Jul 24, 2011 | Change, Personal Rant
Irrespective of your views on climate change, the carbon tax, global warming, and the need for change, the sight of all the spivs and carpetbaggers mixed amongst the crowd setting out to get their noses into the new troughs created by the Federal Governments clean energy funding initiatives should make the blood of taxpayers run cold.
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC)has been quick off the mark with the press releases, but short on all but the vital detail, $10 billion to be given away, kicking in 2015-16 fiscal, so plenty of time to plan, or if you happen to be a real company, struggle for finance to see you through. The really lovely part of this is that it will be run by those paragons of free enterprise and productivity, The Greens.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (AREA) has been set up to take the place of a mash-up of existing programs, guided by an “Independent board”, and will allocate and administer $3.2 billion, including the 1.7 billion unallocated under the current programs.
This is a monster party at which bureaucrats will again pick winners, a task at which they have demonstrated a remarkable lack of skill in the past, but if you practice enough with taxpayers money, it will be right on the night, trust me, I’m a politician!
Jul 21, 2011 | Change, Personal Rant
It seems to me that the carbon “debate” currently taking place fails on the most basic level of dealing with any of the facts. It is simply a political poop throwing contest, where the only success factor in either of the protagonists minds is the level of noise they can generate.
The science appears pretty clear, human activity is contributing substantially to climate change, carbon being the primary villain, but nevertheless just one of many, and whilst it is long term in the context of any individual life, it is reasonably clear that we are on borrowed time.
This is not to support either political position, nor to accept or deny the value of a Tax Vs an ETS Vs “Direct Action” but simply to acknowledge the need to take out some insurance, with a very long time frame, so perhaps out great great grand-children will thank us, or perhaps cash in the policy. Either way, they will be better off.
The question currently being asked is “how can we?” and there are many answers, none really addressing the range of challenges in the implementation. Perhaps a better question to start should add one tiny word: “how can we not…..”?
Jul 21, 2011 | Change, Collaboration, Leadership, Personal Rant
We all understand the “God Complex” the situation where someone proclaims their universal truth about a complex problem. My solution is the right one, no argument!.
Problem is that complex problems are really, well, complex, hard to understand, and there is rarely a single right answer, and even rarer that an individual stumbles across the solution first time, without trying many potential solutions and partial solutions, revising the bits that worked, dismissing those bits that proved to be useless. Sound familiar, its trial and error, continuous improvement, or to the Lean adherents amongst us, PDCA, or the scientific method, perhaps AAR, all variations to a theme about which I have written a bit.
In the case of the carbon tax in Australia, it may be a contributor to a solution to global warming, it may make enough difference to worth the pain, it may not, problem is we will not know until after the data is in, but by then the dice will be rolled, and we cannot unroll it.
Currently we have two political leaders proclaiming the rightness of their solution to a hugely complex problem. Neither knows the answer, that will be the outcome of a hugely complex set of assumptions and outcomes containing multiples of permutations of what may happen depending on decisions and actions over which neither pollie has any control at all.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have both of these silly wallies admit they do not know the right answer, that there certainly is not one “right” answer, but agree that the problem is real, as they have done in a tacit way by each “committing” to the 5% reduction. In a bi partisan manner, map out a program of experimental measures across a range of activities, with a view to refining over time the range of measures to be put in place to reduce our emissions, and encourage the “clean” economy through technology and changed practices. This stuff is important enough to our collective future that it requires genuine wide ranging collaboration to come up with an evolutionary and decade straddling program for there to be any hope of success.
Somebody, please tell me I’m dreamin’.
Jul 10, 2011 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
I have praised the way Tesco has adapted to the emergence of smartphones as a marketing tool, particularly in the UK by combining Loyalty card use, Dunnhumby data mining and smartphones.
Sensibly Tesco are migrating this technology elsewhere in their growing global footprint, including Korea with the use of virtual supermarkets to add value to shoppers by easing their time burden.
Recently Tesco also bought US start-up specialist social marketing agency BzzAgent, highlighting their determination to push the boundaries of social media and technology turning the emerging technical capabilities into marketing tools.
Australian retailers are dragging their feet badly, but with all the ex Tesco management now in Coles, there will be movement on leveraging the data on store cards and into net shopping pretty soon. Others will follow as they get their acts together, so suppliers to retail need to get their heads around how these changes will impact them in an environment where the change over the last few years has been huge, and they lose control of their brands via the rapid market share increase of housebrands as they become the Sku of choice for retailers.
Jun 24, 2011 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Personal Rant, Social Media
Telstra is one of the best yielding shares around, management knows there is no other reason to hold them, so effectively pump the share price with good yields. At the current prices they are a good buy, being assured of a juicy yield, and probably 50% market share from the NBN deal, all of which makes Telstra pretty attractive short term , but long term?
It seems to me that a strategy of squeezing earnings out of an existing business model when that model is being attacked from all sides is always tough, but in a telco it is almost sure to be terminal given the rate of innovation occurring from the sidelines.
There is now a free VOIP app for iPhone, “viber” that eliminates call costs, including international roaming which has been around for only a couple of months, but has attracted 12 million users, and expanding at net speed. On top the damage Skype must have inflicted, and will inflict into the very near future as Microsoft (presumably) sets about building cheap teleconferencing services onto the Skype platform, traditional telcos must be in a long term world of pain as they see their markets stolen by innovators they did not see coming.
I ask again, who would buy shares in Telstra, other than as a short term strategy to get a slice of the public donation of $11 billion and short term market share.
Jun 22, 2011 | Change, Management, Social Media
It seems that technical changes are facilitating behavior changes that were previously constrained by the practical and cost barriers that existed.
However, the really important changes occurring are not the technical ones, but the manner in which consumers use them, and enterprises deploy them to do things differently, and improve their collective lot.
As attitudes follow behaviour, we are in for massive further changes in attitude towards the net, and all its tools both current and coming, and as the behavoural changes of the last decade cement into place, further enormous opportunities for innovation will emerge.
