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Tag Archives: ASIC

When Winners are Sinners…

11 Friday May 2018

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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Alex Malley, ASIC, Australian Cricket team, Australian Securities and Investment Commission, ball tampering, banking Royal Commission, Callum Hawkins, CEO, Chair, Commonwealth Games, Commonwealth Games 2018, Directors, entitlement, Executive, Michael Shelley, win at all costs, win without conscinces, winners are sinners

Bangas 1

It strikes me that a couple of the by-products of our self-obsession are this overwhelming sense of entitlement I’m noticing lately and this ‘win at all costs’ culture. We can’t necessarily call it an aberration because there are a number of factors that individually may not give rise to it, but collectively may just be significant causation. I can almost track it back to the selfie stick! Social media, and particularly LinkedIn, in the business context, has had a significant role to play. Everywhere nowadays we are told that we have to have a ‘narrative’ and be conscious of ‘brand self’. LinkedIn is, by its very nature, a form of selling yourself and with this comes the danger of self-absorption. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was desperate to get to the 500+ connections to prove that I’m no slouch in the networking game. How many do I actually know well, trust and cherish as colleagues or business partners…I’d be stretching it at 50.

You might argue that this is all a bit trivial and doesn’t really harm us in business or society.  However I think it has potential to do great harm and here’s why. With self-absorption comes entitlement and arrogance. A comfortable bed fellow with this is the ‘win at all costs’ culture. Nothing wrong with winning you might argue. We need winners. No-one wants to be backing a losing horse. No-one wants to be backing a CEO and Board whose company isn’t winning on the stock market. But there is a line we must draw in business and life where the pursuit of a win has to come secondary to other issues. The delivery of shareholder value at the cost of say allowing or turning a blind eye to modern slavery is but one example.

You don’t have to look far to see the unfettered pursuit of winning at all costs in our everyday lives and the world of commerce. Three significant events related to Australia have happened recently and while distinct and seemingly not linked, do, I think share a common thread of ‘win without conscience’. Firstly there was the ball tampering incident by the Australian men’s cricket team in South Africa. I’ve held off blogging about this until the heat has died down. There was too much emotion flying around in the direct aftermath for reasoned analysis. Of all the commentary I read I found that very little focussed on the ‘win at all costs’ culture as a causative factor. In short an absolutely mindless act was undertaken on the field of play using sandpaper to alter the texture of the ball to try and win a test game. Sure it was to get one up in the series but there are few clearer cases of a fixation on the target of winning, with all other considerations out the window, than this. All rational thought appears to have been missing, especially by the leadership team. What in itself would have been foolish in the days of radio, was clearly a complete brain explosion when the game is telecast in 4K definition live! When considering why they did this, you have to think in terms of risk and reward. Why would they risk so much? The answer lies I believe in the notion of both entitlement and ‘win regardless of how’.

Our players clearly have been told they are the best and they have a firm belief that the ‘crown’ is theirs by rights. At its mildest it manifests itself in the over the top celebration when a wicket falls or a century scored. At its worst players doctor the ball to gain an advantage. Underpinning this is an on-field tirade of abuse against the opposition called ‘sledging’. In junior sport if you caught your child doing this you would chastise them. We don’t tolerate it in the business workplace so it’s hard to see why we even encourage it in the business of sport. John Buchanan, the ex-Australian cricket team manager and now leadership coach, was early to hit the media decrying what happened and the parlous leadership that allowed the situation to arise. What was missing in his critique was the fact that the toxic culture that gave birth to this was very much in evidence when he was the coach.

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The second event happened at the Commonwealth Games. It was important to our nation’s pride that we won the most medals and ‘bossed’ it over everyone. So much so that at times I felt a little bit like we were living in a post war Germany – where the GDR used to dope up their athletes because winning meant so much. I’m not suggesting for a minute we did this but the fervour and ‘we’re better, stronger, faster than you’ zeal which is a disguised xenophobia was certainly tainting the air. But let’s not get too hung up on the Games. They are the friendly games after all where sportspersonship and comradery are the most important aspects. And yet I’m not sure that this was so. The marathon was a case in point. It was painful to watch the exhausted leader of the marathon, the Scotsman Callum Hawkins collapse just 2 kilometres short of the finish line. What was even more painful for me – at the friendly Games remember – was the sight of our Australian runner, Michael Shelley, powering past him prostrate on the ground as he stormed off to win the much vaunted Gold Medal.

My contention is that if we weren’t so self-absorbed with winning then he would have done the reasonable thing and at least stopped to check his fellow marathoner was OK. Not a hanging offence for sure and not worthy of the trolling he got some time after on social media, but still there is something there that got in the way of basic humanity and compassion. I can’t help think it was the same mindset that brought the sandpaper into play in the Third Test in South Africa.

amp-ceo-craig-mellor-stands-on-stage-with-chairman-catherine-brenner-before-their-agm-in-sydney__724275_

So what’s all this got to do with business, aside from sport being big business by any measure? Well my final example of entitlement and ‘win at all costs’ is now on display in the Royal Commission into Banking. CEOs, Chairs and Directors from the finance industry are being paraded in an almost gladiatorial fashion (at last many might add) before the Commissioner and what is being revealed is jaw dropping to say the least. Think of it as another sandpaper incident…every single day! We all suspected that things weren’t good in the sector and the remuneration structures incentivised bad behaviour, but to see the depths that have been plumbed by our elite strata of Directors and Executives is beyond comprehension. If you shook your head at the sandpaper on the cricket ball, your head must be spinning Exorcist style now.

AMP Values

What we have witnessed and heard is layers of hubris, entitlement, arrogance and there is no finer example of a win at all costs attitude than this. In such situations it’s best to ‘fess up’. Strangely though, the cricketers didn’t straight away. In fact they concocted a half-baked story that didn’t hold water for even 24 hours. For Executives and Directors they too have been less than forthcoming, lying even to the regulator ASIC. They have deliberately misled us for years showing one face to staff and shareholders, and a different face to customers; yes even their dead ones! Every night we are blasted with TV advertising showing just how friendly the Banks are, how they help small business, or rescue us from the waves in what is confusingly presented as their helicopter. Their values statements on their websites are exemplars of how true values-based organisations should act…and yet it is a huge deceit.

The exhortations to be winners and promoters of ‘brand me’; quite often perpetuated by the obsession we have today with entrepreneurship have made us morbidly self-absorbed. We need to get away from winning without conscience. We need to become less ‘me, me’ and more community and customer focused. We need humility. We need less ‘super star’ Directors and CEOs who seem to be lionised in some media as though they are the new David Beckham. No exaggeration if you recall Alex Malley! Get over yourselves fellas and shielas – you ain’t that special or interesting. We can only hope that our sporting heroes and our business leaders learn the subtle art of winning and losing. Come at one through humility and the other through wisdom. Choosing which is which is the key. We should all work hard on doing the right thing. No-one really wants the stain of sinning on their consciences, surely, even if a gold watch, parachute or medal are on offer!

Changing Culture to Small is Beautiful

08 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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absolutely positively Wellington, ASIC, Construction Training Centre, CTC, culture, Greg Medcraft, Lonely Planet, over-boarding, Queensland, small is beautiful, Wellington

CroppedImage1136515-Mount-Victoria-view-WellingtonNZ-Photo-Capture-Studios-Copy

 

In Australia we do appear obsessed with size. Big is beautiful. We celebrate tall people, we talk about which State is biggest. We celebrate the big hits between big men in the State of Origin and we often hear people say how many times the UK could fit within Australia; sometimes said with an earnestness as though it was a likely proposition. It’s a cultural thing. Depending on what your yardstick is for measurement, we are in fact a very large country as land mass goes. By population we are of medium size at around 23 million. Pakistan for example has 183 million, Indonesia 254 million and Saudi Arabia 30 million. All bigger – the relevance of which will hopefully be apparent later.

I’ve just got back from a week in New Zealand. It was quite enlightening. Way down there close to the Arctic it’s got no right to be as successful, culturally and ethnically diverse and modern as it is. Of course I’m extrapolating my experience from a trip to Wellington, the wind beaten capital of the shaky isles as they are known because of the prevalence of earthquakes. But I’m probably OK in doing so. What characterises kiwis (aside from their penchant for gathering on the Gold Coast) is their get up and go attitude. They call it the ‘number eight fencing wire attitude’ which is an oblique reference to their ability to fashion pretty much anything from anything. Sitting in a trendy coffee shop on Cuba Mall I mused that what stands out with the kiwis is they are really good at marketing.

I noted that Wellington uses the three word strapline ‘absolutely positively Wellington’ to promote itself. Furthermore, though, it has embraced its lack of stature. It’s only New Zealand’s third largest city and can never compete with the sprawling metropolis that is Auckland. Auckland is big and wants to play in the big league. Wellington embraces its diminutive size and markets this. It’s not something we really understand in Queensland where I live. We’re bigger than Texas and proud of it. As we know when size is an issue you are constantly comparing sizes and celebrating when you are bigger. No-one brings a measuring tape out to prove assertions made about being smaller.

CroppedImage1136515-Cruise-ships-in-port

In 2011 Lonely Planet named it the 4th best city in the world to visit. They described it as ‘This little capital…’ and so the embrace of its slight stature cleverly started. It was subsequently voted the best small capital in the world. Small sounds ‘cool’ as in groovy, welcoming, warm and of a human scale. The opposite end of the spectrum – best big city in the world – just sounds cold, alienating and exhausting.  Walking on the trendy waterfront I noticed the cruise ship terminal proudly describing itself as the ‘Best Little Cruise Ship Terminal in the World.’ Wow that’s clever. To combat that you pretty much have to say ‘our’s is smaller.’ To be fair it was small. Pointing to its obvious lack of stature takes away any implied criticism about size and gets the cruise line passengers to think about the building in another way.

And that’s where my ‘aha’ moment kicked-in. Here at the Construction Training Centre (CTC) we have at times been fixated on size. I admit to having Googled other training centres in construction in Australia to determine whether we are bigger. At 12.2 hectares we are just not that big and in the past we have tried to ‘big-up’ our reasonably modest estate. That made me think about the possibility of inverting that and describing our self as a small Precinct; or as one of our Team commented when I floated the idea – niche. To say we are the best construction training Precinct in Australia sounds like bragging. To say we are the best small niche training centre in Australia feels like our bragging is tempered with some humility. It’s much more authentic. We do want to be the best we just don’t need to be the biggest. This mindset is now percolating through our Team. It will be interesting to see where it takes us. It’s about amending our culture to embrace the true nature of what we are in terms of what we do, why we do it and our geographic and spatial realities. Once again it’s about being authentic doing the things we are good at well and not trying to be what we are not. After all culture is best described as ‘the way we do things around here.’

Medcraft-Greg-main

Discussions around culture are very timely at the moment in Australia especially in the corporate sector and specifically banking. ASIC Chair Greg Medcraft suggested that Directors be held responsible and accountable for the culture of their banks. There’s an expression in management, popularised by JFK that ‘success has many fathers but failure is an orphan’. We do see Directors taking credit for success but when the remuneration policies agreed by them create a culture of greedy risk-taking they appear somewhat dumbfounded and admit to not knowing. In fact I’d like to challenge the basic premise that Directors actually do set culture. The setting of culture like setting of strategy is the Holy Grail in management. It’s like being good in bed and a good judge of character. Very few admit to short-comings in either area! So to suggest that in fact Directors don’t set the tone or culture is a bit of a come down for those at the very top of our Corporate world. I actually think Directors should monitor culture but not set it. Let’s be honest, when we look at Corporate Australia we are in pretty rarefied air. Hard at times to come down to Base Camp as you traverse from lofty peak to lofty peak.

I manage a small investment portfolio at work (there was a day when I described it as ‘substantial’!) and as a result pay pretty close attention to who are setting strategy for the companies we invest in. I’m disappointed time and again to find what I call ‘over-boarding’ where Chairs and Directors of our large ASX listed companies have a number of Boards that they concurrently serve on. They are nearly always listed in the Director profiles and appear to be something of a badge of honour. I read such lists with concern. If a Director has more than two Boards (and the majority do) then I do not believe they are capable of exercising the roles they are required to play under the Corporations Act 2011 and the ASX Governance Rules to any satisfactory level – certainly not to mine. It expands the boundary of common sense that these very busy individuals can set the tone and culture of an organisation when they spend so little time in it. ASX Governance Rules recommend independent Directors and therefore they are unlikely to have much skin in the game. No skin no passion; no passion begets flitting in and out. Duties elsewhere dictate this anyway.

Culture embodies the overall collective of the way people think, their behaviours and their commitment. To get a successful culture you must embrace the whole and just not think about the head. If Banks are to get their culture right Directors need to be able to read the cultural temperature gauge but not set the ambient temperature level. When it’s not right the CEO and Executive Team should be held to account. If Directors can’t read and amend culture through their Executive team, then it’s time the Directors stand aside.

Culture of course has another meaning. It is about the understanding of the world in which we live and the wonderful diversity this brings to the workplace especially in a country such as ours where we celebrate our cultural diversity. This week we were approached by one of our Tenant’s staff for access to the First Aid/Breast Feeding Room to pray. This again provided time for reflection. While we are very female and wholehearted-friendly on the Precinct I wondered just how culturally accommodating we are. In a time of increasing pressure on our Muslim communities because of terrorism acted out in the name of fanaticism and not religion I pondered what we were doing to provide safe prayer facilities for our Muslim customers. A quick meeting with the person concerned has us now in advanced stages of installing a prayer room. Not as easy as it seems. Sure it’s easy to buy a prayer mat, Quran and put up a sign showing the direction of the Qibla. More difficult is dealing with the uncertainty amongst team members and tenants who do not have the level of cultural quotient that would otherwise allay their fears. What is important about the introduction of, on the face of it, a very small room is the fact that team members can raise concerns in a way that supports their concerns but also enables them to gain additional information that will make the concept be seen for what it is; an endeavour to continue to provide value adds to our tenants and their staff.

Being aware of culture, be it organisational or geo-political is an important aspect for a well-rounded manager. Managing this to provide business outcomes is a very important and over-looked feature. I think our culture is good at work but we can always improve. Culture is not static it changes from week to week sometimes. It changes when team members leave and new ones come in. Everyone leaves a mark. If they didn’t they would just be robots. I’d like to think that our new way of considering ourselves, as small, will be a breath of fresh air. Of course when put in the context of my recent trip to Wellington that has a whole other connotation!

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