New Zealand should be “a safe place where everyone can prosper”, writes Bruce Cotterill. Photo of Routburn Track / Supplied by Tourism NZ
New Zealand should be “a safe place where everyone can prosper”, writes Bruce Cotterill. Photo of Routburn Track / Supplied by Tourism NZ
Opinion by Bruce Cotterill
Bruce Cotterill is a professional director and adviser to business leaders. He is the author of the book, The Best Leaders Don’t Shout, and host of the podcast, Leaders Getting Coffee.
Bruce Cotterill advocates for a national vision to guide the country’s future and decision-making.
He suggests “a safe place where everyone can prosper” as a unifying theme for progress.
Cotterill emphasises the importance of aspirational yet achievable goals, drawing inspiration from charitable organisations.
Last week, I managed to get myself caught up in a lively conversation with a couple of mates. It wasn’t heated. But it was one of those discussions that no one was going to win.
And then there was the debate after the Budget. The same wordkept popping up. Apparently the Budget lacked it. The politicians try to talk about it but fail. They all have a series of their own, and often mutually exclusive, themes they try to stick to. But their ideas are usually either short-term, difficult to get agreement on or ultimately unworkable. For some time now, they have been unable to nail it. Instead they seem to focus on subsets of the big picture.
So, what was the topic of my friendly debate? Vision. A vision for the country. John Key called it “the vision thing”. Perhaps it’s a single phrase. Or alternatively a series of bullet points that sum up what we’re about.
Coming up with a national vision for the country is challenging because a vision needs to be brief but broad. Brief enough for everyone to understand and remember. Broad enough to encapsulate everything we wish for our society. But it also needs to have the potential as a guiding light. A statement, or series of statements that sets our path, and reminds us when we’re going off track.
Plenty of people will say it will never happen, but in the words of a current advertising campaign: “I think we can do better than that.”
The Prime Minister is fond of saying “we have to grow our economy in order to pay for the services we need”. It’s a great line and a good start. But it only deals with part of the picture. We need something more all-encompassing.
We can learn plenty from the way our charities operate. They tend to be under-funded, over-reliant on volunteers and always up against the odds. They’re dealing with people with massive needs too. And yet, in that seemingly hopeless environment, they achieve amazing results.
We’re over-reliant on the charitable movement. If you think our health or welfare budgets are huge, imagine how much more they would be if we added the work and the costs of the various charitable efforts that support our communities. Cancer organisations, St John’s Ambulance, Salvation Army, mental health charities and so on.
This week, on our Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, my guest was Ah-Leen Rayner, CEO of the Breast Cancer Foundation NZ. More than once, she referred to the organisation’s vision. In part, it was what attracted her to the role. That vision? “Zero deaths from breast cancer.” Wow! How’s that for big picture thinking.
It’s long term. Aspirational. And ultimately achievable. It’s also a guide to support decision making and prioritisation, and a yardstick to measure progress. We currently lose 650 women per year to breast cancer. So, it might sound impossible to achieve. But Rayner believes it’s entirely possible. So do the people she works with. And impossible doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
It reminded me of my own effort. I’ve volunteered in and around swimming, surf lifesaving and water safety for most of my life. We lose about 100 people to drowning every year. Most of it’s preventable. I once tried to get the water safety community to sign up to a vision statement that said “No One Drowns”. It’s fair to say that they humoured me for a while, but it struggled to get buy-in and faded as people didn’t believe it was achievable.
And that’s the challenge with vision statements. They need to be aspirational but achievable. Out of sight, but not out of reach.
So why not a long-term vision for the country? Something that defines the type of country we want to be. A theme that both main political parties can get behind. Something that guides our decision-making. Something simple. A theme that unites us. We certainly need that at the moment.
We were once a country that could do anything. Number 8 wire and all that. But we’re not that anymore. So what do we want to be?
I suggest that most of us would want a country where we are safe. In this regard we are fortunate. We’re geographically isolated and so our safety is something we can control.
Thereafter we want services that provide for our needs well. Healthcare and education are always at the top of this list. That encompasses facilities and resources, including talent. But there are others. Infrastructure that enables our lifestyle and supports our needs should be up there too. A welfare system needs to catch those who are unable to help themselves.
So what should a vision for a country such as ours look like?
I thought I’d have a crack at it. It’s a conversation starter, so don’t be too critical.
I’d like New Zealand to be “a safe place where everyone can prosper”.
Pause for a moment. Think about it. I’d suggest that it captures most of what we want in our country.
First and foremost, we all want to feel safe. That means safe from crime, accidents, disease, weather events and wars. Policing and a well-run judiciary should deal with crime. Education and common sense would eliminate a lot of accidents, while first-world healthcare and medication can control disease. Dealing with weather events is often about preparation. The terms of our participation in wars is a decision we control.
The word prosper will mean different things to different people. For some, simply surviving and being able to look after themselves will be a step up. Getting some of our absent kids back into school would be progress. Good health and wellbeing is a core enabler of prospering. The term is relative.
Providing good care and offering dignity to those who can’t help themselves will see them prosper, especially relative to the alternative life they might lead in a less caring environment. At the other extreme, those leading large businesses would measure earnings growth, new customers and a growing workforce as prospering. University degrees and trade qualifications will see our young people prospering. Trade and export policy will contribute to our ability to prosper too, and we shouldn’t consider deals that don’t meet a “prosper” threshold.
The ability to prosper is a lens we should run across our immigration policies too. There is no question we need to attract immigration. Our need for everything from teachers and nurses to engineers and hospitality workers is well-documented. But we need to ensure that those who come to our country with the intention of settling are set up for success rather than failure.
Bruce Cotterill's vision for New Zealand is one in which everyone prospers. Photo / Alex Burton
Our immigration policies should focus on the skillsets we need. To bring people without critical skillsets at a time when housing, education, infrastructure and health services are all stretched to breaking point, is irresponsible. To allow a professional person to come here, but without their spouse or children doesn’t set them up for success.
Furthermore, we only need people who add to our resource rather than those who are dependent on it. And, if we target the right skills, we must let them work when they get here, so they are not suddenly dependent. There is no point bringing in nurses or doctors in if we don’t allow them to ply their trade when they get here. We’ve all heard the stories of doctors, university lecturers and robotics engineers driving Ubers or taxis! We don’t need more highly educated people who are unable to work in their specialist area. That doesn’t help them succeed and it doesn’t add value to us.
We’re fortunate that a lot of people want to come to our little country. By most comparisons we’re clean, safe and straight-forward. The demand to come here should always outnumber the spaces we have available. We can be choosy about who we allow. We should treat that opportunity much more seriously than we currently do.
Prosper also means making life simpler. I continue to believe that the maintenance of personal freedoms is one of the more important challenges within the current global agenda, and it’s something where our distance and independence should enable us to lead the world. We all think of freedoms as speech, the press and movement. In some parts of the world those freedoms are being challenged while we take them for granted.
But the freedom to do what we need to do, or want to do is important too. That’s why the elimination of red tape is so important to our ability to prosper.
The most important word in my little slogan above is “everyone”. Imagine a country where everyone is safe and everyone prospers. A country where every individual is treated equally. We will all think of reasons to be divided. Māori and Pākehā. But also immigrants and locals. White and blue collar. Those who need our help, and those who can provide it. But think about being the first country in the world to give women the vote and the country where the celebration of equality is unmatched.
Can you imagine how powerful such positioning could become?
There are plenty who will suggest that we’re more divided than ever before. A clear vision, one that’s hard to disagree with, can change that. Here’s the cool bit. We’re small enough to do this. And we could feel the impact within five years.
A safe place where everyone can prosper. I’m sure we can come up with better. But it illustrates that a clear vision for New Zealand will provide the backbone against which to consider our priorities and policies as we build the country we want for the next 100 years.
A safe place where everyone can prosper.It’s short and it’s simple. It means something. That’s a great place to start.
Bruce Cotterill is a professional director, speaker and adviser to business leaders. He is the author of the book, The Best Leaders Don’t Shout, and host of the podcast, Leaders Getting Coffee.
