TELL YOUR BOSS TO LEARN TO WIN

I am still looking for a job. But sometimes, I admit, I’m not looking very hard. Why?? Because I get to read, and read and… read. This week, I read about aviation financing: wet leases, dry leases, moist leases (strange sexual metonony here?!). I learned about cross-border mergers and regulatory comparison between EU, US and other anti-trust/competition regimes. I explored the GE-Honeywell merger fallout. I listened to Schoenberg and Sibelius, Lou Reed and electronic music. I read Paul Krugman’s paper regarding a ‘third-order’ explanation for the 1997 Asian Crisis through excess asset price inflation. In other words, I READ STUFF. A lot of stuff, if I may so myself. One article, however, struck me. Occasionally, I reread and resort old papers and files. And I found a paper I had saved by Tony Schwartz. Schwartz queried, impetuously, ‘Are You Learning As Fast As The World Is Changing?’ According to Schwartz: “Translation: You're not going to learn faster (or deeper) than everyone else if you seek inspiration from the same sources as everyone else”. And I would ask: Have you (the reader) ever asked yourself or, God forbid, the boss that question? Perhaps you should. Now. Today. To be fair, Schwartz admits the difficulty. (Even if the boss is more or, possibly, less enthusiastic). As he says in this passage, which I quote verbatim since it requires so little additional effort to do so: “A few months ago, after I gave a talk about innovation to a gathering of executives from the world of food retailing, one frustrated member of the audience asked for some advice about dealing with her boss. "My boss likes to say, 'I want a totally new idea — and three examples of where that idea has worked before.'" The audience roared in recognition of the oxymoronic absurdity of the boss's sentiment, as did I”. And, of course, quoting verbatim is the point here. Schwartz indicates that most learning is, if not exactly second-hand, taken from other disparate sources. (A process he mischievously refers to as ‘R&D: Rip off and duplicate’). On Steve Jobs – “As Jobs talked about the original Macintosh computer, he talked less about semiconductors and software than he did about painting, music, and art. "Ultimately it [creativity] comes down to taste," he explained. "It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then trying to bring those things in to what you're doing...I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world." There’s a whole mental and conceptual world waiting to be (re)discovered. And you should tell your boss about it!

BREAKING THEIR BONDS: A VALUE DRIVEN APPROACH FOR AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS

We must become the change that we wish to see in the world – Mahatma Gandhi A good life is one that is characterised by complete absorption in what one does – Jeanne Nakamura and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi A VALUE-DRIVEN APPROACH The next step for upping the ante in Australian business? Inspiring a VALUE-DRIVEN approach to performance, assessment and promotion. In a highly regulated and stable business environment, Australian businesses (such as the banks) achieved high ROE off cost synergies and sales growth. The new normal landscape in South-East Asian led growth, nevertheless, switches us to the pole of quality relationships. Employees, broadly, are going to be exposed to Asian and non-Anglo investors/customers, an evolving regulatory framework and different workplace and cultural norms. THE PROBLEM “You Get What You Measure”: From my experience, Australian business currently tends to measure heavily according to compliance and volume from target-driven growth. (Setting sales and profit metrics which translate down to strict sets of KPIs for individual business units). This made some sense in a period of heavy inorganic expansion, with easy corporate and household credit and a stable domestic legislative framework. But the new environment requires us to INNOVATE. And that means Australian employees, in order to be successful, will have to shift rapidly to customer-focussed growth and away from transaction-based growth. In this environment, ideas count. Employees should optimally – and, in fact, practically – be assessed on the strength and implementation of their ideas. This requires employees to collaborate, initiate and execute creative projects in a rapidly shifting economy. There are no simple path-driven routes to success in such a fluid landscape. In other words, Australian business needs to start measuring succinctly for LEADERSHIP. VALUE IS DRIVEN ‘AROUND’ KPIs AND BY QUALITY THINKING Though it is essential to measure targets the business sets for its staff – and through its managers – it is now critically important to assess accurately ‘how’ employees contribute to valuable growth toward their business mission. And, equally, managers above all should be measured by how they ‘grow’ their employees in the soft skill set requisite to creative team development. This necessitates business seniors “looking behind” formal results to the substance of team activity and how that drives valuable business development. This conceptual target, if you will, must take precedence over the simple numbers, processes and outcomes, crucial as they are. And yes, we should be looking for ‘simple’ processes. Even childishly simple, if businesses can pull it off. REWARD CREATIVE SOLUTIONS AND CREATIVE ‘SOLVERS’ I have to be frank, here. Australian business will need to become much more attuned to employee engagement and reward good employees appropriately. The ‘dollar and cents’ attitude to containing business overhead by saving on employee expense will soon become redundant. And possibly a liability. As Montesquieu stated, ‘What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by their good fortune’. In a War for Talent – this compound noun is capitalised deliberately – Australian business needs to prioritise the message, ‘find, grow, retain’ as a corporate mantra to avoid stagnation. Employees are themselves conduits to customers and knowledge, and as brand ambassadors provide access to new markets. SO BE GENEROUS, GET OUT THERE AND WIN!!!!

KEEP IT HONEST - TODAY'S ABBOTT BLUNDERS

Today’s Abbott blunders: Abbott does NOT have a mandate: the Libs got through the election by default in one of the worst periods of government instability in our political history. Whitlam had a popular mandate, and enshrined the “Doctrine”. Abbott and Gillard had among the lowest popularity ratings in Australian history. Abbott does not have a mandate, whatever that means.. Japan is NOT our ‘best’ friend in Asia: Japan is A friend in Asia. China and Korea are exceedingly important to our mutual economic and, increasingly cultural, wellbeing. There are enormous numbers of Chinese tourists who visit our Great Red Land. Of course, our closes neighbour, Indonesia will become vitally important to our sovereign economic future as she has the potential to be a ‘Top 5’ power. It is very short sighted to privilege one society/economy over another given the massive differences in South East Asia, and China’s exponential rise. Abbott needs to read about foreign policy in light of the dangerous Diaoyu/Senkaku Dispute and not issue divisive pronouncements. If he is policy-lite in this area, he should talk to wonks and academic experts on the subject. In his position, he cannot “wing it”. The Wedding Scandal is the product of negative politics – ‘don’t give it, if you can’t take it.. ‘Abbott ran one of the most negative public campaigns in Australian political history against both Gillard and Rudd (leaving aside any merit to the Liberals’ more moderate aspersions). The dictum, “As you sow, so shall ye reap” is surely applicable to this episode of overblown political diatribe. Therefore, both sides should refrain from inane or negative comment upon the other’s petty foibles and focus upon substantive issues. In light of Abbott’s extraordinary churlishness pre-election, however, Abbott merits exceptional scrutiny (See infra). The press ought to pursue him and his Ministers like the Hounds of the Baskervilles. That is not to say there is serious evidence of impropriety. Again, one should focus on substantive politics. In any event, governments don’t control nearly as much as they think: Fortress Aus just WON’T WORK. As Laura Tingle and lawyer Richard Falkman have argued, Australians – denizens of the ‘global imaginary’ – are increasingly interdependent. Contrary to Treasurer, Joe Hockey’s proposition, Australia influences, and is influenced by global events. That is why the stimulus package was necessary to avert economic catastrophe internally. There is no obvious demarcation between municipal and global governance. These logical terms in governance are co-variant, if you will. If the US sneezes, we will probably catch a cold. Abbott et al should contribute to positive expectations, not construct a Fortress-edifice out of outdated assumptions.