Dec 26, 2010 | Personal Rant
As we approach Jan 1, the time many of us make promises to ourselves for the coming year, most of which don’t last much past Jan 3, consider making a couple of real commitments:
- I will cease the busywork that achieves nothing, checking emails every 10 minutes, moving paper, and all the other thousands of things that fill the time, but do not achieve anything
- I will push myself out of my comfort zone, take a risk, and do stuff, put some rubber on the road, make a difference, roll with the punches, and keep going.
Nov 4, 2010 | Change, Operations, Personal Rant
Last week talking to a colleague, we agreed that a skill that seems to have been lost in the rush to electronic aids is being able to look at a bunch of numbers and know if it is approximately right or wrong. It seems that many over 50 just “know” if the column is OK, whereas a youngster who has all the electronic skills has no idea.
There seemed to us to be something cognitive at work that we did not have a grasp of, then I came across this article on the impact on learning of writing, and realised that the same phenomenon is possibly at work with numbers.
As kids at school, we worked with numbers, wrote down all the exercises, before we worked them, I can even remember not being allowed to bring a calculator into exams because they just gave an answer when understanding the process of arriving at an answer was as important as getting the right answer, so we had to show the workings to demonstrate understanding.
When involved in improvement projects in factories, I often find the default position is to buy some software, when time and time again the best outcome is achieved with simple visual recording and labeling. Now I understand a bit better why that is.
Nov 3, 2010 | Branding, Leadership, Personal Rant, Strategy
The new focus on Rural and regional Australia (R&RA) in the current parliament has great merit in ways hard to quantify.
The nature of “Brand Australia”, how we see ourselves, has always been about the wide brown land, the sunburnt country, the Akubra hatted drover gazing into the sunset, however much that sense is a myth, given the urban nature of the population, it nevertheless defined us.
Over the last 50 years a steady erosion of the rural population has occurred, and an erosion of the support infrastructure has followed, schools, hospitals, communities with insufficient size to be sustainable, coupled with the levels of immigrants who have no connection to the myth, and this has had, and will inevitably continue to have an impact on the psyche of the country.
How you put a value on this Australian psyche I have no idea, but I hope that the independents last long enough to make an impact that lasts, and that they do not become subsumed in the Canberra Politic” as I am sure that the value they can add to the sense of who we are will be greater than anything treasury can put a figure on.
Oct 27, 2010 | Personal Rant, Social Media
Isn’t it interesting, the next election in NSW will be contested by a large number of independents, and they will all have a shot at being elected.
It is pretty easy to just put this down to the appalling dross we have been putting up with for ages, but is it the only reason?
I think not.
Both sides are as distrusted as the other sharing some key characteristics other than almost homogeneous policies, where they seem to be as dysfunctional as each other, but other things, they are boring, dull, common, beset by “duurrrrr”, relying on mass media to deliver a picture as it has in the past. However, we the voting public no longer rely on mass media to form our views, we get our news, information on our particular interests, and opinion forming commentary, elsewhere, all powered by the new media forms that have emerged.
The independents now emerging are doing so because they now can, they do not need the piles of money and endorsement of the media owners and party machines to be seen, it can be done by being different, gaining stature because they are prepared to say things with personal passion, their views are not subjected to the discipline of the focus group, they are interesting, and interested, and can connect on a personal level.
I expect a NSW parliament full of independents post election, maybe we will get some robust debate for a change, not the personal attacks that belong in the gutter, but battle of ideas, options, and something different.
Sounds constructive for a change, and perhaps even useful.
Oct 20, 2010 | Management, Operations, Personal Rant
If you ever needed a lesson in the pitfalls of negotiating under pressure, take a look at the mess created by the agreement of the terms of the revised Mining Resources Rent Tax between the large miners, and the Federal government . If it wasn’t so serious, it would be funny.
In simple terms, the deal which set MRRT rates was with the Federal government, but the states own the resources, and already do, and will continue to levy, a royalty payment on tonnes extracted.
The miners thought the MRRT rate was inclusive of any increase by the states in Royalties, so they had a reliable ceiling on the total tax paid, the Feds say no such condition was agreed, and the states are cash strapped, and looking for revenue, where better than the miners in a boom.
All parties stuffed up royally by making assumptions in a pressure cooker negotiation, and not articulating them in the discussions, and written agreement.
This is easy to do under pressure, but these guys are supposed to be experts, so it is unbelievable that such a basic oversight occurred. The lesson is that whatever you do, take some time away from the scramble and pressure of “completing” a negotiation before an agreement is executed to ensure all the bases are covered.
Sep 21, 2010 | Change, Leadership, Personal Rant, Social Media
In Australia, we are considering the NBN, and the impact it will have, and argue about the best way to deliver it, cost effectively.
A further debate should be the impact of connecting the billions of people in the world not yet connected, and what that may mean to us, and others currently enjoying the benefits of living in a developed economy.
What will happen when Africa has access to the net, not just the knowledge, but the social tools, the ability to connect and do business across borders, absorb the cultural and economic differences they have with the developed world? With the resources base in Africa, the potential for development based on resources is huge, as with Siberian Russia, so long as the social institutions in those regions can evolve to the benefit of the majority, rather than breaking down into deadly squabbles over the potential spoils to the few.
The growth in Asia, low cost manufacturing based on low labor and institutional costs, has led to increased prosperity, increased education, a movement from the country to the cities, changes in traditional diets, will only accelerate and move to other areas in the world with increased connection, with huge flow on impacts.
Logically this also leads to consideration of the financial markets, as the developing world generates large trade surpluses, and investments in infrastructure funded by domestic saving further increasing their competitive advantage, how will the currently developed world repay the accumulated public debt? What will happen in those “developed” countries that slash public expenditure, and increase taxes to repay the debt rather than default?
We are in for a wild ride over the next few decades, but we seem to focus excessively on meaningless trivia, perhaps it is a coping mechanism.
