Finland was the first to recognize the importance of the Net, declaring into law the right of every citizen to broadband access. Now the US is following suit, considering a plan for free or very low-cost broadband connections for every American. So where is Australia in all this? Are we keeping pace?

According to, yep you got it, Labor statistics, Australia trails the world with the fifth most expensive network and is seventeenth in terms of take up with only 23.3% of people subscribing. Now that’s an interesting statistic, because if the Net is so important why are so few of us using it? Perhaps it is price, perhaps it is speed but it is definitely not age with many pensioners happily booking trips, making purchases and posting their bridge scores online.

The Internet is vital to the new digital economy. Not only does it allow scientists, economists, sports enthusiasts and all our amazing educators to share information with immediacy and relevance, it is depended on by millions of people everyday as a major form of communication.

Imagine any business thinking about operating without an Internet presence? How would anyone find them or know what they do? If you don’t have a business website you are simply not known. I wonder when was the last time anyone dusted off their Yellow Pages and actually looked up a number? Nope, I’m pretty sure all of you searched online.

It is now possible to work from a distance. Employees can interact effectively and efficiently without actually going to a fixed workplace. The cost cutting to businesses is phenomenal. But most of all, we must be able to communicate with speed to keep up with every latest development that spins by, only to be replaced with astonishing speed.

This is the essence of the Net and this is why Australia must support a world-class broadband network.

Disclaimer: My presentation “Ten Ways to Double Your Sales Using Technology” uses broadband.

It’s no surprise that the Coalition has a funding ‘black hole’. Take a look at the independents’ demands and it’s likely that whoever forms a government will be left with their very own large black hole.

Julia Gillard has already caved in to Wilke’s demands regarding funding for the Hobart Hospital and gambling.

Bob Katter, with his old ‘new’ paradigm, wants taxpayers and consumers to bankroll farmers through protectionism and the rebuilding of tariff walls torn down in the 1980s. Even though most modern economists see protectionism as harmful to economic growth, Katter seems determined quite literally to return Australia to the days of Keating’s famous ‘Banana Republic’!

Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor are yet to add to the growing demands once they have decided who to ‘trust’. But it seems likely that one cost we can all agree on is a new broadband network in whatever form it finally takes.

What is your perception of these guys? As we know in business perception determines buying decisions and there’s always a next time.

Ahh … the price of independence!

In early August, when Kristy Fraser-Kirk launched her $37 million sexual harassment case against David Jones and former CEO Mark McInnes, companies across Australia were forced to sit up and take notice.

Immediately, the mud-slinging began: ‘She’s asking too much’, ‘It’s all a publicity stunt’, and so on, but without such a huge amount tabled, would this case have been just another sexual harassment  story briefly noted then swept aside by the never-ending tide of breaking news?

The real issue here is that Fraser-Kirk claims the board knew that McInnes was a bully and sexual harasser but that they did nothing to protect her, thereby failing in their duty of care. And that is the crunch for many employees, both male and female, who find themselves in this situation but have no-one to turn to for support.  If the perpetrator is high up, or actually part of the Human Resources Department, how can the person being bullied or harassed get their claims heard?

Peter Wilson, president of the Human Resources Institute, describes sexual harassment as ‘a cancer’ in Australian workplaces and has urged companies to employ independent agencies where harassed employees can go to frankly discuss their concerns.  However, it doesn’t appear that big business agrees.  Myer, Westpac, Telstra and Qantas have all stated that their internal policies are adequate for handling any employee claim.

Perhaps the rejection of an external sounding board, excuse the pun, is partly due to wanting to keep any such ‘dirty’ matters in house, or maybe it’s related to cost.  But with the Fraser-Kirk lawsuit proceeding before the court, business is about to find out just how expensive ignoring an employee’s complaints really can be.

Makes a good case for Management Liability insurance. Whilst it won’t solve the problem – it might ease the pain.

In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey, the nemesis of the movie was a computer called HAL. Its voice sounded exceptionally friendly and it made all the right noises and if it had possessed a face it would have been smiling inanely. Yet all the time it was trying to kill the humans it was meant to serve.

Call me cynical, maybe even a conspiracy theorist, but it seems that some companies have been able to replicate the essence of HAL and insert it into their “Customer Service Specialists”.

These people are not literally trying to kill you, of course, merely destroy your will to live whilst dealing with the company they represent. They speak in reassuring tones, nodding and smiling at everything you say, and then they hit you with their pre-programmed responses defined by the system within which they have been ordered to operate.

I think customers become annoyed because they believe the descriptions pinned to the lapels of these people. If you went into the bank with an enquiry and the counter clerk said to you: “Yes, you need to go and talk to the robot over there,” you would have little expectation of a favourable outcome because you would know the robot’s parameters were limited. Instead, you are actually informed that you should speak to the “customer service specialist”, and herein lies the misconception.

“Customer” – You

“Service” – Providing appropriate assistance

“Specialist” – Highly trained

Put all those together and you naturally believe that this person will be able to listen to your particular request or gripe and then use their knowledge and most importantly, their discretion, to tailor a personalised solution.

A human should be able to do this, but not when they are working within strictly imposed company guidelines. When you remove the option of discretion, you often also remove the entire concept of customer service and you effectively end up with a robot. You can almost see the confusion behind their smiling eyes.

We are not talking about complex customer requests here. The other day, I asked my bank (the Commonwealth) if they could split my personal credit card limit, and allot one half to a new business credit card.

Apparently this was impossible!

The only solution was that I would have to stand around and wait for someone to carry out the necessary paperwork to apply for a new card.  And I mean stand around, as there were no chairs.

I asked why this person couldn’t just take all the details the bank already had about me, complete the form and send it to me for signing, but this data option was not pre-programmed into my CBA “customer service specialist”. I left!

Later when I called to offer feedback, I was informed that what I had asked could have been carried out, but that it wasn’t company policy. This person further admitted that it would have been within the realms of possibility to direct my backside towards a chair whilst I waited. Obviously, because robots do not have muscles that tire, they cannot grasp the human need to take the weight off.

In reality, to blame the individual “customer service specialist” is a little harsh. The real problem is with the management who do not allow the human factor to come into play with their customer-facing staff. The only genuine reason why this might be good business practice is if the people they are employing are not very bright and cannot be trusted to think for themselves lest they make a reckless decision that triggers a whole host of problems.

If this fear is preponderant, then they should pay higher wages to attract brighter employees. The payoff would be a much happier clientele, and increased revenue through an enhanced customer service reputation.

Fortunately, some companies do get the point. I have experienced quality customer service on a couple of occasions recently, where the specialist really deserved their title. Then again, all they had to do was listen to what was being said, and possess the freedom to act unilaterally to resolve the issue.

It is a sad reflection of the state of play, however, that when you have such a positive experience with customer service personnel, you’re left feeling that something strange has just happened.

Companies need to give their employees the opportunity to provide the best customer service where it matters – on the ground with the customer. They have to be given the go-ahead to become human again, and to stop behaving like robots.

PS The partly completed form arrived in the mail a couple of days after my “feedback” and after I had arranged a business card somewhere else!

Okay, maybe her career had slowed, but she had a fiance and 4.7 carats on her finger and a $6 million Bondi apartment she shared with her now ex-fiance according to latest news reports.

It all started with the publication of a photo of her taken whilst she was in the shower by her ex, AFL footballer/knuckle-scraper Brendan Fevola. He allegedly  released the pic to his mates (as you do) and it ended up in a magazine. Bingle became a victim and garnered considerable sympathy. She said she would sue Fevola, and no one blamed her for that.

Then celebrity publicist Max Markson rode into town and swept her up and away from Sympathy straight into Desolation. Instead of building on the sympathy vote, his representation has managed to turn the entire country against her, which is perhaps not the marketing solution she had hoped for. Having announced that he would transform her into a $1 million multimedia package, even talking about a spin-off reality television show, Markson managed to secure a reported $200,000 for a tell-all interview for Bingle with Woman’s Day magazine. If the intention was to create even more sympathy regarding the boorish behaviour of Fevola, it didn’t quite pan out that way. Seen as cashing in, Miss Bingle instantly lost her victim status.

Not the desired marketing solution

For one thing, Bingle is throwing stones at Fevola from inside her own glass house, which is never a good personal marketing strategy. She should have remembered that she was seen as a marriage-wrecker at the time, as Fevola was not single. She might also have paused to assess the current view of her, which from some angles is that she is a money-obsessed WAG to her ex fiance Michael Clarke, cruising around in an Aston Martin whilst sporting an engagement ring that cost half the price of an average Aussie house.

It’s also been noted that Clarke’s cricketing career has not been helped by their relationship; in fact, according to the media he has been told by cricketing officials that if he doesn’t sort his head out very soon, he won’t be playing Test cricket any more.

In New Zealand at the time, Clarke had stern words with Bingle following the magazine story and Bingle was then seen leaving their Bondi pad and heading off to stay with friend and DJ Carl Kennedy. Clarke then left his Australian teammates and returned to Sydney to an empty home, although Clarke’s agent, Chris White, has denied that the marriage is off.

The other problem Bingle has to contend with, apart from being susceptible to bad advice, being happy in adulterous relationships, and being a blatant WAG, is that she doesn’t seem to be too bright, even for a 22 year old. Whilst this can win the “aahh bless” vote from some people, it can become very irritating when practiced as an art.

Case in point: when she became the face of the “Where the Bloody Hell Are You” campaign, The Daily Telegraph asked her how she felt about being a Cronulla girl projecting a positive image of Australia just months after the race riots that so badly marred the Sydney suburb. Instead of actually knowing about the riots, or even pretending to – given that they had been stated as a fact by the journalist – she chose to admit that she had been modelling underwear in Italy and was not aware that any riots had taken place. In other words, she didn’t keep up with the news and none of her friends considered it important enough to mention to her, which either says something about their priorities, or reveals that they don’t think the presentation of such facts, or conversations of that sort, are worth bothering with where Bingle is concerned. Much as you wouldn’t waste your breath giving a seminar on grammar and syntax to George Bush.

As for Markson, on second thoughts, perhaps he’s actually more of a business strategist than we give him credit for – except that his eye is on his own business rather than his clients’. If Bingle did receive $200,000 for her story, he’s likely to have earned over 10% of that for himself.

In Bingle’s defence, celebrities shouldn’t really have to ask whether the publicity that their publicist is planning is likely to screw their career; it should be taken as read that publicity is intended to prolong a career and provoke a positive public response.

What does all of this have to do with small business in our country? Well, China is one of Australia’s most important trading partners. That affects the Australian economy in ways we have yet to imagine.

So, over the past few weeks I’ve been researching business activities in China – everything from lending policies, a growing middle class and expanding base of manufacture.

My conclusions? Indeed, China is a powerful country and a major player on the world economic stage. But it is not a great country.

In effect, the Chinese sabotaged the climate change talks in Copenhagen at the end of the 2009. Of course, this summit of world leaders and scientists had little teeth to begin with, serving in an “advisory” capacity to world governments.

China, a country that tops the list of polluters – pumping even more filth into the atmosphere than the U.S. – refused to budge on their pollution control policies. Why? Well, China simply doesn’t have to play ball with the Western nations. It’s that powerful a force in the world economy which, as small business owners, we recognise as having a direct impact on our business.

Need a new product fabricated and manufactured? Chances are, you won’t use an Australian-based fabricator when you can get the same job done in China at half the price. Long live our great nation, but business is, well, business. National pride often takes a back seat when it comes to the cold, hard realities of global economics.

No one questions China is a powerful nation. Its holster is jam-packed with nuclear weapons – enough to annihilate the world. It has an almost endless supply of cheap labour to develop a powerful manufacturing base. It has a government that encourages a little bit of private, albeit, highly regulated private ownership. China is slowly marching in to the new millennium in some ways.

In other ways, China remains a repressive regime, strongly centralized and tradition bound.

What defines greatness?

Read the article at http://strategies.com.au/art1002a.html

Like you, I’m a small business owner and a service provider. Most of my clients are small business owners, but Obamanomics will impact us all regardless of company size, manufacturer or service provider.

Like it or not the American consumer drives the world economy. They buy stuff that keeps factories in China running 24/7. Clothes, computers, large-screen TVs – all made off American shores, mostly in Asia. The trade deficit between the U.S. and China has always been lop-sided, and now, the U.S. owes the Chinese government two trillion dollars. A child born in the U.S. today OWES approximately $36,540 at birth!

The U.S. has become a debtor nation, in effect, the world’s largest banana republic.

And this has thinking Americans worried. U.S unemployment is running at around 10%. Unlike us Aussie spenders, America has become a nation of scrimpers and savers, not buyers. Many are running scared, afraid of losing their jobs. Every American knows someone who’s been laid off or down-sized and that has a sobering effect on the buying, spending and saving habits of the largest consumer society in the world.

(Were it not for the Rudd socialist stimulus packages I suspect I would be writing this about Australia. But that article will come later this year after more interest rate rises and those holiday spending credit card bills hit home.)

Where Obama Went Wrong

Read the article here

‘Encouraging’ rather than ‘interesting’ comes to mind if one looks at the most recent statistic and commentary posted by both government and Treasury officials in the Australian scene.

Read the Article here

It would be nice to just coast into 2010 thankful to have survived. However, those who succeed in the second decade must not relax, but plan. You must take the time to plan what your business will look like in the coming year, the next three years and the next five years.

Twelve months to Recovery

Your initial plan should be only twelve months long, but it must be comprehensive. Look at all aspects of your business. Do you have the number of employees you need and are they performing the job that your require? Consider if you would benefit from a renegotiation with your suppliers. Develop a plan to keep your current customers happy and get new ones. Create a calendar of speeches, articles and appearances to keep your businesses name in the forefront of the market.  Write down the advantages and disadvantages you have against your competition and combat them. Take a fresh look at your offices and consider how to update and refresh them. The last month of the decade is not a time to look back, but a time to look forward.

Five years will seem like a dream

Five years from now we’ll all look back on this year’s recession and say, “I remember when…”. Can you imagine what your business will look like in five years?  What do you want it to look like? Be honest. Is your goal survival or growth?  How will you get there? How many employees will you need?  Will you need more space?  Less?  What will your technological requirements be? How will you finance your plans? Perhaps retirement is in your plan or you have children to put through university.

What has to happen to your business to make your personal goals happen? If your business is still successful, will you continue in it, or sell? How much involvement do you want to have in your business at that point in your life?  Do you still want to be hands-on in every detail, or could you restructure your business to allow more time for fishing? It’s never too soon to think long term.

While everyone else has a holiday focus it’s a great time to plan.