A found poem:

I think that’s a negative view, to be honest.

Like: we’re entrepreneurs and

business people, and

I get it.

You know, if you’re not retooling and radically disrupting your

business,

you ain’t doing the job.

You know, you have to disrupt yourself aggressively

before you get disrupted by global events,

and if you keep thinking you want

the same business model,

the same customer mix,

the same margin structure,

you know you’ve got to be

retooling and

refinancing and

rehoming, and

that’s just the reality of

business people

all around the world.

So, my job is to make sure I’m setting up the conditions

for you to be able to go create that growth.

And I think some of the subtext and assumption in your question is that

I think in New Zealand

I’ll be honest with you as a

business person who was …

I sat in Illinois for six years in Chicago, and the last person I wanted to ever talk to as a CEO was the government.

I didn’t sit there in Chicago saying I wonder what the government thinks and I wonder what they’re doing to help me for my business?

Can I get some grant money to do something?

No!

No.

I’m a business person.

I’m building a kick-ass company that actually has

commercially superior returns,

great customer experience, and

awesome internal culture.

That is the job of what makes a great company,

not a good one,

a great one.

And so that was my mentality.

Come home to New Zealand, and there’s a parent-child mentality.

I have literally sat in boardrooms across New Zealand,

The conversation goes: I wonder what the government’s going to do?

I wonder what the government’s going to think?

Who cares what the government thinks or does?

Our job is to be adult,

adult,

adult.

The business leaders,

the political leaders, and

the community leaders

working together,

doing things differently.

I set up the operating system.

You go out there and smack it and

go create the road, and

the community leaders see the pain,

the hurt,

the need, and

the frustration, and

the three actors do different things

(but complementary things)

to deal with the challenges and

the opportunities.