Yesterday I attended the New Zealand Productivity Commission workshop in Christchurch, titled Future Inquiry Pathway. Acknowledging, to their credit, that everything is interconnected.
In their nine years of operation, the commission has produced seventeen reports on issues selected by the government of the day. Topics have included immigration settings, technological change and the future of work, and State Sector productivity. Fascinatingly, beneficiaries of these inquiries have been under no obligation to report on uptake of the findings.
During the workshop, it was frequently stated that the organisation is independent, but this seems to conflict with my understanding that a government can virtually order a report.
The commissioners were undoubtedly aiming for something different and responding to change in our national dialogue – something beyond the banal nature of our current political debate.
There were many things which I will continue to mull over. The first being this country’s love of reports, studies, and research. It’s comparatively easy to get the above three areas funded through government agencies, but extremely difficult to convert the learning into actionable or testable products or services. Why is that?
Could it be that we suffer from a fear of failure? Article after article, comment after comment, speech after speech, refer to failure as being part of success. If we are going to reach beyond this impasse, we will need to address our attitude to failure at a government level, instead of demanding people’s heads if an initiative is not immediately successful. As entrepreneurs, we know this to be true, but we must extend this to the government of the day.
As suggested yesterday, there is more room for lessons in piloting projects and ideas, and I daresay more forgiveness.
Whatever tools and processes there are available to us, there has never been a more important time to make use of them to unlock action.
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