KSK: Take the People With You

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change
Albert Einstein

Change is what the country wanted, and change it did, leaving a shell-shocked Labour Party wondering just what had happened. A bolt from the blue – literally. But they knew it was coming, they just couldn’t bring themselves to acknowledge that they had gone too far, too fast, in directions that were not discussed before being set in motion. A bit like booking a flight to Paris and finding yourself landing in Timaru (sorry, Timaruvians.)

Crucially, they ignored one of the first principles of change management: take the people with you. Gently take them through what is an unsettling process. “Everybody wants progress. Nobody wants change”, as Paul Romer, economist and political entrepreneur, said.

Chris Hipkins came to the job on the basis of change; and that, ironically, is exactly what he and his party delivered. A change of government.

Change in any organisation is challenging. People resist it. Their emotions run high and they seek ways to avoid the inevitable. They make one of two statements, either of which is guaranteed to get in the way of progress:

1. “We’ve never done it this way.”
2. “We’ve always done it this way.”

And there they are: happy to remain grimly stuck in the past. The trick is to move them with the change: explain, assist, train, explain, assist, train; overcome objections and do everything it takes to get them on side and take them with the change.

The Labour Government, despite claiming to be the most open and transparent government ever, were not, as we now know to our cost.

Andrea Vance, yes, that one, on June 6, 2021, said, “At every level, the government manipulates the flow of information. In my 20-year-plus time as a journalist, this government is one of the most thin-skinned and secretive I have experienced. Many of my colleagues say the same.”

The changes they set in motion were neither open nor transparent and, as Andrea Vance said so well, their openness and transparency were “an artfully crafted mirage”. And they are now surprised and trying to identify where it was they went wrong. Change management was just one of their many shooting-themselves-in-the-foot (feet) moments. They behaved like a dictatorship. The Ardern model simply passed on, like a baton in a relay race, to Hipkins. The despicable reign of the dame was on a par with her cynical and abrupt defection – she knew the jig was up. I had a momentary pang of sympathy for the Hapless Hipkins (only momentary, and the moment has, thank goodness, passed).

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, said, “The ‘non-profit’ institution neither supplies goods or services […] Its ‘product’ is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human change agents. Their ‘product’ is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether.”

Let’s take that business model and apply it to the government, which is, after all, a non-profit institution and a human change agent. The Labour Government changed our lives beyond anything we could have imagined, and for now, their legacy lives on.

They eroded our health system so that the ‘product’ of a cured patient has a diminished outcome, given the mandates, the loss of staff, an overwhelmed workforce and doubtful outcomes for many patients.

The ‘product’ of a child that learns now has truancy at never-before-seen levels:

Data shows the number of unenrolled students – those who had not attended school for at least 20 consecutive school days – was 9205 at the end of March. During 2022, there were 9980 non-enrolment notifications for children between the ages of five and 13.

NZ Herald

A young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult is now obscured by those who murder, rape, ram-raid and otherwise create an underbelly of anti-establishment youth; most definitely a changed human life altogether.

The gang ‘product’ supported by the Labour Government was warped.

They divided us. As it turned out, we were, and are not, a team of five million.

Whichever way you choose to look, the ‘product’ of the Labour Government was not one that we wanted to purchase.

We are sick of excuses and the rush to blame ‘nine years of National’ for the faulty product Labour delivered. Under the Labour Government, the ‘product’ is faulty and must be recalled.

A business with as many broken, damaged, warped, not-fit-for-purpose products as the Labour Government has made would not survive. It is no surprise that they have been resoundingly voted out. We want new products. Ones that are resilient. Ones that do what they are designed to do; those that do not morph into something else like a transformer prototype with hidden persona. We want the products to serve local communities and the population as a whole: products that are robust, well-designed, strong, resilient, backed with the right know-how and with a recalibrate and reset if needed.

The certainty of the uncertainty of Labour’s tax policy was a change that was a step too far. Derek Cheng, though, states that scrapping the wealth tax policy was a significant contributory factor for Labour’s landslide loss.

The one event that dragged Labour further down was Hipkins’ decision to scrap the wealth tax policy. “The kicker for the red-green swing voters was Hipkins ditching the wealth tax,” Cheng said.

RNZ News

If he had kept the wealth tax they would not have lost? Or not with such a life-threatening effect? And people wouldn’t have switched out red for blue with a wealth tax promise? Yeah, nah.

The changes in tax policy were of great concern and with the ‘most open and transparent government ever’ and their stealth agenda, it was not a risk of change that appealed.

It also suggests that Labour no longer knows who its voters are. They are not those of the past: they are now the intellectuals and academics and those with serious money. Did they want a wealth tax? A capital gains tax? It seems not.

Now that we have a government-in-waiting, we can wonder about Mr Luxon and his team. Are they going to deliver the new, the refurbished, the redesigned, the recalibrated and fit-for-purpose products the country so desperately needs?

And is he going to, or has he already, made a gracious approach to Winston?

Far better to buy with grace than make a grudge purchase.

Here are three helpful suggestions for Mr Luxon when dealing with grudge purchase decisions:

1. Focus on task over mood. In other words, get over yourself, Mr Luxon. Fancy footwork is the realm of your ballet-dancing wife.
2. Share your strategic intent. Make sure you have enough capacity. With just ACT you don’t. Take out the insurance policy called NZ First.
3. Offer pricing perspective. Let Winston know that you understand what he wants. Treat him with respect. He is your customer.

We do not, under any circumstances, want another “artfully-crafted mirage”.

KSK has a Master of Management degree from the University of Auckland. She has a business management background following many years in the medical field. She is a former business mentor with Business Mentors NZ. This article was first published HERE