Dialogue: So much palaver, and so little said

The late John Lennon said some trite things in his time, most of them to the tune of Imagine. But he was on the button when he wrote: "Life is what happens to you while you are are busy making other plans."

The line kept running through my head these past few weeks as the Prime Minister held business seminars on the value of science and digitised data transmission.

That, I think, is a fair translation of the catchcries "knowledge economy" and "e-commerce."

I don't mean to doubt their value. Science is probably vital to upgrading our exports. And it turned out, when the seminars started talking about the taxation of research and development, that business has been doing more than we thought.

They have been calling it an ordinary business expense in order that it not be taxed as capital, which was probably illegal. The law will now catch up with life and there need be no more talk of incentives.

Nor do I doubt the impact of technology - not in a week that they switched on an upgraded fibre-optic cable to California that can carry the electrical impulses of two full-length movies in two seconds.

E-mail is a marvellous instrument but, after all, it is still only an instrument. You get it, you turn it on, you learn to use it. The rest, as ever, is up to human impulses and countless commercial judgments, which are not found in national plans.

Believe me, I have called up the seminar speeches and forced the eyes through acres of newsprint about the challenges and opportunities that abound for the innovative and adaptive people we must be.

It has been deadly reading. If you know what I mean, skip the following points. They are Helen Clark's "vision" of what we need:

Every New Zealander to have the positive, can-do, give-it-a-go and dare-to-excel attitude that ensures we live and breathe innovation.

Our education institutions to prepare young New Zealanders to contribute to expanding and sustaining a knowledge economy.

To optimise New Zealand's already world-class research and science ...

To ensure that every enterprising New Zealander with a great idea has access to the capital and management expertise required to realise his or her idea fully.

To ensure that we have the people and technology to realise our innovative vision.

It is all true, every word of it. But is there one point that is still alive and growing in your thoughts now, a moment later?

It wouldn't matter that this sort of thing is expressed in sludge-prose if there was just an idea or two that was earth-wired to what we are doing.

That is the secret.

Leadership - "vision," if you like - is not about listing goals or painting word pictures of some idealised state. It is the ability to see things that are staring everybody in the face - things that are happening here and now and have potent possibilities that become obvious when they are pointed out.

At last, two days ago on this page, there was just such a contribution. An article by the managing director of Sheffield personnel consultants, Ian Taylor, pointed out that there are immense potential benefits in the Kiwi diaspora - the brain drain as we call it.

Part of his company's business is to keep in touch with talented, skilled New Zealanders overseas as potential recruits for clients here. He had noticed that, "expatriates are seldom ex-patriots."

We have all noticed that. The other day I had a drink with a very good journalist who has been away for more than a decade. He comes back at intervals to take the pulse of the country.

This time he was indignant that companies such as Lion Nathan had moved their base across the Tasman.

"That's a bit rich from somebody who has forsaken the place," I kidded, and immediately regretted it. He recoiled as though stabbed in the heart.

"That's true," he said in a way that told me it hadn't occurred to him. In other words it wasn't true. Through all those years of absence he remained as much a New Zealander as I am.

"New Zealanders," wrote Taylor, "are never more conscious of their identity than when they are out of New Zealand."

We now have the means, he pointed out, to tap that reservoir of goodwill, skill, ideas and connections without trying to press people to come home.

His company and others, along with Government agencies, are setting up a website of networks of New Zealanders in business overseas. That is a gloriously simple, practical idea that chimes with what is happening and grows in the mind. Why didn't it occur to us weeks ago, during the controversy over the Richard Poole advertisement?

The most telling element of that episode should not have been the Business Roundtable's role, but the discovery that it was so easy to contact so many expatriates.

Richard Poole's message even crossed into antagonistic wires.

It is possible to imagine New Zealanders in diverse countries exchanging business tips, contacts, techniques, experiences and suggestions, along with tales of home.

They would probably welcome business in this country plugging in, provided, Taylor said, the contribution from here is positive not dour.

He didn't use dead language such as knowledge economy and e-commerce, and demonstrated that vision is one of those words, like passion and leadership, that those who have the qualities never need to utter.