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Australian Disease vs Dutch Disease
Topic Started: 12 Dec 2013, 08:38 PM (1,030 Views)
Barista
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Australian leadership is all too often feeble, and its outstanding trait is its uniformity – good leaders are rare. What we all too often see is leaders who want to craft the people they would lead (generally though an implied threat, but often through speciously plausible bullshit as well) rather than engage with them and work with them. It doesn’t really matter whether it is an SME or a large employer, the national, state or local political stage, the organisation of a local cricket club, both sides of politics, large charities, universities, unions, or the public service.

Australian leadership doesn’t like being questioned and doesn’t like being held accountable for what it determines as being appropriate for those it leads. Sure, this is a culture common amongst second rate organisations the world over, but what really makes Australia distinctive is the resistance organisations have to considering originality in any shape from within or without and engaging with it, exploring it conceptually and pragmatically, let alone applying it, and the expectation that Australian subordinates (particularly in larger workplaces, but it is also noticeable at a national decisionmaking level) will just shut up and not make waves, and the default setting, when waves do occur, to blame the lowest underlings, rather than to identify issues develop responses and to lead towards a goal.

That ethos in many organisations is bound in place and typified at many organisations by performance appraisal systems which incorporate behaviours (I personally have introduced these at organisations – how many people have bullshit in their appraisal systems such as ‘risk engagement’, ‘thinking beyond the square’ [often where any original thinking would be intolerable] ‘commitment to team and leadership ethos’ ‘team player’ etc which are basically there to bully people into conforming behaviours one way or another and to provide tools for them to be managed with them?), how many contractual relationships have non-disclosure provisions which go miles beyond any real non-disclosure need. And, from that point, in how many organisations or groups of organisations does ‘success’ in the organisation revolve around getting into a ‘club’ [the leadership team, stream and it ‘ethos’] and gravitating higher through inculcating, and promulgating where necessary, ever more grotesque forms of ‘leadership ethos’ which all too often involves bullshitting the lower level punting types, bullshitting clients, bullshitting the public, and bullshitting just about anyone and everything – and recoiling (usually sharply) at anything which may imply criticism, let alone an outright questioning of anything? A similar phenomena will see organisations recruit only those into the organisation who are identified as having a sensitive pressure point (they need a job, need to service a mortgage/debt/family, are overtly ambitious to succeed inside an organisation and will exhibit appropriate management behaviours) and a disinclination to recruit those who don’t know matter what their skills.

Most management likes to keep a tight rein on information flow inside an organisation and if we look at a national discourse and political level we see basically the same phenomena there. Our mainstream media (the cash strapped commercial TV channels, a range of magazines, the league of Uncle Rupert or the chenille world of Fairfax) runs long on promoting an orthodoxy (an anodyne get out there and buy and don’t ask questions culture), triggering the right behaviours (oi, oi, oi, mate) and identifying those outside the orthodoxy (single mothers, academics who can’t answer complex questions with a sound grab – indeed anyone coming across as educated without being blokey enough to offset it – asylum seekers, aboriginals etc) beyond performing that function the media has basically evolved to a point where it writes opinion for itself –cf the Canberra press gallery and its spectacular ability to completely miss what the rest of the country is experiencing, the Sydney set which runs the ABC, the Fairfax mainstay of property spruiking no matter how long and hard the spruik must be, and Uncle Rupert’s pernicious gargoyldom. As a general rule Australians are far better off plugging in to international media to get a macro picture of what is shaping their world, and couldn’t rely on its domestic media to report anything happening here without subordinating what is happening to an agenda.

This effectively means that our leaders (who may have better sources of information [though they wouldn’t share them with us]) only engage with us to an agenda, and of course only engage with us one way [they say - we listen]. The distance (still) and the size of the Australian market means that there is little in it for international media to be particularly detailed in looking at Australia, so it functions at a national level in much the same way as any larger organisation’s internal communications process works – a sort of cross between HR and operations/corporate services, with a strong suit in distracting trivia, an habitual leaning toward cheap hagiography of irrelevancies which don’t threaten the management line, and genuine silence on big issues or on any line that management deems not on its side.

The effect of this is most pernicious at the nexus between the media and economic/business reporting, and fairly obviously his experience represents an individual with an informed view being treated as a chattel by management when his message wasn’t part of their song. The same phenomena would explain the regular commentary on economic issues by a lot of people who manifestly don’t have all that much idea of what they are on about (utter irrelevancies writing for Uncle Rupert on Holden workplace agreements or Bernard Keane’s recent piece on the impact of a Holden departure being good examples), and, more disturbingly, a lot of the utter bullshit being tossed into the public domain by people who certainly do know what they are on about (eg much of the stuff being tossed up by Gittins or Pascoe over the last 18 months in the lead up to their recent conversions to the enormity of the economic task ahead of Australia). This state of affairs serves interests, and like in companies where ‘restructuring’ is to occur, is invariably used as a tool for protecting some interests at the expense of others. In essence, it is a form of power.

Australia’s ‘disease’ this time around stems largely from the decision to crush the exporting and import competing sectors of the economy through a strong AUD in order to fit in the investment phase of a mining boom, and part of that disease is the information management process articulating the advantages and disadvantages of that decision. Nobody has ever come out to lay claim to that, and it has never been explicitly discussed in the mainstream media, at least until far past the point where it was being presented as a fait accompli. A similar approach is invariably used with many Free Trade Agreements which sell out local interests (who invariably don’t get all that much media/information coverage) in favour of international interests – usually balanced out against a Potemkin press release of gains which are generally fairly marginal for ordinary people should they care to think about it (but from which they are dissuaded by a wall of business interest touting gains). In the same way nobody has ever conceptually rounded out why it is that we need to feed housing speculators to sustain aggregate demand through housing construction and the implications of doing this – its been fed to us piecemeal with the upside neon lit from rooftops and the downside unacknowledged (just don’t ask about future first home buyers, let alone whether they will service stupidly large mortgages in globally uncompetitive workplaces for inordinately long periods). And then there is immigration in much the same category – its big and it needs to be big, but we can’t ask why or to what purpose, or even how it can best be accommodated.

The problem with this approach, the same as the problem with inward focussed management is that what Don Rumsfeld would call ‘unknown unknowns’ are known not only in the wider marketplace (could we sell Australian assets at what we thought a good price but which the rest of the world thought cheap?) but also known, or suspected, by a large number of the underlings (think ordinary everyday Australians wondering about their electricity bills, job security, or hoping to buy a house in inner Sydney) who begin to question management’s approach, if not actively work against it. At a workplace level this condition presents as significant absenteeism, a lot of presenteeism (here but not doing much), and increasing levels of detachment. At a national level it presents as increasing disenchantment with the entire political process, and a brooding wait for the opportunity to give that disenchantment substance. And the disenchantment itself begins to deter effective long term policy making in favour of short term fixes for popularity, which may echo increasingly loudly with those who’s approval is being sought, and those seeking it, but has an increasingly myopic effect on the ‘known knowns’ world – the French refer to it as nombrillisme. In this environment conceptual trains of thought which would point to some outcomes being fairly logical start to become observed more for those who win or lose in the process, and for those factors which can or can’t be openly acknowledged (for the implications they carry for the wider entity).

Australia is here. Like organisations/companies/bureaucracies which cant openly say that a long serving manager is past his time or stovepiping in the organisation has made it inefficient, or that the end outcome of market testing/commercialization will be the evolution of the organisation without what has hitherto been key parts, the departure of Australian manufacturing gives rise to a number of major questions and issues, which our political and business leaders cant acknowledge without acknowledging some unpleasant truths. Without acknowledging the truths they can’t plan for a future which is closing in all too quickly.
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Foxy
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Zero is coming...

We have a super rich abundant country, we can afford to buy what we need.
Cut the crap, get with the program.
Peter
:pop:
http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/n/2/1/u/8/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1456285515560.png
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Count du Monet
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foxbat101
13 Dec 2013, 12:19 PM
We have a super rich abundant country, we can afford to buy what we need.
Cut the crap, get with the program.
Peter
:pop:
Australia is like Bactria in Alexanders Empire...........it ended up being fucked over in short order. :bl:

We'll be the first part of the Anglo world Empire to go down.
The next trick of our glorious banks will be to charge us a fee for using net bank!!!
You are no longer customer, you are property!!!

Don't be SAUCY with me Bernaisse
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Dr Watson
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Barista
12 Dec 2013, 08:38 PM
Australian leadership is all too often feeble, and its outstanding trait is its uniformity – good leaders are rare. What we all too often see is leaders who want to craft the people they would lead (generally though an implied threat, but often through speciously plausible bullshit as well) rather than engage with them and work with them. It doesn’t really matter whether it is an SME or a large employer, the national, state or local political stage, the organisation of a local cricket club, both sides of politics, large charities, universities, unions, or the public service.
James, are you writing essays for a university assignment? Is there a minimum word count? This will put your lecturer to sleep. You need to streamline your delivery. Cut to the chase man!
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt — Bertrand Russell
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Bukit Batok XI
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Dr Watson
13 Dec 2013, 01:18 PM
James, are you writing essays for a university assignment? Is there a minimum word count? This will put your lecturer to sleep. You need to streamline your delivery. Cut to the chase man!
If Gunna could get his message into picture books he probably would open up access a bit, but he nailed Australian management there - described it to a nicety - which makes me wonder if he knows what he is on about. And the MB crowd seemed to lap it up.

Australia has very very provincial management
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