I was asked by my Alma Mater, Victoria University of Wellington, to give a 90-minute lecture on leadership last week to students visiting New Zealand from Peking University and the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. (My half-serious suggestion that I spoke Cantonese and the three students from Guangdong who understood could translate to Mandarin to the rest of their classmates was turned down.) The above was the second slide, and the four main points I wanted to get across. When I posted this on Facebook and Instagram, it got quite a few likes, so I’m sharing it more publicly here.
They were a personal look at my style of leadership and what drove my career over the last quarter-century or so.
The first one was more down to luck and necessity than my being a great visionary who foresaw virtual firms and how we could be brought together through online communications. The second, however, is probably down to a number of factors, though one must also evaluate the risk of taking those steps.
The third and fourth, however, should be things we can all accomplish, by finding causes close to our hearts.
One student asked about the fourth, because she noted that there were circumstances where dissent might land one in trouble. (You may think I was taking a dig at China there, but I suspect Edward Snowden might have a thing or two to say about that.) I gave her the example of a person who had a criminal record for a minor matter because he had fallen in with the wrong crowd, and had repaid his debt to society. Did he deserve a leg up because you knew he was a good person? Now, what if that person wanted to go for a particular job? Even if the glass ceiling isn’t shattered, you can still put cracks in it if you believe he’s the best person for it. Help him out: give him feedback on his CV, offer him advice, help rehearse a job interview.
What if it was someone who wanted to go to a good school but his parents couldn’t afford it? Would you write a letter of endorsement and put your weight behind his application for a scholarshipâbecause you knew he would make the most of that opportunity?
My apologies for the use of the masculine pronoun but the above are based on real-world examples.
We all have something to offer the next person, and those opportunities to help others will always arise.
I’ve had a wonderful time in Pune and Mumbai, two cities to which I had wanted to go for some years. Like some New Agers say: be careful what you put out into the universe. It can come true.
My main reason for going was to address the Knowledge Globalization Conference at FLAME in Pune. FLAME’s campus is remarkable: 1,000 acres, near a fancy golf course, and completely teetotal (which actually suits a social-only drinker like me). The scenery in the valley is stunning, and the sound of the water trickling down the mountain during the winter was particularly relaxing.
But as with any place one visits, it’s never the scenery that makes it: it’s the people. And in Pune I found a sense of optimism from all people from all walks of life, one which I hadn’t seen for quite some time.
I also ran into Deo Sharma from Sweden, whom I first met in 2002 in KĂžbenhavn. When there are coincidences like that, you know you’re on to a good thing.
Equally inspirational was addressing the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication. This talk, arranged through my friend Nishit Kumarâwho learned I got a bigger buzz sharing knowledge than sitting on a beach relaxingâwas attended by 600 students at different year levels. When you see a school like that, and students prepared to ask tough questions (both in person and later on Twitter), you feel encouraged that Pune has an incredible future ahead.
And before I advance to my next point, Mumbai was just as fantastic, and I need to acknowledge my old friend Parmesh Shahani, who let me stay with him in a home that beats some of the art galleries I have seen.
Everywhere you go in Pune, you see schools. A lot of tertiary institutions. Like so many Asian families, Indians place education highly. I had two parents who never seemed to go out on the town because we weren’t made of money, and everything they had went to my private schooling. I can well comprehend this mentality.
Which, of course, begs the question: why isn’t our country doing more in this sector with India?
I realize things are gradually changing as we incorporate more air routes directly to India and the government begins focusing on our fellow Commonwealth nation, but, as with capitalizing on the wave of Hong Kong emigration in the 1990s, I fear we might be too slow. Again.
This is nothing new. I’ve been saying it since the mid-2000s, on this blog and elsewhere. Privately I’ve probably been uttering it for even longer, before we nominated Infosys of Bangalore as one of our Brands with a Conscience at the Medinge Group.
And yet in the quest to get a free-trade deal with Beijing, we brushed aside India, a country with whom we have a shared heritage, a lingua franca, and a lot of games of cricket.
When I first went to India in 2008, one Indore businessman asked me: why on earth did New Zealand pursue the Chinese deal ahead of the Indian deal?
âFollow the money,â I swiftly answered, a response to which I got a round of applause.
I know the numbers may well have been in China’s favour, but sometimes, there is something to be said for understanding what is behind those numbers. And there is also something to be said for looking at old friendships and valuing them.
We can’t turn the clock back, nor might we want to, but it seems greater tie-ups with Indian education could be a great way to expose the next generation to more cultural sharing.
While in Pune, there was news of two Indian student murders in Manchester, which won’t have done the British national image a great deal of good. Australia already suffers from a tarnished image of racism toward Indian students, one which the Gillard government is hurriedly addressing with advertising campaigns featuring Indian Australians. It strikes me that there is an opportunity here in New Zealand, now that I have apologized for Paul Henry. Only kidding. I don’t think that I had much influence doing so unofficially, but I felt I had to get it off my chest, and I did apologize.
I was frank about it. I was frank about Henry, and I don’t mean Benny Hawkins off Crossroads. I was frank about the Indian immigrant who had to change his Christian name to something sounding more occidental before he got job interviewsâprior to that he did not get a single response. But, I also noted, none of this would be out in the open in the mainstream media if New Zealanders, deep down, were not caring, decent people. The incidents would have been covered up.
Despite what we might think, most folks didn’t realize that we had a decent high-tech industry, that we are the home of Weta, and that Tintin, The Lord of the Rings and King Kong were local efforts. Although Players had only been out for three days by that pointâand not to particularly good reviews, eitherâfew realized a third of it was filmed in New Zealand.
They still think of sheep.
But there is a generation which, despite a huge domestic market and the optimism in their own country, wants an overseas experience, and the occident is still regarded as the place to do it in.
When they heard there was the possibility of high-tech jobs in a beautiful land, ears pricked up.
I realize the OECD stats say we’re average when it comes to innovation, but I know it’s there, under the radar, growing. People like Prof Sir Paul Callaghan reckon it’s the realistic way forward for our nation. Interestingly, this message sounds an awful lot like the one I communicated during my 2010 mayoral campaign.
And if we are to grow it, then maybe working with our Indian brothers and sisters is the exactly the direction we need to follow.
The Motor Trade Association, whose conference and expo are on in Rotorua this November, has some last-minute sponsorship deals going. I’ll be heading up to speak on social media, and if anyone would like to reach this industry and the sizable numbers that are going to be there this year, events’ manager Anna McGeorge has some specials and would love to hear from you.
You can have your logo on the vehicles heading between the Repco Carnival and the MTA Gala Dinner for NZ$3,000; speak at the MTA Council breakfast on November 11 at NZ$1,500 (along with having your display banners and signage up); sponsor the MTA Gala Awards dinner (no reasonable offer refused, but retail is NZ$20,000); buy a full-page ad or insert for $500; or get your logo at the registration desk (with wifi) for NZ$1,500. The PDF brochure with further info is linked here, and you can reach Anna on anna.mcgeorge@mta.org.nz or 64 4 381-8802.
Earlier this month, I gave a workshop talk to the Leadership and Development Conference for the New Zealand Chinese Association in Auckland.
I’ve just uploaded the speech notes, and as I did so, I wanted to append a few more thoughts.
The topic was identityânot just branding, but personal identity.
My self-critique ex post facto was that I spent insufficient time discussing my mayoral campaign, which, I am told, was the one area the audience wanted to hear more of. In the hour’s space, I spent more of it on the theories behind personal branding.
It’s not hard to see why the young Chinese New Zealanders who attended this conference wanted to hear more about politics. First up, the title of the conference was a big clue. If you weren’t interested in leadership, you wouldn’t be there.
Secondly, they’ll have grown up in a far more equal and fair society than I did. Which means they have more opportunities to seek the jobs they want. They won’t be limited by societal expectations and the false stereotypes will be waning.
While there have been mayors of Chinese ethnicity in New Zealand for the last 40 years, it has only been in recent times that men like Meng Foon and Peter Chin have surfaced and brought a modern face to these positions.
With the departure of Pansy Wong from Parliament, ‘Asians’ are underrepresented more than ever.
God knows how many times I have heard the BS line of ‘But Chinese people aren’t interested in politics.’
Funny, considering China has had politicians for most of the last five millennia and I come from a long line of them.
And that’s the experience I should have shared more of with the Auckland audience. If we’re to be better represented, then we should be giving young people the courage to do what they want to do.
If they’re interested in politics, then by all means, they should seize the day, and who gives a damn what their ethnicity is?
The good news is that I didn’t experience much racism on the campaign trail. Our media were above board on this front, which shows some level of maturity has come into New Zealand society. Bias came in due to politicking in at least one case, but, generally, the fourth estate did well.
I noticed a couple of instances where my lack of council experience became a talking-point. This is despite three of the last five mayors lacking council experience.
Considering the structure of Wellington City Council needs fresh eyes to examine it, not being part of the furniture and having a healthy scepticism toward Humphrey Applebys might be a good thing.
But they were valid concerns for some people, though to be dismissed by a few members of our media because of it means that fresh ideas won’t surface in our society, at least not till the idealism has gone out of them through groupthink and establishmentarianism.
What would have been worth discussing with the audience was the idea that there will always be forces that try to include and exclude. I’m not pointing fingers because we all do it. The whole debating season I had with my five opponents was about oneupmanship.
However, it would have been a great exercise to have looked at how they could overcome exclusion in their careers. And without changing their names.
It would have tied neatly back into my criticism of the Uncle Tom behaviour.
I apologize for furthering another stereotype: I realize Tom was a far more noble character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin than what people would believe today. I use the term only as a shortcut.
The behaviour, I am sorry to say, has existed among our own race, too.
I feel it’s still a concern when I see certain people who buy in to comfortable stereotypes, and use them to shoot down someone. Worse still, when they use them to shoot down someone of their own colour.
It serves neither the majority nor the minority.
And given that the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders gave me a fair go, you’d hope that we’d have seen an end to the Uncle Tom mentality.
That would have been a great debate.
Fortunately, there were equally members of the Kiwi Chinese community who were extremely encouraging toward my candidacy, because they had grown up with racism not unlike my own experience. They tried to redress the balance wherever possible, and I was extremely grateful for that.
So many used their contacts to make life easier for my campaignâand it was through those and many other efforts that we punched well above our weight. Netting a third of the numbers of the victor on a tenth of the money is no mean feat.
The good still outweighs the bad when it comes to race, and it can only get better for our young people. If all Kiwis get to do the things they are most passionate about, without prejudices about what they âshouldâ be doing, they will ultimately benefit New Zealand.
I keep telling people, most recently Mark Westerby, the producer, at last night’s Pecha Kucha where we both spoke, about âa cartoon strip that’s written by a six-year-old and drawn by his 20-something brotherâ. Except I encountered it so long ago that, beyond a few initial Tweets and a long browse of their website, I had forgotten its name.
A quick search on Duck Duck Go located it: itâs called Axe Cop, and can be found at axecop.com.
It’s a work of genius. Malachai Nicolle, who began the Axe Cop saga when he was five, comes up with the ideas. His older brother, Ethan, 29, gets his younger brother’s ideas and draws them up as a comic strip. So for those who ever wondered what rests in the mind of a five-year-old boy, Axe Cop answers that question.
Many of us, while we admire the thought processes of a child, might not be able to use our own imaginations to appreciate fully what he or she has drawn. The Nicolle brothers solve that problem: while the interpretation still has a filter, this one’s probably finer than many, since the pair are related and a big brother is far more likely to be sympathetic to his own kin in ensuring that his execution is faithful.
Below is a video made just under a year ago showing the writing process.
Episode 1 has been turned into a motion comic by Axe Cop fans, and gives you an idea of how the saga began:
I really admire the work of the Nicolle brothers. It also helps those of us who are grown up to try to recapture the thought processes that we had when we were children. The obvious benefit is to innovation and product-development, freeing us from the rigour of standardized methods. It could go even further: remember when we were innocent, free from notions of racism and prejudice?
Sometimes, we have a lot to learn from children.
