NZ business needs more mad young things!

I had a fantastic time at the Exporting Beyond 2007 Summit at Sky City yesterday. Sadly, I was probably the youngest there (and at 32, that's not saying much).

Highlights:

• Short. It started with lunch and finished after 4pm. That's what busy people will go for.
• Focused. There was a real sense of urgency about this, and a sense that everyone in the room could make a difference.
• Interactive. After a 45-minute intro speech, we got into elective groups, about 15 people around the table, and threw our ideas around. True Wisdom of Crowds stuff.
  

Key insights I gleaned:

• We're so comfortable right now in NZ that we're in danger of being numb to the future - we need to focus on exporting or our future generations won't be able to live this same lifestyle.
• To do that, we need to tell stories and share more.
  

I'm sensing a cultural disconnect here. The needs - telling stories, sharing and collaborating - are quite touchy-feely, yet the people there yesterday were CEOs, mostly focused around finance and the economy, rather than the "softer" disciplines like psychology or language.

The way it was positioned - as an "Exporting Summit" for "CEOs" - probably failed to attract the kind of people who can inject some much-needed fresh thinking and creative solutions.

People like the kids who are taking risks and making lots of money. Chances are none of them would consider themselves "exporters" or even CEOs.

The event also highlighted the fact that we kiwis are paranoid about competition and largely unwilling to share. That's another post for another time! Stay tuned.

The secret of New Zealand

In conversation post-conference yesterday with Leon Hudson from Chong Newztel and Nick from the New Plymouth District Council - two expat Brits who have seen the light and made New Zealand their home.

Leon: Since moving here I have never been so relaxed in my whole life.

Simon: Boy that's not the message we want to send out during a skill shortage - come to NZ to relax.

Leon: No, it's not that I'm relaxing - in fact I'm working longer hours that I used to. It's just that I'm not so tense. In London if I miss the tube it's a huge catastrophe. In New Zealand if I miss the bus, I get out a book to read.

He then said some stuff about cheese that I really didn't understand... but it was food for thought (the conversation, not the cheese... hang on, there wasn't any cheese..!)

And Nick did contribute to the conversation, just not that part of it.

Anyway ... like I said, food for thought. What sort of message should we send out to attract the rightly skilled people to NZ? Not that it's a place for work/life balance (although that's true) because apparently we need high growth businesses and those kind of businesses don't do work life balance.

But Leon's correction - that he's perhaps able to work longer hours because of a less tense atmosphere ... now that's interesting.

More info: my immigration article in Idealog

Well done Ponoko!

Umamiblog » Blog Archive » Hola from TechCrunch

Woohoo! Well done Ponoko for being part of TechCrunch. This is better than the Rugby World Cup!

Fisher and Paykel: Making the best of a bad situation

Here in New Zealand, we've been rocked by the news that Fisher and Paykel is moving part of its manufacturing to Thailand.

Many words have been written by minds smarter than mine about why the move happened, and what now. I'd like to write about how it was done.

My mate David works at Fisher and Paykel (matter of fact, two of my mates, and they're both called David - strange, huh?). He's in the division where they make fridge doors, so his job is safe - for now.

But when I quizzed him about the feeling on the ground at F&P, he said many of the 350 who have now lost their jobs are relatively happy. They've received a good payout, and they can now try and find other work. Clean and simple.

Compare that with Brigid, another friend who works for Air New Zealand's ground staff. Since about October last year she's had the spectre of redundancy over her. Once Brigid had accepted her fate, the stakes changed. February 8th was to be her last day, then March sometime, and then ... let's call the whole thing off.

Can you imagine what the working environment was for those Air New Zealand ground staff? Negative, grinding, uncertain, demotivating.

Air New Zealand has done a fantastic job of rebranding itself a couple of years back - but they really threaten to flush all that hard work down the pooper if they treat their staff this way. There is no intrinsic or positive motivation for a ground services worker to treat a passenger well. Just the hope that someday, maybe, there will be a nice big redundancy payout to make it all worthwhile. It is deeply dysfunctional.

Air New Zealand, learn a few lessons from F&P. Yes, they couldn't save the jobs. That's a macro issue. But at least they got the micro issues sorted out.

TBI Tuesday Q&A: Jonathan King :: The Big Idea :: an online community of New Zealand's creative industries

TBI Tuesday Q&A: Jonathan King :: The Big Idea :: an online community of New Zealand's creative industries

No comment, more of a personal bookmark so I can read it later. Also see the interview with Jonathan King in the latest Idealog. (The article's not online yet, but the podcast is)

Immigration: the conversation begins

Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog: Immigration in New Zealand: a fair and balanced look

I mentioned the other day that I hoped my Idealog article would start a conversation. It has, on Jack's blog. When you touch on immigration, you discover stories, sometimes sad ones, sometimes uplifting ones.

Come on New Zealand, let's make our story a great one.

Come to New Zealand if you're smart

It's out now: the article I worked on for three months.

New Zealand has an opportunity to passionately participate in the global economy - by seeking out and welcoming talented people from around the globe.

It's a story of stories. While there are many facts and figures out there that point to the value of diversity, I found more powerful the stories of creative individuals who used their outsiderness to help themselves and their new country.

Vincent Heeringa talks more about immigration (though, sadly, not my article!) in this week's Kiwi FM Idealog podcast.