Jun 5, 2014 | Governance, Management
JSF F-35 Lightening
I am not a car nut, but as a young bloke, I used to fix my own cars. There was not much you could not do without a reasonable set of Sidchromes, a block and tackle, mechanical manual, and a jack.
No longer.
My kids would no more set out to fix their own cars as fly, it is simply too complex. On the other hand, they have mastered the art of managing complexity by just knowing how to use stuff, and call for expert help when things go wrong.
Life is becoming incredibly complex, almost everything we do has dimensions that we cannot hope to understand and interact with, so we outsource. We ask the experts, take advice, seek guidance from those with the domain expertise we do not have. This is a healthy process, except when having asked the experts, we disregard their advice because it is inconsistent with some pre determined position, or expressed opinion.
Ego getting in the way.
We see it all the time in politics, expert advice disregarded by those who sought it to inform their decision making.
Last week Liberal backbencher Dennis Jensen, with a Phd in materials science, and a background in applied research, and so with some credibility on matters scientific had the balls to criticise Government. In a very worthwhile speech made to an almost empty Parliament he reflected on the apparent lack of uderstanding of how science works and the management of R&D priorities using the JSF project as a case in point as he had intimate knowledge of the decision making processes applied.
Economies are complex, and the competing demands on a finite pool of funds challenging to manage, but is that not why we employ experts? Why then disregard their advice in such a wholesale fashion as appeared to happen here?
Better stop thinking and get back to where the real action is, whichever crappy reality show is currently topping the ratings.
Jun 3, 2014 | Change, Governance, Innovation
Solar tower. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations
It seems to me that the most important emerging driver of success in the economy that must drive innovation and value delivery, is the intersection of technical capability and power generation.
Oil has driven the geo politics of the C 19 & C20. The US became a manufacturing giant by finding oil, and was a net exporter until the 70’s, then became an importer. Now thanks to the technology commonly called “Fracking” enabling (for better or worse) the extraction of gas reserves the US is again an exporter, and cheaper energy is in the early stages of revitalising US manufacturing.
Early C20 imperialism was driven by energy, the French and British in The Middle East, British and Dutch in SE Asia, The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour because of the oil embargo, Hitler went after the Caucuses for the oil, it is a long story.
Now we have another revolution on our hands.
We are no longer looking to conserve energy, which has been the mantra since the 70’s oil shock, now we are seeking to harness it from other sources.
The tops of our buildings with rooftop PV, which has dropped 80% in cost over a real short time, wind, tide. Solar however is the most obvious, and potentially sensational advances are being made that will transform economies.
In this state (NSW, Australia) we are arguing about the sale of the “poles and wires” of the power distribution companies to fund public works, schools, and so on. Vital projects, but at the same time we are cutting the R&D that will deliver us the world of tomorrow.
Any idiot who has thought about this stuff (even I could figure it out in a number of posts over the years) would come to the conclusion that just like computing, power generation will become distributed, so, rather than argue about the disposition of yesterdays assets, we should be considering how we build a leverage those of today, let alone tomorrow. Moore’s Law in reverse, combined with the explosion of adjacent technologies.
Companies like IBM with their Deep Thunder and Smarter cities initiatives are driving the research agenda, Germany outdoes the US in spreading the impact of innovation from the lab to the manufacturing operations, and in Australia with the abundant easily accessible sunlight in a politically stable country we are ignoring all this in favour of short term political tit-bits, trivia, and populist bullshit, mixed in with the occasional poorly sold but sensible objective.
Will we ever wake up????
May 25, 2014 | Governance, Leadership
SMH.com.au
The photo of Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann smoking a cigar just before the budget has raised temperatures in all sorts of places.
I wonder why? After all, it is just a cigar.
Some are annoyed that they seem to be promoting a nasty habit
Some say that it shows the inherent sense of elitist attitude in the government party
Some are just aghast at what seems to be a self satisfied indulgence.
Parts of all these reasons may be right, but I see it a bit differently.
To my mind we the led are pissed that our “leaders” appear to have forgotten why they are there. They volunteered to put us, the electorate before themselves, to do the right thing by us, to act in our interests, not their own.
That self sacrifice is the essence of leadership, and by this photo, a moment of time, two blokes who have worked hard together to deliver a project that has an impact on our lives, seem to be saying it was for them that they did the work, not us.
That is why we are pissed, or at least some of us, most are more realistic and recognise it is just a moment. Nevertheless, we rather it had not happened as it feeds our insecurity about the motives of those who volunteered to lead, and in whom we placed trust.
May 22, 2014 | Change, Governance, Marketing, Small business
The future prediction business has so far failed to find a sustainable business model, apart from the fun stuff in the tent with the funny lady with the cards and crystal ball.
About the only serious people who still profess to be able to predict the future with any accuracy are politicians, and we all know how that usually turns out. The rest of us set about controlling what we can control, and preparing for the unexpected from the things we cannot.
By contrast, with some effort, staying on the leading edge is possible for all enterprises. Information is now so freely available, and consulting services whose stock in trade is “leading edge” whatever you want, so ubiquitous, you can stay in front of most if not all of your competition, and be aware of changes occurring so you are in the best position to leverage them.
Small and medium sized companies are best placed in this game of staying current, should they be prepared to make the commitment to do so.
Smaller companies can try stuff out, see if it adds value, and deploy in the time that their larger competitors take to organise the conference call to test if there may be a good idea in here somewhere. The only hurdle is that it does consume scarce resources, but when you see that consumption as an investment, the payoff can be huge.
In the marketing space, my hometown, the cost of testing has fallen so dramatically over the last decade that there is no longer any valid excuse not to be testing extensively.
So get on with it, apart from being strategically and competitively sensible, being at the front is where the fun is.
May 21, 2014 | Change, Governance, Leadership, Strategy
Courtesy www.theage.com.au
Years ago I worked as a junior marketing bloke for Allied Mills, which became Meadow Lea Foods, then Goodman Fielder. I returned 25 years later as a contractor running a specialist unit of the ingredients division in a pre-sale “polish-up” as they struggled to manage their assets and generate a sustainable profit.
Finally, it seems GF, the last really significant Australian FMCG business has dropped the last hospital pass, and is being sold overseas.
What a shambles, a litany of strategic bumbles and crap management over a long period. It is also a report card on the whole Australian food processing industry. The sale reflects the result of the challenges that have finally led to the demise of large, Australian owned enterprises in the food industry. One day a Phd student will document all this, and perhaps the mistakes many of us saw evolving over a long period will be articulated in the hope we learn something.
I have written about this progressive failure to retain domestic ownership a fair bit over the last few years, the fiddling, the missteps, stupid stuff by both management and regulators, and now just feel sad rather than angry as I have been before.
The undoubted opportunities for Australia to become the food basket of Asia will not go away, we will still get some of the benefits, but just those bits that multinational conglomerates give us, almost none will be because we can make the decisions that have a long term impact on the shape and nature of the enterprises. Those decisions will all be made overseas in someone else’s best interests.
Vale Australian value added food processing.
PS. May 28.
It has been announced that, as expected, Peters ice cream has been sold. to UK based R&R icecream, funded by a French private equity group. Despite a checkered ownership history in the last 25 years, Peters is a brand of my (long ago) childhood.
Sigh.
May 10, 2014 | Governance, Leadership, Personal Rant
Courtesy http://mockingwords.blogspot.com.au
As great an advocate of analytics as I am, it remains a truth that data without a context is useless.
It is in the articulation of the context that data is given meaning, and it is at this point that the context can be articulated to change the meaning of the data.
“Spin” is so common we almost do not mind any more, it is so woven into our daily media consumption, that it is normal, and each person applies their own cogitative filtering system to what they are bombarded with every day.
Spin is no more than selecting a combination of data and context to deliver an argument that suits a predetermined outcome. Question is when does the modest spin with perhaps the best of intentions become a lie based on manipulation of data and context.
I cannot wait for Tuesday nights budget, if nothing else it should be a lesson in context management.
PS. A week post budget.
Well it seems they really blew this one!
We thought the previous residents of the Lodge were too smart by half, trying to manage both the data and the context, and failing at both, but the current Prime Minister and his Treasurer have set new standards.
Irrespective of your political inclinations, and view of the logic of the budget, it is hard to argue that the sell job has been just crap, the only thing worse has been the packaging of the product.
Mr Shorten cannot believe his luck, and how quickly we forget. Perhaps our limited memory is what the PM is relying on, I wish him luck, but where is the bookie when you need him.
