I rewatched Princess of Chaos, the TV drama centred around my friend, Bevan Chuang. Iâm proud to have stood by her at the time, because, well, thatâs what you do for your friends.
Iâm not here to revisit any of the happenings that the TV movie deals withâBevan says it brings her closure so that is thatâbut to examine one scene where her character laments being Asian and being âinvisibleâ. How hard we work yet we arenât seen. The model minority. Expected to be meek and silent and put up with stuff.
Who in our community hasnât felt this?
While the younger generations of the majority are far, far better than their forebears, the expectation of invisibility was something thatâs been a double-edged sword when I look back over my life.
The expectation of invisibility was never going to sit well with me.
I revelled in being different, and I had a family who was supportive and wise enough to guide me through being different in our new home of Aotearoa New Zealand.
My father frequently said, when speaking of the banana Chineseâthose who proclaim themselves yellow on the outside and white on the insideâthat they can behave as white as they want, but thereâll always be people whoâll see the yellow skin and treat them differently. And in some cases, unfairly.
He had reason to believe this. My mother was underpaid by the Wellington Hospital Board for a considerable time despite her England and Wales nursing qualification. A lot of correspondence ensuedâI still remember Dad typing formal letters on his Underwood 18, of which we probably still have carbons. Dad felt pressuredâmaybe even bullied to use todayâs parlanceâby a dickhead manager at his workplace.
Fortunately, even in the 1970s, good, decent, right-thinking Kiwis outnumbered the difficult ones, though the difficult ones could get away with a lot, lot more, from slant-eye gestures to telling us to go back to where we came from openly. I mean, February 6 was called New Zealand Day! Go back another generation to a great-uncle who came in the 1950s, and he recalls white kids literally throwing stones at Chinese immigrants.
So there was no way I would become a banana, and give up my culture in a quest to integrate. The parents of some of my contemporaries reasoned differently, as they had been in the country for longer, and hoped to spare their children the physical harm they endured. They discouraged their children from speaking their own language, in the hope they could achieve more.
As a St Markâs pupil, I was at the perfect school when it came to being around international classmates, and teachers who rewarded academic excellence regardless of oneâs colour. All of this bolstered my belief that being different was a good thing. I wasnât invisible at my school. I did really well. I was dux.
It was a shock when I headed to Rongotai College as most of the white boys were all about conforming. The teachers did their best, but so much of my class, at least, wanted to replicate what they thought was normal society in the classroom, and a guy like meâChinese, individualistic, with a sense of selfâwas never going to fit in. It was a no-brainer to go to Scots College when a half-scholarship was offered, and I was around the sort of supportive school environment that I had known in my primary and intermediate years, with none of the other boys keen to pigeonhole you. Everyone could be themselves. Thank goodness.
But there were always appearances from the conformist attitudes in society. As I headed to university and announced I would do law and commerce, there was an automatic assumption that the latter degree would be in accounting. I would not be visible doing accounting, in a back room doing sums. For years (indeed, until very recently) the local branch of the Fairfax Press had Asian employees but that was where they were, not in the newsroom. We wouldnât want to offend its readers, would we?
My choice of these degrees was probably driven, subconsciously, by the desire to be visible and to give society a middle finger. I wasnât going to be invisible. I was going to pursue the interests that I had, and to heck with societal expectations based along racial lines. I had seen my contemporaries at college do their best to conform: either put your head down or play sport. There was no other role. If you had your head up and didnât play sport at Rongotai, there was something wrong with you. Maybe you were a âfaggotâ or âpoofterâ or some other slur that was bandied about, I dare say by boys who had uncertainties about their own sexuality and believed homophobia helped them.
I loved design. I loved cars. Nothing was going to change that. So I pursued a design career whilst doing my degrees. I could see how law, marketing and management would play a role in what I wanted to do in life. When I launched Lucire, it was âagainst typeâ on so many fronts. I was doing it online, that was new. I was Chinese, and a cis het guy. And it was a very public role: as publisher I would attend fashion shows, doing my job. In the early days, I would be the only Chinese person amongst the press.
And I courted colleagues in the press, because I was offering something new. That was also intentional: to blaze a trail for anyone like me, a Chinese New Zealander in the creative field who dared to do something different. I wasnât the first, of course: Raybon Kan comes to mind (as a fellow St Markâs dux) with his television reviews in 1990 that showed up almost all who had gone before with his undeniable wit; and Lynda Chanwai-Earle whose poetry was getting very noticed around this time. Clearly we needed more of us in these ranks if we were going to make any impact and have people rethink just who we were and just what we were capable of. And it wasnât in the accountsâ department, or being a market gardener, serving you at a grocery store or takeaway, as noble as those professions also are. I have family in all those professions. But I was out on a quest to break the conformity that Aotearoa clung toâand that drove everything from typeface design to taking Lucire into print around the world and running for mayor of Wellington. It might not have been the primary motive, but it was always there, lingering.
This career shaped me, made me less boring as an individual, and probably taught me what to value in a partner, too. And thank goodness I found someone who also isn’t a conformist.
When we first met, Amanda did ask me why I had so many friends from the LGBTQIA+ community. I hadn’t really realized it, but on reflection, the answer was pretty simple: they, too, had to fight conformist attitudes, to find their happy places. No wonder I got along with so many. All my friends had stood out one way or another, whether because of their interests, their sexuality, how they liked to be identified, their race, their way of thinking, or something else. These are the people who shape the world, advance it, and make it interesting. Theyâweâweren’t going to be pigeonholed.
Itâs not every day your Alma Mater gives you an award. I was very humbled to be recognized tonight by Victoria University of Wellington for my contribution to the Alumni as Mentors programme. The hard work is really the VUW teamâs, who do such an amazing job matching us with students, and providing resources and support throughout the duration of our mentoring. TÄnÄ rawa atu koutou.
At the Alumni as Mentors event tonight at Vic Uni. Lots of alumni volunteer their time every year to work with students. But only one has [participated] every year, former mayoral candidate @jackyan, ka rawe Jack. 👏 pic.twitter.com/o8bV7RoS6V
— 1. Matthew Reweti for Te Whanganui-a-Tara (@poneke_matt) September 21, 2022
Something is crashing my PC and taking Eudora mailboxes with it.
The latest is losing my Q3 outbox table of contents, which I suppose isnât as bad as losing the inbox, outbox, and all third-quarter emails, though being at the end of the week, there was still some repairing from the weekend back-up I made.
The outbox was there but the table of contents was corrupted, and when Eudora rebuilds, for some reason the recipient isnât recorded, only the sender.
Once again I was faced with a line-by-line (or, rather, group-by-group) comparison of the back-up and the existing mailboxes, to see what changes had been made since the 11th.
Above: What remained of the third-quarter outbox. I can no longer group this âbox by recipient, since Eudora doesn’t rebuild sent email folders with the recipient in the relevant column.
There were about three dozen emails that werenât in common.
The below Windows crash appears to have happened just after the last recorded ârecipient-lessâ email in the corrupted table of contents.
That was a while back, but I do remember another crash that slowed the computer to a crawl, with the non-closing app on restart being something to do with an AMD capturing window error.
Could AMDâs software be crashing and deleting mailboxes? If so, itâs cost me many, many hours of frustration and the knowledge that I have a corrupted table of contents for this quarterâs emails that will never be fixedâa rare imperfection among years of perfectly archived âboxes.
I was also able to trace it to when I sent a message to a friend on Facebook who is not easily reachable by other means. Since I rarely use the site it was pretty easy to pinpoint when I was last there.
Considering my phone died after installing Whatsapp what’s the bet that running Facebook on a desktop browser kills your desktop’s data?
Itâs as I always say: the newer the software doesnât mean more reliable. Just ask anyone using Facebook today.
I have updated the AMD driver so letâs see if the bug recurs. Iâm considering running Eudora back-ups on a daily basis but the weekly Windows back-up takes in many other work folders, and I donât believe thereâs a way to run a second job through the default service.
I visited a dental surgeon earlier this week and noticed his software didnât perform as he wished. He couldnât edit things in his billing software due to a bug. He had to return to the file minutes later and repeat the task before the program let him.
I dispute those who say I encounter more bugs than the average user. Watching the surgeon, he just lived with the bug, and knew that if he waited long enough, his program would allow him to make edits again. It seems to be a bug affecting the most basic of tasks. The difference, I imagine, is that he didnât document the stupidity of the software developer in preventing him from doing a fundamental task, whereas I regularly call them out, especially when it comes to common sites such as Google or Facebook where the (misplaced) expectation is that they must hire the best. Not always.
Prof Sir Geoffrey Palmer once said in one of his lectures, âThe more lawyers there are, the more poor lawyers there are.â The analogy in software is, âThe more software developers there are, the more thick software developers there are.â Like any profession, and I include law, not everyone who graduates is smart. Just look at some of our politicians who claim to have law degrees.
A few thoughts about Twitter from the last 24 hours, other than âPlease leave grown-up discussions to grown-upsâ: (a) itâs probably not a smart idea to get aggro (about a joke you donât understand because you arenât familiar with the culture) from your companyâs account, especially when you donât have a leg to stand on; (b) deleting your side of the conversation might be good if your boss ever checks, although on my end âreplying to [your company name]â is still there for all to see; and (c) if your job is âChief Marketing Officerâ then it may pay to know that marketing is about understanding your audiences (including their culture), not about signalling that your workplace hires incompetently and division must rule the roost.
Iâm not petty enough to name names (I’ve forgotten the person but I remember the company), but it was a reminder why Twitter has jumped the shark when some folks get so caught up in their insular worlds that opposing viewpoints must be shouted down. (And when that fails, to stalk the account and start a new thread.)
The crazy thing is, not only did this other Tweeter miss the joke that any Brit born, well, postwar would have got, I actually agreed with him politically and said so (rule number one in marketing: find common ground with your audience). Nevertheless, he decided to claim that I accused Britons of being racist (why would I accuse the entirety of my own nationâI am a dual nationalâof being racist? Itâs nowhere in the exchange) among other things. That by hashtagging #dontmentionthewar in an attempt to explain that Euroscepticism has been part of British humour for decades meant that I was âobsessed by warâ. Guess he never saw The Italian Job, either, and clearly missed when Fawlty Towers was voted the UKâs top sitcom. I also imagine him being very offended by this, but it only works because of the preconceived notions we have about ‘the Germans’:
The mostly British audience found it funny. Why? Because of a shared cultural heritage. There’s no shame in not getting it, just don’t get upset when others reference it.
Itâs the classic ploy of ignoring the core message, getting angry for the sake of it, and when one doesnât have anything to go on, to attack the messenger. I see enough of that on Facebook, and itâs a real shame that this is what a discussion looks like on Twitter for some people.
I need to get over my Schadenfreude as I watched this person stumble in a vain attempt to gain some ground, but sometimes people keep digging and digging. And I donât even like watching accident scenes on the motorway.
And I really need to learn to mute those incapable of sticking to the factsâI can handle some situations where you get caught up in your emotions (weâre all guilty of this), but you shouldnât be blinded by them.
What I do know full well now is that there is one firm out there with a marketing exec who fictionalizes what you said, and it makes you wonder if this is the way this firm behaves when there is a normal commercial dispute. Which might be the opposite to what the firm wished.
As one of my old law professors once said (Iâm going to name-drop: it was the Rt Hon Prof Sir Geoffrey Palmer, KCMG, AC, QC, PC), âThe more lawyers there are, the more poor lawyers there are.â Itâs always been the same in marketing: the more marketers there are, the more poor marketers there are. And God help those firms that let the latter have the keys to the corporate Twitter account.
I enjoyed that public law class with Prof Palmer, and I wish I could remember other direct quotations he made. (I remember various facts, just not sentences verbatim like that oneâthen again I donât have the public law expertise of the brilliant Dr Caroline Morris, who sat behind me when we were undergrads.)
Itâs still very civil on Mastodon, and one of the Tooters that I communicate with is an ex-Tweeter whose account was suspended. I followed that account and there was never anything, to my knowledge, that violated the TOS on it. But Twitter seems to be far harder to gauge in 2019â20 on just what will get you shut down. Guess it could happen any time to anyone. Shall we expect more in their election year? Be careful when commenting on US politics: it mightnât be other Tweeters you need to worry about. And they could protect bots before they protect you.
Since I havenât Instagrammed for agesâI think I only had one round of posting in mid-Januaryâhereâs how the sun looked to the west of my office. I am told the Canberra fires have done this. Canberra is some 2,300 km away. For my US readers, this is like saying a fire in Dallas has affected the sunlight in New York City.
Iâve had a big life change, and I think thatâs why Instagramming has suddenly left my routine. I miss some of the contact, and some dear friends message me there, knowing that doing so on Facebook makes no sense. I did give the impression to one person, and I publicly apologize to her, that I stopped Instagramming because the company is owned by Facebook, but the fact is Iâve done my screen time for the day and Iâve no desire to check my phone and play with a buggy app. Looks like seven years (late 2012 to the beginning of 2020) was what it took for me to be Instagrammed out, shorter than Facebook, where it took 10 (2007 to 2017).
A rebrand should be done with consultation, and that should be factored in to any decision-making. In the 2010s, it should consider out-of-the-box suggestions, especially in an increasingly cluttered market-place. It should be launched internally first, then externally. A new logo would surface after months of exhaustive design work. The result should be something distinctive and meaningful that resonates with all audiences.
Meanwhile, hereâs one done by my Alma Mater amongst false claims, poor analyses, and considerable opposition, with the resulting logo appearing a mere week after the powers-that-be voted to ignore the feedback. In branding circles, any professional will tell you that there’s no way a logo can appear that quicklyâunless, of course, Victoria University of Wellington had no inclination to listen to any of its audiences during its “feedback” process. But then, maybe this was done in a hurry:
The result is flawed and lacks quality. Without even getting into the symbol or the typography, the hurried nature of this design is evident with the margin: the text is neither optically nor mathematically aligned, and accurately reflects the lack of consideration that this rebrand has followed. The one symbol I like, the ceremonial crest, does away with the type, and judging from the above, it’s just as well.
I like change, and my businesses have thrived on it. But this left much to be desired from the moment we got wind of it. It supplants a name sourced from Queen Victoria with the name of an even older, white, male historical figure, creates confusion with at least three universities that share its initials if it is to be abbreviated UoW (Woollongong, Wah, Winchester; meanwhile the University of Washington is UW), and offers little by way of differentiation.
Yes, there are other Victoria Universities out there. To me thatâs a case of sticking with the name and marketing it more cleverly to be the dominant oneâand forcing others to retrench. Where did the Kiwi desire to be number one go? Actually, how bad was the confusion, as, on the evidence, Iâm unconvinced.
If itâs about attracting foreign students, then alumnus Callum Osborneâs suggestion of Victoria University of New Zealand is one example to trade on the nation brand, which rates highly.
There were many ways this could have gone, and at each turn amateurism and defeatism appeared, at least to my eyes, to be the themes. #UnWell
A letter I penned today to Prof Grant Guilford, Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University of Wellington. I support the official adoption of a Māori name (I thought it had one?) but removing Victoria is daft, for numerous reasons, not least the University’s flawed research, dealt with elsewhere.
Wellington, August 8, 2018
Prof Grant Guilford
Vice-Chancellor Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600
Wellington 6011
New Zealand
Dear Prof Guilford:
Re. Name change for Victoria University of Wellington
There have been many arguments against why Victoria University of Wellington should change its name. Count me in as endorsing the views of Mr Geoff McLay, whose feedback the University has already received.
To his comments, I would like to add several more.
First, since I graduated from Vic for the fourth time in 2000, brandingâa subject I have an above-average knowledge of, being the co-chair of the Swedish think tank Medinge Group and with books and academic articles to my nameâhas become a more bottom-up affair. In lay terms, all successful brands need their communityâs support to thrive. Not engaging that community properly, and putting forth unconvincing arguments for change when asked, fails âBranding 101â by todayâs standards. I donât believe those of us favouring the status quo are a minority. Weâre simply the ones who have engaged with the University.
As an alumnus, I have a great deal of pride in âVicâ, so much so that I have returned to support many of its programmes, namely Alumni as Mentors and the BA Internships. The Universityâs view of market-place confusion is, to my mind, a defeatist position, one which says, âOh, thereâs confusion, so letâs cede our position to the others who lay claim to âVictoriaâ.â Thatâs not the attitude that I have toward our fine university.
The alternative is to stand firm and build the brand on a global scale, something that is more than possible if the University were to adopt some lessons from international marketing and branding.
I have done it numerous times professionally, and for New Zealand companies with strictly limited budgets, and the University has an enviable and proud network of alumni who, I suspect, are willing to help.
Vic has told us for years it is âworld-classâ, and I expect it to stand by those claimsâincluding confidence in its own name, not unlike the great universities in the US and UK. A lot of it is in the way the brand is positioned. Confidence goes a long way, including confidence in saying, âThis is the real Victoria.â
Kiwis are adept at being more authentic, something which a strong branding campaign would highlight.
As alumnus, and fellow St Markâs old boy, Callum Osborne notes, if there is to be a geographic qualifier, New Zealand has far more brand equity than Wellington, so if a change is to occur, then âVictoria University of New Zealandâ is an appropriate way forward.
âUniversity of Wellingtonâ says little, and there are Wellingtons elsewhere, too.
This isnât about apeing others, but being so distinct in the way the University communicates, symbolizes and differentiates itself to all of its audiences. To be fair, I have only seen pockets of that since graduating, yet I believe it is possible, and it can be unlocked.
As promised to the MMBA 505 class at Victoria University of Wellington last night, here are my slides. My thanks to Dr Kala Retna for inviting me along as the guest speaker. To the students: thank you for attending at such a late hour. MBAs are hard work.
I just realized I used to have a whole page of downloadable slides, which I believe we removed when we redid the site for the 2013 Wellington mayoral election. It might be time to reinstate the page with the presentations I’ve been doing here and abroad. Thoughts on Leadership is probably self-explanatory as a title, with my main five points being:
1. Be the first.
2. Prove something can be done when conventional wisdom says it canât be.
3. Change the world for the better.
4. Break glass ceilings wherever you can find them.
5. Find the people who understand your vision.
The first four tend to be the “rules” that have guided me, while the fifth is one I had to learn the hard way some years ago, and can retitled: ‘Find the people who understand your vision and don’t get suckered by those who spout buzzwords.’ As a firm we tend to be a bit more of a closed shop than we used to be, and like any other, we get our share of fakes trying to ride off our coat-tails. Lucire seems to attract quite a few, in particular, which is what the fifth point addresses in some part.
For a bit of levity after the academic stuff, there’s always this great podcast by Mike Riversdale and Raj Khushal, published today with me as their guest, as part of their ongoing Access Granted series. Only a little bit has been cut for commercial sensitivity, and the rest is a bit of light-hearted banterâthe sort you’d have between mates, and I have known Mike and Raj for many yearsâwith no hair-pulling.
The latest Victoria University study, expressing that there is a shortage of creative people, sounds very familiar. Dr Richard Norman highlights in a Fairfax Press editorial that knowledge economy companies are âstruggling to capitalise on opportunities for growth because of limited local talent âŠ
âMany of these companies are well-seasoned and high-earningâa third of those interviewed had total sales of over $50 million for the most recent financial year and about half had been here for more than two decades.â
The study also revealed, ‘Views varied widely about the effectiveness of current promotion of Wellington. The strongest recurring idea for promotion of Wellingtonâs attributes was to focus on its potential as a digital city.’
In other words, had people been listening to this sectorâas I had for many yearsâthis comes as no surprise.
In both my mayoral campaigns, I expressed that Wellington needed to be open for business for tech and the knowledge economy, and last year I made it very clear that I would find ways to bridge the training at the tertiary level with these very companies seeking talented graduates. Not only would there be a city-supported internship programme modelled on that of Dunedin, but specifically geared to this sector, but there would be another that would connect graduates directly to these firms, which told me that they knew these young people were there, but their sits vac werenât known to them.
Wellington is a haven for companies operating in the knowledge economy, whether itâs down to our creativity thanks to the highest-profile firms being based here (Xero, Trade Me) or our workâlife balance, and it has been heading that way for all of my career, since I began developing digital fonts in the 1980s and digital publications as the 1990s unfolded.
Frictionless exports form part of a productive, profitable future for our city and yet they have often been ignored by some of the same-again politicians and business âleadersâ who have a Life on Mars mindset to our economy.
To this end I approached the Chancellor at Victoria University last week, and formally in writing earlier this week, to see if I could still create something that would help todayâs students find the jobs that they want.
Already I had signed up to the Alumni as Mentors programme (on to my second âmenteeâ now), and was part of the pilot programme for Vic internships late last year, to help enhance the employment prospects of final-year students. But that’s just in one company. I can do more.
After a discussion with a senior Victoria University professor last year, I was very keen, had I been elected as mayor, to get Wellington to a level of critical mass when it came to R&D and technology. I have similarly been talking to representatives at other tertiary institutions such as Weltec, and of course, I still serve on one advisory board at Whitireia.
My hands are more tied as a private citizen, and things will take longer, but they are still worth doing.
As Dr Normanâs study was developed in partnership with the Greater Wellington Regional Council, with support from Grow Wellington and the Wellington City Council, there will be others who are thinking along the same lines. Iâm sure that all these efforts will intersect, but we have to act.
I only wish such a study was released a year earlier, as I don’t recall anything of the sort in The Dominion Post during the election cycle.
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.
Here’s an article from Autoblog that combines several of the themes I enjoy writing about: cars, leadership, management and education.
I’ve already hinted at this on my Facebook fan page, where I seem to post some of the pithy things these days. I sometimes try to avoid blogging about the same thingâa lot of what you see here are ideas that haven’t changed, especially a lot of the posts about social responsibility and branding.
I don’t want to dissuade anyone from getting higher education but one has to remember: education, especially tertiary education, is meant to open your mind to other possibilities and to get you thinking about them critically. It’s why I enjoyed papers at law school like public law and jurisprudence: both had lecturers (Prof Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Assoc Prof Ian Macduff) who enjoyed a well reasoned argument, even when it didn’t agree with their own thinking. It’s also why I didn’t appreciate banking law, or several other papers, where you had to agree 100 per cent with the lecturer, and to hell with independent thinking.
The MBA, then, can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing for those who treat it as it should be: a skill set, providing a framework, from which to analyse things. A curse for those who believe that certain case studies must be followed religiously, failing to take into account the conditions of their own organizations. Which brings us neatly to the Volkswagen case.
It may be a bit of a simplification to say that MBA thinking killed GM, and Volkswagen has eschewed that to become one of the world’s greatest car manufacturers, but it’s not too far from the truth. If you read period American books on managementâor even one of my favourites, Lee Iacocca’s autobiographyâthere is this idea of what ‘efficiency’ is, usually with a lot of outsourcing, finding cheaper and cheaper bases of manufacture, with another eye on how to raise the share price for the quarter. Not the best way to run a firm, especially when visions need to be set for years, decades or quarter-centuries. I’ve written about that aspect before.
But the way John McElroy puts it in his article, ‘efficiency’ means an absence of overlap and vertical integration, yet with them, Volkswagen AG is the world’s largest car company ‘if you measure it by revenue and profits. Its revenue of $200 billion is greater than every other OEM. Last year’s operating profit of $14 billion is the kind of performance you expect from Big Oil companies, not automakers.’ Yet:
Any efficiency expert would tell you that VW is too vertically integrated, has too much overlap and duplication, and has way too many brands. VW, meanwhile, keeps growing bigger, stronger and more profitable ⊠Efficiency experts will tell you that on an employee-per-vehicle basis, Volkswagen looks hopelessly inefficient. Financial analysts will tell you that the company woefully trails its competitors on a revenue-per-employee basis. But VW will tell you that it makes more money than any other automakerâby far.
In fact, McElroy goes on to say that Volkswagen looks a lot like the General Motors of Alfred P. Sloanâbefore the MBAs got hold of it.
The idea of ‘efficiency’ is often a misnomer. Most of British industry was dismantled with the mantra of efficiency, essentially giving it up to globalist, technocratic forces, helped along by the Slater Walkers and the governments of the time. Those decades, too, were driven by “experts”âand what resulted was neither efficient nor productive. The decline of British Leyland is perhaps one of the most telling examples of period thinking applied disastrously to the British motor industry, its skilled workers now happily picked up by the Japanese, Germans and Indians.
By all means, if real savings can be had and long-term goals achieved, then efficiency is a wonderful thing. There are areas where technology should aid productivity. But watch out for that word efficiency. It doesn’t always mean what the experts say it meansâand if revenue and profit decline as a result of it, and corporate culture is harmed, then you may be better off heeding the lessons that Volkswagen’s management has. Use that MBA as a framework, not as a playbook.
The latest Victoria University study
