$1.4 billion industry statement

One $1.4 billion industry statement later, and I’m still hungry. Why? It all has to do with the execution.

One of the problems in Australia is that we love strategies, but not execution –– the details are seen to be beneath us. We also misuse the word ‘strategy’ endlessly. “My strategy will be to grab a coffee before the meeting, to make sure I’m focused”. Please!

Because we don’t like execution, we don’t learn. Bad strategy is normally classified as poor execution by foot soldiers. Larger enterprises then sack those responsible, effectively losing whatever learnings occurred and dooming themselves to repeat their mistakes.

Only organisations that are forced to learn from poor execution actually get better at it. Take for instance the army. They have a saying that a “sucking chest wound is nature’s way of saying you f**ked up your fieldcraft”. Because there are repercussions to poor execution, the organisation learns. The benefit of this is that both poor strategies and great strategies are executed well; you can then determine which is which.

Anyway, back to the industry statement.

My experience in 22 years of applying for government programs is that the people delivering the program always have the same position. We have an execution problem that isn’t being addressed.

If you haven’t received assistance before, they (the government agencies) look for reasons why you can’t this time either. Interestingly I have even been knocked back for programs that were simply registration as a supplier and were not competitive. Those running the program thought there were “more deserving applicants”. Thanks for that.

The reason I have been applying for government programs for 22 years is that every once and a while I forget that it will simply be a waste of time, and allow someone to talk me into applying for a program.

So my position now is “never again will I waste a moment of my time applying for a program”. I know I am not alone in this. So whom will these programs help? The businesses that are non-viable and have received assistance before, therefore are eligible again.

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