Sustainable business A familybased mindset
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[Applause]
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welcome all and those here today
i’d like to start my talk today to
introduce you to
a beautiful maori creation narrative
this is a story that talks about how we
think and feel about our beginning
it starts off with ranginui and
papatuanuku holding each other tight in
the dark
between them many children were born
these children
tired of being in a dark cramped life
with their parents
and so they decided that they needed to
separate them
through much discussion tane mahuta
he stretched his legs up and he pushed
his father apart from his mother
pushing the father up into the sky to
become ranginui our sky father
and his mother down to the earth to
become papatunuku
or as we like to call her papa our earth
mother
as the light came in and the children
flourished
they took on different roles as gods and
in our beliefs
tane mahuta became the god of flora and
fauna
tangaroa became the god of sea and all
sea creatures
and there was a god tumatowinga who was
the god of man and war
and that is where we as humans descend
so as you can see in this creation
narrative is maori
we intrinsically believe that we are
connected
by what we call whakapapa or genealogy
as a family to not only ourselves as
humans
but the environment and all that is
around us
i liken this in the business world to be
called a family-based mindset
it’s a way that we think and act either
personally or professionally in all that
we do
we fully understand that the impacts our
actions have on others and those around
us
for every action there is a reaction
whether that be positive or negative
and we constantly trying to create
positive impact
for those around us that we love
i also liken it to being a feeling based
mindset
so we know how it feels when we do good
by the things that we love
we feel it in our hearts and in our
stomachs is maori
and so we bring that into our personal
and professional lives
we can at times of course employ
individualistic ways of thinking
but for us as maori that is a place that
we can survive
but we won’t thrive as individuals
we know that we can sustain that only
for a short period of time before we
need to bring in this family-based
mindset
where we actually not only survive but
we
also thrive as a people i’d like you to
take a moment just to pause and think
and think about those things that you
love and cherish
think about that wider than just your
family
think about the environment and all of
those things that make you feel good
for me it’s my family it’s being at the
beach
it’s things that are water-based it’s
the color blue
and it’s also great food those are the
things that i love
and often when i’m doing or being what i
do
i think about how i can impact those
positively and how good it makes me feel
it’s that feeling of goodness that we
have as maori is what we bring
that is unique into the business world
and especially that multi-layered
quite complex mindset we have about our
interrelationship with the environment
that is around us
let me share a story with you of an
entity that i had the privilege of being
involved with
it is a health-based entity in a tough
part of new zealand with a high needs
health demographic
across a 200 kilometer area delivering
health services
now this entity had a rich history of
providing great service to the people
over a long period of time
however through government policy and
funding changes
the entity started to become sick itself
as profits started to wayne
and so did its return to the people and
the services it delivered
so many minds were brought in to think
about this entity around what might the
solution be
in taking a pure profit focus the
consultants all said well it’s really
simple you downscale your services
to live within your means and you’ll
correct or balance your books
now we were really blessed as a group of
people to be asked to come on board to
help this
entity and its journey forward taking on
board that mindset but equally being
allowed to bring our own thoughts to the
fore
we’re really lucky that as a group of
maori with shared values and shared
vision we could bring a family
based mindset and a feelings based
mindset into how we
projected forward the strategy for
correcting that entity
now we knew we had to fix the profit
problem because that was a problem
and we did great strides over a three
year period
to get that right and to get the entity
to break even
but we didn’t do it in a way where we
reduced services
we did it in a way where we actually
asked to increase the funding
to allow us to deliver the services that
were in need
all the while we kept thinking of the
people on the journey and thinking well
if we’re going to correct these books
we need to make sure that the return to
the people is sustained and is there
now you might wonder why we did that and
why did we get
so involved it was many hours it was a
lot of voluntary work
to correct that organisation
well we were all fundamentally driven by
the fact that this
demographic of people had a really high
mortality rate
they died 10 years younger than the
average new zealander
in a new zealand context that means the
people were dying in their 60s
rather than in their 70s or early 80s
and these weren’t just any people for us
these are our whanau
these were our our parents our
grandparents our cousins
and for me personally my losing my
grandmother at 62
was at the time i was young and hadn’t
appreciated how young
she was but there was a big loss for my
family that was a loss of knowledge
that was a loss of her native language
for my family so i thought to myself
well
you know i need to get in and try and do
something to make this right
we strategized we brought in this
family-based feelings based mindset
we talk about a plan that balance the
people the planet and the profit
and i’m so proud that after a five-year
journey whilst we’d corrected the profit
piece
we were also bringing returns to the
people the journey continues on for that
entity
now that i have stepped down and and let
another colleague take my place in that
injury
the journey continues but they’re always
striving forward to bring returns for
the people
with the ultimate goal of lifting that
mortality rate
there was just a small story to share
with you around
how we actually bring to the fore this
thinking into all that we do
but i often think as a maori accountant
you know is this way of thinking and
being unique to maori
and often look back and i look at some
of our proverbs that we have
and it spoke to me that this is a real
natural inherent way of being
and the one i came across is
which is i am the environment and the
environment as me
but i further thought about that and
thought well are we the only
culture or people out there that think
like this and one day i happen to
stumble across this quote
from albert einstein a profound thinker
who says some of the most simplest
statements but this for me summed it up
a human being is part of the whole
called by us universe
a part limited in time and space he
experiences himself his thoughts and
feelings as something separated from the
rest
a kind of optical delusion of his
consciousness
this delusion is a kind of prison for us
restricting us to our personal desires
into affection for a few persons nearest
to us
our task must be to free ourselves from
this prison by widening our circle of
compassion
to embrace all living creatures and the
whole of nature and its beauty
nobody is able to achieve this
completely but the striving for such
achievement is in itself
a part of the liberation and a
foundation for inner security
when i came across that statement i had
an epiphany
that this is what we have inherent in us
as maori
while swim hat might have people
challenge our beliefs and try and pull
us into this individualistic way of
thinking
we always have a natural way of coming
back to thinking of ourselves as one
with the universe
and it really spoke to me then about
that good feeling that i get
when i’m working collectively and doing
great work with the whole and taking
everyone
on the journey or part of the journey as
a larger group
so then i also had the privilege of
becoming part of a group who could then
say
well if this is how we thought and this
is how profound thinkers think
what’s actually happening out in the
maori market
this year we ran a survey and we just
asked those in business at the front
line how they were going how they were
thinking and what were they doing
and the feedback was subtle but clear
they felt really comfortable that they
were nailing the
return to the planet and the people but
they could see a gap a gap in
the way they were being is that they
weren’t as focused on the profit piece
and the global pandemic taught them that
to not have a fully sustainable platform
with any one of those three out of line
means that you could either be
in or out of business quite quick we
have something here in new zealand which
does surprise me
when people are surprised about it it’s
called in new zealand the tall poppy
syndrome
so we don’t often talk about profits and
we don’t like to promote or put
ourselves
above others so it’s a very
uncomfortable conversation for us to
have
but i’m really proud of my people that
in the global pandemic they saw that
this is an area that they need to work
on
and so they instantly fix their sites to
say how can we correct this to make sure
we’re resilient for the future
it’ll be interesting to see we’ll run a
survey next year to see how the market
fed
the global pandemic is still playing out
and everyone is in the midst of it
so what strategies are employed and what
worked we’ll find out next year and i
really look forward to that
one thing that i did become aware of
though is that on a global perspective
people typically had a pure profit focus
quite high and
i see her moving towards bringing that
down and lifting up the people and
planet focus
so i’d like to hope that today by
sharing the story
of the people out there learning that
maori do the inverse of what is
happening globally
that you might learn something from our
story today and take away a piece of
that
to help you in your thinking and how you
act in business
so what i would ask you to do before i
close off today is to take a moment to
think about those things that you love
and how good it feels to do good by them
bring that thinking and feeling into
your business and think about
how your business actions and decisions
are when you’re at the forefront of
providing services or bringing products
to market and what impact that that will
have for future generations
which will be your children your
grandchildren your great grandchildren
and your great great grandchildren
think about what legacy you want to
leave for them i’ll close the session
with
a very short proverb from the maori
world that
i really love that speaks to the
gratitude that we often bring forth
and that is just to say that this talk
today
really is
today’s talk is just a small thing given
with love
go well be safe thank you for listening
you