Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: future

  • Twenty trends for 2020

    Twenty trends for 2020

    I’m speaking at the Ovations Speaker Showcase next week on the Twenty Trends for 2020. A big ask for twenty minutes.

    Despite the time limits, it’s doable. Here’s the list of trends I think are going to define the rest of this decade, along with some  related links.

    1. Accelerated rate of business
    2. China moving up the value chain
    3. Dealing with a society at retirement age
    4. Rising incomes in South Asia and Africa
    5. Robotics and Automation
    6. The internet of machines
    7. Reinventing entertainment
    8. The fall and rise of social media
    9. The continued rise of the DIY economy
    10. Newspapers cease to exist
    11. 3D printing
    12. nano-technology
    13. The new education revolution
    14. Reskilling the workforce
    15. Older workers re-entering the workforce
    16. The fight for control of the mobile payments system
    17. Mobile apps redefining service industries
    18. Taming the Big Data tsunami
    19. The fight for data rights
    20. Flatter organisations
    21. The great deleveraging

    Apart from the fact there’s 21, the twenty minutes I have allocated isn’t going to be enough to cover these. So which topics do I skate over?

    Of course there might be more topics that I’ve missed. I’m open to suggestions.

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  • Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter Six: Building capabilities

    Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter Six: Building capabilities

    This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

    Of all the chapters in the Australia in Asian Century discussion paper, Chapter Six has probably attracted the most opprobrium because of the fine words which haven’t been matched by government policy and action.

    Parts of this chapter have a strong “school marm” tone as it tries to mandate the composition of company boards or the locations of where students will study. Overall though, most of the objectives are either motherhood statements, impractical or at odds with the actions of both state and Federal governments.

    National objective 9. To build the capabilities of Australian students, Australia’s school system will be in the top five schooling systems in the world, delivering excellent outcomes for all students of all backgrounds, and systematically improving performance over time.

    • By 2025, Australia will be ranked as a top five country in the world for the performance of our students in reading, science and mathematics literacy and for providing our children with a high?quality and high?equity education system.
    • By 2015, 90 per cent of young Australians aged 20 to 24 years will have a Year 12 or equivalent qualification, up from 86 per cent in 2010.
    While these objectives are worthy, there’s little discussion of exactly how this will be achieved beyond broad statements. Again it’s notable that these aspirations are being laid out at a time when funding is being cut and staff retrenched in both state and Federal government education departments.

    National objective 10. Every Australian student will have significant exposure to studies of Asia across the curriculum to increase their cultural knowledge and skills and enable them to be active in the region. All schools will engage with at least one school in Asia to support the teaching of a priority Asian language, including through increased use of the National Broadband Network.

    Says who? Who exactly is going to force a school to engage with at least one school in Asia? These are the sort of broad brush statements that detract from the report.

    These kind of statements are the “thought bubble” approach to policy that marks much of what passes for governance in Australia today and such poorly thought out programs end up at best wasting money. At worst, the unintended consequences of a ‘policy’ thought up on the back of beer mat end up causing more damage than good.

    Such a program could work well if properly thought out and integrated properly into the long term curriculum of the students but it would take proper leadership from state and Federal education ministers.

    National objective 12. All students will have access to at least one priority Asian language; these will be Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese.

    This is good and fair, but is something that was supposed to have been put in place thirty years ago. Instead the proportions of students studying Asian languages has steadily dropped.

    As newspapers have reported there are barely a dozen Hindi language teachers in New South Wales, so the priority needs to be training teachers to deliver the courses.

    Such inconvenient logistical problems are an excellent example of those well meaning but poorly thought through “thought bubbles.”

    National objective 12. Australia will remain among the world’s best for research and teaching in universities, delivering excellent outcomes for a larger number of Australian students, attracting the best academics and students from around the world and strengthening links between Australia and the region.

    • By 2020, 20 per cent of undergraduate higher education enrolments will be people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, up from 17 per cent in 2011.
    • By 2025, 40 per cent of all 25 to 34?year?olds will hold a qualification at bachelor level or above, up from 35 per cent in 2011.
    • By 2025, 10 of Australia’s universities will be in the world’s top 100.
    • A larger number of Australian university students will be studying overseas and a greater proportion will be undertaking part of their degree in Asia.
    This objective really smacks of poorly thought out ideas on the run and illustrates starkly the differences between the well meaning objectives and the behaviour of governments.
    It’s almost impossible for ten of Australia’s universities to make it into the more reputable measure of top 100 universities when for the last three decades research and post graduate programs have been slowly strangled by falling government funding.
    Even if a Gillard government were to change that trend, it’s unlikely Australian universities could make up the lost ground in 13 years.
    Mandating that “a larger number of Australian university students will be studying overseas and a greater proportion will be undertaking part of their degree in Asia” is nice but who is going to force students to study overseas and specifically in Asia?
    More to the point, what are notoriously conservative Australian employers going to do with all these graduates of Asian universities?

    National objective 13. Australia will have vocational education and training systems that are among the world’s best, building capability in the region and supporting a highly skilled Australian workforce able to continuously develop its capabilities.

    • By 2020, more than three?quarters of working?age Australians will have an entry?level qualification (at Certificate III level or higher), up from just under half in 2009.
    • Australia’s vocational education and training institutions will have substantially expanded services in more nations in the region, building the productive capacity of the workforce of these nations and supporting Australian businesses and workers to have a greater presence in Asian markets.
    Given the week before the Gillard government cut apprenticeship funding and the NSW government announced it was further emasculating its state TAFE system a few days after the report was released, this objective can be treated purely empty words.

    Business capacity

    One of the reasons why Australia engaged so little with Asia over the last twenty five years is because the business community became focused inwards rather looking for opportunities in foreign markets. So the idea of getting more Asian experience into boardrooms is laudable but the solutions proposed impractical.

    National objective 14. Decision makers in Australian businesses, parliaments, national institutions (including the Australian Public Service and national cultural institutions) and advisory forums across the community will have deeper knowledge and expertise of countries in our region and have a greater capacity to integrate domestic and international issues.

    • One?third of board members of Australia’s top 200 publicly listed companies and Commonwealth bodies (including companies, authorities, agencies and commissions) will have deep experience in and knowledge of Asia.
    • One?third of the senior leadership of the Australian Public Service (APS 200) will have deep experience in and knowledge of Asia.
    This objective has drawn a lot of scorn from the business community and for good reason – how is a Federal government going to mandate that a third of the ASX200 will have “deep experience and knowledge of Asia”?
    While the aim of having a third of the senior public service possessing Asian experience is worthy, this is almost impossible given the deadline for this is thirteen years away, any bureaucrat hoping to have “deep experience and knowledge of Asia” would have had to have been working on it for the last five or ten years. If this program isn’t in place now, it isn’t going to happen.

    Society

    Probably the biggest strength of Australia as a nation is in its diverse and relatively tolerant society so this section of the report is notable for what it misses in opportunities.

    National objective 15. Australian communities and regions will benefit from structural changes in the economy and seize the new opportunities emerging in the Asian century.

    Another worthy aim and its notable that the region cited in the case study is Darwin, a city whose economy is being wildly distorted by the LNG boom which is driving up prices and labour costs. If anything Darwin is an example of Australia turning its back on opportunities and focusing on a quick, resources driven buck.

    National objective 16. By preserving and building on our social foundations, Australia will be a higher skill, higher wage economy with a fair, multicultural and cohesive society and a growing population, and all Australians will be able to benefit from, and participate in, Australia’s growing prosperity and engagement in Asia.

    Cant and motherhood statements as one would hope all government seek to build a fair and cohesive society on our social foundations. It’s interesting that much of the poorly thought out, short term tactics by publicity hungry politicians probably does more to damage Australia’s institutions than other factors.

    Overall this chapter deserves to have drawn the most criticism with its motherhood statements and wholly unachievable aims.

    Most disappointingly, it skates over Australia’s diverse workforce and provides no ideas on how to harness the talents of the country’s ethnic groups in building ties and improving the nation’s skills.

    Image of the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival from EmmaJG on Flickr

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  • Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter Three: Australia in Asia

    Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter Three: Australia in Asia

    This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report. An initial overview of the report is at Australian Hubris in the Asian Century.

    The third Chapter of the Australia in the Asian Century report, “Australia in Asia” attempts to define the role the country currently plays in the region. In some ways this is the most constructive part of the paper in that it describes the lost opportunities of the last 25 years.

    Much of the early part of the chapter traces the development of Australia’s engagement with Asia after World War II; Chifley’s post war efforts with the United Nations, Menzies’ engagement with Japan, Whitlam’s going to China, Fraser’s opening to Vietnamese immigration and Hawke’s work on building the APEC agreement are all noted.

    Again are the major wars that also formed Australia’s current position in East Asia – World War II, the Malayan Emergency, the Korean and Vietnamese wars – are barely mentioned. This trivialises some of the major influences in today’s complex tapestry of relationships

    Of Australia’s closest Asian neighbour, the fall of Sukarno gets a brief nod but Suharto’s removal, the rise of Indonesian democracy and East Timor are all removed from the narrative. There is also no mention of other internal dislocations like the Cultural Revolution or the Indian Partition, all which still have echos today.

    In the introduction the Colombo Plan gets a mention and it’s worth reflecting upon its effects.

    When I worked in Bangkok in the early 1990s there were a number of business leaders who had been educated in Australia under Colombo Plan scholarships.

    That investment by Australia paid dividends through the 1980s and 90s as many of those scholarship students were ardent supporters of Australian businesses and government.

    One wonders how today’s students who’ve been treated as milk cows by Australian governments and “seats on bums” to education institutions will feel about the country when they enter business and political leadership positions over the next decade?

    The examples of Australian business engagement in Asia are interesting – Blundstone’s is a straight out manufacturing outsourcing story which doesn’t really describe anything not being done by thousands of other businesses while Tangalooma Island Resort is a light of hope in the distressed Australian tourism industry.

    A notable omission is how digital media, apps developers and service businesses are faring in Asia. There are many good case studies in those sectors but the writers seem to be, once again, fixated on the trade patterns of the 1980s and 90s rather than success stories in new fields and emerging technologies.

    Generally though the description of the Australian economy is again more of the same; a combination of self congratulations on having a government AAA credit rating, hubris over avoiding a GFC induced recession and stating how the services sector has risen to replace the manufacturing that’s been outsourced by companies like Blundstone.

    Overall Chapter Three of the Australia in the Asian Century report illustrates the opportunities missed in the last 25 years. Had this report been written twenty years ago it could have forecast a booming relationship in the services and advanced manufacturing sectors. It almost certainly would have included an observation that the days of the Australian economy depending upon minerals exports is over.

    What a difference a couple of decades make.

    The engagement of Australia with Asia concludes with a look at the changes to the nation’s immigration intakes and demographic composition. This point is, quite rightly, identified as an area of opportunity.

    Having Thai restaurants in every suburb and Indian doctors in most country town isn’t really taking advantage of the opportunities presented by having a diverse population and workforce. Chapter Four attempts to look at how these factors, and others, can help Australia’s engagement with the Asian economies.

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  • Shifting to a better return

    Shifting to a better return

    As part of Deloitte’s Building the Lucky Country series, the consulting firm had a briefing last week from John Hagel, co-chairman of Deloitte’s Silicon Valley Centre for the Edge, to discuss how industries are responding to shifts in the workplace and their markets.

    John’s thesis is that businesses can be broadly split into into three groups; infrastructure, product innovation and customer relationship business which he covers in his Shift Index that looks at how industries are being affected by digital technologies.

    Infrastructure businesses are high volume, transactional services like call centres, logistics and utilities companies.

    The product innovators are those who develop new products, get them to market quickly and accelerating adoption of those goods.

    Customer relationship businesses focus on understanding their clients and using that knowledge to add value.

    Each of these business models require different mindsets and because most large companies try to do all three, they manage to do none well.

    One of the results of this is a lousy Return On Assets, which Hagel says have fallen in the United States to one-third of the levels of 1965 and he doesn’t see this improving as the ‘competitive intensity’ of US markets increases.

    A big feature of this decline in overall ROA is how the best performers have travelled compared to the laggards with the ‘winners’ barely maintaining their returns while the ‘losers’ are seeing their results declining dramatically.

    How Hagel sees the solution to this poor performance is through rewarding creative and passionate workers better.

    Firms have untapped opportunities to reverse their declining performance by embracing pull. To accomplish this, firms must develop and encourage passionate workers at every level of the organization.

    Additionally, companies must tap into knowledge flows and expand the use of powerful tools, such as social software to solve operational/product problems more efficiently and effectively as well as to discover emerging opportunities.

    If Hagel is right, it’s the businesses who want to micro-manage their workers while stifling innovation, initiative and creativity in their businesses who will be the great losers in this next decade as we move to the next phase of the ‘Big Shift’ where knowledge flows improve business performance.

    Starting the process of dealing with these shifts involves understand what the DNA of your business really is; if it is a transactional infrastructure business then management needs to acknowledge this and not kid itself about being in customer relationships.

    There are weakness in John Hagel’s proposition – one being that businesses can be easily pigeonholed into three categories.

    Apple is a good example of this where a company that is clearly product focused has also shown it can be customer orientated with the success of the Apple Stores.

    There’s also the question of why are there only three categories? In the breakdown the immediate thought is that there are businesses that don’t fit in any of these boxes. Legacy airlines or struggling motor manufacturers are good examples.

    Despite the criticism, John and the Center For The Edge have some good points about the future of business and it’s something we’ll explore more over the next few weeks.

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  • Delivering products

    Delivering products

    Once upon a time the local plumber got to work by bicycle, then he got a jalopy and now he shows up in a van or a hotted up ute. The plumber and his customers don’t care about the way his services are delivered.

    A hundred years ago the retail industry was dominated by corner stores that customers could walk to, they received their deliveries by horse drawn carts and made deliveries on bicycles.

    Then along came the motor car, which changed shopping habits and delivery methods.

    Fifty years later the corner stores were a dying breed as they were replaced by supermarkets which customers could drive to and they took their deliveries by truck.

    Today the retail industry is changing again, as the Internet changes shopping habits and society in ways similar to the motor car.

    A similar pattern of change happened in the media sector; the evening paper died as commuters switched to cars and reading the Tribune on the tram or train home became less relevant.

    Morning papers survived as people took deliveries to read over breakfast before driving to work.

    At the same time radio and television became the dominant way most people got their news.

    Even more the retail, the web has dramatically changed news distribution methods.

    As the effects of Fairfax’s restructure sinks in, there are a group of people who don’t seem to want to accept reality – newsagents.

    Mark Fletcher’s initial post about Fairfax’s restructure on his Australian Newsagency Blog attracted some harsh comments;

    “Whilst the print media is arguably in decline I consider this post to be scare mongering……Fairfax will be here in print for years to come and to say or suggest that some days of the week will be or may be cut is pure conjecture at this point.”

    ” I am in semirural metropolitan Sydney. We have just added another 100 customers to our delivery run. Majority dont like reading their news online – old habits die hard. I hope that Fairfax dont abandon them. They like getting their newspapers in print.”

    “Hi i will not pay to read online why it is all free, but will buy paper”

    Focusing on print condemns those newsagents to the fate of the corner shop.

    What is missed in the discussions about the future of the media is that medium is not message – people want relevant content delivered in the most convenient way.

    This is true in every business. What we do is not really related to how we deliver the product, if we’re tied to one way of getting our services to a customer then we’re in trouble.

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