“Experts” stuff up negotiation
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...
About competition.
The scary thing about competition is that someone always loses, even if it is only an opportunity. Many would like to believe that we should all be friends together to save the pain, but outside the public sector, it does not happen like that. Successfully competing...
Waterfall Planning
The corporate obsession with planning, appropriate in principal often becomes just an exercise in managed optimism. Many times I have witnessed, and been party to budgeting and planning sessions that are driven by a notion that all the bad stuff that has happened this...
The 2 parts of innovation.
Usually discussion about innovation focuses on the new stuff, the things that have, or need to change to deliver a changed outcome. During a discussion recently about "green electricity" in Australia, specifically solar power, it struck me that the costs of the Photo...
Down in the weeds.
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it is the driver of everything that contributes to improvement. Doesn't matter if it is improvement in a factory, using the "5 why" tool, or some question, the answer to which advances our knowledge of space. The driver is...
Groups need a purpose
It is a pretty simple observation that for a group to act collectively, there must be a strong central reason for them to do so. The larger the group, the more difficult it becomes to maintain this sense of collaborative security, and more and more dissention to...
Change by threes
Creating change in any organisation is a huge challenge to the capacity of an organsations leadership. Over many years of assisting in all sorts of projects, I observe it often tends to become overly complicated, perhaps over-intellectualised, so I have a simple 3...
Freedom of whose press?
That democratic cliché "freedom of the press" is a bit misleading, because to be able to exercise it, you needed to own or control the capital equipment and distribution channel to get your message out, so clearly this freedom was limited to a very few. However,...
Loose/tight management
This is a term I commonly use to describe a management style that I believe delivers the best results to any enterprise. In one sense, central management is loose, against a clearly articulated and understood strategic purpose, it allows line management to make...
Geography is dead
Since man sought to organise themselves beyond family groups, geography has been the fundamental organising principal of almost all the institutions created, it was really the only thing that made sense. Everything from businesses to empires and the church(s) were...