This will be short as I am blogging from my iphone. PM John Key will be signing the FTA with the Malaysian PM tonight. Approximately 60 businesspeople are accompanying John Key on this trip. It has been a full on day, from the embargoed briefing this morning to visits of the Fonterra plant in Shah Alam and Datacom office in Banda Utama. We are now back at KL Hilton for a briefing before the reception and official signing ceremony later tonight. Just sneaking in a few linea while the PwC guy is speaking. The Kiwis enjoyed being in the official motorcade. More on that later.
Economist Intelligence Unit just announced their list of most liveable cities in the world. Vancouver came out tops. The City of Sails was ranked the 12th best city to live in. Wellington is ranked 23rd. This is a poor showing for Auckland compared to the April 09 announcement by Mercer that Auckland is the 4th most liveable city in the world. According to Wikipedia, the EIU and Mercer surveys are the most authoritative surveys of liveable cities.
When Mercer announced the list of most liveable cities for 2009, the Aussie paper Daily Telegraph headline was “Auckland beats out Sydney in Worldwide Quality of Living Survey“. If there is one thing the Aussies hate more than losing, it’s getting beaten by the Kiwis. Anyway, the latest survey from EIU released this week will surely make the Aussies happy. Their 3 major cities, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth all rank within the top 10 list.
These most liveable city surveys look at factors like stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, infrastructure etc in deciding the rankings.
I think most people choose to emigrate to New Zealand because of one or both of these reasons:
1) Clean and green environment, generally safe ie. great quality of life
2) Children’s education
Auckland
As more and more people get burned out living in the larger European and Asian cities, I’m sure the appeal of New Zealand will only increase. Most migrants end up in Auckland, largely because it’s a good compromise. Auckland may be the big smoke in a South Pacific context, but not really if compared to the major European and Asian cities. 1.4m is approximately the population of an average Shanghai suburb.
Living in Auckland is about getting the best of both worlds. Easy access to some of the most beautiful spots in the world, reasonable climate, and generally good quality of life. These reasons will surely keep people coming.
Immigration policy should focus on facilitating easy access for skilled migrants. We also need to define skills pretty widely. Smart people may not have university degrees. In fact the majority of the self-made billionaires on the Fortune Magazine Rich List don’t either. Current immigration policy makes it difficult for people who may not be well qualified but could add a lot of value to New Zealand to be granted residency.
EIU’s list of most liveable cities in the world 2009:
If I had the opportunity to meet Bill Gates’ father, the first question I would ask is how did you do it? What’s the secret? So it is indeed humourous to find that everyone from “reporters at Fortune to the checkout person at the local grocery store” ask these questions of Bill Gates Sr. His response is even funnier: “Oh, it’s a secret all right … because I don’t get it either!”
In this Fortune Mag article, Bill Gates Sr talks about how Bill (his family calls him Trey) started his first business before Microsoft, a company that created and marketed a piece of equipment they had developed called the Traf-O-Data, that basically analysed raw traffic data and created a graph that gave a picture of each day’s traffic flow.
Obviously Traf-O-Data was no Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500). Bill Gates Sr shares: “Perhaps the lesson here is that every success involves a few false starts.”
The most powerful story in the article was the reaction of Gates Sr to Trey dropping out of Harvard to start Microsoft.
Gates Sr: “Perhaps there’s a lesson in this for the parents of other curious children who, from the start, require the freedom to meet life on their own terms: It is that there is no statute of limitations on the dreams you have for your children. And there is no way to predict how much delight you might feel when those dreams are realized in a far different way than you could have imagined.”
Upon closer examination, Christchurch turned out to be "Chrisichurch"
Following my previous post on the importance of getting translations done right, I have included some photos to further illustrate my point. I was in Shanghai last year, and at a glance saw someone wearing a t-shirt that said “Christchurch” on the back. Perhaps an ex-international student, I thought.
Upon closer examination, I cracked up in laughter.
Chinese police car
And then there was this police car I saw outside a McDonald’s restaurant. For a moment there, I wasn’t sure if they are for real, but I can assure you they are driven by real cops. My mum could have done a better job with the spray paint. Why can’t they get something so basic checked? All they needed to do was to open up a word doc and see if there’s a red underline.
police warning
It’s endless. I came across another sign at a restaurant (with English menus, not a roadside stall).
In verbatim, the text reads:
The police warned Please use the “Auti-Theft Hook” under the table. Take care of your belongings. Shanghai railway station rigilance police station.
My wife (fiancee at the time) asked what sort of system this is. I was also wondering what kind of sophisticated anti-theft system they installed under the table. My curiosity paid off. I didn’t have to look long to discover this most effective albeit primitive theft-prevention device.
Chinese anti theft system
OK in the same way that we laugh at the Chinese who make all these “stupid mistakes”, they do the same with Westerners with silly tattoos and t-shirts. The difference is that the Chinese are just simply too polite to tell you
It’s fashionable these days for Westerners to wear t-shirts with Chinese calligraphy or have tattoos with Chinese words. I reckon 9 times out of 10, people have no idea what the Chinese phrase means.
I found this one, where a boyfriend proudly displays what he calls “My girl’s “Bitch” tattoo”. He posted this on a website, not knowing that it actually means prostitute.
Before and after ... the cover the the Max Planck Research magazine was replaced after it was discovered that the original cover (left) was an ad for a strip joint.
This one is really funny. One of Europe’s most prestigious scientific research institutes has had to issue an apology after discovering that the calligraphy used on the cover of its flagship magazine to illustrate a special China edition was in fact an ad for a Hong Kong strip joint.
The institute hastily replaced the cover – which advertises “hot, young housewives” – from the online and English edition of the publication, Max Planck Research, but not before the German language version of the periodical had been dispatched to subscribers.
Why is it so hard to get people to understand the importance of getting translations done properly, and checked by experts?
I wonder how many people are aware of the sheer amount of money generated by the cruise industry using Auckland as a hub. I received an email from my local business association highlighting some opportunities for the local retailers. During the 2007/08 cruise season, Auckland received $123.8 million of total cruise industry direct expenditure, about 60% of the national spend. Approximately 89,600 passenger days were spent in Auckland, around 21% of all passenger days spent in NZ. The forecast for the 2008/2009 cruise season estimates the Auckland region will see direct spending of $128 million. How many industries can boast of such a significant economic contribution?
For those interested, the ships in town soon include:
Friday 21 November:Volendam arrives and has a full exchange of up to 1,440 passengers – who are likely to be mainly American, plus 40yrs. This ship is rated 4 stars. With a full passenger exchange, expect awaiting passengers in town from around Wednesday, and former passengers to linger for a few days afterwards.
Sunday 23 November: Millennium arrives. Another full exchange of up to 2,449 passengers. She also has a crew of 1000. One of the bigger ships to visit this year. Passengers are mainly Americans over 40.
If I was in the retail business I would certainly try to hone in on this market. Businesses that would benefit include those selling luxury goods or health products to baby boomers. What an awesome way to tap into a captive audience of wealthy consumers. Probably far more effective and far cheaper than embarking on a mass marketing campaign in California.
At the start of this year, I sent an email to my friends telling them that I will do more reading this year. And to widen my reading to include more non-business books. I figured if I halved my internet surfing time and replace this with book-reading time, I should be able to go through 2-3 books/month. As it turns out, 7 months into 2008, I’ve ended up spending about the same amount of time on the net. I need to stop myself from getting distracted by Facebook, Youtube and RSS news feeds.
I want to share an article written by Good to Great author Jim Collins on books to read, that prompted me to search out a few non-business books to read this year. I’m currently reading Gavin Menzies’ 1421. Pretty interesting theory on Chinese expeditions sailing to America, Africa, Australia / NZ long before the Europeans did. It does sound pretty far fetched, but plausible. What makes it more interesting is that Menzies is not a historian, but a retired submarine commander. A few more chapters to go.
Then maybe I’ll finally embark on my long walk to freedom, and read Mandela’s biography, which I have put off for so long, because it’s a hard read. I’m feeling inspired after reading a recent Time Magazine interview with Mandela, where he shared 8 lessons of leadership.
Executives should read fewer management books. I don’t mean that reading is a waste of their time; on the contrary, they should read more. The question is what to read. My own view is that only one book in 20 should be a business book.
That may sound odd coming from an author of three management books, but I’m convinced that you can improve your leadership capabilities by drinking deeply from the well of great books that have been published in a wide variety of disciplines. For one thing, the business and management genres offer precious few superb books with new insights, good writing, and timeless value. I can think of fewer than 10 published in the last 50 years.
More important, outstanding leaders and thinkers often get their best insights by reading outside their primary field. Abraham Lincoln, for example, forged his thinking on the slavery question by reading Euclid’s ancient treatise on geometry and then applying the concept of ligical proof to the great issue of the day. Charles Darwin read about Adam Smith’s economic concept of the “invisible hand” while struggling to formulate his biological concept of natural selection (which, of course, became the invisible hand in the theory of evolution). Peter Drucker told me that the most influential author in his intellectual development was the Danish existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. The great entrepreneur Henry Ford avidly read essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson and applied Emerson’s ideas to his company.
Here are a handful of my most highly recommended selections:
Chimpanzee Politics, by Frans de Waal. Even more enlightening than Machiavelli’s The Prince, this book describes power takeovers and social organizations in a chimpanzee colony and argues that power politics is part of the evolutionary heritage that we share with our closest nonhuman relatives. I’ll never look at academic or corporate politics the same way, and I understand their machinations much better for having read this book. Chimps, unlike humans, do not cloak their political pretenses in rhetoric, so we can see more clearly the process at work and thereby learn much about ourselves.
The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman. This book may well have saved the world from nuclear holocaust. During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy drew directly upon the lessons of Tuchman’s book-which chronicles how, in August 1914, European nations locked themselves into irreversible political and military positions and thereby needlessly brought about the slaughter of World War I. In the midst of the missile crisis, Kennedy said, “I am not going to follow a course which will allow anyone to write a comparable book [about the missile crisis].” Superbly-written, this book teaches valuable lessons about how an organization can be led or driven into calamity through pride, arrogance, and misunderstandings.
Influence, by Robert B. Cialdini and The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence, by Philip B. Zimbardo. I don’t see how anyone can hope to be an effective manager without having a basic understanding of social psychology-the forces of human influence and the dynamics of social behavior. These two classic works, both jam-packed with specific examples and fascinating research studies, teach invaluable managerial lessons. For example, revolutionary change can best be accomplished by “incremental revolutionaries,” who lead people from A to Z by taking small steps from A to B, then from B to C, then from C to D, and so on, so that the step from Y to Z hardly looks like a revolution at all. Another tidbit: explicitly assign people to play devil’s advocate-to “consider the opposite”-and thereby dilute the influence of groupthink that so often plays a role in disastrous decisions.
In Love and War, by Jim and Sybil Stockdale. As the highest-ranking POW in the Hanoi Hilton-in captivity and under physical and psychological torture for seven years-Jim Stockdale displayed iron-willed integrity under the most severe conditions. Stockdale teaches that freedom is a state of mind and that the two greatest weapons of enslavement are guilt and fear, not bars and walls. Stockdale drew strength from Job in the Bible, with its central lesson that if you persist in asking, “Why me?”-if you fail to accept that life is not fair-you cannot endure.
Means of Ascent, by Robert Caro, and Truman, by David McCullough. I love biographies. They offer us a chance to learn from the experiences of others and to develop role models and antimodels. Caro shows through the rise of LBJ how those consumed by ruthless, amoral ambition can become influential in democracy-a tale that’s riveting, revealing, and depressing. McCullough, in contrast, inspires with the story of Harry Truman, a failed businessman with rock-solid midwestern core values, who rose to become one of the most important and effective presidents in U.S. history. Taken together, LBJ and Truman demonstrate that while a leader need not be morally grounded to become powerful, the judgment of history depends directly upon one’s own moral character.
The Panda’s Thumb, by Stephen Jay Gould. We cannot understand our complex world without grasping the basic elements of evolutionary theory. In fact, Jerry Porras and I dedicated an entire chapter of our book Built to Last to how visionary companies like 3M and Hewlett-Packard often “evolved” in a way that only in retrospect looks planned. All of Gould’s books on evolution and natural history are superb, but Panda’s Thumb is my favorite and is a good place to start.
The Plague, by Albert Camus. In this novel Camus wrestles with the question, How do we find meaning in a seemingly meaningless-and certainly brutal and alienating-world? His answer: we must create our own meaning by infusing our tasks with a sense of purpose and by seeking human connection. What does that have to do with management and leadership? Everything. The builders of great organizations appreciate people’s deep yearning for meaning, and they instill a shared sense of purpose and create tightly knit cultures that bond people together. Sam Walton made discount retailing a meaningful pursuit, as David Packard did with technology, and Mary Kay Ash did with selling cosmetics.
The Second World War, by Winston S. Churchill. This 5,000-page, six-volume autobiography and chronicle of the years 1919 to 1945 is the best book on leadership I’ve read. Churchill’s eloquence comes to life as he describes day by day the monumental task of holding Britain and, later, the allies together against the Axis powers-a burden he shouldered at age 65 and carried until age 70. I learned from Churchill the inspirational power of reframing difficult times into a broader goal. When in 1940 the whole world wondered, “Can Britain survive?” Churchill countered that the goal was not to survive, but to prevail. Brilliant!
How to Listen to and Understand Great Music: The Greenberg Lectures, by Robert Greenberg, as part of the Superstar Teacher Series. I’m going to cheat a little here and include a purely audio “book.” The Superstar Teacher Series, produced by the Teaching Co., in Springfield, Va., assembles the best teaching professors to present courses on tape. The Greenberg music series combines a history of western civilization with a history of great music from ancient Greece to the 20th century. Greenberg’s 48 lectures come alive with passion and knowledge while they rock and roll with music from Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, and others. The course illustrates the interplay between societal change and innovation, and offers a unique perspective on the acceleration of change wrought by the 20th century.
Someday perhaps I’ll write a column recommending the few business books of the past 50 years that are actually worth reading, but until then you might want to stick to reading a wide variety of nonbusiness selections. It will give you a better return on investment.
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