Monthly Archives: July 2016

Scaling Everest with Hillary

29 Friday Jul 2016

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Having commented on Trump and the RNC 2016 last week I find with just an hour to go before leaving work I must rush off a blog about the DNC 2016. To not do so might have me subject to a charge of sexism or bias. It came as no surprise that Clinton got the nomination. What may well have been a surprise from many months ago was that the Democrat nomination process which started out with so few candidates went all the way and the Republican campaign which started with 15 or so in the running fizzled out before the end.

Where Trump remains an enigma (and possibly as crazy as a cut snake) Clinton is on the face of it  anything but. Her soft side and lack of rapport aside, we do know she is no stranger to the corridors of power. She is no stranger to the actual corridors of the White House too. With heavyweight endorsements from the most powerful person in the White House, as well as one from the President and her erstwhile rival Bernie Sanders, the deck is being nicely stacked in Hillary’s favour. And maybe that’s the problem. I haven’t been close enough to the Sanders campaign to really understand why he appeals so much to the younger demographic other than he represents a break from the political dynasties. Clinton’s selection was not entirely a one way street.

The ‘obvious’ winner of the RNC 2016 in 2015 was predicted to be none other than Jeb Bush. Never has a candidate been so well funded with better political networks. The Bush v Clinton dynasties once again in a tussle for the White House had all the hallmarks of Carrington v Colby showdown. It wasn’t to be. The public’s tolerance of dynastic ‘born to rule’ politics has grown thin over the years. So while Obama and others ring out with the refrain that never has anyone been so well prepared to run the Country I can’t help but think this doesn’t resonate with the electorate at large. Maybe the US voting public want someone not steeped in the politics of Washington but a fresh face with new ideas. I still think Elizabeth Warren would have fitted the bill. Once again not to be.

Trump has stolen a bit of a march on Clinton with the earlier timing of his nomination. As I write this it extends to a 3 point lead. Trump, of course, is going to use the fear theme (already covered in my last blog) while indications are that the Clinton/Kaine team will provide a much more upbeat message. I was interested in Trump’s acceptance speech where he regaled the audience for one hour fifteen minutes noting it was very short on detail. There appeared to be little or no blueprint for how he would fix the ails that he identified in the American economy and way of life. It was something of a shock then to read critiques of Hillary’s speech to find she was herself light on detail. If the Presidential campaign is going to be waged on fluff then it will be anyone’s guess as to who will win. If it comes down to a battle between ‘I alone can fix it’ and ‘we can all help fix it’ then the electorate is likely to turn itself off and a legion of young people stirred on by the promise of a Sanders vision of the future will turn off politics for good.

We know little about what Trump really thinks outside his one liners and zingers. He was once a Democrat and now a Republican. His values can change over time and we should welcome fundamental change in values in people over time. That might suggest insight and even wisdom. We don’t know enough about his fundamental beliefs to get a sense for him and his compass. While Hillary is a more open book, the secrecy that lies just beneath the surface of the Clinton household from Whitewater to private server emails might suggest that we don’t have 20/20 clarity on her true values either.

This made me reflect on what might a good set of values for the next President of the free world look like. They must be right for the times, be clear and provide the sort of roadmap that gives a sense that America is heading in the right direction. They must be able to be grasped by all so that the ever-widening gap between those who have and those who have not can be bridged. Trickle-down sufferers and big business barons alike need to be able to embrace them with equal gusto. Shit I’m sounding like a political speech writer now!

Over the years I’ve looked around for values and compasses that resonate with me. I’ve toyed with my own value systems and have written more than one manifesto for how I wish to manage at work and how I wish to live my life. They remain fluid documents. They are beliefs lightly held. That had me wondering if I was standing in one of those President-to-be spots would the electorate be any clearer about what I believe in, what guides and motivates me? Hand on heart I cannot answer that with the assurance I would like.

 Where might one go for guidance? I would look no further than the organisation from whom I derived my blog name; Burning Man. I was online the other night looking to see whether I could book for Burning Man 2017 when I was reminded of their underlying values:

 10-principles

 I can think of no better manifesto to take to the office, your daily life, or the nation.

 

The Week When the Bell Tolled for Trump

22 Friday Jul 2016

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I had the rare pleasure last Saturday to be in the presence of Rob Bell for a whole day seminar. Bell was recently announced in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. Part evangelist, part stand-up comedian this American self-help guru was great fun. There is nothing more inspiring than seeing a master ply their craft and doing it live. It doesn’t matter if it’s Pink Floyd, Kiri Te Kanawa, Ritchie McCaw or Oprah Winfrey, virtuoso performances can be enjoyed for the pleasure of seeing someone at the top of their game. And believe me Rob Bell is at the top of his.

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This week has also been the week of the Republican’s convention (RNC 2016). Talking of people at the top of their game, Donald Trump is being less feted in Cleveland than any other Presidential candidate in living memory. There’s a slight irony here too because the performances on stage have been routinely poor from the ‘haven’t I heard that before’ speech by Melania Trump, to the Ted Cruz speech where he forgot, or overlooked actually endorsing Trump for President. The irony being that Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame which celebrates probably the greatest on stage performers the world has ever encountered. Of course the Hall of Fame is a backward looking institution as all halls of fame are, celebrating the best from the past. Seldom do you ever get in when in your prime. Rather it’s a celebration of a lifetime’s contribution. This fixation with looking back on how good things used to be, does resonate through the Cleveland republican Convention in a big way and I believe amongst a group of worried voters the world over.

In the Q and A session last Saturday Rob Bell was asked to explain, if he could, the rise of Donald Trump. His answer was very insightful. He talked about revolutionary change. He referenced the internet and the massive change this is bringing about to how we do things from relationships to business and everything in between. He referred to the previous massive change being the printing press where knowledge, once the preserve of the political elite became, theoretically anyway, available to the masses. Both good and bad came of that but the mass production of knowledge changed the world forever. The internet is the next seismic shift in the way information is changing our lives forever. Then, as now, Bell divides people into two groups when a seismic change is upon us. There are the ‘lean-in’ people who see this marvellous opportunity and embrace it. The app millionaires and social media junkies are shining lights here. But then there are those fearful of change – the resisters. This is the brigade that think surely the internet has wrought bad tidings upon us including networked terrorists, bomb-making classes and school bullying via social media. This group resist and look back to the halcyon days when things were simpler and clearly better. Resistance like this, according to Bell, stems a lot of basic survival instinct and this emanates from the reptilian brain. This is where we know from neuroscience that our fight and flight instinct is based. Here adrenalin and cortisol are produced and these do cause heightened arousal and a tendency towards aggression. This fear of change is tapping into the reptilian brain and manifesting itself as the aggression and violence we are seeing exhibited by Trump campaign supporters.

Not so long ago in Queensland over half a million people voted for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party. Political commentators, scratching their heads to explain this, have put it down to her tapping into some basic fears. In times of uncertainty fear is given much greater freedom to roam. When uncertainty levels rise we drop down the Maslow hierarchy a notch and find ourselves more concerned with safety and security. It’s easy to tap into generalisations borne more out of ignorance than fact, and there are plenty willing to exploit this; Hanson being one of them. Migrants will take our jobs, their Islamic religion will overwhelm us and they will be bomb-making on the quiet. Jobs and family security will become paramount. While these might be reptilian instincts they are familial and tightly held for good evolutionary reasons.

This week also saw the release of McKinsey’s report ‘Poorer than their parents? A New Perspective on Income Equality.’ by Richard Dobbs et al. Part of the reason why we should not think that a Clinton Presidency is a foregone conclusion rests in some of the statistics contained in the report. Survey results from the US showed that almost two in five respondents felt their economic positions had deteriorated. Broadly the same figures were reported in the UK, where Brexit has recently happened and France where Marine Le Pen’s National Front party are waiting in the wings when, as The Spectator recently observed, ‘the French mood finally snaps.’

To really understand whether the current political turmoil is in fact a zeitgeist we need to understand what is on the radar for those for whom the digital advance has not yielded increased prosperity. I think it is possible here to make some global generalisations. The blue collar workers of say Michigan (automotive), South Australia (automotive) Philadelphia (manufacturing) Wyalla (steel) Wales (mining), Central Queensland (mining), Townsville (refining) all share a common thread. Their jobs are being taken and they are being automated or off-shored out of existence. While generally unskilled, these workers are anything but stupid. They know the truisms that lie behind the advance of technology and globalisation. Firstly a displaced steel worker, or someone from the automotive assembly line does not easily transition to a social media manager, nor will their self-curated life on Instagram generate much income. Secondly they know that once their job has gone their chances of living the lifestyle they were accustomed to are very slim.

This weekend I’m out looking at cars. A quick look at some of the new vehicles on the market suggests driverless cars are not that far away. Many of the advanced features, albeit on makes and models beyond my scope, are already nudging close to the driverless car concept. Only the wealthy at the outset will be able to afford them. Whether the ownership or not of a driverless car becomes a class wedge that illuminates the burgeoning gap between rich and poor is yet to be determined, but you can be sure that blue collar workers whose livelihoods depend on driving for a living will be keeping a watchful eye on the future. It’s perhaps understandable then that this cohort in the US might want to look seriously at Trump. His slogan after all is somewhat backward looking. ‘Let’s make America great again’ could mean pushing forward or for many it resonates with simpler better days gone by. Days by the way we cannot get back. If you are one of the 2.5 million workers who currently drive for a living in the US you might just want to side with Trump.

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Between now and November 8 when the Presidential race is decided we need to be less critical of the voters who are drawn to what, on the face of it, is a pretty distasteful, mean and shambolic Trump campaign. We also need to be mindful of the pollster gyroscopes that are out of whack. Reports of a Clinton landslide sound way too optimistic to me. Remember the Brexit pre-polling? In our own nation we need to become comfortable with the paradox of embracing those who voted for One Nation, but rejecting Pauline Hanson and all her party stands for. As Rob Bell much more eloquently puts it. ‘Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.’

The Terminology of Life at the Top

08 Friday Jul 2016

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Kevin 07

My Name’s Phil and I’m Here to Help!

 

I’ve been a CEO over 20 years and this week I passed the milestone of 10 years as CEO of the Construction Training Centre. According to Business Insider Australia the average tenure of a CEO is 9.7 years so I’ve managed, just, to scrape over that particular hurdle.

They rather unhelpfully, from my perspective, think the optimal lifespan of a CEO is a mere 4.8 years. Gulp! That’s to suggest I’ve outstayed my welcome by some 5.2 years. They cite three main reasons why CEO’s generally move on being burn out or loss of enthusiasm for the job, external changes in the market where skill set requirements change and when Board’s decide enough is enough. And I get all of that. It’s hard to maintain drive once you emerge from a purple patch. For many the inexorable torrent of KPI achievement gets to the point when alternatives look rosier. Quite often CEO’s transition to not for profits tired by the singularity of the commercial world. Others, and I’d like to think I’m one of them, aim to expand the outcome metric such that there are a range of measures by which one can evaluate their own performance and therefore continue to grow and thrive.

I call these pivots. In the brave new Australian business world, without the ballast of our resources sector in overdrive, we have to look elsewhere to drive economic growth to generate the prosperity that we have become so accustomed to. As a country we need to pivot. This was one of the messages of the Coalition’s not so successful election campaign in the Federal election. At the time of writing, almost a week on, we are still not definitively clear as to who will govern the country. If you think the lifespan of a company CEO is short, spare a thought for the CEO of our country; the Prime Minister.

Over the last five years we have had something like five Prime Ministers. There are all sorts of performance metrics to determine whether a Prime Minster is successful but it appears to me we only look at a few when making this judgment. The first is the country’s financial performance which in a globalised world is not really in the full control of the government anyway. In CEO terms this is the state of the balance sheet and importantly, in the short-time horizon thinking that besets both Boards and voters, the profit and loss. For Prime Ministers there is the other key measure which is the opinion poll measuring the most nebulous of characteristics – popularity? Be warned. Popularity can easily beget populism.

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With the rise of Trump, Lafarge, Xenophon, Hanson et al serious political commentators and writers are warning of the danger of the tide of populism that is entering the world of politics. Populism can mean many things to many people. To some it’s having their local representative totally aligned to their own views and in these cases they regard their politician as ‘on the money’ and ‘in touch’. One of the worst criticisms that can be levelled against a politician is that he or she is out of touch. Populism though for me is a kind of giddy political surfing where the incumbent politician rides a number of waves hoping always to catch the best ride to take them safely to the beach. The only grasp you get of their underpinning values, beliefs and thought processes is the particular fad (wave) of the day.

So how should we measure a politician’s success? One logical way is to define what the criteria for success is from the outset. If we carry the hypothesis forward that the PM is the CEO of the country then we might just be able to use the essential success factors of a CEO as a guide. Getting an overall consensus of what makes a successful CEO is no easy feat but there is a consensus of sorts that suggest the CEO only needs to do three things:

  • Set the overall vision and strategy and communicates this to all stakeholders;
  • Get the best skilled people together to make the vision a reality; and
  • Make sure there’s enough cash in the bank.

Applying this to our recent election then….

The message from Malcolm Turnbull was one of jobs and growth. The rhetoric of this was repeated in a mantra-like fashion but what wasn’t clear to many, I would suggest, is what this means to the individual in the street. Underpinning all of this is this vague concept of innovation. Innovation as a buzz word caught on quicker than a Medicare text alert. As an aside I put myself in Turnbull’s shoes when the Medicare ‘text’ scare emerged. He never really properly neutralised this attack. I would have issued a Coalition Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) storm warning text the morning of the polling saying something like. ‘BOM Beware- dangerous tropical cyclone Hanson on the horizon’. So on the count of clear message Turnbull, the supposed great communicator, was found wanting.

Getting the best skilled people to make the vision a reality comes down to how we educate and train our people to confront what’s coming. The challenges are many and while, yes, it’s an exciting time to be an Australian I think it’s also a scary time for a young school leaver or graduate (from Uni or TAFE) to firstly choose a career path that has some degree of protection from automation and secondly to be able to ply your ‘trade’ in a meaningful job in your field of study. This to me was the missing opportunity in the campaign. Labor focused on education only with respect to Gonski which I’m still convinced very few Australians (me being one of them) understand the detail of, or rationale behind. We need to radically address education and training across all spectrums of pre-school, primary, secondary, VET and tertiary if we want to compete globally. This is an even better legacy to leave behind than a huge surplus which we partly squandered on school halls. Perhaps our surplus in the Rudd years would have better spent on soft education structures than physical ones.

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The final measure is cash in the bank. We have had a shot across the bows this week from Standard and Poors who have put us on credit watch suggesting that our much treasured AAA credit rating is in jeopardy if we don’t start addressing our growing deficit. For me this is a simplistic view and I have complete disdain for these rating agencies. We should always remember that they gave AAA credit ratings to bundled collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) that in reality were of junk bond value. And we all know where that led…that’s right the GFC.

Final

As I reflect back on my ten years I have achieved consistently across the three key success criteria. For me though that is no real measure of success. Those three are a given that any CEO is expected to achieve and therefore I don’t think you can really judge your time with any sense of pride if those has been your sole outcome. For a PM one key measure surely must be the degree of community cohesion. This is important right now with elements in the Senate with an agenda likely to cause social division. As a CEO this translates into how well the team is gelling to get results. Perhaps the most important test is how well are those for whom you have stewardship faring. For a PM that is how content and cohesive is the community. For the CEO this translates to the degree of well-being expressed by the work team. Our recent staff survey would suggest that we are in pretty good shape. For me the whole-hearted employee is what we should strive for. Achieve this and you just know your customers will be taken care of. All Turnbull needs to do now, on the eve of his first term as an elected PM, is get his team to work as one, sharpen his message, get it out there, bring us back to surplus and make us all happier and content with the way things are. Good luck with all that. With 20 years under my belt, and to quote a fellow Queenslander, my name’s Phil and I’m here to help!