Apr 7, 2014 | Personal Rant, Small business
The joint is in a mess.
Every time you look at the news, there is another “revelation” of dodgy morality, insider dealings, political duck-shoving and just plain corruption.
Greed has become the magnet in our moral compass, and to compete, we are all tempted to cut a corner here, increase a claim there, and in the process join the race to the bottom.
Engaging in a number of forums of SME’s over the last few weeks, it has become evident to me that the cynicism of small business owners is at an all time high, and their contempt for those who pull the levers of power never higher.
Small business (1-19 employees) is the neglected powerhouse of the economy, generating 47% of jobs, and 36% of industry value add, and are heavily concentrated in the service industries where the growth is occurring. This is just another way of saying important.
These people, who together probably lift the average hours worked in the economy 25%, and who are way more productive than most, are becoming wary of trusting our institutions, are minimising the people they employ, and the degree to which they engage. Over time their confidence is being eroded, their trust being withheld.
The long term impact is that investment, innovation, and ultimately our economic well-being is compromised.
As far as I am concerned, those convicted of offenses should be thrown into the slammer, and their assets taken, but they are the sideshow to the slow erosion in the character of our economic fabric. They just provide the evidence that all the bad stuff that the owners of SME’s believe every time they set out to engage with a local council to get a DA, have to fill in another senseless form, or suffer the invasion of someone checking that they are doing the “right thing” is really happening. They wonder at the volume of corruption and hubris that is remaining hidden, when they are getting their regular dose of Obeid and Thompson et al from both sides of politics on public display.
The public display of corruption is just a sideshow, the small fraction of the smelly deals that get done that becomes public, but just imagine how productive we would be if the stench of this sideshow was removed, and confidence and trust rebuilt.
Mar 24, 2014 | Change, Leadership, Personal Rant, Strategy
Until I was about 10 years old, I lived in a little cottage at North Avalon, and used to walk to primary school through the sandhills, along the beach, then to school, and back. It sometimes took longer than it should have, as there was simply so much to see and do.
Those with children who have been to a farm nursery will understand the joy, the wonder of it to those kids, yet, this is not a normal part of our landscape, as it was just a very few years ago. This connection to the world around us has been replaced by apartment blocks, video games, and concern about the safety, both physical and emotional, of our kids.
Somewhere along the line we have lost something, real engagement with the natural world has been lost, replaced by coverage by David Attenborough.
Imagine the urban landscape that included again, those opportunities for the production of a bit of food for the family, and neighbours, how much reconnection might occur?.
Man is a social animal, and at some level we all understand that the most powerful motivator is recognition, not money, so social collaboration when enabled and recognised can change the world.
Look at what had happened with the town of Todmorden in Yorkshire, England, the productive gardens in our own backyard, have the potential to again be social glue, a force for the benefit of us all.
Problem is, the short term, financially driven mind set that dictates the usage if land around out cities, as well as in them mitigates against this opportunity to once again create the enablers of the production of social glue, and our children and grandchildren will be the worse for it.
Mar 11, 2014 | Change, Governance, Innovation, Personal Rant
Comment on possible changes to the cross media ownership laws is emerging, again. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull reopened the conversation in an interview with Sky, reflecting that the media landscape had changed dramatically, so it makes sense to change the rules that govern the ownership that were set up before the changes occurred. It seems pretty sensible to me.
However, here is the paradox.
The traditional media is commercially stuffed, as the advertising has been drained away by the “new media” of the internet, but never have they been so powerful. Just look at the role the Murdoch press, and the so called “news” programs on commercial TV at prime time in the evening, played in the recent federal election.
“New media” outlets are popping up all over the place, previously unpublishable individuals (like yours truly) can have their say, amongst comment and analysis by serious groups like the Guardian , and new collaborations like that represented by the Conversation . However, the agenda is still being shaped by the newspapers and evening TV “news” programs.
Occupying a core place in the system is the ABC, seemingly reviled by both political persuasions when in Government, so they must be doing something right. However, the future of the ABC is consistently under question, and the economic argument is a solid one. The demographics of the ABC are heavily skewed towards the top half of the population, 70% of the population never engage with the ABC over the course of a year, and yet we all pay equally, effectively a regressive tax. As the argument goes, those who want the ABC can generally afford to pay for it, or have their viewing/listening interrupted by ads which pay for it, and those who do not ever listen/view it should not be expected to pay.
The media landscape has changed beyond recognition in the last decade, and the rules that govern that landscape should evolve as well to better ensure a competitively and commercially healthy system, as we are all best served by diversity, competition and innovation. Just what that evolved regulatory framework means is under debate, and some pretty smart people are putting their views, amongst them Marc Andreesen, an investor who gets it right more often than he gets it wrong, with this terrific post on the future of news.
Any change will impact all of us. How we obtain information, analysis, and opinion, wrapped up as “news” in my humble view, is crucial to the way we interact with the world, and we should all be engaged in the debate about the changes.
Jan 16, 2014 | Change, Governance, Leadership, Personal Rant
Most business leaders are familiar with the notion of return on capital, funds invested, etc, and those same leaders often say something along the lines of “our people are our most important asset” weather they believe it of r not, behave like it is the truth or not.
However, here is the rub of 2014.
Our machines are becoming rapidly more capable. Apple launched the iphone in 2007, and the App store a year later, creating a revolution that is evolving and spreading at huge speed, disrupting everything in its path.
Forget Angry Birds, the nonsense hit game of 2011, and its ilk, but look at the way Apps are being used in medical science, geo location, and a thousand other places, disrupting as they go.
As this all progresses, the machines take over from people, the gap between the smart, innovative, educated and creative people and the rest is widening.
On average we are degrading the value of the people around us, an increasingly small number are hugely valuable, the rest are being replaced, the return on capital is increasing, the return on people is decreasing.
I do not think it is 1984 yet, but leaders should be adding the calculation of return on humans into their strategic matrices as they plan the next 3-5 years capability building initiatives.
Of greater concern should be the social consequences of this trend, and the steps our communities should be taking to address the problems that will become generational, way, way beyond an election cycle.
Wake up Canberra, and the rest of our closeted, self interested pollies.
Jan 7, 2014 | Change, Governance, Personal Rant, Strategy
courtesy Owen Wilson
I am up around Armidale in the North of the state, yakking to a few contacts, a few people I have worked with over the years, and some potential clients.
Nice area, good, although demanding agricultural land, long history of agricultural productivity and initiative, great potential as a tourist destination with the variety of environments, products and enterprises, and with the advantage of the university, which always adds diversity and intellectual depth to the life of a town.
Problem is, the place seems to be dying.
Perhaps it is just the superficial view of an occasional visitor, informed only by his eyes, and the anecdotes and woes of the small group of people he interacts with, but nevertheless, a compelling picture.
The summer has been unusually hot, records have been set and broken, there was little winter rain last year, a short dump in early spring that moved things along, but nothing since. Stock is now being moved out or dumped onto the market because there is no feed on the ground, harvests have been marginal, and the farmers are not looking forward to the next conversation with their banks.
Meanwhile, the public sector fiddling goes on, clogging the arteries of enterprise in the pursuit of saving us from ourselves. One semi retired farmer up here wanted to put a BnB and farm stay facilities on his property, a lovely spot 30k’s out of town. It took 6 months to get a DA from the council, which was meanwhile commissioning reports on what was needed to develop tourism.
Duh!
This is just a microcosm of what is happening all around us.
Unless we start actually doing something about the causes of the problems facing us, instead of always focussing on mitigating and treating the symptoms, we will be truly stuffed, perhaps not in my lifetime, but certainly in that of my children.
We need to stop talking, blaming ,deferring and avoiding, and start doing useful, productive stuff.
Dec 25, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, Personal Rant
It is Christmas day, my adult children are off doing stuff, my wife is working for the man, so I am left with my thoughts, the prospect of a late, and very big lunch, accompanied by perhaps a few too many sherbets, and this blog.
It seems to me that the basic purpose of Christmas is to provide an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of family and the relationships that exist in our lives. However, we have been hi-jacked by commerce, self interest and marketing at its most venal.
Christmas has become a commercial day, even my Jewish friends get caught up in the frenzy, and I am almost ashamed to admit, I have no Muslim friends with whom I have felt sufficiently comfortable to have a philosophical discussion about Christmas, and the personification, indeed branding of it as” Santa Day”.
So, hug your kids, embrace your friends, smile, and remember that it is us that has allowed Santa to become a brand, so it can also be us that steps above the commerce and get back to the real meaning.
Merry Christmas, and thanks for engaging with my variable musings throughout the 5 years of this blog, I hope to have scratched your brain from time to time.
