Minister of Finance Bill English said it best in September when he effectively put the frighteners into every grey-suited public servant in the land.

“We simply cannot afford to continue the public sector growth we have seen in recent years. We cannot escape this fact or wish away this constraint . . .

“It’s about doing the things that work and stopping doing the things that don’t work. It’s about doing fewer things and doing them better.”

In the nine years from 2000 the number of public servants grew by 54 per cent.

The message is clear: It is no longer appropriate for the heavy and methodical gears of government to turn ever onwards at the same pace.

Effectively the public sector has been asked to do more, better – with less money and less people, and to do it smarter.

And they aren’t having a quick look behind the couch cushions for some silver coins either.

 The powers that be have said the strategy to cap numbers and salaries in the public sector will extend for the next three to five years. Many commentators have said we will never see anything like the number of public servants we had under the previous government. So this year and those that follow are an interesting time for those in the public sector, and an interesting time for those that work around it.

Brian Cowper is the newly appointed director of public sector at Hudson, one of New Zealand’s largest recruitment and talent management companies.He puts the situation bluntly.

“The current account deficit needs to be managed, that can only eventuate with a sinking lid. You’ve got the Minister of Finance saying that the public sector funding  for this year will be down to $1.1 billion. It was $1.4 billion.”

Cowper is newly appointed, but his role is also newly created – showing an increased private sector interest in public sector goings-on. General Manager of Hudson Wellington Peter de Boer says their increased focus on the public sector is in anticipation of both wider changes in the industry, and a shift in public-private sector relationships as the government strives to cut costs.

“The dust is starting to clear now, but the recruitment industry in New Zealand has changed,” he says. “The whole focus and strategy of the public sector is shifting – working with them creates the best of both worlds.”

So will this year be the year of the public-private servant? Possibly.

Cowper reiterates there are some interesting trends just about to reveal themselves. Like their friends in the private sector, public servants have been hibernating. It’s been a long winter. It’s human nature to want to hold onto your job once you see others losing theirs, so hardly surprising the 2009 Human Resource Capability Survey released late last year showed the largest annual increase in public service tenure since records began.

But with the green shoots of economic recovery now appearing, the winds are changing – people perceive there is more opportunity to change jobs. Here comes what Cowper predicts will be a kind of labour market musical chairs – everyone vies for the higher salary, better development opportunities, communication, and job reassurance once the music stops.

This upswing in mobility will be in part motivated by the mental situation many public servants currently find themselves in – disengaged and disassociated.

“When you go through tough times you have to increase employee engagement,” Cowper says. “Increasing your employee engagement when you are negotiating no pay increases and not rewarding performance as much as you would like to – it makes it extremely difficult.”

He says disengaged employees are also symptomatic of the fact that a large percentage of public sector managers have never managed through hard times – their lack of experience is compounded in the public sector because there is little left for them to give out as incentives.

This is all further complicated by the fact that the safety net of not replacing the people that leave is gone – because they simply haven’t been leaving. Cowper says where previously there was a cushion in budgets – money saved on salaries by not replacing staff, being spent on operations and service delivery – there is now only the bottom line.

“What it means is that people who haven’t had the experience managing in the tough times will find it even tougher because now they haven’t got the margin with which to work, and my recent conversations with some senior managers have confirmed that.”

Part of the government’s new strategy is an active encouragement of public sector innovation, which may sound like an oxymoron but considering the amount of attention they have given to it, it definitely is not. In the same speech he spoke of shaking things up, Bill English said his government would not only push innovation in the public sector, but would also accept the associated risks.

“This is fundamentally important because without innovation, we will not deliver better, smarter public services over the next five years.The government will support innovation – even with a risk of failure.”

Innovation is a concept Cowper says was never a high priority in the public sector.

“I don’t think it was stifled by the previous government, it certainly has never been encouraged as much as this government is doing so,” he says. “The government is encouraging innovative ideas, they are encouraging organisations to come up with something different and not be frightened to – not to experiment – but to innovate in a logical way.”

He cites the initiative to change the service delivery of Primary Health Organisations, and the establishment of the shared services board to save $700 million on back office functions as an example. “I think when you see some radical changes – like in health with the shared services approach to back office functions – you can see that it’s an innovative idea. It came from taskforces that looked at service delivery and then identified efficiencies.”

While there is no denying the recession has changed both the public and private sector forever, questions remain over what the long-term effects will be.

Cowper agrees nothing quite like what we have seen has ever happened before. We have experienced the regular ups and downs of the economic cycle but the collapse of banks and finance companies was a different story. As for the effect on the labour market, after 30 years of corporate and public sector experience, Cowper is capable of giving a pretty informed opinion about the future of the “complex beast”. He says the crossroads between the retiring baby boomers, many of whom lost significant portions of their investments in 2008 and 2009, and younger generations is an interesting space.

 “It is a unique period in history because you have got baby boomers that are coming up for retirement and you’ve got ageing workforce populations. There are some big questions around what happens now if the baby boomer generation want to hang on. What’s the effect of that? What’s the effect of it for the younger people coming through?” he says. “It is a small country, the effects could be quite large. People might start to pursue opportunities overseas; the economy in Australia has already started to lift.”

The recession seems to have thrown up more questions than answers, but as Cowper says, at least we know what we are facing.

Change is coming. Look busy.

Some kids learn but in adulthood forget what their pretty and patient young kindergarten teacher so lovingly taught them. If we think of the main players in the New Zealand tertiary education sector like a playground, all the usual kinds of kids are there.

There are the big kids – they have lots of clout, they shout the loudest. They steal everyone else’s toys. There are the kids that like maths, the kids that like music, the kids that like science, the kids that like to play house. Then there are the kids to whom anything is a magic wand. These kids like to explore, use their hands, take risks, learn new things. These kids are the polytechnics. Some kids like to read. Some kids like to do.

The polytechnics like to do, and the six largest New Zealand polytechnics are definitely doing something big. They broke away from the other 14 New Zealand polytechnics earlier this year and banded together to form the Metro Group. They are deep in uncharted territory. Collaboration County. Leadership Land.

The Metro Group’s ambitious plans are to change the mechanics of this country’s tertiary education sector and to play a more integral role in modernising the economy through a focus on innovation, technology, and higher level learning. They also plan on reducing the number of qualifications offered across their institutions by 25 per cent by 2012, thus decreasing back office costs and allowing for content streamlining.

Linda Sissons of WelTec, Mark Flowers of Wintec, Rick Ede of Unitec, Peter Brothers of the Manukau Institute of Technology, Neil Barns of the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, and Phil Ker of Otago Polytechnic are the six CEOs on a mission. The Metro Group’s first initiative, the pilot, the testing of the collaborative waters, is the Bachelor of Engineering Technology – a common degree shared among all Metro Group member polytechnics.

It is a bit of a diversion from the out-wit, out-smart, out-educate mindset seen in the wider sector, which the six CEOs agree largely results in money being spent
unproductively.

“There was a lot of money spent on the competition and not a lot of purpose,” Flowers says.

Long hours have gone into crafting this new course. 2010 is the inaugural year with 2000 students enrolled across the six Metro Group members. The structure of the degree plays to the strengths of individual institutions in the civil, mechanical, and electrical majors and sub majors rather than every polytechnic replicating every major within their own institution.

A common first year is offered at all institutions and students will then move according to the area in which they choose to specialise. For the polytechnics it means greater efficiencies. For business it means a higher standard of graduates with a more specialised knowledge. For the wider tertiary sector it means an exciting new business model for education.

The creation of the Bachelor of Engineering Technology was spurred by the results of career research and mapping carried out by the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand. Rick Ede says it was a natural progression of the polytechnic model of working closely with industry.

“There was just the perfect opportunity there to say, ‘hey look we can come together and package up a national qualification that goes directly into this career structure framework of the industry. It wasn’t easy developing the choices, but it is an awful lot easier when you know exactly what the industry really needs,” he says.

It’s textbook management practice in action. They are walking the walk and so far – it is early days yet – it seems to be paying off.

 “For business – I think they should have a high expectation of what institutes of technology do, we are supposed to be modernising this economy,” Flowers says.

“You know as well as I do the pace that technology is showing. So the real benefit should be if the six of us can get our act together and really get focused and make a difference. And if we don’t then we bloody well ought to be.

It’s like the old sayings go – no polytechnic is an island. You can lead a man to university but you cannot make him think.

Flowers says the Metro Group’s model considers both the employer and the student as customers of the service of education.

“Business is the customer, you will find all tertiary institutes say ‘oh the student is the customer’ but I believe the employers are just as important,” he says.

 “Whereas if I was sitting in a university I’m not sure that I would be saying it quite as insistently as that, and that is a connection I would like to make and I think my colleagues would all agree.”

By placing business as the end customer of the process they are ensuring employers get graduates that can hit the ground running, promptly add value to the business, innovate, and create breakthroughs. Chief Executive of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Limited (GNS) Dr Alex Malahoff agrees.

“They have the right desire, the attitude, the right training for specific areas,” he says.

“New Zealand is such a tiny country, in order to make use of all available avenues to get as intense a degree as possible, you might as well make use of your colleagues and make use of the other institutions. All the institutions realise that of course you compete for students and all of that but in the end if you get the right facilities and the right really special talent you can help make the degree a better one.”

The Metro Group initiative is a diversion from the decade of ups, downs, and identity crisis the polytechnics and the wider tertiary education sector has seen. Courses in twilight golf, incidents of bail out funding and appointments of crown managers at several institutions have, according to Ede, tainted the whole sector with the same brush.

The Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill, currently before Parliament, riled up the sector earlier last year by tabling a reduction in the size of polytechnic councils and giving the Minister for Tertiary Education the right to appoint the chair and deputy chair of those councils.  Unitec, under Ede’s 18-month leadership recently dropped their 10-year-bid to become a university. He says New Zealand needs to recognise that polytechnics and universities are different but equally valuable.

Flowers agrees, “Personally I just see it as two parallel systems with a slightly different emphasis, it shouldn’t be seen as superior – they are just different.”

 The tertiary education sector has been in a constant state of flux. The Metro Group leaders say in particular, the growing importance of the international student market and the increases in entry-level qualifications have kept them busy over the years. Where previously a certificate or diploma would have been sufficient for an entry level position a degree is now the norm – due largely to the increased role of technology at work.

 “Look at nursing – nurses used to do a diploma, now they do a degree,” Ede says. “Radiographers – they used to do a diploma and now if you want to specialise in ultrasound or MRI you need a postgraduate qualification. Over time it’s been a gradual shift.”

The international student market is a lucrative one, and one largely dominated by universities and private providers like language schools – the polytechnics now want in on more of the action. WelTec’s Linda Sissons says one goal of the six institutions banding together is to present a united front to the international market.

“Other countries and other agencies would much rather work with a consortium of providers than with one after another,” she says.

Some have already made more progress than others; Mark Flowers spoke to IN-Business at Auckland Airport before he flew out to Beijing on a 10-day trip to cement current relationships and look into new projects.

Sissons reiterates collaboration is the key to their success in Asia.

 “We won’t succeed unless we go out together, go out as metros united or New Zealand united, not one by one,” she says.

Above all else he believes in doing things well, proceeding slowly and developing a truly worthwhile business relationship. Once that is in place and the trust of the client has been gained, the result is that you’ve earned the right to be involved in the deals and plans much earlier on, which Jupe says is when the “good stuff” really happens.

By way of illustrating this philosophy, the head of Bluestar Group in New Zealand gives us a metaphor to mull over. He starts by describing a close family gathered around a table, sitting down to a well-cooked meal of a slow food like lamb shanks. He mentions the Italians, known for being great wine and diners, and likens the lot to a truly great business relationship. “Above all else, relationships take time,” he says. “There is absolutely no quick-fix solution and you aren’t going to be able to solve anything with kneejerk responses. It takes time, effort, and the goal of really understanding the problem.” Just like you can’t microwave lamb shanks, you can’t expect a great business relationship to happen overnight. This is the core of his message: slow down, and you will have the rewards soon enough.

Earning your place at Jupe’s metaphorical table is a big part of the philosophy. It is not just handed over. “It’s not for whingers. You can’t just rock up and talk about what you don’t like and leach off others. You’ve got to contribute, and everyone’s got to bring something to the table. Busy people need to see value in you being there. And that also means having the ability to make decisions. There’s no point having someone engaged who is going to have to go back and run things past someone else all the time.”

“Your network has value too – as a client, whose network are you going to choose? Who else are your suppliers bringing to the table with them? There’s a whole team, and that team isn’t linear. Traditionally people look at the supply chain and that’s not the whole network, it’s far more holistic than that. Blue Star have a great client network, but broader than that, we are working at getting a seat at the table with other industries where we can share ideas and collectively solve clients problems.

“And building this network means finding people with similar values, whether it’s about responsible printing and long-term sustainability, or something else. You don’t want to end up with a network where all the players are the same, but rather a network with a collection of all the right ingredients. But you absolutely need people with similar values who can collaborate with others.” This collaboration is extremely important in Jupe’s eyes. “You’ve got to be comfortable to share ownership, and part of it is that everyone’s got to have their turn. But don’t confuse it with the terrible political correctness we’ve got going on in New Zealand, the most important thing is the outcome!”

After joining Blue Star in 1997 and starting their print management division, Jupe has turned his hand to making this philosophy a reality. “Now more than ever, I’m trying to refocus our team on the things that matter. Who do we need to be talking to? How do we build a relationship with those people? How do we understand their needs better, and who else do we need to bring to the table to make it credible?”

“And part of that credibility,” he continues, “is in the informality. There is a space for the suits and ties, but the reality is that people are having to do much more in their day now to achieve similar or lower results. People are really busy, and often they’re only comfortable to take some real time out for breakfast to meet if there’s value in it. They’re not going to do it just for the sake of it, but once you have that seat at the table with them, you can begin working on a real relationship.” This informality also helps spark ideas – Jupe is big on getting out of the offices and cubicles into a more relaxed environment. “Only then have you actually got a better chance at being creative. You can’t be creative if you’re under pressure!”

Interestingly, Jupe thinks business in this country has had it too good for far too long. “If we look at our economy over the last 10 years, it’s been too easy for all businesses to be reactive. If a client needed something, people reacted.” Now, says Jupe, if a business wants to survive, it’s time for a change. It makes the current climate a perfect time for his ‘dinner-table’ methods to really make a difference.

“You have a lot of people under a huge amount of pressure at the moment, they’re trying to make tough decisions, and if they’re going to try to do it all on a spreadsheet, it’s going to be even tougher. We all need to refocus on what really matters in business, and what is going to help people when they are facing these decisions.”

And Jupe reckons this ’new’ way of doing business, isn’t actually that new at all. “It’s getting back to the roots, the way things used to be done. It isn’t a new way of looking at commerce.” He also thinks it’s also a more ‘Kiwi’ way of doing things. “New Zealand is made up of many small businesses and we tend to place value on relationships, and that’s really important.” It’s also not just an ‘easy’ way to do business either, it requires integrity and the ability to be honest if there is something you cannot commit to doing. “You can’t just get together and tell lies to each other!”

This whole philosophy challenges the way many business leaders think. For example. the way that senior staff are so often not involved with their clients at all. Jupe laments about this, saying it is not a way to make people feel heard. “So many of them are so many steps removed from the customers. They would rather interact with emails, RFPs and formal presentations, when actually most people just want to talk and engage with people who are going to listen to them. There is absolutely nothing more important than talking with your customers. No Powerpoint, no powerplays, just common ground.”

Blue Star are also challenging the way their customers think. Often, print is thought of as the ‘last step’. We figure everything else out first, and then contact a printer for a price for putting it on paper. But as Jupe says: “We want our customers to say if it’s anything to do with print or related to print, think of us first. And even broader than that, if it’s how you manage your information, we want to be part of that as well.”

When we ask about the possible ‘hippy’ perception of some of Jupe’s ideas, he tell us about his Masters Degree in business strategy, and laughs about the irony of it. “I think one of the best approaches to strategy is taking the time to get to know the environment you’re in, and the people. Talking about what it is that we really need to be doing, the stuff that doesn’t rank in charts or in people’s strategic plans. It’s in the conversations, exploring opportunities and being comfortable throwing ideas around, and ultimately, trying something.”

 In fact, this is an important distinction, Jupe thinks. “You can’t spend all your time fighting fires. In business we need to have people doing today’s business, yes, but we also need people taking a breath and looking forward, creating a future we can get excited about.”

Jupe is equally philosophical when we ask him about the oft-prophesied death of print.

“Everyone always thinks that new technology will replace the old, but it’s not always the case. I was a small boy when TV came out, and it hasn’t replaced radio even though people said it was going to. In our industry there are a lot of people talking to customers about their latest piece of equipment, but it’s far braver to say ‘I’m interested in what your business problem is and we’ll go away and find a solution.’ I’d rather take the time to understand the problem, and not just peddle technology.

“Again, this is part of stopping and taking the time to smell the roses. More and more businesses need to do that – stop and not panic that the role your service plays is going to be different, but rather figuring out what it’s going to be. First understand what ‘different’ means and then figure out how to make that different thing happen. I think the onus as a printing organisation is on working out what the role of print really is and how we can deliver it well. That could be anything from running on-site print rooms for people, storing all their documentation and providing it when they need it, it could be managing digital documents, it could be back to the basic stuff – just printing their business cards or forms.”

We’ve heard a lot of philosophising from Blue Star’s New Zealand CEO, but Jupe knows he has to do more than just talk. “The best evidence of whether you have a culture that can make all of this stuff work is actually doing it. We started our business 12 years ago with no print management capabilities, and now half of our business in New Zealand is in print and document management solutions. This is reflected in our business structure as well: we don’t have an IT team, we have a business systems team because business systems encompass everything about how we work internally and how our clients interact with us.

“A lot of companies have IT and that’s all back office, they shut the propellor heads out the back and throw pizza under the door. Our view is that business systems are a key part of how our customers interact with us, so we want them involved in helping understand our clients problems.”

Positive in a downturning market, and productive though his industry is under attack, Jupe still manages to make business sound exciting. You could say he’s given us plenty to chew on.

Transforming the centre of Wellington into a car and bus-free zone is “common sense, not nonsense” according to Sir Robert Jones. The polarising entrepreneur is turning his hand to local government, and assembling a team to contest the 2010 Wellington City Council elections on a platform of banning buses and other traffic from the “Golden Mile” between Lambton Quay and Courtenay Place.

Instead, free trams and bicycles would be provided. Cafés and kiosks would be encouraged as well as a Saturday market, and water fountains and other attractions would be installed along the central city route. 

Describing Wellington as a “shabby city with potential”, Jones claimed his suggestions would cause a surge of apartment construction and a massive economic boom. “It is not hard – it is simple.”

Citing examples of successful projects in Brisbane, Budapest, Copenhagen, Vienna and Barcelona, he expected a Wellington CBD transformation could easily be completed in a matter of months.

“Other buggers will be saying, ‘vote for me’, but we’ll be saying ‘vote for this’.”

Fresh Films has been going for just over six months, but owner Claire Alderton has been in the business much, much longer.

With an impressive past client list that includes Microsoft, Ernst & Young, Burger King, and Holcim, she has now gone out on her own and is determined to keep Fresh Films true to her own values.

“I think people find it refreshing that we are upfront and honest,” she says. 

“If a potential client wants to make a film but I know they won’t see a return on investment, then I’ll tell them the truth. For me, business in New Zealand is all about forming long-term relationships and I won’t jeopardise that for a quick sale.”

Fresh Films specialise in high-quality corporate films, TV commercials and web video. 

Last week they launched a new cost-effective web video product which enables businesses to have an interactive presenter on their website in just three days.

“The opportunity for audience engagement is massive,” Alderton says. “Presenter-led web videos increase the amount of time customers spend on your site, and provide visitors with a unique and memorable experience.”

Her goal is for Fresh Films to be one of the most sought-after production companies in New Zealand within three years. 

Once one of the youngest first assistant directors to work on major feature films in Hollywood and the UK – think Ocean’s Eleven, Starlight Express – she’s all set to take on New Zealand.

Suzanne Paul is fond of misquoting Winston Churchill: “Never, never, never, never, never, never give up.”

Her nearly 40 year career has spanned a cataclysmic series of booms and busts – the infomercial queen has more in common with the wartime Prime Minister than you might think.

Her trials are well documented: angry creditors are still owed more than $1 million from the 2004 collapse of the ‘cabaret-come-kapa haka’ venture Rawaka. Paul was declared bankrupt in March 2005. Her public pledges to pay have yielded few results and serve only to rile the Rawaka creditors more.

Through the liquidation of Rawaka, Paul could have walked away from her debts, but she requested that the liquidation be kept open to enable her to work her way back and pay what is owed. Rawaka liquidator Mike Lamacraft says they were happy to do it – but he remains sceptical anything will ever eventuate.

“It’s been a long time . . . I don’t know whether the interest has waned or not. If anything comes out of it I will be quite surprised.”

But while creditors have been scathing, her supporters stay fiercely protective. And recent high-profile triumphs include a best-selling book launched at Christmas 2008 and a public relations dream win on Dancing with the Stars in 2007. Whatever your opinion – and nigh on everyone will have one – you cannot help but admire the gall of the woman who picked herself up after what, for many, would have been a career-ending failure.

Ladies-mag darling she may be, but beneath the makeup and the dulcet tones Paul is an entrepreneur, with the pushy sales persona, in the business of selling her name and image.

Her story before arriving permanently in New Zealand at the age of 35 is not as well known as the tale of television, triumph, and torment that followed. A salesperson since leaving school at 15, and a travelling salesperson from 21, she learned the art of the sell the best way – by pounding the pavements.

“I realised I was good at it. I just instinctively knew the right things to say that would make the product sell.”

After several years, however, she found herself up against a brick wall in England.

“By the end of it I had done every town in England and every gadget that was going, and so that is when I thought I would try other countries, try further afield.”

In Australia, her money ran out, her visa expired and she was forced to return to England to work for several years before making enough to pay for an airfare back. It happened again in Auckland, when the launch of the vibrating massage pillow failed to float. Eventually, Paul hit the jackpot with a bronzing powder – Natural Glow – yet in many ways her life seems to have followed its previous pattern. After making a fortune, Paul proceeded to lose it. And now, nearly five years since her bankruptcy, new business ventures are once again coming to fruition.

The rented home in Greenhithe is large and airy. Paul’s dancing with the stars gong – a heavy blunt object – sits in pride of place near the front door. In person, her enthusiasm is palpable, but the moments where she drops her guard are few and far between. When asked what she learned from bankruptcy her reply is characteristic, if not entirely unexpected. She has a somewhat cavalier, roll-the-dice attitude to business.

 “People always ask me, ‘What did you learn? Was it you learned not to trust people, or to do your accounting better?’ But I always say, ’No, no – the only thing I learnt was you have to pick yourself up and try again, that’s all,’” she says.

When asked what got her through, her reply attests to a love of the finer things in life.

“When I lost everything I drew up the plans of the house that I wanted to build. I’ve got the shape of it, I know where all the rooms are going to be, the swimming pool and the outdoor spa and everything and I can see it in my mind in just a split second. I can see my gold Mercedes convertible, and so when things are really, really bad that is what I think about.”

So while the Rawaka debt is the proverbial elephant in the room, Paul has turned with gusto to the “shorty market” – designing her own line of clothes for women under 163 cm (5 ft 4), with shoes to match. ‘Suzanne Paul: Petite’ is the realisation of a New Year’s resolution and three years toil trying to find an investor to trust her.

Paul knows her target market back to front – or up and down as it were.The hard yards to pull herself out of bankruptcy and be discharged after only one year, instead of the usual three, were done back at square one with sales demonstrations in shopping malls. The mall environment, a blessing and a curse, gave her a unique insight into the psyche of the average Kiwi woman.

“I have sat here and cried putting my makeup on saying, ‘I don’t want to go out to the shopping mall for six hours selling,’ I was a multi-millionaire! I don’t want to stand in a shopping mall selling stuff. But I would say to myself, ‘Now stop it, put your face on, get yourself out there, it’s going to be great. Who knows who I might meet. I might get a good idea, I might see something.’”

It is this critical eye that has been such an asset for Paul – her ability to spot a gap in the market or see a flaw with a current product.

“I am always trying to look at what’s in the market and think to myself, how can I do it better, cheaper, easier – you have got to have something different to offer people. There will always be new opportunities – like last year when I invented ‘The Big Blue Puff’.

“You would think that every bronzing product on the market would already have been invented, but I always see things and think, yeah, that is good – but it’s not perfect, there is still something there.”

Paul says the “vertically challenged” market is well established overseas. In the UK, Marks and Spencer and Topshop both have dedicated short clothing lines. She estimates close to 50 per cent of Kiwi women are under 163 cm – including herself at 158 cm.

“That’s a lot of shorties uncatered for.”

Launched in August, the line has had initial success and is now sold in retail outlets including Ballantynes, Smith and Caughey’s, and Scarpa. Paul now faces another uphill battle convincing more retailers to pick up the line. She is incredulous that others can’t see what she sees.

“I am really frustrated with certain retailers, that they can’t see what is so obviously staring them in the face. It is frustrating as all hell when you get hit with brick walls, but that’s what being an entrepreneur is.”

“You come up against a brick wall and you have got to go round it or under it or through it or over it or something – but you don’t stop.”

If the ability to think outside the confines of the status quo makes Paul an entrepreneur, what makes her a rebel?

 “I would always consider myself an entrepreneur, a rebel – wow – is that a bad thing though? I am definitely going down a different path. I have, right from the beginning, right from when they all said to me that nobody will buy makeup with luminous spheres in.”

Those luminous spheres and her iconic infomercials underlined her early success. She fought hard for both. In the 1990s, Kiwi television executives told her there would never be any demand for TV after midnight. The goodnight Kiwi applied to young and old. Between the hours of 12 and 7 am, the sum total of entertainment was the colourful test signal.

They told her the accent was too odd for TV. They told her no one would buy makeup from a two-minute television commercial without first trying it. Eventually, they were talked into giving her a shot. Prestige Marketing, the company built on the back of those nocturnal infomercials, grew to employ 150 staff in New Zealand and 130 in Australia. It was sold in 1996 for $39 million.

Paul Meier, Paul’s business partner for Prestige Marketing, had a parallel business trajectory.

“We built it up together and then he went his way and I went mine, and I lost all my money and he lost all his money,” Paul says. “When I was thinking about starting again and thinking, ‘this is impossible and I don’t want to do it’, I looked at what he was doing and he was starting again and he really inspired me.”

Meier has come back with another bronzing powder – ‘Thin Lizzy’ – but Paul shrugs it off. “You can’t copyright a bronzing powder. Every company – Estee Lauder, Elizabeth Arden – all of them have a bronzing powder. I would just happen to be the first and then everybody copied me, there is nothing you can do about it.”

If nothing else, Paul is the consummate salesperson. She says the key to selling is simple.

“I never sell anything that I am not really passionate and enthusiastic about,” she says. “I was in the malls for 15 years demonstrating Natural Glow – 15 years, three days nearly every week. To be able to say that same demonstration over and over, it is really bloody difficult to sound passionate and excited about it, but that is the only way people will buy off you – if you sound as though you are saying it for the first time.”

For many, she will be forever defined by what she failed to do with Rawaka. Paul takes a more philosophical slant.

“The main thing that people must know is that they will fail,” she says. “If you are going to go into business or be an entrepreneur, at some point you are going to fail. You can’t have great success without great failure. It is impossible.”

This year Paul will take But Wait There’s More, her best-selling autobiography-come-self-help book, to the world. And there really is more – a series of motivational CDs to accompany the books will go to England, Australia and America.

It’s yet another new direction from a woman who refuses to stay down and who has an enduring vendetta against the tunnel vision of the status quo.

 “You see how people can believe things, but it might not be true. All the TV stations said ‘nobody watches TV at night’. Well, maybe that’s because there was nothing on. At the moment a lot of retailers are saying ‘we don’t think there is a need for us to sell clothes for short people because we never have’. But, you know, they are blinkered.”

Paul remains a misfit, a rebel, a round peg in a square hole. She’s been glorified and vilified, but she can’t be ignored.

Please don’t accuse me of going deaf. I am, but it ain’t nearly that bad. But, have you noticed how increasingly, one cannot hear any more, with some telephone calls? The voice at the other end is muffled and distant. Furthermore, everyone’s moaning about it and not just me.

Contrary to popular belief I’m no Luddite. All technology amazes me. To simply push a button on my desk and immediately there’s my Sydney office coming over crystal clear, is a miracle. Except the buggers aren’t always there any more.

Recently, all was revealed.

News broke of a hullabaloo from France after endless complaints, the Telecom mob there admitted they had given up on land line maintenance.  It’s no longer economic, they said, because everyone’s now using cell-phones. Well I’m not, and nor evidently are many others.

Plainly, the same situation applies here. I have a large house which I had built exactly 40 years ago. For about 38 years I’ve had no trouble with the absolutely necessary, four downstairs and two upstairs telephone units. Additionally, I had an answering machine and fax which worked. Sadly, no longer.

Telecom contract out repairs but I smell a rat. After I complained, an ape turned up, wandered about a bit, mumbled he didn’t know what was wrong, buggered off and sent me a bill for $100.

So now I’m down to one phone upstairs and one at the extreme end of downstairs, in my library, which still works loud and clear. God knows, I’ve bought heaps of different units but to no avail and have long since forgotten the magic days of having an answer phone and home fax
machine. So this is progress?

It’s fairly clear that Telecom has given up on landlines and abandoned servicing them.

A month ago, while in Auckland, my staff insisted I come in at 4 pm the next day for a surprise, I did. In bowled up a top Telecom executive and presented me with, what my staff insisted, was the absolute top of the range latest cell-phone. Apparently it would even cook me breakfast. “All free”, I was told – a gift from Telecom, so I would change my ways.

But it sits unused in a drawer. I don’t know how to work it and don’t wish to.

I don’t want to carry a telephone around with me. My life is well organised. All I want is what I had in say, 1975, namely telephones at my home and my office, which actually work. But apparently I can’t.

I’m feeling a bit Hitlerish about all of this. Six months with absolute control and out would come the machine guns to mow over these cell-phone addicts and restore some sanity. In fact I’d make Hitler look like a piker.

Mind you, it would be a bloody busy six months if that was all I had. Like the Mikado’s Lord High Executioner, “I’ve got a little list – and none of ‘em would be missed”, except of course my list is not little, but instead lengthy.

Rat-a-tat-tat, over would go the dazed eyed fat girls streaming out of government offices with sunglasses on top of their heads even though it’s raining; rat-a-tat-tat as I blasted out the shuffling parking meter zombies. I’d get a chauffeur so I could hang out the car window and take out the fresh-from-India, Wellington taxi-drivers clogging the city streets with their top speed of 15kph.

 But pecking order-wise they would all have to wait until the Telecom bosses were first seen to.

But here’s an interesting thing.

The Douglas revolution saw the old Post Office split into two main companies: one, Telecom, to confine itself to telephones, while the Post Office carried on with the mail.

Worldwide, traditional telephony and mail delivery are both taking a beating from the new technology. So answer this?

Why, if Telecom has given up servicing land lines when it’s still charging at least a million subscribers for this ever-diminishing service, is NZ Post able, despite hugely reduced mail usage, to provide what I’ve
always considered to be the best service in New Zealand?

My office can drop letters into the Wellington mail boxes at 5:30 pm and they’re delivered anywhere in the country the next morning. It is a truly remarkable organisation; number one in this country in my view. 

Furthermore, it’s unique in another way. Those of you who still actually read the news will be aware of the current griping in Britain, France and the USA about their fast declining postal services.

The Australians have never matched New Zealand, at least not in the 36 years I’ve had a home and office there.

Maybe we should reunite Telecom back with the Post Office but with one proviso. That is that the new entity’s management be drawn solely from the Post Office personnel.

Telecom’s lot should be re-employed as parking meter wardens to match their competence level. Just don’t let them drive taxis. They’d be even slower than the Indians.

The true adventurers, pioneers, and generally brave and bold people to which we all owe our modern existence, are the dreamers and the venture capitalists. Venture capitalists are an extremely rare breed; there are many pretenders that need to be filtered out.

Genuine venture capitalists are lone hunters – more like tigers than lions. Angel networks don’t hunt in packs but they do provide effective networks of like-minded people you can share with. Or do they?

Incubators bring together dreamers and subsidise the dream for a while. The reality of venture capital is harsh: four out of five pre-screened start ups fail. Out of five successes – 25 start ups – three will be exceptionally pedestrian businesses that bore you shitless.

Of the other two, one will be really exciting. It will have rough patches and extremely rewarding patches. Every day will be a fight – but the profits will pour in. The other one has usually gone through the rough stage and will mature into an excellent cash cow.

A reality check: just going from idea to product takes anywhere between two and five years. Tack on a few more years to get from product to customer and don’t even think of actually penetrating the market and building a business in under five. Surviving predatory competition from better resourced but useless competition? Another five to ten years. Then and only then does the one-in-25 emerge.

Be prudent – budget another 10 years to achieve stability and here you are looking at 25 years of hard slog. When this reality sets in it seems hilarious the idiots in Wellington wanted to set up a venture capital fund with a three-year cycle.

Venture capitalists fall essentially into one of three groups: bankers, vulture capitalists, and true pioneers. 

Bankers are easily picked. Once a banker, always a (w) banker. The first meeting between a banker and a dreamer will involve some banker analysis, and the question, “What is your exit strategy?” Then they will ask you how much money you need and what’s in it for them.

What started out as equity will migrate to dressed up debt.

They will want a front-of-the-bus position, a preference share, or convertible note. They will perhaps want a coupon compounded. They will want strategic control, milestones for drawdown, and a clear exit commitment – at least for them. These guys are bankers. Everyone knows what happens when you disappoint a banker.

The differences between the vulture and the venture capitalist are slight. There are however, several tell tale signs. The vulture’s objective is to put in little but get lots of control out. They then use that control to force the hapless dreamer to default on promises, at which point they lever the dreamer out – after sucking all the dreams out of them.

Usually these people will promise you funding all the way through the process, at least through to market penetration,  and will agree with you upfront the pricing of each lump sum, which will be milestone driven. They will tell you they have done all this before and can help you with management and strategy. They will take a board seat and often chairmanship as well. They might even take an operational role and you will think you have found heaven. They will then work hard to ensure you miss your milestones, and the fine print will have some pretty nasty consequences.

They will continue to fund you either on more punishing terms for equity, or they will say something along the lines of: “Look, the old deal’s off, but we will provide some more cash as debt.” The end game is a quick receivership and a new company. There are many ways in which these guys eat everyone’s lunch.

The real venture capitalists, the true pioneers, will do nearly all of the above. They will want to value the company with cash flows, will want to milestone their investment, they will want board seats. The difference is, these guys will rarely talk about exit and somewhere along the line they will say to you words to the effect: “Listen mate we are partners. If you get rich, I get rich, and vice versa.

“You are not going to get rich on salary until this thing is making cash. Don’t even talk to me about your market worth – I only care about how much you need to have a peaceful life at home.”

Then these guys will start talking to you about the management resources you will need and they will find these people for and with you. These guys are owners not workers. They rarely, if ever, take an operational role. They won’t pretend to know your job better than you.

Unfortunately the only time you will know the difference between a vulture and a venture capitalist is when you hit the first bump in the road.

The vulture will either abandon you or take you out.

The partner will simply roll up their sleeves and help you out of the hole. At the end of the day they will wipe their brow and yours and say: “That was a close one.”

The difference will be the direction and force of the hand they offer you, and sometimes that help goes beyond money.

When management turned off the tower’s external lights to do their bit during the midwinter electricity crisis of 2008 they found themselves fielding outraged phone calls from Aucklanders demanding they be turned back on.

“It was public demand – people felt we were being stingy,” Sky City Energy and Environment Coordinator Jonathan Woodbridge Buys says. Not to be deterred, the technology eventually evolved enough for them to install the latest in efficient LED lighting on a remote control system.

The twinkling lights on the skyline are now beacons of efficiency.

When Woodbridge Buys started the role in August 2007 he spent the first few weeks studying the tower and hotel’s $6.5 million energy and utilities budget – concentrating on the areas of biggest spend, looking at where the fastest returns could come from, and investigating new lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation technology.

Within a couple of weeks he had saved the company more than $20,000.

He says energy conservation at Sky City works to an “it has to do good not just feel good” mantra. They aren’t going to partake in energy saving initiatives unless they pay themselves off and produce a return on investment. Even the gaming machine manufacturers are doing their bit. Their newest offerings emit less light and heat by using liquid crystal displays, flat tubes and panels, and touch screens instead of buttons.

“If you put your hand on top of an old machine it used to be hot and all that heat had to be got rid of in the gaming space.”

The Sky Tower is a somewhat unique example, but what about the more bog-standard office building? There are around 75,000 commercial buildings in New Zealand, which collectively account for 9 per cent of our national energy use – about the amount of electricity used by 1.2 million homes. Analysis by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) shows that most buildings could save 10–15 per cent of this energy, and much of it with paybacks of less than a year.

“It isn’t rocket science. We’ve worked with many businesses which are stronger and more profitable as a result of good energy management,” EECA Business Account Manager Dan Coffey says.

Companies like Sky City that invest in energy efficiency find not only that it’s good for the bottom line, but it makes a happier workplace. In Wellington, the Reserve Bank has just undergone an energy transformation, cutting energy use in its offices by 22 per cent with a programme of ‘continuous commissioning’. This means they constantly monitor and adjust the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems to optimise their performance.

The project had a payback of 12 months and they say the response from staff has been positive. Research confirms buildings tuned for energy efficiency record improved staff satisfaction. Coffey explains it is because the systems are adjusted to ensure they aren’t fighting each other by overheating or overcooling.

 CEO of the New Zealand Green Building Council Jane Henley says an office is more than just four walls. “Buildings are a powerful business service, which shape the culture and wellbeing of the people who spend day after day in them. Many companies are starting to understand the opportunity to reduce operating costs, and importantly to choose space that has high levels of natural light and zoned temperature control,” she says.

Natural light, fresh air and access to outdoor views, as well as control over their own workspace temperature and lighting, can directly affect staff’s productivity.

 “We’re seeing research overseas that shows companies which invest in these features achieve significant productivity gains and cost savings,” Henley says.

She cites the example of Australia’s first six star Green Star rated office building, where productivity has risen by 10.9 per cent since staff moved in, with an estimated annual saving of $2 million. There is a growing movement towards energy-efficient commercial architecture and design, which EECA says will eventually have a flow-on effect on energy use.

The International Energy Agency’s Dr Nigel Jollands says the high global interest in this field makes energy efficient buildings “the new black”, with lots of R&D now focused on energy efficient buildings.  New Zealand has been slower off the mark in this regard, but there are some stellar local examples. The Selwyn District Council in Canterbury commissioned a new headquarters that made the most of passive solar gains. They ensured an energy audit was carried out on the design before the concrete was even poured.

Realistically, most Kiwi businesses aren’t in a position to commission a brand new eco- building, but as companies like Sky City prove, there’s much positive potential in existing buildings. Getting staff buy-in is crucial for an efficiency programme, Coffey says. Half of the energy used in offices is under their direct control – such as lights and office equipment.

“A simple after hours walk-through can deliver returns. There’s often a surprising amount of plant and equipment running unnecessarily.”

Coffey says he’s seeing energy awareness shift from being confined to engineers, to a general management discipline.

“[It] makes sense because why would any well-run business pour money down the drain?”

Even the guys in suits are getting it. 

As we leave this decade behind and start work in a fresh new one, sustainability is only going to become more of a competitive advantage. I’m not saying we are entering an utopian era of sunshine and rainbows, because a warm fuzzy feeling alone is not enough to sustain a business’s bottom line.

And it doesn’t have to.

There is now a multibillion dollar market for more environmental and ethical products and services. The low carbon and environmental goods and services market (LCEGS) was recently estimated to have globally been worth £3 trillion in 2008. Recent Colmar Brunton research shows the market is growing faster than we thought – they estimate close to 50 per cent of consumers are now looking for ‘green-cred’ when buying products.

Looking past just consumer products, there is huge potential for higher level green technology and innovation, and in a corporate context, for green business initiatives.

Sustainability is no longer a nice-sounding concept; it’s a serious business opportunity.

Scientist and former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery puts it in perspective as the next natural progression of industry.

“With every revolution we have had, from wood to coal, from coal to oil, and now from oil to renewables, profits have increased. That’s the way the world is.”

Sustainable Business Network (SBN) Chief Executive Rachel Brown explains it is a simple matter of supply and unmet demand.

“The marketplace is frustrated because the products and services aren’t there yet,” she says. “I think there are a lot of people out there in the market saying, ‘if it was there I would buy it’ but it is not there so they feel trapped into buying stuff they don’t actually want.”

The costs of overlooking this growing trend in the market could be devastating. “I think any business that doesn’t have its finger on the pulse in its market is really in potential risk.”

Before organics were hip or even widely accepted, Chris Morrison and two business partners created drinks company Phoenix Organics. It was 1986 – they were trailblazers. Morrison now chairs the SBN board and is still involved with some cutting edge stuff – upsetting big American corporates and helping to rebuild the Samoan economy with organic fair trade bananas for example. He says, and Brown agrees, the innovative mindset of the eco-entrepreneur manifests itself today in what has come to be known as ‘clean technology’.

Advances, particularly in small scale sustainable energy companies, are happening thick and fast in response to growing demand.

 “We know people are trying to find renewable, clean technologies for the future – the world is screaming out for these solutions,” Brown says. “They don’t want fossil fuels burning. They don’t want anything that is going to leave nasty stuff behind like nuclear currently does.”

Notable projects in the pipeline include scientists and entrepreneurs looking at the development of ‘biomimicry’ to create energy solutions.

“They go and look at what nature does to generate energy and then replicate it,” Brown says. “They have mimicked kelp, they have used the same idea of anchoring something to the ground and then every time it moves with the sea it generates power. They make the technology really cheap and really light. These ideas are bubbling to the surface in all sorts of places – they are really small companies but they have the potential to be massive.”

Clean technology is the darling of the sustainability space. Brown says the SBN intends to support it by marrying the ideas with the entrepreneurs. “Businesses need ideas and one of the great things about the network is you bring the trail blazer guys together with the businesses who think there is an opportunity but don’t know what it is.

“So it is a little like the Phoenix Organics idea. Everyone was going ‘oh you are a bloody idiot, it will never happen’ and then they just break through,” she says.

Sustainability requires the ability to think outside the three walls of your office cubicle.

At the recent national SBN awards, Kiwibank took out the Emerging Large and Corporate Business category. The award is designed for businesses that have over 20 employees and have become formally involved in sustainability within the last two years.

Murray Wu is the bank’s General Manager of Business Transformation. He says they take a more holistic approach:

 “It is about good business, and as a side note it is hard to pull business out from sustainability.”

“Sustainability isn’t necessarily about going out in the community and painting Kindy fences and all that stuff, but [about] how you make your business last for the long haul and generate the benefits for community that are meaningful to them,” he says.

“There are just some things that other companies do well that we won’t go and do because it is not our strength and it’s not where we think our focus is. For example going and doing a whole lot of complex environmental initiatives, it’s just not our space, but on the other hand helping educate people about finances or helping small business start up, that is.”

Kiwibank, while gratified by the win, is wary of overplaying it.

“We look at our competitors and some of them are doing some fantastic stuff and they are sponsoring this that and the other and their names are all over the place,” Wu says. “We didn’t know if we would meet the expectations of people in the sustainability world. We are quite sensitive to it, even though now we have won an award and all that, when we look at what we do, we would still be careful about what we say about it.”

Greenwash. It continues to be the white noise of sustainability. As companies see its competitive edge they are frantically rushing to out-green each other with harried and increasingly desperate-looking efforts. Morrison says there are so many measures of what is ‘good’ now consumers are confused. “There just seems to be new labels coming all the time whether it is zero carbon or whether it is organics, no animal cruelty, vegan, or heart tick.

“There are just more and more and more so that is becoming more and more difficult for consumers to decipher what’s real and what isn’t.”

There are also those in the marketplace that are deliberately misleading consumers with bad science, by manipulating the figures, or lying by omission. Brown says there are some epic contradictions out there of cigarettes-in-recycled-packaging proportions.

“That is ripping off the market and the thing is the market is not that bloody stupid I would like to think.” She says the Sustainable Business Network comes in handy in helping to sort the genuine from the jumped up.

“That is one really important role that we are playing – supporting the market. We are always looking at how we can speed up the uptake of sustainable products, help businesses identify what the opportunities are and then promote those businesses to the market place.”

Brown has been deeply involved with the SBN since founding it in 2002 – she knows it is more than a passing fancy; that sustainability and clean technology are and will continue to be a source of competitive advantage.

 “Some people think it is a fad and it will go away, I guess for some people they have seen it kind of bouncing along for years. But now there is quite a loud heartbeat in this space so I think they would be dumb not to be in there.”