Key points:

• the recovery being discussed in the media is highly uneven, with an increasing gap between those with opportunity and those without,
• those that are not recovering as well, were already worse off financially, and
• numerous areas are at risk of increasing vulnerability if they are impacted by additional pressure.

At the end of December 2020, there were 660,000 more unemployed¹ people than in December 2019 - an 81% increase in 12 months. This figure however does not include people who are unemployed but ineligible for JobSeeker. Despite some recovery, the level of unemployment is an ongoing concern.

We found that impacted Australian households also have levels of economic stress that are closing in without the necessary relief of new employment opportunities. This means there are certain communities around Australia that are entering a level of economic stress not seen before in our lifetime.

The Vulnerable Australia Model, which leverages multiple data sources including JobSeeker and Youth Allowance (Other), shows that over 670,000 of Australia’s 1.5m unemployed live in areas with significant economic stress, and will struggle to keep up with the recovery being experienced in mostly more traditionally affluent areas. A further 525,000 live in areas with moderate economic stress and may be at risk of falling further behind with the upcoming changes in government support.

The contrast in how Australia’s recovery is playing out can be traced through changes in unemployment, with Local Government Areas (LGAs) categorised into four groups³:

• areas with increasing unemployment,

• stagnant areas showing little to no change,

• average recovery areas, and 

• those areas with above average recovery.

The stagnant areas

Whilst some areas are showing recovery in terms of decreasing unemployment figures, 35% (147) of Local Government Areas are showing little to no improvement in unemployment. These LGAs disproportionately represent the most economically vulnerable people. Analysis has shown that they have a high proportion of lone person or overcrowded households, high mortgages with low income levels, and homes with no cars or easy access to transport.

These areas are already at high economic vulnerability and additional pressure is likely to cause real lasting damage. Of the 540,000 unemployed people in the LGAs that show no recovery, 226,000 (or 42%) began receiving JobSeeker payments during the pandemic. At risk of becoming highly vulnerable are a further 90 LGAs (with 369,000 unemployed people) which are close to falling into high economic stress. Many of these LGAs such as Campbelltown, Fairfield (NSW), Melton, and Casey, have a large number of overcrowded homes, group homes, and public housing. People in these areas tend to pay between 34% and 45% of their incomes on rent and mortgage repayments. If people in these areas are faced with additional income stress, it may lead to people struggling to keep their home or put food on the table. It will also levy increased demands from social service organisations as they attempt to support people through the crisis. 

Reliance on JobKeeper

Whilst the initial shocks of the pandemic may have passed, the impact on businesses and ultimately the people employed by those businesses is possibly yet to be fully understood. According to Treasury data, 941,951 businesses were making use of JobKeeper last September, which supported approx. 3.6m people.

Taking a more local perspective, there are a number of areas which are reliant on a single major industry within their local economy⁴. It is concerning that some areas which were identified as having high economic vulnerability, were supported by only one or two predominant industries. In the Armidale Regional LGA (NSW) for example, approx. 82% of the workforce is employed in the Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing industries. In this region, 2,126 of the nearly 3,000 businesses were receiving JobKeeper payments as at September 2020.

In more general terms, areas with a high proportion of employment being supported by a single industry, with a high number of businesses requesting JobKeeper support, it is highly likely that JobKeeper payments play a strong role in supporting the region. Furthermore, almost all of the unemployed people in these regions live in suburbs that are either continuing to increase in unemployment or show little recent improvement.

The Vulnerable Australia Model takes into account a multitude of factors from housing and health to industry and community. From this, we are able to move from answering “where are the unemployed people living” to more useful questions like “what would happen to people in this suburb if the hospitality industry shut down”. For a deeper look at the insights provided by the Vulnerable Australia Model, please contact us.

Atop of founding one and becoming actively involved in another NFP organisation this year, increasingly my paid work is focussed on helping the social services sector through these incredibly testing times.

I want to say from the outset that one of the gifts of this experience are the countless amount of talented, courageous, generous, passionate and purposeful souls I have had the great pleasure of meeting and working with. These people have greatly influenced my journey this year and have been the nourishment for my own increasing clarity, purpose and passion.

I understand a lot of people do this, but I put signs behind my computer monitor to keep me on course, and one of those reads:

May your heart be the single source of your effort and your expression

This statement is so meaningful to me, and it only needs to be meaningful to me, but I want to keep reminding myself of my authentic intention to ensure I keep my ego intact and stay grounded in my own personal truth.

The reason for this is that all change is challenging and it can bring the best and the worst out of us. And in these extremely challenging times we currently face, these bests and worsts are amplified. Your social media feeds should provide a solid reference point here.

Surprisingly, as my interest in the sector has grown, I have become more attuned to some people who appear not as engaged in the work of helping others as I would expect. A few weeks ago I witnessed an incident involving a not-for-profit that I have to say was the trigger point for this article.

A lot of people, myself included, have been belting out this “better together” mantra. I’ve previously written about Doing Business #BetterTogether and further talked about the challenges and opportunities of partnerships in The Paradox of Partnerships.

I have always been a huge believer in the value of strategic partnerships and have spent much of my career building them. There is no more important time to work with others than when the challenges, opportunities and demands begin to exceed our capability. As Stella Avramopoulos, CEO of Good Shepherd Australia and New Zealand said to me, “this is an opportunity to disrupt the old models and do things differently, to best support those in crisis. We need collaboration across the not for profit sector, corporate Australia and government.”

Just a few weeks ago (September 3rd) a Sydney Morning Herald headline read: “Charities dwarf mining and agriculture in our economy, but many face ruin”  - they go on to say :

“Since COVID-19 hit, two-thirds of volunteers have cut back their hours. Donations are expected to fall 7 per cent this year, and a whopping 12 per cent next year. Yet while the supply of resources has plummeted, the demand for help has skyrocketed”

The increase in demand is also coming from new cohorts, those who have never asked for help before. Foodbank Australia CEO, Brianna Casey says, “Foodbank has seen an extraordinary increase in demand for food relief across our frontline charities since March. We’ve seen new demographic groups who have never had to ask for food assistance before including international students and casual employees no longer able to find work.”

The challenges faced by the social services and not for profit sector are without question, and by all definitions, both critical and crucial. According to the ACNC (Australian Charities and Not For Profits Commission), there are approximately 56,000 registered charities in Australia, a number expected to significantly diminish, ironically at a time of peak demand. Finding ways of coming together for good must surely be the priority for the survival of their organisations and the achievement of their now more challenging objectives.

As Stella Avramopoulos, CEO of Good Shepherd Australia and New Zealand mentioned:

“This is a crisis that has struck without warning. People are overwhelmed and many people who have never needed support before are now in distress. It’s important that we collaborate across the social welfare sector to ensure people get all the support they need and reliable information about the services available to them.”

The journey to facing such challenges begins with increasing awareness. To address this our team has been working with a collaborative group of talented individuals over the past few months to get a fix on the realities Australians are facing and will face in the coming months and years ahead.

What our team have developed is a data-driven model to objectively measure and anticipate vulnerable Australian communities; the Vulnerable Australia model. This model utilises a broad range of data to identify the key leading indicators and variables that identify and anticipate vulnerability in specific communities and suburbs.

Importantly, the model has been designed to be dynamic and is refreshed with new data as circumstances like government support, and lockdowns change.

As part of Anti-Poverty Week, we will be launching this model publicly in a free webinar on October 14th called Vulnerable Australia. The webinar is a presentation on the current and emerging Vulnerability in Australian communities, exacerbated by the economic and social impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

As Toni Wren, Executive Director of Anti-Poverty Week commented this morning “Anti-Poverty Week is pleased to see more collaborations between for-profit and non-profit sectors as we work together to tackle the challenges brought on by this pandemic. Together we can solve poverty.”

Our authentic intention is to bring numbers to the challenge, to bring objectivity and to heighten the awareness of our new realities. As a team we came together for good - we built this as a means for ensuring more adequate support for all Australians when and where it's needed. We hope that this information will be a platform from which many more will come together for a common purpose and stop competing for good.

If you would like to attend the Vulnerable Australia Webinar, click here to register.

When I posted the article “When bravery outruns capacity”, about the immense challenges I have personally faced these last five months, I made a very deliberate choice. I made the choice to express my authenticity, to reveal my learning, my struggles, the rawness of my emotion and my empathy for others.

I have to admit that I was overwhelmed with gratitude by your responses and comments. I told my truth, and many of you helped me celebrate that vulnerability. Through these  encouraging and supportive comments, I felt seen in my intentions to help others and to lead, and boy do I appreciate it.

Amongst your comments four words kept coming up: empathy, vulnerability, resilience and courage. The one that really stood out to me was courage. It made me wonder, why is it that this post was seen as courageous? And where is it that courage comes from? 

When I think of courage I think of more grandiose examples of people standing up against the tide of popular opinion, the people who I see as speaking their truth to power. I think of people like Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Katherine Gun. 

There is however one example of courage that I am incredibly drawn to and that is the story of Sophia Scholl (inset in the image above) and her selfless bravery in the name of truth. We posted about Sophia back in February this year, a largely unknown German student driven by her moral cause to rise up against the tyranny of the Nazi Party. A fearless act of selfless bravery and courage that cost her her life at just 21 years of age.

I like telling her story because it's a story rarely told about a young woman who without a public life or a public voice, did everything she could to stir others into action, to bring power to her truth. Whilst it might be argued she played a small role in informing the German public about the genocide and murder of innocent civilians, she did so by risking her life, which was the enormous price to pay and a risk she accepted in the name of this truth. 

This is an important story because of its authenticity and intention. There was no fame or notoriety to be gained by her actions which were carried out with her friends in secret. There was just cause, truth and an awful lot of risk. To me, this is where courage is found, where it can exist free of ego and in the purity of its authentic intention.

So where does such courage come from? Interestingly the word courage comes from the latin root “cor” which means heart. I think Sophia is such a wonderful example of pure heart. I also found that Simon Sinek has some clarifying and slightly different perspectives on the topic. In this video, he says that courage is external, an external expression and a response to external circumstance. He talks about trust and gives an excellent example of how the Israeli Army keeps teams together in their reserve from the age of 18, a deliberate choice to ensure the bond and trust amongst these soldiers. It’s a way of ensuring their combined resilience to challenge, a strengthened resolve in their togetherness.

It would seem that this strength that comes from trust is the birthplace of brave acts. Many heroes Sinek has interviewed have remarked on their choice for courage and that the reason was often “because they would do the same for me”. The other thing that is said about courage is that when we want to speak our truth to power, we have to lean into the discomfort and fear of judgment of others and ensure that our message is right in its authentic intention. This is reinforced by the example of Sophia and the notion of heart. 

Being courageous isn't always enough. We need to maintain the resilience that fuels courage in the face of our obstacles. This does not mean being rigid, but instead our resilience provides us with a platform from which we can easily adapt to changing circumstances. After all, a pillow can be resilient to a wrecking ball.

Importantly, Sinek also highlights that when people do great things they are seldom or hardly ever alone and neither am I.

I find my own resilience and strength because I also do not work alone, nor do I publish without checking my content with my team. I completely trust my team. I trust that they care for me and I trust that they would not allow me to run risks that pose a danger to me or us. It is our bond, and our common understanding about our common capacity for reason, care and the outcomes we all seek that provides strength and allows the speaking of truth to power.

It is because of my team that I am becoming more and more able to share my authentic self, without shame or fear of judgment (well, less of it), that I am leaning into the incredible discomfort of speaking my truth and that I am doing it to be of service to others.

Of course I worry about what people think of me, I get concerned about how I am perceived  and I do a lot of thinking about my drivers; am I being authentic? Am I being egoic? Am I looking for acceptance? Or, am I genuinely trying to help others?

What's powerful and necessary is that I can ask these hard questions of myself but most importantly I can ask them of my team directly and I know what I will get back is their truth, their loving honesty and feedback. 

They fully understand my intentions, my values and what I am setting out to achieve and they have full license to correct me and challenge me. We have absolute collaborative clarity, strength and resilience because they know I want to hear what they have to say, I value their input and I actively seek it. (I know it drives them a little crazy at times, but I can own that).

So here is my view on where courage truly comes from. It comes from our heart, our passions, our purpose, our intentions, our truths, but rarely does our truth get to power without “our people”.

To me this feels like such an important question to ask ourselves in our businesses at this specific moment in time. Can we have direct conversations with our teams? Are we open to receiving the direct feedback and acting on it? And do we have the collective strength and resilience to weather the uncertainty of our time through our truth?

In this challenging and changing landscape the strength and resilience of any business and its ability to succeed must be built on such trust. Trust comes from speaking our truths and being open to each other's truths so that we can all grow in our capability to anticipate and respond to change. 

Courage then is found in the authenticity of our enquiry, the questions we ask of ourselves, we ask each other and our propensity to trust and act upon the feedback we give each other. 

At times of crisis and challenge, when the fear of judgement is heightened amongst our people we must lean in, ask the direct questions, invite the direct feedback, and take direction and action. What we must not do is demand and power over people when they are already vulnerable. This is cultural toxicity at the best of economic times, it destroys the necessary unity and weakens the collective resolve. It destroys businesses. 

I want to remind you in this exploration of courage, that strength of any nature, particularly collective strength, comes from the heart of our teams, their trust in each other and their leaders and their ability and permission to be seen, and authentically heard. Change is an inside job, it happens inside of us, and it turns out we are in fact better at it together.

If you subscribe to the view that what gets measured gets done, check out our Collective Resilience Monitor that helps you measure and put resilience to work.

Turns out, I've come to learn that this, in fact, might not be the badge of honour I have always believed it was.

Brene Brown has said “that we are wired for struggle” and I believe that some of us actively look for struggles because we believe it's how life should be. It was either taught to us; “Life wasn't meant to be easy son”, or learned by us from our own experiences.

But just how much struggle is appropriate and how much do we subconsciously or consciously bring struggle into our lives to complete the story we tell ourselves about who we are and how our life goes?

This would appear to be the big question that has emerged for me at this specific point in time.

How deep must we dig or how deep are we choosing to dig? Is it a choice or is it a necessity?

I know for me, this crisis swept me up into a frenzy of helping and being of service to others. I somehow believed that the world needed people of my “grit”, my determination and fight to take action, for others. I have learned that this initial burst was completely subconscious and since I have found resolution that this is in fact who I want to be in the world, but let me assure you it has a cost.

For me this last 5 months has provided a “next level” requirement of depth, one full of psychological triggers to resolve the world as I believe it should be. My incessant demands for leadership (in case you haven't noticed), as it turns out, isn't all about the now, but often about the resolution of my past experiences. I want no person to unnecessarily suffer because I believe I understand what suffering is.

What I want to share with you is the suffering that I have caused myself in my beliefs that bravery has no cost, but it most certainly does.

I think the depth to which we dig is driven by what we truly believe to be “on the line” for us and more specifically, what is required of us personally; believe being the key word here.

I’m a strategist, by reputation and importantly by nature. I didn't thumb through the career guidebook to get here. I learned my capability for vigilance, foresight and the always-on scanning of opportunities, threats and necessary mitigations and interventions.

This on its own is fine, but when charged with the belief of what I MUST do in the face of suffering I have not once afforded myself the luxury or as I would unkindly say the “delusion” of blind hope. This has exhausted me mentally and emotionally and this is what I would like to share with others.

Importantly I am a long way from alone here, I have met and have always been very attracted to “People of Grit”, the “Bungee Jumpers of Uncertainty”, who dare to be brave, and to leap, but it does not mean they do not scream in terror through at least part of that fall.

Throwing caution to the wind and having complete “faith in the universe” is an attractive proposition, but not a naturally occurring one for me or many others. 

For me and for most of you reading this, we have not battled for food, shelter or safety, our challenges have almost always been a bi-product of our lofty expectations, passionate desires and determined resolve to change the course for that which we believed was intended for us, our inherited or interpreted baseplate for being, most of us not capable of knowing which one is true. 

Notably, all of challenge is relative, there are many people doing it super tough right now, by all known definitions, particularly in Melbourne, but fear, pain and challenge is relative. It is driven by the gap between our expectations and our current experience, a gap that has widened in either reality, emotion or core belief over the past five months, dependent upon how change has both entered our lives and been interpreted in our own minds.

For me, it has been both an experience and a trial, where I have dug deeper only to find wave after wave of unresolved “matter” that has had to be fought or surrendered to. The deeper I have dug, the more I have found the brokenness of past experience, all of which have layered counter attack after counter attack upon my resolve.

When we feel attacked, under threat or powerless, our resolve and our deeply held beliefs are called upon to help us construct a response. It’s like calling for backup in the battlefield of our minds, it's just that some of us struggle with surrender more than others.

Powerlessness of course, in and of itself, is not a new experience for any of us, but it's one we may not have felt since we were small children, a time when we last felt reliant and dependent on the ability of others for our safety and survival, our basic needs and our core desire for attachment. The experience is what I called “Psychosocial Regression” in my webinar on April 7th. This webinar was my attempt to offer certainty and guidance. I outlined the plausible response to people experiencing powerlessness and the lack of recent familiarity with that feeling as a way of helping leaders navigate the road ahead.

I find it amusing now (although at times it felt harrowing) that I, in fact, proved that theory right in what I have experienced this past 5 months. The struggle is very real, well at least it felt that way to me.

What I feel compelled to share is that I have found that my grit, determination and courage have been both a blessing and an incredible burden, a curse of cruelty to self, even if occurring for the noblest of causes.

This lesson is one I wanted to share with you. My capacity for self love, self kindness are 1000% critical to my mentally surviving my choices at this time and accepting that these are in fact my choices. Those of us that “get going, when the going gets tough” need support from ourselves firstly and from those around us so the wheels don’t completely come off.

So, mindful that so many people are suffering right now, be it based on economics, homeschooling, isolation or loneliness, that two things must be present; reminding ourselves to be grateful for what we have and for us to offer connection and empathy to others.

Remember that bravery and struggle can only exceed our capacity when we fail to offer or accept empathy and love for ourselves. If we want to make a real difference, we must offer this to ourselves first. Lastly, the healing from connection itself is so vital to ensuring that we do not “outbrave ourselves” and that we must do our best to ensure that others are not left to grit this out alone.

I’d like to finish by offering my gratitude, to my team, our clients, colleagues and friends, recognising that I myself have even found it difficult to work with me this past 5 months.

I hope this is helpful.

Scott

What is happening now, regardless of the imperfection of interventions, is asking something of us, and for most of us, that will likely be somewhat different than business as usual. 

My assertion is that we have one critical choice in the midst of external uncertainty and that is to either allow change to happen to us, or for us to take some command over the changes we make to ourselves, our thinking and our impact in the midst of volatility.

Digging into the concept of choice I was drawn to the origin of the idea of three different types of people, the well known saying that is actually from a speech given in 1931 by Nicholas Murray Butler, the President of Columbia University in New York. I feel his original idea has been somewhat diluted:

“The vast population of this earth, and indeed nations themselves, may readily be divided into three groups. There are the few who make things happen, the many more who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens. Every human being is born into this third and largest group; it is for himself, his environment and his education to determine whether he shall rise to the second group or even to the first.”

Taking this notion into the context of the day, I thought it interesting to ponder the management of turbulence in aeronautics (Naturally! You don’t want to see inside my head). In high levels of turbulence, it’s important you don’t stop. Now, this doesn’t mean you don’t think, all challenge and discomfort requires a rewire and reset to comfortably fly through the vulnerable zone. 

From what I have read, experienced pilots will tell you that slowing down in high turbulence is mostly about passenger comfort not about the safety of the aircraft. This is only true in large passenger aircraft and is, of course, relative to the size and weight of the aircraft (an interesting analogy for business perhaps).

Importantly, pilots talk about slowing down to optimal manoeuvring speed, and that often this change in speed is only marginal. It begs the question about our own optimal manoeuvring speed.

I have the luxury and the danger of having a small business, a light aircraft in a turbulent economy. Whilst it makes us more agile, not reaching a safe and optimal manoeuvring speed in high turbulence could cause serious structural damage. This also means that it is not at all safe to slow down below the optimal speed.

The danger of having superior agility is the range of wrong moves one can make at high speed. We have at times in our own business these last 5 months travelled at some dangerous speeds at our own risk.

In short, the lesson is too fast (or too much), and you will lose focus and become inattentive to the truly important. Too slow, and that turbulence will most definitely wreak havoc, particularly if you’re not flying an A380.

If you are however flying that A380, high turbulence is a reality check for a lack of agility, the length of time it takes to change speed or altitude and the inability to keep up with the rate of change. This reality check could very well give rise to assessing the weight of the aircraft and its responsive agility. We will quickly learn in the coming 6 to 12 months that drawing swimlanes on a whiteboard, is in fact, not the definition of being agile. This lack of agility allows our smaller competitors to outmanoeuvre us in these times.

This brings us back to the importance of choice. The lesson from the aircraft analogy is that we must know ourselves and our capability if we are to withstand and penetrate the turbulence ahead. People and businesses capable of introspection and acute self-awareness tend to make better choices amidst volatility.

This is the most critical of all factors in uncertainty, awareness of self and awareness of capability in advance of strategic choice. It enables the consideration of new alternatives and broadening the range of options we perceive we have available to us.

In business, we talk about reading the play, but one of the most important corresponding variables is reading the play in light of one’s skill, experience and capability. Again, this is a very different game depending upon the scale of your business. 

Now, we must take our established awareness, and curiously assess the conditions in light of our capability. Introspection is the platform upon which we can curiously and knowingly navigate uncertainty.

What we must be capable of seeing is a new possibility amidst the line of fire. We must be able to see which of our old paradigms are of use and which are obstructive in the context of current change. We must first know ourselves (our optimal manoeuvring speed), then remain curious about our enemy so that we can make the right choices that lead us through the turbulence ahead. 

Stay Safe. Godspeed.

Scott

Over the past 4 to 6 weeks, I have witnessed and heard of:

• people shopping as if their wallets needed to be freed when many of them are on the cusp of unemployment

• IKEA and other retailers not even doing counts on entry

• Families gathering in groups of 30

• Teenagers hanging out in gangs of 10 or more as if nothing had changed, their parents clearly not feeling the need to encourage them otherwise

We are in the grip of a life-threatening pandemic. In the midst of a tug of war, clutching on tightly to a life we believe we need, whilst obstructing our ability to have a life at all. It is a battle of grand stupidity, of political irony, one where “leadership” is so fundamentally necessary and yet somehow so elusive, even to those who are directly remunerated to lead.

We can only move as fast as our slowest runner, and people we have some serious stragglers out there. People are hobbling through a minefield of misinformation trying to ensure their children are not endangering themselves and others while others’ prerogatives are outweighed by wondering when the next football game will be played. .

This unfortunate observation is just like George Orwell talked about in his book 1984, a kind of drone-like mindlessness. It seems like dear George was more of a futurist than an author being able to so accurately forecast our kinds’ shortsightedness and our race for a dollar over a life.

But the first question that comes to my mind is not why this is happening, instead, I wonder what have we learnt from the first wave that will change the way we lead into and through the challenges ahead of the second?

I made specific reference to the role of leadership back on April 7th, when many of my friends remarked I was being pessimistic and that we would bounce back from this as if the pandemic was akin to getting a bad batch of tomatoes.

I had asked in my webinar on April 7th, demanded actually, that the business community stand up, that we needed leadership, we needed the brave and the strong to rise up. This was followed by the deafening noise of crickets in the night echoed, the reality of our situation that had heavily dropped into my comprehension.

At the very end of that video, I cried, I was overcome with emotion, not because I may not be able to buy plants from Bunnings, but because I had thought through the worst-case scenarios, and I had felt the overwhelming emotion of our possibilities and suffering. As a result, I was compelled to act, to engage in solutions, and we are still up to our necks in that every day. (hit me up if you want to join in) 

I do strategy, a lifetime of experiences good and bad has taught me vigilance over detail, to reach in with empathy and to understand. It is the cause of my thinking and insight and my demands for more data points and my frustration over the utter lack of mindfulness we have observed. 

Now, leaders of commerce, government, community and family, this is maybe better considered a second chance than a second wave. This is our opportunity to embrace our employees, customers and communities with strength, direction and reassurance, this is our chance to redeem ourselves from the silence of denial we suffered the first time around.

What can we now do together? Now that we know of the evidence of this pandemic. Now that we know that this thing reaches well beyond a football season and that Australians and people all over the world are suffering in ways we couldn’t contemplate just last Christmas.

How will we respond to the fact that services like Foodbank, Good Shephard and Domestic Violence agencies are overwhelmed already, well before the current government stimulus disappears. That Australians are truly suffering right now and that our actions as leaders will seriously matter to someone else, no matter how big or small they are.

As Bill Taylor says in his 2010 article:

The true mark of a leader is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action — an unconventional business strategy, a unique product-development roadmap, a controversial marketing campaign — even as the rest of the world wonders why you're not marching in step with the status quo. In other words, real leaders are happy to zig while others zag. They understand that in an era of hyper-competition and non-stop disruption, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something special."

How will we stand up for something special? Something special, like supporting the disadvantaged? “How will we step up, when we can’t step out?”  What will we do for others, for our teams, our communities and our families? What will we do to restore hope through courage and conviction? How will we now lead differently, that we have been given this second chance?

So why should we care about Strategic Partnerships?

The opportunity of creating large scale impact at low operational cost is indeed the lure of strategic partnerships. In fact, at a time like this, one might argue that these sorts of opportunities are more important now than ever before. 

The watch out of course is having sufficient self-awareness, purposeful intention and curiosity as an individual and a business as they are critical precursors to co-creation and mutual possibility.

So here is the challenge, the timing is perfect now for low cost, high impact paths to market, in fact, I’d argue it always is. The truth of this moment though is that partnerships in an economic crisis become more of an imperative than an option.

The problem is, at distance, people achieve very little together, relationships do not evolve, vulnerability is absent and true connection and collaboration isn’t possible.

This can and must change if businesses are going to prosper in the new normal. We must unlearn the habits that keep us at distance and learn again to allow connection in the workplace and in our commercial relationships. 

Much of what we are taught in business creates distance, at distance, humans are met with a high degree of discomfort. Some of us have become so conditioned to distance, that this way of operating has seriously impacted our mental wellbeing. In fact, studies have proven that people who live without genuine connection suffer chronic illness, the absence of connection appears to impact us at a cellular level.

Further, unfortunately, what we learn in business we take home to our families and loved ones or companions. Surviving and thriving on the front lines of commercial conquest gives rise to an ever-increasing number of people who struggle with being genuinely connected, unable to feel or express emotion, unable to admit not knowing or understanding, unable to ask for help and unable to attach to any non-material purpose.

This is not a natural state of being, this is why we are getting sicker, mentally and physically and this is importantly reducing our opportunities to grow as individuals and businesses. This is costing us commercial opportunities atop of the damage it causes us as individuals.

So what has all this “gooey stuff” got to do with business in the coming years?

With demand set to decline, given an economic recession rocket boosted by a pandemic, businesses will need to be looking for more economical ways of generating revenue. One of the most efficient ways is through strategic partnerships; working together with other companies to leverage a collective capability and make more for each other along the way. Mutual market interest, economic efficiency, ROI and scale, is a formula for success under fire.

But, the first step towards change is awareness, so we must acknowledge that partnering and collaborating with other businesses no longer occurs naturally and in fact, we have to learn how to find and build allies and unlearn the behaviours that are holding us back from genuinely doing so.

In fact, history will clearly show you the critical importance of allies when we are at war and economically we are, as at this month, officially at war. 

For those of you in doubt, strap yourselves in, with a potential wave 2 rearing its head in Melbourne this week, this is not BAU and therefore it’s time to start to think about how you will do business differently.

The fundamental commercial issue is that partnering without purposeful intent for the longer-term almost always ends in the erosion of profit.

It’s tempting in a wobbly market to anchor onto bigger, more stable businesses, which can have its merits, but without a longer-term lens can be a financial burden for numerous reasons. When we think short-term in negotiations we invariably snooker ourselves commercially over the medium to longer-term. 

When we chase immediate volume plays we can become reliant on sources of supply that will soon become the enemies of our P & L. If this isn’t yet ringing true, I’d like you to consider the dependent relationships that exist in your business today, the ones where you are the dependent for leads, sales or traffic and reflect on how the margins from those “deals” over time have been gradually or not so gradually eroded.

There are very real reasons to apply caution to strategic relationships, but if we can do them differently, with a long-term relationship genuinely in mind, the outcomes can vary significantly.

I should call out too that there are plenty of people who have made a living in start-ups collecting badges (partners) with unsustainable terms only to flip or list the entity in all of its perceptual glory, often leaving shareholders wondering. It’s been done, time and time again, but the smart money over the coming years will not be so easily fooled.

Strategic Partnerships, it’s no surprise, are best executed by the evolved. That is people and companies who are comfortable in their own skin, with who they actually are, and with clarity and self-awareness about what they are most definitely not and what their real issues are with customer acquisition and retention. 

So my call out to you all, as we relentlessly throw out hashtags of hope, is that before we can actually be #bettertogether, we must take stock of why that’s been so difficult, so far.

What do you think? How do you think business can quickly evolve and change its approach to build more valuable strategic partnerships?

This process of cognitive offloading, continues to extend well into adulthood. "Adults show remarkable flexibility in this ability, typically relying on internal cognitive processing when adequate but turning to external support in situations of high internal demand,” remarks Kristy Armitage. We look to our managers, leaders, personalities, news to make decisions for us. To paraphrase Kant, it’s easy to be immature and outsource our thinking and understanding to others. Also consider that just because you read, talk with others, get a degree, it doesn’t mean you love to actually think about things.

This outsourcing works for us in most cases. We want to lose weight, we search for a nutrition app and use it to guide us on what and how much to eat. What this doesn’t do, is encourage us to explore the reasons why losing weight is important, what it means to us and others, how we think about the resistance we might face in going down this path, and so on. I’ve seen the exact same patterns occur in business. Get outside advice and guidance on a new strategy, but why does that strategy matter to you and your clients?

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage (immaturity)
- Immanuel Kant

To actively engage in this way of thinking takes work. It’s difficult. We’re comfortable with where we’re at and taking a different path is often uncertain. There’s no surety on how things will work out, what others’ responses might be. We may also worry about having to answer questions people ask that we don’t know the answer to. Kant talks about this resistance as laziness and cowardice.

A battery of processes and methods have been developed to help people make these steps. In the business world, we use systems like Lean & Agile. In health there are numerous diets and plans to get us exercising. We have religion, mindfulness, stoicism, and many others. With all of these we can easily suffer from doing the process but not making any sustainable change. As I have been thinking on the reasons for this, it appears we should focus less on following a particular system to change our habits, and more on changing our habits of thought.

We are no longer mysterious souls; we are hackable animals
- Yuval Harari

Let’s take the “fail fast, fail often” approach prominent in many business start-up discussions. If we adopt those methodologies blindly, we easily fall into short-termism and create a race to the bottom just to get something done because we can change it later. If we think about what it means to “fail fast, fail often”, we recognise that it asks for an acceptance of failure whilst learning and moving forward. Fail fast, fail often is not an active attempt to fail as quickly as possible. Yet whilst catch-phrases are useful as a shorthand, and allow us to cognitively offload, we all too easily forget the totality of what they once represented.

The outsourcing of thinking will see us adopting processes without understanding their intention. We miss the opportunity to use them as a process to change our habits of thought. We must begin to make moves to apply actual thinking in a world of cautious consideration that rewards certainty in our output. Only then might we be able to emerge from the self-inflicted immaturity that Kant describes.

If you are a market leader with stagnant market share, this is your moment.

If you are a second or third-tier challenger, this is your moment.

If you are a start-up, an entrepreneur or small family business, this is your moment.

This is the moment when old paradigms are redundant and where the game will be won through curiosity, anticipation, speed and agility.

This is the moment when previously forecasted realities can not be relied upon and when the variability of economic impact will create new pathways for brands and businesses that can learn, adapt and out-think their competitors. This is the moment, your moment to lead through the uncertainty and reset, reposition and revitalise your business.

This is the moment when competitive advantage is not marked by what you have but instead, by what you do with it.

You know that moment when you approach the veterinary surgery and as soon as your dog realises where he/she is, it slams on the brakes? The ensuing struggle of being dragged, sliding across the floor quivering and cowering, you know that moment? Because it feels like the last 12 weeks in Australian business to me.

You keep reassuring your dog, but utilising the paradigm formed by past experiences, the dog continues to resist. This leads me to wonder, what our past experiences are really doing for us now. The potential for loss is being met with inaction, indecision and a stifling lack of leadership.

The reality of our situation sends the nation's socio-economic elite into disbelief as they dig those fingers deeper into the ears of reason.

What a canvas for change, an opportunity to reshuffle the decks, and a chance to make a significant change for your business, it’s market position and economic prosperity.

Change the paradigm, shift the possibilities.

Just so everyone is tuned in, right now, even with JobKeeper and JobSeeker in place, as at May 29th, the increase in demand for Food Relief Services via Foodbank is up 78%. That's more than 1 million Australians in need of help, many of whom are vulnerable students and the newly unemployed. Yes right now!. (Thanks to Brianna Casey for this sobering update - a link to donate is below)

When I mention such stats to the executive teams of Australian Businesses, it genuinely shocks them. Then, how is it that these executives are going to navigate new terrain, they haven’t taken the time to understand?

And herein lies the opportunity to change the game and for a real reset of competitive advantage. Why? Because the rules are changing every day.

In the first two weeks of this, I myself got it wrong, way wrong. I was all stunned, shocked and outraged by the deafening silence from Big Business in offering any reassurance to Australians, no matter how symbolic. 

In hindsight, I knew better than to expect this. How was it that the old paradigms, “The Persona Dartboards” that hang on the walls of marketing departments, would suddenly come alive and morph themselves into empathetic connection with customers they broadly and inaccurately describe?

This is where there is a significant opportunity for competitive advantage, done differently with different thinking.

I said it in my post 12 weeks ago, “There’s nothing better than a race where 90% of your competitors stop running” and now I would add that maybe the race your competitors are running is taking them further away from relevance with the very same customers you compete with them for.

I swear in many ways it feels like a lot of businesses are lining up on the front lines of battle, armed with Nerf Guns and Super Soakers. Don’t be that business.

You see right now in this current market and in the next 3 to 5 years ahead, it matters not who you were, or who you think you are. What does matter is how you behave, how you show up, how you out-think, out-manoeuvre and how you “out-care” your competitors.

I said in a webinar 70 days ago that it was important that “We ensure that our ladder is not up against a burning wall”.

The burning wall is symbolic for any practice, behaviour or way of doing business that will be redundant in the future - the old paradigms that no longer serve you or your customers.

There are many businesses out still driving their trusty old sales vehicles, the ones with high mileage, heavy steering, bald tyres, dodgy brakes and inept suspension systems ploughing forward as if nothing has changed.

This is the opportunity. This is the time to find meaningful and tangible ways of building organisational resilience, a time when having a kanban board can no longer serve as the delusion of agility, a time when you need to rethink customer insight and understand the new variables of concern, change the way you sell products or even the products you sell. This is the time to get off that burning ladder and compete. The opportunity to seize this moment, by actually being present in the realities of this moment rather than the false and temporary comfort of the past. 

The rules have changed, and they will continue to change in the weeks, months and years ahead. Tune in, take your advantage, make this your moment.

If you are in a position to, please donate to Foodbank here: every dollar provides 2 meals to someone in need.

Finding ways to lower the cost of doing business whilst keeping the revenue rolling in, is, without doubt, the business challenge of the day. This is therefore also a time when strategic alliances and partnerships should be getting some serious attention as a way of ensuring business success.

Done well, partnerships offer a low-cost way to significantly improve the outcomes for businesses. Unlike your usual business transactions though, partnerships require some different thinking in order to return the results you expect.

For some, partnering is intuitive, but this is not true for everyone. What I have learned from my experiences is that often we can get to opportunities faster and more economically when we work in partnership with other companies, but it’s the way we think about them that makes all the difference. 

Partnerships and strategic alliances are some of the first things to look at when thinking about shifting the prospects of your business. When we are scanning for “opportunities for growth” and “value exchanges” we should be thinking about which companies might help us get more effective reach and more efficient sales conversion. Together, is very often a better pathway to accelerating results than just simply pedaling harder on our own. 

My first real experience of the benefit of partnerships was when I was selling roast and ground coffee to cafes in the early to mid-’90s. I was working for a high cost, locally unknown, European brand with fewer resources than nearly all of our competitors. This meant thinking laterally about how to get in on the most “aspirational” sites and locations before competitors swept in and took the business. 

Building a cafe coffee brand was all about high end, highly successful clients using your product. If you acquired one great cafe in a great location, you would secure another 15 because they saw your product being served in that cafe. It was a time when many operators had little to no knowledge of what quality coffee really was, so they looked to others and what they were doing or using.

With this in mind, I quickly found myself visiting the licensing commission every week to see what cafes and restaurants had applied for a liquor license. I would then narrow this down to those who were in great (coffee) locations. In those times you couldn’t get a decent latte in the suburbs, but you might have been able to get a “cup-of-cino” (yes people had signs spelling it like this) at the local shopping mall. Australia has come a very long way since this time, now viewed as having some of the worlds best baristas serving the world’s best coffee. 

If the business was in a great location, I promptly jumped on the phone to my partners; shopfitters, electricians and plumbers to see who was working on the site so I could get a referral to the owner. All the selling happened before the site was open or even built. It was imperative that we were there first. If we were too late, the major competitors, with better-known brands and lower prices, would smash us in the contest. Our partnerships were reciprocal because many of our clients were also in the market for an electrician, plumber or shopfitter. These partnerships were fundamental to the 45% compound annual growth rate we achieved over the 3 years I worked for this business.

I carried this notion of partnering forward when our team was launching a potato chip/snack brand nationally. A partnership with Coca-Cola was a monster contributor to scaling our brand and was a major push down the hill on the way to driving a 7x revenue result in just 24 months.

These experiences taught me that partnerships can be incredibly impactful. Not just for a smaller business trying to scale quickly but also for larger businesses who have a need to access new markets, new channels to market, or even just reposition themselves with their customers. Having identified, negotiated, executed and led dozens of national and global partnerships over my career, I can attest that when done well, they can be incredibly rewarding.

If you want to get more customers or keep more customers there is much to be gained by working with a strategic partner to achieve your objectives. Your “opportunities for growth” are indeed all the evidence you need to get started.

There are of course some fundamentals, nuances and risks in identifying and leading strategic partnerships and alliances to meet commercial and brand outcomes. For example, just like any other relationship, it’s critical that both self-awareness and curiosity are matched with the capability to deliver. It’s equally important that relationships do not become dependent or co-dependent over time. 

As a killer example of self-awareness and curiosity, the recent partnering of Samsung TVs with Apple TV & Apple Music saw two fierce competitors in one market, realise they were #bettertogether in another market.

In any exchange of value, there must be mutual regard for what the other partner brings to the table, or you can be assured of a break-up down the road. Furthermore, in the name of brand equity and business reputation, there are many risks to be mitigated against when starting a new relationship.

As always, there are many other things to consider in selecting and leading strategic partnerships, too many to mention here. We’ve published some of this material on our website if you are interested in learning more. Download our guide to assessing strategic partnerships here. 

For now, I hope that reading this, may have at least drawn your attention to the opportunities of truly being #bettertogether.

Happy Partnering, Scott

curiously conscious commerce 

• Did you ever wonder why some people are so dedicated to their work when others aren’t?

• Did you ever wonder why there aren’t more married couples at the gym, and why there are so many single people there?

• Why some people live for fitness and others say they wish they had the time?

• Why some people save and others live paycheck to paycheck?

• Why some people can abstain from small indulgences like chocolate or ice cream and others can’t resist the temptation? 

• Why some people are driven to learn a new language or skill and others have never given it a thought?

• Why some people are constantly trying new experiences and others are wedded to routine? 

• Why some people never watch TV and others find themselves glued to it for 4 hours a day? 

The answer is HOPE!

Hope is the difference between these choices, decisions and behaviours.

Hope it is said to “be a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen”, it is also defined as “a feeling of trust”, and when we are hoping we are “wanting something to happen or be the case”.

When we have Hope for something better or more in life we take actions that bring us closer to that realisation. We make different choices on how we spend our time, how we spend our money and the thoughts that occupy our minds.

I say this all the time, but humans are creatures of progress, and when our hope dissipates for whatever reason, that progress seems far less achievable. When we lack Hope we give rise to discontent, irritation, frustration and unhappiness. Hope then, and its pending absence is the root cause of the mental health tsunami our society could be seriously challenged by. (This is indeed the motivation for our team to commit so much effort to build solutions that can intercept and intervene with the loss of Hope.)

Hope is the causeway through which expectations for life are formulated and when it is lost we find ourselves oscillating between our needs and wants.

When we find ourselves battling to have our basic needs met, we can get stuck bouncing between needs and wants, unable to attain hope to set new expectations. In this state, we will tend to participate in behaviours that take us further away from a better future. This is why, even if our basic needs are met, an absence of Hope can be the birthplace of instant gratification, which leads to more unhealthy eating, drinking, drug-taking, gambling or any way of temporarily escaping the distress we experience when Hope is lost. 

It is also, therefore, the birthplace of obesity, chronic disease, domestic violence, crime and the division of our community, between “Haves” and “Have Nots”, Hopes and No Hopes. Whilst I am on that, the term “No-Hoper”, an offensively narcissistic term, shows no empathy toward people who have lost hope and struggle to bring it into their lives. This is a time for compassion, not judgement.

Even amongst the most selfish of us, the simple fact remains that when a community loses Hope, the economic opportunities diminish, innovation dies, and a halt in progress is experienced by all, “Haves” and “Have-Nots” alike.

In economic downturns of any magnitude, the odds for opportunity blow-out and the chances for choice and change are significantly reduced. This slows us down as a collective and brings some of us to a grinding halt, this is where people lose hope, and the impacts on human behaviour, health and mental well being can be staggering unless we choose to consciously address it. 

We have already seen the capital HAVES, preying on the weakened, like Hyenas over a carcass, unable to stop gorging themselves on the misfortune of others. This is so incredibly short-sighted, and so strategically flawed over the longer term. 

Then there are the obvious immediate opportunities, for the next “Meal”.

The “highly competitive”, are currently immersing themselves in that very challenge. The easy work or lowest hanging fruit is to identify those people with Hope (the forecastable “Haves”) and get to them faster than your competitors. As an insights rich company, our team can attest to the phenomenal increase in demand for these more immediate victories. 

There is nothing wrong with competing for higher positions in competitive terrain, but that’s not all there is to do.

Here’s the juice! Make no mistake, we are at War here!

Whilst it is true that

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.” Sun Tzu

it is also true that

“In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good” Sun Tzu

So I would conclude that the most challenging and most economically necessary work is thinking how your business might lower the odds of opportunity, and allow people easier access to hope. There is no point in residing over destruction or hovering over the skeletal remains of demand.

When our economic capacities are challenged, people need to find much more cost-efficient or even cost-free ways to participate in Hope driven behaviours and actions, they need a pathway and this is where the real thinking and longer-term economic prospects lie. 

Hope is of critical importance to the state, the state of our minds and our economy.

“Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.” - Anne Frank

What do you think this means for you individually? How will you maintain hope?

What do you think it means for your business, it’s products and services? How can you lower the odds of opportunity and give easier access to hope for your customers?

What do you think this means for your team? What might you do for them so that they maintain the hope that drives their engagement and productivity?

Show an attempt at deception, a disrespect for intelligence, a lack of care or regard for loyalty and people will when given the choice, consistently reward you with their absence. 

Universally, what we have experienced in the past 8 weeks has been so foreign, confronting, alarming and disturbing, whilst there is variable impact, emotionally this has been one hell of a ride for so many of us. The fragility of our commerce, the lost value of our connection, the dysfunction of our workplaces, the absence of business dexterity and our strategic impotence in the face of uncertainty, all on display for our viewing displeasure.

What has stood out to me most, is the resounding challenge that brands and businesses are having in connecting with customers who are experiencing ambiguity and emotional frailty.  

In the first two weeks of this lockdown, in the infancy of our crisis, en-masse we were met with deafening silence, as brands, just like people were struggling to know what to do or how to act, even if imperfectly, to the millions of customers doused in a shower of fear. Then suddenly, it was BAU, with businesses not adapting their approaches to customers with the exception of a sprinkling: “We’ve been with you for years”, “We do everything we do for you”, and “We will be here with you, as we always have been”, “Together”. Brilliantly formulaic, frightfully insincere. See this video montage on advertising that featured in the US Market.

So right now, we are looking at the sales numbers, as the economy is parted like a sea of haves and have nots and many businesses are left with a common non-negotiable, we better find out who even can buy our sh!t right now, and what it is they need from us, and hurry!

So to this end, and inspired by a chat with the wonderful Nina Christian yesterday, this morning I have compiled a shortlist of the reasons people are not buying your sh!t and what you can do about it. Maybe these don’t apply to you, maybe a few do, but it’s not a list I want to see any of you ticking off completely.

1.Know your place!

There is an obvious challenge to figure out where brands and businesses fit in people's lives, particularly in a time filled with such relentless uncertainty. 

This was well pronounced by the barrage of bullish!t messaging for all types of brands telling us they were there for us, usually by way of imagined promotional discounts or things they wanted us to do for them, like spend money with them, for them.

It’s time for some solid self-awareness. This is not a time for your protesting screams for attention, it’s time brands got realistic about who they really are in the world of their customers.

Get grounded on your place in the minds of your customers and let that be the basis from which you connect. What role can you realistically play in helping your customers do the things they need to do?

2. Find a mutual interest.

Without awareness, finding a place of mutual interest becomes challenging. As I mentioned in a webinar I gave five weeks ago (below), we need to understand what matters most to our customers right now and figure out a way we can #beofservice.

This is in stark contrast to making half-arsed adaptations to what you were doing and saying before this pandemic in the hope it is enough to keep the revenue rolling.

It starts and ends with your customer and their interest, and to think Dale Carnegie gets mocked.

If you don’t know what matters most to your customers right now, you’d better find out real quick. Think about what your customers need to get done and why this matters to them. How do your interests intersect with theirs?

3. Don’t make assumptions

All great connections are fuelled by curiosity, questioning and a growing understanding of how people see the world.

The poor utility of customer data and serious lack of meaningful customer insight is literally kicking your P & L to the curb.

Imagine you are in the trenches in battle, enemy fire is relentless, and you don’t know how you can move forward, would you bet your own life on a guess? Are you prepared to bet your economic future on a spin of the chocolate wheel? I didn’t think so!

The economic impact of this pandemic does not treat all equally, so do you know which of your customers can and will be able to still buy from you? Where they are and how you might reach them before your competitor?

Knowing our customers, how they think, why they think it and anticipating needs is not new science, it's available, consumable and it is right now by no means and never was a “nice to have”.

We need to explore alternative ways of engaging with our customers, given their experiences, and continue to look for ways to continuously adapt to changing needs.

4. Mean what you say

I hear the cries of corporate CEOs declaring their concern for the mental health of the nation, but the question is has this concern propelled your organisation, even if for its own self-interest and reputational equity, to take your countless resources and deploy them at a solution? Or should we just ask you to stand up or shut up?

A concerned and somewhat powerless public wants to trust you, they want to rely on you, they want to believe in what you have to say, but say something without conviction and commitment to action and you will find yourself in a hole of disappointment you actually dug yourself.

When people are challenged, anxious, worried or frightened we turn to people we trust, and trust is earned through actions, not words.

Mean what you say, do what you say and make sure it matters to people.

5. Offer a future

People are creatures of progress, we all want to move forward, out of this pandemic, onto something more and better, into a life where the lessons of right now, shape more of what’s more right tomorrow.

People need hope, a pathway to possibility, a leg up and out of this trying situation.

I know we have our fingers in our ears about the actual realities of the months and years ahead, but if you want to be followed, you need to create a compelling vision of what the future could be like. Joining your customers in denial, to never speak of the unspeakable does not only not help your customers, but it’s also not helping your brand.

Right now, people fear that this pandemic is likely to result in the amplification of our already failing society. That depression could be our new norm, that in our highly developed society, people will be confronted by real poverty and that our instinct for survival will turn us against each other.

You want to be followed, lead! People need pragmatic optimism and that optimism comes from the evidence of your actions as businesses and brands.

There is no going back, so be a part of helping people move forward, they need it.

6. Believe in Your Customers

Think about what you are really doing for your teams and your customers to place faith in your organisation and brands.

This country has already suffered a horrendous record in employee engagement (Gallup) as a result of a lack of trust (Edelman).

Now is your chance to stand up, and mean something to people, not to look for accolades for empty proclamations, but instead to show people what you can achieve together.

To move well beyond self-interest into mattering when it matters.

Throughout human history, people have followed the brave, the selfless servants of the people, the people who create a vision of the future that others can see themselves in.

Much of the reason companies and brands are not doing more, is because they don’t believe, they don’t have faith in the loyalty of people and what underpins their trust. Move beyond this transactional Mexican stand-off and you can be sure that the what you achieve together will provide rewards for everyone involved, including your brand and business.

Oh, and one last thing. If you do any of this, faster and better than your competitors, then winning will not be a concern. Waste any more time in the stand-off, in the absence of real insight, understanding and meaningful action, and the results are obvious.

Change is an inside job, for everyone and every business, it requires self-awareness, curiosity and conviction in your actions.

People will indeed buy your sh!t, when you give them reasons to see it as something other than sh!t.

I hope this helps.

Scott

I see the term “Start-Up” as a potentially dangerous label we are increasingly prone to using. I will argue that the term “Start-up” brings with it a false idealism that makes us feel bigger than we are. This, in and of itself, can make us lose our perspective about our own reality.

Now if you think I am nitpicking, I want you to consider the difference in a BBQ conversation that goes like this:

Q: “What do you do Scott?”

A: “Oh, I work for myself, in my own small business in ‘X Field’” 

This may, of course, leave the person wondering any one of the following possibilities:

1. “I wonder why Scott couldn’t get a job”

2. “Wow that’s got to be tough”

3. “Just scratching out a living hey”

One thing is certain though, answer that very simple question in this way, and watch the person’s face drop, an avalanche of apathy often ending in a change of subject. (#awkward as my daughter would say.)

Now take the very same question and apply a different answer to it:

Q: “What do you do Scott?”

A: “Me, I lead a start-up in ‘X-Field”

Now watch the reaction, as the person moves forward with intrigue and excitement thinking:

1. “Wow a startup, that’s got to be fun”

2. “This guy might be onto something here, I’d better ask more questions”

3. “It takes guts to back yourself like that”

People, let me be the one to say; how utterly f%$ing ridiculous! That using the word “start-up” would have someone drawing completely different conclusions to the same situation. I see this as part of the problem.

Starting a business is challenging. 

Staying in one can be really tough. 

Winning in one is statistically improbable.

These are the facts of the matter.

And this is my issue!

I feel that glamorising small business with an apparently more acceptable word is doing us damage. I think it gives us a false sense of our reality and I would also go so far as to say that using the word “start-up” infers, in the minds of many, that someone has succeeded before they have effectively started much at all.

Now given that the failure rates for small business are alarmingly 90%, I think a solid dose of reality isn’t just medicinally relevant but essential to not underestimating the challenges that lay ahead.

In case you think I am being harsh, just last year 49% of “start-up failures” were due to their being no market for the product or service. Yes, that’s right, nearly half of all failures are down to the fact that people are making shit that nobody actually wants! Good, God! (This makes me feel somewhat better because I did this myself back in 2004).

If that statistic doesn’t scream a reason to take a good hard look at our sense of reality in small business, I’m not sure what does. This, of course, leaves us to ponder the two most important challenges for small businesses getting out of the blocks:

• Just because YOU CAN doesn’t mean YOU SHOULD! and the super important ...

• Just because THEY SHOULD, doesn’t mean THEY WILL

It’s the second one that bit me on the butt back in ‘04, when I had supposed that personalised & targeted communication was the answer to poor response rates from marketing campaigns. I might have been right, but I needed the market to agree with me more than they evidently did; a valuable lesson in meeting the market, where they are.

What I am really saying is that having anything but a realistic picture of our position in the world, and the challenge of winning, is in fact, the enemy of winning.

With the number of new businesses consistent climbing, against a backdrop of high failure rate and moreover only 50% of start-ups actually commercialising, I am a YES to more realistic and grounded thinking about what business we are actually in, and to the challenging of grandiose positions that rob us of a clear perspective.

Further, I think the behaviour also needs to reflect such a reality too, I have to say, that I am at odds with the celebration before victory culture the “Start-up” community is now famous for. (See Shem Magnezi’s amusing read on this here: http://bit.ly/32tPNSx ) 

As Shem attests, there is plenty to say here about whether we think the behaviour of early-stage start-ups and communities in any way even remotely resembles the first 24 months of the journey for the likes of Zuckerberg, Musk & Besos for example. I’d argue that the table tennis came sometime later.

So, this is a call for being realistic and grounded about where we actually are. This was the intention of the tongue in cheek joke I posted yesterday: The Start-Up lookup table.

The most concise summary of my point is, if using the term Start-Up is a way of avoiding the truth about where we are, then seriously folks “F$#k Start-Up”

What are your thoughts on the lingo we use in the new business community and if it serves us?

Today, I continue to help people grow their business, and it's something I simply love doing.

Over this time our approach has become more focused, methodologies more refined, data sources more evolved and the engagement with clients more direct, or shall we say “more authentic”. Each business I have launched is a statement of personal evolution and learning but the focus has always on learning and helping people grow.

Over the journey, I found an explanation of our methodology, one that has always been second nature to me. I fell in love with the teachings, principles and practices of The Art of War (孙子兵法), a collection of the teachings of a famous and incredibly successful Chinese general, military strategist, writer and philosopher Sun Tzu (545BC - 470BC).

So, to pay respect to a philosophy studied by leaders in military, politics, business and sport for thousands of years and to give wholehearted consideration to the very real challenges of growing a business and to our focus of “helping people find a way of winning”, we called our business The Art of More.

The other reason for this choice was the ability of Sun Tzu's philosophy to be applied to many and varied situations. It covers aspects such as knowledge of the terrain and competitor, self-awareness, and avoidance of unnecessary and untimely conflict. Ultimately Sun Tzu was about achieving victory without battle. As one of my mentors would say, that in its core meaning, The Art of War is in fact The Art of Peace.

Also, importantly, the concepts and principals articulated in the text are timeless, because they pertain to people, behaviours and human nature.

Further, what isn’t commonly known is that the very title of this work has been contested. The Art of War is considered by many to be The Art of Strategy, a position strongly held by author RL Wing in his 1988 translations.

Wing believes that translating the Chinese character used for “War” (bing) to mean Strategy, is not only a common translation but also most faithful to Sun Tzu’s objective: the achievement of triumph through tactical positioning, without resorting to battle.

For some, the philosophy is simply referred to as Sun Tzu’s 13 Chapters. 2,500 years provides plenty of room for interpretation!

For me, I love the meaning of each of the perspectives and principles of these teachings, and most of all the incredibly holistic nature of the thinking. 

I have been taught that strategy is a “sport of completeness” and without completeness, we simply operate in tactical actions based on effort, hope and chance. In fact, what many call a strategy in modern-day business cannot be truthfully defined as anything but tactical. Current practice is not holistic in its considerations and not complete in its form or impact. It may only partly consider competitors and sometimes does not at all. It also very often fails to encompass an informed view of the way in which the competitive environment or terrain is likely to change.

So again, to pay respect to a philosophy studied by millions of people for thousands of years and to give consideration to the very real challenges of growth, change and uncertainty, we would like to extend the teachings in our social media efforts.

We will share stories and lessons over the journey, and when thinking about some of the things we’d like to share with you, sharing the philosophy of Sun Tzu was one of the first “cabs off the rank”.

Over the course of the next 12 months, we will post specific principles and perspectives contained in the Art of War and ground these with very brief, real-life examples of people who succeeded and failed at the hands of these principals.

We encourage your feedback and questions, and in the meantime, we hope you enjoy them.