Oct 16, 2025 | Leadership, Strategy
On the surface there is little in common between these two manufacturing inputs. However, there are two commonalities
First: Australia has plenty of both in its raw form
Second: Australia currently and into the future has little or no chance of being a significant supplier of the end value added product.
Australia remains a significant contributor to the world’s supply of raw wool. In volume we are now second behind China. In value we are the runaway leader after 100 years of genetic management leading to a fine and consistent wool staple, ideal for the manufacturing of high-end clothing. We do only a tiny, artisan level of processing of the raw wool in this country. Over time we have outsourced this dirty, effluent heavy process to India and China.
Sadly, the huge value add to wool occurs after the initial processing of the raw clip, and we are not getting any of it, beyond a few scraps.
In the case of rare earth minerals, we have plenty in the ground, very little of which is being mined currently, and very little of what is mined is processed.
These science fiction sounding minerals occur at very low concentrations, requiring hundreds if not thousands of tonnes of earth being mined and processed to deliver very small amounts of the final product. The subsequent processing is capital intensive, uses toxic chemicals, consumes vast amounts of water and energy, and for neodymium in particular, the critical component of high performance magnets, emits vast amounts of CO2 during processisng. . As a result, we have the raw material, but no way to add the value.
China has a stranglehold on the world supply of these minerals, controlling around 90% of processing and around 70% of the volume of mined material for subsequent processing. Over 20 years China has invested heavily in generating this chokehold on the critical inputs to a modern economy. 20 years start gives them immense price and availability leverage over the industrial activity of the rest of the world, which increasingly requires those science fiction sounding rare earth elements in the manufacture of a vast range of products.
In recent days China has changed the rules on the mining, processessing and export of products made with rare earth elements. The technology required to process the raw materials, and the manufacturing technologies necessary to produce end products are now all subject to licenses being given by the Chinese government. If nothing else, this should scare the wits out of the loonies in the White House.
While building a lather abour rare earch minerals, we should aslo remember the dominence China now has in minerals that are not classed as ‘rare earth’. Managnese, Cobolt, Graphite, lithium, and others.
It would be a brave man to predict any change in this situation in anything less than decades, hundreds of billions invested, and really politically sensative choices being made about the environmental impacts that expansion of non Chinese supply would entail.
The Australian government has announced a ‘Critical minerals strategy’ that includes a Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve. This all sounds appealing, but the acid test will come the first time a mining enterprise proposes to mine an area that is the last habatat of some rare insect, and add CO2 to the atmosphere by establishing a pilot processing plant. The last time the government got involved with supply chain management of a raw material with a view to controlling price and availability was with the wool industry. That ended up as an absolute disaster, and would be logarithnically easier to get right than it will be to bridge the gap with rare earth minerals..
A ‘Critical Minerals Strategy’ sounds like a good idea, is a better sound bite, but is a practical hurdle of enormous proportions. However, China’s dominence should be seen as a challenge to be met with application of the pool of scientific and mining intellect we have in this country. We must find a pathway to making the existing lead China enjoys redundant by the generation and application of scientific understanding, and subsequent development of the technology.to process the stuff in an environmentally sustainable manner.
Oct 13, 2025 | Change, Innovation, Leadership
If everyone in the room agrees, you are probably all wrong. Innovation does not come from consensus; it comes from the friction created by different ideas and perspectives.
If you listen to comedians, there is a common thread through everything they say. A friend of mine who does a bit of fun standup calls it the ‘1,2,5’ of conversation. The first statement sets the scene, the second reinforces the first, the next is entirely unexpected. It is not the obvious ‘3’, rather, it is oblique, often the opposite, and always a surprise. The laugh, or in my friends case, occasional quiet chuckle, comes from that unexpected punchline.
Consider the survival chances in a hostile environment of two groups of people.
One is a homogenous group, that automatically sees things in a similar way.
The second is a neurologically diverse group that sees things from different perspectives.
Which is the more likely to survive that hostile environment?
This leads to the obvious but often ignored idea that the way you make up the groups in your business requires some heretics, comedians, and philosophers.
Rather than randomly allocating people to a group tasked to undertake a specific challenge, would it not be better to ensure you have a neurologically diverse group undertake it, as they are way more likely to surface new, different ideas. Some of those ideas, even most, may be absolute crap, but it just takes one to deliver the idea that changes everything.
Nicholas Copernicus presented the idea that the earth was not the centre of the universe, using Galileo’s newly invented telescope. This led to him being excommunicated for heresy by the Catholic church. Later, he was proved right, which did not help him. In time however, it helped the rest of us as it completely changed the way we think.
Every new idea starts as a heresy noted 19th century philosopher Thomas Huxley.
If you want these ideas that are often extremely inconvenient, to emerge from your group, you need to work for them.
Header: The eyepiece of Galileo’s telescope
Oct 8, 2025 | Analytics, Leadership, Operations
We have learned over time, led by Toyota, that ‘root cause analysis’ thereby seeing the root cause of problems is the road to continuous improvement.
At any time when there is a problem, do not let it get papered over, do not let the symptoms be treated, dig and dig until you understand the root cause and then fix it.
Often this is a challenging task, root causes by their nature are usually well hidden, and often ambiguous until there is a forensic examination. However, they are always there and rooting them out enables a compounding of improvements over time.
That analysis requires a cultural context in which to work, as it takes time, consumes resources, and is never completed, as there is always another problem to be analysed. That is the nature of problems, root out one bottleneck, and the blockage just moves to the next spot, previously hidden by the former one.
However, we also seem to look at a process from its beginning, setting out to define a hidden problem occurring inside the process.
Should we reverse the order, and look at the causes of success?
Why and how has Toyota managed to remake themselves from the crappy stuff carrying the lousy quality implications of ‘made in Japan’ from my childhood to an icon of quality, and in the process, driven change through manufacturing globally?
What is the root cause of their success?
My contention is that the root cause is a simple piece of rope.
The Andon cord.
Toyota put Andon cords through their factories, so that any person on the line could stop the line at any time when they saw a fault.
Not only were they empowered to stop the line, they were expected to do so any time a problem occurred that could not be fixed in the time allowed at that station in the line. When the line was stopped by a worker, the supervisor immediately went to the stoppage point with two objectives:
- Solve the problem to ensure it would not be repeated, and that the problem got not one step closer to a customer.
- To congratulate the worker for stopping the line so the problem could be fixed. This ensured there was not any reluctance to address a problem by such radical means as stopping a whole factory.
This is an extreme example of empowering the front line, making those who can see problems as they face them all the time, responsible for fixing them.
When introduced, this must have caused headaches, as the productivity would have plummeted. The number of cars produced dropped off a cliff, but those that got through would be as good as they could be, and slowly, as problems were solved, productivity rose, quality rose, as over time Toyota became the benchmark for motor vehicle quality around the world.
All from a simple piece of rope, and the surrounding culture that delivered to those at the coal face, the responsibility to exercise their right to pull it.
What is the equivalent of the Toyota Andon cord in your business?
Sep 18, 2025 | Change, Innovation, Leadership
The secret isn’t glamorous. It’s not an app, a hack, or a shiny new framework.
It’s the part everyone pushes down the priority list as they break a problem into its component parts. The hardest bit. Break the problem into its pieces, then go straight at the hardest part first.
AI now helps us do the problem analysis faster. It can model options, run simulations, and point out blind spots. However, it cannot focus your attention on the hardest bit first, that requires you.
Failure is the toll on this road. Edison’s “I now know what doesn’t work” wasn’t optimism, it was realism. Most attempts will miss. Data won’t rescue you when you’re in uncharted territory. Only cycles of trial, error, and learning will.
And here’s where humans stumble. We hate failure, and often failure has consequences in corporate life, so we become risk averse. We look for shortcuts, silver bullets, or easy wins. AI makes the shortcuts more tempting because it gives us mountains of plausible-sounding answers in seconds. But plausible isn’t proven.
The real advantage belongs to people who can keep their “discovery tempo” steady, using AI as an accelerant while still accepting that most paths will be cul-de-sacs.
AI has changed the speed and nature of problem-solving. What hasn’t changed is the rule: robust innovation comes from persistence through failure. The cycle is now faster, but the psychology hasn’t shifted.
So, the winners will be those who combine two rare qualities: the resiliance and patience to face repeated failure, and the discipline to use AI not as a crutch, but as a lever to attack the hardest part of the problem first.
Sep 3, 2025 | Leadership, Operations
Derek de Solla Price was a British physicist and scientific historian perhaps best known for his work on the Antikythera mechanism. After researching scientific papers and their authors, he proposed that in any field half the ground breaking work comes from the square root of the number of participants in the field.
In a company of 100 people, the real work of innovation and improvement is done by just 10. Similarly in a company of 10,000 people, the really key employees number 100.
More recent research indicates that the actual distribution is more skewed than Price hypothesised.
While the maths may remain consistent, the bigger the company the more invisible will be those few people who are the key to improvement.
If you are one of those key people buried in the bowels of a large enterprise not only must you do your regular job, but the extras you do also need to be noticed and the value of that extra effort understood.
If you are the leader of such a business, it is a key task for you to identify nurture and advance the few square rooters you are likely to have as employees. You may find they are the ones causing trouble, refusing to follow accepted but unspoken ‘rules’, questioning the status quo, and experimenting in ways that do not always work.
These square rooters are invaluable.
They are the source of innovation, improvement and long-term productivity.
Jul 4, 2025 | AI, Leadership
Most marketers wouldn’t know John Boyd if he jumped out of a strategy deck and tackled them. However, his OODA loop brainchild leverages the power of AI to turbocharge tactical marketing effectiveness.
Boyd, a maverick US Air Force fighter pilot and strategist, understood that survival in combat came down to one thing: speed of decision-making. The OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, then rinse and repeat was his insight that gave him the nickname of ’40 second Boyd’ He was never beaten in flight simulator dogfight combat. He understood that whoever cycles through that loop faster reshapes the contest and forces the opponent into reactive mode. In air combat, this meant living. In business, it means winning.
OODA is a mindset. AI is changing the tempo of that mindset in ways even Boyd could not have imagined.
AI can Turbocharge tactical Tempo
Until recently, the bottleneck in decision-making wasn’t data, or insight, or even creativity. It was people. Our slow, deliberate committee meetings, our weekly WIPs, the reviews that drag on longer than a Sydney DA approval.
AI doesn’t suffer these constraints. It observes more, faster. It orients by processing billions of data points in real-time. It proposes decisions with options and probabilities baked in. And it acts immediately when allowed, not months.
What used to be a quarterly campaign development cycle can now happen in an afternoon. And that changes everything.
The limiting factor is the siloed org chart.
The challenge isn’t getting AI to do the work. It already can. The real challenge is getting organisations to leverage the power of speed AI can deliver.
Too many CMOs are caught in the headlights, stuck in outdated governance and fear of missteps. They’re playing the game like it’s 2012. Time as a constraint is rapidly being removed. AI can produce a full marketing program overnight. Then it is handed to the organisational approval processes, often as decisive as my Aunt Mimi.
Meanwhile, your competitor, the one who slashed the approval chain and taught their AI what “on-brand” means, has already launched, learned, and iterated.
Leadership Is the Bottleneck
The real AI revolution is not technical. It’s cultural, and it is leadership.
Speed has become the underrated competitive edge. Not speed for its own sake, but speed to consider, learn, adapt, execute, and then repeat the cycle. This means leaders must rethink their role. They are no longer approval gatekeepers; they act as tempo setters. The conductor of a real-time orchestra where instruments never sleep and tempo changes every hour.
Reclaim the OODA Loop
Every time a decision is delayed, it hands the advantage to the opposition.
In Boyd’s world, if you could stay inside your opponent’s OODA loop, responding to changes faster than they could comprehend, you won.
AI lets us do that not just to competitors, but to markets, media shifts, consumer moods, even cultural trends.
But only if we let it.
As AI becomes embedded in workflows, the question becomes: who trains the AI?
Who owns the “brand brain” that defines tone, style, and judgment?
Smart brands are reclaiming that brain. They are training AI on their own assets and experiences, not renting a brain from their agency. That brain learns, evolves, and becomes an unfair competitive advantage.
Marketing to succeed in this new world must become an adaptive system.
In a world moving at AI speed, Boyd’s old dictum is truer than ever:
Decide fast. Act faster. Or die slow.
If you are not already building your AI-accelerated OODA loop, your competitors are. By the time you notice, they’ll be on to the next loop, and you may be headed for oblivion.
