And then there was the debate after the Budget. The same word kept popping up. Apparently the Budget lacked it. The politicians try to talk about it but fail. They all have a series of their own, and often mutually exclusive, themes they try to stick to. But their ideas are usually either short-term, difficult to get agreement on or ultimately unworkable. For some time now, they have been unable to nail it. Instead they seem to focus on subsets of the big picture.
So, what was the topic of my friendly debate? Vision. A vision for the country. John Key called it “the vision thing”. Perhaps it’s a single phrase. Or alternatively a series of bullet points that sum up what we’re about.
Coming up with a national vision for the country is challenging because a vision needs to be brief but broad. Brief enough for everyone to understand and remember. Broad enough to encapsulate everything we wish for our society. But it also needs to have the potential as a guiding light. A statement, or series of statements that sets our path, and reminds us when we’re going off track.
Plenty of people will say it will never happen, but in the words of a current advertising campaign: “I think we can do better than that.”
The Prime Minister is fond of saying “we have to grow our economy in order to pay for the services we need”. It’s a great line and a good start. But it only deals with part of the picture. We need something more all-encompassing.
We can learn plenty from the way our charities operate. They tend to be under-funded, over-reliant on volunteers and always up against the odds. They’re dealing with people with massive needs too. And yet, in that seemingly hopeless environment, they achieve amazing results.
We’re over-reliant on the charitable movement. If you think our health or welfare budgets are huge, imagine how much more they would be if we added the work and the costs of the various charitable efforts that support our communities. Cancer organisations, St John’s Ambulance, Salvation Army, mental health charities and so on.
This week, on our Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, my guest was Ah-Leen Rayner, CEO of the Breast Cancer Foundation NZ. More than once, she referred to the organisation’s vision. In part, it was what attracted her to the role. That vision? “Zero deaths from breast cancer.” Wow! How’s that for big picture thinking.
It’s long term. Aspirational. And ultimately achievable. It’s also a guide to support decision making and prioritisation, and a yardstick to measure progress. We currently lose 650 women per year to breast cancer. So, it might sound impossible to achieve. But Rayner believes it’s entirely possible. So do the people she works with. And impossible doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
It reminded me of my own effort. I’ve volunteered in and around swimming, surf lifesaving and water safety for most of my life. We lose about 100 people to drowning every year. Most of it’s preventable. I once tried to get the water safety community to sign up to a vision statement that said “No One Drowns”. It’s fair to say that they humoured me for a while, but it struggled to get buy-in and faded as people didn’t believe it was achievable.
And that’s the challenge with vision statements. They need to be aspirational but achievable. Out of sight, but not out of reach.
So why not a long-term vision for the country? Something that defines the type of country we want to be. A theme that both main political parties can get behind. Something that guides our decision-making. Something simple. A theme that unites us. We certainly need that at the moment.
We were once a country that could do anything. Number 8 wire and all that. But we’re not that anymore. So what do we want to be?
I suggest that most of us would want a country where we are safe. In this regard we are fortunate. We’re geographically isolated and so our safety is something we can control.
Thereafter we want services that provide for our needs well. Healthcare and education are always at the top of this list. That encompasses facilities and resources, including talent. But there are others. Infrastructure that enables our lifestyle and supports our needs should be up there too. A welfare system needs to catch those who are unable to help themselves.
So what should a vision for a country such as ours look like?
I thought I’d have a crack at it. It’s a conversation starter, so don’t be too critical.
I’d like New Zealand to be “a safe place where everyone can prosper”.
Pause for a moment. Think about it. I’d suggest that it captures most of what we want in our country.
First and foremost, we all want to feel safe. That means safe from crime, accidents, disease, weather events and wars. Policing and a well-run judiciary should deal with crime. Education and common sense would eliminate a lot of accidents, while first-world healthcare and medication can control disease. Dealing with weather events is often about preparation. The terms of our participation in wars is a decision we control.
The word prosper will mean different things to different people. For some, simply surviving and being able to look after themselves will be a step up. Getting some of our absent kids back into school would be progress. Good health and wellbeing is a core enabler of prospering. The term is relative.
Providing good care and offering dignity to those who can’t help themselves will see them prosper, especially relative to the alternative life they might lead in a less caring environment. At the other extreme, those leading large businesses would measure earnings growth, new customers and a growing workforce as prospering. University degrees and trade qualifications will see our young people prospering. Trade and export policy will contribute to our ability to prosper too, and we shouldn’t consider deals that don’t meet a “prosper” threshold.
The ability to prosper is a lens we should run across our immigration policies too. There is no question we need to attract immigration. Our need for everything from teachers and nurses to engineers and hospitality workers is well-documented. But we need to ensure that those who come to our country with the intention of settling are set up for success rather than failure.
Our immigration policies should focus on the skillsets we need. To bring people without critical skillsets at a time when housing, education, infrastructure and health services are all stretched to breaking point, is irresponsible. To allow a professional person to come here, but without their spouse or children doesn’t set them up for success.
Furthermore, we only need people who add to our resource rather than those who are dependent on it. And, if we target the right skills, we must let them work when they get here, so they are not suddenly dependent. There is no point bringing in nurses or doctors in if we don’t allow them to ply their trade when they get here. We’ve all heard the stories of doctors, university lecturers and robotics engineers driving Ubers or taxis! We don’t need more highly educated people who are unable to work in their specialist area. That doesn’t help them succeed and it doesn’t add value to us.
We’re fortunate that a lot of people want to come to our little country. By most comparisons we’re clean, safe and straight-forward. The demand to come here should always outnumber the spaces we have available. We can be choosy about who we allow. We should treat that opportunity much more seriously than we currently do.
Prosper also means making life simpler. I continue to believe that the maintenance of personal freedoms is one of the more important challenges within the current global agenda, and it’s something where our distance and independence should enable us to lead the world. We all think of freedoms as speech, the press and movement. In some parts of the world those freedoms are being challenged while we take them for granted.
But the freedom to do what we need to do, or want to do is important too. That’s why the elimination of red tape is so important to our ability to prosper.
The most important word in my little slogan above is “everyone”. Imagine a country where everyone is safe and everyone prospers. A country where every individual is treated equally. We will all think of reasons to be divided. Māori and Pākehā. But also immigrants and locals. White and blue collar. Those who need our help, and those who can provide it. But think about being the first country in the world to give women the vote and the country where the celebration of equality is unmatched.
Can you imagine how powerful such positioning could become?
There are plenty who will suggest that we’re more divided than ever before. A clear vision, one that’s hard to disagree with, can change that. Here’s the cool bit. We’re small enough to do this. And we could feel the impact within five years.
A safe place where everyone can prosper. I’m sure we can come up with better. But it illustrates that a clear vision for New Zealand will provide the backbone against which to consider our priorities and policies as we build the country we want for the next 100 years.
A safe place where everyone can prosper. It’s short and it’s simple. It means something. That’s a great place to start.
Bruce Cotterill, a five time CEO and current Company Chairman and Director with extensive experience across a range of industries including real estate, media, financial services, technology and retail. Bruce regularly blogs on brucecotterill.com - where this article was sourced
Coming up with a national vision for the country is challenging because a vision needs to be brief but broad. Brief enough for everyone to understand and remember. Broad enough to encapsulate everything we wish for our society. But it also needs to have the potential as a guiding light. A statement, or series of statements that sets our path, and reminds us when we’re going off track.
Plenty of people will say it will never happen, but in the words of a current advertising campaign: “I think we can do better than that.”
The Prime Minister is fond of saying “we have to grow our economy in order to pay for the services we need”. It’s a great line and a good start. But it only deals with part of the picture. We need something more all-encompassing.
We can learn plenty from the way our charities operate. They tend to be under-funded, over-reliant on volunteers and always up against the odds. They’re dealing with people with massive needs too. And yet, in that seemingly hopeless environment, they achieve amazing results.
We’re over-reliant on the charitable movement. If you think our health or welfare budgets are huge, imagine how much more they would be if we added the work and the costs of the various charitable efforts that support our communities. Cancer organisations, St John’s Ambulance, Salvation Army, mental health charities and so on.
This week, on our Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, my guest was Ah-Leen Rayner, CEO of the Breast Cancer Foundation NZ. More than once, she referred to the organisation’s vision. In part, it was what attracted her to the role. That vision? “Zero deaths from breast cancer.” Wow! How’s that for big picture thinking.
It’s long term. Aspirational. And ultimately achievable. It’s also a guide to support decision making and prioritisation, and a yardstick to measure progress. We currently lose 650 women per year to breast cancer. So, it might sound impossible to achieve. But Rayner believes it’s entirely possible. So do the people she works with. And impossible doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
It reminded me of my own effort. I’ve volunteered in and around swimming, surf lifesaving and water safety for most of my life. We lose about 100 people to drowning every year. Most of it’s preventable. I once tried to get the water safety community to sign up to a vision statement that said “No One Drowns”. It’s fair to say that they humoured me for a while, but it struggled to get buy-in and faded as people didn’t believe it was achievable.
And that’s the challenge with vision statements. They need to be aspirational but achievable. Out of sight, but not out of reach.
So why not a long-term vision for the country? Something that defines the type of country we want to be. A theme that both main political parties can get behind. Something that guides our decision-making. Something simple. A theme that unites us. We certainly need that at the moment.
We were once a country that could do anything. Number 8 wire and all that. But we’re not that anymore. So what do we want to be?
I suggest that most of us would want a country where we are safe. In this regard we are fortunate. We’re geographically isolated and so our safety is something we can control.
Thereafter we want services that provide for our needs well. Healthcare and education are always at the top of this list. That encompasses facilities and resources, including talent. But there are others. Infrastructure that enables our lifestyle and supports our needs should be up there too. A welfare system needs to catch those who are unable to help themselves.
So what should a vision for a country such as ours look like?
I thought I’d have a crack at it. It’s a conversation starter, so don’t be too critical.
I’d like New Zealand to be “a safe place where everyone can prosper”.
Pause for a moment. Think about it. I’d suggest that it captures most of what we want in our country.
First and foremost, we all want to feel safe. That means safe from crime, accidents, disease, weather events and wars. Policing and a well-run judiciary should deal with crime. Education and common sense would eliminate a lot of accidents, while first-world healthcare and medication can control disease. Dealing with weather events is often about preparation. The terms of our participation in wars is a decision we control.
The word prosper will mean different things to different people. For some, simply surviving and being able to look after themselves will be a step up. Getting some of our absent kids back into school would be progress. Good health and wellbeing is a core enabler of prospering. The term is relative.
Providing good care and offering dignity to those who can’t help themselves will see them prosper, especially relative to the alternative life they might lead in a less caring environment. At the other extreme, those leading large businesses would measure earnings growth, new customers and a growing workforce as prospering. University degrees and trade qualifications will see our young people prospering. Trade and export policy will contribute to our ability to prosper too, and we shouldn’t consider deals that don’t meet a “prosper” threshold.
The ability to prosper is a lens we should run across our immigration policies too. There is no question we need to attract immigration. Our need for everything from teachers and nurses to engineers and hospitality workers is well-documented. But we need to ensure that those who come to our country with the intention of settling are set up for success rather than failure.
Our immigration policies should focus on the skillsets we need. To bring people without critical skillsets at a time when housing, education, infrastructure and health services are all stretched to breaking point, is irresponsible. To allow a professional person to come here, but without their spouse or children doesn’t set them up for success.
Furthermore, we only need people who add to our resource rather than those who are dependent on it. And, if we target the right skills, we must let them work when they get here, so they are not suddenly dependent. There is no point bringing in nurses or doctors in if we don’t allow them to ply their trade when they get here. We’ve all heard the stories of doctors, university lecturers and robotics engineers driving Ubers or taxis! We don’t need more highly educated people who are unable to work in their specialist area. That doesn’t help them succeed and it doesn’t add value to us.
We’re fortunate that a lot of people want to come to our little country. By most comparisons we’re clean, safe and straight-forward. The demand to come here should always outnumber the spaces we have available. We can be choosy about who we allow. We should treat that opportunity much more seriously than we currently do.
Prosper also means making life simpler. I continue to believe that the maintenance of personal freedoms is one of the more important challenges within the current global agenda, and it’s something where our distance and independence should enable us to lead the world. We all think of freedoms as speech, the press and movement. In some parts of the world those freedoms are being challenged while we take them for granted.
But the freedom to do what we need to do, or want to do is important too. That’s why the elimination of red tape is so important to our ability to prosper.
The most important word in my little slogan above is “everyone”. Imagine a country where everyone is safe and everyone prospers. A country where every individual is treated equally. We will all think of reasons to be divided. Māori and Pākehā. But also immigrants and locals. White and blue collar. Those who need our help, and those who can provide it. But think about being the first country in the world to give women the vote and the country where the celebration of equality is unmatched.
Can you imagine how powerful such positioning could become?
There are plenty who will suggest that we’re more divided than ever before. A clear vision, one that’s hard to disagree with, can change that. Here’s the cool bit. We’re small enough to do this. And we could feel the impact within five years.
A safe place where everyone can prosper. I’m sure we can come up with better. But it illustrates that a clear vision for New Zealand will provide the backbone against which to consider our priorities and policies as we build the country we want for the next 100 years.
A safe place where everyone can prosper. It’s short and it’s simple. It means something. That’s a great place to start.
Bruce Cotterill, a five time CEO and current Company Chairman and Director with extensive experience across a range of industries including real estate, media, financial services, technology and retail. Bruce regularly blogs on brucecotterill.com - where this article was sourced
10 comments:
Bruce, I admire the intent—but respectfully, “safe and prosperous” are not always friends. Safety is essential for the vulnerable, yes—but overextending it risks shackling everyone in bureaucratic red tape. We don’t build the 22nd century with padded walls and endless consents. As thinkers like Bennett and Taleb warn, too much safety breeds fragility. Our current systems centralise control and eliminate risk so thoroughly that enterprise dies at birth. Kafka would feel right at home in our permitting process. Let’s ensure guardrails for those who need them, but open the road for those ready to build. Prosperity demands discomfort, ownership, and decentralisation—not another strategy document. If we want to be more "New Zeal-land" than “Old Apathy-land,” we must prioritise enterprise, civic responsibility, and the courage to risk again - which is not exactly "safety". That’s how we grow—not by wrapping our future in cotton wool and calling it governance.
Incidentally, I also thought about what could be our nation's "overlapping consensus" (in Rawlsian terms), which I believe is education for 22 century - https://zoranrakovic.substack.com/p/nz-renaissance-through-education
Too many commenters call us by different names. Maori and Pakeha(I refuse to be called Pakeha). Even the PM keeps saying Maori and non-Maori. I think we should refer to citizens as New Zealanders in any slogan that is devised. A safe and prosperous country for all New Zealanders....There are too many people who have not had their say on what our country should be called. A united name for country, citizens and also one flag flying to represent us. The flag was voted on and the status quo prevailed.
Nice ideas Bruce. Seems like you’re talking about a country I used to know, but it’s long gone.
Nice try Bruce, but count me out on any national "vision",...something a hairs breadth from a "slogan", itself the
stuff of propaganda.
If you want such a vision, I suggest you (re)read Orwell's "1984". Here is a handy slogan from his "Ministry of Truth"..."War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is strength"
We surely had our fill of such stuff from Jacinda's government,..."Team of 5 million", & "government as sole source of truth"?
No Bruce, leave such to the socialists. Next you will be telling us that it is 'gummits' job to "run the country". And from there a need to develop a '10 year plan', in accordance with "Dear Leader's" unquestionable ideas.
I would suggest that readers of this column would likely be far more dedicated to the sovereignty of the individual...with clearly identified rights and responsibilities. I would grant you perhaps that a building block of the society is the family,...but no further, please.
Concur. NZers did not wake up and take action in time.
Now, time to face the music.
Good try Bruce, good try. But from an old soldier, keeping your troops ‘safe’ never won a war. ‘Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead’ has sometimes been the only way to crash through the barriers directly in front, and actually achieve something. If we ever needed that kind of attitude we really need it now.
All these comments suggest it is ok to continue sloshing around in the murky water of a bucket; with know way of getting out. I find NZ so short sighted when it comes to forward planning. Both parties are guilty of fiddling around the edges of major issues, achieving little and spinning their story to convince everyone thing will be better. If not a "vision " then at least a plan! That both parties will be guided by. How does NZ know where it's going? How does it know what to focus on? Are we just aimlessly winging it?
There is a clear vision already in place for New Zealand Bruce.
It just not one anyone wanted or voted for.
I like the idea of a national vision statement but it’s a really hard task to create one Bruce. Prosperity gets my vote, as would arguably over-used notions like ambition, ingenuity and maybe innovation - even integrity and authenticity. I would definitely like NZ to be more ambitious and less tall poppy syndrome. But please, not “safety”. Jacinda and her team of covid fear-mongers have rendered me henceforth forever allergic to safety-ism. When people well-meaningly say things like “drive safe” or “stay safe”, it chills me to the bone. I think of vaccinations, masks, lockdowns. A “be kind” would in all truth launch me into the stratosphere!
What a lot of tosh - Feeling "Safe"? from what?
The last egregious little tyrant who wanted to smother us with safety is now in permanent state of self-exile thanks to trying to make us all "safe".
The next politician who has "a vision" for us to "feel safe" should be prepared for a swift smack in the chops.
It might snap them out of whatever hazy vision this "feel safe" nonsense emerged.
I might suggest the proponents also lay off the weed.
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