Wellington
By understanding our culture’s inherent weaknesses when trying to grow businesses overseas, NewZealand will have a much better chance of making really good money from them.
“New Zealanders cling to a number of belief; beliefs that have become central to how we viewourselves as Kiwis and that are part of our mental models,” says Tony Smale, director of
Among our myths is the idea that New Zealand’s lifestyle is way too cool to be worried aboutour economic performance he says. There’s also the ‘ordinary Kiwi’ belief that we’re allreally just the same.
“We fail to recognise just how special our top performers are and what huge impacts they haveon business performance,” Smale says. “That they either intuitively think differently or havedeveloped specific mental models that are different to most. If you want a high profile example of atop performer and the impact on an organisation – think
Smale says a recent MED report stated that if a manager’sperformance is shifted from the bottom quarter to the top quarter, it is equivalent to increasinglabour output by 41% or capital by 77%.
The most damaging myth is the #8 gauge wire, DIY self-reliance belief. While a defining advantagefor a pioneering nation, it is a misfit with a modern knowledge-based economy. Such an attitude isgood for going stuff on a small scale than to growing businesses and extracting the maximum valuefor our efforts he says.
A first step to stepping outside our cultural beliefs is for a company to carry out anintellectual assets assessment Smale says.
“Businesses that fully exploit their intellectual assets create greater returns and value fortheir shareholders,” he says. “Intellectual assets are represented not just in legal patents andtrademarks, but also in the business’s personnel, their collective knowledge, know-how andaccumulated experience, customer databases and relationships, trade-secrets and many other elementsthat are often not even recognised, let alone recorded, protected and managed.”
Another way to capture value is to own and manage much more of NZ business’s distributionchannels.
“Many of our products and services find their way to the end user via long and complexchannels; channels that frequently play Kiwi firms and sectors off one against the other,” Smalesays. “Those channels often create and harvest more value than the Kiwi producers. But, perhapsmore significantly, they create communication barriers between our firms and the people thatactually use the products, compounding our habit of thinking for our customers, and our reluctanceto listen and respond to customer feedback.”
From a business point of view, this is not just about cutting out the proverbial middle man.
“It is about bold promises, reassurances, building direct relationships with the people who buythe product – and getting one step closer to the people who consume the product,” he says.
Understanding ourselves better, how we think and engage with our customers, and how they want tothink and want to engage, we will be in a much better position to adopt innovation and managementpractices that help create and harvest maximum value without the need to work even longer and harderSmale says.