Mar 8, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Personal Rant
If Australia’s management has been slow to pick up on the need for intensive and innovative energy management programs, is it little wonder, with the litany of indecision, populism, back-stabbing, and just plain lies eminating from Canberra.
The Howard government announced an ETS in 2008, then lost the election, putting the Rudd government in power, espousing a view about the “greatest moral challenge of our time” and delivering a white paper that outlined their CPRS to be implemented in 2010.
Then we had the spectacle of a legislative program being pushed prior to any chance of certainty that may have come out of the Copenhagen group hug, which then failed to deliver on expectations.
Meanwhile, the Liberals had rolled Malcolm Turnbull, a climate change believer who had negotiated a bi-partisan approach to carbon pollution reduction, (illogically to be implemented before Copenhagen)by one vote and taken its bat and ball back to the corner labeled “skeptics”. A bit later, Rudd as PM was convinced by a cabal including his deputy to backpedal on their carbon scheme, and was subsequently rolled.
Now we have a renewal of the Labor Party “determination” to bring in a scheme being championed by said deputy as PM after an unequivacal promise prior to the last election that it would not happen.
Monty Python would shake its head at this lot, which is just what business leaders have done. In the face of the total shambles and indecision, they have moved very cautiously, as outlined in this Business Spectator/Accenture CEO Pulse survey, but nowhere near fast enough to come anywhere near being able to deliver the bi-partisan commitment to a 5% reduction on 2000 emissions by 2020.
From whichever political and climate change perspective you view this debacle of the last 14 years since the Kyoto protocol adopted by the UN in December 1997 it cannot engender any confidence that our “leaders” will actually provide the one thing that business really needs, certainty of the regulatory framework within which they must work and invest for the future.
Mar 6, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Personal Rant
All sorts of changes are occurring in our working lives, but one that has huge potential to add to the economy, but is actively ignored, is the large pool of over 50’s (of which I am one) who are working at far less than their potential, and willingness to contribute.
This huge group are usually less than fully employed as a result of things beyond their control, often having been loyal and productive employees for many years find themselves on the scrap-heap after a merger, rationalisation of activities, or business failure, and sometimes simply personal chemistry, and they struggle to gain further employment.
Too old, too experienced or over-qualified. How can you have to much experience or qualification, and age is irrelevant? it is attitude that matters!!!!
Employers, often 15 or 20 years younger see them as a risk, particularly the airhead 30 year olds who seem to inhabit HR departments, and market based recruiters. They see the experienced over 50’s as too set in their ways, lacking in energy, just looking for a sinecure before retirement, or just easily bored by a job they may have done successfully in the past. Sometimes this may be true, but consider the other side, the experience, networks, work ethic and embedded knowledge that they can bring.
The waste represented by this “semi-grey” cohort of keen, experienced, but grossly under employed people is disgraceful. It should be an issue in any electoral conversation, and it never is. However, you can benefit when hiring if you view potential employee risk assessment just a little differently.
Mar 2, 2011 | Leadership
Leadership is a topic that has probably had more earnest academic stuff written about it than anything else, libraries would be denuded if all the material was suddenly removed.
Whilst it is dangerous to reduce complicated concepts to a list of bullet points, leadership is really all about behavior, and that can be listed as a series of do’s and don’ts.
This blog from Mike Michalowicz, and the links provided is as good a summary of the dead forests as I have seen.
Mar 1, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Personal Rant
Writing position descriptions for employees takes up a lot of management time, just another job that has to be done by a date.
If this is the case in your business, you have missed the point, as it is people that make a business, not the other way around.
To me it is pretty clear that in culture of success, a place where people want to work, there is robust leadership in place that achieves a few key outcomes in relation to their most important asset, their employees:
- Roles are very clear. Each person understands what they need to do, how what they do contributes to the overall outcomes as well as their own, and the rules and behaviors that are in place.
- Trust and autonomy. People want to work on things that make a difference, and they want the autonomy to go about it, within the rules, but in their own way being measured by the outcomes, and trusted to do the right thing.
- Accountability and due process. With clarity of role definition comes accountability for outcomes whilst what I call “Due Process” is in place. Due process is simply the process of encouraging and enabling debate on an issue, so that irrespective of the final position, all parties who will have to live with the decision have had a chance to have their views heard and considered.
- Praise. Everyone looks for praise when they do something right that is out of the ordinary. In an environment that delivers praise when appropriate, it is also easier to deliver advice, admonishment, and change tactics on areas that are not so good.
Feb 28, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Personal Rant
When I gave up smoking some 25 years ago, I did it “cold turkey” albeit after a lot of practice.
It was not easy, but probably not as hard as the industry supplying stop smoking aids would now have you believe.
The single strategy, which I applied with considerable focus was not that I had “given up” smoking, implying some sort of deprivation, but that I had “taken up” non smoking, a far more positive mind set.
The wider implication of this personal experience, is simply that focusing on what you will do, by when, and measuring the outcome, rather than on what you won’t do, is a far more effective way of getting results.
This is equally valid weather it is a personal task of losing a bit of weight (I will go to the gym Monday, Wednesday, Friday before work) or managing the strategic implementation of a major corporation.
Willpower is a bit like a muscle, the more exercise it gets, the better it works.
Feb 27, 2011 | Leadership, Personal Rant, Strategy
It seems to me that the government is on the horns of a dilemma.
On one hand, they need to appease the Greens, securing their votes, by introducing a carbon tax, a course of action that seems very sensible in the long run when you consider the weight of scientific evidence.
However, in so doing, Gillard will break what honest John Howard would call a “core promise” not to introduce one, hamstringing her ability to sell such a substantial change, at least without an election where the intention is on the table.
We have a two pace economy, digging stuff up and flogging it is the foundation of current prosperity, but we are no longer making anything, and the current “skills shortage” has little to do with employment levels, but everything to do with the gutting of education, particularly trade skills, over the last 25 years.
Now we are going to gut manufacturing, or what is left of it, with a tax that will do nothing to abate worldwide carbon levels, although it may make those who do not have to produce anything to make a living feel good.
There is some merit in the argument that a tax will stimulate innovation in the development of alternatives, and Australia should be in a good position to leverage the innovation, particularly as regards solar, but that is long term, the pain to manufacturing will be immediate, and I wonder if it is worth the pain, even if a miracle happens, and Gillard et al can sell it, and get re-elected at the same time.
This is what strategy is all about, choices, weighing the relative merits of a range of seemingly mutually exclusive options, determining where the best long term use of limited resources lies, whilst maintaining the current P&L. Posturing will not stand up to scrutiny, it takes intellectual honesty and transparency to make tough decisions and have the stakeholders prepared to support a course of action. Pity there is little of either evident in Canberra, or in the states.
Now we have sorted the carbon management issue, consideration needs to be given to a whole range of other strategic choices in health, education, taxation, Australia’s relationships, immigration, defense, and so on.
We seem to be a bit short on the vision thing!.
