Jul 5, 2010 | Change, Personal Rant
We are pretty familiar with the notion of “Peak Oil” the point at which the consumption of oil is greater than the rate of discovering new sources, giving us a doomsday outcome at a calculatable point in the future, but is it such a new idea??
William Jevsons an English economist published a book in 1865 called “The coal Question” in which he speculated that the machines (steam engines) developed to utilise the coal deposits in England, and to which England had easy access, had become so efficient that the at rate at which the resource was being depleted, England would soon run out.
It would be dumb to assume that the search for new oil reserves would repeat the experience with coal, where huge new resources were discovered in many places, but it makes sense to consider commercial and technical responses to the increasing cost of oil that will be a natural outcome of the increasing difficulty, cost, and environmental impact of extraction.
The awareness of the costs of oil across our society is mobilising great intellect to address then problem. As you read around this topic, fascinating stuff comes to light. One is the e-book, Winning the Oil Endgame written by Amory Lovins and colleagues.
Whilst this relates ways in which technology can reduce, and perhaps virtually eliminate oil use, none of the technology is science fiction, just applications of existing, well understood science.
I can only wish that 10% as much effort that Canberra invests in spinning their green credentials could be devoted to doing something useful.
Jun 29, 2010 | Change, Leadership, Personal Rant
Despite the optimistic nonsense coming out of the Government in Canberra, and the shrill response of the opposition and mining industry, we need to consider the proposed new mining tax in a wider context.
I am not an economist, so perhaps am not trained to come up with sage explanations about why what happened in the past did not comply with my predictions, but is seems to me that in a global context, at some point the financial music will stop, and the piper will have to be paid the bill for decades of public sector overspending in most developed economies. At that time, the money will not be there, as Greece is finding, and I suspect Spain is about to discover, and so the solutions are pretty painful, savage reduction of immediate spending, and substantial increases in taxation, which in some economies will need to be draconian to address the debt.
In this country, we have been partially insulated by the demand for resources. However, the source of debt finance for the rest of the world has been the trading surpluses of our resource export customers, and at some point they will stop lending, and at that time, their demand for our resources will drop substantially. That is when the do-do will hit the political fan, so it appears better to start to claw back public costs, and increase public revenues in ways that will ease the pain that will otherwise come.
Charging a premium for the once only use of Australia’s natural resources over and above corporate tax rates appears to be a pretty good option to me, and has been successfully done in petroleum, and by way of the Federal Resources Rent Tax (which was going to end the world when proposed, according to the industry), and the poorly managed state based mining royalty systems.
Clearly (to me at least) the extension of the resources rent tax in some form to mining is a very good way of addressing the financial molehills we have before they become the mountains Greece has built as it is morally and economically defensible. Pity the Government has so abjectly failed to sell it, and the political opposition and mining industry response has been so successful in the short term, to our long term cost.
Jun 28, 2010 | Management, Personal Rant, Strategy
Now there is an explanation for the common situation where a person fails to see what to others appears to be blindingly obvious.
The Dunning-Kruger effect provides the psychological evidence supporting what most of us see often, and that is that our (and others) incompetence in an area masks our ability to recognise that incompetence. The “we don’t know what we don’t know” effect at work.
When you think about it, the absence of the skills we need to recognise a right answer when we see it, are the same as the skills required to produce a right answer in the first place. This makes sense when you read it twice.
Our exertions as we consider complex issues, from the future of the financial depredations of the GFC on the economy, to climate change, what to do about our involvement in Afghanistan, to the personal questions we all face, are all about making decisions today on the basis of our understanding of the best information we have available, but often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and often misused or ignored.
We therefore most often make those decisions in relative ignorance, seeking easy, saleable “solutions” to problems where we are ignorant, but unaware of it, or unable to concede it.
How scary is that?
Jun 9, 2010 | Communication, Marketing, Personal Rant
A while ago, I sat through two consecutive presentations on related topics, the first was energising, interesting, and memorable, the second was cold, dirty, dishwater.
Thinking about the manner of the presentations, rather than the value of the words, led to the conclusion that the difference was more than the capacity of the presenters to sell a story, which was markedly different, it was also about the manner the story was presented.
The first used a visual backdrop as a tool to highlight key points, and make them memorable by creating some emotion, and the visuals were very sparse, terriffic. The second used the built in capacity of Powerpoint to drive the agenda of the presentation, demonstrate the speakers mastery of the program, and provide speaker notes to the audience, dishwater.
The reason a presentation is given, whether it be to a few colleagues in an office communicating a routine matter, or thousands in a auditorium presenting a world changing idea or view, is the same. It exists to get a sale, to create buy-in to an idea, gain agreement, and approval. Whatever the driver, a presentation seeks to communicate and engage. No chance of doing that by boring people to death.
Seth Godin, one of the best salesmen of an idea around came up with a rant against Powerpoint some years ago, his arguments were thumped into me by the juxtaposition of these two presentations.
Jun 1, 2010 | Change, Leadership, Personal Rant
Increasingly it would appear that Australians are prepared to sit back and leave the social problems we have to government to solve, and in the process are becoming increasingly cynical about the ability of governments to make any positive difference at all. Indeed, the recent comment that the Federal Government could not sell heaters to Eskimos rings true with most of us.
Over the last few days there has been a vigorous debate about the closing of hotels earlier in an effort to reduce alcohol fuelled violence. Listening to the babble, I was reminded of the thoughts of Peter Drucker, who 40 years ago foresaw the increasing reliance of western society on Government responsibility at the expense of personal responsibility, and concluded that there was little, if any impact government could have on the core of the problem, all they could do is allocate the bandages. Rather, he saw the corporate sector as being a more effective mechanism for the implementation of programs to address problems, simply because it was in their long term best interests to do so, in order to have orderly markets, educated and engaged employees, and stakeholders willing to extend credit.
Recent events would cause me to consider that something in the corporate sector has also gone array, as it seems some individuals in senior positions have lost any sense of wider responsibility in the quest for more, and more personal assets.
It is my view that essentially the solution of social problems remains with each of us to do our bit express our views, and importantly take those small individual and group actions that cumulatively make change happen. Leaving it to others, whoever “others” may be, is an abrogation of personal responsibility, and diminishes us all.
May 24, 2010 | Management, Personal Rant
What a wonderful, emotive description, courtesy of Seth Godin, of the sort of make work activity we all undertake to put off doing those difficult, risky, confronting jobs that can really add value.
It takes effort not to stomp on a roach when it crosses the floor, but stomping it is basically a useless, time wasting exercise, just like checking emails every 10 minutes, reading industry rags cover to cover, redoing a completed presentation in the hope of making it that 0.5% better, and the thousands of other things we dream up to keep us in out comfort zone.
Make a difference to your day, let the roach live, and do something useful with your time.
