Tiger
Tiger is a tenacious, surprisingly well-educated animal, living and working in the real world. Having to come up with staff wages every week sharpens the senses.
Business – the silent crisis.
There is an unacknowledged crisis looming in New Zealand business courtesy of our politician imposed, and woke media and academic supported, lockdown. We may now be out of the physical lockdown, but there remains a dangerous lingering effect. That effect is from the much-touted “new paradigm” of doing business, in particular, remote and virtual interactions. This is a farce. In a free market, businesses do not work like that.
Businesses are collections of functions that transact with each other. The more efficient these are, the more competitive the business can be. They are physical entities, put together, such as cities are, to realise these efficiencies. Small to medium businesses are at the coalface of change, responding efficiently to changes in external marketplaces and providing the market with efficient access to specialised goods and services. They also employ a large proportion of the New Zealand workforce but you won’t find any meaningful government or organisational acknowledgement of the environment they operate in.
Efficient transactions require a range of factors and often businesses compete on these factors to gain momentary advantage. Factors such as access to better-priced raw materials, more efficient mobilisation of resources, security of energy supply and so on. These physical benefits are very often “lubricated” with trust which is built on relationships. An example might be when a business requires an urgent delivery and the supplier’s rules require a purchase order prior to despatch. It is possible that a relationship that has a high level of trust can bypass these rules and offer the purchaser a competitive advantage.
This brings me back to the crisis. I see so many articles celebrating the “new paradigm” of home-based workers, remote learning and such. I hear associates thrilled with their new work arrangements, work-life balance and no more need to commute. That’s fine for a short while, but as time ticks along, the context of roles, work and the economy changes. New relationships need to be built, new staff need to be mentored and new skills acquired. None of this can occur in a 2-dimensional Zoom meeting.
New relationships need to be built, new staff need to be mentored and new skills acquired. None of this can occur in a 2-dimensional Zoom meeting.
It would be foolish to think that business has suddenly lost the need for 3-dimensional, tactile, neuro-linguistic programming interactions. After all, that is what builds trust between individuals, and trust greases the wheels of efficient transactions, particularly for small to medium-sized businesses. It would appear that policymakers are quite happy for the business world to mark time, and let the real world outpace an ossified economy.
If you enjoyed this BFD article please share it.