Dialogue: Leadership the missing link for NZ

The real deficit is not economic policy or action plans, writes MICHAEL BARNETT*.

The excellent series of articles featured in the Business Herald on New Zealand's economic direction shows a remarkable shared belief among business, union and political leaders that the country is ready, willing and able to meet the challenges and opportunities coming our way.

But the unified leadership to meet them is the missing link.

It is reassuring to know that politicians and union advocates, along with business, identify economic vitality, social cohesion, a sustainable business environment and national identity as key ingredients for helping to achieve increased national growth and higher living standards.

From all points of the business-union-political compass, there is agreement on the need to develop employment opportunities and build a more competitive economy.

Getting New Zealand back into the top half of the OECD is something that many sector leaders support. Many also agree that most New Zealanders have made no connection with this goal to their own hip pockets and living standards and regrettably the strategic vision and unified leadership needed to achieve it are missing.

These may not be the exact words used by the various sector commentators - but the shared concern for these values and outcomes is very evident.

If, then, we can agree on the policy settings and the direction, where is the leadership to take charge of putting the agenda into action? As we continue to make similar calls for taking New Zealand forward, the need for leadership is becoming more urgent than a policy and direction change.

Who are the leaders going to be? What are we doing to encourage them to step forward? What are we doing to energise them to singlemindedly drive an action plan to achieve higher living standards for all New Zealanders?

Clearly, the national processes don't generate dominant, magnetic leaders in the way they used to.

In business, for example, there are numerous successful leaders - I'm not denying that - but I don't think they are of the stature of James Fletcher, Richard Carter or James Wattie.

Similarly, in politics and unionism, who are today's equivalent of Michael Savage, Keith Holyoake, Tom Skinner and Patrick Walsh? They were all strong leaders and a clear guiding light in most people's lives in the extended periods that they held office.

Prime Minister Helen Clark comes closest to being a modern-day equivalent of a dominant leader. She is becoming renowned as a leader for dealing with crises. And that's part of my point.

We are living in an age of multiple crises. We live in crisis, really. So it's not like having a singular focus around a growing economy with assured markets for everything we can produce, and in which everybody can pull together to win.

This new crisis-driven environment means we probably have greater challenges and opportunities and a greater need for a unifying economic strategy than at any time in our history. So the need for leadership is greater.

What specific things, then, could be done to produce the leaders needed to realise our economic potential and vision?

Singapore may provide a model. It moved from a Third World economy in the 1960s to First World with citizens today enjoying higher average incomes than New Zealanders directly as a result of the strong leadership exercised by former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Among world leaders of his time, he was without peer.

A vigorous, persuasive communicator, a visionary who also had a strong capacity for detail, he also had a high understanding of the economics of international relations and the place he sought for Singaporeans.

In Singapore, as in many social democratic countries in Europe, economic leadership is these days exercised not by a single, dominant political leader, but by an economic development grouping made up from key sectors of business, trade unions and government.

That is, responsibility for increasing national income and growth and achieving higher living standards has been depoliticised; or to put it another way, accountability for achieving growth has been spread across key leadership groupings sanctioned and encouraged by government, but often as not promoted by business exercising the initial leadership.

Examples in Singapore include establishing the city state as a global hub for chemical processing and shipping.

If New Zealand is to move in this direction - picking the big winners and backing them to the hilt - then the question of leadership becomes one not just for politicians such as Helen Clark and Bill English, but for businesspeople, trade unionists and professional associations. What are we doing to identify the key skills across the nation that will drive global strategies needed to realise the economic and social potential that we seem to agree we share?

What are we doing to empower talented leaders to perform as the nation's wealth creators and drive the growth strategy that we all agree we want put in place?

For business and I suggest also unions, professional associations, government agencies and bureaucrats as well as political parties, there is work to be done to improve our image.

We need to learn to work better together - to be less adversarial, less driven by crises and certainly not so focused on personality. We need to replace those "them and us" attitudes with a preoccupation for setting targets and outcomes - dreams we want to see happen, and action steps to achieve them.

Team New Zealand has done it; the Black Caps seem to be doing it - let's encourage businesses to go down a similar road of producing world-beating products and services.

It's not a question of one organisation or party being right or wrong. What's needed is an objective, an action plan and a team to perform in a non-adversarial way.

Most of all, we need to encourage businesspeople to share their leadership skills, not hide them away in fear of the famous New Zealand knocking machine.

* Michael Barnett is chief executive of the Auckland Regional Chamber of Commerce.