Eliminating threats and debts

Many years of highs and lows later, approaching semi-retirement and hoping only to work just 75 hours a week, I noticed during our self-inflicted Covid lock down, that skilled and experienced people became hard to find. This was the creation of a new level of laziness and a whole raft of "precious princesses" that feel entitled to work from home, taking as many sickies as possible, and avoiding boldness or decision making, steering companies towards failure.

Lord Esher in 1904 after the British Army failure in the Boer War commented "An inordinately centralized system has destroyed initiative. Most minds trained to attend to process and paperwork details, cannot be expected to take bold decisions, particularly in war"

Last year, a close pal in the same industry, with a similar amount of battle scars, was suspicious of whether his senior team were experienced enough to read a major client. He jumped on a plane and travelled overseas to a hotel near the shipyard, and was summonsed to the meeting room with key people from his client's company. They were visibly angry, and immediately dumped on him the threat of contract cancellation, refund of monies and cancellation of future work. He had no doubt that such an action would totally bring down his company. They made it clear that the only remedy was to "pull a rabbit out of the hat". His project managers, attending to process and paperwork, had not read the "threat level".

The next morning at the shipyard meeting room, with a full attendance of the client team, his project managers, sub-contractors, yard owners and managers, he took control of the narrative.

Firstly, he apologized profusely but quietly to the client. As captain of his ship, he had appointed the shipbuilder and the project managers, so he was totally responsible for the program slippages. In order to redeem his credibility, he declared to the assembled group, that he wanted the vessel out of the shed and in the water as soon as possible, and with 2 outer engines and the steering, he would personally take her on a two hour "Yard Trial".

One precious princess on his payroll (a PPP), without engaging her brain before her mouth, declared "this is totally unsafe and I will not attend". Berating a paymaster in front of seriously good long-term clients, is never a good tactic. She was asked to leave the room. The fact that this fool could not recognize the threat, showed why this PP would never succeed in running her own business. She is no longer on his payroll.

Anyway, a few days later, my pal did complete the trials with just 2 engines and the steering, which was a resounding success and the client's trust in him was redeemed.

These tales are very minor indeed compared to what we faced with Iran, wherein the US stepped up in recognizing the huge global threat from this epicentre of Islamic hatred, and moved to eliminate this threat.

Good on you Donald !

Unfortunately, there are plenty of PPPs around, siding with the murderous Ayatollah, who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his own people of his own religion, just for peacefully protesting against his regime. I was in Iran just prior to the theocracy takeover and it was Persia at its best, a culmination of culture, education and prosperity, a delight to visit.

As for Australia, it's totally unacceptable that our Prime Minister Albanese and the precious princesses around him are all focusing myopically on the voter polls. Not one of this leadership team have the commercial or operational expertise to run a chook raffle.

Sitting on many trillions of dollars of minerals and energy reserves, they have hermetically sealed those resources with layers of green tape to appease the environmental activists and the green party into capturing their votes. They have reinforced Fort Fumble, aka Canberra, with 2.6 million bureaucrats to inflict maximum obstruction, frustration and financial punishment to the 6 million Australians struggling in small business

These inept fools in Team Albo cannot remotely recognize the threats staring them in the face with a huge mountain of debt, no fuel reserves, a faltering economy, low productivity, a non- existent defence capability and a host of self-professed Islamist enemies already within the gates.