a view he had not heard, almost made me lose my dinner. My only savior was I was unsure if it was laughter or sickness that was causing the problem.
Meanwhile, some of us get about trying to make a bob amongst the chaos and red tape created by our dithering, self important, disconnected from reality institutions, and it is just getting harder, and harder by the day.
At least the budget will be brought down in a few days, and that should solve everything. And, if you believe that, you will also believe leadership, integrity, vision, openness to ideas, and all the other stuff that is really valuable to a vibrant community, is no longer relevent.
Apr 20, 2012 | Personal Rant
It is encouraging to see some intelligent debate emerging on the state of Australia’s productivity. The business forum in Canberra on April 12, the comment on the speech and scary graphs Don Argus presented a few weeks ago, and just in the pub, despite the objections of the CFMEU.
The productivity challenges we face can only be addressed at the Macro level by politicians, individual management can only do so much in their enterprises limited as they are by regulation, funding and their markets.
Our political leaders have a few very hard choices to make. Do they continue the mindless populism of short term expediency, or make the investments in the community that will not pay off immediately, but that have a long term benefit, not cashable at the ballot box for many elections?. They must decide between the long term prosperity of the country, and their short term prospects of re-election.
Governments have a portfolio of spending, and need to prioritise those investments that no individual or enterprise can make for themselves, public infrastructure, education, health services, defense, police and the judiciary, and a few others.
The motivation for the vote has re-directed billions into non competitive, unproductive investments driven by political expediency. It has to be reduced by the electorate understanding that governments just spend our money on our behalf, they do not produce anything.
Joe Hockey’s speech in London last week to the Institute of Economic Affairs seems at odds with the continuing determination of the opposition to give more away, without divulging the source of the largess. Selective use of some of the facts aside, the principal of less government and more self reliance is one we should aspire to before we all go the way of Greece, Spain, et al.
Luckily we have the resources to make those choices ourselves, at a pace that we can absorb, rather than having them thrust upon us , without any opportunity to mitigate the adverse impacts that will emerge for some.
Apr 10, 2012 | Management, Personal Rant, Uncategorized
I kept a diary of how I spent my time recently, and noted a number of things I suspected, but did not have the “data” such as it was.
- Being “connected” had reduced my productivity significantly. My concentration was broken when emails came in, seemingly demanding just a look, people ringing, texting, just wanting an immediate response/decision irrespective of my current load, and capacity to appropriately consider the response.
- The discipline of the “to do” list had been destroyed. As a young bloke, I did a list for the next day, last thing every night. That list offered a priority guide, time allocation, a memory prompt, and a record of activity each day. Whilst like most plans it was a point from which to depart, it still gave structure to my day, week, and priorities. That discipline has effectively gone in the welter of competing tasks surfaced by connectivity.
- My “head-time” had been destroyed. In the dim, dark, unconnected past, I had time to consider options, seek considered input, and just allow a situation to stew in my brain over a period, which often led to options not consciously in the mix at the outset. This happened as I walked at lunch-time, sat in traffic, over the weekend, and just having a casual chat with colleagues whose council may have added a perspective. All that valuable head-time is gone, driven away by the access and immediacy of the devices in my pocket, and the expectation of others that an immediate response is mandatory.
Years ago, a mentor urged me to distinguish between the urgent but not important, and the important but not urgent, and act accordingly. Being connected has given the urgent a huge increase in leverage at the expense of the important, and it is taking a real effort to redress the imbalance.
I have reverted to a to do list that structures my day, turn off all devices in the middle of the day and take a hobble around the block and talk to myself or a colleague, and set out to do the most important thing on my list first thing in the day. This added discipline is proving to be much harder than I thought, but useful. My personal productivity seems to have lifted, as has my satisfaction with the tasks completed every day.
Mar 23, 2012 | Management, Personal Rant
Not the latest desperate revenue raising measure from a proliferate government, but the cost to stakeholders of the multiple levels of management that infest most large organisations, but which add no direct value.
Management manages, it manages those underneath them, successive levels of filtering, shaping, compromising, and dissembling of information between the coal face and the top.
I recently completed an assignment for a large organisation and realised early on that the job was not to consider the problem presented in a new light, to apply a new set of eyes and experiences to it, but to present to senior management a set of ideas that had in the past not got through the filtering process, and this assignment was a last ditch effort by a committed middle management to question the status quo.
This may be a legitimate management tactic, a way to progress an idea, but it is hugely wasteful. In this case, the conclusion was obvious to all but those who finally allocated the resources, and who owed their exalted positions to the continuance of the status quo. It was a redistribution of resources from shareholders to a bloated senior management without an original idea in 20 years, and to me, a grateful consultant.
Such redistributions in the hands of governments are called a “Tax”, why should it be any different in business?.
Feb 24, 2012 | Leadership, Personal Rant
I spoke to a few people in Canberra yesterday, curious as to the impact of the Labor leadership cat-fight on the rest of the place.
Whilst I expected it to be the topic of the day, the consensus was that work in the bureaucracy, the implementers of policy, had come to a complete standstill over the last few weeks, and yesterday, started rolling backwards as individuals took the lead from their bosses, and started jockeying for post cat-fight, and probably post this current “government”, position.
If we ever needed a graphic example of the impact of indecision and conflict at the top, we need look no further.
The worse it has got at the top, the more the impact ripples through the ranks, stopping any sort of sensible conversation, let alone strategy (policy in their terms) implementation. Worse still, the ripples amplify the impact, so the recovery time will be substantial.
The impact of the profound lack of leadership that this power tussle has displayed will be felt for months, probably years. Problem is, we as taxpaying individuals and enterprises are paying through the nose for the privilege of watching this stupid game, as the main game gets totally ignored, and continues down the proverbial slot.
