Sessions at today’s PANPA bootcamps in Sydney addressed the issues of these times.
What to do when you’ve ‘let go’ key staff – and let them take their knowledge with them; and how the “resume growth and the opportunity of real prosperity”.
We’re hoping the answer to the first question – from former Cadbury’s executive Arthur Shelley (pictured) – isn’t too late: Don’t let them go without sharing their knowledge first… and don’t have them back as consultants.
The second issue – and the quotation is from moderator Marcus Hooke – was addressed in a brainstorming session from Ken Hudson… or ‘blitzing’ session to use the expression coined by the ‘Speed Thinking’ author.
The two presentations from the print and logistics bootcamp which preceded tomorrow’s Future Forum plenanies were typical of a ‘left of centre’ programme keyed to immediate needs.
In adjacent rooms, similarly innovative presentations addressed the needs of sales teams and journalists in a digital age.
Shelley helped his roomful of delegates decide what knowledge they might need for the future, and how to retain it… presenting the reminder that NASA cutbacks had lost the knowledge of how it had put a man on the moon in 1969 until ‘oldies’ were invited back to recollect.
And the chilly reality that the people who put the UK’s nuclear power facility together will all be dead by the time it comes to decommission it.
“What will your business look like in five years, and what is the knowledge you will need then,” he asked. A hard question to answer.
And of change: “Bringing the new guy in who changes everything to do it his way is bad succession,” he warned.
Shelley urged planned transfer of knowledge rather than any attempt to formally ‘capture’ it. “Identify the things you have that have value for the future, and then work back from there,” he says.
Two speakers emphasised key compliance issues: Health and safety issues including eliminating bullying and avoiding hearing loss – which are fundamentally about making your workplace one in which good people want to stay – and the need to stay ahead of product stewardship legislation.
Debbie Burgess, a director of Sydney-based Bright Print Group, brought some chilling statistics on the subject of bullying, estimated to cost $6-13 billion a year in Australia. Bullying can reduce the victim’s performance by 50 per cent… and 72 per cent of workplace bullies are bosses.
While “lines are blurred” about what constitutes bullying, Burgess emphasized that a culture to eliminate it must start from the top.
News Corp Australia environment officer Andrea Bassett recalled Australia’s world-leading performance on newspaper recycling, and warned that a similarly coordinated approach might be needed to avoid government intervention on newspapers’ low-level use of packaging.
The ‘voluntary’ Australian Packaging Covenant introduced last year was “actually not voluntary at all” and she urged individual firms to have no part of it, taking a coordinated response instead.
Blitz Presentations Ken Hudson had delegates discovering that they could think better faster. “When I’ve given people less time to solve a problem, they have tended to come up with better ideas,” the former American Express marketing director says.
Formed into groups, and bidden to look for ways to improve collaboration in our industry, we hypothesized about joint venture initiatives between the country’s major publishers… and in that environment, it just seemed possible the dream might come true.
The Future Forum – at the Four Seasons hotel in Sydney – continues tomorrow, with the annual Newspaper of the Year presentation dinner that night.
Peter Coleman