Last night, 700 children gathered at the Sydney Opera House for The Festival of Choral Music. Over the four days the event is run, over 2,000 kids will have performed in the choirs, bands and ensembles.
Why aren’t we telling these stories of talent, potential, happiness and beauty? Why are we bogged down in the negative, backward looking view of the world we see in much of our commentary of the world?
Maybe it’s time for a rethink about the stories we tell.
Heather Ridout, the Australian Industry Group chief executive, is quoted that Independent control of Parliament will result in “instability, uncertainty and short-termism in policy development” which is an interesting view, given these are exactly the reasons voters have punished the major parties.
Indeed Heather has seen this first hand as a member of the Henry Tax Review Panel, where the final report was hidden for six months, then the bulk of the recommendations were ignored and the few accepted were mutilated and taken out of context.
All of this with no debate or consultation with the community in a review that would “position us to deal with the demographic, social, economic and environmental challenges of the 21st century.”
So much for the vision of the big parties.
Leadership isn’t delivered by risk adverse, focus group obsessed political managers doing deals with big corporations and lobbyists; it’s delivered by leaders who are capable of stating their case and steering their views, visions and policies through fair and robust debate, not hiding behind well crafted communications strategies and sound bites.
We need leadership in both business and politics to face those 21st Century challenges the Treasurer identified when he announced the Henry Tax Review.
A hung Parliament is a once in a generation opportunity to rebuild leadership and confidence in our governments. It’s one we shouldn’t squander.
The distrust and disengagement of voters in last weekend’s election holds valuable lessons for business.
As the politicians have found, the days of empty slogans are over. If you say “people are your most important asset”, “service with a smile” or “no question refunds” then you have to be sure you value those smiling employees as they cheerfully refund money. Otherwise your disgruntled staff and customers will be letting the world know the truth quickly.
We’re in an era of accountability. The connected society means all of us — in our professional, political and personal lives are more accountable than we have been for several generations. This is even more true of our businesses.
A good example of this is restaurants; where twenty years ago few eating places were reviewed by newspapers or magazines while most scored a paragraph in an annual guide, which could have been up to two years out of date by the time it was in the bookstores.
Today dozens of rating sites give customers the opportunity to report their experiences and customers are reading those reviews before they choose where to dine.
The same process is happening in all industries, your business is being reviewed and discussed online in forums, blogs and various social media channels. You have to deliver on your promises and you will be caught out if you don’t.
For society, the Internet and the new communications tools that run on it are changing how we deal with our peers, customers, employers and staff. We have more power and we have more responsibility.
It’s interesting this point was missed by the political parties that ran campaigns that relied almost exclusively on TV, radio and print. Although it isn’t surprising seeing that both parties’ 2010 campaigns seem to operate in a 1960s time warp where cheap fuel, plentiful credit and unlimited mineral exports were the nation’s boundless future.
This sort of complacency is understandable when you have a duopoly. As we know in the business world, a comfortable duopoly breeds cosy, risk adverse managers who spend more time squabbling over who should have the keys to the executive toilets than worrying about minor things like staff, new products or customer satisfaction.
Which is what’s happened to our political parties; winning the privileges of power is all that matters to the factional warlords and their supporting ranks of scheming apparatchiks; just like second rate managers in a cosy, protected industry.
The underlying beliefs of the major parties — free enterprise, a strong regional Australia or a fair go for the Australian worker have all became empty slogans and their markets, the voters, are now holding them to account.
In many ways the three or four independents who will hold the balance of power are like upstart business that disrupt cosy markets, they are reminding the incumbents of the business they have chosen to be in.
That’s the biggest business lesson from last weekend’s election; that in the new global economy the barriers to entry have fallen and new businesses are waiting to grab the customers you’re neglecting. Markets are moving quicker than ever and you need the tools and the teams to take advantage of the opportunities.
Unlike the political world, today’s business environment has no place for the safe, comfortable incumbent. It’s a great time to be a genuinely smart company.
Cloud computing is about using other people’s computers to do the work for you.
Rather than having programs running on your computer and saving information to the hard drive, a cloud service connects to your system and you access both the program and your data through a web browser such as Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari.
That service could be free such as Hotmail and Flickr or it could be paid for like Salesforce or Google Apps. Either way, they use a “cloud” of computers to provide the application and store their customer’s data.
Having your applications and data saved on someone else’s servers brings a number of advantages in security, cost and flexibility.
For businesses, that flexibility comes out of not having to buy complex software licences for their networks, instead they only pay for what they use. For home users it means not having to install software that often slows down machines and sometimes conflicts with other programs.
As we use the Internet more on our phones or with mobile devices like the iPad, having the advantage of not needing different software versions for each device makes it easier for us to access and use the information that used to be locked in our personal computers or office servers.
Cost too is an important factor, while many programs such as Yahoo! Mail and WordPress are free, even the paid for programs like Sassu and Basecamp offer considerable savings over their traditional competitors that require you to buy a disk and install the tool on your system.
One of the reasons for those reduced costs is the cloud services are sharing the resources between many users. That reduces the supplier’s distribution and support costs while making it easier for them to update their program when new features or security problems appear.
Security is probably the most misunderstood part of cloud computing. While cloud services do require a degree of trust in the supplier, most providers are providing a much more secure and trustworthy computer environment than most homes and businesses.
There are downsides however; you do need to have a reliable Internet connection and you do have to trust that your supplier will not only keep a secure environment but also won’t share your data with others and won’t go broke.
While some of those disadvantages with cloud computing mean that some businesses — particularly those in the medical and banking industries — have to be careful about using online services, for most homes and enterprises the cost and flexibility benefits outweigh the risks.
Over the next few years we’ll see many, if not most, computer programs move onto the cloud as reliable Internet becomes commonplace. It is the way the IT industry is heading and where we will all be doing our computing in the next few years.
Setting up a website for your small business or community group isn’t difficult and it’s a great way to keep in touch with your customers and members.
Join 702 Sydney’s Simon Marnie and Paul Wallbank from 10am on Sunday, August 15 to look at some free and simple ways to get your organisation online with cheap or free websites and social media tools.
Further information on developing web sites and social media strategies for business and community groups can be found on our page at Five Free and Easy Online Business Marketing Tools.
Tune into ABC 702 Sydney from 10am or listen online through the ABC Sydney webpage. We love to hear from listeners so feel free call in with your questions or comments on 1300 222 702 or text on 19922702. If you’re on Twitter you can tweet paul at @paulwallbank and 702 Sydney on @702sydney.