How do we bring back healthy risk-taking culture in Wellington?
Tuesday, 21 May 2024
Alex Matthews is a Wellington business person in the digital production / IT / games sector, an experienced risk-taker, and an avid futurist passionate about Aotearoa’s role on the global stage.
OPINION: We as Wellingtonians have an opportunity to challenge our risk-averse culture, in order to champion our current challenges and lead the nation.
Fundamentally we have a dilemma, one that I believe has been increasingly troubling Wellington decision-makers for a very long time; how to make good decisions and identify risks worth taking. Everything moves so fast and experience across it all is often lacking. Despite the challenges, decisions still need to be made.
I’ve often said modern leaders need to practise ‘positive insecurity’, which for me means being willing to be wrong, open to being challenged and able to detach the ego from decision-making. Easier said than done, but we can hold onto this practice while actively seeking to fill gaps in our knowledge. We can actively search and be decisive.
A core part of the New Zealand identity that I remember growing up was its affinity for boldness, for taking risks and winning against the odds. Many have argued that it’s in our blood. Our ancestors, no matter what their country of birth, often had to risk everything to come to these lands. We are the children of calculated risk-takers who backed up their ambitions with skill, know-how, survival, technology and an enterprising spirit.
In my last article, I talked about how I felt Wellington is due for another period of change, as a ‘perfect storm’ of economic, social and environmental factors coalesce, forcing us to adapt if we want to preserve the potential of our beautiful city to remain at the top of global indexes.
This change, while scary, is also full of opportunity to do things differently. Wellington is well placed to lead the way.
As the bureaucratic heart of the country, we have fallen prey to the common cultural ailment that plagues so many, perhaps all countries’ capitals; a system of peer pressure that fears risks, punishes new thinking and leads to overly expensive and bloated undertakings. Because when the decision-making is audited, so long as it's determined on the current calculus that ‘no real risks were taken’, then all is well, even if the project is a total failure and delivers no benefits to citizens. Somehow, that just doesn’t add up.
Government workers, I really believe, are trying their best and deserve our respect, our support. They’re the victims as much as anyone of a system that discourages real innovative thinking and enforces a status quo of bland compliance. I know from many contacts who work in these jobs how soul destroying that experience can be. It is pervasive in any bureaucracy and not something that can change easily.
Where we can start, though, is how we define risk. Surely projects that cost too much money, take too long to complete, bypass our own innovation sector, funnel huge sums offshore to multinational companies, rely on layers upon layers of highly paid consultants, would be considered risky? Somehow this very approach still seems to receive a lot of favour compared to taking chances on a new local start-up, undertaking multiple inexpensive experiments, employing an agile approach to project management, working with specialist community groups, or getting the early adoption benefits of embracing a new and emerging technology. Our out-dated understanding of where the risks are, perpetuates a costly cycle that will continue to starve the taxpayer of value for their money.
But don’t worry. We’re going to catch up, just like we have in the past. The phenomenon is not unique to us, it is not mysterious and it is solvable. By being honest about the challenge, we can see the opportunity it presents. Perhaps critically, this also needs to come from the top - with ministers overtly creating safe spaces for their teams to take risks in.
One reality we have to consider is that never has society moved as fast as it does now. How do you make an informed, strategic decision in a position of leadership, on a subject matter that is evolving faster than any tertiary degree can ever keep pace with? Think about AI, crypto, robotics, space, metamaterials, energy production, the internet, manufacturing and construction techniques, environmental protection, new media, current understandings of what constitutes wellbeing and a good life. These things are fluid and will not slow down in their ascent - the rate of change will only increase.
The answers are around. On a high level we need to strive for significant professional development investments, on an ongoing basis to stay current in technology, sociology, the environment, global culture and innovation. We’ve always been a country dependent on its ties and familiarity with what’s going on in the rest of the world. This desire to remain relevant internationally and be a trendsetter is what has rewarded us in the past.
We need more diversity of age groups working together - young, old and everyone in between reinforcing each other's knowledge. We need more R&D funding, start-up capital, business incubators and accelerators run by people who really know what they’re doing. We need accessible investment groups that can ensure our talent and innovations stay onshore, rather than the normal trend of them all going overseas to make another country rich. We need a greater knowledge of working with open source technology, exporting digital services / products, and how to generate our own unique IP.
In many cases we need smaller, bolder decision-making teams: with higher degrees of knowledge of what works and what doesn’t by studying the successes of other nations; with a deep sensitivity for how to adapt them to Aotearoa’s unique culture.
There are already many examples of this in Wellington. The city is full of great initiatives, incredible leaders, highly functional teams and examples of innovation. We need to take the opportunity to make this more widespread and cultivate a brand nationally and internationally as an efficiently run, innovative capital. At its best in the past, that’s the Wellington I’ve been proud to live in.
New Zealand has had a No.8 wire mentality for many years that could engineer anything in its own garage, a culture geared towards innovation; if there was a will there was a way. This cliche can no doubt be problematic; but it does touch on the ambitions of a society that wasn’t afraid to tinker, to create, take risks and try something new, to do more with less. I think we can re-embody that in this new era by giving each other permission to be bold, to take informed risks. We as the population also need to accept not all of them will always work; and that’s okay. Starting small, failing fast, and having in-built adaptation is the mantra for minimising the impact of taking risks in the innovation world.
We need to bring back confidence to a capital that has become used to throwing more money, more consultants, more processes at a problem, rather than being empowered to move swiftly in trialling new solutions and doubling down on the ones that demonstrate promise.
It’s time to make change - in leadership communities spanning government and the private sector. It is time to take risks and to update how we make those assessments. Many of the solutions may prove to be local, robust, affordable and easier. We need to remember we are the children of calculated risk takers.