Boiling Frogs [2007]
Is it just me or are metaphors like “boiling a frog” and “on the road to nowhere” being used more and more frequently to describe New Zealand’s future position?
Put it another way: Hands up those who DON’T think New Zealand’s going to the dogs!
And for those who don’t : how many times can you point to the success of Icebreaker, Pumpkin Patch, Rakon and 42 Below as evidence of our cutting edge business practice before it dawns on you that there are very few others?
It’s hard for New Zealanders to get too excited about our impending demise – especially when you know you’re working damn hard, your home’s rising in value, you have far more consumer choice than you used to and you’ve already achieved or surpassed the ambitions of not just your parents’ generation but most of your own.
As we used to say in Dunedin [as we boiled our frogs] it's all right here!
Anyway it’s hard to know what you can do about it. When you’re just starting to get your head around the fact that driving your SUV 30 kilometres to and from a farmers' market is not actually of net benefit to the planet – or that simply by existing you’re contributing to the destruction of several bird and plant species – it seems burdensome to have to also worry that your consumption of imported goods, your non export-earning job, your lack of protest at government fiscal policy and your planned holiday in Spain are contributing to a bleaker future for your children and your children's children.
That's not what we do! We're reactive - we wait till the last minute and then go - ooh.
In the meantime our dominant strategy for the demise of New Zealand is to find somewhere else to be. OE has become a great coping strategy, Australia is an extension of our labour market now for jobs at all levels of the economy, from labouring and manufacturing on up.
More and more of us see ourselves as citizens of the world – exporting ourselves for periods of time. It’s rare to find a university-educated New Zealander under 50 who has had continuous residence only in this country. Weird really.
I love the thinness of New Zealand – the fact that there are so many gaps to slide your ideas through, smart networks of smart people doing smart things and so few degrees of separation. But when coupled with ever-present kiwi myopia and this underlying fluidity in our economic lives, thinness can be a nuisance – especially when it comes to taking concerted action.
Those of us who want a more prosperous future need to take account of this. According to Vincent Heeringa of Idealog magazine, the people who led the Knowledge Wave conferences have all gone offshore to work now.
Not really persisting is it? But fair enough. Good on them for getting out there and doing it in the first place. It proves the point though - that it's easier to export ourselves than our ideas, our goods and our services.
People always rest on their laurels – as we are at present – long after they’ve dried up and faded. If you want change – discomfort, panic or fear is a useful start point. But even that's not enough on its own.
As the temperature of the water has risen over the last few decades, this frog New Zealand has jumped in and out of a few pots but found them all to be within a few degrees of each other.
The phase changes, discontinuities and jump shifts that have occurred have probably destroyed almost as much value as they’ve created.
So let’s be a bit creative and turn the issue around. If it's 2015 and New Zealand has become one of the leading countries in the OECD, what must have happened? I can see three immediate possibilities:-
- Our natural advantages of beauty, water, grass, temperateness, space, remoteness or stability – and the goods and services they enable – must be in really short supply somewhere else.
- We must have developed a very “sticky” culture of achievement, enterprise and creativity which attracted and retained not only our own brightest and best but also those of other countries.
- Or we adopted the strategy I suggested in a piece I wrote back in 2003 and systematically sabotaged the economies of those above us on the OECD list.
We’ve already done quite well on the first one out of Osama Bin Laden, Mad Cow disease and SARS. And Australia is running very short of water in parts. The West Coast beckons. . . very wet, very close . .
And yet I feel that success based on the demise of substantive parts of the rest of the world is a little like cutting off your nose to spite your face. That goes for # 3 as well unfortunately.
So how do you make a culture that’s good at attracting people who like to make the countries they live in richer?
The same way you do anything; build the core ideas to support the proposition – the memes and the brands; build the processes and infrastructure to sustain it; and create the incentives to retain a critical mass of them.
The usual stuff – money, challenge, opportunity, lifestyle, but also the real stuff of life – community, friendships and loved ones. . done better and smarter with enough people for long enough that it becomes "the way we do things here"..
In terms of perceptions of New Zealand, 100% pure and Lord of the Rings – the two most common NZ memes out there in the rest of the world now – still don't really say "come and be smart here" do they? Though they are better than that stuff about sheep.
But really, what would entice a citizen of the world to commit to building wealth here? Apart from burnout? Ask yourself: what would make an Aucklander move to Hawkes Bay?
Maybe it should be strictly rational stuff about investment and job opportunities, but it's really pretty much always about family. Family and a more laid-back lifestyle. We have to send out our children to marry these people and bring them back here to breed. One at a time. . . choosing only the best!
Cheers
Jill
Jill Caldwell is Director of Windshift Communications Ltd. Click Here to contact Jill directly This is a free monthly newsletter provided to direct subscribers and legitimate Windshift contacts only. No further use is made of subscriber information. [Copyright Windshift Communications Ltd 2006]
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"As we used to say in Dunedin [as we boiled our frogs] it's all right here! "
