COMMENT. Melbourne — A colleague of mine, of mature age, a professional director, told me he does not understand one thing about Melbourne’s directors.
How so many directors keep getting roles with less than stellar performance.
As a competent, good Director, he is mystified.
Shhh…
Of course no-one in the community says this publicly. I am a member of peak body AICD, and never heard it there! Truth begone! Top-down folk there.
With some Directors, often I get the feeling they want to investigate, interrogate you, and pick your brains. That’s if they can’t find out whose son you are.
It’s like university lecturers. Publicly, they will not tell you many are pressured to accept students who have not acquired necessary skills. That was struck from an ACS report on the ICT industry in 2006.
Not an Australian disease alone, off-balance sheet disasters, and debt-buyouts are rubber stamped by the professional board class.
Boards need to assert more influence on the managerial class. Michael West makes the point, as well.
Ians?
Catherine Deveny, called them Ians, yesterday.
The public service is infested with these types, we need them.
Innovators typically can’t fill out forms, do admin or accounting. Ad agency people I met are lucky to have matching socks. But maybe that’s intentional!
When someone does something innovative, Ians add all their costs, projections and overhead. And outsource it. And pretty soon it’s too expensive to do.
Often they tend to be judgmental of innovation. Or not cautious enough, employing outdated metrics to measure it. Cost, cost, cost is the cry.
The old needs the young to renew. And innovators with judgment. To make revenue from opportunity.
Eddington’s $20 Billion of Waste.
I have read quite a bit on Eddington’s plan for Melbourne.
In short, a couple of $10 billion tunnels.
As usual, rather than fixing infrastructure and managing it well, we just throw some big numbers at it. We perhaps, shock, need competent management of what we have, within a new paradigm of innovation.
I saw Eddington speak, and found there was a lack of intellectual depth in his arguments.
West mentions Eddington’s other interests. Eddington, for his mettle, was director of failing Allco. Allco, and David Coe, tried to take over Qantas.
Had Qantas been taken over Qantas would now be in serious trouble, given the proposed debt load. Where are the questions in and of the Qantas board?
Perhaps it’s the ‘don’t rock the boat’ survival instinct for boards?
And I don’t – unlike a few people – believe diversity, or gender, have much to do with it. Margaret Jackson supported the Qantas Allco bid.
Common sense & ethics are gender neutral.
Yet right now, Eddington is being made king in deciding Australia’s infrastructure priorities.
And, I can’t picture Sir Rod trying to get to the work on the Glen Waverley line.
Money, mo’ money.
Out of touch.
Problem is, the idea that you have to spend huge sums of money is a typical idiotic bureaucratic and corporate response.
The collapse of ABC and others, pricks the balloon of some of the glowing analysts reports sitting in shelves everywhere. How efficient ABC was at childcare? When profits came from chicanery of property development zero-shuffling. Allco. Centro.
Analysts writing those reports told retirees to ‘hold-tight’ as stocks fell.
Opportunity, instead.
In the 2thinknow view, there are so many opportunities. Not for costs, but profits.
All that is needed is a new understanding of business.
Instead of looking at sustainability as a cost look at it as a revenue opportunity.
Transport is a money-losing venture because the Government are incompetent. The managers are incompetent. And everyone is hamstrung.
But there are opportunities, 2thinknow can identify for profitability.
But it requires dropping the mind-set of costs. Put Garnaut in unimaginative too. Yes let’s all eat roo meat. That’s realistic!!
Action Arnold.
California is getting on with the job building Australian solar plants that can’t be built here, because everybody is busy paying Deveny’s Ians to write reports.
I would like to see some intelligent opportunity from Rudd not more committees, waffling academics and usual corporate suspects. I am still waiting.
Incompetence of MBA.
When I was at AGSM I was struck by how incompetent & inaccurate the MBA program was. The curriculum represents the negatives of business, advising virtually all free market, no regulation, debt-finance.
In only one example, one of my senior classmates from HP in the IT class felt the lecturer had no practical concept of IT, despite his ‘experience’. The lecturer is now fortunately shoving pins into corporations consulting for a big firm, where his theory will be useless.
AGSM, a pre-eminent as a business school teaches dogma, not how to think.
The great lecturers there, Alex Malley & Grant Foster, were great in the practical aspects of their subjects. They had real commercial experience.
It’s time we stopped praising academic waffling mediocrity, or corporate climbers, because they just have an imprimatur.
It’s an opportunity for an ideas-based meritocracy. A great conversation of great ideas and great minds.
Instead?
ABC was incompetent and badly run. Turns out they had no special skills, despite analysts glowing reports.
ABC couldn’t even do their 123s of accounting, according to Julia Gillard in Question Time.
Allco was at best optimistic, at worst, fill in an adjective.
Centro was stupid & naive.
Babcock & Brown’s model has serious ethical issues.
Macquarie. Sydney airport. Toll roads. Mmm. Kaboom.
NAB is badly run, but at least they have money.
There’s more blood in the streets. Because the people running these places focussed on costs, debt and lacked operational management.
In short, did they do something? Other than zero-shuffling?
Next for Australia?
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Qantas forced to merge. And Macquarie in trouble.
And I suggest we look at high-debt business that have low-margins. Kaboom.
Interestingly Time must lose money on its flagship. No adverts.
Business is done by doing. Let’s thin the ranks of the executive dead wood and managerial pretenders who do nothing but manage-up.
We need those Ians, but let’s not pretend they have original ideas. Nor vision.
We get in to trouble when we believe our corporate PR.
Australians who want to get ahead, go offshore, that’s the message.
Meritocracy of ideas is a thought whose time has come.
Deveny’s Australian Ians.
COMMENT. Melbourne — A colleague of mine, of mature age, a professional director, told me he does not understand one thing about Melbourne’s directors.
How so many directors keep getting roles with less than stellar performance.
As a competent, good Director, he is mystified.
Shhh…
Of course no-one in the community says this publicly. I am a member of peak body AICD, and never heard it there! Truth begone! Top-down folk there.
With some Directors, often I get the feeling they want to investigate, interrogate you, and pick your brains. That’s if they can’t find out whose son you are.
It’s like university lecturers. Publicly, they will not tell you many are pressured to accept students who have not acquired necessary skills. That was struck from an ACS report on the ICT industry in 2006.
Not an Australian disease alone, off-balance sheet disasters, and debt-buyouts are rubber stamped by the professional board class.
Boards need to assert more influence on the managerial class. Michael West makes the point, as well.
Ians?
Catherine Deveny, called them Ians, yesterday.
The public service is infested with these types, we need them.
Innovators typically can’t fill out forms, do admin or accounting. Ad agency people I met are lucky to have matching socks. But maybe that’s intentional!
When someone does something innovative, Ians add all their costs, projections and overhead. And outsource it. And pretty soon it’s too expensive to do.
Often they tend to be judgmental of innovation. Or not cautious enough, employing outdated metrics to measure it. Cost, cost, cost is the cry.
The old needs the young to renew. And innovators with judgment. To make revenue from opportunity.
Eddington’s $20 Billion of Waste.
I have read quite a bit on Eddington’s plan for Melbourne.
In short, a couple of $10 billion tunnels.
As usual, rather than fixing infrastructure and managing it well, we just throw some big numbers at it. We perhaps, shock, need competent management of what we have, within a new paradigm of innovation.
I saw Eddington speak, and found there was a lack of intellectual depth in his arguments.
West mentions Eddington’s other interests. Eddington, for his mettle, was director of failing Allco. Allco, and David Coe, tried to take over Qantas.
Had Qantas been taken over Qantas would now be in serious trouble, given the proposed debt load. Where are the questions in and of the Qantas board?
Perhaps it’s the ‘don’t rock the boat’ survival instinct for boards?
And I don’t – unlike a few people – believe diversity, or gender, have much to do with it. Margaret Jackson supported the Qantas Allco bid.
Common sense & ethics are gender neutral.
Yet right now, Eddington is being made king in deciding Australia’s infrastructure priorities.
And, I can’t picture Sir Rod trying to get to the work on the Glen Waverley line.
Money, mo’ money.
Out of touch.
Problem is, the idea that you have to spend huge sums of money is a typical idiotic bureaucratic and corporate response.
The collapse of ABC and others, pricks the balloon of some of the glowing analysts reports sitting in shelves everywhere. How efficient ABC was at childcare? When profits came from chicanery of property development zero-shuffling. Allco. Centro.
Analysts writing those reports told retirees to ‘hold-tight’ as stocks fell.
Opportunity, instead.
In the 2thinknow view, there are so many opportunities. Not for costs, but profits.
All that is needed is a new understanding of business.
Instead of looking at sustainability as a cost look at it as a revenue opportunity.
Transport is a money-losing venture because the Government are incompetent. The managers are incompetent. And everyone is hamstrung.
But there are opportunities, 2thinknow can identify for profitability.
But it requires dropping the mind-set of costs. Put Garnaut in unimaginative too. Yes let’s all eat roo meat. That’s realistic!!
Action Arnold.
California is getting on with the job building Australian solar plants that can’t be built here, because everybody is busy paying Deveny’s Ians to write reports.
I would like to see some intelligent opportunity from Rudd not more committees, waffling academics and usual corporate suspects. I am still waiting.
Incompetence of MBA.
When I was at AGSM I was struck by how incompetent & inaccurate the MBA program was. The curriculum represents the negatives of business, advising virtually all free market, no regulation, debt-finance.
In only one example, one of my senior classmates from HP in the IT class felt the lecturer had no practical concept of IT, despite his ‘experience’. The lecturer is now fortunately shoving pins into corporations consulting for a big firm, where his theory will be useless.
AGSM, a pre-eminent as a business school teaches dogma, not how to think.
The great lecturers there, Alex Malley & Grant Foster, were great in the practical aspects of their subjects. They had real commercial experience.
It’s time we stopped praising academic waffling mediocrity, or corporate climbers, because they just have an imprimatur.
It’s an opportunity for an ideas-based meritocracy. A great conversation of great ideas and great minds.
Instead?
ABC was incompetent and badly run. Turns out they had no special skills, despite analysts glowing reports.
ABC couldn’t even do their 123s of accounting, according to Julia Gillard in Question Time.
Allco was at best optimistic, at worst, fill in an adjective.
Centro was stupid & naive.
Babcock & Brown’s model has serious ethical issues.
Macquarie. Sydney airport. Toll roads. Mmm. Kaboom.
NAB is badly run, but at least they have money.
There’s more blood in the streets. Because the people running these places focussed on costs, debt and lacked operational management.
In short, did they do something? Other than zero-shuffling?
Next for Australia?
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Qantas forced to merge. And Macquarie in trouble.
And I suggest we look at high-debt business that have low-margins. Kaboom.
Interestingly Time must lose money on its flagship. No adverts.
Business is done by doing. Let’s thin the ranks of the executive dead wood and managerial pretenders who do nothing but manage-up.
We need those Ians, but let’s not pretend they have original ideas. Nor vision.
We get in to trouble when we believe our corporate PR.
Australians who want to get ahead, go offshore, that’s the message.
Meritocracy of ideas is a thought whose time has come.
Executive Director of Innovation, at 2thinknow. Expert on Innovation Cities and innovation analyst. An experienced data analyst to business and government for over 13 years.
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